0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.

txt
WARNING
Places, facts and people are, in this book, real. I did not invent
nothing: and whenever, on the trail of my old costume of
novelist, I invented, I felt immediately pushed to destroy what
I had invented.
Even the names are real. Hearing me, in writing this book, one
so profound intolerance for every invention, I could not change them
real names, which have appeared indissoluble from real people. Maybe to
someone will be sorry to find himself like that, with his name and surname, in a
book.
But I have nothing to answer to this.
I wrote only what I remembered. Therefore, if you read this book
as a chronicle, it will be objected that it presents infinite gaps. Although
taken from reality, I think we should read it as if it were a novel:
that is, without asking him anything more, not less, than what a novel is
can give.
And there are also many things that I remembered, and that I have left out of
to write; and among these, many that concerned me directly.
I did not really want to talk about myself. This is not mine
history, but rather, despite empty spaces and gaps, the story of my family.
I must add that, during my childhood and adolescence, I
I always proposed to write a book that told about people who
then they lived around me. This is, in part, that book: but only in
part, because memory is labile, and because books taken from reality do not
it is often that thin glimmers and splinters of what we have seen and heard.
In my father's house, when I was a little girl, at the table, if I or mine
Brothers overturned the glass on the tablecloth, or let one drop
knife, the voice of my father thundered: Do not do bad luck!
If we soaked the bread in the sauce, he would shout: - Do not lick the dishes!
Not
Do not bother! do not make potacci!
Sbrodeghezzi and potacci were, for my father, also the modern paintings,
that he could not suffer.
He said: - You people can not be at the table! You are not people to wear
in the logos!
And he said: - You guys who do a lot of sbrodeghezzi, if you were a table d'h魌e
in England, they would immediately send you away.
He had the highest esteem in England. He found that he was, in the world, the
greatest example of civilization.
He used to comment, at lunch, about the people he had seen during the day.
He was very strict in his judgments, and he gave everyone stupid. A stupid
it was, for him, "a sempio". "It seemed to me like a beautiful," he said,
commenting on some new knowledge. Besides the 玸empi?there were i
"Niggers." "A Negro" was, for my father, who had awkward, awkward, and awkward
ways
shy, who dressed inappropriately, who could not go in
mountain, who did not know foreign languages.
Every act or gesture that we thought was inappropriate was defined by
he "a negrigura". - Do not be black! Do not be bad! - there
he was constantly shouting. The range of negrigure was great. He called
"A negrigura" to bring city shoes; strike up
speech, by train or by road, with a travel companion or with a
Through; converse from the window with the neighbors; take off your shoes
lounge, and warm your feet to the mouth of the heater; complain, on trips in
mountain, for thirst, exhaustion or peeling at the feet; bring, in the trips,
第 1 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
cooked and greasy dishes, and napkins to clean your fingers.
In mountain tours it was allowed to bring only one determined
sort of foods, namely: fontina; marmalade; pears; hard-boiled eggs; and it was
allowed
drink only tea, which he prepared himself, on the spirit stove. Chinava on
his cook's long, frowning head, with red brushed hair; and he repaired
the flame from the wind with the flaps of his jacket, a colored wool jacket
rust, peeled and bleached at the pockets, always the same in the
holidays in the mountains.
In the outings, neither cognac nor checkered sugar was allowed:
this being, he said, "nigger stuff"; and it was not allowed to stop at
to have a snack in the ch鈒et, being a negrigura. A negrigura was also

protect your head from the sun with a handkerchief or straw hat,
or defend yourself from rain with waterproof hoods, or tie yourself around your
neck
scarves: protections dear to my mother, that she was looking for, in the morning
when
we went on a trip, to insinuate in the mountain bag, for ourselves and for
ourselves; is
that my father, in finding them in his hands, threw away anger.
On trips, we with our spiked shoes, big, hard and heavy like
lead, socks of wool and balaclava, glacier sunglasses on the
in front, with the sun beating over our heads in sweat,
we looked enviously at the "blacks" who walked lightly in sneakers
tennis, or sat down to eat cream at the ch鈒et's tables.
My mother, making trips to the mountains, called it "the fun of the
devil to her children, "and she always tried to stay home, especially
when and she always tried to stay home, above all
when it came to eating out: because he loved, after eating, to read
the newspaper and sleep indoors on the sofa.
We always spent summer in the mountains. We were renting a house,
for three
months, from July to September. Usually, they were houses far from the inhabited
area;
and my father and my brothers went every day, with a mountain bag
on the shoulders, to do the shopping in the village. There was no sort of
amusements or
distractions. We spent the evening at home, around the table, we brothers and
mine
mother. As for my father, he was reading on the opposite side of the
home; and from time to time
he looked out of the room where we were gathered at
chat and play. He looked suspiciously, frowning; and yes
he complained to my mother about our servant Natalina, who had put him
in
disorder certain books; "Your dear Natalina," he said. 獳 demented?
he said, oblivious to the fact that Natalina could hear him in the kitchen.
On the other hand, the phrase "demented by Natalina" la
Natalina was there
used to it, and did not take offense at all.
第 2 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Sometimes in the evening, in the mountains, my father was getting ready for
trips
ascents. Kneeling on the ground, anointed his shoes and my brothers
with del

whale fat; he thought that he alone could grease his shoes with
that fat. Then there was a great noise of metalwork all over the house: it was
he was looking for crampons, nails, ice axes. - Where is it
you chased it
my ice ax? - he thundered. - Lidia! Lidia! where you hunted mine
ice ax?
He left for the ascents at four in the morning, sometimes alone, sometimes
with guides of which he was a friend, sometimes
with my brothers; and the day after the
ascension was, by exhaustion, intractable; with a red and swollen face for the
glare of the sun on the glaciers, the chapped and bleeding lips, the nose
spread
of a yellow ointment that looked like butter, eyebrows
wrinkled on the furrowed and stormy forehead, my father was reading the
newspaper, without pronouncing a verb: and a trifle was enough to do it
to blow up
in a scary rage. Upon returning from the ascents with my brothers,
my father said that my brothers were "salami" and "negro", and that
none of his sons had inherited from
he is the passion of the mountain;
excluded Gino, the eldest of us, who was a great mountaineer, and who together
to a friend he made very difficult tips; of Gino and that friend, my father
He spoke with one
mixture of pride and envy, and said that he now
he did not have much breath, because he was getting old.
This my brother Gino was, after all, his favorite, and so
satisfied in each
thing; he was interested in natural history, he made collections
of insects, and of crystals and other minerals, and was very studious. Gino yes
he then enrolled in engineering; and when he returned home after an exam, and
he said
that he had taken a thirty, my father asked: - How did you get
thirty? How come you did not get thirty and praise?
And if he had taken thirty and praise, my father would say, "Uh, but it was an
exam
easy.
In the mountains, when it was not going to make ascents, or trips that lasted
until the evening my father went, every day, "to walk";
left early in the morning, dressed in the same way
when he left for
the ascensions, but without rope, crampons or ice ax; he often went away from
第 3 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
alone, because we and my mother were, according to him, "poltroni", "dei
salami "and" negri "; if it is
he went with his hands behind his back, col
heavy step of his spiked shoes, with his pipe between his teeth. Some
time, he forced my mother to follow him; - Lidia! Lidia! - thundered al
morning, - let's go
to walk! If you do not mind you are always on
meadows! "My mother then, docile, followed him; a few steps back,
with his stick, the golf tied on his hips, and shaking his curly hair
hair
gray, which he wore cut very short, although my father had a lot of it
with the fashion of the short hair, so much that he had done it, the day that he
was there
cut off, a fury to bring down the
home. - You cut yourself again
hair! What donkey you are! My father said to her, every time she came back
at home at the hairdresser. "Donkey" meant, in my father's language,
not an ignoramus,
but one who did villainy or rudeness; we his sons
we were "donkeys" when we talked little or we answered badly.
- You must have been raised by Frances! - my father used to say to my mother,
seeing that her hair had still been cut; in fact this Frances, friend of
my mother was my beloved and esteemed father, among other things being the
wife of a childhood friend and companion of
do you study; but he had eyes

of my father the only fault of having started my hair trendy mother

short; Frances often went to Paris, having relatives there, and it was
a winter came back from Paris
saying: - Short hair is used in Paris. TO
Paris fashion is sporty they had repeated
my sister and my mother all winter, doing a bit of the verse
Frances,
who spoke with the r; all the clothes had been shortened, and mine
mother had cut her hair; my sister no, because she had them long up in
bottom back, blond and beautiful; and because he had too much
fear of mine
father.
Usually, in those holidays in the mountains, my grandmother used to come there,
the
my father's mother. He did not live with us, but in a hotel in the village.
We went to visit her, and she was sitting there on the

little square of the hotel, below

the beach umbrella; she was small, with tiny feet shod with black ankle boots
very small buttons; she was proud of those little feet that sprouted below
to the skirt, and it was
第 4 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

proud of her head of candid, frizzy, combed hair

a tall, bulging helmet. My father took her, every day, "a little 'to
to walk". They went to the highways, because she was old, and

not
he could practice the paths, especially with those little heeled boots;
they went, him ahead, with his long strides, hands in back and pipe in
mouth, her back, with her rustling robe, with
the passages of his
tacchettini; she never wanted to go on the road where the day had been
before, he always wanted new roads; - This is the road of yesterday, - yes
he complained, and my father told her
distracted, without turning around: - No, it's another;
- but she continued to repeat: - It is yesterday's road. It's yesterday's road.
- I have
a cough that chokes me, - he said after a little to my father, who always
pulling
forward and did not turn; "I have a cough that chokes me," he repeated
putting his hands to his throat: he always used to repeat the same things two or
three
times. He said: "That infamous Fantecchi who made me
make the dress
marron! I wanted to do it blue! I wanted to do it blue! - and was beating the
umbrella on the
pavement, with anger. My father told her to watch the sunset on
mountains; but she continued to beat on the ground,

angrily, the tip

of the umbrella, taken by a fit of rage against the Fantecchi, his dressmaker.
After all, she came to the mountains only to stay with us, since
he lived in Florence during the year,
and we in Turin, and so he saw us only
the summer; but he could not suffer the mountain, and his dream would have been
holidaying in Fiuggi or Salsomaggiore, places where he had spent the
summers of

his youth.
It had been in the past, my grandmother, very rich, and had become impoverished
with the
world War; because as he did not believe that Italy won, e
he had a blind trust in Francesco
Giuseppe, he had wanted to keep
certain titles, which he owned in Austria, and so he had lost a lot of money; my
father, irredentist, had in vain tried to convince her to sell those
titles
Austrians. My grandmother used to say "my misfortune" alluding to that
loss of money; and he despaired, in the morning, walking up and down
第 5 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
the room and wringing his fingers. But it was not like that
poor. He had, a
Florence, a beautiful house, with Indian and Chinese furniture and Turkish
carpets; why
one of his grandfathers, Grandfather Parente, had been a collector of objects
precious. On the walls there were portraits
of his various ancestors, the grandfather
Parente, and the Vendee, who was an aunt who called it that way because it was
reactionary, and held a parlor of pigtails and reactionaries; and many aunts and
cousins ??that were called

all or Margherita or Regina: names used in

Jewish families of yesteryear. But there was not one of the portraits of the
father of
my grandmother, and we should not talk about him: because he was a widower, and
having argued one day with his two daughters, already adult, he had
declared that, in spite of them, he would be married to the first woman
that he met on the street, and so he had done; or
at least, so yes
he told his family that he had done; if it had been the first one
woman he had met on the front door, leaving the house, I do not know.
Anyway he had, with this
new wife, still a daughter, that
my grandmother never wanted to know, and that she called, with disgust, "the
little girl of father ". This "little girl of father", a mature and
distinguished lady
now on

fifty, we happened to meet her sometimes in the

holidays, and my father then said to my mother: Did you see? Did you see?
It was Father's baby!
- You are brothel of everything. In this house it is done
brothel of everything, -
my grandmother used to say, meaning that there was nothing for us
sacred; phrase remained famous in the family, and that we used to repeat every
time
that we had to laugh about

dead or on funerals. He had, my grandmother, a

deep disgusting of the animals, and gave in spite when he saw us play
with a cat, saying that we would take, and infected her, diseases;
"That infamous beast," he would say, stamping his feet on the ground, and
beating the
tip of the umbrella. He was disgusted with everything, and a great fear of
illness;
but she was very healthy, so much so that she died more than

eighty years without ever having

needed neither a doctor nor a dentist. He always feared that
some of us, out of spite, baptized her: because one of my brothers
once, joking,
第 6 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

he had made the gesture of baptizing her. He recited every

day his prayers in Hebrew, without understanding anything, because he did not
know

Hebrew. He felt, for those who were not Jews like her, a disgust,
as for cats. Only my mother was excluded from this disgust: the only one
non-Jewish person to whom, in his life, he became attached. And mine too
mother loved her; and he said it was, in his
selfishness, innocent and
naive as a nursing baby.
My grandmother was young, according to her, beautiful, the second beautiful
girl from Pisa; the first was a certain Virginia Del Vecchio, her friend.
A certain Signor Segr?came to Pisa, and asked to know the most beautiful
girl from Pisa, to ask for her in marriage. Virginia did not accept to
marry him. My grandmother introduced him then. But mine too
grandmother lo
he refused, saying she did not take "Virginia's leftovers."
He then married my grandfather, grandfather Michele, a man who was supposed to
be
very sweet and mild. She was a widow at a young age; is
once the
we asked why he had not resumed a husband. He answered, with a laugh
shrill and with a brutality that we would never have expected in the old one
querulous and plaintive that it was:
- Cucc?
to make me eat all mine!
My brothers and my mother sometimes complained because they were bored
in those holidays in the mountains, and in those isolated houses, where not
they had amusements, neither
company. I, being the smallest, I had fun with
little: and the boredom of the holidays I still did not feel in those years.
"Others," my father said, "you get bored, because you have no life
inner.
One year we were particularly without money, and it seemed like that
we had to stay in the city in the summer. One was then fixed at the last moment
house, which was cheap, in a fraction of a country

which was called SaintJacques-d'Ajas; a house without electric light, with oil
lamps. Where you go
being very small and uncomfortable, because my mother, all summer, did not
what to say: Cow of a house!

malignazzo of a Saint-Jacques-d'Ajas! - The

our resource were certain books, eight or ten volumes bound in leather:
bound files of I do not know that weekly, with sciarade, rebus, and novels
terrifying. He had loaned them to my brother Alberto his friend, a
of course Frinco. We fed Frinco's books throughout the summer. Then mine
mother made friends with a lady, who lived in the
next house.
第 7 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
They attacked speech while my father was not there. He said he was "from
negri 籺o talk with the neighbors. But since then it was discovered that this
Madam, Mrs. Ghiran, stood at
Turin in the same house as Frances, e
he knew her by sight, it was possible to introduce her to my father, who became
with her very kind. In fact, my father was always suspicious and suspicious
in
regards outsiders, fearing that they were "equivocal people";
but as soon as he discovered a vague common knowledge with them, he felt
immediately reassured.
My mother was just talking
of Mrs. Ghiran, and we ate,
at the table, dishes that Mrs. Ghiran had taught us. - New star
that rises, "my father said, every time the lady was appointed
Ghiran. "New
rising star "or only" new star "was always
the ironic greeting of all our new infatuation. - I do not know how
we would have done without the books of Frinco, and without Mrs. Ghiran, -
he said
my mother at the end of that summer. Our return to the city that year was
marked by this episode. After a couple of hours of bus, reached the
train station, boarding the train and
we took a seat. Suddenly there
we realized that all our bags had remained on the ground. The train conductor,
raising the flag, he shouted: - Departure! - Start a horn! - he did then
my father, with a
scream that echoed throughout the wagon; and the train does not
moved until our last trunk was loaded.
In the city we had to separate, with agony, from the books of Frinco, because
Frinco addressed them
back. And as for Mrs. Ghiran, we did not see her
never again. - Mrs. Ghiran must be invited! it's a rude! He said to
my father. But my mother was very changeable in his
sympathy, and unstable in its relationships: and people, or saw them all
days, or did not want to see them ever. He was unable to cultivate knowledge for
pure spirit of urbanity. He always had a fear
crazy "to get tired", e
he was afraid people would come to visit her when she wanted to go to
hoot.
My mother saw her friends: always the same. Except for Frances, e
some others that were

wives of friends of my father, my mother, her friends

she chose them young, a lot younger than her: young ladies
newly married, and poor: he could give them advice, suggest them
seamstresses. "The old women" made her horrify, as she said, alluding to
第 8 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
January alluding to
people who were about his age. The receptions made her horror.
If one of her old acquaintances sent her to say
that would come
to visit her, she panicked. - Then I will not be able to go to today
hoot! - he said desperately. Those young friends, however, could pull them off
behind a walk, or at the cinema;
they were handy and available, and
ready to maintain a relationship with her without ceremonies; and if they had
little children, better, because she loved children a lot. It happened to
times that the
afternoon, these friends came to see her together.
My mother's friends were called, in my father's language, "le
babe. " When dinner time approached, from his studio, my own
father screamed
loudly: - Lydia! Lidia. Are all those babes gone? - So yes
he saw the last baba, dismayed, slipping into the corridor and sneaking away
from the door; those young friends of mine
mother avevan all, of my father,
a great fear. At dinner, my father used to say to my mother: "You did not get
tired of it
to babare? Do not you get tired of beating?
Sometimes they came to our house in the evening, friends
of my father: like him
university professors, biologists and scientists. My father, when yes
they announced those evenings, at dinner, asked my mother: - You have
prepared some treatment? - The
treatment were tea and biscuits: liqueurs,
in our house, they never got into it. Sometimes my mother did not have
prepared no treatment, and my father then got angry: - How not
there is
treatment? You can not receive people without giving treatment! You do not
it can make negroes!
Among the most intimate friends of my parents, there were the Lopez, and that is
the
Frances and her husband, and the Terni. The
Frances's husband was called
Amedeo, but was surnamed Lopez, still from the time it was, together
to my father, student. The nickname my father had as a student was
Pom, that
he meant tomato, because of his red hair; but mine
father, if they called him Pom, he was very angry, and he allowed
only to my mother to call him that. However the Lopez said,
talking to each other about our family, "the Pom" in the same way as us
we said, of them, "the Lopez". The reason for this nickname he had
第 9 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Amedeo, no one has ever been able to explain it to me, and
he had lost, I believe, in the
night of times. Amedeo was fat, with locks of fine white hair
like silk; he spoke with the r, as his wife and as their three children
males, our friends. I Lopez
they were much more elegant, more refined and more
modern of us: they had a nicer house, they had an elevator, and the
phone, which in those years did not have anyone yet. La Frances, that
he often went
in Paris, he brought the latest news about clothes and clothes
mode; and a year brought a Chinese game, in a box with paintings of the
dragons, which was called "ma-jong"; they had all learned to
play
this ma-jong, and Lucio, who was the youngest son of the Lopez, and mine
same age, he always boasted about me with this ma-jong but he never wanted to
teach it to me: he said it was too much
complicated, and that his mother does not
he let the box touch: and I was enraged with envy, seeing, at home
them, the precious box, forbidden and full of mystery.
When my parents went, the
evening, from Lopez, my father on the way back
they magnified their house, the furniture, and the tea that was served on a
cart,
in beautiful porcelain cups; and he said that Frances "could do more", that is
He knew
finding beautiful furniture and beautiful cups, he knew how to furnish a home,
and
how to make tea.
If the Lopez were richer or poorer than us, it was not clear: mine
mother said they were much more
rich; but my father said no, that
they were like us without much money, only Frances "could do more", and
it was not "a poultice like you guys". My father felt, of the
rest,
very poor, especially early in the morning, when he woke up;
She would also wake my mother, and say to her, "I do not know how we'll go
next ??you saw that the Realtors have gone down ? The

Real Estate
they always went down, never went up; "Those malignazze
d'Immobiliari, "my mother used to say, and complained that my father
he had no business sense, and as soon as there was one
bad title, immediately
he bought it; she often begged him to turn to an agent for advice
exchange, but he then raged, because he wanted, in this as in all
第 10 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
other things, to do with your head
her.
As for the Terni, they were very rich. However Mary, the wife of Terni,
he was of simple habits, frequented few people, and spent days in
contemplation of his two children together
to the nanny Assunta, who
she was all dressed in white; and they did, both Mary and the nanny, that
he imitated her, an ecstatic whisper: - Sss-st! ssst! Even Terni always did
玈sst, ssst?in
contemplation of her children; he did, moreover, "ssst ssst" on everything, on
the nor a dentist. He always feared that
some of us, out of spite, baptized her: because one of my brothers
once, joking,

contemplation of her children; besides, he did "ssst ssst" on everything, on our

servant Natalina, anything but beautiful, and on certain clothes
old people he saw wearing my sister and my mother. Of
every woman who
he saw, he said he had "an interesting face" and that he resembled
some famous paintings; he stayed for a few minutes in contemplation, and yes
took away the candy, cleaning it in one
very white and fine handkerchief.
Terni was a biologist, and my father had a large one about his studies
estimate; he used however to say 玹hat sempione of Terni? because he found that
it was, in the
live, a
poseur. "Terni poses," he said of him every time he had it
met. "I think you can," he resumed after a while. When Terni
he came to visit us, he usually stopped in the garden with us, a

speak about
novels; he was educated, he had read all the modern novels, and was the first to
bring in our house La recherche du temps perdu. Indeed, I believe
looking back, trying to look like Swann,

with that candy,

and with the habit of discovering in each of us kinships with famous paintings.
My
father, from the study, called him out loud, so that he would come and talk with
he of tissue cells;
Terni! - he was screaming, - come here! Do not do the lot
Sempio! - Do not be a clown! - he shouted, when Terni, with his
whispers of ecstasy, he hunted his nose in the worn and dusty curtains of the
our
dining room, asking if they were new.
第 11 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
The things my father appreciated and esteemed were: socialism;
England; the novels of Zola; the Rockfeller foundation; the mountain, and the
guides of the
Val d'Aosta. The things my mother loved were: the
socialism; the poems of Paul Verlaine; music and, in particular, the
Lohengrin, who used to sing for us in the evening after dinner.
My mother was
Milanese, but also of Trieste origin; and on the other hand
He had also married many of Trieste's expressions with my father. The
Milanese came to mingle in his talk, when he told memories
childhood.
He had seen one day, walking down the street, in Milan, when he was
small, a stalwart lord, motionless in front of a window of
hairdresser, staring at a doll's head, and saying
to himself:
- Beautiful beautiful beautiful. Too long de col.
Many of his memories were like this: simple phrases he had heard. A
day, with his college mates and with the teachers, he was out a
walking.
Suddenly one of the little girls had detached herself from the line, running
to hug a dog that passed; he hugged him, and said:
- The is the, the is the, the is the sister of my bitch!
She had been in many college
years. A world had fun in that
college.
He had recited, sang and danced at school parties; he had acted
in a comedy, disguised as a monkey; and sung in an operetta, yes
called the pianella lost in the snow.
He had written and recorded a work. His work began like this:
I am Don Carlos Tadrid,
And I'm a student in Madrid!
While I was going one morning
By the way
Berzuellina,
I suddenly saw a window
A young teacher!

And he had written a poem, which said:

Hi or ignorance,
My mind is crippled by your thoughts!
Salute reigns where you are,

Let me leave it
study of maccabees!
We drink, we dance and we do not think,
Let's party!
Now you muse inspire me a concept,
Tell me what your heart tells me,
Tell me that the philosopher is annoying,
第 12 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
In the ignorant find
the love.
And then he had parodied the Metastasio, like this:
If at each interior the breathlessness
It was read on the written front
How many ever do they walk
They would go to land?.
He remained in boarding school until sixteen
years. On Sunday, he went to see a
his maternal uncle, who was called the Barbison. There was a turkey for lunch;
they ate, and after the Barbison it indicated the leftovers of the turkey to the
wife, and le
he would say: "We'll eat it and ask you for it."
Barbison's wife, Aunt Celestina, was called Barite.
Someone had explained that there is barite everywhere, so she
He indicated,
for example, the bread on the table, and said: - You see yourself that pan
there? It is all barite.
The Barbison was a rough man with a red nose. "With the nose like the
Barbison "used to say my mother when he saw
some red nose. The
Barbison told my mother, after those turkey lunches:
"Lydia, what about chemistry, what is hydrogen sulphide?" El
spussa de pet. Hydrogen sulphide and spussa

de pet.
The real name of the Barbison was Perego. Some friends had done for him,
these verses:
Nice to see in the evening and in the morning
Del Perego the c?and the cellar.

The Barbison sisters were called "le

Beate ", being very much
bigoted.
Then there was another aunt of my mother, Aunt Cecilia, who was famous for
this sentence. Once my mother told her that they had been in
thought for my grandfather, the who was late in coming home, and they feared the
pits
something happened. Aunt Cecilia immediately asked: - And you got it
at lunch, do you laugh or pasta? "Pasta," my mother replied. - Bon that does not

you had laughed, because otherwise somehow long that it became.

My maternal grandparents both died before I was born. My
maternal grandmother, grandmother Pina, was a modest family, and had
married
第 13 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
my grandfather who was his neighbor: a bespectacled young man, distinguished
lawyer at the beginning of her profession, which she felt every day on the
door, ask the concierge: - There are
l閠ere for me? - My grandfather
said l閠ere, with a single and narrow hand; and this way of speaking
that word seemed to my grandmother a great sign of distinction. You
he married for this; is
also because he wanted to be, for the winter, a
black velvet coat. It was not a happy marriage.
She was young, my grandmother Pina, blonde and pretty; and had
recited once in one
filodramatic company. How was the
curtain, my grandmother Pina was there with a brush and a tripod, and she said
these words:
- I can not continue to paint; my soul does not
bend to work
and to art; it flies far from here, and feeds on painful ideas.
My grandfather then threw himself into socialism; and he was a friend of
Bissolati, of
Turati and Kuliscioff. My grandmother Pina stayed
always a stranger to life
husband's politics. Since he filled her home with socialists, my grandmother
Pina used to say, with regret, of her daughter: - Quela tosa there will marry
her
gasist -. Then they ended up with the

live separated. My grandfather, in the last few years

of his life, he had left politics, and had resumed acting as a lawyer;
but he slept until five in the afternoon, and when the customers came
He is saying:
-
What are they doing? send them away!
Mia, grandmother Pina, in the last years, was in Florence; and he sometimes went
to
to find my mother, who in the meantime had married, and lived in Florence too;
he had, however, mine

grandma Pina, a great fear of my father. A was coming

day to see my brother Gino, in swaddling clothes, who had a little fever; for
calm my father who was all excited, my grandmother Pina had him
said
it was perhaps a teething fever. My father was furious, because
he claimed that dentition can not give a fever; and my grandmother Pina,
meeting in uncle my Silvio that

he also came to us, - Dis

no, I'm the dent, "he whispered to him on the stairs.
Except "I'm not the dent", "that woman there will marry her a gasist" e
獻 can not continue to paint? I of mine
第 14 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

grandma I know nothing, and

I have not received any other words from him. I mean, I still remember that yes
he repeated this phrase in our house:
- All the days there is one, all the days there is one, the Drusilla

ancuei a
break the oceans.
He had three children, Silvio, my mother and Drusilla, who was myopic and
he always broke his glasses. He died in Florence, in solitude, after a lifetime
of many pains: his son

Major, the Silvio, killed himself at the age of thirty,

shooting at his temple one night in the public gardens of Milan.
After the college, my mother left Milan and went to stay in Florence. Yes
enrolled in medicine;
but the university never ended, because he knew mine
father, and he married him. My grandmother, my father's mother, did not want
that
marriage, because my mother was not Jewish: and someone had them
told
that was, my mother, a very devout Catholic: and that every time
who saw a church, made great bows and signs of the cross. It was not true
at all: no one, in my mother's family, did not go in
church, nor
he made signs of the cross. My grandmother therefore opposed it for a while;
then
he agreed to meet my mother, and they met one evening at the theater,
assisting with a comedy, where it was
a white woman finished in between
the died; and a blackberry jealous of her, she gritted her teeth and said,
looking at her with
terrible eyes: 獵oteletta madama bianca! coteletta madama bianca! ?
獵oteletta madama
white ", - my mother used to say, whenever
he ate a cutlet. They had free armchairs for that
comedy, because my father's brother, Uncle Caesar, was critical
theatrical. It was, this uncle Caesar, completely different from my father,
quiet,
fat and always cheerful; and, as a theatrical critic, it was not at all severe,
and
he never wanted to say no harm to any comedy,
but in all he found
something good; and when my mother told him that a comedy was there
He seemed stupid, he got angry and said, "You try to write."
a comedy like that -. The
Uncle Caesar then married an actress; it's this one
it was a great tragedy for my grandmother, and for many years she did not want
第 15 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
her uncle
Caesar introduced her to his wife; because an actress still seemed to her
worst than
one that made the signs of the cross.
My father, when he married, worked in Florence in an uncle's clinic
my mother, who was nicknamed "the Demented" because it was who was late in
coming home, and they feared the pits
something happened. Aunt Cecilia immediately asked: - And you got it
at lunch, do you laugh or pasta? "Pasta," my mother replied. - Bon that does not

you had laughed, because otherwise somehow long that it became.

My maternal grandparents both died before I was born. My
maternal grandmother, grandmother Pina, was a modest family, and had
married
my grandfather who was his neighbor: a bespectacled young man, distinguished
lawyer at the beginning of her profession, which she felt every day on the
door, ask the concierge: - There are
l閠ere for me? - My grandfather
said l閠ere, with a single and narrow hand; and this way of speaking
that word seemed to my grandmother a great sign of distinction. You
he married for this; is
also because he wanted to be, for the winter, a
black velvet coat. It was not a happy marriage.
She was young, my grandmother Pina, blonde and pretty; and had
recited once in one

filodramatic company. How was the

curtain, my grandmother Pina was there with a brush and a tripod, and she said
these words:
- I can not continue to paint; my soul does not
bend to work
and to art; it flies far from here, and feeds on painful ideas.
My grandfather then threw himself into socialism; and he was a friend of
Bissolati, of
Turati and Kuliscioff. My grandmother Pina stayed

always a stranger to life

husband's politics. Since he filled her home with socialists, my grandmother
Pina used to say, with regret, of her daughter: - Quela tosa there will marry
her
gasist -. Then they ended up with the
live separated. My grandfather, in the last few years
of his life, he had left politics, and had resumed acting as a lawyer;
but he slept until five in the afternoon, and when the customers came
He is saying:
-
What are they doing? send them away!
第 16 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Mia, grandmother Pina, in the last years, was in Florence; and he sometimes went
to
to find my mother, who in the meantime had married, and lived in Florence too;
he had, however, mine

grandma Pina, a great fear of my father. A was coming

day to see my brother Gino, in swaddling clothes, who had a little fever; for
calm my father who was all excited, my grandmother Pina had him
said
it was perhaps a teething fever. My father was furious, because
he claimed that dentition can not give a fever; and my grandmother Pina,
meeting in uncle my Silvio that
he also came to us, - Dis
no, I'm the dent, "he whispered to him on the stairs.
Except "I'm not the dent", "that woman there will marry her a gasist" e
獻 can not continue to paint? I of mine
grandma I know nothing, and
I have not received any other words from him. I mean, I still remember that yes
he repeated this phrase in our house:
- All the days there is one, all the days there is one, the Drusilla
ancuei a
break the oceans.
He had three children, Silvio, my mother and Drusilla, who was myopic and
he always broke his glasses. He died in Florence, in solitude, after a lifetime
of many pains: his son

Major, the Silvio, killed himself at the age of thirty,

shooting at his temple one night in the public gardens of Milan.
After the college, my mother left Milan and went to stay in Florence. Yes
enrolled in medicine;
but the university never ended, because he knew mine
father, and he married him. My grandmother, my father's mother, did not want
that
marriage, because my mother was not Jewish: and someone had them
told

that was, my mother, a very devout Catholic: and that every time
who saw a church, made great bows and signs of the cross. It was not true
at all: no one, in my mother's family, did not go in
church, nor
he made signs of the cross. My grandmother therefore opposed it for a while;
then
he agreed to meet my mother, and they met one evening at the theater,
assisting with a comedy, where it was

a white woman finished in between

the died; and a blackberry jealous of her, she gritted her teeth and said,
looking at her with
terrible eyes: 獵oteletta madama bianca! coteletta madama bianca! ?
第 17 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
獵oteletta madama
white ", - my mother used to say, whenever
he ate a cutlet. They had free armchairs for that
comedy, because my father's brother, Uncle Caesar, was critical
theatrical. It was, this uncle Caesar, completely different from my father,
quiet,
fat and always cheerful; and, as a theatrical critic, it was not at all severe,
and
he never wanted to say no harm to any comedy,
but in all he found
something good; and when my mother told him that a comedy was there
He seemed stupid, he got angry and said, "You try to write."
a comedy like that -. The
Uncle Caesar then married an actress; it's this one
it was a great tragedy for my grandmother, and for many years she did not want
her uncle
Caesar introduced her to his wife; because an actress still seemed to her
worst than
one that made the signs of the cross.
My father, when he married, worked in Florence in an uncle's clinic
my mother, cwho was late in coming home, and they feared 玊he Dementus?because
he was a physician of the gods
crazy. The Demente was,
in truth, a man of great intelligence, educated and
ironic; and I do not know if he ever knew he was called in the family like that.
My mother knew, in the house of my paternal grandmother, the various court of
the
Daisies and Queens, my father's cousins ??and aunts; and also the famous
Vendee, still alive in those years. As for Grandfather Parente, he had died
since
time; and so is his wife, grandmother Dolcetta, e
their servant, who
it was Bepo fachin. Of the grandmother Dolcetta, it was known that she was small
and fat,
like a ball; and that he always indigestion, because he ate

too much. He was sick, he vomited and yes

he put in bed; but after a while the
they found that he ate an egg: - The x is fresh, - he said to justify himself.
They had Grandfather Parente and grandmother Dolcetta, a daughter called
Rosina. To this
Rosina died her husband, leaving her with young children
and a few deniers. He returned, then, to his father's house. And the day after
it was
when they were all seated at table, Grandma Dolcetta said
watching:
- Cossa today our Rosina, that no the x is of his usual umor?
The story of the grandmother Dolcetta's egg, and the story of our Rosina,
第 18 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
it was my mother who told us about it in a relaxed way;
because my father, he said
badly, confusedly, and always interspersing the story of his own
thundering laughter, because the memories of his family and his childhood it
rejoiced;
so that of those stories broken by long laughs, we do not
we understood a great thing.
My mother instead rejoiced telling stories, because she loved the
pleasure to tell. He was beginning to tell a
table, addressing one
of us: whether it was about my father's family or that
he would tell of his, he was happy with joy and was always as if
tell that story for the first one
time, to ears that do not
they knew nothing. "I had an uncle - he began - who called him the
Whiskers'. And if one then said: - I know this story! I've already heard it
a lot of times! - then you
he turned to another and whispered to him
to tell. - How many times have I heard this story! - my father was thundering,
picking a few words at the passage. My mother, under her breath,
She recounted.
The
Dementia in his clinic had a madman, who believed he was God
Demented every morning told him: - Good morning, dear Mr. Lipmann
-. And then the madman answered: - Dear perhaps,

Lipmann probably
no! - because he believed he was God.
And then there was the famous phrase of a conductor, acquaintance of the
Silvio, who was in Bergamo for a tour, had told ai
singers
distracted or unruly:
- We did not come to Bergamo to campaign, but to direct the
Carmen, Bizet's masterpiece.
We are five brothers. We live in different cities, some of us

they are
abroad: and we do not write often. When we meet, we can
be, one with the other, indifferent or distracted. But enough, among us, one
word. Just one word, one sentence: one of those

ancient phrases, heard and

repeated endless times, in the time of our childhood. It is enough to say: "Not
we came to Bergamo to campaign "or" De spussa l'acido
hydrogen sulphide ? to find again a
treat our ancient relationships, and ours
childhood and youth, inextricably linked to those phrases, to those
第 19 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
words. One of those phrases or words, would make us recognize each other,
we
brothers, in the darkness of a cave, among millions of people. Those sentences
are
our Latin, the vocabulary of our days gone, are like i
hieroglyphs of the Egyptians or the Assyrian-Babylonians, the
testimony of a
vital nucleus that has ceased to exist, but which survives in its texts,
saved from the fury of the waters, from the corrosion of time. Those sentences
they are the foundation of ours

family unit, which will exist until

we will be in the world, recreating and resurrecting in the most different
points of the
earth, when one of us says - Dear Mr. Lipmann, - and immediately
it will resonate with ours
ear the impatient voice of my father: Stop it with
this story! I already heard so many of those times!
How come from that lineage of bankers, who were the ancestors and relatives
of my father, they are
come out of my father and his brother Caesar completely
destitute of every sense of business, I do not know. My father spent his life in
the
scientific research, a profession that did not make money; and had
of the
money an idea as vague and confused as ever, dominated by a substantial one
indifference; so, when he happened to have money, he
he always lost, or at least led himself so
having to lose it, and if
he did not lose it and it went smoothly, it was a simple case. He accompanied
him for
the whole life the worry of being, at any moment, on the
pavement; concern
irrational, that lived in him united to others
bad moods and pessimism, like pessimism about success combined with others
bad moods and pessimism, like pessimism about success and luck
of his sons; concern that weighed on him like a dusky mass
of
black clouds on rocks and mountains, and that however it did not touch, in the
depth of his spirit, his substantial, absolute, intimate indifference
to money. He said "a strong sum" talking about
fifty lire, or rather,
as he said, fifty francs, because his unit of monetary measure
it was the franc, and not the lira. In the evening he went around the rooms,
thundering
against us that we left

