New Italian Women: A Collection of Short Fiction

by Anna Banti

  They danced the famous “toe and heel” mazurka, in great esteem in that part of the countryside, with its intricate steps and innumerable variations. Mariutine had had virtually no opportunities to dance it, but she danced by instinct like most of the mountain girls once she had overcome her initial shyness, and she rushed ahead confident and light on her feet, gracefully following her partner. He, gripping her like a spider, “led” her in masterful style, with the trippings, turns, and virtuosities of a consummate artist. He stamped his heel, throwing up his foot shod in a kind of shoe that passed for citified, the toe pointed upward. He opened his legs like a compass and closed them again with a click. His humped back was no trouble to him, nor did the years seem to weigh on him, for he could not have been less than fifty or fifty-five years old. The tails of his jacket flew out, matched in the same rhythms by the fluttering out of Mariutine’s smock and skirts.

  The company had abruptly withdrawn its attention from the masked entertainers to focus on the dancing. At every tricky step, at every unexpected and original variation, a murmur of approval arose, and some enthusiast couldn’t help exclaiming, “They’re neat, by gosh! They’re neat!”

  When at last, with a full and throbbing chord, the mazurka came to an end, they all clapped their hands. A shepherd-boy brought the hunchback his hat, in which he had stuck a long rooster feather, a sign of primacy, and the cry “Music! Music!” resounded on all sides.

  At once the devil with his fiery red, ugly face, the old man with the long white beard, and the fellow with the pig’s snout who had given up his cock-a-doodle-doo, with great seriousness, knowing that they had an obligation to dance well, took Ursule, Teresine, and Catinùte out onto the dance floor. They began to wheel about in rhythm with the music, in their heavy hobnailed shoes.

  Meanwhile Compare Guerrino had not let go of Mariutine, and he urged her with great familiarity towards a corner of the barn where there was a low stool. Panting and out of breath, he wiped the sweat dripping down his forehead with a large red kerchief. Mariutine too was overheated. One of her braids had come loose, and her heart was beating as after a fast race. Yet she felt happy and proud of her well-earned success. Nor did it ever enter her mind to regret having had an older, hunchbacked partner instead of a handsome young man. She took her place cheerily enough beside Compare Guerrino, and she smiled at him gratefully.

  They were silent for a bit. A cluster of people separated them like a wall from the space allotted to dancing. No one paid attention to them. Only two white calves from their place close by turned around to look at them placidly. Finally the hunchback, continuing to pass the kerchief over his deadly pale and sweaty face, without looking at his companion, said nonchalantly, “You can’t be all that well off up there in that hole where you live. Why don’t you find a job in town?”

  The question touched a spot too sensitive for Mariutine, excited by the dance and by all the extraordinary events of that whole day though she was, to hear it calmly. She suddenly felt whisked away from the joy and heedlessness of the moment and brought back to the dark foreboding that had made up the fear and menace of her entire life. She started up and blushed furiously; nevertheless, by a great effort conquering her bashfulness, she answered: “I’d rather have a hard time up there at our place, than go be a servant,...” she murmured with lowered eyes, but firmly. “And then, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.”

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  “I have to take care of Barbe and my sister.”

  The hunchback laughed. “As for Barbe, he’s old enough to look out for himself. But what do you mean...your sister! How old is she?”

  “She’s going on seven.”

  “And where is she now?”

  He seemed to have forgotten Rosute’s tragedy completely.

  “At the hospital in Forni. We brought her there this morning, but she’ll soon be cured and she’ll be released.”

  “Ah, ah, she’ll be released,...” repeated the hunchback two or three times as if he were talking to himself. “She’ll be released.”

  And after a long pause, he continued breezily, “In town, my dear, in the evening, hundreds and hundreds of lights go on all by themselves as though by a miracle, and at night it’s as bright as by day. Down there people don’t trudge along as we do up here in the midst of snow stones and crags, but they walk on streets smooth as velvet, and, if it rains, they take shelter beneath the porticoes. In town there is music in the square at least twice a week, and people go to the movies and the theater. At carnival time they dance on a platform all festooned with artificial flowers and many-colored balloons, and hundreds of maskers, not scraggly like these, but splendid ones dressed in silk and velvet, offer sugar-almonds to the pretty girls.”

  And since Mariutine proved interested despite herself and turned her wide-open ingenuous eyes to him in utter fascination, he continued.

  “Think about it, beautiful,” he said in a low and insinuating voice. “Why don’t you want to try it?... And, if ever you do, remember Compare Guerrino. I have occasion to go down to town two or three times a month, and I have many connections. We could find a respectable family, that would treat you as a daughter.... Or perhaps a lady living alone, or better yet, a widower or an elderly bachelor.... A master is always less fussy and demanding than a mistress. I might even know of somebody just right for you.... Such a person, you see, would be someone safe for you to rely on. He wouldn’t treat you badly. The one I have in mind knows what young people need. Is that clear? If ever you feel like doing it, just let me know somehow. And meanwhile think about it. Will you do that?”

