The City and the House

Books by Natalia Ginzburg

All Our Yesterdays

The Things We Used to Say

The Little Virtues

The Manzoni Family

Valentino and Sagittarius

Family: Family and Borghesia, Two Novellas

Road to the City

Voices in the Evening

Rome, 15th October

My dear Ferruccio,

I booked my ticket this morning. I leave in six weeks, on 30th November. I sent off my three trunks a week ago. There are books, suits and shirts in them. Phone me when they arrive. I know how much you prefer the telephone to letters. I'm the opposite.

I am very happy to be leaving. I am very happy that I'll see you again. My life here has become difficult recently. I couldn't breathe any more. When I decided to come and see you I was able to breathe again.

I am also very sorry to be leaving. I think I shall miss certain people and places I'm strongly attached to. I don't think I'll make new friends. I've become rather solitary over the years. I have had some friends here, not that many, and I shall miss them. But there has to be something to put up with. I shall be with you and that will mean a great deal to me. I am very fond of you, as you know, and I have been painfully aware of your absence all these years. Your visits were short, and few and far between. I enjoyed them, it's true, but at the same time they upset me because they were short and because I was always afraid I bored you; I was always afraid that being with me meant very little to you.

I often wonder whether you are pleased that I'm coming. True, it was you who told me to come, but sometimes I feel that perhaps you regretted this afterwards. But if you have had regrets, let's say no more about it at this stage. I have booked my ticket and I am definitely leaving. I will try to be as little financial trouble to you as I can.

I am coming to America like someone who has decided to throw himself into the sea and hopes he will emerge either dead or new and changed. I know this kind of talk irritates you, but this is what I feel and I want you to know.

With love from,

Giuseppe

Rome, 20th October

My dear Lucrezia,

I don't think we shall see each other again. I think yesterday was the last time. I told you that I might come again, next Saturday, to Monte Fermo, but I don't think I shall. Yesterday evening as we were coming through the gate I looked up at
Le Margherite
, and I thought that I was looking at your house for the last time. I don't think I shall come and see you again. And I don't think you will come to Rome. There's no point. Don't come on my behalf. I said goodbye to you yesterday, and I don't like saying goodbye to people twice. Don't phone me, and I won't phone you either. I don't want to hear your voice, nor do I want you to hear mine. I prefer this sheet of paper.

You told me that you will come and see me in America. But I don't believe it. In all the years I've known you I've never seen you set off on a long journey. The only thing I've seen you do, in all these years, is to jump in your beat-up old Volkswagen that stinks of wet dog to get to the market in Pianura. And so I think the last time I'll see you was yesterday, on the station at Pianura. You had on your shaggy white woollen jacket with camels embroidered along the edge, and rather grubby white trousers, your hair was gathered on top of your head and one lock of it hung down on to your neck, and you were leaning against the wall. That's how I remember you. You were very pale. But then you are always pale. While he was waiting for the train to arrive, Piero said, ‘Why don't you get the next one, it leaves in an hour?' I am very fond of Piero. I stood at the window and saw the three of you: you, Piero, Serena. Piero had his thick red scarf on. Serena was eating bread and cheese. You were leaning against the wall. That's how I remember you. Piero's sweetness and seriousness. His blond curls that are always a little greasy even when it's cold. Serena with her juniper covered in crumbs. Your height and pallor, the black lock of hair hanging down on to your neck, your hands in your pockets.

I shall do various things in the few days before I leave. At the moment I have to buy some shirts, a winter suit and an overcoat. Then I have to empty my flat. Not of its furniture but of everything which is of no use to anyone, old papers, old letters, old pots, old rags. Not the furniture, because as you know the Lanzaras are buying it with the furniture. Roberta says everything's going for a song. But you know how Roberta is. She immediately assigns every object a name, an importance and a financial value. I see Roberta a lot these days. She comes up and helps me empty the drawers. According to Roberta, my selling the house is a real piece of lunacy. Never sell bricks and mortar, never. You should hang on to bricks and mortar for dear life. And people have offered her immense sums for her flat, which is immediately under mine and is the same as mine, and she has refused them because she wouldn't dream of letting it go. But how is it possible that the Lanzaras are paying so little.

My dear Giuseppe, she says to me, the Lanzaras are leading you up the garden path. And what will you do if one fine day you decide to come back? I answer that I don't think I'll ever want to do that. This is how we talk whilst we are emptying the drawers. Every so often we look at photographs of our relatives, and of when we were children, Ferruccio, Roberta and me, on the beach or skating.

