The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

by Jhumpa Lahiri

  Malpasso

  Translated by Jenny McPhee

  Malpasso is the name of the road that winds up the side of the mountain. It’s carved into the same rock to which the houses cling and cast their reflections in the river far below. Built, it seems, one on top of the other, the houses resemble a tower, and beneath them is a low portico that shields the Malpasso from the rain and sun in both winter and summer. Gusts of blazing heat burst off the rock in summer, and in winter, the snow and the north wind dance upon it in a whistling swirl.

  From that height, looking down at the river is like peering into a well, and at that juncture the river curves sharply to create a wide clear mirror reflecting the houses. Farther off, among the gently rising and expanding hills – neatly organized like the wings of a theatre – one sees other, milder curves where the water flows languidly and shimmers brightly. This is the town’s most beautiful view and so, long ago, there under the portico they had built the Malpasso Caffè, its large windows shutterless even in winter. The main street begins there, rounds a bend and culminates in a more sheltered piazza. The Malpasso’s clientele is always the same. The veterinarian, the pharmacist and the bailiff frequent the Malpasso, while the doctor, the captain and the lawyer all go to the Theatre Caffè.

  The old fellow was considered one of the newest customers, even if he had been coming to the Malpasso every day at the same time for two years now, always sitting in the same spot by the window. The red velvet upholstery covering the seats along the walls was shabby, the planks in the wooden floor were loose, the mirrors foggy. But the town was beautiful and, in the spring, the mild sky was further softened by the clouds, while mists rising off the river drifted across the hills. In winter, the river froze between banks of hardened snow, and at night one heard the ice cracking.

  Initially the old man was given a measured, if not actually hostile, welcome. No one knew where he had come from – a retired bureaucrat, but this became known only later. He lived behind the church and was somewhat bothered by the bells (however – and this is what the neighbours said – the bells drowned out the shrieks of an angry wife who used her bitter voice to yell incessantly). Instead, at the Malpasso he was happy; no wife, no bells. Contented, he licked his lips, leaving them a little moist. He stayed for as long as he could at the Malpasso, together with people who had increasingly shown themselves to be kind, talkative and polite. At certain times, when the young people came to play billiards and turned on the radio, it could get a bit boisterous. The elderly played interminable games of cards, dominoes and dice. Every day, the old man showed up looking as if he had run away from home, his wool scarf wrapped around his neck, his bowler hat pulled down to his ears. Having scooted along the walls in a near-sprint, he arrived completely out of breath and went to sit in his usual place, where he loved to look out at the river and hills. That landscape was a privilege. He always talked about it while gesturing with his hands, inserting a Latin phrase here and there. After a while everyone began to call him ‘The Professor’.

  At the first hint of winter he put on an old coat with a red fur collar, yet he still managed to come down with a cough that lasted for weeks. Whenever he was overcome by a coughing fit, he shook like a twig, then dried his eyes on a handkerchief before having a glass of steaming grog. He was happy at the Malpasso. The young veterinarian, who had taken a shine to the old man, gave him a prescription, and the others, laid-back and light-hearted, had teased him: ‘How well you take care of him. Isn’t it animals you look after?’

  Even the old man laughed. He was certainly an animal. He had a wife. And what a wife! Feeling a bit more at ease, he began to talk, even if reluctantly, but the others had been needling him to tell his story. He was an amusing old man and the idea of that scarecrow-wife amused them too.

  No one had ever seen her, but everyone knew that she was spiteful and ruled with a stick. He couldn’t stay in his house even if he sat in a corner and said nothing, nor did it do any good to pretend to be asleep or sick. It was simply an impossible life, years of never being able to swallow a bite of food in peace with that ugly, poisonous, aggressive woman around. When he managed to enter the house without being seen, he would sneak into the kitchen, lift the lid off a pot, get himself a cup of soup, then fish some meatballs out of a casserole dish. Later, his wife would make one of her scenes, but eventually her outbursts stopped upsetting his stomach so much. For a long spell afterward she would, like a dragon, stand guard, and she locked everything away in the cupboards, keeping the key in her pocket.

