New Italian Women: A Collection of Short Fiction

by Anna Banti

  “She pretends to sleep because she is sure of herself, and has plotted something: iron, chloroform, vitriol. Perhaps the delay has even been planned just to incite me to take action.” The man’s nature, rather gloomy and upset by the bad humor of the day, striving not to yield odiously to supplications and fear, is thrown into the most fantastic suspicions. By now he is in a defensive position, and Amina will never know that that was the moment when she was in real danger. “This woman needs to be put in her place”: and it is no longer the notion of a drunkard, but the obsession of a terrified man, almost of a madman. His temples pound, the man begins to count the beats and promises himself that on the one hundredth he will put out his hand and grab her arm. And then, slowly, seeming close enough to touch, the clock below strikes eleven. Only eleven. Who could hold out until tomorrow? Better to get it over with the man decides, and with an effort of will he frees his numb arm, opens his fingers and up, up, he withdraws them from the weight of the covers. Immediately the air seems too fluid, his arm too light; the elbow he is leaning on slips. It slips so that his thumbnail hits the drinking glass and makes it vibrate like a thin wail. His heart skips a beat. The game he is playing seems too difficult. He turns his head imperceptibly toward his wife. She has not budged – or is he mistaken and her face has moved to the left a few inches? As he watches, her face seems to gather shadows around the mouth, those commas of irony that accompany a boast. As if it meant: “just try to come close and you’ll see.”

  Now it seems to him very important to keep an eye on the ambush, the woman’s very slow turning, and to prevent its happening. Staying like that, mouth half open, he suddenly feels a great tiredness and his eyes burn, unfit to keep watch. And in fact, her terrible mouth seems to separate from her face to wander over the pillow and hide under it, twisted like a picklock. “The revolver,” it seems to shout and he makes a leap, but falls like a feather in a well that closes over him.

  There actually has been a leap and Amina, with all her ideas about dying with her eyes closed, opens them wide and is ready to scream, when, instead of the mouth of the pistol, she encounters her husband’s face, more sorrowful than grim, eyes shut, mouth half open. A deep and regular breathing commences, as on a thousand other nights. So her husband is snoring, therefore sleeping. Still incredulous, his wife holds completely still and eagerly absorbs the meaning of this marvelous sight. There is no doubt – the head’s abandon, the light swelling of his cheeks at every breath, the process of breathing that chokes and hisses, give the promise of security. The fact seems so miraculous that, receiving it like a blessing, Amina accepts it totally, without reservation. Her rigidity relaxes into the inertia of happy tiredness, her blood flows again. Taking her gaze from the sleeper’s face, she turns to the wall with placid reassurance: her brain, disconnected, is left to follow the inflated, wandering thoughts of someone who had won a lottery and greedily nibbles on her own desires. She will make Giannina a new dress, that is certain, and recover the arm chairs with the material from this hateful canopy over the bed. These queer thoughts are the luxury of her contentment. Then, reviewing what had happened, from the anxious return home to the crisis of a moment ago, she dares to linger on the particular of Norma’s sharp reply, and suddenly has a strong desire to laugh. Slowly she pulls herself up on the pillow and arranges herself like a convalescent. From there her husband’s face looks smaller in the ample folds. Coldly she examines his thinning hair, the lucid skin of his nose, the yellowish cartilage of his ear. Her look turns from his ear on the pillow to the candle flame that is too high at this moment. And there, next to the candlestick, is the black pistol. For a moment the woman does not move since the good feeling of her liberation had made her forget the shape of her fear, that weapon imagined and not seen.

  “He really did want to kill me,” is her first thought, an absorbing reminder; but her second thought has to be completely different because her eyes are already sparkling with activity. The fear is no longer dreadful, as she must show; her head rings with stinging words and fearless laughter that, along with the basso of that disgusting snoring, make a beautiful song.

  Just as ideas form images in a dream, Amina finds herself standing barefoot next to the bed without realizing it. She has not yet decided what to do, but the certainty of a power and a victorious cunning induce her to move alongside the bed, keeping her eyes on the sleeper. Turning the corner, she is drawn by the door, but traitorously: something tells her that beyond it she will again feel the pressing anxiety to escape, the terror of being caught. She resists, and dragging her feet over the rough bricks, she strikes one of her husband’s shoes; in order not to fall she grabs at the back of the chair where his clothes have been casually thrown. Now she notices the odor of sweat and tobacco as her fingers touch the folds of his vest and sleeves, still alive and elastic: those secret symbols of all her misery. Then a perverse curiosity urges the woman on in pursuit of the visible traces of those actions she had followed with closed eyes an hour ago. It seems like she is unearthing relics, some abandoned bones, and she is suddenly aware of an uneasiness that is not fear, but an inner craving.

  Why deny it? Her right hand has touched the wood of the dresser, has come down precisely on the weapon as if the gesture were premeditated. The weight of the object gives her hand the sensation of sudden swelling, but in the action of picking it up it becomes even more heavy. What fear, what fear, Amina says to herself, but she knows she is lying to herself and that her heart is beating so fast because a mocking little voice keeps saying: “What do you need? If he wakes up you’ll shoot....” No, fear is not making Amina short of breath, but the pistol seems to have become an enormous load, more than her strength can bear. Her shoulders droop, then her knees. Almost in a state of sleep her fingers feel the texture of the bedside rug where her body has sunk.