第 20 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
the lights on; but then it happened to him to lose
millions almost without realizing it, or with certain titles, that buys and
he sold at random, or with publishers, to whom he sold his works neglecting
ask for one

fair compensation.
After Florence, my parents went to stay in Sardinia, because
my father had been appointed professor in Sassari; and, for a few years,
they lived there. Then they moved to
Palermo, where I was born: the last, of
five brothers. My father went to war, as a medical officer, on the
Karst. And finally we came to live in Turin.
They were, the first years of Turin, for me
mother, difficult years; it was just
the first world war ended; there was the post-war period, the caroviveri, we had
a few deniers. In Turin, it was cold, and my mother complained about the
cold, and of the house
that my father had found before we arrived
without consulting anyone, and that it was damp and dark. My mother, how long
my father said, had complained to Palermo, and had complained to
Sassari:
he had always found a way to grumble. Now he spoke of Palermo, and of
Sassari, as of earthly paradise. He had both in Sassari and at
Palermo, many friendships, to which, however, not
he wrote, because he was incapable
to maintain relationships with distant people; he had had beautiful full houses
there
sunny, a comfortable and easy life, very good service women; in Turin, i
first times, not
he could find service women. Until one happened
day, I do not know how, in our house, Natalina: and she stayed there thirty
years.
In truth, if he also grumbled and complained, in Sassari and in Palermo
mother had been very happy: because she had a happy nature, and everywhere
he found people to love and to be loved wherever he found
way of having fun at the things he had around, and of
be happy. He was happy
even in those early years in Turin, inconvenient years if not perhaps hard, and
in the
which she often cried, because of my father's bad mood, the cold, the
nostalgia of other places, his
children who grew up and had
I needed books, coats, shoes, and there was not much money. It was however
happy, because as soon as she stopped crying, she became very happy, and
he sang a
lurking home: the Lohengrin, the Pianella lost in the
第 21 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
snow, and Don Carlos Tadrid. And when he remembered those years later,
those years when he still had all his children at home, and they were not there
money, le
Real estate always went down, and the house was damp and dark, talking about it
always like beautiful years, and very happy. - The weather in via Pastrengo,
- he said later, to define that era:
via Pastrengo was the street where
we lived then.
The house in via Pastrengo was very large. There were ten or twelve rooms,
a courtyard, a garden, and a glassed-in veranda overlooking the garden;

was
but very dark, and certainly humid, because a winter, in the toilet, grew two
or three mushrooms. Of those mushrooms there was a great deal of talk in the
family: and mine
Brothers said to my paternal grandmother, ours
guest at that time, that there
we would have cooked and eaten; and my grandmother, though incredulous, was
nonetheless
frightened and disgusted, and said: - In this house you become a whorehouse of
everything.
I was at that time
a little girl; and I had only a vague
I remember Palermo, my hometown, from which I had left at the age of three.
But I imagined myself also suffering from the nostalgia of Palermo, like
my

sister and my mother; and of the beach of Mondello, where we went to

take a bath, and a certain Signora Messina, my mother's friend, and one
little girl called Olga, my sister's friend, and me
I called "Olga
alive 籺o distinguish it from an Olga doll; and of which I said, every
once we saw her on the beach: - I am ashamed of Olga alive -. These
it was the people who were in Palermo
and in Mondello. Cullandomi in the
nostalgia, or in a fiction of nostalgia, I made the first poem of my life,
composed of only two verses:
Palermino Palermino,
You are more beautiful than Turin.
This poem was
greeted at home as the sign of an early vocation
poetic; and I, encouraged by so much success, immediately made two other poems
very short, which concerned mountains I could hear about
from mine
brothers:
Long live the Grivola,
第 22 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
If you ever slip.
Long live the Mont Blanc,
If you're ever tired.
Moreover, in our house, the habit of making poetry was very widespread. My
brother Mario had turned a volt once a poem about some kids Tosi, that
they played with him at Mondello, and he could not suffer:
And when the gentlemen Tosi arrive,
All unpleasant, all boring.
But the most famous and the most beautiful was a poem
that he had made mine
brother Alberto, about ten or eleven years, and that he was not tied to any fact
real, but created from nothing, pure fruit of poetic invention:
The old maid
Without breast
Did
a child
So cute.
The daughter of Jorio was recited in our house. But it was mainly acting,
in the evening, around the table, a poem that my mother knew and that she had
taught, having it
felt, in her childhood, at a charity recital
in favor of the survivors of a flood in the Po Valley:
It was several days when everyone was trembling!
And the old men said: "Holy Madonna, i

waves
Ingrossan by the hour!
Pay attention to children; play with the stuff! "
What a! leave them alone, poor old good ones!
Father did not want to; and then father is daring and young, and he did not
believe
What should it be
that horrible thing happen.
Still that evening he said to his mother: 玆osa,
Have the babies lie down, and you can sleep in peace.
The Po is peaceful like a giant lying
In the large bed of earth he has
dug God.
Go, sleep; many spirits sure as mine
They watch on the shore; many strong shoulders
They are there to defend this poor valley ".
My mother, the sequel, had forgotten it; and I believe that
remember with
not even this beginning, because for example where it says "Il
Father is daring and young, "the verse stretches without respect for any one
第 23 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
metric. But he supplanted the inaccuracies of the
his memory with the emphasis that
he put in words.
Many strong shoulders
They are there to defend this poor valley!
My father, this poem, could not suffer; and when he heard us
declaim
along with my mother, she got angry and said we did "the
theater, "and that we were unable to deal with serious matters.
Terni, and some friends of my brother, came to visit us almost every evening
Gino, the eldest of us, who attended, in those years, the Polytechnic. Yes
he was standing around the table, reciting poetry, singing.
I am Don Carlos Tadrid
And I'm a student in Madrid!
my mother was singing; is
my father, who was reading in his study,
he looked at the suspicious door of the dining room occasionally
frowning, with a pipe in his hand.
- Always to say sempiezzi! always doing the
theater! My father, the only ones
arguments that he tolerated, were the scientific topics, politics, and certain
movements that took place "in the Faculty", when some professors
he was called to Turin,

unjustly, according to him, because it was

"Of a simple", or when another was not called in Turin,
unjustly, being a person whom he judged "of great value". on
arguments
scientific, and what happened "in the Faculty", none of
we were able to follow him; but he, at the table, informed me daily
mother both, of the situation "in the Faculty", and of what it was
happened, in
his laboratory, to certain cultures of the tissues he had put under glass; and
yes
he was angry if she showed absent-minded. My father at the table ate
very much, but so fast, that
he seemed not to eat anything, because the
his plate was immediately empty; and he was convinced he was eating little, and
he had
transmitted this conviction to my mother, who always begged him
of

to eat. He instead scolded my mother, because he found that he ate

too much.
- Do not eat too much! You will indigestion!
- Do not tear off your pits! - thundered from time to time. My mother indeed
第 24 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
since he was a child he had the habit of tearing his pips: having had one
patereccio, and then the finger that peeled, once, in his college.
All of us, according to my father, ate too much, e
we would have done
indigestion. Of dishes that he did not like, he said they did
bad, and that they were on the stomach; of the things he liked, he said that
they did well, and that "they excited
peristalsis ".
If a dish he did not like came to the table, he would rage: -
Why do you make meat this way! You know I do not like it! - If for
he just made a plate of something that
he liked it, he got angry
same:
- I do not want special things! Do not do me special things!
"I eat everything," he said. - They are not as difficult as you.
I really care about eating!
- We do not talk
always eat! it's a vulgarity! - thundered, if there
he heard us talking about one dish or another. How I like it the
cheese, "my mother used to say, every time she came
in
table the cheese; and my father used to say:
- How monotonous you are! you only repeat the same things!
My father liked very ripe fruit; so when to us
some pear happened

a little broken, we gave it to him. Ah, give me yours

pears marches! You're good donkeys! - he said with a great laugh, that that
echoed
for the whole house; and he ate the pear in two mouthfuls.
"Walnuts," he said

crushing walnuts, - they are good. They excite the

peristalsis.
"You're monotonous too," my mother told him. - You repeat too
always the same things.
My father, then, was offended: - What donkey! He said. -
You told me that
I'm monotonous! A beautiful donkey you are!
As for politics, there were ferocious discussions in our house, which
they ended up with outbursts, napkins thrown into the air and doors slammed with
so much
violence to make the house shake. These were the first years of fascism. Why
they argued with such ferocity, my father and my brothers, I do not know
explain it to me, since, as I think, they were all against the
fascism; I
asked my brothers in recent times, but no one has made it clear to me.
They also remembered all those ferocious quarrels. It seems to me that my
第 25 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
brother Mario,
by the spirit of contradiction
towards my parents, he defended Mussolini in
some way; and this, of course, sent my father into a beast;
my brother Mario always had discussions about everything, because he found it
always of an opinion contrary to his.
Di Turati, my father said he was naive; and my mother, who does not
he found that ingenuity was a fault, nodded, sighed and said: -
My poor
Filipp鑤 -. Once at that time, Turati came to our house,
being passing through Turin; and I remember it, as big as a bear, with the
gray beard cut in a circle, in our living room. I saw him two
times: then, e
later, when he had to escape from Italy, and he lived in us, hidden, for
a week. But I can not remember a single word that said that
day, in our living room: memory
a great shouting and a great discussion, e
that's enough.
My father came home always angry, because he had met, for
street, processions of black shirts; or because he had discovered, in the
sessions of
Faculty,
new fascists among his acquaintances. - Clowns! Scoundrels!
antics! - he said sitting down at the table; slammed the napkin, slammed the
flat, slammed the glass, and blew with contempt. He used

express the
his thoughts on the street, aloud, with his acquaintances who
they accompanied home; and those looked around scared. -
Cowards! Negroes! - thundered my father at home,
telling about the fear of
those of his acquaintances; and he was amused, I think, to scare them, talking
loudly
voice on the street while he was with them; he enjoyed himself a little, and he
did not know a little

check the stamp

of his voice, which always sounded very strong, too
when he believed he was whispering.
About the tone of his voice, which he could not control,
told Terni and my mother that a
day, in a ceremony of
professors, while they were all gathered in the university halls, my mother
he had whispered to my father the name of one who was few
pass by them. - Who is it? -
my father had shouted very loudly, so that everyone
they had turned. - Who is it? I'll tell you who it is! he's a perfect fool!
第 26 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
My father generally did not tolerate jokes, those that
we told each other and
my mother: the jokes were called, at home
ours, "jokes", and we tried, to tell and to feel, the most
great pleasure. But my father was angry. Among the jokes, he
tolerated
only the anti-fascist ones; and then some little jokes of his time,
that they knew he and my mother, and that he evoked, sometimes, in the evening,
with the
Lopez, who, moreover, also knew them from

time. Some of
those little jokes, to him they seemed very salacious, although they were, I
think,
innocentissimi; and when we were present, he wanted to tell them
whispering. His voice became
then a noisy buzz, in which
we could very well distinguish many words: including the word
"Cocotte", which was always in those nineteenth-century jokes, and that he
pronounced,
studying to whisper it, stronger than the others, and with special
malice and pleasure.
My father always got up at four in the morning. His first
concern, upon awakening, was going to look
if the "mezzorado" was
came well. The mezzorado was sour milk, which he had learned to do, in
Sardinia, from certain shepherds. It was simply yoghurt. The yoghurt, in
those years, he was not yet of
fashion: and it was not for sale, like
now, in dairies or bars. My father was, in taking the yoghurt
like in many other things, a pioneer. At that time they were not yet of
fashion sports
Winter; and my father was perhaps the only one in Turin
practice them. As soon as a little snow fell, it started for Clavi鑢es in the
evening
on Saturdays, with skis on their shoulders. At the time there were still neither
Sestri鑢es, or the hotels of Cervinia. My father usually slept in one
refuge above Clavi鑢es, called 獵apanna Mautino? He pulled back to
sometimes my brothers, or some of his assistants, who
they had the same as him
mountain passion. The skis, him The skis, he called them "the ski". He had
learned
to go skiing as a young man, during his stay in Norway. Returning the
Sunday evening, he always said
but there was a bad snow. The snow, for
he was always either too watery or too dry. Like the mezzorado, which
第 27 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
it was never as it should be: and it always seemed to him or too watery,
or
too thick.
- Lidia! the mezzorado has not "come!" - thundered down the corridor. The
mezzorado was in the kitchen, inside a soup bowl, covered by a plate and
wrapped in an old salmon-colored shawl,
which once belonged to
my mother. At times, he had not "come" at all, and had to throw away: not
it was a green drizzle with some solid white block
marble. The mezzorado

it was very delicate, and nothing was enough to make it not

it succeeded: it was enough that the shawl that was developing it was a little
'pushed aside, and
let some air filter through. - Even today he has not "come!" All
fault
of your Natalina! - thundered my father from the corridor to my mother, who was
still half asleep, and he answered him from the bed with words
He disconnected. When we went on holiday,
we had to remember
take away "the mother of the mezzorado" which was a cup of mezzorado
well wrapped and tied with a string. - Where's the mother? you took the
mother? - asked my father in
train, rummaging in the mountain bag.
- There is not! there is not here! He shouted; and sometimes the mother really
was
forgotten, and it was necessary to recreate it from nothing, with brewer's
yeast.
My father did, al
morning, a cold shower. He threw, under the
lashing water, a scream, like a long roar; then he got dressed and
he swallowed large cups of that icy mezzorado, in which he poured many
spoons of
sugar. He left the house that the streets were still dark, and
almost deserted; went out into the fog, in the cold of those dawns of Turin,
with
on his head a broad beret, which almost formed a visor on it
front, with
a long and wide raincoat, full of pockets and leather buttons; with the
hands behind his back, his pipe, his crooked step, a higher shoulder
other; in the streets there was not
still almost nobody, but the few
people who were there he could hit them in passing, walking
assaulted, head down. There was not at that time, in his laboratory,
nobody; maybe only
Conti, his attendant: a short, quiet little man
第 28 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
subdued, with the gray coat, who loved my father and al
which he loved very much; and that he sometimes came to our house when
we needed to fix a wardrobe, to change a light valve,
or to tie the trunks. Conti, by dint of being in the laboratory, had learned
anatomy; and when there were exams,

he suggested, and my father

He flew into a rage; but then at home he told my mother that Conti was pleased
knew the anatomy better than the students. In the lab, my father
a gray coat slipped in,
equal to that of Conti; and he was screaming in the

corridors as he used to scream in the hallway of the house.

I am Don Carlos Tadrid
And I'm a student in Madrid
sang my mother in full voice as she got up and
I was brushing i
hair, still all soaked: she too, like my father, had a shower
cold; and they had, you and my father, some gloves all thorny, with which you
they rubbed after the shower, for
to warm up. - I'm freezing! - said mine
mother, but with joy, because she loved cold water a lot; - I am still
all frozen! It's so cold! - And he went, squeezed in his bathrobe, with in
Manola
cup of coffee, for a ride around the garden. My brothers were
everyone at school, and at that moment there was a little peace in the house. My
mother sang, and shook her hair wet in the air of the
morning. Then
he was going to talk, in the ironing room, with Natalina and Rina.
The ironing room was also called "the locker room". There was the
sewing machine; and there the Rina was staying,

sewing machine. This

Rina was a kind of dressmaker at home: good, however, only to turn around
our coats, and to put patches on trousers. Clothes, he did not do it.
When he was not from us, he was

from Lopez: if they dribbled it, Frances and

my mother. She was a small little woman, a kind of dwarf; He called
my mother "Mrs. Maman", and when she met my father in the corridor
he escaped like a rat, because he could not suffer it.
- La Rina! even today there is Rina! - my father was furious. I can not do it
suffer! It's a gossip! and then it's not good to do anything! - But the
they call
always also the Lopez, - my mother justified.
La Rina was in a changing mood. When he came to us after a period
that she had not come, showed herself all kind, and lavished on her
thousand jobs:
第 29 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
he planned to redo all our mattresses and cushions, to wash the curtains, and of
remove the carpets from the coffee grounds, as he had seen done at home
of Frances. But he was tired of it soon;
he was sullen, he was angry with me and
with Lucio, who that we were around because he had promised us first
walks and sweets; Lucio, Frances's little son, almost came
every day from us to
to play. - Leave me alone! I must work! -
Rina said, immortalized, sewing machine; and argued with the
Natalina.
- That malignazza Rina! - said my mother in the mornings that La Rina,
without having warned, he refrained from appearing, and no one knew where
she was driven out, as Frances had not even seen her. there were
mattresses and pillows, on its own initiative, unmade, flakes of
wool piled up
in the "locker room"; and carpets on which the coffee grounds had
left yellowish gore. - That Rina's malignazza! I do not do it
come never again! - La Rina, after some
week, he came back: hilarious, kind,
prodigy of initiatives and promises. And my mother immediately forgot her
faults; and he would sit in the closet room and hear the chatter
Rina sewing a
machine, quick, beating the pedal with its minuscule
dwarf foot, fitted with a cloth slipper.
Natalina resembled, my mother said, to Louis Eleventh. Was
small, frail, with a face
long, the hair sometimes curled and smooth at times
sumptuously curled to the iron. "My Louis eleventh," said mine
mother in the morning, when he saw her enter the bedroom, grim,
with

a scarf around his neck, with a bucket and a brush in his hand. There
Natalina was confusing the female and male pronouns. He said to
my mother: - She came out this morning without the overcoat. Who,

she? - The
Signorino Mario. He must tell us. - Who, him? - He, Mrs. Lidia, -
Natalina said offended, slamming the bucket.
Natalina was, my mother explained, talking to her friends,
"a
lightning "because he did the housework with extraordinary rapidity: ed
it was "an earthquake" because it did everything with violence and noise.
He had a beaten dog look, because he had

had an unhappy childhood;

she was an orphan, raised between orphanages and hospices, then in the service
of master
merciless. He tried for his old masters, of which he told them that
第 30 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
they slapped them to make them
hurt your head for several days, a fund of nostalgia.
Sumptuous golden postcards were written at Christmas. He also sent them, a
times, gifts. He never had a penny in his pocket, being generous,
great to spend, and always ready to make loans to her friends,
with which he went out on Sundays. That dog-beaten air kept it
always; however, it vented on us, and in
particular on my mother, one of his own
sarcastic, despotic and stubborn will. He entertained with my mother, who
he loved tenderly and from whom he was tenderly loved, a relationship
grumpy, sarcastic
and not at all servile. - Good thing he's one
madam, if not, how could she earn her life, he who is not good at?
do nothing, - he said to my mother. - Him who? - He she She!
We always lived,
at home, in the nightmare of my father's outbursts, which
they exploded suddenly, often for minimal reasons, for a pair of shoes
that he was not, for a book out of place, for a light bulb
electrocuted,
for a slight delay in lunch, or for an overcooked dish. We lived
yet also in the nightmare of the quarrels between my brother Alberto and Mario,
that even those exploded
Suddenly, she suddenly felt in theirs
room a noise of overturned chairs, and walls beaten, then screams
lacerating and wild. Alberto and Mario were two big boys,
very strong,
that when they punched themselves, they hurt each other
they came out with bloody noses, swollen lips, torn clothes. - Yes
amazzano! - cried my mother, ignoring the double emme in the
scare. Beppino come, let them be killed! He shouted, calling my father.
My father's intervention was, like all his actions, violent. He threw himself
in the middle of those two clinging to beat each other, and there
covered with slaps. I was
small; and I remember with terror those three men who were struggling
wildly. Also the reasons why they were beaten so much, Alberto and
Mario, they were futile, as futile were i
reasons why they exploded
my father's wrath: a book that was not there, a tie, the
Previously going to wash. Once Alberto appeared at school
with a bandaged head, a
professor asked him what had happened to him. He is
He stood up and said, "My brother and I wanted to swim.
Mario was, of the two, the biggest, and he was the strongest. He had hard hands
like iron, and had,

第 31 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
in his anger, a nervous frenzy that stiffened him
the muscles, the tendons, the jaws. He had been a little frail, as a child, and
my father took him to walk in the mountains, to strengthen him: how
besides, he did it with all of us. Mario had conceived a dull hatred of the
mountain; and as soon as he could escape the will of my father, he stopped the
everything to go there. But, in those years, he had to
still go His wraths
sometimes they were unleashed on things: sometimes the object was not Alberto
of his anger, but something that did not obey the fury of his hands. The
afternoon of the
Saturday, went down to the cellar to look for his ski: and it was
caught, looking for them, by a silent anger, or because he could not find them,
either
why the attacks did not open, no matter how hard they were with them
hands.
In his anger, of course, they were present and Alberto, and my father, however
in
that moment away; Alberto, who used his stuff; and my father, who
he insisted on taking him to the mountains when
he, the mountain, hated it, and
that made him bring old skis and rusty attacks. Sometimes he tried
the boots and could not fit them. It was the devil in that cellar,
there alone; and U.S
we heard a great noise from above. He was knocking on the ground
all the skis of the house, banging attacks, boots, skins, tore
ropes and smashed drawers, kicked the chairs, the walls, the legs

of
tables. I remember seeing him one day in the living room, sitting in peace at
read the newspaper: suddenly he was seized by one of his rages
silent, and began to tear the paper furiously.
He gritted his teeth,
he stamped his feet on the ground and lacerated the newspaper. That time neither
Alberto, nor
my father had no fault. Simply, in a nearby church,
the bells rang: and that sound
insistently he exasperated it.
Once, at the table, for an outburst that my father had done to him,
not even among the most terrible, he took the bread knife and began to scrape
himself
the back of the hand. Neither
blood streamed out: I remember the fright, the
he cries, my mother's tears, and my father is scared too, and screaming,
with sterile gauze and iodine tincture.
After he had argued with Alberto
and they were beaten, Mario remained
第 32 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
for a few days 玾ith the nose?or 玾ith the moon? as we said at home
our. He came to the table pale, with swollen eyelids, small eyes
little ones; Mario had
always the small, narrow and long, Chinese eyes;
but in those "moon" days they were reduced to two invisible cracks. Not
he said a word. He had, generally, the snout because he found that at home
ours always gave Alberto right against him; and then he found
to be too old for my father to still have the right to
slap him. - Have you seen that snout has that Mario? you have
considering that
moon? - my father used to say to my mother, as soon as he left the room. -
What is it that has this moon? he did not say a word! what a donkey!
Then, one morning, to Mario, the moon was
passed. He entered the living room, yes
he sat in an armchair, and stroked his cheeks with a smile, absorbed
the half-closed eyes. He was beginning to say: The worm of the fall of malo -.
It was a
his little joke e
he liked it very much, he repeated it insatiably. - The bug
of the fall of the malo. The beak of the chelo of the apple tree. The bico of
the kilo of the milo.
Mario! My father was shouting. - Do not swear!
- The bug of the decline of
malo, - Mario resumed, as soon as my father was
released. He was talking, in the living room, with my mother and with Terni,
who was his great friend. - How cute Mario is when it's good! -
my mother said. - How nice it is! It looks like the Silvio!
Silvio was that brother of my mother who had killed himself. His death
it was surrounded, in our house, of mystery: and I now know that he killed
himself,
but
I do not know why. I believe that air of mystery around the figure
Del Silvio, especially my father spread it: because he did not want us
we knew there was, in our family, one
suicide; and maybe still for
other reasons, which I ignore. As for my mother, she from Silvio spoke
always with joy: having my mother that kind of nature so happy, that
he invested and welcomed each one
thing, and that of every thing and every person
he recalled the good and the joy, and left the pain and the evil in the shadows,
just giving you a short sigh from time to time.
Silvio had been a

musician and a man of letters. He had put on music

some poems by Paul Verlaine: Les feuilles mortes, and others. He knew
play little and badly, and he murmured his tunes accompanying himself to the
piano with a single finger; and meanwhile he said to my mother: - Listen,
第 33 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
stupid, feel this how beautiful it is -. Although it sounded so bad, and sang
in a whisper, it was wonderful to hear it,
my mother said. The
Silvio was very elegant, dressed with great care; woe if he did not have i
well-ironed trousers, with straight folds; he had a nice stick with a knob
of ivory, and went out for Milan with the
stick, with the straw, went to
meet with his friends, discuss music in cafes. Il Silvio, in
those stories of my mother, was always a cheerful character: and his
end, when I'm in it

I learned the details, it seemed indecipherable to me. There was him,

on the bedside table of my mother, a faded portrait, with the straw and with the
with the straw and with the
upside down: next to another photograph of my mother
together with
Anna Kuliscioff, in a veil and feathered hats, in the rain.
Then there was Del Silvio, at home, a work left unfinished, the Peer Gynt.
They were some large files, in folders tied with
tapes, on top,
on top of the wardrobe. - How silvio was funny! - always said mine
mother. - How nice it was! And Peer Gynt was a work of value!
My mother always hoped that one
at least his children became,
like Silvio, a musician: hope that was disappointed, because all of us
we showed total deafness towards music, and when
we were trying to sing,
we were very stoned: yet we all wanted to try
to sing, and Paola, making her room in the morning, fell sadly
cat voice the opera pieces and the songs he had heard from me
mother.
Paola sometimes went with my mother to concerts, claiming to love her
music: but my brothers said that in truth it was all a fiction, and
that did not care. As for me

and to my brothers, led by

try some concert, we were always asleep; and conducted
at work, we then complained "of all the music that he did not leave
hear the words ? A
Once, my mother took me to hear La Butterfly.
I had with me the "Corriere dei Piccoli": and I read all the time, trying to
decipher the words in the dim light of the proscenium, and tapping me with my
hands
ears to not hear the noise.
However, when my mother sang, we all listened to her open-mouthed.
Once someone asked Gino if he knew Wagner's works. - Yup,
sure, - he said, -

第 34 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
I heard the Lohengrin sing from my mother.
My father, not only did not love music, but hated it: he hated every one
kind of instrument that produced music, it was a piano,

of an accordion or a drum. Once I was in Rome with him, right away

after the war, in a restaurant: a woman came in to beg for alms. The
waiter made the move to drive her away. My father
he raged against that
waiter, he shouted, "I forbid you to drive that poor woman away!" Leave it
to stay! - He gave alms to the woman; and the waiter, offended and angry, yes
he withdrew in a corner, with his
towel on the arm. The woman then pulled
out of his overcoat a guitar, and began to play. My father, later
a little, he began to show signs of impatience, the signs of impatience he gave
to
table: move the glass, move the bread, move the cutlery, and yes
slammed the napkin on his knees. The woman kept on playing,
bending over him with his guitar, grateful to him that
he had protected her, and
long melancholy moans started from the guitar. My father suddenly
exploded: - Enough with this music! Go away! I can not stand to hear
play! - But that continued: e
the waiter, triumphant, was silent there
his corner, motionless, contemplating the scene.
In addition to Silvio's suicide, there was another thing in our house that
it was always veiled in a vague mystery,
while covering people of whom yes
He was always talking: and it was the fact that Turati and the Kuliscioff, not
being husband and wife, they lived together. Even in this sort of
mystery I recognize
above all the intention and the modesty of my father, because
my mother could not have thought of it alone. It would have been more
simple that they lied to us, telling us that they were husband and wife. instead
no; to us, or at least to me that I was still a child, it was hidden that
they lived together; and I, always hearing them name in pairs, I asked
because, and if they were husband and wife, or brother and
sister, or what. I was coming
answered in a confused way. I did not understand then where the Andreina, friend
of my mother's and Kuliscioff's daughter's childhood, she was pinned out, and
why it was called Costa; is
I did not understand what Andrea Costa had to do with that
he had long been dead, and yet he was often appointed along with
Those people.
Turati and Kuliscioff, in my mother's memories, were always there

第 35 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
present: e
I knew that they were both alive, that they were in Milan (maybe together,
perhaps in two different houses) and still dealing with politics, which
they fought against fascism. However yes

they mixed in mine

imagination, with other figures also always present in the memories of
my mother: her parents, Silvio, Demente, Barbison. People o
death, or anyway
very ancient even if he still lives, because he participates in
distant times, of remote events, when my mother was small, when
he had heard "my sister's sister" and "de spussa
the acid
hydrogen "; people who could not meet now, who did not
they could touch, and that even if they met and touched they were not
but the same as when I had thought them, and
that even if he still lives
they had, however, been infected by the proximity of the dead, with whom
dwelt with whom
they lived in my soul: they had taken the step, of the dead
unattainable and light.
- Oh, poor Lydia,
- sighed my mother from time to time.
She was so sorry for herself, for the troubles she had, the little money, the
scolding
of my father, Alberto and Mario who always beat each other; Alberto that does
not
had
desire to study, and always went to play foot-ball; and ours
snouts, and the faces of Natalina.
I, too, sometimes had a snout, or I had a tantrum. But I was one
little girl, and my faces and mine
whims, at that time, did not disturb
very my mother. - Pinch me, pinch me! - I was starting to say in the morning,
when my mother dressed me and put on me some wool sweaters, which me
they bothered
to the skin. - But they're good shirts! - said my mother. -
I'm from Neuberg! You do not want to throw them away!
Our sweaters, my mother bought them "from Neuberg"; and if a sweater
was from Neuberg,
it had to be good, soft, and it was not possible
that would bother the skin. The sweaters were bought from Neuberg; i palts
they were made by the tailor Maccheroni; as for our shoes
from
winter, my father took care of it, and they were ordered by a shoemaker,
which was called "Mr. Castagneri" and had a shop in Via Saluzzo.
第 36 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
I went into the dining room, still with my face, for
knit way of
Neuberg; and my mother saw me enter dark, sullen, said: -
Here is Maria Temporala!
My mother hated the cold; and that was why he bought, from
Neuberg, all those
mesh. He hated the cold while doing, every morning,
that icy shower, which she liked. But the cold, the constant cold e
penetrating the winter days, he hated it. - How cold! He said
continuously, slipping a golf over the other and pulling his sleeves on
hands. - It's so cold! I can not suffer from the cold! - And he pulled me
Neuberg's shirt on my hips, while I was there
I danced away. - All of
Lidia wool! - he said, referring the verse to one of his old friends
school. And he said: - To think that to see you with this beautiful warm shirt,
me
I feel completely reconsidered.
But he also hated the heat. When it was hot it began to
snort, to pull aside the collar of the dress from the neck. - How hot! I do not
I can suffer the heat! He said. And my father used to say: - What
intolerant
you are! that you are intolerant!
When he went with my father on the road, my mother would carry around
a quantity of golf and clothes of different weight, and did nothing but undress
is
get dressed, at the slightest changes in the weather. - I never find the right
one
temperature, - he said. My father used to say: - How boring you are with the
heat and
with the cold! Always find to grumble!
I did not want to

never have breakfast in the morning. I detested milk. The

mezzorado, even more. However my mother knew that I was at home
Frances, when I was there for a snack, I drank cups of milk; and so too

come on
Terni. In truth I drank that milk, from Terni and Frances, with extreme
repugnance; I drank it out of obedience and shyness, finding myself outside of
my home. My mother had put it in her head
milk, from Frances, me
She liked. So in the morning I was brought a cup of milk, and I,
regularly, I refused to touch her. - But it's Frances's milk! He said
my mother. - It's Lucio's milk! and the

Lucio's cow! - He gave me to

to understand that the milk had gone to get it from Frances; that Lucio e
Frances had their own cow, and that milk in their house did not
it was bought from
第 37 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

milkman, but made to come every day from certain lands that
they had in Normandy, a campaign called the Grouchet.
- It's the milk of the Grouchet! it's Lucio's milk! - continued for a while
my mother; but

as I resolutely refused to drink it, Natalina

ended up making me a soup in stock.
I did not go to school, although I was old enough to go there; because mine
father said that at school yes
they take microbes. Even my brothers
they had done elementary school at home, with teachers, for the same reason. TO
me, gave my mother lesson. I did not understand arithmetic; and I could not
learn the
Pythagorean table. My mother was uncool. He took in the garden
pebbles and aligned them on the table; or he took some candy. In home
our candy was not consumed, because my father
he said that
they ruin their teeth; and there was never chocolate, or other desserts to eat,
because it was forbidden to eat "out of the meal". The only sweets that you
they ate, but always at the table, they were certain
pancakes called 玤li
smarren 粀ho had taught I do not know what German cook; it seems they were
cheap, and he would eat it so often, that we could not do it any more
suffer. Then there was a sweet that
he knew how to make Natalina, and that was called
玊he sweet of Gressoney? perhaps because Natalina had learned to do it
when we were in Gressoney, in the mountains.
The sweets, my mother bought them
just to teach me
arithmetic. But to me that arithmetic tied to the stones, to the candies,
he was even more repugnant. My mother had subscribed to learn moderns
teaching methods, to a magazine
school, which was called "The rights of the
school". I do not know what he learned about the systems in that magazine
teaching; perhaps, nothing; but he had found a poem there, which she liked
a lot, e
that used to say to my brothers:
And we will all shout
Long live the kind man
of an elegant girl
that practices virtue.

Teaching geography, my mother told me about all the countries

where my father was
as a young man. He had been in India, where he had taken the
第 38 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
cholera, and, I believe, yellow fever; and he had been in Germany and Holland.
Was
it was then also in the Spitzberg. In Spitzberg, he had entered inside the
skull of the whale, to look for the cerebro-spinal ganglia: but it was not
managed to find them. He had been soiled with whale blood, and clothes, that
had brought back, they were smeared and hard of
dry blood. There were in
our house many photographs of my father with the whales; and my mother me
showed, but they left me a little 'disappointed, because they were blurred
photographs,
and my father does not

it appeared that at the bottom, a tiny shadow; and of

the whale could not be seen neither the snout nor the tail; only one species
could be seen
of serrated, gray and foggy hill: and the whale was that.
In
spring rose in our garden, many roses: and why
they grew up I do not know, since none of us ever dreamed of watering them,
nor to prune the roses; he came, yes and no, once a year,
a gardener: and yes
he sees that it was enough.
- Lidia roses! Lidia violets! - said my mother walking for
the garden, and redirecting the verse to that schoolmate. In
spring, they came in the
our garden the children of Terni with theirs
nanny Assunta, who had a white apron and white socks of
thread of Scotland: and he took off his shoes, and placed them beside him on the
lawn. The
Cucco and Lullina, the sons of Terni, also had white clothes, and
my mother used to put my aprons to play them without getting dirty.
- Ssst, ssst! look what the Cucco does! He said
Terni, admiring his
children who played with the earth. Even Terni, on the lawn, rose up
shoes and the jacket, to play the ball: but he would immediately come back to
them
if you could hear me coming

father.
We had a cherry tree in the garden; and Alberto saliva on the tree a
eating cherries, with his friends: Frinco, that of books, grim figures in
sweater and visor cap; and the brothers of
Lucio.
Lucio came in the morning and left in the evening: in the good seasons,
he always stayed at our house, because they had no garden.
Lucio was delicate, frail, and at the table he never had
hungry: he ate
little, he sighed and put down his fork: - I'm tired of chewing, - he said,
第 39 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
talking to the r, like all of them in the family. Lucio was fascist, and mine
brothers did it
to get angry, talking badly of Mussolini; Not
we talk about politics, "said Lucio, as soon as he saw my brothers coming.
He had, as a child, big black curls, arranged in long bananas on the
front; then, they cut off his hair, and then had a smooth, smooth head,
brillantine luster; and he was always dressed like a little man, with
tight-fitting jackets and butterfly ties. Had
learned to read
with me: but I had read a lot of books, and he few, because
he read slowly and grew tired; however, when he was at home, he read
he too, because I occasionally get fed up
to play, I would throw myself with a book on the
meadow. Lucio then went to brag, with my brothers, having read a book
in full, because they always teased him that he read little. - Today
I read two
lire. - Today I read five lire, - he said pleased,
showing the price that was written on the title page. He came to
resume, in the evening, his woman, a certain Maria Buoninsegni: one
little woman
old, wrinkled, with a stripped fox around the neck. This
Maria Buoninsegni was very devoted: and she took us, Lucio and me, to the
church, and
in the processions. She was a friend of Father Semeria, and talked about it
always; it's a
Once, in a religious ceremony, he introduced me and Lucio to his father
Semeria, who caressed us on the head, and asked her if we were her children. -
No. Sons of friends, - answered Maria
Buoninsegni.
Neither Lopez nor Terni loved the mountains: and my father the trips and the
ascension was sometimes done to her with a friend of hers called Galeotti.
Galeotti lived in a campaign called
Pozzuolo, with a sister and
a nephew. My mother had once been in that campaign: and it was
very amused, he always spoke of those days in Pozzuolo: there were chickens and
turkeys, and they did
great eaten. Adele Rasetti, the sister of
Galeotti, had very much walked with my mother telling her the names of the
herbs, plants and insects; because in that family they were all
entomologists and botanists. Adele then gave my mother one of his own
framework, where an alpine lake was seen; and we kept it hanging in ours
dining room. In the morning the Adele got up early, to do the

accounts col
factor, or to paint; or he would go on the lawns "to erborize",
small, thin, with a pointed nose, with her straw hat. - How good it is
第 40 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Adele! He gets up early, he paints! It goes to
erborizzare! he always said mine
admired mother, she who did not know how to paint, and did not recognize the
basil from chicory. My mother was lazy, and was always full
admiration for active people;
and every time he saw Adele Rasetti
she started reading science manuals, to learn something too
on insects and botany: but then it got tired and left there.
Galeotti came to see us,
summer, in the mountains, with the nephew, who was the
son of Adele, and he was a friend of my brother Gino. My grandmother, in the
morning,
he paced up and down the room in anguish, wondering what to wear
to put. -
Put, - said my mother, - the gray one with the little buttons. - No,
that Galeotti has already seen it! My Grandma used to say, wringing her hands
for it
the uncertainty.
Galeotti, my grandmother, did not look at her
long, always being
absorbed in talking with my father, and in concerting walks and ascents,
My grandmother after all, despite the worry of being seen
from Galeotti 玾ith the dress of
yesterday, "Galeotti could not suffer, finding him
rough and simple, and fearing that he would take my father to dangerous places.
The nephew of Galeotti was called Franco Rasetti. He studied physics: he had
However
he too is a mania for collecting insects and minerals; and this mania
he had attached it to Gino. They came back from the trips with clumps of moss in
the
handkerchief, dead beetles and crystals inside the sack from
mountain. Franco
Rasetti, at the table, spoke incessantly, but always of physics, or of
geology, or beetles: and talking with his finger all the crumbs on the
tablecloth. He had a pointed nose and the
pointed chin, a complexion always a
little greenish lizard, and spiny mustache. It's very smart, -
my father used to say about him. - But it's dry! It's very dry! - Franco Rasetti
however, despite being
dry, he had written a poem once, coming back
with Gino from a trip, while they were in an abandoned farmhouse and they waited
that it was raining:
The slow and uniform rain falls
On green lawns
and on the black rocks.
第 41 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Vague forms disappear in the air
Veils of light calyxes.
Gino, he did not write poetry; and he did not love either the poems or the
novels. But he liked this poem very much; and the

he always played. Was

long; I unfortunately remember only that stanza.
Even the poetry of black rocks seemed beautiful to me; and me
I yearned with envy, for not having written it myself. It was simple: lawns
greens,
black rocks, I had seen many times too, in the mountains. And it was not me
came into my head that nothing could be done: I had looked at them, and that was
enough. The
So they were poems: simple, made of
anything; made of the things that you do
They watched. I looked around with attentive eyes: I was looking for things that
they could resemble those black rocks, those green fields, and that this
I would not be there once
left to be taken away by anyone.
- Gino and Rasetti walk well! My father said. - They did
the Aiguille Noire de Peter? They're fine! Too bad that Rasetti is like that
arid! It does not talk about politics,
do not care about it. It's dry!
"But Adele is not dry," my mother said. - How good, he gets up
soon, paint! I would like to be like Adele!
Galeotti was always cheerful, he was rather short,
plump, and dressed in
gray hairy wool: and had a short white mustache, hair between whites and
blond, and a tanned face. We all loved him very much. But I, of
him, I do not remember anything else.
A
day, they were standing in the antechamber, Terni and my mother: and mine
mother cried. They said that Galeotti was dead.
The words "Died Galeotti" remained in me forever. It was not, fin
then, from
when I existed in the world, no one died that we
we knew each other very well. Death was inextricably married in mine
thought, to that form dressed in gray wool, cheerful, and that often

it was
to visit us in the mountains in the summer.
Galeotti was suddenly dead, of pneumonia.
Many years later, after my penicillin was discovered, my father
he often said:
- If there had been
penicillin at the time of poor Galeotti, not
第 42 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
would be dead. He died of streptococcal pneumonia. It heals, with
penicillin.
My father, as soon as a person died, immediately
he added to the
his name the word "poor"; and he got angry with my mother, who did not
he did that. It was, this of the "poor", a habit very respected in the
my father's family: my grandmother,
talking about one of his dead sister, he said
invariably "Regina poveretta" and never mentioned her otherwise.
Galeot Galeotti thus became "the poor Galeotti" an hour just after his
death. To my grandmother, the news of her death was learned with greatness
caution, because she, always very afraid of dying, did not like it
at all that death revolved around him, among the people who
He knew.
My father, after Galeotti's death, said he did not feel bigger
joy in making ascents. However, he did it anyway; but without the ancient
pleasure. And he and my mother talked about the
time that Galeotti was still alive
like a happy, happy time, when they were younger, when they were
mountains retained their charm unto my father, when the
fascism
it seemed to be soon to end.
- How cute, how nice Mario! - said my mother, smoothing i
hair to Mario who had just got up, and had eyes, for sleep
small, almost invisible.
-
The bug of the decline of malo, - said Mario with a smile absorbed,
caressing his jaws. It was his way of announcing he did not have the
snout, and that he would have chatted with my mother, with mine
sister and with
myself.
- How cute Mario is, how beautiful it is! - said my mother. - Looks like
Silvio! Looks like Suess Aja Cawa!
Suess Aja Cawa was a film actor known at the time. My
mother, when she saw the Mongol eyes and bony cheekbones on the screen
of Suess Aja Cawa, he exclaimed: - It's Mario! it's him!
- Do not you find that Mario is beautiful? - he asked my father.
- I
I do not find it so beautiful. Gino is more beautiful, "my father answered.
"Gino is beautiful too," my mother said. - How nice it is
Gino! My Ginetto! I only like my children. I do
fun
only with my children!
And when Gino or Mario had a new dress by the tailor Maccheroni,
my mother hugged them, and said:
- My children, when they have a new dress, I want them more
第 43 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

well.
They were in our house, on the beauty and ugliness of the people,
heated discussions. We still discussed whether a certain lady Gilda,
housekeeper in Palermo in a family of our friends, it was

nice or not. My
brothers claimed it was ugly, a kind of dog snout; but
my mother said it was an extraordinary beauty.
- Nope! - screamed my father, with one of his own
thunderous laughter, that
they echoed throughout the house. - Nope! Beautiful one there!
And they always argued for a long time, if the Columbus or the Coens were
uglier,
our friends we met in the mountains
in the summertime.
- The Coens are uglier! My father was shouting. - Want to put coi
Colombo! There is no comparison. The Columbus are better. You have no eyes! Not
you have eyes!
Of his various cousins ??that yes
they called either Margherita or Regina, my own
father used to say that they were very beautiful. - Regina when young, -
he began, - he was a very beautiful woman -. And my mother said, "No, no."
Beppino! It was a
baslettona!
He was sticking out his chin and lip below, to show that it was great
basletta that had that Queen; and my father was angry:
- You do not understand anything of beauty and ugliness! You say that
the Columbus
they are uglier than the Coens!
Gino was serious, studious, quiet; he did not beat any of his own
brothers; it was fine in the mountains. He was my father's favorite. Of him,
my father did not say
never that it was "a donkey"; he said, however, that he "gave little
string". The rope in our house was called "twine". Gino, in fact,
he gave little string, because he always read; and when he spoke to him,
he answered in monosyllables, without raising his head from the book. If Alberto
e
Mario beat each other, did not move and kept reading; and my mother
he had to call him and shake him, to come and divide them.