  When she felt hot, she removed the bed covers, and when she felt cold, she put them back on. But because she was fat and always sweating, the old man’s teeth chattered through the night in April and November; after the lights went off he would put on his winter coat so that his wife wouldn’t yell at him. Avaricious, she could squeeze blood from a sardine, and she caressed her coins so often, they sparkled when leaving her hands.

  Finally someone said to him, ‘But why did you marry her?’ and the old man became sad and confused. For a few days afterward, he didn’t mention his wife, and he went back to expressing his passion for the landscape and praising the Malpasso. Other confessions ensued, hesitantly, as if he had to fight against a melancholic modesty. When she was in her thirties, his wife had suffered from a grave illness. Before that, oh, she had been a darling woman, a sweet, beautiful bride. In the rush of his words, he seemed to want to excuse himself for keeping her the way she was now, spiteful and tempestuous, but he had married a different woman, and, well, everyone knows about the heart’s memory … No one could have detected in that woman her old self, but he could, he who had been very happy with her for a few years. He then became dazed and pathetic. As a result of all the questions and answers, he weaved a new pleasurable plot in which the gold of youth shimmered while a white, wispy ghost sailed like a swan through the Malpasso’s smoky atmosphere.

  Everyone was listening to him, especially the young people – a beautiful young bride, gentle and fresh-faced, with a velvety voice and chaste abandon. Those first years – what a beautiful young thing! – she had a long braid that fell down over her sky-blue dress and she sang. He lifted up his hands as he did when quoting Latin: She sang! It was as if by some sorcery the door to a fairy kingdom had been sealed off forever. The young people urged him on. Despite the passage of time, the intimacy they were witnessing was still an exciting elixir. They loved the beautiful woman, her white arms, her gracious devotion, her sweet perspiration. She had sweated even then, but this wasn’t what had motivated her to take the blankets off her husband. And she was often in the kitchen then too, but joyfully, shelling peas with her caressing pink fingers.

  This beautiful ghost reigned over the Malpasso clientele for some time. Every day there was a new touch: a flower in her hair, a delicate ring on her finger, some lace, a feather. By now, everyone knew how the beautiful woman had once stood at the window-sill with a geranium over her ear. What a lucky old man!

  This entertainment, however, soon came to an end. One day when the old people were sitting, as they usually did, around a table with their noses in their tattered cards, occasionally shouting peevishly at those playing billiards to stop their ruckus, a tall, massive woman dressed in black came cautiously in through the glass door. A clump of celery stalks protruded out of her shopping bag. She wore an ugly shapeless hat and brittle, grey, unkempt locks of hair framed a sour yellow face. She didn’t go near the bar, moving slowly about the room until she stopped in front of the table of old men, remaining perfectly still as she stared at them, her two large hands clutching the shopping bag. The old man turned white, holding his breath, and pulled his head down further into the collar of his coat. He appeared to want to slide off of his seat and under the table. The onlookers understood that she must be his wife.

  They had imagined her to be ugly, but not this ugly! They were indignant, and since they’d chased after a beautiful ghost for all this time, the reality of her now disturbed them
and they too looked at her suspiciously. But the woman paid no attention to either their glares or their words, nor did she notice when the veterinarian stood up to offer her his seat. The shopping bag she held in her gnarled hands swayed slightly as she held her husband in a fixed and threatening stare.

  Finally, her lips barely moving, she began to interrogate him. One question followed another without his having a chance to answer even one of them. So this was his headquarters, right? She knew it was here that he came to spin his tall tales, the old fool. Oh, she knew everything. And she didn’t much care, to tell the truth. But why was he the one that came off looking good in the story? Marriage notoriously doesn’t always work out, and he might not be happy, but neither was she. Fate! In any case, these ‘gentlemen’ had no business interfering.