  “You’re very kind, Compare Guerrino, and I don’t know how to thank you,...” murmured the confused girl. “As for thinking about it, I will do that, you can be sure, but, as I’ve told you....”

  “Ta ta ta,” the hunchback interrupted her sharply. “I’ve just been telling you these things for the sake of saying them. You have to have something to talk about. By the way, how old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “That’s young. You look at least four years older. You already have such breasts! While dancing I felt them, you know? And what a sweet scent you have – really of a fresh rose, or a musk rose.”

  As he made these remarks Compare Guerrino’s tongue licked his lips and he looked at the girl hungrily. His eyes lingered on her budding breasts that were still lightly heaving, on her thighs that could be readily guessed at as they were outlined under her thin skirt, and on her red and fleshy mouth.

  “You’re the most beautiful fantate I’ve ever seen,” he murmured, pressing against her on the low stool.

  Mariutine blazed up in blushes. She felt diffident toward the hunchback because he was her elder and because he was the master, and even if she had known how, she would not have dared to reply, for her extreme poverty had shaped in her ever since early childhood the habit of compliance and almost of servility with regard to anyone outside of her own family. But these were the first praises, the first compliments ever, that had come to her coarsely directed toward her physical self. More than flattering her, they caused her deep embarrassment, just as did Compare Guerrino’s speeches and familiarity, which while they interested and amused her, also aroused an obscure sense of discomfort.

  Just then, abruptly raising her eyes as though summoned by other eyes, she met the gaze of Barbe Zef, who had entered the barn unannounced. Crouched on his heels next to a table where they were gambling, behind a cluster of people, he was eying Mariutine and her companion closely. On meeting the girl’s gaze, he swiftly shifted his eyes and pretended to be following the game. Mariutine had noticed the whole scene, but she did not make anything of it. And the hunchback too perhaps had noticed, for, without paying any further attention to her and without a word of good-bye, he got up and left his place with an indifferent air.

  Joining the people who made up the filò, lingering first with this one and then with the other, tossing off a joke here, a compliment there, a
nd a sardonic word further on, distributing to the shepherd-boys little tweaks of the ear and to the girls fond little pinches, like a king holding court he passed the entire company in review. Swarthy, unattractive, and deformed as he was, he nevertheless had the manner of the true master, and in his eyes there was an astute and intelligent expression. When he reached Barbe Zef, he turned to him with a joke, and Barbe Zef replied quietly and with deference, without the remotest trace of awkwardness. Then Compare Guerrino, at the center of a small circle of men, tight-lipped and without laughing, began to tell a story, spicy certainly and bold, for Barbe Zef and the other older men, already leering after the glasses of wine they had drunk, could be seen splitting their sides with laughter.

  Meanwhile the young men of the family and after them the other youths, as soon as they saw Mariutine free from Compare Guerrino’s escort, rushed to invite her to dance. And she, her eyes agleam like two blue pearls, rosy and disheveled, passed from one to the next, light on her feet and radiant with joy.

  The dancers kept it up until nearly midnight, when, inexplicably, there was a sudden pause and a silence. Then without need for a word of agreement, men, women and children, and even the white-haired old men, all bounded up on their feet at the same time, and unfurling their voices they joined in a chorus:

  The sun at sunset is a glory

  And the moon splendid above

  And the stars they form a crown

  And sweethearts are making love.

  It was the traditional chorus that concluded the filò. But even apart from that, the shepherd-boys who were falling asleep, the platters of chestnuts where nothing more remained than the shells, the empty pitchers, and the languishing conversations were all signs clearly indicating that the evening was over.

  The visitors, led by the lame accordionist, were saying their good-byes. Since Barbe Zef and Mariutine would have to be leaving the next day at dawn to make the return journey to their high land, the thanks and leave-takings of the family were exchanged on the spot before everybody disbanded to go to bed.

  Ursule invited Mariutine to sleep with them in their bed. Barbe Zef had a good pallet and a heavy blanket in the barn. The others, after innumerable “mandis” and handclasps, went off on their own.

  In the little bedroom, the girls quickly got undressed, while through the nocturnal silence the drawn-out tones of the receding accordion continued to reach their ears:

  Oh my dearest Ursuline,

  Oh my dusky darling one,

  Black your curls and sweet your mouth,

  Created just for making love.

  Translated by Blossom S. Kirschenbaum

  * * *

  Dear Giuseppe

  by

  Natalia Ginzburg

  Lucrezia to Giuseppe

  Monte Fermo, 20th July

  Dear Giuseppe,

  All of a sudden I’ve a great desire to write to you. So I’ve locked the door to my room so that no one can come and annoy me while I’m writing to you.

  It’s five in the afternoon and it’s very hot. Everyone’s in a bad mood, perhaps because of the heat. A short while ago there was a great row between my mother-in-law and the Swiss girl, because my mother-in-law went into the Swiss girl’s room and the bed had not been made yet and she saw that the mattress was stained with menstrual blood. Then she saw biscuit crumbs and ants under the bed.

