The City and the House (7 page)

I am in good health. I spend hours every day in my room. I have started to write a novel. I used to write novels when I was twenty. I never finished any of them. Perhaps I shall manage to finish this one. My brother and Anne Marie don't know that I am writing a novel. I told them I was writing a paper on Flaubert.

I write in longhand, sitting in an armchair with a large book on my knees and the paper resting on the book. I have never liked typing. True, I used to write articles on the typewriter, but when I write anything else, anything that is not meant for the newspapers, I prefer to use a ballpoint pen. But generally speaking I have kept very little of the things that I have written in ballpoint throughout my life. When I re-read them I felt uncomfortable and tore them up. Now I would like to see if I can manage to write something I shan't tear up.

I wake up early in the morning. Before I get up I stare for a long time at the bear-cubs and the balloons. Then I go into the kitchen and make myself a coffee. Anne Marie comes in a little later, in her dressing-gown, and she starts to make the breakfast for my brother and herself. She heats up the milk, toasts the bread, beats the eggs. In the morning she doesn't have her hair in a bun, instead it is gathered in a long plait. She smiles all the time. She smiles with her mouth, but her eyes and the rest of her face don't smile. She and I sometimes talk to one another in English and sometimes in French, but we have nothing to say to each other in any language. Then my brother appears from the bathroom in his striped dressing-gown. They have a long, careful breakfast, which I don't take part in but at which I am present. When they have finished breakfast I help Anne Marie to wash the dishes. I take the rubbish bags to the dustbin which is in front of the door. And here's my brother in his loden overcoat and Anne Marie with her bun. Anne Marie puts her cap on in front of the hall mirror, and tilts it over one ear. They take their bicycles out of the garage and go off to the Institute. I wave to them from the window. I am alone.

I don't go out much. During the first days I was here I went out with my brother a few times. They were the only times in which he and I were together without Anne Marie, and I anxiously searched around inside myself for things to say to him, without finding a single phrase. He was a bit embarrassed, too. Perhaps he thinks that I don't like Anne Marie. It's true, I can't stand her; I can't stand either her long neck, or her clear squinting eyes, or her smile, or her plait, or her bun. But I can't tell him that and I'm unable to tell him anything else. When I'm alone I don't want to go out, I don't feel any great curiosity to go and look around, I feel that I'm neither a visitor passing through nor an inhabitant of the place; I'm someone who doesn't know what to be and who stares at everything indecisively.

Anne Marie and my brother come back at seven in the evening. Anne Marie immediately starts cooking. She cooks very complicated dishes, slices of meat with minced carrots, beetroot and cabbage mixed up together, sauces with flour and cream. Since I have been here she has never made a meat-loaf but I'm sure that if she did make one it wouldn't fall apart. She hurries about the kitchen darting that long neck of hers this way and that, smiling the whole time. I offer to help her. She politely refuses. My brother and I sit in the living-room and wait for supper to be ready. He reads scientific journals and I read detective stories. Every now and then he raises his head and asks me if what I am reading is interesting. I always say yes. I look at him. As I look at him, whilst he is reading seated at the table, with his chin cupped in his hand and his wrinkled forehead, I experience once again the feeling of great calm that he always used to give me when we were children, and when I thought of him in Italy. He has always been a secure point of reference for me, a tree-trunk I could lean against, someone from whom I could at every moment ask for explanations, judgements, reproaches and absolution. But in fact I never ask him for anything now. Our relationship has been interrupted. It seems to me that he doesn't have space for me now. After the evening of my arrival he has said nothing more to me about his marriage. And whilst I look at him I feel that behind his authoritative appearance an extreme embarrassment, as far as I am concerned, is hiding itself-a dislike even, a disgust, which is not at all severe or condemnatory, but simply irritated. We go and sit down to supper. I don't like Anne Marie's soups at all but I eat them all the same and praise them to the skies in French and in English. At table my brother and Anne Marie hold hands. They drink milk and fruit juices. Towards evening I always go to the ‘Wines and Spirits' and buy myself a can of beer. They could remember at least once that I drink beer and buy some for me. They don't do so. They don't remember. It will seem silly to you, but this upsets me.