  As she spoke she didn’t look at anyone else, as if the ‘gentlemen’ were not there. Her glare was reserved for her husband, who continued to shrink down in his chair, sliding down slowly and stretching his legs ever deeper under the table. What they needed to know, she went on, was that she had always been like this, had never suffered any illness. She was as healthy as an ox. She had always been ugly and tough, it was useless to pretend otherwise. Everyone is born with a destiny, and he married her as she was, only a little younger and with quite a bit of money. The money was still there and so was the wife. Life isn’t rosy. And had never been rosy, nor any better than it was now.

  She noticed the empty chair next to her. A large foot emerged from beneath the hem of her long skirt and kicked it away. The men’s eyes widened noticeably. What a foot that bride has! Even the young men, holding their long billiards sticks, gathered closer. The woman continued to speak quietly. She hadn’t come to make a scene. She wanted to show what she knew herself to be – a civil woman. However, she also wanted to set the story straight. When one had such an enormous imagination, one never knew how far a story would go, and the old man still read all those books that had ruined his brain. She wouldn’t want for him to one day boast about having abducted and seduced her at eighteen, when instead she had married him at over thirty, but honourably so, accompanied by a healthy prenuptial agreement in which her husband was given access to very little of her money to squander. He had, of course, always resented this. Ah, so he had invented a cute little bride with geraniums in her hair? She didn’t like this, nor did she find it convenient. The gentlemen were embarrassing themselves by sitting there listening to all his drivel.

  She smiled nastily, flashing her rotten teeth, then turned and left without saying goodbye to anyone. The creaking floorboards accompanied her all the way to the door, which she slammed behind her, the glass tinkling for a good while afterward. In front of the Malpasso, she was hit by a gust of wind and they saw her raise her hands and the shopping bag in order to keep her hat on. She then disappeared, that bunch of celery bouncing on top of her head.

  At sunset the wind died down. Leaning against a railing near the river, the old man paused to look at the landscape. How much better it would have been if he had just contented himself with the view instead of letting himself be dominated by his usual weaknesses! Life is what it is, his wife is what she is, the river and hills are what they are. Instead, they had made a mockery of him … And who knew how long those who surely believed they too had been ridiculed would hold it against him?

  Out of pity, the veterinarian, who had accompanied him, said: ‘Let’s try not to talk about it any more … But you made a mistake. The hours are long at the Malpasso and things last.’

  The old man blinked his eyes and swallowed now and again. Finally he mumbled, ‘It’s just that … by now I was convinced of it myself. And it … did me good. Almost as if it had really happened.’

  The other man took his arm and they made their way to the bridge. Ghosts are a private thing and should be cultivated in silence. Someone as old as he is should have known this. Ghosts can’t be used to remedy what others see as our mistakes, the compromises we once made.

  ‘Now he is suffering like a widower,’ the young man thought, and walking beside him he stole a glance at his face. Instead, the old man still appeared to be entirely transported by that landscape. And it is right that old people experience nature so intensely, because when they are gone, it remains eternally, and the unwavering certainty of this reassures them.

  ‘Malpasso’

  First published in the magazine Le grandi firme (27 January 1938). Later included in Pamela o la bella estate (Mondadori, 1962).

