All Our Yesterdays (27 page)

For the whole of the journey she did nothing but talk to Giuma, telling him all the things she had not been capable of telling him when she had had him in front of her. For the whole of the journey she told him all about the baby that had been born from the two of them. But she remembered how he had looked away when she had started to talk to him about the baby, she saw again his bewildered eyes avoiding hers. She tried to wipe out the memory of those bewildered eyes, perhaps they had not really been avoiding hers, perhaps he was expecting her to talk for some time about the baby and had been surprised at her stopping all of a sudden. She was sorry that he had seen her wearing the ugly dress made by the San Costanzo dressmaker, he had become contemptuous of fine clothes and yet she was sorry that he had seen her like that. She had bought herself rather a fine dress at Turin with Signora Maria's clothing coupons, a dress she had found ready made in one of the big shops. But the day she met Giuma she was not wearing it because Signora Maria had already put it into her suitcase. What a mania Signora Maria had for always packing bags before it was necessary, Anna felt a great rage against Signora Maria, what a pity Giuma had not seen her wearing that dress, it was beautiful and did not look like a curtain. She was seized with rage against the cape, too, and wanted to fling it out of the train, but she thought she might give it to La Maschiona for when she went to Mass on Sundays.

La Maschiona was immensely pleased with the cape, but she shut it up in her cupboard together with her coat and could never make up her mind to wear it. The baby clung to La Maschiona's skirts and had become surly and savage, Cenzo Rena said that La Maschiona made everyone surly and savage that remained in her company. Anna looked out of the window at the village and realized how she had forgotten it during those few days ; at Turin, when she had tried to remember it, all she could see was the man with the corkscrew leg and the pieces of mules' hair lying outside the farrier's door. Now, little by little, she found everything again as it was. Then she started unpacking her suitcase and showed Cenzo Rena the dress she had bought in Turin. Cenzo Rena looked at it absent-mindedly and said it was not too bad. But when he heard how much it had cost he became gloomy and said it was too much, he hadn't very much money now, they must be economical and limit themselves to what was absolutely necessary. He had had to make another loan to the police-sergeant because his wife had to have an operation for a tumour of the breast, they had taken her off to the town in a motor ambulance. The San Costanzo doctor had not realized it was a tumour, he had kept saying it was nothing at all, doctors from the town had had to be called in for a consultation. Cenzo Rena said this was altogether too much, they must get rid of this doctor as quickly as possible. The police-sergeant and Cenzo Rena had made peace again, the sergeant had confessed with a blush that he had been forced to have his little boy's curls cut, because the mother was in hospital and no one in the house knew how to put in those curling-pins in the evening. Now, without its curls, the face of the police-sergeant's son looked bare and flat like that of the sergeant himself, you could see his big, squashed-looking nose and Cenzo Rena thought that the boy now looked like a little police-sergeant, and he thought that after all they had not been altogether wrong to leave him with curls all that time. The police-sergeant was still suffering at the thought of those shorn curls, he did not know how to tell his wife about it. The sergeant also had a pair of twins of a few months old and as yet they had no curls, in the twins' curls now lay the only hope.

Cenzo Rena was in a very bad humour and he was annoyed also at having made peace with the police-sergeant, because the sergeant now came often to see him, and he had to be comforted and told that his wife would get better. Very often he came in the evenings, too, and found the
contadino
Giuseppe there, and it was no longer possible to listen to the forbidden radio with the police-sergeant sitting there, he sat there in his cloak and on his chest he had a decoration on which was inscribed : “God curse England.”

