Family Lexicon

by Natalia Ginzburg

  My mother said, “How nice he was! How much I liked having him here!”

  Adriano was not arrested but he left the country, and he and my sister, being engaged, wrote to each other. Old Olivetti came to my parents to ask, on his son’s behalf, for my sister’s hand in marriage. He came from Ivrea on a motorcycle wearing a peaked cap and many newspapers over his chest. He was in the habit of layering himself with newspapers whenever he rode his motorcycle in order to shield himself from the wind. He asked for my sister’s hand quickly and then stayed for a while sitting on the couch in our living room fiddling with his beard and talking about himself: how he’d begun his factory with very little money, how he’d educated every one of his children, and how he read the Bible every night before going to sleep.

  My father then flew into one of his rages at my mother because he was against the marriage. He said that Adriano was too rich and too obsessed with psychoanalysis—as were, for that matter, all of the Olivettis. My father liked the Olivettis but he found them a bit extravagant. And the Olivettis said we were too materialistic, especially my father and Gino.

  After a while we realized we weren’t going to be arrested, and neither was Adriano, who returned from abroad and married my sister. As soon as she was married, she cut her hair. My father didn’t comment because now he could no longer tell her what to do, he could no longer forbid her from doing anything or order her to do something. Still, he soon enough started to yell at her again and he even started to scream at Adriano. He thought they spent too much money and used the automobile too frequently to go between Ivrea and Turin. When they had their first child he criticized their child-rearing methods, telling them that the child should be kept in the sun more often or he would get rickets.

  “They’ll give that child rickets!” he yelled at my mother. “They never keep him in the sun! Tell them to keep him in the sun!”

  He was also afraid that they would take their child, when sick, to witch doctors. Adriano didn’t believe much in real doctors and once when he had sciatica he went to a Bulgarian for aerial massages. He then asked my father what he thought of aerial massage and if he’d heard of the Bulgarian. My father knew nothing about the Bulgarian and was outraged by the very idea of aerial massage.

  “He’s surely a charlatan! A witch doctor!”

  And when the child came down with a small fever, he worried. “They won’t take him to one of those witch doctors, will they?”

  He loved that child, Roberto. He thought he was beautiful and laughed whenever he saw him because he thought he was the spitting image of old Olivetti.

  “It’s as if I’m looking right at old Olivetti!” my mother would also say. “He looks exactly like the old engineer!”

  Whenever Paola came from Ivrea, the first thing my father would say to her was, “Tell me about Roberto!”

  He always said, “Roberto is beautiful!”

  Paola had another child, a girl, but he didn’t like her. When they brought her to see him, he barely looked at her. He said, “Roberto is much more beautiful!”

  Paola was offended and scowled. When she left, my father said to my mother, “Did you see what a jackass Paola was?”

  During the first years Paola was married, my mother cried often because Paola had left home. My mother and Paola were very close and told each other a great many things. My mother never told me anything because I seemed too young to her and also because I didn’t “lend my gear.”

  I went to the middle school then and my mother no longer taught me math. I still didn’t understand math but my mother couldn’t help me because she couldn’t remember middle-school math.

  “She doesn’t lend her gear. She doesn’t talk!” my mother said about me. The only thing she could do with me was take me to the cinema. I, however, wasn’t always willing to go with her, despite her pleas.

  “I don’t know what the mistress wants to do! Let me see what the mistress wants to do!” my mother would say when talking to her friends on the telephone. She always called me her “mistress” because I was actually the one who decided what we did in the afternoons, if we would go to the cinema or not.

  “I’m bored!” my mother said. “I have nothing to do anymore, there’s nothing more for me to do in this place. Everyone has left. I’m bored!”

  “You’re bored,” my father responded, “because you have no inner life.”

  “My dear little Mario!” my mother said. “Thank God it’s Saturday. My dear little Mario is coming!”

