All Our Yesterdays

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Signora Maria related what she had heard in the shops and from the music-master, whom she still met sometimes on the road by the river. The Germans were sprinkling a kind of powder that made people stupid, the Allies were breathing in this powder and were fighting half asleep. And the French generals were accepting gold coins from the Germans to make wrong moves. And the Germans were dressing up as French peasants and fishermen and Were cutting the telegraph wires and poisoning the rivers. And the roads of France were full of refugees, women running away with their children, and the children got lost and the Germans caught them and sent them off to their laboratories, where they used them for scientific experiments like frogs or rabbits, Emanuele put his hands over his ears and besought them for goodness’ sake to make her stop talking ; his nerves were all to pieces and he couldn’t control himself, one day perhaps he would strangle Signora Maria. Emanuele disliked the Belgians, the French, the English, the Russians who had allied themselves with the Germans, he limped up and down the room and kicked at the furniture. He disliked Signora Maria who was spreading panic. In his own home he also had Franz spreading panic, he wandered about like a ghost and said that the Germans by advancing in France would overflow into Italy. Emanuele told him he was behaving as though the Germans were already in Italy ; but perhaps Mussolini was not sticking by the Germans. Franz said he was not afraid of Mussolini, he was only afraid of the Germans, if he found himself face to face with German soldiers he would go mad. At night he came to Emanuele’s room and sat on his bed, and made him repeat that the Maginot Line was impenetrable. But the Germans went on penetrating it. One night he woke Emanuele to tell him that not only was his mother Jewish but his father too, he was completely Jewish and it was well known what the Germans were doing to the Jews, if the Germans came down into Italy the only thing for him to do would be to put a bullet through his head. So many times he had been on the point of going to America but he liked Italy too much, in Italy he felt he was safe even though for some time now there had been laws against the Jews, all you did was to pay a little and the police left you alone. But now he felt the Germans altogether too near, there they were in France behind the mountains and all they had to do was cross the mountains to get to where he was.

  The newspapers were full of these German victories, there were little maps and the part taken by the Germans was black, the other part white, and every day the black part got steadily bigger. That time when the German fleet went to the bottom seemed very far away, it was less than two months ago and already it seemed like many years. They had been happy at that time but now it seemed foolish to have been so happy, what was the use of a fleet to Germany anyhow ? German tanks were filling the roads of France, women and children in flight were scattered and overwhelmed. Emanuele, too, now began telling stories of gold coins and poison in the rivers, the same things that sent him into a rage when Signora Maria said them. Sometimes Emilio and Concettina came to hear from Ippolito what he thought about this advance. Emilio asked if Italy would want to go into the war now in order to snatch a little piece of France for herself, he asked whether war would break out at once in Italy, Concettina would be having her baby in a short time now. Ippolito did not answer, he glanced for a moment at Concettina and at her big, swollen body, her drawn, frightened face. Signor Sbrancagna also came and asked Ippolito what he thought. But Ippolito did not look as if he thought anything, he sat huddled deep in his armchair and gave him the same little twisted smile that he gave when people tormented him. Signor Sbrancagna asked him whether they ought to take Concettina away to have her baby in some quiet country place, which the war could never reach. Ippolito shrugged his shoulders slightly, he looked at the window and the mountains, they all looked at the mountains and thought of what was going on behind them, women and children running away, tanks advancing and taking the whole of France. It was Danilo who answered Signor Sbrancagna, saying that in a short time there would not be a single quiet place on earth in which to have babies, unless you went to Madagascar. Probably the Germans did not calculate on getting to Madagascar. Then Signora Maria cried that this was not a moment for joking, it had got to be decided where Concettina could go to have her baby, Ippolito must decide, he was the head of the family and he was responsible for Concettina and for the others. Ippolito sat there a little longer with the twisted smile on his face, and then suddenly he got up and they saw him go out of the gate and walk away with the dog on a lead, a cigarette between his lips and his small head bent sideways on to his shoulder.

