The Little Virtues

by Natalia Ginzburg

  Sometimes we arrange marriages between my children and the children of her brother, the one who goes around the country in hunting boots. We talk like this until the small hours of the night and drink black, bitter tea. We have a mattress and a bed, and every evening we toss up for which of the two of us shall sleep in the bed. When we get up in the morning our worn-out shoes are waiting for us on the rug.

  Now and again my friend says that she is fed up with working and wants to let her life go to pieces. She wants to shut herself in some filthy bar and drink all her savings, or she will just stay in bed and think of nothing and leave everything to drift, and let them come and cut off the gas and the light. She says she will do it when I leave. Because our shared life will not last much longer; soon I shall leave and return to my mother and children and be in a house where no one is allowed to have worn­out shoes. My mother will take me in hand; she will stop me from using pins instead of buttons and writing till the small hours. And, in my turn, I shall take my children in hand and overcome the temptation to let my life go to pieces. I shall become serious and motherly, as always happens when I am with them, a different person from the one I am now—a person my friend does not know at all.

  I shall watch the clock and keep track of time, I shall be cautious and wary about everything and I shall take care that my children’s feet are always warm and dry, as I know that they must be if it is at all possible—at least during infancy. And perhaps even for learning to walk in worn-out shoes, it is as well to have dry, warm feet when we are children.

  Portrait of a Friend

  The city which our friend loved is always the same; there have been changes, but very few—they have introduced trolley buses and made one or two subways. There are no new cinemas. The ancient monuments are always there with their familiar names, which when we repeat them awaken in us our youth and childhood. Now, we live elsewhere in a completely different, much bigger city, and if we meet and talk about our own city we do so with no sense of regret that we have left it, and say that we could not live there any longer. But when we go back, simply passing through the station and walking in the misty avenues is enough to make us feel we have come home; and the sadness with which the city fills us every time we return lies in this feeling that we are at home and, at the same time, that we have no reason to stay here; because here, in our own home, our own city, the city in which we spent our youth, so few things remain alive for us and we are oppressed by a throng of memories and shadows.

  Besides, our city is by its nature a melancholy place. On winter mornings it has its own smell of the station and soot, diffused through all its streets and avenues; if we arrive in the morning we find it grey with fog, pervaded by that distinctive smell. Sometimes a pale sun filters through the fog and dyes the heaps of snow and bare tree branches rose and lilac; in the streets and avenues the snow is shovelled into little heaps, but the parks are still buried beneath their thick, undisturbed blanket which lies, a finger thick, on the deserted benches and round the fountain rims: the clock by the horse track is stopped at a quarter to eleven, as it has been since time immemorial. There is a hill on the other side of the river and that too is white with snow, but marked here and there with reddish bushes; on the top of the hill a circular, orange-coloured building which used to be the Balilla National Opera stands like a tower. If there is a little sun to catch the glass dome of the Automobile Showrooms and make the river flow with a green glitter beneath its stone bridges, the city can seem, for a moment, pleasant and friendly; but that is a fleeting impression. The city’s essential nature is melancholy; the river loses itself in the distance and disappears in a horizon of violet mists which make you think of sunsets at midday, and at any moment you can breathe in that same dark, industrial smell of soot, and hear the whistle of the trains.

  And now it occurs to us that our city resembles the friend whom we have lost and who loved it; it is, as he was, industrious, stamped with a frown of stubborn, feverish activity; and it is simultaneously listless and inclined to spend its time idly dreaming. Wherever we go in the city that resembles him we feel that our friend lives again; on every corner and at every turning it seems that we could suddenly see his tall figure in its dark half­belted coat, his face hidden by the collar, his hat pulled down over his eyes. Stubborn and solitary our friend walked with his long tread throughout the city; he hid himself away in remote, smoky cafés where he would immediately slip off his coat and hat but keep on the pale, ugly scarf that was carelessly flung about his neck; he twisted strands of his long brown hair around his fingers and then, quick as lightning, pushed the strands back. He filled page after page with his quick, broad handwriting, crossing out furiously as he went; and in his poetry he celebrated the city,

  Questo è il giorno che salgono le nebbie dal fiume

  Nella bella città, in mezzo a prati e colline,

  E la sfumano come un ricordo . . .

  [This is the day when mists rise from the river

  In the beautiful city set among meadows and hills,

  And they make it shadowy as a memory . . .]

  When we return to the city or when we think of it his poems echo in our ears; and we no longer know whether they are good poems or not, because they have become so much a part of us, and so strongly reflect for us the image of our youth, of those far off days when we heard them for the first time recited by the living voice of our friend, and we discovered with astonishment that it is possible to make poetry even out of our grey, heavy, unpoetic city.