  Mario, in fact, came home almost every Saturday. In the room where Ferrari had slept, he would open his suitcase on the bed and with meticulous care unpack his silk pajamas, his toiletries, his Moroccan leather slippers. He always had new things that were elegant and beautiful, as well as suits made from English fabrics.

  “All wool, Lidia,” my mother said, touching the suit fabric. “Ah, you too have your little things,” she said, repeating what my aunt Drusilla used to say.

  Stroking his jaw, Mario still said “The Brot shot in the pot” whenever he sat down briefly with me and my mother in the living room. But he was soon on the telephone, speaking in a lowered voice while making mysterious engagements.

  “Goodbye, Mama,” he said from the front hall, and we didn’t see him again until dinner.

  Mario rarely brought his friends home, but even when he did he wouldn’t bring them into the living room. Instead, he shut himself up with them in his bedroom. These particular friends seemed decisive and determined, and Mario, too, now always seemed decisive and determined. It was as if he cared for and thought about nothing else besides his career and the business world. He was no longer friends with Terni and he no longer read either Proust or Verlaine; he only read books about the economy and finance. He no longer came with us on holiday, instead spending his holidays abroad on tours and cruises. He went off on his own and sometimes we didn’t even know where he’d gone.

  “Where do you think Mario is?” my father would ask after some time had passed and Mario hadn’t written. “We no longer know anything about him. We never know what the hell he’s up to. What a jackass!”

  We knew, however, from Paola that Mario often went to Switzerland, but not to ski. He hadn’t put a ski on his foot from the day he left home. In Switzerland, he had a lover who was very thin and couldn’t have weighed more than thirty-five kilos. He only liked women who were extremely thin and very elegant. Paola said this one took a bath two or three times a day; Mario also did nothing but take baths, shave, and douse himself in lavender water since he was chronically worried that he might be dirty and stink. Everything disgusted him, much the same as it did my grandmother. Whenever Natalina brought him coffee, he inspected the cup thoroughly to make sure it had been cleaned well enough.

  Every so often my mother would say, “How happy I would be if he were to marry a nice, smart girl!”

  And my father immediately flew into a rage. “Married, sure! That’s just what he needs. I don’t want Mario to get married under any circumstances!”

  •

  My grandmother died and we all went to Florence for her funeral. She was buried in the family tomb there with our grandfather Parente, with “poor little Regina,” and with all the many other Margheritas and Reginas. My father now called her “my poor little mother,” his tone full of affection and compassion, but when she was alive he’d always treated her as if she were a bit of a fool—much the same way he treated all of us. Now that she was dead her defects seemed innocent and childish, deserving of pity and sorrow.

  My grandmother left us her furniture. My father said the furniture was “very valuable.” My mother, however, didn’t like it. Piera, Gino’s wife, also said that it was very beautiful. My mother was somewhat taken aback since she trusted Piera who, my mother said, was very knowledgeable about furniture. But my mother found it too big and heavy. There were armchairs my grandfather Parente had imported from India made of dark wood full of tiny holes, with elephant heads carved on the armrests.
There were some small black-and-gold chairs—from China I think—and a great many knickknacks as well as porcelain figurines, silverware, and dishes decorated with a coat of arms that had once belonged to our Dormitzer cousins who’d been made barons after lending money to Franz Joseph.

  My mother was afraid that Alberto, when home from boarding school on his holidays, would take some of my grandmother’s things to the pawnshop. So she had a glass-front cupboard made that could be closed with a key and placed all the little porcelain figurines inside it. She said, however, that my grandmother’s furniture was not right for our apartment, that it was cumbersome and wouldn’t make a good impression.

  Every day she repeated, “That furniture clashes with via Pallamaglio!”

  So my father decided we should move and we went to live on the Corso Re Umberto in a rather run-down and not very tall building that overlooked the avenues of the Corso. Our apartment was on the ground floor and my mother was once again very happy because she felt nearer to the street and could come and go without having to climb up or down stairs. “I can even go out,” she said, “without a hat.” Her dream had always been to go out “without a hat,” something my father had forbidden her to do.