  This row irritated me. I found both of them unbearable. The Swiss girl said she would leave tomorrow and took her suitcases down from the top of the wardrobe. I tried to calm her down but without success. If she leaves tomorrow I shall have everything to manage – the children and the house at a time when I want to just stay quietly in my room and think.

  So many things have happened to me since you left. My life has changed. I’ve fallen in love. You will be surprised if I tell you that I’ve never been in love before, when I always kept telling you that I fall in love very easily, but they were all mistakes, and perhaps you’ll be offended if I tell you that you were a mistake too. I thought I was in love with you, I thought I wanted to live with you – what a mistake, Giuseppe – you, thank goodness, were terrified at the prospect and told me for God’s sake to stay where I was. You were wise and I thank you for it. I got on with you well enough, at the beginning. I felt happy enough, but it was all on the level of enough. When I met you my life did not change color. Now it has changed color. Piero accepted you, he stayed calm, more or less, my adultery with you was a bloodless affair. Now, on the contrary, my adultery is of the kind that scatters blood all over the place. I.F. and I are madly in love with each other and we are going to live together, I don’t know when. I don’t know where. We shall get a house in a town, I don’t know which one. I shall take the children with me. You were afraid of the children, he isn’t, he isn’t afraid of anything.

  When I saw him arrive here the first time and get out of his olive-green Renault and come towards me with that gray crewcut he has, I suddenly felt scared and irritated. I said to myself, “Now who in God’s name can this be?” We paused for a moment and looked at each other, not moving, face to face. We are about the same height – I’m a very little taller than he is, but only a very little. The dogs started barking. They didn’t want him there. Egisto and Albina were behind him and they were surprised that the dogs were barking, usually they don’t bark. From that moment I have liked Egisto and Albina even more and I really enjoy seeing them. He went into the house and hung his raincoat on the coatstand and immediately a nail came out of the wall and the coatstand came crashing down. Goodness knows why a nail should come out of the wall at that precise moment. Afterwards I told him that the dogs barking and the coatstand coming down had been two omens.

  I think that Piero quickly realized that something was going on because his manner changed immediately, from the first few times that I.F. started coming here on Saturdays he seemed always frightened and upset. At first he only came on Saturday, but then on other days during the week too. He would phone and then come over. Now he doesn’t come any more. Sometimes we meet in Pianura and go for a walk in the country. But usually I go to his house in Rome. He has a relationship with that woman called Ippolita, though everyone calls her Ippo. They don’t live together. She’s a woman with a big nose and beautiful hair. Everybody tells me about her hair. Everybody – Albina, Egisto – tells me about it. What on earth’s so marvelous about her hair! I’ve never seen her. Egisto’s seen her, he’s been in her house. She has a very beautiful terrace. Everybody talks about her terrace too. I.F. finds it difficult to leave her because it will hurt her, he hasn’t told her anything about me, but in a few days now he’s going to tell her about me and leave her. It hasn’t been easy for me to talk to Piero either, but I had to talk to him because I would have felt bad if I hadn’t talked to him. Anyway, Piero had already realized everything. He’s very depressed. We had an open relationship – you remember that we were always saying so – but in fact it was only open on my side, Piero has never loved any other woman but me. Anyway an open relationship reaches a point when it either closes or goes to pieces. The relationship between Piero and me is going to pieces. I’m sorry because I’m fond of Piero, I’m sorry to see him depressed. I feel that he wouldn’t have been so depressed if I had gone off with you, but he thinks of I.F. as something dreadful. He always comes home very late from Perugia and eats alone; I sit myself down at the table while he’s eating and he tells me to go away. He can’t stand me and I can’t stand him. We sleep together but on some nights I tell him I’m too hot and I go and sleep upstairs in the room that has the quilts with dragons on them. It should be cooler in there because it faces west, but in fact it’s stiflingly hot in there too. Sometimes I’m very unhappy as well.

  The strange thing is that everything is breaking up here, the whole house is falling to pieces. The Swiss girl is leaving tomorrow, the washing machine leaks. It’s very hot, we’re all dead with the heat. The Swiss girl used to take the children to the stream every day, but sh
e’s going tomorrow and I shall have to take them because if I don’t they will wander round the garden getting bored and filthy. Serena has gone to Russia, otherwise she could have taken them to the stream. I think the children have realized something is going on too, because they all seem frightened and bored. Perhaps the Swiss girl has realized too and that’s why she’s going, because it isn’t very cheerful staying somewhere where everything’s falling to pieces. Only my mother-in-law hasn’t realized anything. Every so often she comes to me with a worried look on her face and tells me that she has found a dead bird full of ants on the bathroom windowsill, or she tells me she’s found a bowl of moldy figs in the refrigerator. Whenever my mother-in-law goes round the house these days she always finds something disgusting.

  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 friend-ship. 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 has nothing to do with you – as you wish, it doesn’t matter. But I think you will acknowledge our friendship as real.