All Our Yesterdays (20 page)

It was dark when they arrived back at Le Visciole, and Signora Maria was waiting at the gate. She said that ever since the affair of Ippolito she was always expecting misfortunes, she was not as brave as she had once been, as soon as it became dark she was worried if they were not all in the house. She wanted to see the watch at once, she took hold of Anna's wrist so as to look at it. Cenzo Rena clapped his hand to his forehead, he had quite for-gotten about it but there was still time to buy watches, there was plenty and plenty of time. Signora Maria was disappointed and much astonished, what had they been doing then for so many hours in the town? Cenzo Rena said they had not been in the town. He stopped to pat the dog and play with it, he asked its pardon for not having greeted it properly on his arrival the evening before. They went into the dining-room, Concettina was there putting the baby to sleep, Emilio and Giustino were playing chess. Cenzo Rena said that he and Anna were getting married at once, as soon as the papers were ready, in fact someone must speak to that same superintendent of police who had once tried to hit him, and must promise him a present if he would hurry up and get the papers together quickly, Signora Maria must speak to him because he himself did not wish to see that policeman's face. He said this and they all sat still and in silence, and they looked now at Cenzo Rena and now at Anna, and Concettina all of a sudden gave the baby to Signora Maria and came forward to Cenzo Rena and said that so long as she was alive this dirty thing should not happen. She told him to look at himself in the looking-glass, perhaps he had not noticed that he was an ugly old gentleman. He had money and so he believed he could buy anything, but they were not to be bought, their father had not brought them up so that when the moment came someone might be able to buy them. Cenzo Rena said he no longer had so very much money, though he still had a little. He often looked at himself in the looking-glass and he had known for some time that he was an ugly old gentleman. But perhaps something worse might happen to a girl than to marry him. All at once he flew into a terrible rage, he upset the chess table with his knee, something worse, he shouted, something worse. Giustino bent down to pick up the chessmen from the carpet. What did they know about Anna, shouted Cenzo Rena and walked up and down the room, what did they know about each other, they had let Ippolito die on a seat. Then Concettina started to cry, it was not her fault that Ippolito was dead, she had never imagined that he wanted to die. She sobbed with her face between her hands and the baby screamed, Signora Maria rocked it gently on her knee and looked round with troubled eyes, Cenzo Rena was mad, he was mad and it might easily happen now that he would wreck the whole house. The chess table was lying on the floor with a broken leg. But Cenzo Rena calmed down suddenly, he asked Concettina's pardon for having made her cry, he helped Giustino to collect the chessmen and looked at the table with the broken leg, it could perfectly well be mended, it was easy. Concettina said they must never speak to her about that seat, never never, she was always carefully trying not to think about that seat, she was trying to tear it away from in front of her eyes. She asked Cenzo Rena's pardon for having said that he was an ugly old gentleman. Cenzo Rena told her she had spoken quite truly, he was an ugly
rather
old gentleman, he was almost forty-eight. But he was not thinking of buying anybody and he did not want to do anything dirty, he wanted to do good and not ill. They were all very quiet and sad now, they were gathered round the baby cracking their fingers to make him stop screaming, Concettina was still sobbing gently and they gave her a glass of water to sip. Then they remembered Anna and gave her some water too, because she was looking very tired and pale. And Cenzo Rena told Concettina that he wished to speak to her alone for a moment and he went upstairs with her. Giustino went to fetch the glue and he and Emilio tried to mend the leg of the table.