Reading, he ate
bread, slowly, one loaf after another; he ate more or less one
pound, after lunch.
- Gino! - shouted my father, - do not give a string! do not tell anything! and
then
not
eat lots of bread, you will indigestion!
第 44 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Gino, in fact, often had indigestion: he was red in the face, frowning,
his waving ears were red like fire. - What is that?
Gino has that
snout? - my father used to say to my mother, waking her up in the
night. - What's that got that moon? It will not be put in some
mess? - My father could never recognize, in his children, the
musi
from indigestion; and before a true indigestion, he suspected obscure
stories of women, of cocottes as he used to say.
Sometimes in the evening, he wore Gino dai Lopez; looking like the most serious,
the most
polite, the most presentable of his children. But Gino had the habit
to fall asleep after eating: and also fell asleep there by the Lopez, in
an armchair, with Frances talking to him: his eyes yes
They did
small, his head swayed gently; and after a while he slept, with
a smile vanished and blissful, with hands on his lap.
- Gino! - screamed my father, - do not sleep! are you sleeping!
-
You guys, "my father said," are not people to wear in the logos!
On one side there were Gino and Rasetti, with the mountains, the "black rocks",
the
crystals, insects. On the other side there were Mario, mine
Sister Paola and Terni,
who detested the mountain, and loved the closed and warm rooms, the
twilight, the cafes. They loved the paintings by Casorati, the theater of
Pirandello, le
poems of Verlaine, the editions
of Gallimard, Proust. They were two worlds
incommunicable.
I did not know yet if I would have chosen one or the other. They attracted me
all
two. I had not yet decided whether, in my life, I would have studied the
beetles,
chemistry, botany; or if instead I would have painted pictures, or written
novels.
In the world of Rasetti and Gino everything was clear, everything took place in
the light
of the sun, everything was plausible, not

there were mysteries or secrets; and instead in the

speeches that made Terni, Paola and Mario on the sofa in the living room, there
was
something mysterious and impenetrable, which exercised on me one
mix of
charm and fright.
- What's Terni with Mario and Paola to chip? - said my father to
第 45 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
my mother. - They're always there in a corner with a spike. What are all
those fufignezzi?
The fufignezzi
they were, for my father, the secrets; and he did not tolerate seeing people
absorbed in speaking, and not knowing what they said.
"They will talk about Proust," my mother told him.
My mother had read Proust, and she too,
like Terni and Paola, the
he loved very much; and told my father that he was, this Proust, one who
she loved her mother and her grandmother so much; and he had asthma, and not
he could never sleep; is
since he could not stand the noises, he had lining up
cork the walls of his room.
My father said:
- It had to be a tanghero!
My mother had chosen neither one of these two worlds,
but
he lived a little in one and a little in the other, and in one and the other he
was with
joy: because his curiosity never rejected anything, but fed
of every quality of drink or food.
My father
instead he used to throw on new things, which he did not know,
a grim look full of suspicion. And the books that Terni brought home,
he always feared that they were not "adapted" to us. - Sara

adapted for the

Paola? - he asked my mother, leafing through La recherche and reading them here
and there a few sentences. - It must be boring stuff, - he then said, throwing
away the
volume; and the fact that it was "stuff
boring 籸eassured him a little.
As for Casorati's paintings, of which Terni brought us reproductions, mine
father could not suffer them. - Sgarabazzi! sbrodeghezzi! He said. There
painting, moreover, not it

it was interesting at all. He went, with my mother, in the

museums of paintings, when they were traveling; granting to the "ancient"
painters,
like Goya or Titian, for the fact that they were now universally
recognized, jubilant, a certain legitimacy. He wanted those visits though
the museums were very fast; and did not allow my mother to stop
in front of the paintings. - Lidia, come on, let's go! He said
dragging it away;
he had always been in a hurry on the road.
Besides, my mother, too, was not very interested in painting:
but he knew Casorati in person, and he found him sympathetic. - Beautiful
face that has Casorati, - he always said. Because he found a beautiful one
第 46 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
face, he also accepted his paintings.
"I've been in Casorati's studio," my sister said, coming back.
- How nice it is
Casorati! what a beautiful face! - said my mother.
- What the hell is Paola doing in Casorati's studio? he asked mine
father, with frown and suspicion. My father always feared that we there
we put
in some "mess", that is, that we find ourselves trapped in
dark amorous textures; and everywhere he saw threats to our chastity.
- Nothing, it went with Terni. They went to say goodbye to the Nella
Marchesini, - explained my mother.
The name of Nella Marchesini, my sister's childhood friend and that
my father knew well and esteemed, it was enough to reassure my father. There
In the Marchesini
he studied painting with Casorati, and his presence in it
my father considered it legitimate. It would not have been enough to
reassure him, however, the company of Terni, which he did not consider for
we
authoritative protection.
"How much time to lose has that Terni," he observed. - He would do better
to finish her work on tissue pathology. It's a year that I feel
speak.
- You know it is
Casorati antifascist? - said my mother. The anti-fascists
in time they became more and more rare: and my father, when he felt that
there was one, immediately he rejoiced.
- Ah, is it anti-fascist? Oh really?
- he said with interest. - But his
paintings are great sbrodeghezzi! Possible that people like it!
Terni was very close to Petrolini: and when Petrolini came to Turin
for a series of

representations, Terni had, almost every evening, tickets of

free armchair, which he gave to my brothers and my mother. - That
beauty! - said my mother during the day. - Even tonight you go to

feel
Petrolini! Let's go in the armchair. How I like going to the theater in an
armchair! Petrolini is so nice, he's so funny! He would have liked it very much
also to Silvio! - Ah, then tonight, too
just cry, - said mine
father. My mother used to say to him: "But you too will Beppino. - Nope! -
my father screamed. - Imagine if I come to hear Petrolini! It matters very much
to me
me of Petrolini! A
clown!
- We went to Terni to greet Petrolini in his dressing room, - he said
第 47 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
my mother the next day. - Mary has also come. They are very friends
of Petrolini.
The presence of Mary, his wife
of Terni, it was in the eyes of my father one
authoritative and reassuring presence; because he nurtured Mary the tallest
admiration and esteem. Mary's presence was worth granting one
legitimacy and a
decorum at those evenings at the theater, and maybe even a little at the
figure of Petrolini; but he continued to despise, imagining that
should, in order to recite, put on a nose and get oxygenated i

hair. Not
I understand why Mary is so much a friend of Petrolini, "he said profoundly
amazement. - I do not understand why you are so much fun listening to Petrolini!
I understand Terni and you guys, that you like
so much the sempiezzi. And how is that?
are they friends of Petrolini? It must be an equivocal person!
For my father an actor, and especially a comedian, he did
grimaces on the scene to make
Laughing people, certainly had to be "one
equivocal person ". My mother reminded him, however, that his brother
Cesare had spent his life in the company of actors, and he had married
an actress. Not
they could be, all those people that his brother used
attending, they could not always be "equivocal people", though
they came on stage in disguise, or if their hair and mustache were dyed. IS

Moli鑢e?
My mother told him. - Moliere was not the actor himself? You will not say
not that he was an equivocal person! - Ah Moli鑢e! - said my father, who
he had the greatest esteem for Moli鑢e. -
Moli鑢e is beautiful! The poor
Cesare had a passion for Moli鑢e! But you do not want to put it
Moli鑢e with Petrolini? - he screamed at the end, with one of those thunderous
laughter,
that turned upside down

Petrolini the most acute contempt.

My mother, Paola and Mario used to go to the theater; and there
they usually went with the Terni, which, if they did not have as for Petrolini
free armchairs, they had

but always a stage and invited them; therefore

my father could not say: I do not want you to throw away the money at the
theater -;
besides, he looked kindly at my mother's evening with Mary. - Go
always a
have fun, - he said to my mother, however - always cried. - But you
in the evening you're always there locked up in your study, "my mother said. -
第 48 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
You do not give me a string. You do not keep me company. - What donkey! -
he said mine
father. - You know I have something to do. I have no time to waste as you guys.
IS
then I did not marry you to keep you company!
My father, in the evening, in his studio, worked: that is, he corrected them
drafts of the
his books, and glued some illustrations to it. Sometimes however, he read
novels. "Is that novel beautiful, Beppino? - asked my mother. -
Of course not! a bore! a sempiezzo! - he answered
shrugging. He read
but with the most lively attention; and meanwhile he smoked his pipe, and swept
it away
ash from the page. When he came back from some trip, he always had with
novels
police, who bought on the stalls of the stations; is
he ended up reading them there in his study in the evening. They were, usually,
in English or in
German: it seems perhaps less frivolous to read those novels
in a
foreign language. "A simplicity," he said shrugging; and read
however until the last line. Later, when they started to leave i
novels of Simenon, my father became one
assiduous reader.
"It's not bad Simenon," he said. - Describes that province well
French. That provincial environment is very well described! - But then,
in the years of via Pastrengo, novels
of Simenon did not exist yet; is
the books that my father brought from his travels were certain shining volumes,
with figures of women slaughtered on the cover. My mother, finding them in them
pockets of the
coat, he said: - But look at that simplicity that reads this
Beppino!
Terni had created a connivance between Paola and Mario that persisted
even when he was leaving. It was a connivance
voted, for how much
I could understand, in the name of melancholy. Paola and Mario did
melancholic walks, or their two together or each on their own,
at twilight, in harvest
solitude; and together they read sad poems,
murmuring in a painful whisper.
As for Terni, he was not at all, if I remember correctly, such a person
melancholy: he was not attracted in special
way from abandoned places e
第 49 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
silent, and never did melancholic and lonely walks. Terni lived
in a perfectly normal way: in his house, with his wife Mary, the
nanny Assunta, e
his sons Cucco and Lullina, who he and his wife
they spoiled, and before the But Terni had
brought into our home the taste of melancholy, of attitudes
melancholy, as the "Nouvelle Revue Fran鏰ise" had brought you, e
the reproductions of Casorati. And Paola and Mario had gathered
that invitation: not Gino, who did not like Terni and Terni
he did not like it
at all; not Alberto, who became impatient with poetry and painting and after 獿a
old spinster without a breast 籬e had never done poems, and thought
just playing foot-ball; and not me,
that I did not really care a lot about
Terni and I did not see in him that the father of Cucco, a child with whom
sometimes
I was playing.
They showed, Paola and Mario, lost in their melancholy, one
deep
impatience for my father's despotism, and for the costumes of
our home, so simple and austere: they seemed to feel, in the
our home, in exile, dreaming of a whole other house, and
all other habits. There
their intolerance translates into large snouts and moons, dull looks and faces
impenetrable, monosyllabic responses, rabbiosis of doors that
they were shaking the house, and
cut waste to go, Saturday and Sunday,
in the mountains. As soon as my father left the room, they were
they reassured, because their impatience did not include my mother, but
she was voted to

my father alone; they listened to my mother's stories, and

the poetry of the floods loudly proclaimed with her:
It was several days when everyone was trembling!

Mario wanted to study law, e

my father, on the other hand, had it
obliged to enroll in business and economics: seeming to, I do not know
because, the faculty of law, a faculty that is not serious, and without a
certainty
future. Mario brought him, for
years, a mere rancor. As for Paola,
he was generally dissatisfied with the life he was doing, and he wanted to have
more
clothes; and her clothes she did not like, they looked like they were
masculine and of

第 50 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
heavy cut: because my father wanted us to get dressed
all from the tailor Maccheroni, a man's tailor, who did not spend much: o
at least, he had made up his mind that he did not spend much. My
mother
he also had a sartina, the Alice seamstress, to whom he sometimes resorted: but
mine
mother said she was not good. - As I would like a beautiful dress of pure silk!
- said my sister to my mother, when
they were talking to
living room; and my mother used to say: - Me too! - and leafed through fashion
magazines; -
I would, - said my mother, - a beautiful princessina of pure silk! - it's mine
sister said: - Me too! -
But pure silk could not buy it,
because there were never any money; and then, the seamstress Alice would have
wasted it,
not knowing how to cut.
Paola wanted to cut her hair, bring her heels
tall and not the
masculine and robust shoes that made "Mr. Castagneri"; go to
dance in the house of her friends, and play tennis. Nothing was there
allowed. Instead, it was almost imposed
to go, Saturday and Sunday,
in the mountains with Gino and my father. Paola found Gino boring,
Rasetti boring, the friends of Gino generally all boring, and the mountain
unbearable.

Skiava however very well, without style, they said, but with
great resistance to fatigue and with great courage, and threw himself down to le
he descended with the impetus of a lioness. Judging by the impetus e
from the fury
with which he threw himself down the slopes, I am induced to believe that yes
amused to skiare, and draws the most lively pleasure: but flaunted for the
mountain a deep contempt; he said of

hate shoes
spiked, wool socks and tiny freckles that appeared in the sun
on his delicate little nose; and to make those minute freckles disappear,
he used, after he had been in
mountain, powder the face of a white powder.
He wanted to have little health, a frail appearance, and a pallor's face
lunar, as women have in Casorati's paintings; and he was annoyed when
the
they said it was "fresh as a rose". Seeing her white in the face, mine
father who did not suspect that he was wearing powder, said he was anemic and
he got her iron.
My father,
第 51 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

waking up in the night, he told my mother:

- What a moon they have Mario and Paola. They made a great league with them
two. It seems to me that that simplicity of Terni has put them against three.
What is it?

whispered Terni, Paola and Mario on that sofa in the living room,
I did not know it, and I do not know it yet; but sometimes they really talked
of Proust. Then my mother also got into them
speeches. - La petite
phrase! - said my mother. - How beautiful it is when he says petite
phrase! as he would have liked even at Silvio! - Terni raised the
candy and wiped it in the handkerchief, al
Swarm way; and he did "Ssst!
ssst! "- What a great thing! what a nice thing! Terni always said; and Paola
and my mother did the verse all day long.
- Vaniloquio! - said my father,
catching a few words while
He passed. - I'm tired of this your vaniloquio! he kept on he kept going
to his study; and when he was there he was screaming: Terni! he still has not
finished his
work on
pathology of tissues! Lose too much time in simplicity! She is
lazy, he does not work enough. It's a great lazy!
Paola was in love with one of her university mates: young
small, delicate,

kind, with a persuasive voice. They did together

walks along the Lungo Po, and in the Valentino gardens; and they talked about
Proust, being that young a Proustian fervent: indeed he was the first one
had written about Proust in Italy. The young man wrote stories and essays
of literary criticism. I believe Paola was in love with him, because
he was the exact opposite of my father: so

small, so kind, with the

so sweet and soothing voice; and he knew nothing about the pathology
of fabrics, and had never set foot on a ski field. My father
he came to know about them

walks, and went into a rage: first of all because

his daughters did not have to walk with men; and then because for him a
a writer, a critic, a writer, represented something of

despicable, of
frivolous, and even of misunderstanding: it was a world that repelled him. Paola
however continued those walks continued despite the prohibition of mine
father: and sometimes they met her
Lopez, or other friends of my parents, e
they told it to my father, knowing of his prohibition. As for Terni, him
if he met her, he certainly did not want to tell my father, because Paola did
第 52 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
she was confided
with him, on the sofa, in secret whispers.
My father screamed at my mother: - Do not let her go out! forbid them to
go out! "My mother, she too was not happy with those walks, and
she too of that
young man was wary: because my father had infected
she is a confused, obscure revulsion for the world of the literati, world at
home
our stranger, since they did not come to us as biologists,
scientists or
engineers. Furthermore, my mother was very attached to Paola; and before the
Paola had that story with that young man, they used to shoot for a long time
two together for the city, and look, in the
windows, "pure silk clothes",
that neither could buy one another. Now, Paola was seldom
free to go out with my mother; and when it was free, they went out
chatting arm in arm,
they ended up talking about that young man, e
they came home angry with each other: because my mother did not
he accorded that young man, whom he barely knew, all the sympathy
and the
cordiality that Paola demanded. But my mother was completely incapable of
prohibit something from someone. - You have no authority! My father screamed,
waking up in the night; and on the other hand he had demonstrated

not to have big

authority not even him, because Paola continued for years to walk with
that young child; and stopped when the thing went away by itself, a little to
little, as the light goes out
of a candle; and not by my will
father, but completely outside his screams and prohibitions.
My father's furies were unleashed, as well as on Paola and the young man
small, even on the
studies of my brother Alberto, who instead of doing i
homework always went to play foot-ball. My father, among sports,
he only admitted the mountain. The other sports seemed to him or worldly
is
frivolous, like tennis, or boring and stupid, like swimming, since he
he hated the sea, the beaches and the sand; as for the foot-ball, lo
he calculated a game of street boys, and he did not
he even did not
among sports. Gino studied well, and so did Mario; Paola did not study,
but my father did not care: it was a girl, and he had the idea
that girls, even if not
they really want to study, they do nothing,
第 53 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
because then they get married; so he did not even know that I did not learn
arithmetic: only my mother was desperate, having to teach her.
Alberto

he was not studying at all; and my father, badly accustomed by his others
male children, when he brought home a bad report or was suspended
from school to indiscipline, he was seized with anger
frightening. My
father was worried about the future of all his sons, e
waking up at night he would tell my mother: "What will Gino do?" what will you
do
Mario? - But in regards to Alberto, who was going
still in the gymnasium, mine
Father was not worried, he was even panicked. - That
rascal of Alberto! that scoundrel of Alberto! - He did not even say
玊hat ass of Alberto?why
Alberto was more than a donkey; his faults
they seemed to my father unheard, monstrous. Alberto spent his days or
on the fields of foot-ball, from which he returned filthy, sometimes with knees
or la
head
bloody and blindfolded; or around with his friends; and always came back
late for lunch. My father sat at the table, and began to beat the
glass, fork, bread; and we did not know if it was there
he had it with Mussolini,
or with Alberto who had not yet returned. Mascalzone! scoundrel! -
he said, while Natalina came in with the soup; and his wrath
it grew as it proceeded
the lunch. At the fruit, Alberto
he came, fresh, rosy, smiling. Alberto never had the moon and it was
always cheerful. - Mascalzone! - thundered my father, - where have you been? TO
school, - said Alberto
with his light and fresh voice, then I went
a moment to accompany a friend of mine. - A friend of yours! Mascalzone
that you are not anything else! It is the "touch" of the past! "One was, for my
father," the
touch, "and the fact that Alberto re-entered" after the touch, "seemed to him
one
unheard of thing.
My mother also complained about Alberto. - It's always dirty! He said.
- He goes around looking like a barab!
He only asks me for money! not
she studies!
- I'm going a moment to my friend Pajetta. - I'm going a moment from mine
friend Pestelli. - Mom, please give me two liras? - These were
the words that

第 54 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Alberto said at home, and did not say many others; not
because it was not communicative, it was indeed, of us, the most communicative,
expansive and cheerful; only that it was never in the house. - Always with
Pajetta! with Pajetta! with Pajetta! - said my mother, putting in that
name a special raging rapidity, perhaps to indicate the speed with which
Alberto fled. Two liras were, even then, one
small sum; but
Alberto asked two lire several times a day. My mother, sighing,
he opened the drawer of his dresser with his keys. Alberto does not have money
they were never enough. He took the habit of
sell the house books, so that ours
shelves, little by little, emptied; and every so often happened that my father
look for a book without finding it; and my mother, so as not to get angry,
he said
who had lent it to Frances, but it was well known that it was over
on a stand of used books. Alberto also sometimes brought silverware
from home to Monte di Piet? and my mother, not finding
a coffee pot, yes
he began to cry. - Feel what Alberto did! - he said to Paola. -
Listen to what he did to me! But I can not tell my dad, if he does not scold
him! - IS
he had such fear of my anger
father, who was looking for the bills of the
Monte di Piet?in the drawers of Alberto, and sent the Rina to disengage the
his coffee pots, in secret, without telling my father.
Alberto was no longer a friend of Frinco,
disappeared in the mists of time
along with his terrifying books, not even Frances's children.
Alberto now had Pajetta and Pestelli, his classmates, who however
they were scholars; my

mother always said that Alberto chose friends

they were better than him. - Pestelli, - explained my mother to my father, - is
a
very good boy. It's from a very good family. His father is

that
Pestelli who writes about the Press. And his mother is Carola Prosperi, "he said
flattered, and to put Alberto in good light in the eyes of my father; there
Carola Prosperi, writer that to my mother

she liked, she did not seem able to

being included in the treacherous world of the literati, because he also wrote
books
for children; and his novels, those for adults, were, he always said mine
mother, "very well
written. " My father, who had never read the books of
Carola Prosperi, shrugged.
第 55 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
As for Pajetta, while he was still a little boy in short breeches
gymnasium, he was arrested because he was spreading, among the
school desks, brochures
against fascism; and Alberto, who was among his closest friends, was
called to the police station and interrogated. Pajetta went to jail, in a
reform of minors; it's mine
mother, flattered, said to my father:
"See that I told you Beppino. See that Alberto his friends if there
always choose well. They are always better and more serious than him.
My father shrugged. It was though

he too flattered that

Alberto had been interrogated at the police station; and for a few days, he
abstained
from calling him a scoundrel.
- A barabba! - said my mother, when Alberto returned
from football, filthy, with blond hair soaked in mud, with torn clothes. - One
Barabbas!
- Fuma, and throw the ash on the ground! - he complained to his friends. -
She lies down on the bed with her shoes and
he insults the blanket! He asks for money, not
they are never enough!
- He was so cute as a child! - He complained. - It was so sweet, mild!
It was a doggie! I dressed him all in a trina, he had those beautiful curls!
Now
look how it became!
The friends of Alberto and Mario rarely appeared in our house;
Gino instead his friends always took them home, in the evening.
My father invited them to stop at
dinner. It was, my father, always ready to
invite people to dinner or lunch; and maybe then there was little to eat.
He was always afraid, instead, that we "scrounge lunch" in the house of others.
- You have
a Frances lunch! I'm sorry! - And if one of us was
invited by someone to eat, and the next day he said this
someone was boring or unpleasant, my father right away Unpleasant! But you
kicked him a lunch!
Our dinners usually consisted of a Liebig soup, a lot
dear to my mother, and that Natalina was always too broth;

and in one
omelette. So Gino's friends shared these dinners with us, always
identical; then they listened to the stories and songs of mine around the table
mother. Among these friends there was one, that
he was called Adriano Olivetti; is
I remember the first time he came into our house, dressed as a soldier, because
he was doing military service at the time; even Gino was then the
第 56 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
military service, ed
they were, he and Adriano, in the same dormitory. Adriano
then he had a beard, an unkempt, curly beard, of a tawny color; had
long, fair-haired hair that curled on the nape of the neck, and it was

fat e
pale. The military uniform fell badly on his shoulders, which were fat and
round; and I've never seen a person in gray-green and gun-like clothes
to the waist, more clumsy and less martial of
he. He looked very much
melancholy, perhaps because he did not like anything to be a soldier; he was shy
and silent; but when he spoke, he spoke then at length and in a voice
very low, and said confusing things
and obscure, staring at the emptiness with the little ones
blue eyes, which were both cold and dreamy. Adriano, then,
it seemed the incarnation of what my father used to call "a
poultice"; and yet
my father never said he was a poultice,
neither a salami nor a black man: he never pronounced none of his address
these words. I wonder why: and I think maybe my father had
a
greater psychological penetration than we suspected, e
he saw the image of the man in the guise of that awkward boy
that Adriano had to become later. But maybe not
he gave him
of the smithy, only because he knew he was going to the mountains; and why
Gino had told him he was anti-fascist, and that he was the son of a socialist,
a friend of Turati too.
The Olivetti
they had a typewriter factory in Ivrea. We
we had never known industrialists so far; the only one
industrial that we were talking about in our house, he was a brother of Lopez
called Mauro, who was in Argentina and was very rich; he's my father
he planned to send Gino to work by that Mauro in his company.
The Olivetti were the first industrialists we saw from
close; and for me
the idea was that those billboards of r閏lame I saw for
road, and which depicted a typewriter racing on the rails
of a train, they were strictly
connected with that Adriano in grayish cloths, who used to eat with us, in the
evening, our bland soup.
After his military service, Adriano continued to come to us in the evening; is
it became
even more melancholic, more timid and more silent, because it was
in love with my sister Paola, who then did not mind him. Adriano had
第 57 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
the car; it was, among the people we knew, the only one
to have
the car; Terni did not have it then, though it was so rich.
Adriano, when my father had to go out, immediately proposed to him
accompany him in the car, and my father
he raged: he could not
suffer cars, and not being able to suffer, as he always said, the
kindnesses.
Adriano had many brothers and sisters, all freckled, and red-haired:
and my father, who

he was also red-haired and freckled, perhaps even

for this he liked them. It was known that they were so rich, but
but they had simple habits, they were dressed modestly, and
they went to the mountains with old skis, like us. But they had many
cars, and offered at every moment to accompany us to a place or
another; and when they went by car to the
city, and saw a
old walk with a little tired step, they stopped and invited him to
to go up; and my mother was just saying how good and kind they were.
We ended up with knowing then also the
their father, who was small, fat and
with a big white beard: and had, in the beard, a beautiful, delicate face
noble, illuminated by the heavenly eyes. He used, talking, to mess with the
his beard, e
with the buttons of his waistcoat: and he had a small falsetto voice,
acidulous and childish. My father, perhaps because of that white beard,
he always called "the old Olivetti"; but they had, he and my father,
approximately the same age. They had socialism in common, and friendship with
Turati; and they agreed mutual respect and esteem. However, when
they met, they always wanted to talk to each other
at the same time; is
they shouted, one tall and one small, one with a falsetto voice and the other
with
voice of thunder. In the speeches of the old Olivetti the Bible was mixed
together,

psychoanalysis and the discourses of the

prophets: things that in my father's world do not
they entered absolutely, and around which, after all, he was not
formed no special opinion. My father found that the old man
Olivetti had a lot of ingenuity, but a great confusion in ideas.
The Olivetti lived in Ivrea in a house called the Convent, because
in the past it had been a friary convent; and they had woods and vineyards,

cows,
and a stable. Having those cows, every day, they made desserts with the
cream: and to us the desire of the cream had remained since the time that mine
Father, in the mountains, forbade us to stop at
第 58 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

eat it in the ch鈒et. He used

prohibit it, among other things, for fear of Maltese fever. There from the
Olivetti, who
they had their cows, the danger of maltese fever was not there.
So we from them there
we ventured to eat cream. However my father there
he said: - You must not always invite the Olivetti! You do not have to
scrounge! "So we had so much the obsession with scribbling that once
Gino
and Paola, invited to Ivrea to pass the day, despite the
the insistence of the Olivetti refused to stop at dinner and even to be
drive back into the car, and they ran away fasting, waiting
the train
in the night. Another time it happened that I had to do with the Olivetti ones
trip by car, and we stopped for lunch in a restaurant; is
while all of them ordered tagliatelle e
steaks, I ordered for myself only
an egg to drink, and then I told my sister that I had ordered only one egg
"Because I did not want the engineer Olivetti to spend too much". This thing
was referred to
old engineer, who was very amused, and used it
he laughed often: and in his laugh there was all the joy of being very rich,
to know it, and find out that there was still someone who did not know it.
When Gino had finished the Polytechnic, two possibilities opened up for him. OR
go to work by that Mauro, who had the company in Argentina, and that
we called "Uncle Mauro" familiarly
imitating the Lopez boys;
my father, for months, had a regular correspondence with his uncle Mauro, in
which
it was about the future of Gino. Or go to work in Ivrea, in the
Olivetti engineer factory.
Gino chose the latter solution.
Gino therefore left our house, and went to live in Ivrea; is
a few months later he announced to my father that he had met a girl there
to be
fiance. My father was seized with a frightening anger. My
father always, whenever one of us announced that he was on the verge of
getting married, he was seized with a frightening anger, whoever he was

the person
chosen. He always found a pretext. Or he said that the person from us
chosen was of puny health; or said he had no money; or said that

he had too many. Every time, my father

he forbade us to get married; without getting
nothing, because we all married anyway.
第 59 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Gino was then sent to Germany to study German and for
forget. My mother recommended him to
go to see, in Friborg, the
Grassi. La Grassi was a friend of my mother's childhood, and she was the one who
he said: "All of Lidia wool!" and "Lidia violets!" La Grassi had
known, in Florence, a
bookseller of Freiburg, and had married him; and he le
He read Heine, and had taught her to love the violets; and he also had them
taught to love fabrics "all of wool", bringing it to Germany later
there

fifteen-eighteen war; being pure wool in Germany, after the

war, unobtainable.
The bookseller, returning to Freiburg after the war, exclaimed:
- I no longer recognize my Germany!
Phrase
remained famous in our house, and that my mother used to declaim,
whenever it happened to her not to recognize something or someone.
My father, that summer, from the mountain, held a long one
correspondence and with
Gino in Germany, and with Lopez and Terni, and with the engineer Olivetti,
always about that marriage; and to the Terni, the Lopez, the engineer
Olivetti, my father wrote that they had to
deter Gino from getting married,
at twenty-five and without a career started.
- Who knows if he will have seen Grassi? - my mother used to say sometimes
thinking of Gino that summer; he's my father
furious:
- La Grassi! It matters very much to me that I saw La Grassi! It seems that in
Germany there is only Grassi! I absolutely do not want Gino to
newlyweds!
Gino, however, got married when he returned
from Germany, as he had
declared that he would do; and my father and mother went to his
marriage. But my father, waking up in the night, still said:
- If I had sent him in
Argentina, by Mauro, instead of Ivrea!
who knows, maybe in Argentina he would not have married!
We had moved house; and my mother, who had always complained about the
house in via Pastrengo, now yes
he complained about the new house. The new house was
in via Pallamaglio. - What a bad name! "My mother always said. - That
bad road! I can not suffer these streets, via Campana, via Saluzzo!
IS
at least in via Pastrengo we had the garden!
The new house was on the top floor and overlooked a square, where it was
第 60 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
an ugly and big church, a paint factory and an establishment of
public bathrooms; and to my mother nothing seemed more bleak than to see,
from the windows, men entering the public baths with a towel
under the arm. My father, that house, had it

even bought,
because he said it was cheap, and that it was not beautiful but had advantages,
it was very close to the station, and it was big, it had so many rooms.
My mother said:
- What does it matter?
we are near the station, we who do not leave
never?
Something had to be improved, in our economic conditions,
because they talked a little less about money; Real estate, them,
down
always, to hear my father, and at this time they had to be, I thought,
swallowed in the depths of the earth; however my mother and sister yes
they made more clothes. Now we too
we had the phone, like the Lopez.
The words caroviveri and caro-pane were no longer spoken. Gino
he lived with his wife in Ivrea; Mario had a job in Genoa, and only
Saturday came to
home.
Alberto had been put, after much uncertainty and discussion, in a boarding
school.
My father hoped he would get sick, and regret and repent of that
severe punishment; and my mother instead
he said: - You'll see how good you are!
you'll see how you enjoy yourself! You'll see how good you are in college! I in
mine
college, how nice it was, how I enjoyed myself!
Alberto went to boarding school as he was
always. He recounted,
when he came home on vacation, that at that college when they were at table
and they ate the omelette, suddenly they heard a bell ringing,
the director entered and said:
I warn you that you do not cut the omelette with the
knife -. Then that bell rang again, and the director disappeared.
My father was no longer going to ski; he said he had become too much
old. My
mother had always said: - Malignazza mountain! - she who
he did not know skiare and stayed at home; but now she regretted it rather than
mine
father no longer skied.
Anna Kuliscioff had died. My mother, from
many years, he did not see her; but
第 61 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
she was happy to know it was there. He went to Milan for the funeral, along with
the
her friend Paola Carrara, who was always at home as a young girl
of the Kuliscioff.

He brought back a book listing in black, where they were written in

memory of the Kuliscioff, and his portraits.
My mother thus replied to Milan, after so many years: but she no longer had
nobody in Milan. His were all
dead. He found the city changed,
become ugly. He said:
- I no longer recognize my Germany!
The Terni had to leave Turin. They went to live in Florence. Set off
first Mary, with the children; Terni
he remained for a few months. - That
pity that you go away from Turin! - my mother used to say to Terni. - That
pity that Mary is gone! And I will not see the children again. We remember the
garden of
via Pastrengo, when she played ball with Cucco? IS
were Gino's friends, and was he playing the steps? Was beautiful! - The steps
was
a game that was made like this: one was against a tree, face to
trunk, and turned around; and the others had to take steps when
that did not see them.
- I do not like this house! - said my mother. - I do not like the way
Pallamaglio! I liked having the

garden!
But the melancholy soon passed away. He got up in the morning, singing, and
he was going to order the shopping; then he took tram number seven. He went col
tram up to the terminus, and came back
without going down.
- How beautiful it is to go by tram! He said. - It's more beautiful than going
in
car!
- Come too, - he told me in the morning, - let's go to Pozzo Strada!
Pozzo Strada was the terminus of the

number seven. There was a clearing there,

with an ice-cream vendor's kiosk; and the last suburban houses. In the distance,
fields
of wheat and poppies.
In the afternoon, he read the newspaper spread on the sofa. He was telling me:
- If you are
good I'll take you to the cinema. Let's see if there is a film "adapted" for you
-. But it was she who wanted to go to the cinema: and indeed there
it was the same, alone or with her friends,
even if I had from
to study.
第 62 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
He ran back, because my father came back from the laboratory at seven o'clock
half, and he wanted to find her at home when he returned. If he could not find
it, yes
he was waiting for her at the

balcony. My mother was breathless, col

hat in hand.
- Where the hell have you been? My father was shouting. - You made me stay in
thought! I bet that even today you have been at the cinema! Steps
there
life at the cinema!
- Did you write to Mary? He asked. Now that Mary had gone to stay in
Florence, his letters sometimes arrived; and my mother never remembered
answer. He wanted her a lot
good: but he never wanted to write
letters. He did not even write to his children.
- Did you write to Gino? My father shouted. - Write to Gino! Woe to you
if you do not write to Gino!
I became ill, and I was
sick for the whole winter. I had an otitis; then me
mastoiditis came. My father, the first days I was ill, treated me. I had an
otitis; then me
mastoiditis came. My father, the first days I was ill, treated me.
In his study he had a locker that he called "the pharmacy," and there

he kept the few medicines and tools he used to treat his children, or i
his friends, and the children of his friends; and they were these: for the
peelings,
jodium tincture; for sore throat, mitylene blue; for
paterecci, the bir. The
bir was a rubber tie, which had to be tied tightly to the sick finger,
until it became, that finger, of a turquoise color.
The bir, however, was never found in the "pharmacy",
when it was there
need; and my father was screaming about the house:
- Where's the bir! where did you put the bir!
He said: - What a mess you are! I've never seen untidy people
like you guys!
The bir was,
generally, in the drawer of his desk.
But he got angry, if someone asked him for some advice on
own health. He said offended:
- I'm not a doctor!
He wanted to treat people, but
only if they did not ask to be done
cure.
He said, one day, at the table: "Quel sempio di Terni has the influence. Self
第 63 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
put to bed. Uff, he will have nothing. I have to go see him.
- What an exaggeration
that Terni! - he said in the evening. - He has nothing! He's in bed,
with the wool sweater! I never wear wool sweaters!
"I'm worried about Terni," he said after a few days. - He does not want to
away the fever. I have
fear that it has a pleural effusion. I want it
see Stroppeni.
- It has a pleural effusion! He shouted back in the evening, looking for mine
mother in all the rooms. - Lidia, but you know that Terni has a

payment
Pleural!
He took to the bed of Terni Stroppeni, and all the doctors he knew.
- Do not smoke! - he was shouting at Terni, who was now healed, and sunbathed
on the porch of his house. - Look at that
he must not smoke! He smokes too much, he has
always smoked too much! His health has been ruined by smoking!
My father, he, smoked like a Turk; but he did not want them to smoke
others.
He became, with his
friends and with his children, in the time they were
sick, very mild and kind; but as soon as they recovered, he resumed a
strapazzarli.
Mine was a serious illness; and my father immediately stopped taking care of me,
and
he made

call doctors of his trust. Eventually they took me to the hospital.

Because the hospital did not make an impression on me, my mother gave me
to understand that the hospital was the doctor's house; is that
the other sick people

all the children, cousins ??and nephews of the doctor were in the rooms. I, by
obedience,
I thought; yet at the same time I knew it was a hospital;
and that time as well as more

Later, truth and falsehood mingled

In me.
"Now you have Lucio's leaner legs," my mother said, "now it will be."
love Frances!
In fact Frances used to compare my legs with
those of Lucio, e
to get upset, because Lucio's legs were dry and pale, in socks
white held on by a black velvet elastic.
One evening my mother spoke to someone in the antechamber;
and I heard
that opened the linen closet. Shadows passed in the glass door.
第 64 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
At night I heard coughing in the room next to me. It was Mario's room,
when the sabbath came; but he could not
to be Mario, it was not Saturday; is
it looked like a cough of an old, fat man.
My mother, coming to me in the morning, told me that she had slept there
certainly Mr. Paolo Ferrari; and that he was tired,
old man, ill, he had the
cough, and you did not have to ask him so many questions.
Mr. Paolo Ferrari was in the dining room drinking tea. Seeing him
I recognized Turati, who had come to Via Pastrengo una

time. But since

they told me that it was called Paolo Ferrari, believed, by obedience, that
were Turati and Ferrari together; and again truth and lies
they mixed in me.
Ferrari was old,
big as a bear, and with a gray beard, cut
in round. He had a very wide shirt collar and tie tied
like a rope. He had small white hands; and leafed through a collection
of the
poems by Carducci, bound in red.
Then he did a strange thing. He took the book in memory of the Kuliscioff, and
there
he wrote a long dedication to my mother. He signed: "Anna and Filippo". I
I had the ideas
increasingly confused; I did not understand how he could be
Anna, and how could Filippo be, if he was, as they said,
Paolo Ferrari.
They seemed, my father and mother, delighted
that he was there. My
Father did not make outrages, and everyone was talking in a low voice.
As soon as the bell rang, Paolo Ferrari crossed the corridor
he ran and took refuge in a room at the back. Was of
usual or Lucio, or the
milkman; because other strangers did not come to us in those days.
He traversed the corridor, trying to walk at the tip of
feet: big bear's shadow along i
corridor walls.
Paola said to me: "It's not called Ferrari. It is Turati. He must run away

from Italy. It's hidden. Do not tell anyone, not even Lucio.
I swore I swore not to say anything to anyone, not even to
Lucio; but I had a great one
want to tell Lucio when he came to play with me.
Lucio, however, was not at all curious. He always told me that "I was doing it
curious "when I asked myself to question him

第 65 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
on the things in his house. I Lopez
they were all very secret, and they did not like to tell the things of the
family;
so we never knew of them, whether they were rich or poor, or how old
he performed the

Frances, and not even what they ate for lunch.

