The City and the House

by Natalia Ginzburg

  You are really my only friend. And so I’m very very sorry that you’re so far away just at the time when I need to confide in someone. Serena isn’t here now either. But then I’m not so sure that Serena would listen to me and understand. I think she would immediately take Piero’s side. Her head’s always full of the position of women, women’s rights, etc., but I know only too well that she would despise me. Sometimes I talk to Albina when she comes on Saturdays. I tell her something, not everything, of how things stand. But my one real friend is you. And you have to go and hole yourself up in America. Our long affair has left us with a deep friendship for each other. I feel it for you and I hope you feel it for me. We’ve also had a son together, Graziano. You don’t want me to say so but it’s true. A son together and a deep friendship. These are the good things I have given to you and which you have given to me, the good things that we own together. You don’t give a damn about your son and you pretend he’s nothing to do with you - as you wish, it doesn’t matter. But I think you will acknowledge our friendship as real.

  Your son Alberico came here once. But afterwards so many things happened that I forgot to tell you about it. I don’t know if I like this son of yours. I don’t understand him very well. He gave his name to that girl’s baby. Of course he did it to be the opposite of you, to be what you don’t want to be, the father of a child coming into the world.

  Send me your news. And tell me what’s happening to you. Let me know if you’re still sleeping in the room with the bear-cubs.

  Lucrezia

  GIUSEPPE TO LUCREZIA

  Princeton, 4th August

  Dear Lucrezia,

  Your letter moved me a great deal, so much so that I couldn’t work for the whole day. You know I’m writing a novel, I think I’ve mentioned it to you. Your letter got so tangled up with my thoughts that I couldn’t free myself from it, and I found your face and your voice everywhere inside me. I didn’t answer immediately. I let a few days pass, because it upset me to answer you.

  You are in love with Ignazio Fegiz, or with I.F. as you call him. This should not mean anything to me, or rather it should please me, because falling in love is a splendid thing and because a person is pleased if something splendid happens to someone he is fond of. Instead, I felt uneasy as I read your letter. You want to leave Piero and go and live with I.F. and take your children with you. You tend to think of your children as if they were furniture or luggage. Besides, there are five of them, not just one. If there was one you could put everything into reassuring him. But it’s not easy to reassure five children. And for I.F. too, five children is not going to be a small undertaking. You say that ‘he’s not afraid of anything’. As for yourself I have to tell you that at the very least I think you are being reckless. And I have to think the same about him.

  What you say about us, about you and me, ‘our adultery was a bloodless affair’ seems ridiculous to me. No adultery is bloodless. And then according to you we have had a son together. I don’t think that’s true, but if it is true our adultery was not a bloodless affair. Children are blood, and they are born surrounded by blood.

  I felt there was something lurking behind your whole letter, something that hurt me deeply, an obscure desire to compare I.F. and me with each other, and to see me as someone inferior, less noble, less valued. You?: dogs barked for him. The coat-stand fell down for him. Then you say that he is about the same height as you. You know very well that I hardly come up to your shoulders, and that this always upset me.

  You say ‘I got on with you well enough, I felt happy enough, it was all on the level of enough’. How nasty you can be. How cruel. You know how to make someone suffer. I don’t believe that you don’t know.

  As for your dithyrambs about our friendship, I have to tell you that I find them hard to believe, and so I don’t know how to respond to them. Real friendship does not scratch and bite, and your letter scratched and bit me.

  What shall I tell you about myself. I get along well. Well enough. On the level of enough, of course. I’m content. The school is closed at the moment. I’m on holiday. I start again in September. I’m writing my novel. Anne Marie gets back from the Institute around six in the evening. I watch her while she’s making the dinner, a complicated dinner, big rissoles that have to be cooked slowly, with carrots and stock, soups made with beetroot and cream, Russian dishes that I’ve learnt to love. Anne Marie had a Russian grandmother. We say very little. Anne Marie is someone who says very little, and always in a low voice, and I like that. I find it restful to live with someone who weighs her words, who speaks sparingly and judiciously. Anne Marie smiles all the time and I have learnt to smile all the time too whilst she is there. Sometimes my mouth is a little tired with the effort of all that smiling. But I think that little by little we shall finally stop smiling.