  13

  Mammina decided all of a sudden that she would take a villa on Lake Maggiore, she was sure that they would be quiet there, whatever Emanuele might say about the possibility of being quiet only perhaps in Madagascar. Mammina this time refused to be frightened, she wrote letters and looked at photographs of villas, and every now and then she went down into the cellar to see if everything there was in order in case war broke out before their departure ; but she was calm and she said that in any case even if war broke out in Italy it would be a matter only of a few days, the Germans were so strong and they would take the whole of Europe in no time. She tapped here and there on the cellar walls to see if they were still firm, and she looked at the cases of soap she had had transported down there, the soap they were putting out now was horrible stuff, big, sticky, greenish cubes that melted into pulp in the water. Mammina had cases and cases of good soap in the cellar, and sacks of sugar and huge flasks of oil, and she walked all round the cellar and considered what ought to be taken to Lake Maggiore and what ought to be left there for when they came back. She was sure it would be a blitzkrieg and that she would spend next winter at Mentone, she was anxious to see what had happened to the villa at Mentone, if soldiers or refugees had slept there it would have to be disinfected. And now she was anxious to get to Lake Maggiore and she went off by herself to see villas, It was impossible to understand from photographs. Emanuele took her to the station, Mammina kept on saying she did not know how they could get on without her, it was she who took the initiative and made decisions for everybody. Franz wandered round like a ghost, spreading panic, Amalia thought of nothing except sticking her nose into the kitchen and giving senseless orders, Emanuele spent his days with his friends at the house opposite. Emanuele told her that Franz had good reasons for being frightened, he was a Jew and it was well known what the Germans were doing to the Jews. Mammina said that Franz always told so many lies, she knew him very well, probably he hadn’t a single drop of Jewish blood in him and he had invented it in order to make people sorry for him and to make himself interesting. In any case she was sure that the Germans, as soon as the war was won, would be so pleased that they would no longer think of behaving tiresomely to anybody.

  Anna and Giuma were now unable to go to the Paris café, because it was being done up and under the pergola there was nothing but ladders, builders and heaps of lime. Amongst the bushes on the river bank they heard the cries and hammerings of the builders, and Giuma was surprised that they should have chosen that particular summer for doing up the little Paris café, just that particular summer when war was expected in Italy at any moment. In any case it would be a war lasting only a few days, said Giuma and he repeated Mammina’s words, the Germans would take the whole of Europe in no time. In the meantime for France it was all over, Emanuele kept on saying that the Germans would stop at the gates of Paris but Giuma did not believe it, by now they had broken through and how very little had been needed to make France crumble, by now nothing was left of France but a handful of crumbs to throw to the birds. Giuma remembered Paris, he had been there once with Mammina, and he certainly did not like to think that it would become a German province. He did not like it but it was not a disaster, it was not worth breaking your heart over it, Emanuele and the others were breaking their hearts because they had imagined all kinds of things, they had imagined themselves starting the revolution and becoming deputies or ministers, so filled with presumption were they. Giuma talked for a little before
making love, but afterwards he was silent, lying beside her in the grass, the sounds of hammering and the voices and cries of the builders at work on the Paris café echoed loudly over the countryside. Twilight came and the Paris café was left alone, deserted amidst the girders and the heaps of lime, with its little windows blocked up. Anna plunged her head into the sweet-smelling, moist grass, and fear and silence increased within her. She had made love with Giuma and she knew that he did not love her, she knew that he felt rather sad and humiliated after they had made love together, and she would have liked to go back to the times when they used to read Montale’s poems and eat chestnuts, and the war was still a cold, distant war, the Germans hadn’t won yet. But now the Germans had won and there wouldn’t be a revolution after all, there would be a war lasting a few days and then Germans and more Germans, German tanks on the roads of the whole earth. And upon this earth that was full of German tanks the story of herself and Giuma had no importance, it was nothing, it was nothing and it was very sad.