  There, between two house-slippers, teeth chattering, she gets hold of herself. Her right arm is in pain, and she notices she is still gripping the pistol tenaciously. Then, with the help of her other hand, she loosens her fist and cautiously stretches her fingers. Above her head the man’s breathing rises and falls without pause and becomes a pledge of protection along with the knowledge of the floor so near, of the fringe of the blanket at the foot of the bed. Certain distant memories of childish games come pleasurably to mind, and they affirm that this heavy revolver is as useless as it is heavy: at most good for a joke. Painfully the woman leans on her hands and rises to a kneeling position. There she stops, her eyes on a level with the edge of the bed. In the candlelight her face is haggard, death-like, yet the shadow of a smile curls the corners of her mouth and bestows on her bowed head a look of innocent obstinacy. Her chin grazes her neck, her curved forehead touches the covers, and she leans there almost as a counterweight to the action of her right hand that slowly lifts the weapon and slips it under the mattress – right there under the body of her husband. If the thrust of her arm were not so deliberate and deep it might pass for the gesture of one who, after the patient is awake, assures herself that the sheets are tucked in as they should be. Then the hand reappears empty. And with a childish persistence the left hand massages it, almost caressing it, with her eyes still closed as in a game. The effort to get to her feet, the steps taken to get back into bed, do not register on her conscious mind.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed with the simple prudence of one accustomed to sleeping with someone, Amina looks at her wrist with interest, rubs it, yawns. Before lying down she looks at the candle flame, which is now half consumed. She leans toward it with puffed cheeks and blows it out. The return of the dark completely loosens her facial muscles: merely a sleepy face. Now it seems to her that a wall has risen to divide her side from her husband’s and to guarantee it, forever. Here she can stretch her poor legs, find a better position by turning on her right side, relaxed. She is almost asleep, and with the intransigence of sleep, registers the annoyance of that snoring and the faint light behind her back. She grasps the pillow carelessly and pul
ls it over her head to cover her ears.

  Translated by Martha King

  * * *

  The Sardinian Fox

  by

  Grazia Deledda

  The long, warm May days had come back, and Ziu Tomas again sat as he had the year before – ten years before – in the open courtyard in front of his house, which was the last in a bunch of little black buildings huddled against the gray slope of a mountain. But in vain spring sent its breath of wild voluptuousness up there: the decrepit old man, motionless between his old black dog and his old yellow cat, seemed as stony and insensible as everything around him.

  Only, at night, the smell of the grass reminded him of the pastures where he had spent most of his life; and when the moon rose out of the sea, far off, as huge and golden as the sun, and the coastal mountains, black beneath a silver sky, and all the huge valley and the fantastic semicircle of hills before and to the right of the horizon were covered with shimmering veils and areas of light and shadow, then the old man used to think of childish things, of Lusbé, the devil who leads damned souls to the pasture, after they have been changed into wild boars; and if the moon hid behind a cloud, he thought seriously of the seven calving cows which the planet, at that moment going to supper, devoured calmly in its hiding place.

  He almost never spoke; but one evening his granddaughter Zana, when she shook him to tell him it was bedtime, found him so stubbornly silent, erect, and rigid on his stool that she thought he was dead. Frightened, she called Zia Lenarda, her neighbor, and both women succeeded in moving the old man, helping him into the house, where he stretched out on the mat in front of the hearth.

  “Zia Lenarda, we have to call a doctor. Grandfather is as cold as a corpse,” the girl said, touching the old man.

  “Our doctor’s gone away. He went to the mainland for two months to study ear diseases, because he says they’re all deaf around here when he asks them to pay the rent on his pastures...as if he hadn’t bought all that land with the people’s money, may justice find him! And now, instead of him, we have that foolish snob of a city doctor, who thinks he’s the court physician of the king of Spain. Who knows if he’ll come or not?”

  “Zia Lenarda, he has to come. He charges twenty lire a visit!” Zana said haughtily.

  And the woman went off.

  The substitute was living in the regular doctor’s house, the only habitable one in the whole village. Surrounded by gardens, with terraces and arbors, with a great courtyard covered with grapevines and wisteria, the house was a comfort even to this substitute, who came from a town that, though small, had all the necessities, vices, murderers, loose women, and gambling houses that the larger cities have.

  Zia Lenarda found him reading a yellow-backed book in the dining room, which opened onto the courtyard; no doubt a medical work, she thought, judging by the intensity with which he consumed it, his nearsighted eyes stuck to the page, his white fists supporting his dark, rather soft cheeks, his thick lips parted to show his protruding teeth.

  The maid had to call him twice before he noticed the woman’s presence. He closed the book sharply and, slack and distracted, followed Zia Lenarda. She didn’t dare to speak, and went before him as if to show him the way, leaping, agile and silent, down from rock to rock over the rough lanes, struck by the moon.