  Our friend lived in the city as an adolescent, and he lived in the same way until the end. His days were extremely long and full of time, like an adolescent’s; he knew how to find time to study and to write, to earn his living and to wander idly through the streets he loved; whereas we, who staggered from laziness to frantic activity and back again, wasted our time trying to decide whether we were lazy or industrious. For many years he did not want to submit to office hours or accept a definite job; but when he did agree to sit behind a desk in an office he became a meticulous employee and a tireless worker: even so, he set aside an ample margin of free time for himself—his meals were quickly over, he ate very little and never slept.

  At times he was very unhappy, but for a long time we thought that he would be cured of this unhappiness when he decided to become an adult; his unhappiness seemed like that of a boy—the absent-minded, voluptuous melancholy of a boy who has not yet got his feet on the ground and who lives in the sterile, solitary world of his dreams.

  Sometimes, during the evening, he would come in search of us; then he just sat, pale, with his scarf about his neck, twisting strands of hair around his fingers or crumpling a piece of paper; throughout the whole evening he would not say a single word, or answer any of our questions. Suddenly, at last, he would snatch up his overcoat and leave. Then we were ashamed and asked ourselves if our company had disappointed him, if he had hoped to cheer himself up by being with us and been unsuccessful; or perhaps he had simply wanted to spend an evening in silence beneath a lamp that was not his own.

  However, conversation with him was never easy, even when he seemed happy; but a meeting with him in which just a few words were exchanged could be far more stimulating than with anyone else. In his company we became more intelligent; we felt compelled to articulate whatever was best and most serious in us, and we got rid of commonplace notions, imprecise thoughts, incoherent ideas.

  We often felt ashamed when we were with him, because we did not know how to be serious like him, or modest like him, or generous and unselfish like him. He treated us, who were his friends, in a brusque way and he did not overlook any of our faults; but if we were upset or ill he immediately became as solicitous as a mother. On principle he refused to get to know new people; but sometimes he would be expansive and affectionate, full of appointments and plans, with someone completely unexpected—someone who was even rather contemptible—and whom he had never seen before. If we happened to remark that this person was in m
any ways unpleasant or despicable he used to say he was well aware of that, because he always liked to know everything and never allowed us the satisfaction of telling him something new: but he never explained why he acted in such a welcoming, intimate way with this person and, on the other hand, refused his friendship to others who deserved it much more, and we never discovered the reason. From time to time he became curious about someone who, he thought, was very elegant, and he would see a great deal of this person; perhaps he thought he could use these people in his novels; but he was mistaken in his judgements of social refinement and he often mistook bottle-glass for crystal; in this, but only in this, he was very naïve. But though he made mistakes about social refinement no one could deceive him when it came to spiritual or cultural refinement.

  He had a cautious, reserved way of shaking hands—a few fingers were extended and withdrawn; a secretive, parsimonious way of taking his tobacco from its pouch and filling his pipe; and if he knew that we needed money he had a sudden, brusque way of giving it to us—so brusque and sudden that we were left rather bewildered; he used to say that he felt he should be careful with the money he had and that it hurt him to part with it, but once it was gone he didn’t give a damn about it. If we were separated from him he neither wrote to us nor answered our letters, or he answered with a few, flat, defensive phrases; he said the reason was that he did not know how to feel affection for friends when they were a long way off; he did not want to suffer because of their absence and he quickly buried the thought of them.

  He never had a wife or children or a house of his own. He lived with a married sister who loved him and whom he loved, but when he was with his family he behaved in his usual uncouth way and his manners were those of a boy or a stranger. Sometimes he came to our houses and then he would scrutinize the children we were bringing up, the families we had made for ourselves, with a puzzled, good-natured frown: he too thought of having a family but he thought of it in a way which with the passing of the years became more and more complicated and tortuous—so tortuous that it was impossible for him to bring the idea to a simple conclusion. Over the years he had built up such a tangled and inexorable system of ideas and principles that he was unable to carry through the simplest project, and the more forbidden and impossible he made the attainment of some simple reality the deeper his desire to master it became, twining itself in ever more complicated tangles like some suffocating species of vegetation. For this reason he was often unhappy and we would have liked to help him, but he never allowed us to utter a word of pity or make any gesture of sympathy; we even imitated his behaviour and refused his sympathy when we were depressed. Although he taught us many things he was not a mentor for us because we saw all too clearly the absurd convolutions of the thoughts in which he imprisoned his simple nature; we wanted to teach him something too—how to live in a more elementary, less suffocating way. But we were never able to teach him anything, because as soon as we tried to set out our arguments he would lift his hand and say that he was already well aware of all that.

  In his last years his face was lined and furrowed, laid waste by mental torment; but his build and figure retained their adolescent gracefulness to the end. In his last years he became a famous writer but this had no effect at all on his secretive habits, nor on the modesty of his behaviour, nor on the scrupulous humility with which he carried out his everyday work. When we asked him if he enjoyed being famous he gave a proud smirk and said that he had always expected to be; sometimes a shrewd, proud smirk—childish and spiteful—used to flash across his face and disappear. But because he had always expected it, it gave him no pleasure when it came, since as soon as he had something he was incapable of loving or enjoying it.