When she came back to the dining-room Concettina was very cold and severe. She sat down in an armchair and lit a cigarette, Signora Maria told her that smoking was not good for her milk but she took no notice. She smoked and looked sideways now at Signora Maria and now at Anna. She said that Signora Maria must go to the superintendent of police at once next morning, they wanted the papers for the marriage at once. She told Anna to go to bed and Giustino to stop messing with the glue and go up to his room. And so they were left alone, Emilio, Concettina and Signora Maria. Signora Maria said she felt her head going round, was it really going to happen that Cenzo Rena and Anna were getting married, were they giving Anna in marriage to a madman, to a madman like that? And they had not even asked Anna whether she liked marrying this madman, but in any case even if she liked marrying him it made no difference, goodness knows what sort of stories this madman had been telling her, goodness knows how he had made her fall in love with him. Her head was going round violently, she closed her eyes and dug her fingers into the arms of her chair, but Concettina said she did not believe in these fainting fits of here, in difficult moments she always imagined she was going to faint but she never did, Cenzo Rena was not in the least mad, said Concettina. Nor had she herself any wish to give a lot of explanations, they were getting married and that was enough. She smoked and smoothed down her dress over her knees. Cenzo Rena had persuaded her, after all he wasn't so very old, he wasn't even forty-eight and there were plenty of marriages that went well in spite of that, very old men and very young women, or the other way round, it didn't matter in the least. And now she wanted to be left in peace, she didn't want any questions. Signora Maria tried to say that there was also the question of the drinking. But Concettina said that Signora Maria had a fixed idea on the question of the drinking, after all Cenzo Rena didn't drink so very much. On the contrary Signora Maria ought to be pleased with Cenzo Rena who had money, she had always so much liked people who had money, she never stopped moaning about the money the old lady had had almost a century before. And furthermore they would have to pay more attention to Anna, no one had ever bothered to find out anything about Anna, what her life was like and what she thought. Goodness knows what Signora Maria did all day long, messing about making dresses out of old curtains. Signora Maria gazed at Concettina with troubled eyes, she could not understand why all at once Concettina had become so unkind to her. She said Anna was a quiet girl, there was no need to pay so very much attention to her, she was not like Concettina who as a girl had always had so many
fiancés,
she used to change them every week, and Danilo always standing at the gate. Anna had no
fiancés,
she just went out occasionally with Giuma, who was a well-brought-up boy of good family and they had known each other ever since they were children. Concettina moved her chin to signify agreement, very hurriedly and frowning at the same time. And that day she had allowed her to go out with Cenzo Rena so that he might buy her a watch, said Signora Maria, and he had not bought the watch and perhaps he had made her fall in love with him in some unaccountable way, he was a man in whom there was nothing to fall in love with, she had not believed any harm could come of it, she begged Concettina to tell her if there had been any harm in it. No, said Concettina, no. She had finished smoking and she stubbed out her cigarette-end furiously in the ash-tray, and then begged Emilio to stop trying to mend the table, they were full of little tables at Le Visciole and that one could well be thrown into the fire.

Anna and Cenzo Rena were married two weeks later, Signora Maria asked how she could possibly get married like that without any trousseau but Cenzo Rena said they would buy the trousseau on the way home, a little bit here and a little bit there. Signora Maria was in despair at the thought of what they would buy, and besides, she said they were in mourning and they ought to have waited at least a year before they got married, but nobody paid any attention to her. Cenzo Rena and Anna were married in the little village church early one morning, and the witnesses were Emilio and the doctor with the hair like chickens' feathers, it was early but all the Humbugs' daughters had come to the church to watch. And then Cenzo Rena and Anna got into the car and left for that famous village of Cenzo Rena's, but at the last moment Cenzo Rena decided to take the dog with him, because it seemed to him that it looked very unhappy when he said good-bye to it. Anna turned her head to take one last look at Le Visciole, and at Concettina and Signora Maria and Giustino at the gate, and then everything disappeared in a cloud of dust, and the three who were standing at the gate could no longer see the little grey car darting away in the dust, they could only hear the barking of the dog in the distance, perhaps it would bark like that during the whole of the journey, because it did not like going in a car and was frightened. Giustino was disappointed that they had taken away the dog, he had grown used to preparing its dinner every day and taking it down to splash about in the river, and he was offended with Cenzo Rena for having taken away the dog without even asking his leave, and he was annoyed with Cenzo Rena and Anna for getting married, it was a thing that could not be understood, a thing without any sense in it. He had expected Cenzo Rena to explain to him why he was getting married, but Cenzo Rena had almost forgotten to speak to him, and yet once they had been friends, they used to go together and dance with the Humbugs' daughters, and besides, Giustino had written him a great many letters, in which he told him a great many things about himself. He did not at all like to think of Cenzo Rena and Anna being married, of their living together far away in that famous village, Cenzo Rena had said to him that he must come and see them some time or other but maybe he would not go. When the summer was over he would go back to the town and would live alone with Signora Maria, and in the town was Ippolito's seat, and the road by the river and the soap factory. Giustino sometimes thought he would like to go to the war, he would not mind shooting when everyone else was shooting, it would at any rate be better than staying at home with Signora Maria, with the road by the river and the tall, thin girl. He had stopped writing to the tall, thin girl even when it rained, the tall, thin girl was at the seaside and had sent him a photograph of herself in a bathing-costume, he had stopped writing to her because he thought she was too thin.