  Below, in the valley’s depth, in front of the woman’s darkened window, the doctor looked up and saw the mountains’ silver peaks. The pure smell of the valley was mixed with the sheepfold odor that came from the hovels, from the forms of shepherds crouched here and there on the steps before their doors: all was sad and magnificent. But in the courtyard of Ziu Tomas the smell of hay and sage dominated; and in front of the low wall by the embankment, with the huge moon and a star almost scraping her head, the doctor saw a woman’s form so slender, especially from the waist down, so shrouded, without outlines, that she gave him the impression of a bust set on a narrow pedestal.

  Seeing him, she went back to the kitchen, got a light, and knelt down beside her grandfather’s mat, while Zia Lenarda ran into the other room to fetch a painted chair for the doctor.

  Then the girl raised her head and looked into his eyes, and he felt a sensation that he would never forget. He thought he had never seen a woman’s face more lovely and more enigmatic: a broad forehead covered almost to the eyebrows (one higher than the other) by two bands of black, shiny hair; a narrow, prominent chin; smooth cheekbones that cast a little shadow on her cheeks; and white, straight teeth, which gave the suggestion of cruelty to her proud mouth; while her great black eyes were full of sadness and a deep languor.

  Seeing herself examined in this way, Zana lowered her eyes and didn’t raise them again; but when her grandfather didn’t answer the doctor’s questions, she murmured: “He’s been deaf for twenty years or more.”

  “You don’t say? Well, at least you might prepare a foot bath for him; his feet are frozen.”

  “A foot bath? Won’t that hurt him?” Zia Lenarda asked, consulting Zana. “He hasn’t taken his shoes off for eight months.”

  “Well, then, are you going to leave him here now?”

  “Where else can I put him? He always sleeps here.”

  The doctor got up, and after he had written out a prescription, he gave it to Zana and looked around him.

  The place was black as a cave; he could make out a passage at the back, with a wooden ladder; everything indicated the direst poverty. He looked with pity at Zana, so white and thin that she reminded him of an asphodel blooming at the mouth of a cavern.

  “The old man is undernourished,” he said hesitantly, “and you are, too, I believe. You’d both need a more plentiful diet. If you can...”

  She understood at once. “We can do anything!”

  Her expression was so full of scorn that he went away almost intimidated.

  Up, from stone to stone, along the sandstone path he went back to his oasis; the moon silvered the arbor, and the wisteria blooms hung like bunches of fantastic grapes whose very perfume was intoxicating. The old maidservant was spinning in the doorway, and with Zana’s strange face still before his eyes, he asked: “Do you know Ziu Tomas Acchittu?”

  Who didn’t know the Acchittu family?

  “They’re known even in Nuoro, my prize! More than one learned man wants to marry Zana.”

  “Yes, she’s beautiful. I had never seen her before.”

  “She never goes out. There’s no need of that, to be sure. The rose smells sweet even indoors. Foreigners come from everywhere, even from Nuoro, and pass by just to see her.”

  “What? Has the town crier gone around to announce her beauty?”

  “That’s not it, my soul! The old man is so rich he doesn’t know how much he has. Land as big as all of Spain, and they say he has more than twenty thousand scudi in a hole somewhere. Only Zana knows the place. That’s why she doesn’t want even Don Juacchinu, who’s noble but not so rich.”

  “And may I ask where these riches come from?”

  “Where do the things of this world come from? They say the old man (on my life, I can’t say yes or no about it, myself) had a hand in more than one bandit raid in the good old days when the dragoons weren’t as quick as the carabinieri are nowadays. Then, in those days, more that one shepherd came home with one sack full of cheese and the other of gold coins and silver plate....”

  The old woman began to relate all this, and it seemed that she drew the stories from her memory like the thread from her distaff; the man listened, in the shadow of the arbor, sprinkled with gold pieces, and now he understood Zana’s laugh and her words: “We can do anything!”

  The day after the first visit he was back at the house: the old man was sitting on the mat, calmly gumming his barley bread soaked in cold water, the dog on one side of him, the cat on the other. The sun slanted in through the low door, and the May wind bore away the wild, leathery smell of the old man.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Well, as you can see,” Zana s
aid, with a hint of scorn in her voice.

  “Yes, I can see. How old are you, Ziu Tomas?”

  “Yes, I still can,” the old man said, showing the few blackened teeth he had left.

  “He thought you said chew. Grandfather – ” Zana said, bending over the old man, showing him her hands with all the fingers sticking out except the right thumb, “ – like this, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, ninety, may God preserve me.”

  “Good for you. I hope you live to be a hundred – more than a hundred! And you, Zana, you’ve stayed here with him, alone?”

  She told him how all her relatives were dead, her aunts, uncles, cousins, the old, the children; and she spoke calmly of death as of a simple event without importance; but when the doctor turned to the old man, shouting: “Change your way of living! Cleanliness! Roast meat! Good wine! and make Zana enjoy herself a little, Ziu Tomas.”

  Then the old man asked: “When’s he coming back?”

  “Who?”

  “Oh,” Zana said, “it’s just that he’s waiting for our regular doctor to come back and cure his ears.”

  “Wonderful! Our doctor’s fame is assured then.”