Sometimes two of my brother's friends come over after supper. Their names are Schultz and Kramer. They work in the same Institute. My brother and Anne Marie talk and laugh a lot with
them
, until late at night. I stay for a while during these conversations, without understanding anything because they are on scientific subjects and because I don't know English well enough. I go to bed early.

I had an interview for an Italian teaching post. They accepted me. I shall teach Italian in a school. A few days ago my brother and I went to see the director. I start at the beginning of January.

My brother has advised me to buy a bicycle. I shall cycle to school. According to my brother you enjoy the fresh morning air better on a bicycle than on foot.

I shall teach for two or three months or so and then perhaps I shall return to Italy. Goodness only knows why I was such an idiot as to sell my house.

Giuseppe

Anne Marie's daughter and son-in-law have arrived. They are sleeping in the drawing room where there are two sofa-beds. They will spend the New Year here. The daughter is a thin, skinny girl. She wears spectacles and she's pregnant. The son-in-law is a little fellow, thin, with red hair and jug ears. The son-in-law's name is Danny, the daughter's Chantal. They both work in an advertising agency.

I've bought a bicycle.

Rome, 15th January

Dear Alberico,

I was very pleased that you phoned me yesterday, and I thank you very much for your New Year's greetings, even though I realize that you didn't phone to wish me a Happy New Year but for your own purposes. You asked me to find you a house to rent in Rome, and you want it at once, by the end of the month.

My dear boy, if you think it is easy to find a house in Rome you are mistaken. You say you want it to be central, really central, in old Rome; poor boy if you think it is easy to find a house to rent in old Rome you have another think coming.

Your flat in via Torricelli was not in old Rome, but it was a splendid flat. You made a terrible mistake when you sold it, and your father made a terrible mistake too when he sold his flat here, above me, where the Lanzaras are now. You have been a couple of real fools.

I've asked someone I know who has an estate agent's to look out for a house for you wherever possible.

You told me you have also phoned your father recently, and that was very good of you. You get in touch so seldom that every sign of life you give is all to the good.

I also phoned your father over the New Year. He seemed to me to be in a very bad mood. When I phoned there were guests in the house, your Uncle Ferraccio's wife's daughter and son-in-law. The house was probably in something of a muddle and your father detests muddle, and he doesn't like guests in the house as you know. And perhaps he doesn't like your uncle's wife, this Anne Marie woman, much. That's the impression I got. He doesn't like America at all either, though what's he seen of it? He hasn't seen anything, in New York he had a bit of a sore throat and stayed holed up in his hotel, and now he's in Princeton he's always shut up in the house - from what he told me - even if he hasn't got a sore throat any more. He's a real character your father is.

I spent New Year's Eve upstairs in the flat that used to be your father's. The Lanzaras invited me. The flat is still a bit disorganized because they only moved in a few days ago. They have made some changes and it's unrecognizable, but in those places where I did recognise it I felt very sad, because I remembered when I used to come up and find your father there and now I find the Lanzaras instead. They are kind, pleasant people, but you can well understand how it's not the same for me.

They have made a lot of changes. They have given those pale blue kitchen fittings to the caretaker and they've made a new kitchen with co-ordinated units. To tell the truth I'd have been grateful if they'd given them to me, but apparently it didn't occur to them. It's a pity your father didn't think of giving them to me, seeing that the Lanzaras didn't want them - I suppose they thought them old-fashioned and not very stylish.

Anyway, I had a really lively New Year's Eve with the Lanzaras. I took two pies up, one cheese and one vegetable, and I gave up my diet for the evening; there were lots of different dishes and I tried them all. I think you should be psychoanalysed by Tonino Lanzara. He is a good analyst, he's very serious and you need an analyst. You need one, let me tell you, you need one as much as you need bread to eat.

I don't want to lecture you because that's not how I am, but when you come back to Rome try not to spend time in all those awful places. When you were here you got into awful habits, so much so that you finished up in jail; be careful that doesn't happen to you again.