  No, I don’t sleep in the room with the bear-cubs. I sleep upstairs. But I don’t sleep with Anne Marie, if that’s what you want to know.

  Giuseppe

  ALBINA TO EGISTO

  Luco dei Marsi, 3rd August

  Dear Egisto,

  As you see I am with my family again. I have to stay in Luco for a fortnight. My mother hasn’t got up yet and the relative who was helping her has gone away and won’t come back till after mid-August, after the Feast of the Assumption. And so my holidays have vanished. On top of which I made a huge mistake in bringing Vito here with me. He’s the worst of Lucrezia’s children, the biggest pest, even though he’s only little. Lucrezia insisted I bring him with me. The Swiss girl packed her bags one fine morning and left. She’s never going to show herself there again. Lucrezia is tired. On top of which relations between her and Piero get worse and worse. There is an unbearable atmosphere in that house now. It’s a desolate atmosphere. They’ve sent Cecilia to Montecatini with Piero’s mother, Signora Annina. Signora Annina hasn’t understood a thing though she and Lucrezia argue about ridiculous things like telephone bills and rotten tomatoes. And so it was a relief for everyone when she said she wanted to go to Montecatini. They have sent Daniele, Augusto and Graziano off to a summer camp. So that now there is just Piero and Lucrezia at Le Margherite, face to face in the heat and the silence. When I was there I talked a little first with one then with the other; I tried to calm them down and make peace. But I was half dead by the end of the day because at the moment they are both being unbearably difficult, people really are exhausting when they talk reams of nonsense and don’t know what to do. And to be plain Lucrezia has had affairs before, she had a very long affair with Giuseppe, and other shorter ones, but they were just child’s play she says. Piero stayed calm. He pretended not to care. She and Piero had an open relationship. They were always saying so. They stayed friends. But now they are not friends any more and Piero is fed up. And Lucrezia is fed up too, though she says she is happier than she has ever been before, she says she is happy and unhappy all together. Every so often she jumps into the Volkswagen and goes off to Rome. She returns the next day. She says that she will leave before autumn. She will live with Ignazio Fegiz, I don’t know where, even she doesn’t know. And certainly Ignazio Fegiz doesn’t know. Not, I think, in Rome. Perhaps in America. Lucrezia will take all her children with her. She says she won’t leave the children. This is the only thing she feels certain about. But Piero doesn’t want to let her have the children. I don’t know what they’re going to do.

  They will need a lot of money to move everyone to America. Lucrezia says that I.F. - she always refers to him like that, as I.F. - has plenty of money because he is a picture-dealer, and that she will find herself a job. However she has never done anything in her life and she doesn’t have any idea what kind of work she could do. She is vague on the subject of work. She wrinkles her forehead and waves her fingers about in the air.

  I don’t like I.F. I don’t trust him at all. He seems to me to be someone with a weak character pretending he has a strong character. I told Lucrezia that. She told me I hadn’t understood anything, as usual. She feels pro
tected and secure. When she feels unhappy she is unhappy because now she finds herself carrying around the weight of so many ruined years.

  Egisto, you and I won’t be able to go to Le Margherite on Saturdays next winter. We shall never go there again, it’s finished. This really saddens me. Piero says he will sell Le Margherite as soon as possible. He will move to Perugia with the children. Lucrezia says that on the contrary she and the children will be in America in a few months, or perhaps in Paris, or in Belgium where she has an uncle.

  Because someone has to be with Vito from morning till night Lucrezia begged me to take him away with me. She said that it’s cool at Luco dei Marsi and that he’d be better off there than in Monte Fermo. I couldn’t refuse her. But as soon as I got on the train with Vito I realized I’d made a huge mistake. Vito is a sweet child but he is a real pest. I shan’t ever forget that train journey. He went backwards and forwards along the corridor; the train was crowded and the corridor was full of luggage and people. I had to follow him and I was afraid that someone would take my seat in the meantime. I bought him an ice cream and he left smears of ice-cream everywhere. Lucrezia is very tired, but then I’m tired too. I hoped that here in my house Maura and Gina would look after Vito but they wouldn’t hear of it. I don’t know, there was a time when young girls were pleased to take little children out for walks, but it’s not like that any more. As soon as I suggested that Maura and Gina take Vito out they disappeared like hares. Never mind, it was a mistake and we have to pay for our mistakes. Vito wants to be with my mother all the time, he’s crazy about my mother, he wants to scribble with his crayons all over her leg that’s in plaster. My mother is patient with him for a while but then she gets annoyed and asks me what the devil I thought I was doing turning up with this child. Vito has two obsessions, one is to climb up on to the window-sills and the other is to go into the kitchen and turn all the gas taps on. So I live in terror. I’ve promised to keep him here till mid August. Love