Lucio told me, with indifference:
- Here in your house there is a bearded man, who runs away from the living room
as soon as I arrive.
"Yes," I told him, "Paolo
Ferrari!
I wanted you to ask me more questions. But Lucio did not ask
other. He banged in the wall with a hammer, to hang a picture that
he had done and that he gave me. It was a picture
which represented a train.
Lucio had a passion for trains, from an early age; he always turned around
for the room, puffing and blowing like a locomotive; and he had home
a big train
electric, which Uncle Mauro had sent him
Argentina.
I told him: - Do not beat like that with a hammer! He is old, he is sick, he is
hidden away! We must not disturb it!
- Who?
- Paolo Ferrari!
- See the tender, -
said Lucio, - do you see that I have also painted the tender?
Lucio always talked about the tender. I was bored now in his company;
we were the same years, and yet it seemed so much smaller than me.
Not
I wanted, though, to leave. When the Maria came
Buoninsegni to take it back, I was desperate and I prayed that he would leave it
to us
a little bit more.
My mother took us down, me and Lucio, with the
Natalina on the square,
to wait for Maria Buoninsegni. He said: - So take some air -.
But I knew it was because Maria Buoninsegni had not a
meet in the corridor with Paolo
Ferrari.
There was, in the middle of the square, a rectangle of grass, with some bench.
Natalina sat on the bench, swinging her legs
court with long feet; Lucio, snorting and
blowing, he was on the train
all around the square.
Natalina, when Maria Buoninsegni arrived with her fox, yes
it was deep in kindness and smiles. Nourished for the Maria Buoninsegni, the

第 66 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
more
great veneration. Maria Buoninsegni just looked at her, and
he spoke with Lucio in his precious and precious Tuscan. He had him put the
knit, finding that she was sweaty.
Paolo Ferrari remained at home
ours, it seems to me, eight or ten days.
Those were oddly peaceful days. I always heard of one
speedboat. One evening, we had dinner early, and I understood that Paolo Ferrari
had to
leave; had been,

in those days, always hilarious and serene, but that evening a

dinner looked anxious and scratched his beard.
Then came two or three men in raincoats; I knew about them
only Adriano. Adriano
he was starting to lose his hair, and he now had one
almost bald and square head, surrounded by crisp and blond curls. That evening,
his face and his few hairs were whipped by a stroke of
wind.
He had frightened, determined and happy eyes; I saw him, two or three times in
my life,
those eyes. They were the eyes he had when he helped a person a
run away, when there was a danger and someone
to be brought to safety.
Paolo Ferrari told me, in the antechamber, as they helped him get on
coat:
- Never tell anyone I've been here.
He went out with Adriano and the others from the raincoat, and
I never saw him again,
because he died in Paris a few years later.
Natalina asked the mother the next day:
- At this time will you have already arrived in Corsica, with that boat?
My father, hearing
those words, he got furious with my mother:
- You went to confide in that demented Natalina! It's a
demented! He will send us all to jail!
- But no Beppino! Natalina has understood very well that
must be silent!
Then a postcard arrived from Corsica, with the greetings of Paolo Ferrari.
In the months that followed, I heard that Rosselli and had been arrested
Parri, who had helped Turati a
to run away. Adriano was still free,
but in danger, they said; and perhaps he would come to hide at home
our.
Adriano remained hidden from us for several months; and slept in the room
from Mario,

第 67 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
where Paolo Ferrari had also slept. Paolo Ferrari was in
except in Paris; but now they were tired of calling him Ferrari at home, and so
they called with the real name. My mother used to say: - How it was
nice! such as
I liked having it here!
Adriano was not arrested, and he left for abroad; and he and my sister yes
they wrote, having engaged. Old Olivetti came from my parents,
to ask, for
his son, my sister's hand; came from Ivrea in
motorcycle, with a visor cap, and with many newspapers on the chest:
because he used to paper his chest in newspapers, when he went in
motorcycle,
for the wind. He asked my sister's hand in a moment; and then
but he still remained a piece in his armchair in our saloon toying
with his beard, and telling of himself: how he had pulled up the
his factory,
with little money, and how he had educated all his children, and how he read
every evening, before falling asleep, the Bible.
My father then gave a fury to my mother, because he did not want to
that
marriage. He said that Adriano was too rich; and he said it was too much
fixed with psychoanalysis. All the Olivetti, after all, had that
fixation. To my father the Olivetti liked, but there
he found a little
extravagant. And the Olivetti used to say that we were too materialistic,
especially my father and Gino.
We understood, after some time, that we would not be arrested.
neither
Adriano, who returned from abroad, and married with my sister Paola.
My sister, just married, cut her hair; and my father did not say
nothing, because now he could no longer tell her anything, he could not anymore
prohibit
nor command anything.
However he began to scold her again after some time; and indeed now
Adriano also scolded. He found that they were spending too much money, and that
they were too much in
car between Ivrea and Turin.
When they had their first child, he criticized the way it was held,
he said that they had to do more sunbathing, otherwise it would become
rickety. - They will
become rickety! - he was shouting at my mother. - Not him
keep in the sun! Tell him to keep him in the sun!
Then he feared that they would bring him, if he was sick, from the sorcerers.
Adriano does not
he believed very much in real doctors,
第 68 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

and once he had had a sciatica,

he had gone to a Bulgarian to be treated with air massages. He had then
asked my father what an opinion he had of air massages, and if he knew
that

Bulgarian. My father of that Bulgarian knew nothing, and the massages

planes sent him furiously. - He will be a charlatan! a sorcerer! - IS
when the child had a little fever, he worried:
- Not
will they take him to some wizard?
Roberto, that child, liked him very much; he found it very beautiful, and
he laughed, looking at him, because he found him identical to the old Olivetti.
-
It seems to see the
old Olivetti! My mother also said. - IS
precise to the old engineer! - My father, as soon as Paola came from
Ivrea immediately said to her:
- Contami of Roberto!
- Roberto is very beautiful! He said
always. Paola then had another one
little girl, but he did not like it. When they brought him to see, the
he just looked. It read:
- Roberto is more beautiful!
The Paola then offended and did the
snout; and he when he was gone
went saying to my mother:
- Have you seen that donkey that donkey?
The early days that Paola was married, my mother often cried,
because he did not have it at home anymore. They were,
my mother and Paola, very close, and
they always told a lot of things. To me, my mother, not
he said nothing, because I seemed small to her; and then because he said that I
"I gave her a little
string".
I was now going to the gymnasium, and no longer taught me arithmetic; I kept
not to understand the arithmetic, but she could not help me, because the
arithmetic
of the gymnasium did not remember it.
- Not from

string! does not speak! - my mother used to say. The only thing that
he could do with me, he was taking me to the cinema, but I did not accept
always his exhortations to go there.
- I do not know what mine will do
Mistress! Now I feel what mine wants to do
Mistress! - said my mother, talking to her friends on the phone; me
he always called "his mistress" because in fact I was the one to decide how
第 69 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
we would
spent the afternoon: if I would have agreed to go to the
cinema with her, or not.
- I get fed up! - said my mother. "I have nothing left to do, there's nothing
left."
to do in this house. Everyone left.
I get tired!
"You get tired," my father told her, "because you do not have an inner life.
- My Mariolino! - said my mother. - Good thing, today is Saturday,
my Mariolino will come!
Mario, in fact, almost came
every Saturday. He opened on the bed, in the room
where Ferrari had slept, the suitcase and carefully pulled out
meticulously her silk pajamas, her soaps, her slippers
Moroccan; had
always beautiful new things, elegant, beautiful clothes of cloth
English. "All of Lidia's wool," my mother would say, touching the fabric of
those clothes; and he said: - Eh, you have your robin too, - remaking the
to my aunt Drusilla, who used to say that.
Mario still said "the worm of the fall of the bad" by sitting down for a moment
with me and with my mother in the living room, and caressing her jaws; but then
immediately
he went to the phone, he took mysterious appointments talking to
low voice; "Goodbye, mother," he said from the antechamber; and we did not see
it

until dinner time.

His friends, Mario rarely brought them
in home; and when they came not
he had them enter the living room, but he closed himself with them in his room.
They were,
those friends of his, men with a resolute and busy air, and also Mario
he always had now
that air bustling and resolute: seemed to think
only to make a career in the business world, the same now that we, but they did
pay more.
- But what will you do with Alberto? - repeated my mother for the whole summer.
The Drusilla, that year,
he was not with us, because he had long lost
the habit of coming with us to the mountains; but my mother felt
his voice echoing in his ear. Alberto, questioned, said he would
studied medicine.
He said this with an air of indifference and resignation, shrugging his
shoulders.
It was, Alberto, a tall, thin, blond boy with a long nose: and he had
success with the girls. My mother,
when he rummaged in his drawers in
第 70 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
looking for bills from the Monte di Piet? he found a pile of letters e
photographs of girls.
He no longer saw Pestelli, who had married; nor Pajetta, who after the
reformist had been arrested again, tried at the Special Court,
and sent to prison in Civitavecchia. Now he had a friend, yes
called Vittorio. - That Vittorio, - said my mother, -
he is a very good one
boy, so studious! It's from a very good family! Alberto, he is a
m鄋fano, but friends always choose them well! - Alberto had not stopped
to be, in my language
mother, "a barabbas" and "a m鄋fano",
word that I do not know what it meant: even now, that it was past
to the high school license.
- Mascalzone! scoundrel! - screamed my father the night, when
Alberto
He fell; and he was so used to screaming like that, that he also screamed when
he
he came back, by chance, soon. - But where the hell have you been until now? -
I was a moment to accompany
a friend of mine, - he answered
always Alberto with his fresh, hilarious and light voice.
Alberto went behind the dressmakers; he went behind, however, also to the
good family girls. He went after all
the girls liked him
all; and as he was cheerful and kind, he courted, for joy and kindness,
even those he did not like. He enrolled in medicine; and my father if
he found it in front of it,
in the anatomy room; and he did not like anything
find it there. Once, it was dark in the classroom, and my father used to make
some
projections; and saw a lit cigarette in the dark. - Who smokes? - scream. - Who
it's that
son of a dog that has gone to smoke?
"It's me daddy," replied the familiar light voice; and everyone laughed.
When Alberto had to give an examination, my father was, since the morning, of

very bad mood. - Me

will make a bad impression! he did not study anything! -
he told my mother. - Wait Beppino! - she answered, - wait! Not it
we still know.
"He took thirty," my mother told him. - Thirty? -
he raged. -
Thirty! They gave it to him because he is my son! If it was not my son it
bocciavano!
And it became more black than me.
Alberto later became a very good doctor. But my father does not know
neither
第 71 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

never convinced. And when my mother or one of us was not well, and
expressed the desire to be visited by Alberto, my father broke into
those thundering laughter:
- Macch?Alberto! thing

you want Alberto to know!

Alberto and his friend Vittorio walked along the Corso Umberto.
Vittorio had black hair, square shoulders and a long chin
prominent. Alberto had hair
blond, a long nose and a short chin
elusive. Alberto and Vittorio were talking about girls. They spoke, however,
also of politics; because Vittorio was a political conspirator. Alberto does not
It seemed
to be interested in politics at all; he did not read the newspapers, he did not
give
judgments, and never intervened in the discussions, which still exploded, a
times, between Mario and my father. He was however attracted to
conspirators. Since
Pajetta's time, when he and Pajetta were kids in short trousers,
Alberto had felt attracted by the conspiracy without however for nothing
take part in it. He loved being a friend
and the confidant of the conspirators.
My father, when he met Alberto and Vittorio on the course, greeted them
with a cold nod. Even the idea that it did not touch him from afar
they could be, those

two, one a conspirator and the other his confidant.

Moreover, the people he used to see in the company of Alberto inspired him
a suspicious disdain. And then my father did not think that yet
there were conspirators in Italy. He thought he was one of the few
anti-fascists remained in Italy. Others were the ones he used to meet in
home of Paola Carrara, that friend of my mother who

she had been like her

friend of Kuliscioff. - Tonight, my father used to say to my mother, -
let's go to the Carrara. Salvatorelli will be there. - How beautiful! - said
mine
mother. - I'm really curious to hear
what does Salvatorelli say!
And after having spent an evening in the company of Salvatorelli, in
Paola Carrara's living room that was full of dolls, because she used to
To make dolls for a work of art
beneficence he was occupied with, my own
father and mother felt a little comforted. It had not been said,

maybe, nothing new. But among the friends of my father and mother, many become
facsist in italy. Others were the ones he used to meet in
home of Paola Carrara, that friend of my mother who

第 72 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
she had been like her
friend of Kuliscioff. - Tonight, my father used to say to my mother, -
let's go to the Carrara. Salvatorelli will be there. - How beautiful! - said
mine
mother. - I'm really curious to hear

what does Salvatorelli say!

And after having spent an evening in the company of Salvatorelli, in
Paola Carrara's living room that was full of dolls, because she used to
To make dolls for a work of art
beneficence he was occupied with, my own
father and mother felt a little comforted. It had not been said,
maybe, nothing new. But among the friends of my father and mother, many
they had become
fascists, or at least not so openly and openly
anti-fascists as they liked. So they felt, over the years,
more and more alone.
Salvatorelli, the Carrara, the engineer Olivetti, were
the few anti-fascists
remained, for my father, in the world. They kept, with him, memories of the
Turati's time, and another costume of life that seemed to have been
swept away from the earth. Stay in
company of these people meant,
for my father, take a sip of pure air. Then there were Vinciguerra,
Bauer and Rossi, closed for years in prison for conspiring, in other times,
against the

fascism. To them, my father thought with veneration and

pessimism, not believing that they would ever go out. Then there were the
communists, but my father did not know anyone, except that Pajetta
that
he remembered as a child in short trousers, which he associated with Alberto's
misdeeds
and that he seemed a small and reckless adventurer. Around the
Communists, however, my father did not have that

time, a opinion well

defined. New conspirators, in the younger generation, did not think that
there were; and if he suspected there might be, i
they would have seemed crazy.
According to him there was not, against fascism,
nothing, absolutely nothing to do.
As for my mother, she was optimistic, and she was waiting for some
nice twist. He waited for someone to be one

day, somehow,
"Knock down" Mussolini. My mother went out, in the morning, saying: - I'm going
to
see if fascism is still standing. I'm going to see if they've knocked it down
第 73 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Mussolini -.
He collected allusions and rumors in the shops, and he received auspices
comfortable. At lunch, he said to my father, "There's a huge one around
discontent. People can not take it anymore. - Who told you that? -

my screamed
father. "He told me," my mother said, "my verdurere." My
father snorted with contempt.
Paola Carrara received weekly "Zurn鄉 de Zen鑦e"
(pronounced the French
so). He had his sister, Gina, in Geneva, and his
brother-in-law, Guglielmo Ferrero, emigrated there for many years for political
reasons.
Paola Carrara occasionally traveled to Geneva. But sometimes the
they removed their passports, and could not, therefore, go to Gina. - Me
they have taken their passport! I can not go to Gina! - The passport,
then, they gave it back to him, and then he would leave, and come back later
few months,
full of hope and reassuring news. - Look, listen to what he told me
William! Listen to what Gina told me! My mother, when she wanted to
feeding his own optimism, he went
from Paola Carrara. There
however, he found, at times, in his half - dark little room, full of beads, of
postcards and dolls, all sulky. They had taken their passport,
or she had not arrived - and she

he thought they had been kidnapped by him

border - the 玓urn鄉 de Zen鑦e?
Mario left his job in Genoa, made arrangements with Adriano and fu
hired by Olivetti. My father was, after all,
happy: but first
to be happy, he became angry, fearing he had been hired because he was
Hadrian's brother-in-law, and not for his special merits.
Paola now had home in Milan. He had learned to
to drive
the car came and went between Turin, Milan and Ivrea. My father
he disapproved, finding that he never stood still in one place. All the
Olivetti, on the other hand, never stood still in one
place and they were always in
automobile: and my father disapproved.
Mario therefore went to live in Ivrea; he took a room there, and passed them
his evenings with Gino, discussing factory problems. Was
always been,
with Gino, in cold relationships; but at that time they became friends. Mario
however, in Ivrea, he bored himself to death.
In the summer, Mario had made a trip to Paris; he had gone to see
Rosselli, and had asked him to be related, in Turin, with the
第 74 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
groups of Justice and Freedom. He had suddenly decided to become one
conspirator.
He came to Turin on Saturday. It was always
equal, mysterious, meticulous
hanging his clothes inside the closet, placing his drawers in the drawers
pajamas, his silk shirts. He was not at home, he put on his raincoat
with air
resolute and busy, he went out, and nothing was known about him. My father met
him one day on the Corso Umberto, in the company of
one he knew by sight, a certain Ginzburg. What's up with it?

Mario with
that Ginzburg? He said to my mother. My mother had put on some
time, to study Russian, 玭ot to get tired? and he took lessons, together
to Frances, from Ginzburg's sister. - IS
one, - said my mother,
very cultivated, very intelligent, which translates from Russian and makes
beautiful
translations. "But," said my father, "it's very bad. We know, the Jews are
all bad. - And you? - He said
my mother, - you're not a Jew?
"In fact I am ugly too," said my father.
The relations between Alberto and Mario were always very cold. Not
the old furious struggles broke out between them
wild. However
they never exchanged a word; and meeting in the corridor, you do not
they never said hello. Mario, when he was appointed by Alberto, curved them
lips from contempt.
Mario, however, now
he knew Vittorio, Alberto's friend; and it happened that
meet, Mario and Alberto, on the course, face to face, with Ginzburg e
Vittorio, who knew each other well; and it happened that Mario invited them,
all
two, Ginzburg and Vittorio, at home to have tea.
My mother, that day they came home to get tea, was all
happy: because he saw Alberto and Mario together, and saw that
they had
the same friends; and then she seemed to be back at the time of via Pastrengo,
when Gino's friends came, and the house was always full of people.
My mother, besides taking lessons from
Russian, he also took lessons in
piano. The piano lessons took them from a teacher who had them
I suggested a certain Signora Donati, whom she too had put in age
mature, to study the
piano. Mrs. Donati was tall, big, beautiful,
第 75 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
with white hair. Mrs. Donati also studied painting, in
Casorati study. In fact, the painting liked her even more than the piano.
He idolized painting, Casorati, Casorati's studio, wife and child,
and Casorati's home where he was sometimes invited to lunch. He wanted to
convince
my mother to take lessons from Casorati too
she. My mother, though,
She resisted. Mrs. Donati phoned her every day, and told how
she had fun painting. "But you," said Signora Donati to mine
mother, - you do not feel the colors? - Yup,
- said my mother, I think I feel
colors. "And the volumes," Signora Donati continued, "do you hear the volumes? -
No. I do not hear the volumes, my mother answered. - Do not you hear the
volumes? -
Never
Color! You can hear the colors!
My mother, now that there was more money in the house, got dressed. Was
this, besides the piano and the Russian, a constant occupation, and, in
bottom, a way "not to get tired";
because my mother, then, those clothes that
it was done, he did not know when to put them, since he never wanted to
go to nobody, if not from Frances or Paola Carrara, people from
which he could
also go with the dress he had at home. My mother's clothes
he made them or "by Mr. Belom" who was an old tailor, who was
as a young man, I was a pretender of my grandmother, in Pisa, when

she was looking

husband and yet did not want "the leftovers of Virginia"; or if he had them done
in the house by a sartina, which was called Tersilla. At home he no longer came
the Rina, disappeared on the night of the gods
times; but my father, when he met
the Tersilla in the corridor, raged as it raged in the past, seeing
the Rina. Tersilla was, however, braver than Rina, and greeted mine
father

passing him along with his scissors to his belt, with his smile
polite in the Piedmontese face, minute and rosy. My father answered her with
a cold nod.
- There's the Tersilla! But how,

even today there is the Tersilla! - he then screamed at mine

mother. "She came," my mother said, "to turn on an old coat.
A coat of Mr. Belom -. My father, to that name of Belom, was silent
reassured,
because he had esteem of Mr. Belom, who had been a
suitor of his mother. He did not know, however, that Mr. Belom was one of the
tailors more expensive than Turin.
第 76 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
My mother, between Mr. Belom and the Tersilla,
now it was swinging towards one,
now towards each other. When you had a dress made by Mr. Belom,
then he found that it was not so well cut and that "it was bad for her
shoulders". Then he called Tersilla e
he did it undo it and redo everything from
head. "I'll never go to Mr. Belom again!" I will always do everything
from Tersilla! he declared himself, in the mirror, wearing the unkempt dress
redone. There were however
clothes that never went well, 玹hey did
always a defect "; then he gave them to Natalina. Natalina had now,
she too, lots of clothes. He went out on Sundays with a long coat of the
Mr. Belom, black, all buttoned up, that made her look like a
pastor.
Paola was also a lot of clothes. But it was always about the
clothes, in controversy with my mother. He said that my mother was getting
dressed
wrong, that he made so many all the same, and a dress of Mr. Belom
if he did then copy from Tersilla a hundred times, to the point of nausea. But a
my mother liked it that way.
My mother used to say that when she had children
small, he always made him make all the identical aprons, and he wanted now
have, like his children, for the summer and for the winter, many aprons. There
Paola,
this conception of clothes as aprons did not convince her
at all.
If Paola came from Milan with a new dress, my mother
he hugged her and said: - I to my children, when they have a dress
new
I love him more -. But she immediately wanted to get a new one
she too: not similar, because Paola's clothes always seemed to her
too complicated: she would do it "more style
apron ". The same
It happened with me. When he made me dress, immediately
one wanted to make one too: but he did not confess it to me, nor did he
he confessed to Paola,
because Paola and I used to say that it was done
too many clothes: he placed the cloth, well folded, in his dresser; and we saw
that new fabric, one morning, in the hands of Tersilla.
She liked having the
Tersilla at home, also because he loved his
company. - Lidia, Lidia! where are you? - my father was thundering back. My
mother was in the ironing room, talking with Natalina and Tersilla.
- Stay
always with the servants! My father was shouting. - Even today there is the
第 77 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Tersilla!
- What will Mario always have to do with that Russian? - he said sometimes
father. - New rising star, - he said, when he had
met Mario
with Ginzburg on the course. Yet he now saw Ginzburg in the best light, and
not much suspicion inspired him, having found him once in the living room
of Paola Carrara, together with
Salvatorelli. He did not understand, however, what he had
Mario to share with him. - What's going to do with that Ginzburg? - he said,
- what the hell are they going to say?
"It's ugly," he would say to my mother, speaking of Ginzburg,
because it's a
Sephardic Jew. I am a Ashkenazi Jew, and for this I am less
ugly.
My father always expressed himself in a rather favorable way about
Ashkenazi Jews. Adriano, on the other hand,
he used to speak well about half-blood,
that were, he said, the best people. Among the half-blood, those that the
they liked more the sons of a Jewish father and a Protestant mother, as it was
himself.
Yes
at that time he was playing this game at our house. It was a game that
he had invented Paola, and it was mainly her and Mario: vi
my mother, however, participated sometimes.
The game consisted

in dividing people who knew each other in minerals,

animals and plants.
Adriano was a mineral-vegetable. Paola was a plant animal.
Gino was a mineral-vegetable. Rasetti, which on the other hand does not
we saw from
so many years, it was a pure mineral, and so was Frances.
My father was an animal-vegetable, and so was my mother.
- Vaniloquio! - my father used to say, picking up some
word. -

Always this your vaniloquy!

As for pure vegetables, the fantastic pure ones, there were very few in the
world.
Perhaps pure vegetables had only been some great poets. How long
we tried, not

we found only one pure vegetable among our acquaintances.

Paola said that this game was the one who invented it, but someone
he had then told her that a subdivision of this sort already had it

done
Dante in the De Vulgari Eloquentia. If it were true, I do not know.
Alberto went to do military service in Cuneo; and now Vittorio
he was only walking on the course, because he had already done military service.
第 78 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
My father, returning, found my mother busy spelling in Russian. -
Uff, this Russian, - he said. My mother continued, even at the table, a
spelling in Russian and reciting Russian poems which he had
learned. - That's enough

with this Russian! - my father was thundering. - But I really like Beppino! -
my mother said. It's so beautiful! Frances is also studying it!
One Saturday, Mario did not come, as always, from
Ivrea; and neither
appeared on Sunday. My mother, however, was not worried, because already
other times he had not come. He thought he had gone to see her
Lover so thin, in Switzerland.
The
Monday morning, Gino and La Piera came to tell us that Mario had been
arrested on the Swiss border, along with a friend; the place where they had it
arrested was Ponte Tresa; and we did not know anything else. Gino
he had this
news from someone from the Olivetti branch in Lugano.
My father, that day, was not in Turin; and he arrived the next morning. My
mother barely had time to tell him what it was
happened: then the house is
he filled police officers who had come for a search.
They found nothing. We had watched the day before with Gino
inside the drawers of Mario, if it was not there
something to burn; but not
we had found nothing, if not all his shirts, "his robin", like
said my aunt Drusilla. The officers left, and told my father he had to follow
them
in
police station for an assessment. My father, in the evening, had not yet
returned:
and so we understood that they had put him in jail.
Gino, having returned to Ivrea, had been arrested there; and then transferred
too

to
Prisons of Turin.
Then Adriano came to tell us that Mario, passing through Ponte Tresa in
car with his friend, he had been stopped by customs guards,
who were looking for cigarettes; and these

they searched the car, and there

they had found anti-fascist pamphlets. Mario and his friend had been made
go down, and the guards were escorting them to the police station; is
passing
along the river. Mario suddenly had freed himself, he had thrown himself away
in the river dressed as he was, and he had swum to the Swiss border.
Swiss Guards, at the last, had met him with one
第 79 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

boat. Now
Mario was in Switzerland, safe.
Adriano had his face of Turati's escape, his face happy and
scared of the days of danger; and put a car and a driver in
disposition of mine
mother: but she did not know what to do with it, not knowing
where to go.
My mother, every moment, reached the hands and said, between happy,
admired and scared:
- In the water, with the coat!

That friend who was

found with Mario in Ponte Tresa, and that he had
the car - Mario did not have a car, nor could he drive - yes
he called Sion Segre. We had seen it sometimes in the house, with Alberto and
Vittorio. Was
a blond boy, always a bit 'bent, with a mild air
lazy; he was a friend of Alberto and Vittorio, and that he also knew Mario not
we knew it. Paola, who came immediately by car from Milan, there
he said that
but she knew it: Mario had confided in her. Of those journeys between Italy and
Switzerland, with pamphlets, Mario together with that Sion Segre had already
done
many, and had always gone smoothly; is
so he had become increasingly daring,
he had filled the car with pamphlets and newspapers more and more, he had
set aside every rule of prudence. When he had thrown himself into the river,
a
guard had pulled the gun out; but another guard shouted
not to shoot. Mario owed his life to that guard who had shouted
so. The waters of the river were very rough, but he
he could swim well; is
I was used to frozen water because, in fact, my mother remembered during
one of his cruises, he had taken a bath in the North Sea, in
company of the cook of the
ship; and the other passengers looked, since
bridge, and applauded; and indeed when they had known that Mario was
Italian, they started shouting: - Viva Mussolini!
However, in that river Tresa,
at the last, he was almost losing his strength,
awkward as he was by clothes, and perhaps by emotion; but then the guards
Swiss had sent him the boat.
My mother, reaching for her hands,
He is saying:
- I wonder if his friend so thin, in Switzerland, will give him by
第 80 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
to eat?
Sion Segre was now in prison in Turin; and they had also arrested
one of his brothers. They had arrested
Ginzburg, and a lot of people who had been in
relations with Mario, in Turin.
Vittorio, he had not been arrested. It was, he said to my mother, amazed,
because he used to hang out with all those people; and his
long face from the
prominent chin was pale, tense and puzzled. They came and went, him and
Alberto came home for a few days on leave, on the King Umberto course.
My mother did not know how to do it
to have my father in prison
linens and stuff to eat; and then she was anxious for some news. Me
he said he looked for the number of Segre's relatives in the telephone
directory; but
that Segre was
he was an orphan and had no one except that brother, arrested
even him. My mother knew that those Segre boys were cousins ??of
Pitigrilli; and he told me to call Pitigrilli, to find out how he regulated
himself
himself and if he would have brought his cousins ??to bed and books to jail.
Pitigrilli replied that he would come to our house.
Pitigrilli was a novelist. Alberto was a great reader of his
novels; and my father, when he found a novel by Pitigrilli,
he seemed to have seen a snake. Lidia! hide that book now! -
She screamed. In fact he was very afraid that I could

read it: being, i

novels by Pitigrilli, nothing "adapted" for me. Pitigrilli also directed one
magazine, called "Grandi Firme": also the one always present in the
Alberto's room, tied in big
files on its shelves, along with books
of medicine.
Pitigrilli therefore arrived at our house. He was tall, thick, with long
sideburns
black and gray, with a big light coat that did not take off, sitting in
armchair gravely, and talking to my mother in austere tone, with
accent of condolent compound. He had been in jail once, years ago,
and he explained everything: the foods that could be made
to prisoners in certain
days of the week, and how, at home, it was necessary to shell nuts and
hazelnuts, peel the apples, oranges, and cut the bread into thin slices, because
in
prison was not possible

have knives. He explained everything to us: and then yes

he still held on to converse politely with my mother, legs
crossed, the big uncoated coat, the bushy eyebrows frowned on
front.
第 81 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

My mother told him that I was writing novels; and he wanted me to

I would show my little notebook, where I had recopied, in accurate calligraphy,
my three or four novellas. Pitigrilli, always with his own

air
mysterious, haughty and troubled, she flipped it a little.
Then Alberto and Vittorio arrived; and my mother introduced them to Pitigrilli
both of them. And Pitigrilli went out among them, on the Corso Umberto, with his
heavy step, the air alters and saddened, the big and long palt? on the
shoulders.
My father remained in prison, it seems to me, fifteen or twenty days; Gino,
two months. My mother went to the prisons in the morning,
with a bundle of
linen; and with bundles of peeled oranges and shelled walnuts in those
days that you could bring food.
Then he went to the police station. It was received, sometimes by a certain
Finucci, and a
sometimes by a certain Lutri: and these two characters seemed to her
very powerful, she seemed to have the fate of our family in her hands. -
Today there was the Finucci! - he said coming home, all
happy, because the
Finucci had reassured her: and had told her that he was responsible for my
father and son
Gino there was nothing, and that soon they would put them out. - Today was the
Lutri! - he said anyway
happy: because the Lutri was of rough manners,
but, my mother thought, of a nature perhaps more sincere. She then felt
flattered
from the fact that both of those characters call us all by name, and

they seemed to know each other thoroughly; they said 獹ino? 玀ario? 玪a
Piera ??Paola ? My father used to say "the professor", and when she told him
he explained that he was a man of science, and never was
busy with politics, e
he only thought of his tissue cells, they nodded, and told them
to be calm. My mother however, little by little, began to
be afraid, because my father does not
he returned home, and Gino did not even; and then, a
a certain point, an article with this big title came out in the newspaper:
獳 group of anti-fascists discovered in Turin with the losers of
Paris". -
In league! - repeated my anguished mother: and that word
"In league" sounded dark threats to her. He was crying, in the living room,
surrounded by her friends, Paola Carrara, Frances, la
Mrs
Donati, and the others younger than her and that she used to protect and assist,
第 82 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
and
consoling when they were without money or when their husbands scolded her; Now
they were the ones to assist and console her. There
Paola Carrara said that
it was necessary to send a letter to the "Zurn鄉 de Zen鑦e".
- I wrote it to Gina right away! He said. - Now you will see that one will come
out
protest on the 玓urn鄉 de Zen鑦e?
- It's like the deal
Dreyfus! - he was only repeating my mother. - IS
like the Dreyfus Affair!
There was always a coming and going of people in the house, between Paola,
Adriano, Terni
that had come on purpose from Florence, and Frances, and the
Paola Carrara; there
Piera, then mourning her own father, and pregnant, had come to live
from us. Natalina ran between the kitchen and the living room, carrying cups of
coffee: and she was excited and happy,
always being happy when there was some
hustle and bustle, people at home, noise, dramatic days, and bells
many beds to do.
Then my mother left with Adriano for Rome; because Adriano
had
discovered that there was in Rome a certain Dr. Veratti, personal physician of
Mussolini, who was anti-fascist and willing to help the anti-fascists. Was
but it is difficult to get to him; and Adriano had

found two that lo

they knew, Ambrosini and Silvestri; and he hoped to reach him through
their.
We stayed alone in the house with Natalina, La Piera and me: and one night, we
were
wake up from one
ringing, and we got up full of fright. They were gods
soldiers, who came to look for Alberto, an official student in Cuneo: he was not
returned to the barracks, and did not know where it was.
Could be
tried, said Piera, for desertion.
We alluded overnight, where Alberto could have ended up; and the Piera
he thought he was scared, and had escaped to France. But Vittorio the

next day he told us that Alberto had simply gone to find one
girl, in the mountains; he had spent time with her, skating
quietly, and forgetting to return to the barracks.
Now he was back
in Cuneo, and had been put under arrest.
第 83 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
My mother returned from Rome more and more scared. It was however also, in
somehow, amused in Rome, because the trips amused her
always.
They were, she and Adriano, guests in the house of a certain Mrs. Bondi, a
cousin
of my father: and they had tried to get in touch, as well as with the doctor
Veratti, even with Margherita.
Margherita was one of the many Margherite e
Queens, that were part of my father's kinship: but this one
Margherita was famous, being in friendship with Mussolini. However mine
father and mine
mother had not seen her for many years. My mother did not have
could have met her, because she was not in Rome at the time; is
she had not even been able to talk to Dr. Veratti. But those two,
Silvestri e
Ambrosini, they had given hopes; and Adriano had another informant -
"An informer of mine" - he always said - who had told him so much mine
father like Gino would have gone out
soon. Among the people arrested, the only ones
truly compromised, and which was said to have been tried, they were
Sion Segre and Ginzburg.
My mother kept repeating: "It's like the Dreyfus Affair!
Then, one evening, my father returned home. He was without a tie, and without
laces
to shoes, because they took them off in prison. He had, under his arm, a
bundle of dirty linen, wrapped in a sheet of

newspaper; he had the

long beard, and it was all with intent to have been in prison.
Gino instead remained in two months; and one day my mother is
the mother of Piera went to bring him to the
Prisons lingerie and stuff from
eating, in a taxi, it happened that this taxi was going to collide with
another car. Neither my mother nor the mother of the Piera did anything:
but they found themselves sitting in the

smashed taxi, with their packages on their knees,

with the taxi driver swearing, a whole crowd of people around, and guards. They
were
a few meters from the prison: and my mother was just afraid that people
he understood that they were going to the prison with those packages, and
believed them relatives
of some killer. Adriano, when he told him the fact, said that
sure in my mother's constellation there was
some battle of stars, and for
at that time many and dangerous adventures touched them.
Then even Gino was released. And my mother said:
- Now start again with boring life!
My father
第 84 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

he was furious, knowing that Alberto was under arrest, and

he risked going to the War Court. - Mascalzone! He said. -
While his family was inside, he was leaving with the girls a

skiare!
- I'm worried about Alberto! He said, waking up in the night. -
It's not a joke, if they pass it to the War Tribunal!
- I'm worried about Mario! He said. - I'm very
worried about
Mario! What will you do?
But my father was happy to have a conspirator son. Not if
he waited for her: and he had never thought of Mario as an anti-fascist. Mario
he always used to give him wrong,
when they argued, and used to talk badly about gods
old socialists, dear to my father and my mother: he used to say that
Turati had been a great naive, and that he had put errors on mistakes. IS
my
father, who also said so, when he heard Mario say
he was offended to death.
- It's fascist! - he used to say to my mother sometimes. - At the bottom is a
fascist!
Now he could no longer say that. Now Mario was
became a famous
political exodus. However, my father was sorry that his arrest and the
his escape had occurred while Mario was a factory employee
Olivetti, because he feared that
had compromised the factory, Adriano and the
old engineer.
- I told him that he should not enter Olivetti! - he screamed at mine
mother. - Now it has compromised the factory!
- How good is Adriano!
He said. - He's done a lot for me. IS
very good! All Olivetti are good!
Paola received, again through I do not know what Olivetti branch, a
note written in the calligraphy note of
Mario, tiny and almost
unreadable. The note said: "To my vegetable and mineral friends.
I'm fine, and I do not need anything. "
Sion Segre and Ginzburg were tried at the Special Court,
is
sentenced one to two years, the other to four; the penalty was however halved,
for
amnesty. Ginzburg was sent to the Civitavecchia penitentiary.
Alberto was not then passed to the War Tribunal, and
he came home from
第 85 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
military service; and began to walk on the course with Vittorio. IS
my father shouted: - Mascalzone! Scoundrel! - when he heard it coming back;
and he shouted like that at any time
he heard him come back, out of habit.
My mother resumed piano lessons. And his teacher, one with the
black mustache, he had a great fear of my father and slipped along the
corridor with scores,
tiptoed.
- I can not suffer that piano master! My father was shouting. - Has
an equivocal air!
- But no Beppino, he's such a good man! He loves his very well
child! - said mine
mother. - He loves his baby, he teaches her
Latin! It is poor!
He had left the Russian, my mother, unable to take lessons
from Ginzburg's sister, because it would have been
compromising. They were
enter new words in our house. - You can not invite Salvatorelli! is
compromising! - we said. - You can not keep this book at home! can he
be compromising!
they can do a search! - And Paola
he said that that our door was "guarded", which was always there still
a guy with a raincoat, and who felt "stalked" when he went to
hoot.
The "boring life", moreover, did not last long, because a year later
they came home to arrest Alberto; and it was learned that they had arrested
Vittorio, and again so many other people.
They came to the
early morning: they were, maybe, six in the morning. He began the
search; and Alberto was there in his pajamas, between two agents who
they watched, while others browsed through his medical books, the
"Grandi Firme", and the mystery novels.
I had permission from those agents to go to school; and my mother, in
in the doorway, he slipped the envelopes of his accounts into his briefcase,
because
he was afraid that
in the course of the search they fell under the eyes a
my father, and that he was scolding her because he was spending too much.
- Alberto! they put Alberto inside! but Alberto never has
busy
policy! - my mother said, stunned. My father used to say: -
They put him in because he's Mario's brother! because he is my son! Mica
because it's him!
My mother went back to the prisons, with the
linen; and the
he met Vittorio's parents, and other relatives of prisoners. -
第 86 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
People so well! - said Vittorio's parents. - A family like that
for good! And they said that
Vittorio is a good boy so much. Had
just given, very well, the prosecutor's exams. Alberto is always
chosen of friends very well!
- And also Carlo Levi is inside! - he said, with one
mixture of fear,
of joy and pride, because it frightened her that they were inside
many, and that maybe a great process could be prepared, but the idea that they
were
in many also the
comforted; and was flattered that Alberto was
in the company of adult people, for good and famous. - It's also inside the
Professor Giua!
- But I do not like Carlo Levi's paintings! - he said immediately
my
father, who never missed an opportunity to declare the paintings of
He did not like Carlo Levi. - But no Beppino! instead they are beautiful! He
said
my mother. - The portrait of his mother is beautiful!
You did not see it!
- Sbrodeghezzi! My father said. - I can not suffer painting
Modern!
- Uh, but Giua will put it out right away! "Said my father. - It is not
compromise!
My father does not
he never understood what the true conspirators were, because indeed
a few days later he heard that they had found in the Giua's house
letters written in sympathetic ink, and Giua was, among all, the most
in
danger.
- With the nice ink! "Said my father. - Yeah, he's a chemist,
know how to make nice ink!
And he was deeply amazed, and perhaps even vaguely envious;
because that
Giua, who used to meet at Paola Carrara's house, was
always appeared as a calm, reflective person. Now Giua
suddenly he was at the center of that political event.