  Concettina’s baby was born a month before its time, before they could find a quiet country place which the war could never reach. Concettina lay silent in the big double bed, with the window open on to the garden, and Signora Maria sat at the foot of the bed and finished the cross-stitch embroidery on the coverlet for the cradle. Signora Maria had forgotten the war, all she could think of now was of hastily finishing the coverlet for the cradle, with mushrooms and little flowers and little houses worked in cross-stitch. In a big cradle draped in blue taffeta beside Concettina’s bed, the baby’s long, narrow head, with a feather-brush of black hair on it, stuck out on the pillow, and Signora Maria every now and then would put down her work and start talking to the feather-brush. But Concettina had not forgotten the war, and she looked incredulously at the cradle and the coverlet with the mushrooms on it that Signora Maria was embroidering, and she wondered how much longer the baby would sleep in that big cradle of blue taffeta, she already saw herself running away with the baby in her arms amongst tanks and the whistling of sirens, and she hated Signora Maria with her mushrooms and her futile chatter. And from time to time the grandmothers and the old servants would come and gaze at the baby and express astonishment at his black feather-brush and chatter to him. Towards evening Anna also came sometimes, she would sit for a moment beside the cradle and look at the black feather-brush, she would look without chattering, she looked at it as though she had known it for a very long time, and a humiliated, weary expression came on to her face as she looked. Then Concettina was hurt, she did not like this humiliated way of sitting beside the cradle, without either astonishment or chatter. For a moment she wondered what was wrong with Anna, why she had had this weary, humiliated expression on her face for some time. But her thoughts at once broke loose, her thoughts were running away with the baby through the streets amongst tanks and Germans, she had no time now to wonder anything about anybody, she had the baby now and she had to run away with the baby to protect him from the war. She fell into a dark, troubled sleep, she woke up and found herself alone, Signora Maria and Anna had gone away. She remembered how once upon a time she had believed that having a baby was a thing that made you feel very calm, a thing that made you love everybody and made you feel at peace. But instead of that, ever since she had had the baby all she could think of was running away so as to protect him from the war, she no longer loved anybody, she was alone on earth with her baby and she was running away. She had travelled thousands and thousands of miles lying still in that bed, every time she fell asleep she took the baby in her arms and ran away.

  Anna now knew that she too was going to have a baby. She went home with Signora Maria, she walked along in silence with Signora Maria who trailed behind her the bag with her work in it and went on expressing astonishment over Concettina’s baby and chattering about his black feather-brush and his little hands. She had forgotten the war. Anna had not forgotten the war, she hoped that the war would come and kill her with the secret child inside her body, she hoped to hear suddenly an enormous crash which would tear the earth asunder. She walked with her heart in expectation of this enormous crash. Signora Maria trotted along swinging her bag and chattering, and from time to time she stopped chattering and flew into a rage with Anna because she was walking too fast. Anna believed that by walking fast she would get rid of the baby. She had heard it said that it was not difficult to get rid of a baby, she had heard it said that all you had to do was to walk fast, to go for very long walks in the heat, walking fast. She would go with Giuma to swim in the lake, at the place where Mammina and Franz had so often gone to swim. Perhaps going for a long swim might help, too. One day she suggested to Giuma that they might go to the lake but Giuma said it wasn’t a lake, it was a tepid, dirty pool that was full of fat women in the summer. Besides they would have a heat-stroke if they walked as far as that. Giuma knew nothing of the child that was inside her. They lay down and made love in the bushes by the river, and then they were silent with their faces in the grass and Anna hunted for words in which to tell him of the child that was inside her. But she looked at Giuma’s face in the grass and allowed all the words to escape from her. It seemed to her that she had become grown-up since the moment when she realized she was to have a baby, and it seemed to her that he, on the contrary, was still a little boy, with his heat-flushed face and his rumpled hair. He started to complain of how Emanuele would never let him touch the car, he would begin shrieking every time he saw him go near the garage. If they had had the car perhaps they might have been able to go and swim in the lake, it was a tepid, dirty pool but perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad to take a dive into it once in a way. But they couldn’t go there on foot. He himself, in any case, would be leaving in a short time, Mammina had arranged for the villa up above Stresa and in a short time would be coming back to fetch him, she had also arranged for a tutor to give him lessons, in October he was to take his final exams.