C
ENZO RENA's
village was called Borgo San Costanzo. Once there had been a train to it, but not since the beginning of the war. Now the rails lay rusting in the lush, thick grass along the river, and the house which had been the station-master's house had for some months been turned into a dance-hall, but then had come an order forbidding dancing because of the war. Now the station-master's house was nothing at all, its windows were smashed and its doors broken down and old men who had nowhere to sleep came and slept there, and they hung up their ragged trousers on the wooden fence, amongst dried and fallen sunflowers. The grass was lush and thick only along the banks of the river, as it rose up the slopes of the hills it became shaggy and scorched, and the hills on the west side had on them neither houses nor trees, on those to the east, on the other hand, could be seen wind-lashed vineyards amongst sandy paths and rocks, and higher up there were small, rugged pines, and where the pines began was Cenzo Rena's house, hanging over a tumbled mass of rocks.

The village was cut in half by the road, and along the road passed the bus twice a day, swaying beneath a load of people who had climbed on the running-boards and on the roof. The bus stopped for a few minutes in the village square, the mail-bag was flung out of the window, and then the bus went on, swaying along the sandy road. In the square grew four small trees, with clipped, round heads, and there, too, the old Marchesa's carriage always stood, with the coachman on guard chasing away with his whip the boys who tried to climb up into it. From time to time the Marchesa would come down to go for a drive, and then the little carriage with its canvas awning would go bowling up and down the street, with the Marchesa's black feather boa fluttering in the air. The Marchesa's palace was hemmed in amongst narrow lanes and little streams of water, amongst crooked, smoky houses and pigsties, and it had a great doorway with double doors of bronze and blue friezes painted on its façade, and in the courtyard stood an oak-tree full of birds.

Such was Borgo San Costanzo, Cenzo Rena's village, and the day that Anna and Cenzo Rena arrived in the village square all the people had come out to see what sort of a wife Cenzo Rena had taken to himself, and they were disappointed with this little wife with her dishevelled hair, wearing Cenzo Rena's waterproof that came down to her ankles. They decided that she looked like the daughters of the draper, but worse, and they considered that there was no need to go a long way away to find a wife like that. The old Marchesa, too, was peering out of her carriage, with her plump, powdered face and blue paint on her eyelids and all round her eyes, and to Anna they all appeared to be
contadini
of the South, including the old Marchesa and the draper, who was standing in the doorway of his shop with his fingers thrust into his waistcoat. And after a minute she had a terrible longing to be back again in her own home, at Le Visciole or at the house in their own little town, with Giustino and Signora Maria and without any
contadini
of the South, and as soon as she found herself in the village square even Cenzo Rena seemed like a stranger, even he seemed something like a
contadino
of the South, and all of a sudden he appeared to have forgotten her and he had started talking very earnestly to a man on a donkey, they were very friendly and goodness knows what they were planning together, something to do with Government land. They laughed loudly and slapped each other on the back, and there was she, standing waiting amongst those four trees, and beside her she had La Maschiona with her big bare feet in the dust, and she hunted for a few words to say to La Maschiona but could not find any words at all, and La Maschiona was looking at her in a fright, and every now and then would heave a sigh and rub her big brown nose with the palm of her hand. The dog, on the other hand, was very pleased to be out of the car, and was running about the square barking in the midst of a heap of children, and rolling in the yellow, sandy dust, and then it went and scratched in the rubbish heap behind the draper's shop.