They said that too

Vittorio was in an extremely dangerous position.
- Voices! "Said my father. - All voices! Nobody knows anything!
Giulio Einaudi and Pavese were also arrested:
people that my
Father knew little, or knew only by name. He felt, however
he too, like my mother, flattered that Alberto was among them: why,
第 87 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
finding it mixed with that group,
he knew they were doing a magazine
called "La Cultura", it seemed to him that Alberto, suddenly, was
became part of a more dignified society.
- They put it in with those of the
"Culture"! He who reads only
玊he Big Signatures? My father said.
- He had to give the comparative biology exam! Now he will never give it
more. You do not graduate anymore! - he said to my mother in the
night.
Then Alberto, Vittorio and the others were sent to Rome, handcuffed,
with the translated. They took them to Regina Coeli jails.
My mother had started going to the police station, from Finucci e
from the
Lutri. But the Finucci and the Lutri said that by now the thing had passed to
police headquarters in Rome, and that they knew nothing.
Adriano had known, from his informant, that all the phone calls
between
Alberto and Vittorio had been registered, one by one. Victories and Alberto
in fact they telephoned continuously, in the rare intervals that were not
together, walking around the course.
- Those phone calls like that
Stupids! - said my mother. - Register one
for a!
My mother did not know what was said in those phone calls, why
Alberto, when he was on the phone, spoke in a whisper. However my mother
he was persuaded that he was always talking nonsense, and so was my father.
- Alberto is such a futile character! My father said. Put it
inside, he who is futility in person!
It began again

talk about Dr. Veratti, and Margherita. My father

however, Margherita did not want to hear her name. - Just imagine if I go to
Daisy! I am not going! I do not dream of it either! - This Margherita
had

written, years before, a biography of Mussolini; is and to my father the fact

that there was, among his cousins, a biographer of Mussolini, it seemed
unheard. - Maybe he does not even want to receive me! Imagine if
I'm going to
Margherita to beg mendicar!
My father went to Rome, to the police station, to hear news; and missing
absolutely of every sense of diplomacy, and always thundering with his
strong voice e
deep, I do not think he could get a great thing or how much
talks, nor for information. He had been received by one, who had them
called to be called De Stefani; and my father, who was wrong
第 88 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

always the names,

talking about it with my mother he called him 獶i Stefano? He described them
how this "Di Stefano" was made. My mother said, "But that's not De
Stefani Beppino! those are Anchises! us

I was too last year! -

Nope Anchises! He told me to call himself Di Stefano! He can not have me
given generality false! - On Di Stefano and Anchise, every time, my father and
my mother argued;
and my father kept calling him Di Stefano,
although it was, without any doubt possible to what my mother said,
Anchises.
Alberto, from Rome, wrote that he was sorry he could not visit the
city. In fact, he had only seen Rome for half an hour at the age of three.
Once he wrote that he had washed his hair with milk, and after his hair
they stank, and the whole cell smelled. The director of the
Prisons stopped that
letter, and let him know that he wrote, in his letters, less nonsense.
Alberto was sent to confinement, in a town called Ferrandina, in
Lucania. As for Giua and Vittorio,
they were tried, and they took fifteen
years for one.
My father used to say:
- If Mario came back to Italy, it would take fifteen years! twenty years!
Mario now wrote, from Paris, in his minuscule calligraphy
is
illegible, short and concise letters that my parents were struggling with
decipher.
They went to see him. Mario lived in an attic in Paris. He wore
still those clothes, which he wore when he was
thrown into the water at Ponte
Tresa: and they were faded and frivolous. My mother wanted us to buy one
dressed: but he refused to leave those faded clothes. He immediately asked for
news
Sion Segre and Ginzburg,

who were still in prison; and of Ginzburg

he spoke with esteem, and yet as a distant person, that his thought is
his affection had not left but they did have a little
left in

aloof; and as for his own adventure and escape, he seemed

have forgotten them completely.
The laundry was done by itself; he had only two worn shirts, and washed them
with great care, with attention
meticulous that used a time in the
handle and store the silk linen inside the drawers.
He swept his attic, with meticulous attention. It was always
第 89 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
well washed, shaved,
lindo, even in his worn-out clothes: and it seemed
more than ever, my mother said, a Chinese.
He had a cat. There was, in the attic, in a corner, the little box with the
sawdust; he was a very clean cat,
said Mario, he never pooped
on the ground. He had, my father said, a fixation with that cat. He got up
early in the morning, to go and buy milk. My father, like mine
grandmother, not
he could suffer cats; and even my mother did not really love i
cats, he preferred dogs.
My mother said:
- Why do not you keep a dog instead?
- Not a dog! My father shouted. - We would miss nothing else
hold a
dog!
Mario, in Paris, had broken up with the Justice and Freedom groups. He had them
frequented for a time, and collaborated in their newspaper; but then he had
since he did not like it so much.
Mario
he was the one who, as a child, had done the poem about the boys Tosi,
with whom he did not like to play:
And when the Tosi boys arrive,
All unpleasant, all boring.
Now for him the boys Tosi were i

groups of Justice and Freedom. All

what they said, thought and wrote the unavoidable. He did not
that criticize them. And he said:
... What's in the lazy sorbi
The sweet fig should not be ripe.
The sweet
it was him, and the slabs were those of Justice and Liberty.
- It's really true! He said. - That's it!
... What's in the lazy sorbi
The sweet fig should not be ripe.
He said it, laughing and caressing her

jaws, as well as a time

he said "the bug of the fall of the bad".
He had started reading Dante. He had discovered that it was beautiful. Evening
He also studied Greek, and read Herodotus, and Homer.
On the other hand, Pascoli, or Carducci, could not suffer. Carducci then the
he sent in a beast. - He was monarchist! He said. - He was first Republican,
and then he became monarchist, because he fell in love with

第 90 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
that idiot of the
Queen Margherita!
- And to think that it is at the same time as Baudelaire, of the same century!
Leopardi, yes, was a great poet. The only modern poets are Leopardi and
Baudelaire! IS

ridiculous that in Italian schools still study Carducci!

My father and mother went to see the Louvre. Mario asked if
they had seen Poussin. Poussin had not looked at them.
They had looked at many others
what's this.
- Such as! - said Mario. - You have not seen Poussin! It was useless then
go to the Louvre! The only thing worth seeing, in the Louvre, is
Poussin!
- This is me
Poussin, it's the first time I hear about it, he said
mother.
Mario had made friends, in Paris, with a certain Cafi. He did not speak that
of him.
"New rising star," said my father.
Cafi was
half Russian and half Italian, who had emigrated to Paris for many years,
very poor, and without health.
Cafi had filled rivers of leaves, and gave them to read to friends, but
he did not bother to have them printed. He said
that when one wrote something,
you do not need to print it. Have written it, and read it to friends, enough.
There is not
no need for it to remain, for posterity, because posterity counts for nothing.
What's there
it was written on those sheets, Mario did not explain it well. All
it was written, everything.
Cafi did not eat. He lived on nothing, he lived on a tangerine, and his family
clothes were all in pieces, shoes broke down. Self
he had some money,
then he bought refined food and champagne.
- What an intolerant Mario! - my father then said to my mother. -
Critics all, nobody's fine with it! Only this Cafi!
-
It seems that he discovered that Carducci is boring! I knew it from
a piece, - said my mother.
Then my father and mother were offended by the fact that Mario seemed
do not have any

nostalgia for Italy. He was in love with France, and of

Paris. He was constantly mixing French words with his speaking. Dell'Italia
he spoke, curving his lips, with profound contempt.
My father is
第 91 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

my mother had never been nationalists. On the contrary, they hated

nationalism in all its forms. But that contempt of Italy
He seemed to understand them and all of us, and our habits, all of it

our
life.
Then my father was sorry that Mario had broken relations with the groups
of Justice and Freedom. The leader of the Justice and Freedom groups was Carlo
Rosselli: and Rosselli, when Mario was
arrived in Paris, he had given him some
money and had hosted it. My father and mother knew the Rossellis
for many years, and they were friends of the mother, Mrs. Amelia, who was a
Florence. - Woe to
you if you make some rudeness to Rosselli! - he said to my Mario
father.
Mario had, besides Cafi, two other friends. One was Renzo Giua, the son
of that Giua who was in prison: a pale boy with eyes
lit,
with the tuft on the forehead, which had escaped from Italy alone, crossing the
mountains. The other was Chiaromonte, whom my mother had known for years
first in Paola's house, in summer, a
Forte dei Marmi. Chiaromonte was
thick, stocky, with black curls. Both of these Mario friends were
en route with Justice and Liberty, and both were friends of Cafi, and
the days passed

to listen to him when he read those sheets of his, written to

pencil, and that would never have become books, because he books
printed he despised them.
Chiaromonte had a very sick wife, and it was
very poor;
however he helped Cafi, when he could. Mario also helped him. They lived
so, in close friendship, sharing the little they had, and without
lean on no group, without doing
plans for the future, why not
there was no possible future; probably the war would have broken out, and
the fools would have won; because the stupid, Mario said, they won
always.
- That
Cafi, - said my father to my mother, - must be an anarchist!
Even Mario is an anarchist! after all, he has always been an anarchist!
After Paris they went, my father and my mother, to Brussels, where

wax
a biology conference. There they found Terni, and other friends of my father,
and
his students and assistants: and my father felt relieved, because the company
第 92 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Mario was tired of him.
- Always give wrong! -
he said of Mario. - As soon as I open my mouth it gives me wrong!
My father liked to travel a lot, sometimes, when they were there
conferences; and he liked to meet with the biologists, discussing scratching the
head
and my back, pulling my mother behind me, in great fury and never
allow it to stop, in galleries and museums. He also liked it
stay in hotels. Only, he always woke up
very early,
in the morning, and it was, waking up, always hungry. Until he had done
breakfast, he was in a ferocious mood; he whirled around the room, watching
out, watching the first light of dawn.
When they were finally five o'clock, yes
he would hang on to the phone and order, screaming, for breakfast: - Deux th閟!
Deux
th閟 complets! avec de l'eau chaude! - They forgot, in general, of
bring him the 玡au
chaude ? or bring him the jam: being the waiters,
at that time, still sleepy. Finally, when he got everything,
he devoured his breakfast, jam and brioches; and then he did
raise mine
mother: - Lydia, let's go, it's late! let's go visit the city.
- What a donkey that Mario! He has always been a donkey!
He has always been an intolerant! I'm sorry if you do some

rudeness to Rosselli!
- Always with that Cafi! Cafi! Cafi! - my mother used to say when they were from
new at home, and telling Mario about Paola and me. He said 玾ith Cafi?
as he once said: 玾ith
Pajetta! "Complaining about Alberto. And he asked
to Paola di Poussin: - Is Poussin really so beautiful?
Paola also went to visit Mario. They argued; and they did not like each other
anymore.
They did not do anymore,

now, together, the game of minerals and plants. Not

they were more in agreement on nothing; on everything they had a different
opinion.
Paola, in Paris, bought a dress. Mario had always found it
elegant, he had always praised his clothes, his taste; and between them, it was,
in general, Paola to give judgments, and Mario to agree with her. That dress
that
Paola bought in Paris, Mario did not like it.

He told her that it seemed,

with that dress, "the wife of a prefect". Paola was very offended.
Even Chiaromonte, with whom he used to meet in the past, on vacation
at the sea, in Forte dei Marmi,
第 93 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

now she was not going anymore. He did not recognize

that Chiaromonte, who once used to come and visit the sea, to row
and swimming, courting her friends, joking about everything, going in the
evening to

dancing at the Capannina, in that new character of a political emigrant,

without money, with his wife so sick, and so a friend of Cafi. Mario le
he said she was a bourgeois. - Yes, I'm one
bourgeois, - said Paola, -
and I do not care!
He went to see Proust's grave. He, Mario, had never been there. -
He no longer cares about Proust! - then told the Paola to mine
mother on his return. - He does not even remember, he does not like it anymore.
The
just like Herodotus!
He had bought a beautiful raincoat for Mario, seeing that it was
without; and Mario, immediately,
he had given it to Cafi, because he said
that Cafi could not get wet when it rained, being sick of heart.
- Cafi! Cafi! Cafi! - also said the disgusted Paola; and he agreed
with my father that
Mario had done very badly to get away from the group
of Rosselli, and said that they were, Mario and Chiaromonte in Paris, two
blocks,
and without any relationship with reality.
Alberto was back from the
he had taken his degree and married.
Against all odds of my father, he became a doctor, and began to cure
people.
He now had a study. He got angry with Miranda, his wife, if

the
study was not in order, and if there were newspapers around. He got angry if not
there were ashtrays; because he always smoked a cigarette after another, and
now he no longer threw the butts on the ground.
The sick came, and he examined them; and in the meantime they told him the facts
their. He was listening, because he loved people's facts.
Then he would go, in a white coat and with a stethoscope hanging around his
neck,
in the next room. There was Miranda there, thrown on a sofa with a bag
hot water, wrapped in a plaid, because it was very chilly and
lazy. He had a cup of coffee.
It was always
restless, as he had been as a boy, and he drank continuously
some coffees. He smoked continuously, in sips, without aspiring, always like
if he was drinking the cigarette.
Friends came to see him, and he was his

第 94 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
he measured the pressure, and gave it to him
samples of medicines.
He found illnesses in everyone. Only his wife found none.
She told him: - Give me a tonic! I must be sick. I have

always
headache. I feel tired! - And he then said:
- You're not sick. Only, you are made of a second quality material.
Miranda was small, thin and blonde, with blue eyes. He used
to stay
many hours at home, with a robe of Alberto, and wrapped in plaid.
It read:
- I almost go to Ospedaletti, from Elena!
He always dreamed of leaving for Ospedaletti, where Elena, her sister,
the winter months passed. His sister, blonde and similar to her, but a little
more
energetic, was at that time in Ospedaletti, in the sun on a deck chair, with the
black glasses, and with a plaid on the legs. OR
perhaps, he played bridge.
They were, Miranda and her sister, very good at playing bridge. they had
won of the tournaments. Miranda had a house full of ashtray, which she had
won in those tournaments.
Miranda,
when he played bridge, he shook himself from his torpor. It was
a mischievous and hilarious face, bending over the cards the little curved nose,
and
her eyes glittered.
However, he rarely managed to separate
from his chair, and from the plaid.
Toward evening he got up, went to the kitchen and looked inside a pot,
where there was to cook a chicken. Alberto said:
- But because in this house you always eat

boiled chicken?
Alberto, he too played bridge. Only, he always lost.
Miranda knew everything about the Exchange, being her father an agent of
Exchange. He told my mother:
- You know that maybe I sell them
my Incet? - And he said to her:
- You should sell your real estate! What are you waiting for?
Realtor? your real estate! What are you waiting for?
Realtor?
My mother used to go to my father and say:
- We need to sell real estate! Miranda said it!
My father used to say:
- Miranda! what do you want that
know Miranda!
But then when he saw Miranda he said:
"What do you mean by Borsa, you really think I'd do well to sell you."
第 95 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Realtor?
He then said to my mother: - What a poultice that Miranda!
He has always
headache! But if you want to buy it! He has a great nose for business!
My father, when Alberto had announced that he was getting married, had done
a great outburst. But then he resigned himself.
But he said, waking up in the
night:
- How will they, who do not have a penny? And Miranda is a poultice!
In fact, they did not have much money. But then Alberto started to
to gain. They came to him
women, and they were visited; he
they told their annoyances. He was listening, with keen interest. Was
gifted with curiosity and patience. And he loved the annoyances and the people
illnesses.
Not now
he read that medical journals. He no longer read the novels of
Pitigrilli. He had already read them all; and Pitigrilli had not written any new
ones,
having disappeared, and no one knew where it was.
Alberto does not
he went more to walk on the Corso Umberto. His friend
Vittorio was in prison; and he had only rare news when i
Vittorio's parents had bronchitis and sent him to

to call.
Alberto had his clothes made by a tailor, whose name was Vittorio Foa.
Alberto said, while the tailor was measuring his dress:
- I use them for the name!
And the tailor, pleased,
thanked.
In fact, even Vittorio was called Foa, like that tailor.
Alberto said to Miranda:
- Always bronchitis! always stupid diseases! Never touch me cure
some beautiful strange disease, a

bit complicated, a little weird! I get tired!

At the bottom I get fed up! I do not enjoy it enough!
Instead, as a doctor, he enjoyed himself; he did not want to confess it. My
mother used to say:
- Alberto has a great one
passion for medicine!
He said: - I want to go to Alberto to let me visit. Today I have a bit of
stomach ache.
And my father used to say:
- Nope! What do you want to know that salami of Alberto!
He said: - You have

第 96 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
stomach ache, because yesterday you ate too much! Take
a pill! I'll give you a pill!
Every day my mother passed by Alberto, who lived, at home, near
their. He found Miranda in the armchair.

Alberto left a moment from his

study, in a lab coat, with a stethoscope on his chest; and he warmed himself to
the radiator.
They had, he and my mother, the same habit of being always attached to
radiators.
Miranda was wrapped up in the plaid. My mother used to say to her: -
Move! Wash your face with fresh water! Let's go for a walk. I'll take you to the
cinema!
Miranda said: - I can not. I have to stay a
home. My cousin's appearance.
And then, I have too much headache.
Alberto then said: - Miranda lacks life. It's lazy. It is made of a
second quality material.
Miranda always waited for her cousins. Neither
He had many. Alberto said:
- I'm sick of treating your cousins!
And he said: - What a boring city Turin! How to be bored! It does not happen
never anything! At least once they arrested us! Now there
they stop more. there
they forgot. I feel forgotten, left in the shadows!
Paola was now also coming to stay in Turin. He was in the hills, in
a large white house with a terrace

circular, which looked on the Po.

Paola loved the Po, the streets and the hill of Turin, and the avenues of the
Valentino, where he once used to walk with the young child. Neither
he had always had a big one
nostalgia. But now you too Turin
it seemed to become grayer, more boring, more sad. So many people, many
friends were far away in prison. Paola did not recognize the streets of
his youth,

when he had a few clothes, and read Proust.

Now he had a lot of clothes. If he did them in the tailors; but he did come
at home the Tersilla, too, and if they argued, she and my mother. Paola
he said
that Tersilla gave her a sense of security. He gave her the sense of
continuity of life.
Sometimes he invited Alberto and Miranda to lunch, and Sion Segre, who was
returned from prison. Sion Segre had one

sister, Ilda, who was usually

with her husband and children, in Palestine; but he came to Turin from time to
time.
Paola and this Ilda had made friends. Ilda was beautiful, tall,
第 97 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
blonde; and they went, she and Paola,
with long steps walking around the city.
The sons of Ilda were called Ben and Ariel; and they went to school a
Jerusalem. Ilda, in Jerusalem, lived an austere life, and spoke
only Jewish problems;
but when he came to Turin to stay a while from
brother, she liked to talk about clothes, and go for a walk.
My mother, of Paola's friends, was always a bit jealous; and when
Paola had one
new friend, she became in a bad mood, feeling herself
put on the sidelines.
She got up then in the morning with a gray face, with all the eyelids and said:
- I have the catamaronaccia -. That set
of tetraggine and of
sense of loneliness, also usually mixed with indigestion, my mother
he called it 玹he catramonaccia? With "the catamaronaccia", it was holed up
in the living room, and it was cold, yes
wrapped in woolen shawls; and he thought
that Paola did not love her any more, she did not come to visit her, and went
with her
her friends for a walk.
- I get fed up! - said my mother. - I do not enjoy it! I'm sick!
There is not
nothing worse than getting tired! If at least some good sickness came to me!
Sometimes, the flu came to her. She was happy, because it seemed to her,

the flu, a disease more noble than its usual

indigestion. Yes
he measured fever; he was thirty-seven and four. - Do you know I'm sick? -
he said happy to my father. - I'm thirty-seven and four!
- Thirty-seven and four? It's not much! My father said. -
I'm going to
laboratory even with thirty-nine!
My mother used to say: - We hope tonight! - But he did not wait for the evening,
yes
he measured fever every minute. - Always thirty-seven and four! Yet me
I hear
bad!
The Paola was then, for her part, also jealous of my friends
mother. Not from Frances, or Paola Carrara. She was jealous of her friends
young, those that my mother protected and
he assisted, and he pulled back
walking around, and at the cinema. Paola came to see my mother, and le
they said she had gone out with one of her young friends. Paola
he was angry: - But it is

第 98 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
always walking! he's never at home!
And then she got angry, Paola, when my mother gave Tersilla to one of them
those young friends. - You did not have to give him the Tersilla! He told her. -
I needed it

me to fix the little ones of the children!

- Our mother is too young! - Paola sometimes complained
with me. - I would rather want to have an old, fat mother with
all the hair
whites! one who was always at home, who embroidered some
tablecloths. As is the mother of Hadrian. It would give me such a sense of
safety, have a very old mother, quiet. One that does not
it were
so jealous of my friends. I would come to see her, and she would be there,
always
serene, with embroidery, all dressed in black, and would give me good advice!
He would say to her: - If you get tired of it, why do not you learn
to embroider? My mother-in-law
embroiders! spend your days embroidering!
And my mother used to say:
- But your mother-in-law is deaf! What can I do if I'm not deaf
how's your mother-in-law? I'm bored to star
always closed at home! I want
to go for a walk!
He said: - Imagine if I learn embroidery! I'm not good! I do not know
punciottare! When I mend my father's stockings, they come out of me
ugly

punciotti, which then Natalina must undo them!

He had resumed studying Russian, alone, and spelling on the couch; is
when Paola came to see her, she would tell her the phrases of the grammar,
spelling.
There

Paola said: - Uff! how boring mother with this Russian!

Paola was also jealous of Miranda. He would say to her: - Go always from
Miranda! You never come to me!

Miranda had a baby,

Vittorio had called him. Paola
he had had a child at the same time.
Paola said that Miranda's baby was ugly. - He has gods
ugly, coarse features said. - Looks like the
son of a railwayman!
My mother, now, when she went to see Miranda's baby, said:
- I'm going to see how the railwayman is!
My mother, young children liked them all. She also liked them
the
nannies.
第 99 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
The nurses reminded her of the time her little children had.
He had a collection of wet and dry nurses; and they had them
taught songs. He sang, for the house, and said: -
This here was from the
balia di Mario! This, from the nurse of Gino!
The child of Gino, Arturo, born in the year that my father had been
arrested, he was on vacation with us, and his nurse also came.
My
mother, when this arturo nurse was at home, she was always there
chat with her.
My father used to say:
- You're always with the servants! Take the excuse to look at the children, e
in the meantime chatters
with the servants!
- But she is such a nice woman Beppino! It is anti-fascist! Think like
we!
- I forbid you to talk about politics with the servants!
He liked my father, his nephews, only Roberto.
When i
they showed a new nephew, he said:
- But Roberto is more beautiful!
Perhaps, being Roberto his first nephew, he was also the only one he had
looked with a little attention.
When
the time came for vacation, my father took in
I rent a house, still the same; now, for years, he did not want to change
place. It was a large house of gray stones, which looked on one
lawn: and it was
in Gressoney, in the hamlet of Perlotoa.
The children of Paola, the child of Gino, came with us; but the
Alberto's son, the railwayman, took him to Bardonecchia, because
Elena, the
Miranda's sister, she had a house there.
My father and my mother despised Bardonecchia, I do not know why.
They said that there was no sun and that was a horrible place. To hear them,
it seemed like it was a
john.
My father used to say: "Miranda is a great thing!" he could come here.
The child was better here than in Bardonecchia, of course.

And my mother used to say: "Poor railwayman!

The child came back from
Bardonecchia that was fine. It was a
very beautiful, florid and blond child. Nothing seemed like a railway worker.
My father used to say:
- It's not bad though. Curious, Bardonecchia has not

第 100 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
hurt.
We had gone, a few years, to Forte dei Marmi, because Roberto had
need of sea air. But my father at the sea was unwillingly. Yes
he would read under the umbrella, dressed

like in the city: angry,

because he did not like people in bathing suits. My mother, you,
he took a bath, though on the shore, because he could not swim: and while he was
in the water he enjoyed it, he took it
the waves. But then coming back to sit
next to my father, she too was emasculated. She was jealous of Paola, who
he went off on a skid, on the high seas, and never came back.
In the evening, Paola went to
dance to the Capannina. And my father used to say:
- Does he go dancing every evening? What donkey!
But in the mountains, in the house of Perlotoa, my father was always there
happy; and so is my mother too. They did not come
Paola or la Piera, if not
for short visits: there were only children. My mother with children, with
Natalina and the nurses, he was fine.
I was there too, and I was bored to death in those vacations. IS
there were,
in the house next to ours, Lucio and Frances. They went, all dressed up
white, in the village playing tennis.
And there was also Adele Rasetti, in a hotel in the village: always the same,
small,

thin, identical to the child in the green and pulled face, with sharp eyes
like spikes. He collected insects in his handkerchief and put them in
a plate of moss on the window sill.
My mother
He is saying:
- How I like Adele!
His son now worked in Rome with Fermi, and was a famous physicist.
My father used to say: "I've always said that Rasetti is very intelligent.
But it is dry! very dry!
There

Frances would come and sit in the grass on a bench next to mine
mother: he still had the racket in his case, his head close in one
elastic white. He spoke of one of his sister-in-law who was in
Argentina, the wife
Uncle Mauro, and he said, following the verse:
- Commo no!
My father used to say to her:
- You remember when we were young when we were on a trip with Paola Carrara, e
Paola Carrara the crevasses
he called them "Those holes where one falls

第 101 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
inside"?
And my mother used to say:
- And you remember when Lucius was small, and we explained that in
you never have to say you're thirsty, and he said, "I have

thirsty but not it

I say"?
And Frances said:
- Commo no!
- Lidia, do not tear off your pits! - my father thundered from time to time. -
Do not make sadness!
- A little with Frances, a little with Adele Rasetti, -

my mother said,
- the days pass!
But when Paola came to see her children, my mother
she immediately became restless and dissatisfied. He went behind the Paola step
for
step, he looked at her
as he pulled out his jars of skin creams.
My mother also had so many skin creams, the same; but you do not
he never remembered to put them.
- You have the skin all cracked, - he said the
Paola, - take care of it a bit
skin. You have to get a good nourishing cream every night.
My mother carried heavy and hairy underpants in the mountains; and Paola le
He is saying:
- You get dressed too much in Switzerland!
- That

melancholy these mountains! - Paola said. - I can not

suffer!
- All minerals! - he then said with me, remembering the game we used
do with Mario. - Adele Rasetti is just a mineral
pure. I with the
so mineral people are no longer good to be there!
He left again after a few days; and my father said to her: "Because you do not."
stop a little more? What donkey you are!
We went, in the fall, me and

my mother to find Mario, who was now

in a small village near Clermont-Ferrand. He was a tutor in a college.
He had made great friends with the director of the college and his wife.
He said that

they were extraordinary people, cultured, honest, as if they were

they find only in France.
In the college he had a small room with a coal stove. You could see,
from the windows, the covered countryside of
snow. Mario wrote long letters,
in Paris, in Chiaromonte and in Cafi. He translated Herodotus, and fumbled with
the
第 102 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
stove. He carried under his jacket a dark sweater with a turned neck, which
he had done it
director's wife. He had given her, for

thanksgiving, a work basket.

Everyone in the village knew him; he, with everyone, stopped to talk, and him
they brought in the houses to drink "the vin
blanc. "
My mother used to say: - How did she become French?
In the evening, he played cards with the director of the college and his wife.
He listened to their speeches, and reasoned with them about the teaching
systems.
They also talked for a long time about the soupe that had been served for dinner
if there was or
no enough onion.
- How he became patient! - said my mother. - As you have patience
with these here! With us not
he never had patience, he found us boring
when he was home. It seems to me that these are even more boring than us!
And he said: - He has patience, only because they are French!
At the end of winter, Leone
Ginzburg returned to Turin from the penitentiary
of Civitavecchia, where he had served his sentence. He had a thick coat
short, a hat frusto: the hat planted a little 'crooked on the black
hair.
He walked slowly, his hands in his pockets: and peered around
with black and penetrating eyes, lips tight, frowning, i
glasses rimmed with black turtle, planted a bit 'low on his
great
nose.
He went to stay, with his sister and his mother, in a lodging near to
France course. He was very vigilant: that is, he had to return as soon as he did
dark, and they were agents to check if
he was at home.
He spent his evenings with Pavese; They were friends for many years. Pavese was
recently returned from confinement; and he was, then, very melancholy, having
suffered a disappointment of love. He came from Leone
every evening; hung
at the rack his lilac-colored scarves, his palt? in martingale, e
he sat at the table. Leone was on the sofa, leaning on his elbow
wall.
Pavese explained that he was coming
there not for courage, because he of courage
he had none; and not even for a spirit of sacrifice. It came because if not
he would not have known how to spend his evenings; and he could not bear to pass
them
evenings in
第 103 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

solitude.
And he explained that he did not come to hear about politics, because, he, of
the
politics, "he did not care".
Sometimes he smoked his pipe, all evening, in silence. Sometimes, enveloping
hair
around his fingers, he told his story.
Leo, his ability to listen was immeasurable and infinite; is
he knew how to listen to the facts of others with deep attention, even when
was
deeply absorbed in thinking of himself.
Then Leo's sister came to bring tea. She and her mother had
taught Pavese to say in Russian: - I love tea with sugar and col
lemon.
TO
midnight, Pavese grabbed her scarf from her coat, if the
he was hurrying around his neck; and grabbed the coat. He was going down for
the course France, tall, pale, with the collar turned up, the
an unlit pipe between the teeth
white and robust, the long and quick step, the grumpy shoulder.
Leone was still a piece standing by the shelf, pulling out
a book and started to leaf through it, and there
he read as if by chance, long,
with frowned eyebrows. It was so, reading as if by chance, until
three.
Leone began working with an editor his friend. It was only him,
the publisher, a
storekeeper and a typist, who was called Miss
Cup. The editor was young, rosy, shy, and often blushed. Had
however, when he called the typist, a wild scream:
-
Coppaaa!
They tried to convince Pavese to work with them. Pavese recalcitrant.
It read:
- I do not care!
He said, "I do not need a salary. I do not have to keep
nobody. It's enough for me
a plate of soup, and tobacco.
He had a supply in a high school. He earned little, but he was enough.
Then he did translations from English. He had translated Moby Dick. he had
translated, he said, for his

pure pleasure; and they had paid it, but he would have it
even for nothing, in fact he would have paid himself to translate it.
He wrote poetry. His poems had a long, shuffling rhythm,
lazy,
第 104 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

a kind of bitter cantilena. The world of his poems was Turin,

the Po, the hills, the fog and the barrier taverns.
Eventually he persuaded himself, he also went to work with Leone in that
small house

publishing.
He became a meticulous, meticulous employee, grumbling against the
two others who came late in the morning and left maybe a
lunch at three. He preached a different time:
he came early, and he came
he went to the precise one: because at one o'clock, the sister with whom he
lived
put the soup on the table.
Leone and the publisher, from time to time, argued. They did not talk to each
other
day. Then they wrote long letters, and they were reconciled like that. Pavese,
he "did not care".
Leo, his real passion was politics. However he had, besides this
essential vocation, others
passionate vocations, poetry, philology and
history.
Having come to Italy as a child, he spoke Italian as Russian.
However, he always spoke Russian at home, with his sister and mother. Their
they went out little, and never saw anyone; and he told, in the most
particular minutes, of everything he had done and of every person he had
met.
He liked it before going to jail

attend living rooms. It was a

brilliant conversationalist, though he spoke with a slight stutter; and it was,
although always deeply absorbed in thinking and doing serious things,
yet willing to follow
people in the pet people in the most futile gossip; being
curious of the people, and endowed with a great memory, which also welcomed
the most futile things.
But when he returned from prison, they did not invite him again

living rooms, and indeed the

people escaped him: because he was now known in Turin as a dangerous man
conspirator. He did not care; it seemed, those lounges, to have them
totally forgotten.
We got married,

Leo and me; and we went to live in the street house

Pallamaglio.
My father, when my mother told him that he wanted to marry me,
had made the usual outburst, which he used to do on each occasion
our
marriage. This time he did not say he was ugly. He said:
- But he does not have a secure position!
第 105 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Leo in fact did not have a secure position; he had it rather than ever
uncertain. They could
arrest him and incarcerate him again; they could, with a
any excuse, send him to confinement. But if fascism ended, he said
my mother, Leo would become a great politician. Furthermore the
little publishing house where he worked, he was, though still so small and
poor, yet thriving with promising energies.
My mother said:
- They also print Salvatorelli's books!
The name of
Salvatorelli was, for my father and my mother, gifted with magic
powers. My father became, to that name, benevolent and meek.
I got married; and immediately after I married, my father
he said,
talking about me with strangers: 玬y daughter Ginzburg? Because he was
always ready to define the changes in situation, and used to give
immediately the surname of the husband to the women who married.
He had two
assistants, a man and a woman, who were called, he Olivo, and she Porta.
Olivo and the Porta then got married together. We continued however to
call them "Olivo e la Porta", and my father
every time he got angry: - It is not
plus the Door! say the Olive!
He had died in Spain, in combat, the son of Giua, that boy
pale, with bright eyes, that in Paris he was always with Mario. His
father, in prison in Civitavecchia, was in danger of becoming blind, for one
trachoma.
Signora Giua often came to visit my mother: they had met
in Paola Carrara's house, and they had done it
friendship. They decided to give themselves some
you; my mother, however, continued to call her, as before, "Signora Giua"; the
he said: "You, Signora Giua," because he had begun like this and succeeded
difficult to change.
There

Signora Giua used to come with her daughter, whose name was Lisetta e
he was about seven years younger than me.
Lisetta was identical to her brother Renzo, tall, thin, pale, straight, with
eyes lit, with hair
short and a tuft on the forehead. We went together
by bike; and he told me that he sometimes saw an old comrade of
school of his brother Renzo at the high school D'Azeglio, who came to visit her
and le
he lent Croce's books, and he was very intelligent.
That's how I heard about Balbo for the first time. He was a count, me
said Lisetta. He pointed it to me once in the street, on Corso Umberto,
small, with a red nose. Balbo was to become mine many years later
best friend: but I certainly did not know it then: and I looked at him without
第 106 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
no interest, that little count, that he lent to
Lisette the books of
Cross.
I saw sometimes pass, on the course King Umberto, a girl who me
she looked hateful and beautiful, with a face like carved in bronze, a
small aquiline nose that cut
the air, the half-closed eyes, the slow steps and
derogatory. I asked Lisetta if she knew who she was. - That, - Lisette told me,
- is one of D'Azeglio, which is good in the mountains and that gives a lot
importance. - IS

hateful, - I said, - hateful, and very beautiful -. The girl

odious, he lived in a side street of the course, on the ground floor; and I saw
her, a
in the summer, looking out the window, looking at me with my eyes
half-closed, her lips disdainful and disgusted, her brown hair cut to her
page around the goth bronzes, the bored and mysterious expression.
I said to Lisetta: "It's just a slap face!
For
many years, when I was far from Turin, I carried inside me
the image of that slap face; and when later they told me that the
"Slapped" was used by the publishing house, and that
he worked with
Pavese and with the publisher, I was amazed that a girl so superb and
contemptuous he had deigned to go down among people so humble and close to me.
Then I learned that she had been arrested, in a

group of conspirators; and I remained

even more amazed. But they still had to spend years before that
rincontrassimo; and before she became the "slap face", mine
dearest friend.
Lisette,

in addition to reading the books of Croce, he also read the novels of

Salgari. It was then on the fourteen years: that is, an age in which one comes
and goes
continuous, incessantly, between maturity and childhood. I, i

novels of
Salgari, I had read them and forgotten them: and Lisetta told them when,
put the bicycles on the grass, we sat down to rest in the countryside. in
his dreams and his speeches mingled

Indian maraj? arrows

poisoned, the fascists, and that little count named Balbo that Sunday
he came to see her and brought her the books of Croce; and I listened to it with
my ear
amused and distracted.
As for myself, I had not read anything about Croce, if
not the literature of New Italy: or rather I had read, in
第 107 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Literature of the New Italy, the novels of the novels and the citations. However
at the age of
Thirteen years old, I had written a letter to Croce, and I had it
sent some of my poems: and he had answered me with great kindness,
explaining politely that my poems were not too much
beautiful. Me
I was careful not to confess to Lisetta that I did not know the books of Croce,
because I did not want to disappoint her, given the esteem she gave me; and me
comforted the thought that if I did not have
Croce bed, Leone had it though
read everything from top to bottom.
Fascism did not seem to end early. In fact, he did not look like
never finish.
The Rosselli brothers were killed in Bagnole de l'Orne.
Turin, for years, was full of German Jews, who had fled from Germany.
Even my father had some, in his laboratory, as assistants.
They were gods without a country. Perhaps, soon, we would be
we also gods
without a homeland, forced to turn from one country to another, from a police
station
at the other, with no more work, no roots, no family, no houses.
Alberto asked me, after I had been married for some time:
-
Do you feel richer or poorer now that you're married?
"Wealthier," I said.
- Me too! and to think that we are so much poorer instead!

I bought the stuff to eat, and I found it all cost

little. I was
amazed, because I had always heard that prices were high. Only, a
before the end of the month, I found myself penniless, having
spent, by thirty cents, all
money I had.
I was happy now. when someone invited us to lunch. Though
they were people I did not like. I was happy to eat, one
once in a while, unforeseen and free foods,
and that I had neither thought nor
bought, nor watched cook.
I had a woman named Martina. I was very nice.
I thought, though:
"Who knows if it's good for cleaning? I wonder if it dusts
well?"
In my total inexperience, I could not understand if my house was
clean or not.
When I went to visit Paola or my mother, I saw, in their homes,
clothes hanging in the ironing room, for

第 108 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
be brushed and stained with the
petrol. Immediately I wondered worried: "I wonder if Martina, ours
clothes, brushes them, sometimes, and stains them? "In the kitchen there was yes
a brush, e

even a small bottle of gasoline, corked with a rag;

but that bottle was always full, I did not see that Martina was using it
never.
At times I wanted to tell Martina to do big cleaning at home:
such as
I used to see my mother's house, when Natalina, with a turban in it
head like a pirate, throwing away the furniture and lashing them with the carpet
beater.
But I never found the right time to
give orders to Martina; I was
timid with Martina, who was, on the other hand, very shy and mild.
I exchanged with her, meeting her in the corridor, long and affectionate
smiles. But I was referring to one
day to day to suggest them
great cleanings. I did not dare, on the other hand, give you any orders, as a
girl,
in my mother's house, I gave orders with indifference, I expressed to each one
instant the
my will. I remembered that when we were on holiday in
mountain, I was brought to my room, every morning, big buckets and
jugs of hot water, because there is no bath there, me

I was washing in
room in a kind of hip bath. My father was preaching that one should wash oneself
with cold water; but none of us, except my mother, used to
to wash with cold water, or rather everyone
we children hated water
cold, from the most distant childhood, in a spirit of contradiction. Now me
I was amazed at having been able to force the Natalina to heat the water on it
wood stove, and to make
the stairs with those big buckets. At Martina, not
I would have dared to order to bring even a glass of water. I had di
I discovered the fatigue and the work, and discovered one of them
laziness, which weakened my will and anchored, in my mind, the
people who surrounded me; so I did not dream around me that
absolute inertia; and at the Martina I was studying of
order, for lunch,
dishes that were prepared quickly and dirty a few pans. I had
also discovered the money: not that I had become stingy - I was
always, like my mother, with le
hands punctured - but I had identified,
behind things, the presence of money as a laborious and tortuous one
第 109 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
complication, which on the trace of thirty cents could bring who knows
where, a
unknown destination; and even from this I derived a sense of fatigue,
of laziness and languor. However, I did not miss it when I had some money
in hand, to spend it right away, repenting
immediately having spent it.
In my adolescence I had three friends. My friends were
calls, in the family, "the squinzia". "Squinzie" meant, in the
my mother's language,
smirky little girls dressed in frills. Those
My friends were not, it seemed to me, neither so ghastly, nor so much dressed
of frills: but my mother called them thus referring to the time of
my
childhood, and to some smelly and frills little girls that they used then
to play with me. - Where is Natalia? - It's from his squints! - it was said
always in the family. Those friends of mine, I had them
from high school years; is
I spent the days with them before getting married. They were poor. Indeed
perhaps
among the things that caught me in them, there was poverty, which I did not
I knew, but I loved and
I wanted to know. After married,
I continued to attend those three girls, but a little less, and leaving
spend days and days without looking for them, which they used
scold me, though

understanding that it was inevitable that it was so.