The other day as we were walking in the woods Piero asked me ‘Why are you going to America?' Usually when people ask me this I say the same things. I've no money. I'm tired of writing articles for newspapers. I'm sick of newspapers. My brother in Princeton knows a great many people. He teaches biology at the university and is very well thought of. He's lived there for many years. He'll find me a job. He has already made enquiries. I shall give Italian lessons in small schools. Teachers are well-paid in America. And then my brother is well-off and has no problems. I don't imagine I shall be completely dependent on him, but it's true that I will be to a certain extent. I shall do the housework and prepare meals. You know that I'm good at housework and very quick. I would like to live in Princeton, a tiny town that I've never seen but which I can imagine because my brother has told me a lot about it. I would like to live in a tiny American town. I've never seen America and now I'll see it. I shall use the library at Princeton. There are lots of libraries there. I shall at last educate myself. I shall have peace in which to work and study and I don't ask for anything else. This is how I want to prepare myself for my old age. I have never managed to do anything and I am nearly fifty. I could go to America for a year and then come back. Well, I don't know. I don't like travelling. For some time now I've wanted to decide what to do, and then do it once and for all.

I like the idea of staying with my brother. He is only a little older than I am but he always led me and advised me when we were boys. I am an insecure person. I need someone who will reassure me. My brother is a man who has all the qualities I lack, he has a calm temperament and thinks clearly. I am very attached to my brother. But, said Piero, when your brother was here you were very depressed and seemed as if you hoped he would leave again. This is true. Having him in my house all the time wore me out. This is a house in which I am used to being alone. Finding him sitting in the living-room when I got up in the morning bothered me, and so did having to decide what he should do every day and who I should arrange for him to meet. Finding his striped dressing-gown in the bathroom bothered me. I'm not a hospitable person. I don't like having guests in the house, nor being the guest in someone else's house. But it won't be a question of guests in America: neither of us will be a guest. We shall be two brothers living together.

As soon as I get up in the morning I start to think of everything I am about to leave, of everything I am going to miss in America. I am leaving you. I am leaving your children, Piero, your house called
Le Margherite
, though goodness only knows why you called it that as no marguerites are to be seen there, nor even anywhere near. I am leaving the few friends I always saw at your house, Serena, Egisto, Albina, with whom we used to go for walks in the woods and with whom we used to play cards in the evening. I say ‘used to' but this is a mistake, because you will continue to go for walks and to play cards, and the ‘used to' refers only to me. I am leaving my cousin Roberta, a splendid, noisy, interfering, rough diamond of a woman who is devoted to everyone. I am leaving my flat here, where I have lived for more than twenty years. The fake-fur armchair with a plaid over it where I sit in the mornings as soon as I wake up. The four-poster bed with thin wooden columns where I finish up in the evenings. The kitchen window that looks on to the convent garden. The living-room windows that look on to via Nazario Sauro. The newspaper kiosk on the corner, the Mariuccia Restaurant that I occasionally go down to for a meal, the sports equipment shop and the Esperia Café. I am leaving you. I am leaving your broad, pale face, your green eyes, your black locks of hair, your swollen lips. We haven't made love now for three years, but when I see you I always have the feeling that we have done so yesterday. Whereas in fact we shall never do so again. That day at Viterbo you said ‘Never again'. I am also leaving Viterbo behind, that hotel and that room I hated, and to which I returned by myself, last summer, for no reason whatsoever. Perhaps because I was very unhappy and I wanted to be even more so. I asked them to give me that exact room, number twenty-three. I often think about that room, and I shall think about it in America: I shall miss it, because we also miss places we have hated. But perhaps in America that room will be vaguer, more distant and innocuous. As for my son, I can't say I'm leaving him behind because I don't really know where he is, and I might see him more often in America, as long journeys are no problem for him.

Say goodbye to your children for me. I sort of said goodbye to them yesterday; I waved to them as I was passing through the kitchen where they were watching television and eating. I didn't want to stop and kiss them because I would have been upset and this would have been ridiculous to them; they would have carried away a ridiculous impression of me. Say goodbye especially to Cecilia, who is the child of yours I like best. You have told me that you think Graziano is my child, but you are probably mistaken, seen from behind he is just like your mother-in-law Annina. Cecilia has very beautiful eyes and she reminds me a little of my sister who died young. Daniele has a natural talent for drawing, as I did when I was a boy. Obviously neither Daniele or Cecilia are mine because they were born when I didn't know you, but what I mean is that I find something congenial in all your children except Graziano. Even the little one is quickwitted and charming. He isn't mine because he was born a year after Viterbo, and anyway he is identical to Piero. I find Graziano rather uninteresting, he's a real know-all. Perhaps it is those glasses that make him look like a little professor. The other four seem much nicer to me. But perhaps attributing the paternity of the least interesting of your children to me is part of your spite-fulness against me.