Anna asked Cenzo Rena why he too did not go away on a journey, why he did not go for example to Turin. Why to Turin, asked Cenzo Rena, why should everybody now have to go to Turin, the most boring city in Italy ? No, he did not want to go anywhere, he wanted to stay at San Costanzo and see if he could manage to get another doctor to come to the village. Meanwhile the doctor had come to know that he was not wanted any more, and every day he became more melancholy. He tried to occupy himself to some extent with the dysentery. When he met Cenzo Rena he told him he had not really understood what was wrong with the police-sergeant's wife, it had seemed such a small thing, just a nodule, he had prescribed Unseed poultices for her. A nodule, said Cenzo Rena, a nodule. And he started to explain to him that it was useless for him to persist in being a doctor. The doctor asked what else he could do, he had spent his whole life in being a doctor, winter and summer he had been trudging round those roads. Now he was nearly seventy. As a young man he had thought it a fine thing to cure people, but then gradually he had started asking himself what he was trying to cure them for, they were
contadini
and they were all the same, they called in the doctor but then took no notice of what he said, in reality they only believed in their own pieces of witchcraft. When a child had a convulsive cough they gave it urine to drink, yes, that was what they did, in any case Cenzo Rena must know that. He himself had gradually become very melancholy, the only thing he liked now was good food, lunch-time was the best moment of his day. Yes, he was sorry about the police-sergeant's wife, but in truth there was nothing to be done for a cancer of the breast, she would have died just the same even if he had diagnosed it before. And besides, what sort of a life did the police-sergeant's wife have, very little better than the lives of the
contadini,
between the washing and the children she wore herself out and they said that the police-sergeant beat her. And then, those breasts of hers were nothing but a wreck and a ruin, a couple of limp bags that it was painful to see, and he himself tried to look at them as little as possible when he was called in to visit her.

Cenzo Rena told Anna that he would be sorry for that melancholy doctor, if it really happened that they found another one to take his place. But he said that all men made you sorry for them if you looked at them closely, and that in fact one ought to guard against that excess of compassion which arose suddenly, from looking closely at people. He was sitting on the bed in their room, he had taken off his shirt and there he was bare to the waist with his plump chest all covered with grey hairs, he scratched his back and he scratched in front among the hairs and uttered great yawns, Anna told him she had once seen a lion at the zoo and it was yawning just like him. When had she been to the zoo, he asked, she had never told him about that. Anna said that she had been there once in Rome as a little girl, with Giustino and Signora Maria. In any case there were lots of things she had never had time to tell him, for instance she had not told him all about Turin, because he himself did nothing but talk about the doctor and the police-sergeant's wife. In Turin, she said, she had met Giuma and they had gone together to a café. Cenzo Rena slipped on his pyjamas and lay down on the bed, and suddenly stopped yawning and scratching. He said nothing and looked at the ceiling, he had taken off his glasses and his face always looked very strange without glasses, all goggle-eyed, as it were, and naked. He said nothing and blinked his eyelids and swallowed, and a profound silence fell between them ; Anna was standing near the window, still fully dressed, she was wearing the dress she had bought in Turin. Outside it was night, an August night, you could see the hills in the moonlight, and a strong smell of dust and withered grass came in through the windows. And what was he like now, this Giuma, asked Cenzo Rena at last, what had he turned into now ? But Anna no longer wanted to talk about Giuma, she stood there in the corner of the window and thought how strange the name of Giuma sounded in that room, how strange was Cenzo Rena's voice as he uttered it, Cenzo Rena and Giuma were two things that could not be thought of together. Cenzo Rena told her to take off that ugly dress that she had bought at Turin. What a stupid journey it had been, he said, she had bought that ugly dress and had not succeeded in carrying off Signora Maria from the Pensione Corona, he himself was very glad not to be falling over Signora Maria there in his own house but she couldn't possibly stay for ever at the Pensione Corona, however little you spent in a boarding-house you were still spending something and he could not go on sending her money for ever. Everybody wanted money from him and in a short time he would not have any left. Anna undressed hastily and put out the light, and then suddenly she asked him whether she had done wrong in going to sit in that café with Giuma. No, he said, no. And he turned to her and the whole bed bounced up and down and he said to her, didn't she know he was very, very fond of her and was always a little afraid she might go off with Giuma or someone else and leave him alone ?

7

The police-sergeant's wife was sent home from the hospital because there was no hope for her, and she died in the autumn, she died without knowing she was dying, very happy at not being in hospital any more but lying in her big mahogany bed that had been bought with Cenzo Rena's money, and with the window open on to the village square and the mild autumn days. Her room was on the top floor of the police station, and every two or three hours the Turk could be heard ringing the bell, for he had had orders from the police-sergeant to ring often, and now the sergeant was in despair at having given him these orders because these continual bell-ringings disturbed his wife's rest, he looked out of the window and shouted to the Turk to ring more gently. For the three old women it was enough to ring just once in the morning, for it was impossible that they, being so old, should run away ; yet nevertheless they came to see the police-sergeant at all moments to complain about sometthing or other, now that someone had not paid them for their mending, now that they had not closed an eye because the children of the tailor who gave them their room screamed all night. The police-sergeant answered that he himself never closed an eye all night because the twins cried and his wife complained.