  Albina

  EGISTO TO ALBINA

  Rome, 10th August

  Dear Albina,

  I shall leave in two days’ time for my holiday. I’ve booked a room in a pensione in Follonica. It is incredibly hot in Rome. I take a shower every half hour.

  I know everything you told me about Piero and Lucrezia. I was at Le Margherite two days after you left. I had to put up with all their tirades too. They were silent up to a month ago, but now they talk non-stop, every moment one of them drags you into a room and wants you to sit down and listen.

  I don’t believe that Lucrezia really wants to leave Piero. I don’t believe that she wants to go and live in Paris or America or goodness knows where. She says it just to have something to say. I don’t believe in this great love of hers. She’s going through a time of crisis, as happens to women around forty. Because Lucrezia must be forty by now.

  I had dinner one evening with Ignazio Fegiz and his friend Ippo. I met them by chance in Piazza di Spagna. I saw them coming towards me, she was dressed in black and looked rather frail, and he looked sturdy in a crumpled white suit. I don’t know why but it seemed to me I was seeing the Cat and the Fox. I went for dinner with them, to Augusteo’s. She is a strange woman. She is ugly but she has beautiful hair. She parts it in the middle, and out of her hair appears a long, hooked nose - she is all hair and nose. At the restaurant we ordered macaroni-cheese and meat, she ordered grated carrots, a cup of vegetable broth and that was it. She was afraid the broth might have been made with a bouillon cube and so she sniffed at it for a long time with her long nose.

  Ippo dresses well. She had on a skirt made of black satin, a kind of long, tight tube, and a starched white blouse with a little cravat. No trinkets. An onyx ring on one finger. People say she takes drugs, I don’t know. Ignazio Fegiz becomes different when she is there. He’s usually aggressive and noisy and doesn’t let anyone talk, and instead he’s silent when she is there. He looks at her. It’s as if there is a continuous and very old understanding between them. We went to her place after supper. She lives in Porta Cavalleggeri. Her flat is really tiny and completely full of pictures. They are almost all her pictures. They are landscapes. They are a reddish, gold colour as if she’s always thinking about sunsets, and after a while all that reddish-gold tires your eyes. The terrace is cool. We drank iced wine and stayed there talking for a long time. To tell the truth she did the talking by herself. She has travelled the world, she has been to China and Japan. I looked at her and thought that next to her our Lucrezia wouldn’t seem much to write home about. She would seem too tall, her feet and hands would be too big, she’d be badly dressed and wouldn’t have a single trip abroad to talk about. We stayed there till it was late. Before he left Ignazio watered the plants. I got the impression that he does this every evening.

  Ignazio Fegiz left with me. As soon as we were in the street he was his old self again, noisy, talkative, nothing at all cat-like about him. Neither he nor I had a car. The nights are cool and it’s pleasant to walk through the city. He likes the summer. But it also seems a malevolent season to him because lots of people go mad during the summer. He didn’t once mention Lucrezia. I told him that I had been to Le Margherite. He said that unlike me he hadn’t been there for a while.

  I think that Lucrezia has imagined this great love. As far as I can see Ignazio Fegiz is someone who doesn’t want to change his private life one iota.

  How you go on about Vito, the poor child. He’s irritating, certainly. All children are irritating. But don’t go on about him so much. If you didn’t want him in the house you should have thought ofthat before.