However, seeing them occasionally cheered me up and gave me back for a moment
my adolescence, which I felt running away from behind me.
All three of mine
friends, for various reasons, lived in the open
I disagree with the society. Society was configured, in their eyes, in life
easy, tidy, bourgeois, made of regular hours, of restorative care, of
do you study

systematic and controlled in the family. I, this easy life, before

I had married her, and I enjoyed her many privileges; but I did not love her,
and I aspired
to get out of it. I was looking for, with my friends, in the city, i
saddest places for
our conferences: the most desolate public gardens, the most squalid dairies, i
more filthy cinemas, more unadorned caf閟 and deserts; and we felt, al
bottom of those squalid

penombre or in those cold benches, as above

a ship that has broken the moorings and sail adrift.
Two of the squins were sisters, and they lived alone with an old father,

第 110 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
which was
He was very rich in the past and had gone to ruin, and he had
trafficking with lawyers for his cause. Always absorbed in writing long
memorials, and shuttling between Turin and Sassi and between Sassi and

Turin, having
still a small property in Sassi, cooking complicated Hebrew dishes
that the daughters did not like, this old father lived in the absolute
ignorance of what his people did
daughters, who, moreover, do not
they did nothing extraordinary, having created a code of life in which
the pathological authority, made up only of occasional and querulous screeching,
he did not have the least
weight. They were two tall, beautiful, brown and florid girls;
one was lazy and always lying on a bed, the other energetic and resolute; that
lazy, he treated his father with good-natured impatience; the other treated him
with
impatient severed and contemptuous.
The lazy one had long Arab eyes, black and soft curls and one
a tendency to fatness, and a great love for pendants and earrings;
and though
he claimed to execute his fatness did nothing for
fight it, and it was in its weight gladly and serene; is
he used to say of himself, with a smile that showed her white teeth,
big and
protruding on the lips: - Nigra sum, sed curves -. The other was thin and
she wanted to be even thinner, examining worriedly in the mirror
his legs that were as strong as columns;
because he had, in his thinness
conquered by willpower, robust sides and a solid and
overbearing skeleton. If he had an appointment with a guy who
he was a little bit at heart,
fasting for lunch, or eating only an apple, because
she made clothes herself and made them so tight, that she feared
they would rip if he ate a whole meal. He dedicated himself to those clothes
attention
meticulous and nervous, frowning front and mouth full of
pins, and wanted them to be as simple and sober as possible, hating in the
sister, in addition to the fat, also the tendency to dress with thirst
flashy.
The father used to leave on the kitchen table, every time he left, long
letters of querimonies, written in his pointed notary and calligraphy
leaning, or against the servant, "who had received
the boyfriend with grace
half of the disappeared popone that you met tonight, "or against the peasant
第 111 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
woman
of Sassi, who had left certain "small" rabbits to die carelessly
cute ", or against a neighbor
of the house, which had been offended by a blanket from them
borrowed and returned burnt, "he had scolded him and not
he had no words of protection at all. "
The girls were attending gods
German Jewish refugees, with whom
sometimes they shared those dark dishes that the father used to cook and
leave in the kitchen, in large and black pans. I sometimes met at home

them
students, who lived the day and did not know what would they do the following
month, if they could have left for the
Palestine or if they would have reached, in America, some cousin
unknown. The charm of that house is always open to everyone, with the strait and
dark corridor in which he would stop in his father's bicycle, with the living
room
encumbrance of sumptuous and worn furniture, of lightings
Hebrews and small apples
redheads owned by Sassi, lying on the ground on the worn carpets, was on me
deep and constant. Sometimes the old father met on the stairs or in the
corridor, always
absorbed in his trafficking of lawyers and tax papers, and
always busy carrying up and down stairs full of apples and
peppers: used to entertain us about his cause, in Piedmontese,

smoothing the
gray unkempt beard and drying under the hat the noble brow of
old prophet; while his daughters, impatient, told him to leave
in his room.
They usually came,

in that house, ghostly and service women

idiot, to whom, however, it was not allowed to cook because the father wanted
reign alone on the food; and since they were not allowed either
sweep the living room, because of the Jewish lights that could break, and on the
way
apples that could be stolen, it was not clear what they did.
On the other hand, each was fired after a few
week and replaced
from another, no less stupid and spooky.
The house was located in Via Governolo. It was destroyed in the war, and I went
to see her coming back after the war in Turin, and there was only one
pile of
ruins in the old courtyard, and the gutted stairs only remained
railing, where the old father climbed and descended with his bicycle and his
baskets. The old father was long dead,

第 112 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
during the war but before
German occupation. He was ill and had entered the hospital
He carried a chicken, which he hoped would let him cook.
He was dead alone, because the

daughters were, one in Africa where she had married, and

the other, the resolute one, in Rome, where he studied law.
My other friend was called Marisa, and lived in the reign of King Umberto
at the bottom, at a point where
the course formed like a grassy space,
the avenues ended and there were the tram stops. She was small and pretty, not
he made that smoking and grilling some nice caps, which he then wore with
much
grace on the red and curly head. Pull-overs was also made. -
He encouraged me a nice pull-ovev, - he said with his blended pronunciation, and
he had
great variety of these 玭ice pull-ovev?with high neck and
revolted, which he carried
under the camel coat. He had a rich childhood, staying in
climatic resorts and luxury hotels, and dancing, almost still a child,
in the bathing establishments.
Then his family had a breakdown
cheap. She kept a memory of that near but ancient life
together affectionate and ironic, totally devoid of bitterness or regret. Had
a

lazy, trusting and serene nature.

Marisa, in the German occupation, made the partisan and showed a
extraordinary courage, which would never have been suspected in the girl
lazy and fragile that had been
always. Then he became a party official
communist, and he voted his own life to the party, but remaining in the shadows,
because
she was devoid of all ambition and modest, humble and generous. He reasoned
only of party matters, he said "the pavement" with his pronunciation
blesa, and said it with the same accent of serene and confident expectation with
which
he would say: "He encouraged me a nice pull-ovev -. He never wanted to
get married, why ever
a man seemed to coincide with the ideal of a man she had and
kept over time, a man who could not describe, but whose
connotations were, in his imagination,
unmistakable.
Those three of my friends were Jewish. The campaign began in Italy
racial; but they were attending those foreign Jews
unconsciously prepared for an uncertain future.
On the other hand, they were enough
第 113 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
carefree to accept such a situation without a shadow of panic.
We went, them and me, still at the university; but, excluding the energetic one
and
resolute, we studied with

disorder and without commitment.

As for the old father of my two friends in Via Governolo,
at the beginning of the racial campaign he received a form, where it was written
玊o report honors and merits
special. " He answered this way:
"I was a member of the" rare name "club in 1911, and I dived
in the Po in the middle of winter.
玂n the occasion of certain works carried out in my house, the engineer Casella
he has me
appointed master builder ?
My mother was not jealous of those friends of mine, as she was always
jealous of Paola's friends. My mother, when I got married, not
he suffered, as he had
cried and suffered when Paola was
married. He had no relationship with me, my mother, but he had
instead a maternal and protective relationship; and he did not miss me
home, a little
because I, as he always used to say, "I did not give them to you 獻 did not give
you a string? and a
little because, having aged, she had now resigned herself to the void
they leave their children when they leave, and had defended and muffled his

life in
so as not to feel so much the shock of that detachment.
It seemed that the only optimists left in the world were Adriano and me
mother. Paola Carrara, all sulky in her living room, invited
still Salvatorelli, in the evening, waiting in vain for words of him
hope. But Salvatorelli appeared dark, everyone was getting darker and more
they were not words of hope, they circulated around them
a dark one
scare.
However, Adriano knew "from one of his informants" that fascism had
short life. My mother rejoiced listening to him, clapping his hands; bad
it was sometimes suspected that that
famous informer was, in fact, one
fortune teller. Adriano used to consult certain fortune tellers, he had one in
it
every city where he went; and he said that some were very good, and they had
guessed

things of the past, some even "read in thought".

Hadrian found, moreover, the fact that people were quite usual
玆ead in thought? he said of something his father knew,

第 114 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Yes
he asked how he had known it; "He read it in thought," he replied
with tranquility. My mother always welcomed Adriano with the most lively
joy, because he loved him, and why always

he was waiting for news from him

they fed his own optimism; Adriano, in fact, used to predict
for us all the highest and lucky destiny. Leo would become, he said,
a great one
government man. - How beautiful! - said my mother
reaching hands, and as if it had already happened. - Will become
Prime Minister! - And Mario? He asked. - Mario, what will it become?
-
Adriano on Mario had more modest projects. He did not feel great
sympathy for Mario, he said he had too much critical spirit, and he too
he found it had hurt to break away from the group of gods
Rosselli. And maybe
unconsciously he had the grudge of having used the factory, many
years ago, to immediately conspire, get arrested and flee. - And Gino? IS
Alberto? - he kept asking
my mother; and Adriano, with patience,
She predicted.
My mother in the fortune-tellers did not believe; he did however every morning,
while he was drinking coffee in his dressing gown in the dining room, many
solitaires.
He said: -

Let's see if Leone becomes a great man of government. -

Let's see if Alberto becomes a great doctor. - Let's see if anyone
gives a nice house -. Who should give her a nice cottage, it was not
well
clear; certainly not my father, who was increasingly worried about money
and again he seemed to have very few, now that there was the countryside
racial. - Let's see if fascism lasts for one
piece, "my mother said
shuffling the papers and shaking the gray hair, in the morning always soaked
of water, and pouring still coffee.
At the beginning of the racial campaign, the Lopez had left
for
Argentina. All the Jews we knew were leaving, or getting ready to
leave. Nicola's brother, Nicola, had emigrated to America with his wife.
They had an uncle there, Uncle Kahn; an old
uncle who never had
seen in the face, because he had left Russia boy. Leo and me sometimes
we also talked of going "to America, from Uncle Kahn". They had us
but raised to him and me, the

第 115 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
passport. He had lost his citizenship
Italian, had become stateless. - If we had the Nansen passport! - I
I always said, - if we had the Nansen passport! - It was a passport
special,

that granted to certain important stateless persons. He once me

he had mentioned. Having the Nansen passport seemed to me the most
beautiful in the world: yet at the end we would not have wanted, neither he nor
I,
leave Italy. He had had, when he still might be
it was possible to leave, the offer to work in Paris, in the group that had been
of Rosselli. He had refused. He did not want to
become an emigrant, a
exile.
But we thought of Paris's exiles as marvelous beings,
miraculous, and it seemed extraordinary that there someone could
meet them for
road, touch them, shake hands. I did not see Mario from
years, I did not know when I would see him again. He too was part of that
wonderful crowd. Then there were Garosci, Lussu, Chiaromonte, Cafi.
Salvo
Chiaromonte, whom I had known from Paola to the sea, I the others did not
I had never seen. - How is Garosci done? - I asked Leone. Paris was there,
not so far away, I thought going on
France course: I thought yes
found right at the bottom of Corso Francia, beyond the mountains, in that
veil of blue mists. And yet a b鄏atro separated us from Paris.
Equally unattainable and
miraculous seemed to us those who were in
prison: Bauer and Rossi, Vinciguerra, Vittorio. They seemed more and more
furthest; they seemed to sink into an ever darker distance, which
it looked like the distant one to the distance of the dead. Possible that in a
past yet
so close, Vittorio walked over King Umberto with his chin
prominent? Possible that we had done, with him

and with Mario, the game of the

vegetables and minerals?
My father, too, had lost his desk. He was invited to Liege, a
work in an institution. He left, and my mother accompanied him.
My mother stayed in the

Belgium a few months. But it was very sad, and

he wrote desperate letters. It always rained in Liege. - Malignazzo d'un
Liege! - said my mother. - Malignazzo Belgium! - Mario from Paris
he wrote that too
Baudelaire could not suffer Belgium. My mother does not
he loved Baudelaire a lot, his poet was Paul Verlaine: but immediately he took
第 116 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Baudelaire in great sympathy. My father, on the other hand, worked well in
Liege,
is
He had also made a pupil, a young man named Ch鑦remont.
- Except for Ch鑦remont and the landlady, the Belgians do not like me, -
my mother said on her return to Italy.
So resumed the
usual life. He came to see me, he went to see
Miranda and Paola Carrara, and went to the cinema. Paola, mine
sister, he had taken a flat in Paris, and wintered there.
- Now that it's not there
Beppino and I'm alone, I'll do business, "he declared every
moment my mother, feeling poor. - I'll eat a little. A soup,
a chop, a fruit.
He recited this menu every day. I believe that
she liked to say "un
fruit ", because it derived a sense of frugality. Regarding fruit,
he always used to buy certain apples called, in Turin, "carpandue".
He said "I'm carpandue!" As he said
of a shirt "is from Neuberg!" and of
a palt?: 玦t is of Mr. Belom!?When it happened that my father is
he complained of the apples that came to the table, finding them bad, mine
mother said in amazement: -
Bad? I'm carpandue!
"I wonder why I like spending so much," my mother sometimes sighed.
In fact he could not keep up with the economy regime he had prescribed.
In the morning, in the hall from
lunch, he dealt with Natalina, after i
solitaires; and Natalina and my mother quarreled, because they were also at
Natalina
she liked to spend, her hands were punctured. La Natalina, making from
eat, ne
he did, my mother said, even for the poor of the
parish.
- Yesterday you made a meat dish, which was also for the poor of the
parish! He said. - If I do little he scolds me, if I do
plus him me
he yelled, yesterday he had told me that Tersilla was coming too, "he said
Natalina moving her big lips and gesticulating excitedly. - Stay still!
do not shake hands! You have a dirty apron,
why do not you change, with many
aprons that I bought you, that you also have for the poor of the parish.
"Oh poor Lydia," my mother sighed, turning the papers over
pouring still coffee. -
You made me a coffee that is a sbroscia, not
第 117 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
could you make it stronger? - It's the machine that's not good. If he me
buy another machine, I told you a hundred thousand times, this has i
holes
too big, it goes down too early, but you have to pass
slowly, coffee is delicate.
"How I wish I could be a boy king," my mother would say with a sigh
and a smile, because the things that
the more seduced they were in the world
power and childhood, but he loved them combined together, so that the latter
mitigated the former with its grace, and the former enriched the second of
autonomy e
of prestige. - But look what a bad "vegia" I am
become! He said, putting on his hat in front of the mirror, hat
that he put simply because he bought it and it cost a lot,
but
that would have risen on the first street corner. - To think I liked it
be so young! Today I seem to be forty years old! - he was saying to the
Natalina on the door. - He has other than that
forty, he is almost sixty
because he's got more than me, "said Natalina, waving her broom
menacingly, because he used to speak always excitedly, and with
menacing expression. -
With that handkerchief, "my mother told her,"
you do not look like Louis Eleventh. You look like Marat -. And he left the
house.
He passed by Miranda. Miranda went around the house, tired, bloodless, with the
blond hair
sloping on the cheeks; and seemed to have escaped from one
shipwreck.
- But wash your face with fresh water! But come for a walk! He told her
my mother.
Fresh water was a safe remedy for my mother
against laziness,
melancholy and bad moods. She washed her face "with water
fresh 籹everal times a day.
- I spend little. Me and Natalina, sunny, we spend little. A broth, one
chop,
a fruit, "my mother said. - Just imagine if you spend a little! a
spend as you are! - said Miranda. And he said: - For today I have
bought a chicken. I find the chicken convenient -. Miranda
he said "the
chicken 粀ith a particular intonation, a drawn and nasal cantilena,
that he had when he opposed the habits of his house to those of our house,
and when he tried in our compare a sense of superiority. - Beyond it
being alone as you are, besides it is having Alberto who is never satisfied, -
第 118 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Miranda continued, always saying "over" for "other", when she wanted to
to compare
two different situations.
My father stayed in Belgium for two years. They happened in those two years,
much things.
My mother went to see him from time to time; but apart from the fact
that Belgium put them on
melancholy, he was also always fearful that i
international events "cut it off" from Italy and from me. My
Mother felt a sense of protection for me, which she did not feel for others
his
children, perhaps because I was, of his children, the younger; and when i was
born
my children, extended to them the same sense of protection. Moreover
it always seemed to me that I was in danger,
because Leo, from time to time
so much, they arrested him. They arrested him, for precautionary reasons, every
time
that some political authority came to Turin, or the king. They held him in
prison for three or four
days, then they released it, just that authority
off again; and Leone returned home, with black beard cheeks and a bundle
of linen under the arm. - Malignazzo king! stay a little bit at home
her!
- said my mother. The king usually made her smile, and she was not
unpleasant; she liked her legs so short and crooked, and that she was
so annoying. But the unavoidable that
they arrested Leone every time, "for
fault of that sempione ? As for Queen Elena, she could not suffer. -
A beautiful one! - said: derogatory term for her. - A paisana! a
stupid!
My two
first children were born, one year apart from each other,
in the time that my father was in Belgium. My mother, with Natalina, left
his house and came to stay with me.
- I'm back in the street
Pallamaglio! - said my mother. - But now me
the Pallamaglio way seems a little less ugly, maybe because I do the
comparison with Belgium! Liege is worse than the Pallamaglio street!
My two children
they liked a lot: - I like both and not
I would know which one to choose, - she said, as if she were to choose one. -
Today
he is gorgeous! - he said, and I asked: - Which one? - Which? mine! -
he said
第 119 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

my mother, and I still did not understand who she was talking about, why
he moved his predilection from one to the other
children. As for Natalina, she used to say "she" talking about each one

of
children, because they were both males; he said: - You do not have to
wake him up, it remains strange if they wake him up, she then touches him for
two hours
because it remains strange.
Since I got tired with
those two little children, and Natalina was
too careless and excited to deal with it, my mother advised me to
take a dry nurse. She wrote herself in Tuscany to some of her old ones
nurses,
with whom he had maintained relationships; and the nurse arrived, but just
in the days that the Germans had invaded Belgium, for which we were all
distressed and little inclined to listen to a nurse, with his
needs of
embroidered aprons and bell-shaped skirts. However my mother, although in
anxiety for my father of which he had no news, he found a way to buy
aprons and also to rejoice at seeing
the great Tuscan nurse with the
wide and rustling skirt wandering around the house. But I felt, with that
a nurse, deeply uncomfortable, and regretting the ancient Martina, that was
returned to her country

in Liguria, because with Natalina it did not go

agree. I felt uncomfortable because I always had that nanny
fear of losing it, fear of judging us, us with our modest ones
habits,
unworthy of her. And also that big nurse with those aprons
all embroidered and puffed sleeves, reminded me of the precariousness of mine
situation and reminded me that I was poor, and that I would not
could without the
my mother's help to keep a nurse; and I seemed to be, in the
Devourers, Nancy, when she looks at her child from the window
walk by hand to the sumptuous nurse on the avenue,
and he knows that they have
lost all their money to the casino.
We were, at the time of the invasion of Belgium, scared but
still confident that the German advance would stop; and the evening
we listened
French radio, always hoping for some reassuring news. There
our anguish grew as the Germans advanced. They came from
we, in the evening, Pavese and Rognetta, a

第 120 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
our friend who at that time
we often saw. Rognetta was a tall, colorful boy in the face, who
he spoke with the r. He took care of I do not know what industry, and he
traveled a lot
between Turin and

Rumania; and us who made a closed and sedentary life,

we admired in him the air he had of always being on the verge of climbing into
train, or to be dropped at that moment; and he, perhaps aware of the
our
admiration, accentuated that air with us, played a little to do the
big businessman and the big traveler. Rognetta collected, he was a tall,
colorful boy in the face, who
he spoke with the r. He took care of I do not know what industry, and he
traveled a lot
between Turin and
Rumania; and us who made a closed and sedentary life,
we admired in him the air he had of always being on the verge of climbing into
train, or to be dropped at that moment; and he, perhaps aware of the
our
admiration, accentuated that air with us, played a little to do the
big businessman and the big traveler. Rognetta collected, in the
his travels, news. Until the invasion of Belgium, le
his news had been
always of an optimistic nature; after the invasion they became tinged with
pessimism
ink color.
Rognetta said that Germany would soon invade not only the
France and
certainly also Italy, but the whole world, for which it would not be
remained in the world a palm of earth to survive. He asked me, first
to leave, as my children were, and I said that

they were fine, and

so once my mother told him: - But what does it matter if they are okay
Is Hitler coming soon and killing us all? - Rognetta was always a lot
task and used, when leaving,

kiss my mother's hand. That evening

kissing her hand he told her that, however, one could always go, perhaps, to
Madagascar. - Why exactly in Madagascar? - asked my mother.
Rognetta

he replied that he would explain it to her again, he did not have it now
time, he had to take the train. And my mother, who fed him great
trust and then in that period, in his anxiety,

he drank every word that

the others said, that evening and all day after he kept repeating: -
But who knows why in Madagascar!

第 121 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Rognetta never had time to explain why. Not
I would have seen that again
many years later; and Leone, I think he never saw him again. Mussolini
declared war, as we had been waiting for several days. The same night the nurse
he left, and I looked at it with greatness
relief disappearing at the bottom of the stairs
wide back, no longer the safety costume and dressed in black gingham.
Pavese came to visit us. We greeted him with the idea that for a piece he did
not
we would

revised. Pavese hated the goodbyes and saluted as he went out

always, holding out just two fingers of his grumpy hand.
Pavese, that spring, used to come to us eating cherries.
He loved the first cherries, the still small and watery ones, which they had
he said, "taste of heaven". We saw it from the window appear at the bottom
to the road, high, with its rapid step; eating
cherries and hurled i
n?ccioli against the walls with a sharp and lightning shot. The defeat of the
France, for me, remained forever tied to those cherries, which
coming he made us taste, drawing them
one by one with your hand
parsimonious and grumpy.
The war, we thought it would immediately overturn and
everyone's life turned upside down. Instead for many years people remained
undisturbed
in his house, continuing to do what he had always done. When
now everyone thought that after all he had done little and did not
they would have been upheavals of sorts,
no houses destroyed, no escapes or
persecutions, suddenly they exploded bombs and mines everywhere and houses
they collapsed, and the streets were full of ruins, soldiers and refugees. IS
there was not one that could be
pretend nothing, close your eyes and
plug your ears and drive your head under the pillow, it was not there. In Italy
so was the war.
Mario returned to Italy in 1945. He was, perhaps, moved and melancholy,
but
he did not let him see; and handed my mother a hugging jaw
ironic, the forehead tanned and furrowed with ironic wrinkles. It was all now
bald, with the naked and shiny skull and as of
bronze, and dressed a tunic
linda and lisa of a gray silk that looked like lining, as seen in the movies
on some Chinese shopkeepers.
He now had a wrinkled, serious face when he approved
people and things
第 122 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
that seemed serious to him, or when he showed appreciation for new ones
novelists or new poets. He said of a novel: - It's good! it's not bad,
it's quite good! - (He always spoke
as if it translated from the French).
He had abandoned Herodotus, the Greek classics: at least, he no longer spoke of
them.
The new novels he appreciated were, in general, French novels on the
resistance. But
he seemed more cautious, in his appreciations: o
at least he was more cautious in his sympathies, not as once subject to
sudden infatuations. But he had not become more cautious in the
deprecate e
in condemning, and showing the ancient, uncontrolled violence in hatred.
He did not like Italy. Almost everything in Italy seemed ridiculous, fatuous,
badly conceived and badly constructed. - The school
in Italy it's worth it! In France it is
best! In France it is not perfect, but it is better though! We know, here there
are too many
priests. It's all in the hands of the priests!
- How many priests! - he said every time he went out. - How many priests
you have in
Italy! We in France, we can do miles without meeting a priest! My mother told
him a story that had happened to one of her children
friend, many years before, even before the

war and even before the

racial campaign. This child was a Jew, and his parents had put it
at public school; they had however asked the teacher to exempt them from
religion lessons. A
his teacher was not there in the classroom and was there
instead a substitute, who had not been warned and when it was time to
religion, he marveled to see that child take the folder and
prepare to go out. - Why are you leaving? - churches. "I'm leaving," he said
the child, - because I always go home when it's time for religion. -
And why? Asked the deputy. - Why me, -

answered that child, -

I do not love the Madonna. - You do not love the Madonna! - he shouted
the teacher was scandalized. - Did you hear any children? He does not like to
Madonna!
- You do not love to
Madonna! you do not love the Madonna! He shouted
now the whole class. The parents had found themselves forced to raise the child
from
that school.
Mario enjoyed this story immensely. It did not end
more than
第 123 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
to be delighted, and asked if it was really true. - Unheard! - he said, beating
himself
the hand on the knee. - An unheard-of thing!
My mother was happy that her story had pleased him so much; but

then
he got tired of hearing him repeat that in France, teachers did not exist like
that
they could not even think. She was sick of hearing him say, "From us, in
France ? and also stubborn to hear him speak
against priests. - Always better
a government of priests that fascism, - said my mother. - It's the same! Not
you understand it's the same! The same thing!
In the war years we had not seen it again,
Mario had married.
The news of his marriage came to my parents just before the end
Of the war; he had married, told someone, with the painter's daughter
Amedeo Modigliani. My father,
for the first time at the news of the
marriage of one of us, remained calm: which seemed to us and mine
mother, very strange, inexplicable, and that remained forever without
explanation. But maybe mine
Father had been so scared for Mario, in
those years, thinking it or prisoner of the Germans, or dead, that now the fact
that he was only married, it seemed to him a minor accident.
My

mother was all happy, and he was almanaccava about that marriage, and up
that Jeanne, whom she had never seen, but of which they had told her that
it looked like a painting by Modigliani, combed like a son
comb the women
in those paintings. My father only observed that Modigliani's paintings were
a horror: - Sgarabazzi! sbrodeghezzi! - and he did not say anything else. But it
seemed
look at that marriage with

vague approval.
After the war, a letter arrived from Mario, a few laconic lines.
He said he had married for reasons connected with his residence in
France, and had already divorced. - Sin!
- said my mother. - How me
Sorry! "My father said nothing.
When they saw him, Mario of his marriage and his divorce
he did not seem willing to talk. He let it be understood that

it was all obvious

departing, marriage and divorce, and had the air of wanting to affirm that
were, marriages and divorces, the simplest and most natural thing of the
world. On the other hand it did not seem
第 124 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

willing to talk about anything that was

happened in those years. If he had had privations or scares, disappointments or
mortifications, he did not say it. But they sometimes appeared on his hardened
face
furrows
melancholy, when he was at rest, with his hands together and close between them
knees in an attitude that had always been the custom, the bronze
skull resting on the back of the chair, lips
curved in a fold
disappointed, a kind of bitter and mild smile.
- Do not you go to see Sion Segre? My father asked him. Evening
Imagined that he immediately ran in search of Sion Segre, his companion
in the ancient adventure. - I am not going. We would not know what to say to
each other, -
Mario said.
He did not even want to visit his brothers in the various cities, though not
he had seen them for many years. He said, like
he had said of Sion Segre: - By now
we would not know what to say to each other!
However, he seemed pleased to see Alberto, who had returned, after the
war, in Turin. Now he did not despise him anymore. - It must be one
good
doctor! - He said. - It's not bad, as a doctor it must be enough
good!
He asked him for some information about Cafi's disease,
describing the symptoms and reporting the opinions of the

doctors who
They cared. Cafi lived in Bordeaux, and now he could no longer leave the bed,
he had lost all strength and almost did not speak anymore.
As Mario had lived in those years, we knew how to

bit by bit, a
tears, from laconic and impatient phrases that he threw out from time to time,
puffing and shrugging, almost annoyed that we did not know anything.
During the German advance, he was a

Paris, having left that

college in the countryside where he taught; and he had come back to life, with
the cat,
in his attic. From day to day the Germans advanced, and Mario said
to Cafi that was necessary
leave Paris; but Cafi had a sick foot, and not
he wanted to move. Chiaromonte, his wife died at the hospital right in
those days, and he decided to go to America. He embarked in Marseilles,
on the last civil ship that still sailed.
Mario finally persuaded Cafi to come away. They left Paris on foot,
when the Germans were by now a kilometer, and it was no longer possible
find a
第 125 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

means of transport. Cafi limped and leaned on Mario, e

they proceeded with exasperating slowness. Occasionally Cafi sat down at
rest on the side of the road, and Mario was re-wearing the bandage.

Then
they started walking again and Cafi dragged his foot into the dust
painful, slipped of a slipper and a calzerotto darned with thread
red.
They ended up in a village near Bordeaux.
Mario was interned in
a camp of foreign refugees. Left free, he entered the maquis. At the end
of the war was in Marseilles, and was part of the purge Council.
Chiaromonte left America and
he returned to Paris, and they were, with Mario and Cafi,
always friends. Mario did not even think about returning to settle in Italy.
On the contrary, he had applied for French citizenship.
He was a consultant
economic of an industrialist, a Frenchman, and had come
in Italy in the car with this Frenchman, and took him around to see the
museums and factories, but the Frenchman was he who drove
the car,
because Mario still did not know how to drive. My father and mother yes
they asked uneasily if that job had any character of stability
or if it was temporary and precarious.
-

I'm afraid he ended up doing a little mess! - said mine

mother. - Sin! he who is so smart! - But who is that French? -
my father said. "It seems to me to have an equivocal air!"
Mario yes
he stopped in Italy no more than a week; then he left again with the Frenchman,
and we did not see him for a long time.
The small publishing house of the past had become large and important. You
he worked a lot now

people. He had a new office, under King Umberto, the

ancient seat having collapsed in a bombing. Pavese now had one
room alone, and on his door there was a small card with writing
"Direction
editorial". Pavese stood at the table, with a pipe, and reviewed drafts with the
rapidity of lightning. He read the Iliad in Greek, in the idle hours,
chanting the verses aloud with sad chanting.
Or he wrote,
erasing his novels quickly and violently. He had become one
famous writer.
In the room next to his, there was the publisher, handsome, rosy, with a long
neck,
第 126 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
hair
slightly graying on temples like turtledove wings. He had now
many bells on the table, and telephones, and no longer screamed: - Coppaaa! - Of
the
the Miss Cup rest was gone. There was no longer the ancient
warehouse worker.
Now when he wanted to call someone, the publisher pressed a button and
he spoke in the internal telephone, downstairs, where there were many
typists and many storekeepers. From time to time
a lot, the publisher took to
walk back and forth in the corridor, with your hands behind your back, the
head a little 'recline on the shoulder, looked at the rooms of employees and
he said something with the
his nasal voice. The publisher was no longer shy, either
better, her shyness only stirred at times when she had to
talks with strangers, and no longer seemed shy, but a cold e
silent
mystery. So his shyness intimidated strangers, who
they felt enveloped in a blue, luminous and glacial look, that was there
he investigated and weighed them across the large glass table, at one
glacial e
bright distance. That shyness had thus become a great one
working tool. That shyness had become a force, against the
which strangers came to slam like butterflies

they slammed dazzle on

a light, and if they had come there assured of themselves with baggage of
proposals and projects,
then they found themselves at the end of the interview, strangely exhausted and
baffled, with doubt
unpleasant to be perhaps a little stupid and naive, and
of having fined projects without any foundation, in the presence of one
cold investigation that had scrutinized and silenced them.
Pavese

he rarely agreed to receive strangers. He said: - I'm busy!

I do not want anyone! S'impicchino! I do not care!
Instead the new employees, young people, were in favor of the talks with the
strangers.
They could, strangers, bring ideas.
Pavese said: - No need for ideas here! We also have too many
of ideas!
The internal telephone was ringing on his table, and he said in the receiver
note item
nasal:
- Below is the guy. Receive it. There is a case that he has some proposal.
第 127 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Pavese said: - What need is there for proposals? We are full of proposals
up to the neck! I do not care about the proposals! Not
I want ideas!
"Turn it over to Balbo," The voice said.
Balbo, he listened to everyone. He never refused a new meeting. Balbo
he had no defense against proposals and ideas. All proposals and all
ideas he liked, they solicited him, put him in turmoil, and he came to
expose them to Pavese. He came there, baby, with his red nose, serious as he was
he became serious when he had a proposal to expose,
when he believed
of having set eyes on a new human case, as amazed as ever
amazed in front of every new human form that was outlined on his
horizon, always willing to see
intelligence everywhere, to see it
sweeping in every corner where his small, heavenly, sharp eyes had settled
and naive, naive and profound. Balbo spoke, spoke, and Pavese smoked
the pipe, e
his hair curled around his finger.
Pavese said: - It seems to me a stupid proposal! Defend yourself from idiots!
And Balbo replied that, yes, it was in fact partly a stupid proposal but
it was however also
together not so stupid, and had a good little pig,
vital, fruitful, Balbo spoke and spoke because he always spoke, he did not keep
silent
never. When he had finished talking to Pavese he went into the room
publisher and also talked with him, small, serious, with little red nose, and
the publisher was rocking in his chair, darting at times on him
clear and cold look, scribbled on one
sheet geometric signs, the
cigarette turned off between the lips, legs crossed.
Balbo never corrected his drafts. He said: - I'm not capable of
proof-read! I go too slowly. It is not the fault
my!
He never read a complete book. He read a few sentences here and there, and
she immediately got up to go and talk to someone about it, because nothing was
enough
to urge it, to make it ferment, to put in
motion his thought that
immediately he ran, and he was there until nine in the evening, talking to him
tables, because he had no schedules, he never remembered to go for lunch.
As long as the tables were done
empty, the desert office; then he looked
the clock winced, put on his coat and put on his green hat,
well trodden on the forehead. He went down the Corso King Umberto, small,
straight ahead,
with his briefcase under his arm, and he stopped to look at them
第 128 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
motorcycles and scooters in the parking lots, because he had great curiosity of
all cars, and a tenderness for motorcycles
special.
Pavese said of him: - But because he must always speak while others
they work?
And the publisher said: - Leave him in peace!
The publisher had hung a wallet in his room on the wall
Leone, with his head a little bowed, his glasses low on his nose, the bushy
black hair, the deep dimple in the cheek, the feminine hand.
Leone had died in prison, in the German prison arm

of Regina
Coeli, in Rome during the German occupation, a cold February.
I had never seen them all together again, Leone and the publisher and Pavese,
after that spring the Germans took the
France, if not one
once alone, we had come Leo and I from the confinement, where they had it
sent immediately after Italy had entered the war. We had come from
I confine myself with a permit of a few
days, and then we had often been to
dinner together, we, Pavese and the publisher, with others who were starting to
become important in the publishing house, other people coming from Milan and
from
Rome, with
projects and ideas. Not Balbo, because then Balbo was at war,
on the Albanian front.
Pavese almost never spoke of Leo. He did not like talking about the absent,
and of the dead. He said it. He said: - When one
he goes away, or dies, me
I try not to think about it, because I do not like to suffer.
However, perhaps, sometimes, he suffered from having lost it. It had been his
best friend. Perhaps he counted that loss among them
things that
rending. And certainly he was incapable of 'sparing himself in suffering,
falling
in the most bitter and cruel suffering, every time he fell in love.
Love caught him like a travail of
temperature. It lasted a year, two
years; and then he was healed, but stralunato and exhausted, as those who get up
later
a serious illness.
That spring, the last spring that Leone had worked on
permanently in the publishing house, when the Germans took France, and
in Italy the war was expected, that spring seemed more and more
away. Even the war, little by little, was done
away. There had been
for a long time, in the publishing house, brick stoves, when the
第 129 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
heating did not work because of the war; then they were adjusted
radiators boilers, but those
stoves, for a long time,
They remained. Then the publisher had them taken away. There were all the rooms
in the rooms
manuscripts piled up in disorder, as there are not enough shelves;
finally they were made
Swedish shelves, with interchangeable boards, which
they came up to the ceiling. In the corridor, at the bottom, a wall was painted
black, and prints and reproductions were hung from it reproductions of
paintings. Then the thumbtacks were thrown away, and they hung up in
shiny frames, real paintings.
My father, he was in Belgium during the German invasion. He remained at
Liege to the last, to work
in his institute, incredulous that i arrived
Germans so early, because he remembered the other war, when the Germans
they had stood still at the gates of Liege for fifteen days. Now however i
German
they were about to enter the city; and finally he decided to close
the institute now deserted and to leave, and went to Ostend, a little to
feet, a little with makeshift means, in the crowd invading them
streets. TO
Ostend, was picked up by a Red Cross ambulance, where it was
someone who had recognized him. They made him wear a gown; and he went,
with that ambulance, up to

Boulogne. Here the ambulance was made

prisoner by the Germans. My father went to introduce himself to the Germans,
said the
his name. Those Germans did not pay attention to his name, which was
unmistakably

a Jewish name, and asked him what he meant to do. He

he replied that he intended to return to Liege. They brought him back there.
A year remained in Liege. He was alone, since no one was there
Institute,

that year, not even his pupil and friend Ch鑦remont. He was
then advised to return to Italy, and so he returned to Italy, from my mother, to
Turin.
They remained, he and my mother, in Turin, until i

bombings
they damaged the house. In Turin, in the bombings, he never wanted to
go down to the cellar. My mother had to conjure it up every time
go down, and tell him that if he does not
it descended, it would not have come down
she. - Sempiezzi! - he said in the stairs. - So if the house collapses, it
collapses
第 130 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
even the cellar, of course! There is no security in the cellar! It's a
sempiezzo!
Then
they evacuated to Ivrea. The armistice came; and my mother was in,
those days, in Florence, and he sent them to say not to move. He remained at
Ivrea, in the house of an aunt of the Piera, displaced elsewhere.
They came to tell him to
to hide, because the Germans were looking for and taking the Jews. Yes
he hid in the country, in an empty house that friends had given him, and
he had finally consented to be

make a false identity card, in which

his name was Giuseppe Lovisatto. When he went to visit acquaintances,
and the woman who opened the door asked him who he had to announce, him
he said however the
his real name, he said: - Levi. No, go, that is, Lovisatto -.
Then they warned him that he had been recognized, and he went to Florence.
They stayed in Florence, my father and my mother, until the
North. In Florence there was little to eat; and my mother would say at the end
of lunch, giving my children an apple for one:
- To the little ones an apple, to the big ones the devil that peel them -. And
he told
della Grassi that in the other war, every evening, took a nut and the
divided into four: - A walnut Lidia! - and he gave each a clove,
to his four sons, Erika, Dina, Clara and Franz.
My mother,

when Leo and I lived in Abruzzo, in the confinement, the

He really liked coming to see us. He also went to see Alberto, who was
not far away, in Rocca di Mezzo; and compared one country with another, e
The daughter of Jorio declaimed, which came to her mind in those places.
With us, as we had no place in the house, he slept at the hotel: the only one
country hotel, few rooms grouped around one

kitchen, with a
a pergola, a vegetable garden, and a terrace; and behind the fields and hills,
low,
bare, beaten by the wind. The owners of the hotel, mother and daughter,
they had become our friends; and U.S
we used to spend the days, there was o
no my mother, in that kitchen and on that terrace. It was commented, in
that kitchen in the winter evenings, and on the summer terrace, the whole
country e
internees,
who had come, with the war, like us, to mingle with life
of the country by dividing its fortunes and problems. My mother, like us, had
learned the nicknames they used to give in the country
to the alternates and to the
villagers. There were many interns, and there were many rich and very poor
第 131 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
people: and i
rich eat better, buy flour and bread at the black bag, but
apart from eating, they did it
same life of the poor, sitting sometimes in the
kitchen or on the hotel terrace, sometimes in the workshop of Ciancaglini,
that he was a merchant.
There were the Amodaj, rich merchants of Belgrade socks;
a
a shoemaker from Fiume, a priest from Zara, a dentist; and two Jewish brothers
Germans, one dance teacher and the other philatelist, called Bernardo e
Villi; and then there was a crazy old Dutchwoman, who in
country called
Leggs, because he had thin ankles; and still many others.
Stinchi Leggeri had published, in the years before the war,
volumes of poems in praise of Mussolini.
- I have
written verses for Mussolini! What a mistake! He said to my mother
meeting her on the road, and raising her long, shod hands shods of
white musketeer gloves, which he had received as a present I do not know
that association for Jewish refugees. The whole day Light Shins
he walked the road back and forth, walking hallucinated and stopping
to talk to people, to whom
he said, raising his hands to the sky
gloved, his misfortunes. All the interns walked so far and forward
back, they did and did the same route a hundred times a day,

because he was
forbidden to enter the countryside.
- Do you remember the Stinchi Leggeri? what's the end of it? - he told me
mother many years later.
When my mother came to Abruzzo to visit us, she always wore

with him
a tub, because there were no baths and his constant concern was
to be able to do some kind of bath in the morning. He had brought one
to us too, and made me wash the children more

times in the day, why

my father in every letter he wrote recommended to wash them a lot,
being a primitive country without hygienic standards; and a woman who
then we had

he said, looking disgusted, when he saw that we were washing

children:
- They are clean as gold. They are always there to wash them.
This woman, big, dressed in black and now in her fifties, had
still alive
his father and his mother, and he called them "that old man" and "that
old". In the evening, before leaving, he would gather in a bundle of cartons
第 132 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
sugar and coffee, and put a bottle under his arm
of wine: -
Allow? I bring something to the old one! I bring some wine to that
old man, who likes wine!
Alberto, they moved him to a place of confinement further north. Was
considered, the
transfer to the North, a good thing; who was transferred
in the North, in all likelihood it would soon be vacated.
We also did, from time to time, some requests to be
transferred
North; but we would have left the Abruzzo with regret, as they had it
Miranda and Alberto were left with regret, and they found theirs stupid
new confinement in the Canavese area. Anyway,
our requests for one
transfer fell unheard.
My father also came to visit us sometimes. That country, he found it
dirty. He reminded him of India.
- It's like India! He said. - The dirt that
there was no one in India
to imagine! The dirt I saw in Calcutta! in Bombay!
And he was all happy to talk about India. He lit up, naming
Calcutta, of a lively pleasure.
When the was born
my daughter Alessandra, my mother stayed with me for a long time
we. She did not want to leave. It was the summer of '43. It was hoped for in an
end
next of the war. It was a peaceful time, and it was the last few months
that
we passed together, Leo and me. My mother finally left and I went to
accompany her to Aquila, and while we waited for the bus on the square, me
I had the feeling of preparing myself for a long time
detachment. I had indeed the
confused feeling of never having to see her again.