The death of the police-sergeant's wife moved the whole village, they had never been able to endure the police-sergeant, but now they grew tender over the widower and his little orphans. The
contadini
had taken to coming to Cenzo Rena's house again, partly because he had now made peace with the police-sergeant, partly because they wanted to talk about the sulphur for the vines which was not to be got, even sulphur had disappeared owing to the war, and the few San Costanzo vines, tossed always by the wind on the ridge of the hill, were devoured by phylloxera. The
contadini
hoped that Cenzo Rena would know some trick or other to get sulphur, but he too had vines and he too could not get sulphur, he took the
contadini
to look at his few vines with their sickly leaves, only the mayor had any sulphur and goodness knows how he managed to get it. The police-sergeant had no vines, but nevertheless it was unlikely that he would ever be left without wine, because those who did not want to go to the war brought flasks of wine to him by night. People soon stopped feeling any tenderness for the police-sergeant, because he had taken into his house a young sister of his wife's and they said he had at once started making love to her on the big mahogany bed that had been bought with Cenzo Rena's money. Everyone regretted the dead woman who had been good and gentle, on the other hand this younger one, whom the police-sergeant would certainly end by marrying, was trying to order the whole village about, she came out on the balcony of the police station and called to the women to come and wash the clothes or mind the twins and never dreamt of paying them, but none of them dared refuse for fear of the police-sergeant. There was also the midwife who was in love with the police-sergeant and who had been going about with swollen eyes and a troubled face ever since that girl with the two pear-shaped breasts had been at the police station, the midwife was saying all over the village that those two breasts in the police station were a scandal. Cenzo Rena was hugely amused by these stories, of which he came to know from La Maschiona and the
contadini,
and there were even some who said that the police-sergeant had deliberately brought about the death of his wife, perhaps he had not exactly killed her but he had brought about her death by taking her too late to the hospital, so as not to have those two diseased breasts in the house but two pear-shaped breasts instead, and so, if the police-sergeant's wife was dead, it had not been the fault of the old doctor but of the police-sergeant himself. No one thought now of trying to get the doctor sent away, and even Cenzo Rena had gradually ceased to think of it and said that everything could now be put off until after the war if there was ever to be any after, if they called in another doctor now it might well happen that another useless old bore might arrive, even worse than the one they had.

All of a sudden came the news of a heavy air raid on Turin, with thousands and thousands of people killed. Anna rushed to telephone to the Pensione Corona but it was not possible to get through, and Cenzo Rena walked up and down restlessly in front of the post office where the telephone was, they stayed the whole day in front of the post office waiting to get through. In the evening Cenzo Rena said that probably there was now nothing but a hole in the place of the Pensione Corona. Anna wondered whether perhaps Giuma was dead too.

Some days later they had a letter from Concettina. She had been surprised by the arrival of a large parcel of towels, all scorched, and then had had a letter from the landlady of the Pensione Corona which said that Signora Maria had been killed on the staircase of the boarding-house, she had been swept away in the collapse of the staircase together with a large suitcase, in which were these towels. All the inhabitants of the boarding-house had gone down into the cellar when the siren sounded, but Signora Maria had not gone down with the others, always, at every air raid warning, she was the last to come down, because she was busy in her room putting shoes and clothes and towels into suitcases, and the landlady had to go up two or three times and knock at her door at the risk of her own life. And this time, too, the landlady had knocked at the door and Signora Maria had abused her, she had shouted that she was old enough to look after herself. The landlady had gone, down into the cellar with the other boarders. And then they had heard an immense crash, and when they came out of the cellar there was nothing left of the Pensione Corona but the walls, and everything else was flames and dust, and they had found Signora Maria in the ruins of the staircase, clinging to her big suitcase.