  He used to say that he knew his art so thoroughly that it was impossible he should discover any further secret in it, and because it could not promise him any more secrets it no longer interested him. He told us, who were his friends, that we had no more secrets for him and that we bored him profoundly; we felt humiliated by the fact that we bored him but we were unable to tell him that we saw only too clearly where his mistake lay—in his refusal to love the daily current of existence which flows on evenly and apparently without secrets. He had not as yet mastered day to day reality, but this—for which he felt a simultaneous desire and disgust—was impregnable and forbidden to him; and so he could only look at it as if from an infinite distance.

  He died in the summer. In summer our city is deserted and seems very large, clear and echoing, like an empty city-square; the sky has a milky pallor, limpid but not luminous; the river flows as level as a street and gives off neither humidity nor freshness. Sudden clouds of dust rise from the streets; huge carts loaded with sand pass by on their way from the river; the asphalt of the main avenue is littered with pebbles that bake in the tar. Outside the cafés, beneath their fringed umbrellas, the little tables are deserted and red-hot.

  None of us were there. He chose to die on an ordinary, stiflingly hot day in August, and he chose a room in a hotel near the station; he wanted to die like a stranger in the city to which he belonged. He had imagined his death in a poem written many, many years before:

  Non sara necessario lasciare il letto.

  Solo l’alba entrerà nella stanza vuota.

  Basterà la finestra a vestire ogni cosa

  D’un chiarore tranquillo, quasi una luce.

  Poserà un’ombra scarna sul volto supino.

  I ricordi saranno dei grumi d’ombra

  Appiattati cosí come vecchia brace

  Nel camino. Il ricordo sarà la vampa

  Che ancor ieri mordeva negli occhi spenti.

  [It will not be necessary to get up from the bed.

  Only the morning will enter the empty room.

  The window will be sufficient to clothe everything

  With a quiet clarity, like a light.

  It will cast a thin shadow on his face where it lies.

  What will be remembered are clots of shadow

  Flattened like old ashes

  In the fireplace. Memory will be the flame

  That yesterday flared in his dead eyes.]

  A short time after his death we went on a trip into the hills. There were inns by the roadside with pergolas covered in ripening grapes, games of bowls, heaps of bicycles; there were farms growing corn cobs, and cut grass spread out on sacks to dry; it was the landscape just beyond the city, at the end of autumn, which he loved. We watched the September night come up over the low hills and ploughed fields. We were all close friends and had known each other for many years, we were people who had always worked and thought together. As happens among those who have suffered a misfortune together we tried to love each other all the more, to look after and protect each other; because we felt that he, in some mysterious way of his own, had always looked after us and protected us. On that hillside he was more present than ever.

  Ogni occhiata che toma, conserva un gusto

  Di erba e cose impregnate di sole a sera

  Sulla spiaggia. Conserva un fiato di mare.

  Come un mare notturno è quest’ombra vaga

  Di ansie e brividi antichi, che il cielo sfiora

  E ogni sera ritorna. Le voci morte

  Assomigliano al frangersi di quel mare.

  [As it comes back, every glance keeps some quality

  Of the grass and of the things on the beach

  Suffused by the evening sun. It keeps a breath of the sea.

  This indistinct shadow compounded of anxieties

  And ancient shudderings is like a nocturnal sea

  On which the sky rests lightly, and which

  Returns each evening. The voices of the dead

  Are like the breaking of that sea.]

  England: Eulogy and Lament

  England is beautiful and melancholy. To be honest I don’t know many countries, but I begin to suspect that England is the most melancholy country in the world.

  It is an extremely civilized country. There the bas
ic problems of life—sickness, old age, unemployment, taxes have apparently been wisely solved.

  It is a country which, I believe, knows how to govern itself well and this is clear in the smallest details of daily life.

  It is a country where the greatest respect for others is a general and willingly observed rule.

  It is a country which has always shown itself ready to welcome foreigners, from very diverse communities, without I think oppressing them.

  It is a country where they know how to build houses. A man’s wish to be snug in his own little house, which is just for him and his family, and to have a garden which he cultivates himself, is considered quite reasonable, and so the cities are made up of just such little houses.

  Even the most ordinary houses look charming from the outside.

  And a huge city like London, which is of a monstrous size, is organized in such a way that you do not realize how large it is and so you are not troubled by it. The eye is not bewildered by immensity but attracted and beguiled by the little streets, the little houses and the green parks.

  The parks appear in the city like lakes—your eyes rest there, refreshed and at ease, cleansed of soot.

  Because wherever the city is not green it is quickly smothered in a thick blanket of soot and smells like a railway station—of old trains, dust and coal.

  The railway stations are the places where England is most openly gloomy. Scrap iron piles up there and coal dust and heaps of rusting, tangled, disused rails. They are surrounded by desolate little allotments full of cabbages, where bits of underwear are hung out to dry and where there are sheds patched together like old sheets.