Then came July 25, and Leo left the confinement and went to Rome. I stayed
still there. There was a lawn there, which my mother
he called "the dead horse",
because we found a horse dead one morning. I used to go up
that meadow every day, with the children. I missed Leo, and of
my mother; and that
lawn, where I had been so often with them, put me one
great melancholy. I had the full soul of the saddest forebodings.
Along the dusty road, among the hills burned by the summer sun,
it passed and
Stinchi Leggeri went on, with his crooked and quick step, with his hat
第 133 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
straw; and the brothers Bernardo and Villi, dressed in long shorts to martingale
given away by that Jewish association, e
which also carried in full
summer, having broken clothes. Except for Leo, the interns remained there,
because
they did not know where to go.
Then came the armistice, the brief exultation and the delirium
armistice; is
then, two days later, the Germans. German trucks ran along the road
hills and the country were full of soldiers. There were soldiers in the hotel,
on the
terrace, under the pergola and in
kitchen. The country was petrified with fear.
I always took the children to the grass of the dead horse, and when they passed
by
the airplanes threw us into the grass. I always met on the road
others
interned, and we looked at each other in silence, asking ourselves
where to go and what to do.
I received a letter from my mother. She was also scared and did not know
how to help me. I thought
then for the first time in my life that was not there
For me, protection was possible, that I had to untangle it myself. I understood
that
there was always in me, in my affection for my mother, the feeling

that
she would, in misfortune, protect me and defend me. But now it remained in me
the affection only, and every request and expectation of protection was from
that affection
disappeared, and indeed I thought maybe I would
due to me in the future
protect it and defend it, because it was now, my mother, very old,
dejected and helpless.I left the country the first of November. I had a letter
from Leo,
bring me to

hand from a person who came from Rome, in which he told me to

leave the country immediately, because there it was difficult to hide and i
Germans would have identified us and taken away. They were hidden
now, here and now
there in the countryside or in the nearest cities, also the other internees.
The people of the village came to my aid. They concerted each other and me
they all helped. The owner of the hotel, who had

Germans encamped
in the few rooms and sitting in the kitchen around the fire, where so many times
we had been sitting quietly, told those soldiers that I was one
displaced by Naples, his relative,
第 134 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

that I had lost my cards in the

bombings and that I had to reach Rome. German trucks
they went to Rome every day. So I went up one of those trucks one
morning, and people came to
kissing my children who had seen growing up,
and we said goodbye.
When I arrived in Rome, I took a breath and thought it would start for us
a happy time. I did not have many elements to believe it, but
I believed it.
We had accommodation near Piazza Bologna. Leone ran a
clandestine newspaper and was always out of the house. They arrested him, twenty
days after our arrival; and I did not see him again
never again.
I found myself with my mother in Florence. He always had a misfortune in his
misfortunes
cold; and grew in his shawl. We did not exchange, on the
death of Leo, many words. She had wanted to
very well; but not
he loved to talk about the dead, and his constant concern was always
wash, comb and keep the children warm.
- Do you remember the Stinchi Leggeri? Villi? He said. - What will it be
success?
Light Shin, as I later learned, had died of pneumonia in one
farmer's farmhouse. The Amodaj, Bernardo and Villi had hidden at
Eagle. But other internees were taken,
handcuffed and loaded on a
trucks, and disappeared in the dust of the road.
They both appeared aged, my father and my mother at the end of
war. My mother, the scares and the misfortunes

they were suddenly aging,

in the space of one day. In those years he always had a woolen shawl
d'angora viola, bought by the Parisini, and grew in that shawl.
He was cold, in the

scared and in misfortune, and became pale, with

wide dark circles under the eyes. Misfortunes were banging her and humiliating
her,
they made her walk slowly, mortifying her triumphant step, and

the
they dug two deep holes in their cheeks.
They returned to Turin, in the house on Via Pallamaglio, which was now called
via Morgari. The paint factory on the square was burned in one
bombing; is
thus the establishment of public baths. But the church was
it was just a little damaged and it was always there, supported by now
第 135 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
iron intravatures.
- Sin! - said my mother, - could collapse! It's like that
ugly!
No sir, she remained standing!
Our house was repaired and tidied up. There was wood
compensated instead of some broken glass, and my father had some
stoves in the rooms,
because the radiators did not work. My mother
he immediately called Tersilla, and when he had Tersilla in the ironing room,
in front of the sewing machine, he took a breath and felt that life
could
resume its ancient rhythm. Taken flowery fabrics to cover the armchairs,
that they had been in the cellar and had spots of mold at some point.
Finally he was hung up in the dining room
above the sofa, the portrait of the aunt
Regina, who now looked back from above with round, clear eyes, with her
gloves, the parrot and the fan.
- To the little ones an apple, to the big ones the devil that peels them!
- he always said
my mother at the end of lunch. Then he stopped saying that, because again
there were apples for everyone. - They know nothing about these apples! - said
mine
father. And my mother used to say: - But
Beppino, I'm carpandue!
My father informed Ch鑦remont that he intended to donate to the university of
Liege of his library, which had remained there: out of gratitude, because
they had hosted him while he was in
Italy the racial campaign.
He was always in correspondence with Ch鑦remont. They wrote, and
Ch鑦remont sent him his publications.
My mother, the places thought of them only as a function of the
people who live there
He knew. In all of Belgium, there was no such thing as Chevremont. When
in Belgium something happened, floods or changes of government, mine
mother used to say:
- Who knows what he will say
Ch鑦remont!
In France, before Mario went there, there was nothing for her
Mr. Polikar, who had met her and my father at a congress.
He always said: - Who knows Polikar!
In Spain

he knew someone named Di Castro. If he read about

storms or storms in Spain, said: - Who knows Di Castro!
Quel Di Castro, in one of his stays in Turin, once he was
sick,
第 136 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

and it was not clear what illness he had. My father let him in
a clinic and called to see him he called a bunch of doctors to see him. Someone
said that
he had perhaps something in his heart. Di Castro had a fever

high, delirious and

he did not recognize anyone. His wife, who had come from Madrid, continued to
to repeat:
- It's not the corazon! it's the cabezza!
Healed, Di Castro returned to Spain, came the Francoist government, then
there
world war and nothing more was heard of it. - It's not the corazon! and the
cabezza! But my mother always said, evoking Spain and the lady
Di Castro. The war also engulfed Mr.
Polikar. Not even of the
Grassi, who lived in Freiburg, Germany, knew nothing more. My mother
he often evoked it. It read:
- Who knows what Fat will do right now?
- She will be dead! - sometimes
he said. - Oh what a sense that maybe she died
Fats!
His geography was all upset after the war. It could not be any more
quietly evoke the Grassi and Mr. Polikar. They had a
time
the power to transform distant countries into my mother's eyes
unknown in something domestic, usual and happy, to make the world like
a village or a road that could be traveled in a moment
with thought,
on the track of those few usual and reassuring names.
Instead, the world appeared, after the war, enormous, unknowable and without
borders. My mother, however, resumed living like him
he could. Shooting ad
to live it with joy, because his temperament was happy. His soul
he did not know how to grow old and never knew old age, that is to stay
folded aside, weeping the
ruin of the past. My mother looked at him
a ruin of the past without tears, and it did not bring about mourning. He did
not love, of the
I remain, dressing in mourning. When her mother died, she was then at
Palermo, and if
he came to Florence, where his mother had died suddenly
and alone. He had great pain when he saw her dead. Then he went out to buy
a mourning dress. But instead of buying a black dress,
as it was
proposed, he bought himself a red dress, and returned to Palermo with that dress
第 137 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
red in the suitcase. He said to Paola: - What do you want, my mother does not
he could suffer black clothes and it would be
very happy, if you could see me with
this beautiful red dress!
At the C?a one foot hurt,
Pus sprang from it sometimes in the evening,
La Mutua sent her to Vercelli.
Young poets wrote, and brought in
reading to the publishing house, verses
of this species. In particular, the triplet on the C?a was part of a long one
poem on the mondine. It was, after the war, a time when everyone thought
of being poets,
and everyone thought they were politicians; all
they imagined that it could and should be the poetry of everything afterwards
many years in which it seemed that the world was muted and petrified
and the
reality had been looked at beyond a glass, in a glass,
crystalline and silent immobility. Novelists and poets had, in the years of
fascism, fasted, there being around many words that
it were
allowed to use; and the few who still used words had them
choices with every care in the meager heritage of crumbs that still remained.
In the time of fascism, the poets had found themselves
to express only the world

dry, closed and sibylline of dreams. Now there were many words again
circulation, and the reality again appeared at hand; therefore those
ancient fasters yes
they gave us to harvest with delight. And the harvest
it was general, because everyone had the idea of ??taking part in it; and one
was determined
confusion of language between poetry and politics, which they were
appeared
mix together. But then it happened that reality turned out to be complex and
secret, indecipherable and obscure no less than the world of dreams; and he
revealed himself
still located beyond the glass, and the illusion of
to have broken that glass
he revealed ephemeral. So many soon withdrew discouraged and discouraged; is
they fell back into a bitter fast and into a profound silence. So the
post-war was sad, full of

discouragement after the cheerful harvest of the

first times. Many separated and isolated themselves again or in the world of
gods
their dreams, or in any work that yielded a living, a job
第 138 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
hired a
case and in a hurry, and that seemed small and gray after a long time
clamor; and anyway they all forgot that short, illusory one
sharing in the life of others. Of course, for many years, nobody
he made
plus his job, but everyone thought they could and should do it
a thousand others together; and it was some time before everyone took up again
his shoulders his job and accept its weight
and the daily fatigue, e
daily solitude, which is the only means we have of
participate in the life of others, lost and close in solitude
equal.
As for the verses of the C?a that
he had a bad foot, they did not
they seemed so beautiful, on the contrary they seemed to us, as they are, ugly,
but
today, however, they seem to us moving, speaking in our ears
language of that time. There were then two ways of writing, and one was
a simple enumeration of facts, on the traces of a gray reality,
rainy, miserable, in the screen of an unadorned and mortified landscape;
the other was a mixture of facts with violence and with delirium of tears, of
convulsive sighs, sobs. In one case or another, they were not chosen
more words; because in one case the words yes
they were confusing in grayness, and
in the other they were lost in moans and sobs. But the common mistake was
always believe that everything could be transformed into poetry and words.
Neither
he became disgusted with
poetry and words, so strong that also included the
true poetry and true words, so at last everyone was silent, petrified
boredom and nausea. It was necessary to go back to choosing the words, to
scrutinize them
for
to feel if they were false or true, whether or not they had real roots in us, or
if
they had only the ephemeral roots of the common illusion. It was therefore
necessary, if one wrote, return to assume the
own trade that
he had, in general drunkenness, forgotten. And the time that followed was
like the time that follows drunkenness, and which is of nausea, of languor and
of
tedium; and everyone felt, in

one way or another, deceived and betrayed: either

those who lived in reality, both those who owned, or believed to
possess, the means to tell it. So everyone resumed, alone and
dissatisfaction, the
第 139 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

his way.
Adriano sometimes happened in the publishing house. He liked the houses
publishers and he also wanted to make one. But the publishing house in his head
to do was different from that, because he did not

he intended to publish neither

poems, or novels. In his youth he had loved only one novel: I
dreamers of the Israel Zangwill Ghetto. Everyone else who had read later
they did not shake him.
He showed great respect for novelists and poets, but
he did not read them; and the only things that attracted him to the world were
urban planning, psychoanalysis, philosophy and religion.
Adriano was now a great man
and famous industrial. However, he kept it
still, in appearance, something stray, as a boy when he did
the soldier; and he always moved with the shuffled, solitary step of one
vagabond.
And he was still shy; and his shyness he did not know
to avail itself as a force, in the manner of the publisher, therefore he used to
push it back
back, in the presence of people he met for the first time:
they were
political authorities, or poor boys who came to ask him for a job
factory; he threw back his shoulders, straightened his head and lit his own
eyes of a still, cold, and gaze

pure.
I met him in Rome on the street, one day, during the occupation
German. He was on foot; he was alone, with his stray step; the lost eyes
in his perennial dreams, which veiled them with mists
blue. He was dressed like
all the others, but it seemed, in the crowd, a beggar; and it seemed, in the
same time, even a king. A king in exile, he seemed.
Leone was arrested in a clandestine printing press.
we had
that apartment near Piazza Bologna; and I was alone at home with i
my children, and I waited, and the hours passed; and I understood this little by
little,
not seeing him come back, they had to
have arrested him. He passed that day,
and the night; and the next morning Adriano came to me and told me to leave
immediately that lodging, because Leone had indeed been arrested, and there he
could
come, from a
moment to time, the police. He helped me pack, a
dress up children; and we ran away, and led me to friends who
they consented to host me.
第 140 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
I will always remember, all life, the great
comfort that I felt in the
see me in the morning, his figure that was so familiar to me, that
I knew from infancy, after so many hours of loneliness and fear, hours when
I had thought of mine that
they were far away in the North, and I did not know if I would
never revised; and I will always remember his back bent to collect, for the
rooms, our scattered clothes, children's shoes, with gestures of
goodness
humble, compassionate and patient. And he had, when we escaped from that house,
the
face of the time he had come to us to take Turati, his face
breathless, scared and happy when he wore in
save someone.
When he came to the publishing house, Adriano used to entertain himself with
Balbo;
because Balbo was a philosopher, and he had a deep attraction for the
philosophers, and Balbo, on the other hand, had
a profound attraction for everyone
the industrialists and the engineers, for the factories, the factory problems,
the
machines and engines: attraction and passion that he boasted with us, with
Pavese and with me,
saying that we were intellectuals and that he is not
was; because we did not understand anything about factories and machines.
attraction
and passion, which ended in the contemplation of motorcycles in the
parking,
when he returned home in the evening. attraction for i
philosophers, and Balbo, on the other hand, had
a profound attraction for everyone
the industrialists and the engineers, for the factories, the factory problems,
the
machines and engines: attraction and passion that he boasted with us, with
Pavese and with me,
saying that we were intellectuals and that he is not
was; because we did not understand anything about factories and machines.
attraction
and passion, which ended in the contemplation of motorcycles in the
parking,
when he returned home in the evening.
Adriano and Paola were divorced after the war. She lived in
Florence, on the hills of Fiesole, and he in Ivrea. He was however remained
friend of Gino, and yes

第 141 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
they always saw; although Gino had, after the war,
left Ivrea and the factory, and worked in Milan. Gino was indeed, perhaps, one
of his very few friends, because he was loyal to his friends and friends
what's this
discoveries and known in his youth, as he had remained faithful,
in the intimacy of his spirit, to the novelist Israel Zangwill. His loyalty
but it was purely emotional, and it did not
extended to the world of
realization: where instead it was always ready to undo what it had
done and always looking for new and more modern ways and techniques,
seeming to him that things
he was doing the old things in his hands: and
in this, he resembled the editor, who was always ready to send in
dust that only yesterday had chosen and created, always anxious and
restless in the
research of the new, research that put forward to everything, and of
in front of which there was nothing to stop him, nor the consideration of the
fortune obtained with the ancient inventions, nor the dismay and the
protests of
those who surrounded him, who were fond of those inventions
ancient and did not understand why they had to throw away.
Now I was working in the publishing house. The publishing house, e
the fact that I
I worked there, they were seen by my father with approval and sympathy, and mine
mother with suspicion and suspicion. My mother in fact found that there was one
environment too left;
because, after the war, she started to have
fear of communism, to which, before, he had never thought. Not the
Nor did he like Nenni's socialism, which he found too much
resembling the
Communism; he preferred the saragattians, but they too were not there
they were completely genius, and it seemed to her that Saragat "had a face that
he knew nothing. "
- Turati! Bissolati! He said. - The Kuliscioff!
Those yes they were
nice! Politics, today, I do not like it!
He went to see Paola Carrara, who was there in her living room, always
dark and full of fake birds, postcards and dolls; and it was there
sulky, because she too had it with the communists, and feared that
they took possession of Italy. His sister and brother-in-law were dead, and she
he had no reason to go to Geneva, nor did he read

plus the "Zurn鄉 de

Zen鑦e "; he was no longer waiting for the end of Fascism, or the death of
Mussolini,
being Mussolini and fascism long time experts; therefore one remained in her
第 142 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
live dislike for the communists, and the
regret that the works of William
Ferrero, his brother-in-law, had not been in Italy, after the end of fascism,
reevaluated as they deserved. He no longer invited people in his evening
living room: i
habitual visitors to his living room, the anti-fascists of one
they had gone to live in Rome, having had political duties:
my parents remained, and a few others, that she still some nights
invited,
but without the old pleasure: everyone found them too "left", except mine
mother; and therefore he ended up falling asleep, sulky, in his habit of
gray silk, hands gathered in the shawl
gray, worked on the crochet.
- You raise up against the communists from Paola Carrara! - said mine
father to my mother.
- I do not like the communists! - my mother used to say. - Paola
Carrara not
It got to do. I do not like them! I love freedom! In Russia there is not
freedom!
My father admitted that in Russia there was, perhaps, no great freedom.
But he was attracted to the left. Olivo, its ancient
assistant, who now had
the professorship in Modena was on the left.
- Olivo is left too! - my father used to say to my mother. It's mine
mother used to say; - See you're the one who makes you put up by Olivo!
My father
and my mother, therefore, had returned to stay, after the war, in
via Pallamaglio, which was now called via Morgari. I lived with them,
together with my children. Natalina was gone, because right away
after
war Natalina had put herself on an attic, with some furniture she had
gave my mother, and did services for hours.
"I do not want to be a slave anymore," Natalina had said, "I want her

freedom!
- Stupid you are! My mother said to her. - Just imagine if I hold you
slave! You are more free than me!
- Son slave! I am a slave! Said Natalina, in her excited tone
and threatening, shaking the
broom; and my mother left the house,
saying: - I go out because I can not see you! You really became unpleasant!
And he was going to let off steam from the greengrocer, the butcher. - It's warm
to me,
not the

第 143 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
nothing is missing! - explained. - She's really stupid!
He went to Alberto and Miranda, who lived not far away, on the course
Valentino; and he too vented with them. - Do not have all the freedom you want?
I

I do not keep anyone in bondage! He said.

And he said: - But I, without Natalina, how will I do?
Natalina moved into her attic. He always came to visit
my mother, who on the beginning
he had hoped he would repent and come back
from her. Then she resigned herself. He had, now, another woman.
- Goodbye Louis, eleventh, - he told Natalina that he was leaving, for
return to his attic that
he was, as he said, "splendid", and where
she invited Tersilla and her husband to have coffee in the evening. - Goodbye
Louis
eleventh! goodbye, Marat!
Many of my father's and my mother's friends were
dead. It was dead
Carrara, Paola Carrara's husband, even before the war: man
tall, thin, with a white brushed mustache, which always went by bicycle,
with a black cape that
She fluttered; my mother always used to say
that was so good, "for good as Carrara," he said when he wanted
indicate the summit of righteousness ;; and even after he died he continued to
to say

so. Hadrian's parents were dead too, the old engineer

Olivetti and his wife, just in the months that followed the armistice, in
a countryside near Ivrea where they were hidden, first he and
then she little
time later. Lopez had died, just returned, at the end of the war,
Argentina; and even Terni was dead, in Florence. My father was always
in correspondence with his wife, Mary,
but he did not see different
years.
- Did you write to Mary? He said to my mother. - We must write to Mary!
Remember to write to Mary!
- Did you go to see Frances? He told her. - Go find the
Frances!
Today, go see Frances!
- Write to Mario! He told her. - Woe to you if you do not write to Mario today!
Mario no longer worked with that French; he now had a job at the
Radio. He had the
French citizenship, and he had married another time.
When he let it be known that he had married another time, my father, this one
once, he became angry. However not much. They went, he and my mother, to
第 144 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

Paris,
to meet the new wife. Mario lived in a house near the
Seine. That house was rather dark, and my father could not see
well the wife of Mario; he only saw that it was

very small, and that he had

a fringe on the eyes. He asked Mario, a moment that she was not there:
"But why did you marry a woman so much older than you?"
In truth, Mario's wife did not have
not even twenty years. He, Mario,
he was forty by now.
They had a child. They returned to Paris, my father and mother, for the
birth of the child. Mario was crazy about the child, and the
he was cradling on
and down the rooms. - Elle pleure, the faut lui donner sa t閠閑! He said
excited to his wife. And my mother used to say: - How did it become French!
This time, my father got furious when he found one
day in Mario's house,
with the girl and his wife, the other wife of Mario, that Jeanne, from
which he had divorced, and with whom he had maintained friendly relations.
My father did not like it
that house on the Seine. He said it was dark and
that had to be wet. As for Mario's wife, he seemed to him
too small. - It is too small! - he kept saying. My mother used to say:
- Is small,

but it's pretty! The feet has them a bit too small. Not me
like small feet.
My father did not agree on this. His mother had her feet
little ones.
- You're wrong! Small feet, in the
women, they are a great beauty! My
mother, poor thing, always boasted of having small feet!
- They talk too much about eating! - said my father of Mario and his wife.
- They have a home too

wet! tell him I'll change house!

- But you're crazy Beppino! They like it so much to stay there!
- Also this of the Radio, I'm afraid it's a mestierolino! He said
my mother. And my father used to say: - Too bad!
with his intelligence! it would have
could have a wonderful career!
Cafi was dead in Bordeaux. Mario and Chiaromonte had gathered everyone together
his scattered sheets, written in pencil, and tried to

decipher them.
Chiaromonte, in America, had remarried. He left Paris and came to
settle down with his wife in Italy.
Mario found that he was stupid; that could not do a stupid thing.
第 145 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
They remained however
very good friends; and met each summer at Bocca di
Slim. They played chess. Mario now had two children, and he worked
Unesco. My father wrote to Chiaromonte to ask him what kind of
work did Mario, and if it was something that presented some guarantee of
safety.
- Maybe this is not a mestierolino! Maybe it's a good job! - He said
my mother. But my father, despite having
received from Chiaromonte
Informations comfortable, shaking his head disappointed, being my father
very stubborn, and always being unable to move from the first
impressions he had had,
so he always kept the idea that Mario
he had missed a brilliant and successful career.
And yet he is still proud of having had a child in Mario
conspirator, who had several times
passed the border with pamphlets
illegal immigrants, and still being always proud of his arrest and his
dramatic escape, however, always retained some regret to the idea
that, then,
however, he had taken a risk to the Olivetti and compromised
the factory. So a few years later, when Adriano died, and Mario da
Paris sent a telegram to my father: "Tell me if
opportune mine
Hadrian's funeral presence ? my father immediately answered him with this one
abrupt telegram: "Inopportune your funeral presence".
My father, on the other hand, was always a lot
worried about somebody
his children. He woke up at night and he was almanaccava on Gino. Leaving the
Olivetti,
Gino had settled in Milan, and was a director and consultant for adults
companies. - The last time
that came it seemed dark, - he said of
Gino my father. - I would not like it to have trouble! You know he has duties
of great responsibility!
Gino was, of us, the most faithful to ancient habits
family. He kept
to go, on Sundays, in the mountains, in winter and in summer. He used to go
sometimes
again with Franco Rasetti, who now lived in America, but reappeared
from time to time in Italy.
-
How good it is in Gino Mountain! My father said. - It's a lot
good in the mountains! It's fine even in ski!
- No, - said Gino, - I'm not good at ski. I go to the old woman
第 146 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
manner. Young people
now yes, they're fine!
- You are always modest! - said my father, and after he was gone
he still repeated: - How humble Gino is!
- What an intolerant Mario! - he used to say every time
Mario came from
Paris. - There's never anyone he likes! Only Chiaromonte likes it!
- I would not want them sent away by UNESCO! He said. - The
Political situation in France is not sure!
I'm not calm!
What a fool he was to take French citizenship! Chiaromonte not
he took it! Mario was really stupid!
My mother, however, became tender on the children of
Mario, when he gives them to him
He wore. - How cute Mario is with his children! He said. - Like the
like!
- Sa t閠閑! The faut lui donner sa t閠閑! He said. - They're really French!
- The girl is
beautiful, - he said, - but it is unleashed! it's a true one
Satan!
"They can not educate them," my father said, "they're too spoiled.
- And what's the use of having children if they do not get spoiled? - my mother
used to say.
-

He told me I'm a bourgeois! - my mother used to say when Mario

he had left. - I look bourgeois, because I keep the wardrobes in order. Their
they have a big mess in the house. Mario that was so
meticulous, so
accurate! he who was like Silvio! Now everything has become different. But it is
happy!
- Stupid! He told me I'm too right! He treated me like I was
a Christian Democrat!
- But

it's true that you're right! My father said. - You're afraid of

Communism. You let yourself get up by Paola Carrara!
"I do not like Communists," my mother said. - Me
liked the socialists,
those of the past. Turati! Bissolati! how cute it was
Bissolati! I went there, on Sunday, with my dad!
- Maybe this Saragat is not so bad. Too bad he has a face that
he does not know anything! He said

still my mother, and my father thundered:

- Do not say simplicity! You will not believe it's socialist Saragat!
Saragat is right! The true socialism is that of Nenni, not that of
Saragat!
第 147 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
- Nenni not
I like it! Nenni is like a communist! always
reason to Togliatti! I can not suffer that Togliatti!
- Because you're right!
- I am neither right nor left. I am for peace!
IS
he went out, with his new, rhythmic, glorious pace, his hair
now white in the wind, the hat in hand.
He always stopped at Miranda's house, the morning when he went to
order the

spending, and the afternoon, when he went to the cinema.

"You're afraid of the Communists," Miranda said to her, "because you're afraid
of you
let the servant away.
- Of course if Stalin comes to pull me away the servant, the
kill him, he said mine
mother. - How can I be without a servant, I am not good to do
anything?
Miranda was still there at the back of the armchair, with the plaid, with the
bag
hot water, blondes
sloping hair on the cheeks, the modulated voice,
cantilenante, childish.
His parents had been taken by the Germans. They had been taken, like so many
unfortunate Jews who had not believed in the

persecution. They were located at

Turin, in the cold; and they had gone to Bordighera, for not having so much
anymore
cold. Bordighera was a small place, and everyone knew them; someone there
he had reported to the

Germans, and the Germans had taken them Miranda, when he had heard that they
were in Bordighera, had written to him
that for charity they went away, because there everyone knew them. The cities
big were more

secure. But they had written, in reply, that they did not
he was stupid.
- We are quiet people! He does not do anything to quiet people
nobody!
They did not want to know false names, false papers. The
It seemed like one
incorrectness. They said: - Who touches us? We are quiet people!
So the Germans took them away, her little mother, candid and hilarious,
heart sick, he is the big, heavy father
quiet.
Miranda had news that they were in the prisons of Milan. They went
第 148 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
there, she and Alberto, trying to get to them with letters, food, clothes.
They did not get any sort of
communication with the prison interior, e
they then learned that all the Jews of San Vittore had been sent away for
unknown destination.
They left, she and Alberto and the child, in Florence, with forgery
first name.
They had two rooms near Campo di Marte. The child was rooting; is
there were bombings and they had to carry it, wrapped in a blanket and
feverish, to the shelter.
After the war,
they returned to stay in Turin. Alberto reopened the study.
There were always many sick people in the hall; and Alberto, with his white
coat,
the stethoscope dangling on his chest, ran away from time to time in the living
room a
heat up the radiator and get coffee.
He had grown fat, and had become almost bald, but still had, on
summit of the head, blond, soft and disordered plumes. He decided to
times to do
the weight-loss treatment: he was on a diet, and he felt certain about himself
medical specialties, free receipts. But in the night he was hungry: e
he went to the kitchen to look for lunch leftovers in the refrigerator.
They had a very nice big fridge, which he had given him
Adriano, because Alberto had treated him once he had been ill; is
Miranda, who always complained, had also complained about

that gift: -
It is too big! He said. - What will I put in it? I always buy only one
ect of butter at a time!
Always remembered those years that had been in Abruzzo, in the confinement.
mourned

always those years. - How well it was good for confinement, a

Rocca di Mezzo! - said Alberto. - Really it was fine! -
Miranda said. - I was not lazy, skiavo, I went with the child a
skiare!

In the morning I got up early, I lit the stove. I never had

headache. Now I'm always tired again!
"You did not get up so early," said Alberto, "we do not idealize! There
stove not

You lit the. The woman came!

- What woman? If we did not have the woman!
The child, the old railwayman, was now a boy. He was going to play,
with my children, a foot-ball to Valentino.
It was big,
blond, with a big voice. He had however, in the big one
voice, an echo of his mother's chant.
第 149 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
"Mother," he said, "can I go to Valentino with the little cousins?"
- Look not to hurt yourself! He said
my mother.
Miranda said: - Do not be afraid! they are wise like snakes!
"But he's pretty well-mannered," Alberto and Miranda said of theirs
child. - Who knows who will have educated him? Not us! Yes
see that he has been educated by
only!
"Maybe I'm going to the mountains on Sunday," Alberto said, rubbing his lips
hands.
Alberto went, like Gino too, in the mountains: but he did not like it
in the manner of Gino,
that was what my father had taught us.
Gino in the mountains went alone, or at most sometimes with his friend Rasetti;
is
his pleasure in going to the mountains was the cold, the wind, the
fatigue, the uncomfortable, the little and bad sleep, the little eat and in
quickly. Alberto instead went with groups of friends; he got up late, if he did
he spent a long time in hotel lobbies, talking and talking
smoking, and doing,
hot in restaurants, hot and good lunches, rested for a long time in
slippers, and finally skiava. When skiava, skiava too throwing himself with
fury in fatigue, as he had learned to
to do in childhood; and not knowing
measure his fatigue, or measure his own strength, he returned home
very tired, nervous, and with deep furrows around the eyes.
As for Miranda, of the
mountain did not want to know: because he had in
I hate the cold, and the snow, except that ancient snow of Rocca di Mezzo, on
the
which he said he had skied so well, and that he always regretted.

- Such as
stupid that Alberto! He said. - Go to the mountains and hope
always having fun, and then instead does not enjoy it so much, and gets tired!
That
fun is it? And then what do you want to have fun now! As young people there
we had fun, skating, doing anything! Now we are not so much anymore
young people, and we do not have more fun!
- Besides it was doing things as young people, besides it is doing them now!
- How depressing this Miranda is! -
Alberto said. - You depress me!
You tarpi wings!
Vittorio sometimes came to them at night, when he was passing through Turin.
Vittorio was released from prison during the Badoglio government. It had been
then
one

第 150 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
of the leaders of the Resistance, in Piedmont. He was from the Action Party. Had
married Lisetta, the daughter of Giua. Died the Action Party, it had become
socialist. They had elected him as a deputy. He lived in Rome.
Lisetta had not changed much since the time we were cycling
he told me the novels of Salgari. She was always thin, straight and pale, with
eyes lit and with a tuft on their eyes. He dreamed, a
fourteen years,
adventurous enterprises: and he had had something of what he had dreamed of,
during the Resistance. She had been arrested in Milan and jailed at Villa
Sad. He had interrogated her
Ferida. Friends dressed as nurses
they had helped her escape. Then the hair had been oxygenated, so as not to be
recognized. He had had a child between fugues and disguises. For
a lot of time,
after the war had ended, there remained bleached locks among the courts
Brown hair.
As for his father, he had also become a deputy, and he came and went
between Rome and Turin; and his mother, Ms. Giua,
he was still still a
find my mother, but they were fighting, because my mother found her too much
left; they were discussing the borders of Asia, and Signora Giua brought them to
her
calendar-atlas De
Agostini, to prove them, documents in hand, that
he was wrong. Signora Giua took care of Lisetta's child, because
Lisetta, being very young, did not yet have a great desire to do

from
mother to her daughter, who had been born to her without her almost having the
time to notice, passed as it was suddenly boyish dreams
to adult life without a moment to stop at
to think.
Lisetta was a communist and saw everywhere, and in all, dangerous remains of the
Action Party. The Action Party, the pi-di-a, no longer existed,
as she called it: but she saw it coming out

the shadow in every corner. -

You are more than a. You have an incomparable mentality of pi.-di-a.! He said to
Alberto and Miranda. Vittorio, her husband, looked at her as you look at one
young cat playing with a
roll of string; and he laughed at her, wincing
in the overbearing and prominent chin, in the big shoulders.
- You can not live in Turin anymore! what a boring city! Said Lisetta. -
A city so pi-di-a.! I
I could not live there anymore!
- You're right! - said Alberto. - You die of boredom! Always the
same faces!
第 151 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
- What a fool this Lisetta is! - Miranda said. - As if it were there
a place where you can
can have fun! You do not have fun anymore!
- Let's go eat snails! - Alberto said rubbing his hair
hands. And the arcades faintly came out, passing through Piazza Carlo Felice
illuminated, almost
deserts at ten in the evening.
They went into an almost empty restaurant. There were no snails. Alberto
it was made to bring a plate of dry pasta.
- Did you do weight loss treatment? - said Miranda; is

Alberto said to her:

- Shut up! You tarpi wings!
- How tired that Alberto is! - Miranda complained to my mother,
in the morning. - He's always restless, he always wants to do something! Wants
always
eat something, or drink something, or go somewhere!
Always hope to have fun!
- It's like me, - said my mother, - I too would like to have fun! I would like
to
take a nice trip!
- Go! He said
Miranda. - It feels so good at home!
"Maybe I'll go to San Remo da Elena for Christmas," he would say. - But I do not
know if
go there. After all, what am I going to do? So much so that I stay here!
- You know I played at the Casino

of San Remo? - told my mother

on his return. - I lost! even the stupid Alberto has lost!
We have lost ten thousand lire!
"La Miranda," my mother told my father, "has
played at
Casino of San Remo. They lost ten thousand lire.
- Ten thousand lire! - my father was thundering. - But look what fools you
I'm! Tell him never to play again! Tell him I forbid it
absolutely!
And he wrote to Gino: "That stupid Alberto lost a large sum
at the Casino of San Remo ?
My father, his ideas about money had become, after the war, more
that never nebulous
and confused. Once, still during the war, he had
asked Alberto to buy him ten boxes of condensed milk. Alberto
he had brought them to the black bag, paying them more than a hundred lire
moon.
My father had asked him how much he owed him. "Nothing," he had said
Alberto, - it does not matter -. My father had put in his hand forty
lire, and had told him: - Keep the rest.
第 152 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
- You know that
Did my Incet go very far? - said Miranda to mine
mother. - Maybe I sell them! - and he did, like every time he talked about money
won or lost, a happy smile, sharp and mischievous.
- You know
that Miranda will sell her Incet? - my mother told a
my father. - And he says that we too would do well to sell real estate!
- What do you want me to know that simple Miranda! - he screamed
my father.
However he thought about it. He asked Gino:
- Do you also believe that I should sell real estate? Miranda said that.
Miranda, you know, he'll do it He has a lot of flair. His father, poor man,
was
a Change agent.
Gino said: - I do not understand anything about the stock market!
- Yes, it's true, you do not really understand anything! We have family
little nose for business!
- We are good money
only to spend them, "my mother said.
- You sure! My father said. - But I will certainly not say that I spend
too much! The dress I wear, I've got it for seven years!
- And indeed we see Beppino! -
my mother said. - It's all consumed,
all kidnapped! You should have a new one!
- I do not even think about that! Imagine. This is still very good. Woe to you
if you tell me to get me a new dress!
- Also
Gino, - he said, - is nothing to spend. It's modest! Has
very modest habits! Paola spends too much. You all have the le
hands holed, less Gino! All megalomaniacs are you guys!
- Gino, -
he said, - he is generous with others, and for himself he is modest! The best
of all is Gino!
Paola sometimes came from Florence. He came by car, alone.
- Did you come alone? by car? He told her
father. - You have done
bad! It's dangerous! How do you break a tire? You had to come
with Roberto! Roberto him of cars he understands a lot. He had the mania
of cars, since childhood. Me
I remember he did not talk about anything else!
And he said: - Well, count me to Roberto!
Roberto was now a man, and he went to university.
- I really like Roberto! It has such a sweet character! - said mine
father. IS
he said: - But he likes women too much. Look, you do not
第 153 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
newlyweds! That it does not come to him to marry!
Roberto had a motorboat, and used to go, in the summer, with his friend Pier
Mario, around
with that motorboat. Once they had had a failure at the
engine and the sea was in a storm, and if they had seen her ugly.
- Do not let it go by speedboat, only with Pier Mario! It's dangerous!
He said
my father Paola. - You must import! You have no authority!
"Paola can not educate her children," she said to my mother in the night.
- He spoiled them too much, they do everything they want! They spend too much!
They are megalomaniacs!
- There's the Tersilla! - Paola said, entering the ironing room. - That
beauty see the Tersilla!
Tersilla got up, smiled, uncovering her gums, asked the
Paola dei
his sons, of Lydia, Anna, Roberto.
Tersilla made trousers for my children. My mother always had
fear that they would remain without trousers. - Otherwise they stay with the ass
outside! -
he said. For the
afraid that they were "with the ass out" he was doing
always make five or six pairs at a time. We quarreled, my mother and I, up
this topic of trousers: - It is useless to make him so many pairs! - I
I said.
And she said, "Yeah, you're Soviet! You are for austere life! But i
children I want to see them in order! I do not want them to have the ass
out!
When there was Paola, my mother left
he went with her, arm in arm, underneath
the arcades, chatting and looking at the windows.
He vented with Paola against me. - Do not give me any twine! - he said, -
does not speak! And then it's too communist! It is a true one
Soviet!
- Fortunately, I have my children! He said, and meant mine
sons. - How cute they are! how I like them! I like all three and not
I would know which one to choose!
- Fortunately, I have i
children, so I do not get fed up. Natalia, her, them
would always send with the ass outside, but I do not, I keep them in order! I
I bring the Tersilla!
The old tailor Belom had long since died. Now mine
mother clothes if there
he had them do in a shop under the arcades, called Maria Cristina. For golf
and the blouses, he went to Parisini.
- It's from Parisini! - he said, showing Paola a blouse that

第 154 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
It was
bought; in the same way as he said of the apples that came in
table: - Son carpandue!
- Come, - he said to Paola, - let's go to Maria Cristina! I would have
want to make me a nice suit!
- But
do not wear a suit, - said Paola, - you have so many! Do not get dressed
too much from Switzerland! Instead, make yourself a beautiful black, elegant
coat, a beautiful garment
important, that you put it in the evening when you go to Frances!
My

mother ordered a black coat. Then he found that it was bad for her
shoulders; and he had it fixed at home, by Tersilla. Then he did not put it on
same. - It's too madam! He said. - Maybe it's
gift to Natalina!
As soon as Paola had left, a suit was ordered. He appeared at the
morning from Miranda, with the new suit.
- But how, - said Miranda, - you made another suit!
And my mother
He is saying:
- Many clothes, much honor!
Paola had her friends in Turin: and sometimes she met them.
And my mother was always a bit jealous.
- How come you're not with Paola? He asked her
Miranda seeing her
arrive. And my mother used to say: - She left today with Ilda. Not me
I like that Ilda a lot. It is not so beautiful. It's too high! Not me
I like women so tall.
And then he talks too much about Palestine. Ilda had left Palestine now; but he
talked about it anyway. The brother,
Sion Segre, had a pharmaceutical industry. They were, him and
Alberto, always friends.
Alberto said to Paola:
- Tonight we go with Ilda and Sion to eat snails?
"I do not like snails," my mother said.
And he stayed at home, watching television. My
father despised
television, he said it was a piece, but at the same time
he approved that my mother looked at her, because it was a gift from Gino.
Rather
if she did not light it up one night and if
he was sitting in a chair reading a book,
he said:
- How come you do not turn on the television? Turn it on! Otherwise it's useless
have it! Gino gave it to you, and you do not look at it! You made him throw away
money, now

第 155 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
at least watch it!
My father, in the evening, read in his study. My mother, with the woman,
He watched television.
After Natalina, my mother had always had Venetian women. If the
he came from one

country, called Motta di Livenza.