  My neighbours haven’t left. Yesterday I went down to get the pressure-cooker I’d lent them. They never return things. A girl in a violet-coloured bikini opened the door to me, she was very thin with a mane of carroty hair. Though it’s true that I see carrots everywhere these days ever since I saw Ippo eating them. Nadia was in the kitchen - also in a bikini - she was mixing a rice salad; she had that sullen, gloomy look she always has. The girl in the bikini is an American and she is called Anais. I mentioned the writer Anais Nin but they had never heard of her. There was an incredible mess in the kitchen. They had had people around the previous evening. I helped Nadia to cut up some zucchini. The baby was crying. They had put her on the balcony in a baby-chair, under an umbrella, but the sun was on her legs and she was covered in sweat. I suggested they bring her in and give her something to drink. They brought her in and stuck a feeding-bottle full of orange juice in her mouth. These modern girls don’t know how to look after a baby. Then Alberico and Salvatore appeared from one of the rooms in their vests and underpants, still very sleepy and dishevelled. They looked like a couple of owls. Alberico got angry because the plates had not been washed yet. I ate with them. First the rice salad then an omelette I made. Then Salvatore and I washed the plates. The baby cried the whole time.

  Yours

  Egisto

  GIUSEPPE TO PIERO

  Princeton, 30th August

  Dear Piero,

  I had heard what you wrote to me from Lucrezia.

  I did get your other letter. I didn’t reply not because I didn’t think it necessary to answer you, but because I found it difficult to do so, as I had sensed from a distance things that you didn’t mention, and as I had had letters from Lucrezia that said everything.

  Even now it’s not easy for me to write to you and tell you what I went through as I read your last letter. It isn’t easy to tell you how close I feel to you in this disaster that’s overtaken you. I think of it as a disaster for both of you, even though only you are suffering at the moment, and she perhaps is happy, or thinks she is.

  I’m sorry not to be with you at Monte Fermo, not to go for walks with you in the woods and over the little hills there as we have done so many times. You know that you have a loyal friend in me, even though in the past I betrayed you - though we stayed friends - in the way you know about. It’s not that I’m someone who is careful not to hurt anyone as he goe
s by, not to trample on or destroy things. It’s not true. I have destroyed and trampled underfoot a great many things that were in my way. In fact when I get up in the morning I find in myself a deep disgust for what I am, for my feet in their slippers, for my sad face in the mirror, for my clothes draped over the chair. As the day goes on this disgust becomes gradually more and more stifling.

  As you know I’m not returning to Italy for the moment. I’m writing a novel and I want to finish it. Besides, I have a relationship here with someone, a strange relationship that’s quite different from all the others I’ve previously had with women. It’s a woman I’m talking about. It’s Anne Marie, my brother’s widow. My brother was very fond of her and for this reason I am very fond of her. But she and I don’t talk to each other, or we say very little. It’s a relationship of smiles and murmurs. It’s a relationship that seems calm, but inwardly it is shaken by continual shocks.

  I too am always thinking of you.

  Yours

  Giuseppe

  EGISTO TO ALBINA

  Rome, 27th August

  Dear Albina,

  I stayed in Follonica for a week. Just imagine, I’d been there for two days when I saw my neighbours from downstairs arriving. I was in the little garden of my pensione reading the newspapers when I saw them getting out of their little maroon Panda. I’d told them in passing where I was going, and they came. It’s strange, sometimes I don’t go down to them because I’m afraid of bothering them, and then they follow me to Follonica. Strange. You name them a place and immediately they come after you. They had rucksacks and blankets and they put the baby in a little rucksack affair which they took in turns to hoist on to their backs, to carry her around. They had a tent for sleeping on the beach, which they did, all except for Nadia and the baby who slept in my pensione; however there weren’t any rooms free and so I had to give her mine. I slept in a bathroom. I don’t like sleeping in bathrooms at all, I like rooms with beds in them, but I couldn’t do anything else -I realized that the baby was too little to sleep in a tent. There was a sudden downpour one night and Salvatore came to the pensione to find me. I hadn’t gone to bed yet. The tent had collapsed in the wind and they wanted me to help them put it up again. We re-erected the tent in the pouring rain. I was drenched to the skin. And then their mattresses were completely soaked and they bundled themselves into the Panda to sleep.