  Carlo Cassola

  1917–87

  ‘I love the periphery more than the city. I love everything in the margins.’ This declaration more or less sums up Cassola’s aesthetic. Always an outsider, he would reformulate his approach to writing throughout his life. He was born in Rome, but loved Tuscany, thanks to summers spent in Volterra and Cecina. He pursued a law degree and worked for many years teaching history and philosophy in local high schools. He suffered severe personal losses; his first wife died at thirty-one, and he had to bury a daughter from his second marriage, born with a congenital disease, when she was only six months old. Il taglio del bosco (Timber Cutting), a long autobiographical story about a young widower published in 1950, echoes the plaintive tones of Joyce’s Dubliners. Cassola’s enthusiasm for the Irish writer inspired him to write a story about discovering Joyce at a young age. In the 1970s, he curated Thomas Hardy’s works for Mondadori in order to revive interest for Hardy in Italy. His novel La Ragazza di Bube (Bebo’s Girl) was nominated for the Strega Prize in 1960, but in the weeks leading up to the vote, was publicly attacked by Pasolini, who called it a betrayal of the neoRealist movement. Cassola won anyway, and the novel was made into a film starring Claudia Cardinale. Cassola responded to widespread literary fame by reverting to an existential phase of writing; his final works were about the extinction of mankind. This story appears in a collection called La visita (The Visit), early work that showcases his signature elements: limited characters, spare prose, charged emotional subtext. Drawing attention to one of life’s interstitial moments, it illuminates, fleetingly but trenchantly, the traditional lot of married women.

  At the Station

  Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri

  The train was already half an hour behind schedule, and a railway man said it would be later still.

  – It’s nice here, said the mother. Let’s hope Dad isn’t waiting.

  – If he goes to the station, they’ll tell him it’s running late, Mum.

  – But you know how Dad is.

  They walked in silence along the pavement, stopping at the far end of the station building. The tangle of tracks ahead of them gradually narrowed. The grey air, cold and dense, hung heavily over the countryside.

  – Who knows why it’s late, said Adriana.

  Her mother glanced at her without replying.

  – It’s usually right on time, Adriana added.

  She stopped talking and lowered her eyes. The silence and her mother’s gaze made her uncomfortable.

  – Adriana, you’re not pregnant, are you?

  The daughter denied it emphatically.

  – All the better, the mother said. At least you two can have a little fun. There’s time to have kids. You’re both so young.

  Two men were talking a few feet away: one standing, the other seated on a stack of railroad ties. Adriana studied their gestures, muted by twilight. Her mother was also looking in their direction. The one standing up nodded goodbye to the other and came towards them, swinging a lantern. Passing by, he stared at Adriana. Adriana turned to her mother.

  – Promise you’ll come back soon, she said.

  – My dear girl, it’s not easy, with that man. I can’t leave him on his own.

  – That’s what you think, Mum.

  – Maybe, the mother replied. After a pause she added: But newlyweds should be left alone. I’m not one of those women always at their daughters’ house for every trifling thing.

  – But in our case … Mario likes yo
ur coming now and then, the daughter said.

  – And now and then, as you can see, I’ll pop over to see you. But not like women who install themselves for months in their daughters’ homes, or in their sons’, like your poor grandmother, God bless her soul. When she passed away I heaved a sigh of relief.

  – Mum, the daughter scolded.

  – Believe me, Adriana, it had become torture in the end. And since then I’ve told myself: When your daughter gets married, each of you will live in her own house, with her own husband. I learned the hard way, I can assure you, she added after a pause.

  All at once the station lights turned on. Casting a last look at the countryside around the station, the two women realized it had turned dark.

  – The days are getting shorter, the mother said.

  They turned back. Bursts of laughter came from the station master’s room, and then the station master appeared in the doorway, smiling, with a cigar in his mouth, his cap at an angle. Adriana wished him a good evening.

  – Good evening, the station master replied, without looking at her.

  – Will it be much longer? Adriana asked.

  The station master turned towards the room and made an enquiry.

  – At least another ten minutes, he replied.

  In the middle of the station a small crowd had gathered, composed mostly of labourers. They’d formed several small groups. Their discussion was lively, they were laughing: no one seemed bothered by the delay.

  – Adriana, the mother said abruptly. Tell me the truth, you’re not fighting with Mario, are you?

  – Of course not, Mum. What gave you that idea?

  – I don’t know … I just got the sense … her mother said.

  She glanced at her wristwatch, and then at the station clock.