He had had one, which one evening had a bloody outlet. there
we scared everyone very much; and Alberto, called urgently, said that
we had to do them,
the next day, an X-ray. The woman was crying,
hopeless; Alberto said that he did not seem like a hem, he was
he seemed to have a scratch in his throat.
In fact, from the radiography nothing came out. Was
a scratch in the throat. There
however, she cried, always desperate; and my father said:
- These proletarians, what a fear they have of dying!
My mother, whenever she left again, hugged her
crying out:
- How sorry I'm going! Now that I was used to having you here!
And Paola said:
- Come to Florence for a while!
"I can not," my mother said, "my father does not leave me. And then the
Natalia goes to her office, and I have to look after my children.
When Paola heard her say "my children" she was not aware of why
he was a little jealous of them.
- They're not your kids! They're your nephews!

Even my children are yours

grandchildren! Come and stay a while with my children!
My mother sometimes went. - You'll see Mary too! He told her
father. - See you go immediately to visit Mary!
- I'm going to

of course, "my mother said. - I really want to see

Mary! I like Mary!
- How cute Mary is! - he said on his return. - It's so good! I do not have
never seen anyone as well as Mary! I have

very amused to
Florence. I like Florence. And Paola has that beautiful house!
- But I can not suffer Florence. I can not suffer Tuscany, -
my father said. During the war, when the oil

it was not found, Paola

he was sending him oil, because she had olive trees in the ground around her
Fiesole's house; and my father was angry: - I do not want oil! I can not
suffer the oil! I can not
suffer Tuscany! I do not want any kindness!
- Paola was not a donkey with you? - he asked my mother.
- No! Poor Paola! In the morning he made me bring breakfast to bed.
第 156 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
I did a good one
breakfast, there in bed, warm! I was fine!
- Thank god! because Paola is sometimes a donkey!
- And who prevents you from having breakfast in bed here too? He asked
Miranda to my mother.
- Not here, here
I get up! I immediately take a nice cold shower. Then me
I do my solitaires, well packaged, well covered, and meanwhile me
I warm!
He was doing his solitaires in the dining room. Alessandra came in, mine
girl: dark, angry, because she did not like to get up in the morning, either
to go to school. And my mother used to say: Here is Maria Temporala!
- Let's see if I'll have a nice trip soon. Let's see if anyone
give me
a nice house. Let's see if Gino becomes very famous. Let's see if a
Mario, instead of that place at Unesco, gives him another even more
important.
- Vaniloquio! My father said
passing. - Always this eternal
nonsense!
He put on his raincoat, to go to the lab; now he was not going to the
laboratory before dawn. Now he went there at eight in the morning. On the door
he shrugged and said:
- Who do you want to give you a cottage? Sempia that you're nothing else!
I spent every night at the Balbo's house. I was there, sometimes,
Lisetta: not Vittorio, because he came to Turin

seldom, and when it was a

Turin preferred to stay in the evening with Alberto, his old friend.
Lisetta and Balbo's wife were friends. Lola, Balbo's wife, was
that hateful and beautiful girl, that
I saw a window at the time, or
I saw on the Corso King Umberto walking with long and disdainful steps.
Lola and Lisetta had become friends in those years I was at
confinement. When Lola had

I stopped being hateful, I ignore him. When

we became friends with her and I, she explained that she knew very well, in that
ancient time, to be hateful, and indeed tried to look more hateful than
he could:
and was anchilosed in the soul by shyness, insecurity and by
tedium. And again, in our friendship, I always return with deep
amazement at that ancient image hateful and superb, so much
hateful that me
I felt a worm in his eyes: and I was induced to hate,
in the same instant, she and me. Return to that image, and comparison with
the familiar and fraternal image

第 157 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
of my friend today: one of the most fraternal
and familiar images that I can count on to the world.
In the time I was in confinement, Lola had worked, for a short while
period, as a secretary in the house

publishing. But it was a bad one

secretary, and forgot about everything. Then the fascists arrested him and he
was
been in two months. He had married Balbo, during the German occupation,
between leaks and
disguises. She was always very beautiful, but now she did not have any more
hair cut to the page, compact, like an iron helmet; now he had i
messy and sloping hair on the cheeks, Indian hair,
not from
Indian woman but an Indian man, whipped by the sun and rain: e
the ancient, hard, immobile profile had turned into an anxious face
wrinkled, naked and flogged by the weather, by the
rain and the sun.
However, sometimes, for a few moments, the ancient profile reappeared
contemptuous, the ancient rocking and disdainful step.
My father, whenever they mentioned him, he said immediately
which was
gorgeous.
- Lola Balbo is very beautiful! ah, it's very beautiful!
And he said: - I know that the Balbo go very well in the mountains. I know that
I am

very friends of Mottura.

Mottura was a biologist, that my
father estimated. The friendship of the Balbo
with Mottura he reassured him on my evenings. Whenever I, in the evening,
I went out, he said to my mother:
- Where you go? goes to Balbo? The Balbo are very friends of Mottura!
IS
said: - How come they are so much friends of Mottura? How to
know?
My father was always curious to know why one was a friend of another.
- How do you know him? how are they known? -
he asked restlessly. - Ah,
maybe because of the mountain! They will have met in the mountains! - IS
thus established the origin of a relationship between two people, he reassured
himself; and if
he had an estimate of one of the two,
he was ready to welcome the other one as well
benevolent approval.
- Does Lisetta also go to Balbo? How does Lisetta know them?
The Balbo lived on the king Umberto course. They had a home at the
ground floor; is
第 158 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

the door was always open. People constantly came in and

went out: friends of Balbo, who accompanied him to the publishing house, the
they followed to the Platti cafe, where he used to take the cappuccino,
they went home with him and talked with him until late at night. If, coming, not
they found him in the house, they also sat in the living room and talked to each
other,
they walked in the corridors, they perched
on the study table,
having learned from him not to have hours, to never remember to go to
dinner, and to discuss without respite.
Lola was very tired of having so many people at home.
It was
yet still the things he had to do; he took care of his
child, with a mixture of apprehension and annoyance: because you too,
like Lisetta, she did not know how to be a mother,
having passed since
fogs of adolescence to the bad weather of adult life, abruptly and
seamless.
She liked, from time to time, entrusted the child to her mother or her
mother-in-law,
dressing with great elegance, putting on pearls, jewels, and getting out on the
Corso Umberto, as before, walking slowly and with the
half-closed eyes, cutting the air with the aquiline profile.
When he came back e
he still found the people he had left in the house, sitting down to discuss the
chest of the entrance or perched on the tables, threw a scream
exasperated, long, guttural, al
which nobody looked after.
He used, in the absence of her husband, to name it with sweet appellations, and
complain about his temporary absence with a long and guttural scream, but
tender, like a dove that

call the companion; but then, as soon as it is

he saw, he immediately scolded him, or because he always came in
late for lunch, or because he had left it, going out without a penny to do
there
spending, or because it was said exasperated for that door of the house always
open and those people who came and went; so they started arguing, him
armed with subtle quibbling and she with nothing but hers

fury, and the reasons and the

wrongs of one and the other were mixed together in an inextricable tangle. Not
they were never alone, even when they were fighting; and she also threw
on the friends present, at random,
some insult, shouting that they would leave
Street; but those did not dream of moving, and waited, calm and
amused, that the storm had passed.
第 159 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
Balbo ate at lunch, always the same
things, namely: rice with butter;
a steak; a potato; an Apple. These were the things he owed
to eat, having had the amoeba in war; - Is there steak? He asked
restless, sitting at
table; and as soon as he was reassured on this point,
he started to eat distracted, continuing together and talking with his
friends, always present at his meal, and arguing, arguing with
thin
quibbles, with his wife. - That's boring! - Lola used to say to friends. - Lo
I find it boring! Yes, there is the steak! What a bore, always with these
steaks! Self
once eat some eggs in the pan! -
And it recalled the time of the
Resistance in Rome, when they were hidden and without a penny, and she had to
running around the city to find the butter, steak and rice at the black bag.
Balbo explained that he was there
eggs in the pan could not eat them, i
they hurt; and he ate seriously, distractedly, indifferent to the sort of
steak that was eating, as long as it was, without any doubt possible,
a steak
grilled.
- I do not like these friends of yours! - Lola complained. - They do not have
a private life, they do not have wives, children, or if they do not care for
them!
They are always here!
Saturday and Sunday,
the house became deserted. Lola entrusted his
child to the mother-in-law, and they went, her and her husband, to skiare.
- How cute it was yesterday! - said her husband's Lola on Monday morning,
turning to friends
reappeared. - It was so nice, if you had seen it. Sa
skier like a ski instructor! He looks like a dancer! It was nothing anymore
boring, we had so much fun! Now here it is boring again!
They went
sometimes, she and her husband, at night clubs to dance. They were dancing
two, until late at night. - We had so much fun! - Lola then said. - He
the waltz dances so well! Dance so light! - and launched,

at the address of
husband who was at that moment at the office, that his guttural screech
and tender of a dove, hanging the evening dress in the closet.

Balbo sometimes said to his wife: -

Buy yourself a new evening dress.
It amuses me - she used to buy a dress for fun, and then she was
第 160 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
dissatisfied, he discovered that it was an absurd dress, that he would not put
it
never. - That stupid!
He said. - To have fun, I had to buy one
dress that makes no sense!
Lola had never worked again, after that brief period she had been
secretary to the publishing house. She and her husband
they agreed to state
that had been a bad secretary. But both were also in agreement
in affirming that a job for her had to exist; we did not know well
which one he needed
find out, Balbo also asked me to find out, among the
a thousand jobs that tingled the earth, a job that Lola could do
well.
Lola always used to recall, with great nostalgia, the time it was
was
in jail. "When I was in jail," he often said. In jail, he said, he was
felt very at ease, finally in place, at peace with herself, free of
complexes and inhibitions. He had done
friendship with Yugoslav girls,
who were inside for political reasons, and also with common prisoners;
he found the right words with them, and their trust had been won; and the
other prisoners
they all gathered around her, for help and
advice. The speeches that made Balbo and his wife around a
possible work of her, they always ended "on the jail", and both of them
concluded
that it was necessary to look for her for a job in which she felt,
as when in jail, completely at ease, free and without inhibitions, and
fully master of his forces. A job like this seemed

but not
easy to find. It happened to her later, to get sick, and she had to stay for
a short time in a hospital: and at the hospital he recovered a little, among the
girls
sick, its strength of capopopolo, that
evidently reborn in the
dramatic moments, of tension, of risk and of emergency.
Lisetta, in Rome, at night, found a job: she had employed the association
Italy-USSR. He had learned the
Russian: she started to study it, immediately after
war, together with Lola and me; and she had learned it, and instead we
we were stopped on the street. Lisetta, therefore, went every day
at the office: e
he managed to keep the house going, and now he was also taking care of the
his children: children pretended not to deal with them, and pretended that
第 161 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
they were, though very small, completely independent of her.
He still came,
in the holidays, in Turin: and took the children with him. When we asked
where the children were, he took a distracted and distracted air, and said he
did not
he remembered well where he had them
left; she liked giving us to understand that
he sent them alone to play on the street. In truth, the children were in the
garden
public, with the grandmother and the nanny watching them; and she went to them
to resume as soon as it was dark, with scarves and caps, having become,
without realizing it and without confessing it to itself or to anyone, a mother
tender, scrupulous and apprehensive.
He also pretended
always being in controversy, for political reasons, col
husband. In truth it was, with her husband, meek as a lamb, and substantially
unable to have a different opinion from him. On the other hand there was not,
among the
their
political opinions, no real difference. The Action Party, the pi-di-a.,
he had lost himself in the mists of time, and there was no trace of it
around: but Lisetta always declared
to see his shadow appear
anywhere, and especially between the walls of his house. As soon as his children
they began to reason, she immediately entered into a controversy with them too:
especially with the
older girl, who was sententious and sarcastic, and the
he bitterly retorted: so that they talked for a long time, mother and daughter,
in front of a meat dish, bringing in the poor and the rich, the
left and
the rights, Stalin, the priests and Jesus.
- Do not make the countess so much! - said Lisetta to her friend Lola,
when he saw her bejeweled and dyed in front of the mirror. It ended then
to give herself too

a little black in the eyes, a little, just barely; is

on the Corso Umberto, on the avenues, Lisetta with the open raincoat came out
and the thin naked childish feet in the sandals, Lola with her black coat
tight-fitting with big buttons, the pin on the collar, the aquiline nose
stretched out to cut the air, the ancient rocking and disdainful step.
They went to the publishing house. They found Balbo in the corridor a
talk, or
with a few priests, or with Mottura, or with one of his friends who
they had followed him from home.
"It's too much with the priests," said Lisetta di Balbo, "it's too many!" - Of
him
he did not say "he has one
第 162 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

mentality from pi.-di-a. ", was indeed one of the few

people who did not say it; and Balbo sometimes accused her of being herself
"A little bit more." He accused her of perhaps being the last pi-di-a. remained
still around. Instead, she accused him of being too Catholic: and it was
yet willing to forgive him for this, as he would not forgive, for
this, no one in the world: because it conserved
again, of his own
childhood, the memory of when Balbo fascinated her with his loquela,
coming to bring them, on Sundays, the books of Croce.
- A count! At the bottom is a count! At the bottom are a count e

a countess!
He said, thinking of the Balbo when he was in Rome, far from them. He saw, a
Rome, other friends, who liked her much less, and with whom she did not have
contrasts, but not even close constraints
of memories; with which, in truth,
he was bored a little. But he did not confess it to himself. The fact that Balbo
she belonged to a noble family, and that she was Catholic, seemed to her, far
away
waver all
reasoning that he held them when they met. But
every time he returned to Turin, the Balbo house attracted her to
arrogance: and yet he was not able to tell the truth to himself; and say: -
They are my friends and I love them and I do not care if theirs
opinions are true or false, I do not care about him
priests like them a lot. Because in its naive nature,

tender, childish,
the opinions and ideas of his and others sprouted and branched out like
large, leafy trees, hiding and covering the clear with his eyes
mirror of his own soul.
Mottura was with Balbo for so long, that he had been in the publishing house
created a verb: 玬otturare? - What does Balbo do? He is being motivated!
Of course he is being motivated! - we said. Balbo, after having
conversed
with Mottura, he went to the publisher to report the proposals that Mottura did
about the scientific series, of which he, Balbo, was not at all
kept to deal with: but used to put the
nose in the most diverse necklaces, and
say his. He had no scientific notion, Balbo, though he had
done, before enrolling in law and in his youthful disorientation, two
years of medicine;
but he did not keep the slightest memory of those two years.
Mottura was the only scientist he knew; apart from my father, with whom
he had given the anatomy exam in those distant years; but he felt
urged, from the speeches with Mottura, to look for books of science, which not
he read, and in which he put his red nose just a moment, here and there.
He was nevertheless very ready to seize on the fly,
第 163 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

conversing with Mottura,

judgments and ideas. He spoke to Mottura for his pure pleasure, and certainly
not to the
purpose of obtaining judgments and proposals; on the other hand, he never had a
purpose
determined in speaking
with people: and even if he had it at the start, it was
he forgot immediately. His speech ran on the edge of a search
disinterested, pure and completely destitute of purpose. But he used to let it
flow
at home
publishing a part of what he had learned, like who, shitting for
pure necessity of shitting, it is nevertheless aware of fertilizing a field.
There
conception he had of work would not have been
thinkable, nor
tolerated, in a place other than the publishing house. In fact, he learned
elsewhere
and later, to work in another way. But then he worked like that; and up to
evening, he did not realize he was
tired, but felt, at the time of
lie down, exhausted. Then he also wrote a book: and when he found the
time to write it, it was not understood at all: however he wrote it,
because to a certain
he had it printed: begging others to correct them

drafts, which he did not know how to correct, he was there for months or not
he saw the errors.
I stayed at the Balbo's house in the evening until
late. From Balbo in plant
There were always three of his friends there: a little one with a mustache, a
tall one
in his face he looked a little like Gramsci, and another rosy, curly one
he always smiled.

What always smiled, then came to work in the

publishing house, was in charge of dealing with the scientific series: e
it seemed a strange thing, as if he were never
busy
of any form of science; but evidently he could handle it
well, because he kept the place for years, and indeed became the director of
that necklace, always with that one of hers
smile mild, unarmed, sad, always
opening his arms wide and saying he knew nothing about science; finally
he left and set up a publishing house of scientific books on his own.
Balbo,

第 164 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
when he stopped a moment to discuss with his friends,
he told Pavese and me about his way of writing. Pavese
he listened to him sitting in the armchair, under the light, smoking the
pipe, with a
malicious smile: and of all the things Balbo told him, he said that already
he knew it for a very long time.
He listened, however, with great pleasure. He always had, in relationships with
us
his
friends, an ironic background, and used, we his friends, to comment on and
to know each other with irony; and this irony, which was perhaps among the most
beautiful things
that he had, he never knew how to take it to the things that most belonged to
him
they were at heart,
not in his dealings with the women he fell in love with, and not in his books:
he carried it only in friendship, because friendship was, in him, one
natural feeling and in some way
unkempt, it was something to which it did not
it gave too much importance. In love, and also in writing, yes
he threw with such a mood of fever and calculation, that he never knew
laugh, and not
to be never entirely himself: and sometimes, when I now
I think of him, his irony is the thing of him that I remember most and I cry,
because
it no longer exists: there is no shadow in his books, and it is not given

find her
elsewhere than in the light of his malign smile.
As for me, I was deeply thirsty for hearing about my books.
Balbo's words sometimes seemed to me to be penetrating
dazzling.
But I knew very well that he used to read books, just a few lines.
There was no time or space for reading in his days. But him
he supplanted the lack of time and

space with a readiness and

acute intuition, which led him to form a judgment with the simple
rescue of a few sentences. At a distance, it sometimes happened to me to hate
that one of hers
way to form a

judgment, and I accused him of being superficial. I had

but wrong, because he was anything but generic and superficial. Not
he could have drawn, from a careful and prolonged reading, a more judgment
complete and profound. Generic and superficial, in his comments on
books or people, there were only practical advice: why him to
practical advice he could not give, neither to others, nor to himself

第 165 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
same. Advice
practical that gave to me, when he commented my books or when I was
he saw melancholy, was to attend the meetings more actively
cell or section of the communist party,

to which I belonged then.

That seemed to him, for me, a means to open a pass in the world
real, from which he told me detached; and it was then then, in the years of
post-war, opinion
widespread that writers should, through the
left parties, break their circle of shadow and blend in the living
reality. This was his advice, I was not able to declare it then
wrong, but I simply felt more miserable, and totally
disoriented: and yet I obeyed him, and went to those meetings, which
I found it, in the intimacy of my spirit and without being able to
confess,
sad and boring.
I understood later that his practical advice was in no way necessary
follow them. It was necessary to free his words from any practical suggestion.
Take off every one
practical content, his words were indicative and
fruitful. But then I felt urged to follow him step by step, and to
to commit, step by step, the same mistakes that he committed. How much
to
Pavese, he committed other errors on his behalf, but not the same ones, and
he stumbled on other roads, where he walked alone, with a contemptuous attitude
and stubborn, and with a painful and mild soul.
Pavese
he made more serious mistakes than ours. Because our mistakes
they were generated by impulse, imprudence, stupidity and candor; and instead i
errors of Pavese arose from prudence, from astuteness, from
calculation, e
by intelligence. Nothing is as dangerous as this sort of mistake. Can
as mortals they were for him; because from the streets that are wrong
by cunning, it is difficult to return. The

mistakes that are committed by cunning,

they envelop us tightly: the cunning puts in us roots more firm than not
recklessness or imprudence: how to dissolve oneself from those tenacious bonds,
so
tight, so deep? Prudence, calculation, cunning have the face
of reason: the face, the bitter voice of reason, which argues with i
his infallible arguments, to which there is nothing from
answer, there's nothing
comply.
Pavese killed a summer that none of us was in Turin. Had
prepared and calculated the circumstances concerning his death, such as

第 166 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
one who prepares
and prepares the course for a walk or an evening. Not
he loved there, in the walks and in the evenings, nothing unexpected or of
random. When we went, him, me, the Balbo and the publisher, to do

walks in
hill, he was very irritated if something diverted the course from him
arranged, if someone arrived late for the appointment, if we changed
Suddenly the program, if yes
he added a person to us
unforeseen, if a fortuitous circumstance led us to eat instead of
in the restaurant he had chosen, in the house of some acquaintance
met
unexpectedly on the street. The unexpected made him uncomfortable.
He did not like being caught by surprise.
He had been talking, for years, about killing himself. Nobody believed him ever.
When
he came to me and to Leo
eating cherries, and the Germans took the
France, even then he talked about it. Not for France, not for the Germans, not
for the war that was investing Italy. Of the war he was afraid, but
not
enough to kill themselves because of the war. He continued however to
to be afraid of war, even after the war had been for a long time
over: how, moreover, we all. Because this happened to us,

that just
after the war ended we immediately began to be afraid of a new war, and
to always think about it. And he feared a new war more than all of us. And in
him
the fear was greater than in us:
it was in him, fear, the vortex
of the unexpected and the unknowable, which seemed horrendous to the lucidity of
the
his thought; dark, swirling and poisonous waters on the bare banks of his
life.
He had not, in
bottom, to kill himself, no real reason. But he composed
together more reasons and calculated the sum, with lightning precision, and
he still composed them together and still saw, assenting with his smile
malignant, that the result was identical and therefore accurate. He also looked
beyond the
his life, in our future days, he looked at how he would behave
people, towards his books and his

memory. He looked past the

death, like those who love life and can not get away from it, and yet
thinking of death they are imagining not death, but life. He
yet he did not love life, and that
第 167 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

his look beyond his own death

it was not love of life, but a ready calculation of circumstances, because
nothing, not even after death, could catch him by surprise.
Balbo went to live in

Rome, and left the publishing house. Then he gasped for it

years between absurd projects and errors. Finally he had a real job. He learned
to
to work like other people: but he always forgot about lunchtime, and
of
leave when the office was empty, as it once was
publishing house. So he worked more than other people, but without understanding
it
realizing with amazement of being exhausted in the evening.
Now the Balbo had three children: and they tried to become a real father
and a real mother, both of whom were incapable, and who weighed on him.
They used to accuse each other of each other every day
this incapacity.
Neither of them claimed to know how to educate children: but each of them
two asked the other to be what the other was not. Balbo was looking
to teach his children something that
he knew well, that is geography:
because of all the other subjects studied at school, he did not remember
nothing, despite having been, as he said, an excellent pupil.
Instead he never touched with them

historical arguments, a little because not

he knew the story, and a little because he was afraid that they would insinuate
themselves, in fact
historians, judgments and political opinions: and he did not want to offer his
children
judgments already

formulated: he thought they should make their opinions and theirs

judgments by itself. And this seemed strange to someone like him who had been
for
a long time, with his friends, aggressive and intrusive in giving

judgments e
opinions: it is aggressive and intrusive also in receiving it, that is in making
its own
opinions of others, in merging them and remixing them and putting the mark on
them
of his thought. Lola and her husband therefore never talked about politics in
the presence of the
their children: she, because she hated sectarianism; him, why

thought
one should refrain from touching complex subjects with children. IS
as both feared to confuse his ideas and inspire them
mistrust and uncertainty with regard to authority
第 168 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

constituted, in the presence of the

children did not talk about the history of jail.
As for Lola, he used to fashion an ideal of children completely different from
those he had, and compare every moment that ideal to

its own
lazy, messy and distracted children. So he did nothing but scold them, in his
rough and chaotic, that did not frighten anyone but just put in
home a confused feeling of
discomfort, noise and chaos.
At the same time she also shaped an ideal of husband and father
quite different from what Balbo was and never could propose to be, and
he threw a lot into it
so much to the address of her husband and her children a
long, guttural and exasperated screech, equal to the one with which it once was
he complained about people wandering around the house.
There was not, in their house
of Rome, people who came and went, as in
King Umberto course in Turin. Indeed now they had few friends, and contents
in a matter of reasonable hours; and it was about people Balbo sometimes
not
he had nothing special to say, with which he was sometimes silent or talking
kidding. The ancient and arrogant talk had subsided in him. addressed
now his intelligence on precise ends, he guided it

towards specific people

and at certain times of the day, then entering the silence as it is
closes a damper when evening comes.
Still sometimes, when they were traveling alone or when they had
all the
boys on holiday, Balbo and his wife enjoyed the days and nights in the
used to, they rested free, strolled through the streets and he
he had his clothes and shoes bought
amused, or went to
dance at night clubs.
Lola finally took a job too. He did not choose it, but rather the
a moment fell between her feet that she did not think about it. It was not
perhaps the
work

that he would choose, if he could choose: and did not look like
in nothing at his jail, that is at the time he estimated better and higher
of his life. However, that job could do it well, e

to bring you a
little of his intelligence: as much as he brought his own together
disorder, his impatience, his restlessness and his desire to fight.
His desire to fight, he vented it
第 169 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

especially in front of the doors of the

post offices, where he sometimes went to send pamphlets for his work
and parcels.
He worked with certain magistrates. He usually did the job within the walls of
home; and meanwhile he shouted orders to the service woman and the children, he
called
to her mother-in-law and her friends, and she measured clothes. This work
added chaos to chaos. Sometimes he touched them
packages; so
she suddenly decided that her children should be given them, suddenly
molded the image of right sons and skilled in making packages. So he shouted: -
Luucaaa! - and Luca looked, big,
all stained with ink, lost
in the fogs of indolence and slow and indifferent like a prince, and she
he ordered twenty packs to be sent to him immediately. Luca, in his life, did
not have
never done
a parcel. She was holding a block of paper and a roll in her hand
of twine. Luca erred around the house with that string, absorbed, forgetful and
indolent, moving slowly and without any purpose,
until suddenly
she covered him with screams and tore the string from his hand, and he looked at
her then
with his green eyes, proud, motionless, from the distances of his royal
silence.
The Balbo always went,

in the winter, in the mountains to skiare. Yes

they brought their children back now. However, they had to reach the North:
despising the low, windy and crowded mountains of the surroundings of Rome.
They went to
Sestri鑢es, or even in Switzerland; and there, on the snowfields, Lola
she was free, forgetting her magistrates, forgetting her studies
children of the service woman who perhaps consumed too much oil, gods

his
bad moods and its eternal resentments. But to conquer that freedom,
there were first, in Rome, days of total chaos, incoercible, of suitcases made
and defeats, of lost golf and of screams, of races
at breakneck for the city, of
orders given and canceled, in the midst of the dismayed woman and Luca
impenetrable
and ink stained, phone rings and appointments with i
magistrates.
Lola also went,
in summer, to bathe in Ostia. There he was alone,
because her husband did not really love the sea, and her children were in
第 170 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
general,
at that time, away from Rome, in their camps of boy-scouts. He went there
with
occasional people, used simply for that purpose, to come
to take in the car and bring home. He kept with these people
occasional conversations that did not bore or entertain her,
there being a mundane side in his temperament, foreign to the
fun and boredom, usually tied up
to an immediate interest, to be
accompanied in the car or get addresses of upholsterers. He used
complicate his practical life looking for distant upholsterers, carpenters who
they were cheap and cheap
but they did not have the telephone, cloth shops at the head of the
world where he could have, thanks to those occasional acquaintances, small
discounts. In Ostia, however, at sea, he enjoyed it alone, swimming
far,
drying in the sun and tanning in an unlikely way, although i
doctors had advised her not to be too much in the sun for that
sickness of which he had once suffered and of which
he was always very scared,
but not enough to avoid the sea, the sun and the sand. It came back to
lunch at four o'clock, and threw her screech around the house, addressed to her
husband
guttural and tender, feeling
pacified by that morning of freedom and of
vacation, and loving the summer, the heat and having children at the campsite,
and the turn
for a house in a bathing suit and bare feet.
I was still in Turin; but
I came to Rome often, and I was getting ready to
come to live permanently. I had remarried, and my husband
he taught in Rome; we were looking for a house, and I would soon bring them down
children, and we would be there
installed in Rome forever.
I went to see the Balbo. We were always friends, and we talked about the times
once upon a time. I said to Balbo: - Do you remember when self-criticism was
done?
It was very much in use among us
do self-criticism, once, in the years of
post-war: that is, after making mistakes, analyzing them and cutting them to
high voice. We interlaced errors on errors; and self-criticism came to
overlap the
mistakes, intertwined and merged with those same
mistakes, in the way music is confused with the words of a work, ne
it obscures the sense and takes them away in its rhythm of glory.
第 171 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
I said: - You
do you remember when we did the rallies?
Lola, remembering her husband's committees, still moaned in pain, because she
did so
saw again there, little on the wooden scaffolding, between waving flags,
above the square
crowded with people; and he spoke phrases there with his voice
undecided, scratching the top of the head from time to time with the index
finger.
Saliva the cold and the darkness of the night, and he always unraveled
sentences, absorbed
in pursuing the tortuous and quirky trace of his thought, persuaded that
the listening people walked behind him along the stony windings
and impervious where he had advanced. People
he waited in vain for the words to come
ringing tolls that she used to hear and applaud. However, he applauded
equally, perhaps out of sympathy and unchallenged trust, or perhaps because
finally
She is silent.
Mine too
Father had once had a rally in those years. The
they had asked to put his name on the list of candidates for the Front
popular: and it was, the Popular Front, the mark in which it is
presented
communists and socialists together. He had accepted. They had told him that
he had to do at least one meeting, one. They invited him to say what
it seemed to him. They led him into a
theater, they made him get on stage: and mine
father began his rally with these words:
- Science is the search for truth.
He spoke only of science, for about twenty minutes: and the people were silent,
shocked. He said, at a certain point, that scientific research was, in
America, more advanced than in Russia. People, more and more disoriented,
silent. However, he suddenly named, incidentally,
Mussolini, that he
he used to call, he said, Predappio's donkey. Then a roar broke out
applause: and my father looked around in amazement, disorientated in turn. IS
this was my meeting
father.
Balbo, who had been present at that meeting, laughed in memory. My
father liked him a lot: and he remembered, of those two years of medicine that
he had done, he alone. There was, on the door
of the institute at the beginning of the year
scholastic, fury and struggles with the freshmen, and my father, Balbo
he said, he threw himself into the fray with his head down, like a man
buffalo who throws himself on the assault

第 172 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
of a herd, to open a gap between the
crowd and pass.
My father, I remembered, ran like this with his head down like a buffalo,
when, during the war, the bombardments took place on the street. My

Father did not go down to the shelters, and when the alarm siren sounded, yes
he started running, not to the shelter, but to his house. He ran
bordering the walls, head down, in the roar of the
airplanes and in the hiss,
happy in danger, because danger was something he loved.
- Sempiezzi! - he said later. - Imagine if I go to the shelter!
It matters very much to me to die!
When I said to mine
mother that I would have left Turin and I would have come to
staying in Rome, my mother was very sorry. - Take me away i
my children! - He said. - But look at that cag - But look what a bitch you are!
- He will send them around
torn, - he said with Miranda. - Me them
will send around without buttons! With the ass outside!
He remembered when he came to visit me, and I was there
cook a basket with all the stuff from
to tune, and never fix it.
I took a moment to sew, then I left it and said:
- I can not sew anymore. I lost the needle.
For many years now, I did not have a home for myself or a house
wardrobe with the
sheets, or a basket with the stuff to fix, which I did not fix. From
many years I lived with my father and my mother, and it was my mother who
he thought of everything.
In the summer, they were
my father and my mother, who were thinking of bringing the
children in the mountains; and they usually took them to Perlotoa, where they
took
rent the usual house, with that front lawn. I remained alone in the city; is
I did not leave the city for a few days, in the period that the publishing house
She closed.
- Let's go for a walk! - said my father in the mountains, in the morning
soon, dressed in his old colored jacket
rust, with socks, the
shoes with nails. - Come on, let's go walking! Must not
lazy! I do not want you to always be on the lawn!
They returned in September; and my mother called her
Tersilla, to make trousers
and school grembiali, pajamas and coats.
- I want them in order! I like to keep the children in order! That
they have all their robin in place! At the idea that they are very hot, me
I hear
第 173 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
all comforted!
In the evening, my mother read to the children Without a family. - How beautiful
the
Without family! - he always said. - It's one of the most beautiful books there
are!
- Books were also very beautiful
of the marquise Colombi, - he said. -
Too bad they are not around anymore. You should tell your publisher, - me
he said, - to reprint the books of the Marchesa Colombi. They were beautiful!
I to the children

I had given Incompreso. He had read it to me, when I was

Paola, who loved at that time very sad stories,
moving, that made them cry, that were going to end badly. To mine
mother
did not like Misunderstood. He found it too sad. - It's more beautiful the
Without family, - he said, - there is no comparison. Misunderstood is too much
sentimental. I do not really like. And instead the Family Without!
Heads! the
Mr. Vitali! The beautiful bands lied! Honor your father and mother! The
beautiful bands said the truth! - And he kept on enumerating the characters of
Without family, and the titles of the chapters, which
he knew by heart, having read
that book several times to his children and reading it now to my children, a
chapter by evening, always falling into the charm of those events, which
they sometimes took folds

dramatic, but they did not go to finish

bad; and falling into the charm of the dog Capi, for whom, she loved
a lot of dogs, he had a great liking. - I'd like to have a dog
so! But the
Papa, imagine if you would let me keep a dog!
- I would also like to have a nice lion! I like lions so much!
All the wild beasts! He said; and he ran, as soon as he could, to the circus,
taking the

sorry to bring us children. - I'm sorry that in Turin not

there is the zoo. I would go there every day. I always want to
see the face of some beautiful fierce beast!
- not including
it's not so nice, "he said. - Pleased to Paola
when she was a girl, because they had, Paola and Mario, the mania of things
sad. Now, however, luckily it has passed!
- They had made a great league with them

two, Mario and Paola, as boys, -

my father said. - Do you remember when they were always chipping, col
poor Terni? They had Proust's mania, they did not talk about anything else. Now,
Paola and Mario
第 174 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

I'm very cold, they do not even look in anymore

face. He finds it bourgeois. What donkeys!
- When does your Proust translation come out? My mother used to say to me. - I
Proust I do not read it again from

a long time. But I remember it, it's beautiful!

I remember Madame Verdurin! Odette! Swann! Madame Verdurin had to
be a bit like the Drusilla!
When I remarried and left, after a few
time, to live in
Rome, my mother then, for a while, held me a grudge. But the rancor
he never put very bitter and deep roots into his heart. I was going
and I came, between Rome and Turin. Me
I was preparing to leave Turin forever.
I said goodbye, in my heart, to the publishing house, to the city. I proposed
myself
to still work at the publishing house, in the Roman office; but I thought that
would be
It was very different. The one I loved was the publishing house that
opened on Corso Umberto, a few meters from the Platti cafe, a few meters away
from the house where the Balbo stood, when they still lived in
turin; it's at
a few meters from that hotel under the arcades, where Pavese had died.
I loved my workmates in the publishing house: those, and not others.
I thought I could not work in the middle

to other people. In fact,

when I was in Rome, I ended up leaving the publishing house, being unable
to work, without the publisher and my old companions.
Gabriele, my husband, wrote to me from Rome
that you hurry me to come down
with the children. He had become a friend of the Balbos, and he visited them in
the evening,
when he was alone.
- But in Rome you must learn to punish! - said my mother. - OR
if you must
find you a woman who is good to puncture! Find one
seamstress who comes into the house, a bit like the Tersilla. Ask the Lola. La
Lola
there will be a seamstress in the day! Or ask Adele Rasetti.
Go to
find the Adele Rasetti, who is so nice! I really like Adele!
"Write down the address of Adele Rasetti," said my father. - I'm writing to you
I! Do not miss it! I also write you my address
cousin, the son of the
poor Ettore! He is a very good doctor! You can call it!
第 175 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
- Watch to go find Adele now! "Said my father. - Woe to
you if you do not go! I do not want you to do the donkey with
Adele! You are all of you
of donkeys. Less Gino, you're all donkeys with people, you guys! Mario is
a donkey. He must have been very close to Frances when she went to
Paris to find them! He must
giving little twine. And she made me understand that
the house was very untidy, as usual!
- To think that once Mario was so ordered! - said my mother. -
It was so meticulous, boring. It was like the

Silvio!
"But now," said my father, "he has changed. Frances made me
understand that there was disorder. You are great messy voialtri!
- Not me. I am ordered, "said my mother. - Look at mine
wardrobes.
- Nope! you are very confusing! You could not find my dress
winter!
- Yes, I found it! I knew it very well where it was! But I had put it away
to give it away, because it's old, not it
you can carry more Beppino!
- Just imagine if I throw it away! I do not dream of it either! So I die, I
figured
if I make a new dress!
- You had it done when you went to Liege! You brought it all
war! Now I'm almost ten years old!

- What does it matter that I brought it? It's still a very good dress! I do not
throw away money like you guys! All megalomaniacs are you guys!
- My mother too
poor woman, - he said, - always insisted that me
I was dressed. He did not want me to be bad when I went to the Vendee
Figure! Poor Ettorino, my cousin, was very elegant, and did not want to
that
sfigurassi near Ettorino!
"From the Vendee," he said, "there were lunches of fifty, sixty guests.
There was a whole procession of carriages. Served on the table Bepo fachin. One
time
he fell down the stairs and has
broken a large pile of dishes! My brother, the
poor Caesar, when he weighed himself after those lunches, had grown by five
or six pounds!
"Poor Cesare, my brother, was too fat. He ate
too much.
I would not want Alberto, who eats so much, to become fat too
like poor Caesar!
- Everyone ate too much. We ate too much at that time. I remember
grandmother Dolcetta,
第 176 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt

how much he ate!

- My mother, poor thing, instead ate little. She was thin. poor thing,
my mother was very beautiful when she was young. He had a beautiful head. The
they all said she had a beautiful one

head. She also gave lunches of

fifty, sixty guests. There was hot ice cream, cold ice cream. Yes
he ate very well!
"My cousin Regina, at those lunches, was very elegant. It was beautiful, ah, it
was
very

beautiful queen!
"But no Beppino," said my mother, "was a fake beautiful!
- Ah no you're wrong, it was very beautiful! I liked it a lot. Even to the poor
Cesare liked him a lot. But when he was young, he was a bit
lightly. It was very
lightly! My mother always said it, too, that Regina was very
lightly!
"Sometimes my uncle, the Demente, used to go to those lunches of yours
Mom, "said my mother.
-
Sometimes. Uh, but not always. The Demente gave a little 'air,
he found that it was a too bourgeois, reactionary environment. It gave a little
of your uncle arias.
- He was so nice! - said my mother.
- How nice was the
Demented, how witty it was! He was like Silvio! Silvio pulled from him!
"Dear Mr. Lipmann," said my mother, "do you remember as you said?
And then he always said, "Blessed are you
orphans! "He said that so many crazy people were crazy
because of their parents. Blessed are the orphans, he always said. At bottom he
had
I understood the psychoanalysis, which had not yet been invented!
- Dear Mr

Lipmann, - said my mother. - It still seems to me

hear!
"My mother, poor thing, kept a carriage," said my father. - Every
day he made his carriage ride.
- He always took us

Gino and Mario, in a carriage, "said my mother. - IS

after a while they started throwing up, because the smell of it bothered him
leather, and dirty the whole carriage and she got angry!
- Poveretta! - He said
my father. - She was so sorry when she has
had to give the carriage away!
"Poveretta," said my father, "when I came back from Spitzberg,
第 177 页
 0000-0ccb-168a-c2c6-29d.txt
that I had been in the skull of the whale searching for the ganglia
cerebro-spinal,
I had my clothes all covered with whale blood in a bag, and
it was disgusting to her to touch them. I took them to the attic, and they stank
in one
terrible way!
- I did not have them
found the cerebro-spinal ganglia, - said my father.
- My mother used to say: 獺e got dirty clothes, for nothing!?
- Maybe you did not look for them Beppino! - said my mother. - Maybe there
you had to
search again!
- Nope! Sempia that you're nothing else! It was not a simple thing!
You're ready to throw me down right away. But look what donkey you are!
"When I was in my college," said my mother,
- they also did me
me to study whales. They taught natural history well, to me
he liked it a lot. But they took us a little too much to mass in my college.
It was always necessary to confess.
We sometimes did not know what a sin
confess, and then we said: "I stole the snow!"
- 獻 stole the snow!?Ah how beautiful my school was! As I am
fun!
- Every Sunday, -
he said, "I was going to the Barbison. The sisters of the
Barbison called them Beate, because they were very bigoted. The Barbison,
his real name was Perego. His friends had made this poem:
Beautiful and
see in the evening and in the morning Del Perego the c?and the cellar.
- Ah, let's not start now with Barbison! "Said my father. - How much it is
I heard this count this story!

第 178 页