  “But in Palermo,” my mother said, “I went out without a hat!”

  “In Palermo, in Palermo! In Palermo was fifteen years ago! Look at Frances! Frances never goes out without a hat!”

  Alberto left boarding school and came back to Turin to finish his high-school degree. He got excellent marks on all of his exams and graduated with honors. We were all shocked.

  “See, I told you so, Beppino,” my mother said. “You see, when he wants to he can really study!”

  “And now what?” my father said. “Now what are we going to do with him?”

  “But what are you going to do about Alberto?” my mother said, repeating what my aunt Drusilla always used to say. My aunt Drusilla also had a son who didn’t study and my mother, in turn, used to say to her, “But what are you going to do about Andrea?” Drusilla was the one who said, “Ah, you too have your little things!” Occasionally she’d come with us on holiday in the summer and rent a house near ours. She’d show my mother her son’s clothes and say, “You know Andrea too has his little things.” As soon as Drusilla arrived in the mountains, she would go to the barn where they sold milk and say, “I would be willing to pay a bit more if you would bring me my milk slightly earlier than the others.” In the end, they brought her milk at the same time as they brought ours, but they still made her pay more for it.

  “But what are you going to do about Alberto?” my mother repeated the entire summer. That year Drusilla wasn’t with us because she’d given up coming to the mountains a while ago, but my mother could still hear her voice echoing in her ears. When asked, Alberto said he intended to study medicine. He said this in a manner that was both resigned and indifferent, shrugging his shoulders. Alberto was a tall youth, thin and blond, with a long nose. Girls liked him. Whenever my mother searched his drawers for the pawnbroker’s receipts, she found a heap of letters from girls along with their photographs.

  Alberto didn’t see Pestelli anymore because he’d gotten married. Nor did he see Pajetta. After Pajetta got out of reform school he was arrested again, tried at the special tribunal, and sent to a prison in Civitavecchia. Alberto now had a new friend called Vittorio.

  “That Vittorio,” my mother would say, “is a very smart boy, very studious! He’s from a very good family! Alberto is a rapscallion but he’s always chosen his friends well.” Even after having graduated from high school, Alberto was still, in my mother’s lexicon, “a hooligan” and “a rapscallion”—a word I still don’t know the precise meaning of.

  “Thug! Delinquent!” my father yelled when Alberto came home at night. He was so used to yelling at him for coming home late that he yelled at him all the same even when he happened to come home early.

  “Where the hell have you been out so late?”

  “I accompanied a friend home for a ways,” Alberto always responded in his cool, soothing, cheerful voice.

  Alberto chased after working girls but he also chased after girls from good families. He chased after all girls and liked them all, and because he was kind and lighthearted, he also, out of kindness and lightheartedness, flirted with girls he didn’t like. He enrolled in medical school. My father taught him in his anatomy course, and didn’t like this at all. Once my father was showing slides and in the darkness of the classroom saw a lit cigarette glowing.

  “Who’s smoking?” he shouted. “Who is that son of a bitch smoking?”

  “I am, Papa,” Alberto responded in his notoriously soothing voice, and everyone laughed.

  Whenever Alberto had to take an exam my father was in a bad mood from the moment he woke up. “He’s going to embarrass me! He hasn’t studied at all!” he said to my mother.

  “Wait, Beppino!” she responded. “Wait! We don’t know yet.”

  “He got an A,” my mother told him.

  “An A?” my father said, flying into a rage. “An A! They gave it to him because he’s my son! If he weren’t my son, they would have failed him.” And he became angrier than ever.

  Alberto later became a very good doctor, but my father was never convinced it was true. And when my mother or any one of us became ill and expressed the desire to have Alberto examine us, my father broke into one of his thunderous laughs. “Alberto, sure! Do you think Alberto knows anything?”