  14

  Emanuele did not come so often now to see Ippolito, he would appear now and then towards evening and say he had spent the day sleeping, whenever he had serious troubles he comforted himself by sleeping. Danilo also would appear and they would turn on the radio for a moment but turn it off again at once, they would flee from the sitting-room and start walking idly about the town. They walked side by side but it was as though they were not walking together, it looked as though they had nothing more to say to one another and were no longer very friendly, they would sit down for a moment in a café but get up again immediately, as soon as the radio in the café started shouting. Danilo would leave them to go and study book-keeping, he said he wanted to take his accountant’s diploma, seeing that now there was nothing better to do. Emanuele and Ippolito strolled along the river for a little and sat down on a bench in the public gardens, Emanuele teased the dog, he pretended to throw a stone so that the dog should make great efforts to hunt for it, Ippolito told him to leave his dog alone. Emanuele said they had fallen very low, sitting there like a couple of old men on a seat in the public gardens. When they came home they saw Anna and Giuma saying goodbye at the gate, Emanuele said they were seeing altogether too much of each other, those two, they were always, always together, he told Ippolito that he ought to keep a better watch over his sister, after all Ippolito was the head of the household and was responsible for everybody. Ippolito did not answer, he smiled his usual twisted smile, and then Emanuele tried to imitate the smile, he went off with his face all screwed up. Ippolito shouted to him to come over and see them after supper, but Emanuele made signs of refusal from a distance, he now went to bed immediately after supper and slept like a log till eleven o’clock next morning, he had discovered that sleep is the one joy of man. Ippolito, on the other hand, could not sleep, Anna had the room next to his and heard him walking and fidgeting about the room all night long, opening and closing the shutters, opening and closing the drawers of the writing-table. Anna lay still in her bed and she too did not sleep, she had an obscure feeling of fear at what Ippol
ito might be doing in his room, at all his walking about and fidgeting. For a moment she felt sorry for Ippolito, she thought of his expression in the morning after these sleepless nights, she thought of how he looked in the morning drinking his coffee in the kitchen, sitting at the table slowly stroking his thin, stubbly cheeks, it was very rarely that he shaved since the Germans had been in France. Then he would get up suddenly and go off to his office, carrying out into the morning air his small head with its streaky fair hair and his usual twisted smile. She was sorry for him but her pity was mingled with rage, she detested that twisted smile and that tall, disgusted-looking body, what sort of ideas had he got into his head to have acquired that disgusted, goggle-eyed look, had he really imagined that he was going to start a revolution with Emanuele and Danilo, in Italy, in Germany, goodness knows what kind of great revolution they had imagined they were going to start. She too had thought about the revolution but now she knew quite well how stupid it had been to think about it, she had thought about the revolution and had imagined herself escaping with Giuma over the rooftops, those thoughts now seemed to her very distant indeed, lost in a remote and ancient time, only a few months had passed and they seemed like so many years. Now she had the baby to get rid of. She did not think about it all the time. She did the things she had always done, she went to school and sat on the ink-stained, penknife-scratched bench beside the girl who had been her dearest friend, but now they hardly spoke to each other. She came home again and threw her satchel down on the round table in the anteroom, she went up to her bedroom and looked at herself in the looking-glass, she was the plump girl she had always been, and suddenly she would remember the baby, with a little plunge into darkness she would remember the baby. These were the last days of term and she had much work to do. Sometimes when she was sitting working at her little table she would suddenly start thinking about a real baby, how it would come into the world and how it would play in the garden of the house opposite, with Mammina grown all at once very old and kind. But she went to the window and looked at the ivy-covered walls of the house opposite, and heard the furious voices of Emanuele and Giuma quarrelling. And the real baby disappeared with a plunge into the darkness, and nothing but fear and silence was left inside her, the baby was again nothing but darkness inside her. With her handkerchief she wiped her sweating, trembling hands, and hunted for words with which to ask someone what she must do. She went to Signora Maria’s room. Signora Maria was packing her suitcase, she was leaving for Le Visciole with Concettina and her baby, Anna and Giustino and Ippolito were to join them there in ten days’ time. Signora Maria was happy, she was always happy when she had a suitcase to pack, and now she was happy at going there with Concettina’s baby, she grew tender at the thought of the baby and chattered about his black feather-brush as she put her shoes in their little cloth bags into her suitcase. Anna saw that she would never be able to say anything to Signora Maria, she had thought of it for a moment but how foolish it had been to think of it, she stayed there for a little looking at Signora Maria as she went backwards and forwards in her old lilac dressing-gown, completely absorbed in her little. cloth bags. Anna wandered vaguely about the house and waited for the war to come and tear the town and the house asunder with a great crash.