I can well believe that you haven't finished the film, but I'm sorry. Anyway, it's been an experience for you, and perhaps you will be able to continue working in the cinema.

I would like news of that girl Nadia whom you introduced me to in Florence that day. I'd like to know if she had an abortion or not. You say I'm to find a flat for you and for your friends. I'd like to know if these friends are the same as the ones I met that day.

With love from

Roberta

Your father has bought a bicycle. The only thing he's managed to do since he arrived in America is to buy himself a bicycle.

Princeton, 18th January

Dear Roberta,

I was really pleased to hear your voice when you phoned a few days ago with your best wishes for the New Year. Then Piero and Lucrezia phoned too from Monte Fermo, and Egisto, Serena, Albina, all our friends, they were all there together, and I think Ignazio Fegiz was there too, or at least there was a voice that seemed like his. When they phoned it was late at night because they had mixed up the time difference and they thought it was day time over here. Anne Marie came down in her nightdress to answer the phone. She has a pink flannel nightdress. There were lots of voices on the phone and I realized they were snatching the receiver from each other to say something to me, and then they were laughing and shrieking - they must have had quite a lot of wine to drink. For a moment Lucrezia's voice was there too, but only for a moment. It was a real joy for me to hear all their voices together and to think of them all together there, at
Le Margherite
, in the sitting-room, that sitting-room I remember so well with the big oval table, the lamp-shade with its frayed border, the basket of firewood and the dogs' cushion, the sofa in front of the fireplace, and over the fireplace the picture of King Lear.

I start my lessons in two days, I'm not excited about it. I just have to teach Italian literature to a class of thirty people, all adults. I'm not worried. I'm pleased that I'll have an income. I shall go every morning at nine. I shall go by bicycle. Ferruccio has shown me the road I have to take.

When I was young I taught history and philosophy in high schools. It's strange that here in America I should go back to doing those things I did when I was young; writing a novel, cycling, teaching.

After the New Year Anne Marie's daughter and son-in-law left. This was a relief to me because the house had been in a muddle and because the son-in-law often came and sat in my room, why I don't know. I think he felt that he liked me. He is someone who is full of problems. He has difficulties at work and his relationship with his wife is not an easy one. He suffers from insomnia. He lost his father and mother, and he had an unhappy childhood, tossed backwards and forwards, entrusted to different families that for one reason or another he had to leave. He would like his wife to be kinder to him. His wife has a strong, arrogant nature. That's what he claims. I said I didn't see all this strength and arrogance in Chantal. She seems a gentle girl. She used to appear in the kitchen in the mornings, with her pregnant belly, her glasses, her dishevelled hair about her neck, in a cheap grey woollen dress with four big buttons down one side of her belly and four down the other, with an air of being serious, determined, deep in thought. Every now and again though she would give a shrill, unexpected burst of laughter, like the shrieking of some bird, when she upset the milk or burnt the toast. Danny told me that she and her mother do, not see eye to eye. Anne Marie is also a strong, arrogant woman. I finally realized why Danny came and sat in my room. Because he couldn't stand Anne Marie and he had realized that I couldn't stand her either.

Danny must be about Alberico's age, or a few years older. Like Alberico he had a difficult childhood. Alberico wasn't tossed backwards and forwards because there was always Aunt Bice. But he too experienced little or no happiness while he was a child. Everywhere you look you find difficult childhoods, insomnia, neuroses, problems.

I think I'll return to Italy in a few months. I thought I'd stay here till June and then return. You will have,to help me find a house. I haven't talked about it to Ferruccio. I'll tell him when it's convenient. Selling my house was certainly a big mistake. You were right. Never mind, what's done can't be undone and there's a reason for everything. A stupid proverb because the things we do often have neither rhyme nor reason to them. Remember me to the Lanzaras. Sometimes I hate them because they are in my house. That house will always be mine, even if I have sold it to the Lanzaras. Remember me to the walls of my house, to the convent garden, to the newspaper kiosk, to the Mariuccia Restaurant and to the Café Esperia.