  •

  Alberto and his friend Vittorio strolled up and down the Corso Re Umberto. Vittorio had black hair, square shoulders, and a long, prominent chin. Alberto had blond hair, a long nose, and a short, disappearing chin. Alberto and Vittorio talked about girls. They also, however, talked about politics because Vittorio was a political conspirator. Alberto didn’t seem to be at all interested in politics. He didn’t read the papers or offer his opinion, and he never participated in the arguments that still sometimes erupted between Mario and my father. Alberto was, nevertheless, attracted by conspirators. Since the time he and Pajetta, still in short pants, were first friends, Alberto was drawn to conspiracies but never took part in them. He liked to be the friend and confidant of conspirators.

  My father, when he ran into Alberto and Vittorio on the Corso, greeted them with a cold nod. It never remotely occurred to him that of the two one was a conspirator, the other his confidant. Furthermore, the people that my father was used to seeing in Alberto’s company filled him with suspicious contempt. He was also convinced that conspirators didn’t exist anymore in Italy. He thought he was one of the few antifascists left in the country. The others were those he used to see at Paola Carrara’s, my mother’s friend who had also been a friend of Kuliscioff.

  “Tonight,” my father said to my mother, “let’s go over to Carrara’s place. Salvatorelli will be there.”

  “How marvelous!” my mother said. “I’m so curious to hear what Salvatorelli has to say!”

  And after having spent an evening with Salvatorelli in Paola Carrara’s small living room full of dolls, because she used to make dolls for a charity she worked for, my father and my mother felt somewhat comforted, even though perhaps nothing new had been said. Many of my mother’s and father’s friends had become fascists, or at least they were not as openly and vocally antifascist as my parents would have liked them to be. So as the years passed, my parents felt themselves ever-more isolated.

  Salvatorelli, the Carraras, and the engineer Olivetti were, for my father, among the few antifascists left in the world. To him they signified another way of life, which appeared to have been swept off the face of the earth. They preserved for him memories of Turati and that entire era. Spending time with these people allowed my father to breathe a breath of fresh air. There was also Vinciguerra, Bauer, and Rossi who all had been shut up in prison for years for having conspired long ago against fascism. My father thought of them with a mixture of veneration and pessimism, believing they would never be freed. There
were the communists, but my father didn’t know any of them except for Pajetta. He remembered Pajetta as a child in short pants and as a reckless little adventurer, and associated him with Alberto’s bad behavior. At the time, my father didn’t really have a well-defined opinion about the communists. He didn’t believe there were any conspirators in the new, younger generation, and if he had suspected that there were, he would have thought them crazy. In his opinion, there was nothing, absolutely nothing to be done about fascism.

  As for my mother, she had an optimistic nature and was waiting for a dramatic turn of events. She was waiting for someone, someday, somehow to “topple” Mussolini. My mother went out in the morning saying, “I’m going to see if fascism is still on its feet. I am going to see if they’ve toppled Mussolini.” She picked up rumors and hearsay in the shops and deduced from them comforting signs. At lunch, she said to my father, “People are very unhappy. They can’t take it anymore.”

  “Who told you so?” my father shouted.

  “I was told,” said my mother, “by the greengrocer.”

  My father snorted disdainfully.

  Every week Paola Carrara received the “Zurnàl de Zenève” (this is how she pronounced the French title of the Journal of Geneva). Her sister, Gina, and her brother-in-law, Guglielmo Ferrero, lived in Geneva, having emigrated long ago for political reasons. Every so often Paola Carrara went to Geneva to visit her sister, though sometimes they took away her passport so she wasn’t able to go.

  “They took away my passport! I can’t go visit Gina!”

  They would eventually return her passport and then she would go, coming home after a few months full of hope and reassuring news.

  “Listen, listen to what Guglielmo told me! Listen to what Gina told me!”

  Whenever my mother wanted to reinforce her optimism, she went over to Paola Carrara’s place. Sometimes, however, she would find her in a foul mood sitting in her living room in the semidarkness among the dolls, beads, and postcards. Either they had just taken away her passport or the latest issue of the “Zurnàl de Zenève” hadn’t arrived yet and she was convinced it had been sequestered at the border.