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Something else keeps me from confessing that I’m writing: it’s the regret that I spend so much time doing it. I often complain that I have too many things to do, that I’m the family servant, the household slave—that I never have a moment to read a book, for example. That’s all true, but in a certain sense that servitude has also become my strength, the halo of my martyrdom. So on those rare occasions when I happen to take a nap for half an hour before Michele and the children return for dinner, or when I take a walk, gazing in the shop windows on the way home from the office, I never confess it. I’m afraid that if I admitted I’d enjoyed even a short rest or some diversion, I would lose the reputation I have of dedicating every second of my time to the family. No one would remember the countless hours I spend in the office or in the kitchen or shopping or mending but only the brief moments I confessed I’d spent reading a book or taking a walk. Michele is always urging me to get some rest, and Riccardo says that as soon as he’s able to earn money, he’ll take me on vacation to Capri or the Riviera. Recognizing my weariness frees him of every responsibility. So they often repeat, severely, “You should rest,” as if not resting were a whim of mine. But in practice, as soon as they see me sitting and reading a newspaper they say, “Mamma, since you have nothing to do, could you mend the lining of my jacket? Could you iron my pants?” and so on.
So, gradually, I, too, have been convinced of it. In the office, when we get a day off, I immediately announce that I’m going to use it to catch up on various projects and add that I’d already planned to do that. I make sure that I won’t stay home and rest, because, if I did, in the eyes of the family that one day would have the appearance of an entire month of repose. Years ago, I was invited by a friend to spend a week in a country house in Tuscany. I was very tired when I left, because I had arranged things so that Michele and the children would be entirely taken care of during my absence and, on returning, I found endless chores that had accumulated during my brief vacation. And yet, later that year, if I ever mentioned that I was tired, they all reminded me that I had been on vacation and surely my body must have benefited from it. No one seemed to understand that a week of vacation in August couldn’t keep me from being tired in October. If I sometimes say, “I don’t feel well,” Michele and the children fall into a brief, respectful, awkward silence. Then I get up, return to doing what I must. No one makes a move to help me, but Michele cries, “Look, you say you don’t feel well and you’re not still for a moment.” Shortly afterward, they resume talking about this and that, and the children, going out, urge me: “Rest, OK?” Riccardo gives me a threatening little wag of his finger as if warning me against going out to have fun. Only fever, a high fever, allows any of us in the family to believe that we’re truly ill. Fever worries Michele, and the children bring me orange juice. But I rarely have a fever; never, I would say. On the other hand, I’m always tired and no one believes me. And yet tranquility for me originates precisely in the tiredness I feel when I lie in bed at night. There I find a sort of happiness in which I feel peaceful and fall asleep. I have to recognize that, perhaps, the determination with which I protect myself from any possibility of rest is the fear of losing this single source of happiness, which is tiredness.
Again, tonight I stayed up wrapping packages for the children. Michele wanted to keep me company and I said, “No, thanks, you go ahead, go to bed.” But it was because, afterward, I intended to write. Now, under everything I do and say, there’s the presence of this notebook. I never would have believed that everything that happens to me in the course of a day would be worth writing down. My life always appeared rather insignificant, without remarkable events, apart from my marriage and the birth of the children. Instead, ever since I happened to start keeping a diary, I seem to have discovered that a word or an intonation can be just as important, or even more, than the facts we’re accustomed to consider important. If we can learn to understand the smallest things that happen every day, then maybe we can learn to truly understand the secret meaning of life. But I don’t know if it’s a good thing, I’m afraid not.
I didn’t have the courage to confess that, on the contrary, these things do happen to us; it seemed to me that it wasn’t true. I said weakly, hiding behind a smile, “Yes, you’re right, but let’s speculate, let’s suppose that Mirella’s attitudes become too free, that she stays out late and I don’t like her expression when she returns … ” He interrupted me, annoyed: “I don’t want to hear you say that, even as a joke.” “All right,” I continued, in the same tone. “Then let’s say she comes home with expensive gifts that a man gave her and explains them with a lie, like that night, you remember? When she said she went out with Giovanna and instead went dancing. Let’s imagine she says she wants to live an easy life, in whatever way, by whatever means … ” Michele replied that he would never allow her to speak like that in his house. I objected that the time is past when a father could say “I won’t allow it” and the daughter had to obey because he provided food, clothing, lodging. Now, whether it’s good or bad, I don’t know, but a girl like Mirella can say, “I’m leaving home and going to work.” Then Michele said he didn’t want to waste his time listening to this absurd conversation, I had nothing to do, evidently, if I got lost in these speculations, he had the paper to read, I was never interested in the international situation, I didn’t realize what was happening in the world. I said I am very well aware of it and in fact these problems don’t seem unrelated. He said, “What could they possibly have to do with each other?” I didn’t know what to say, but I feel that way.
[...] I’m afraid his determination to go to Argentina is a gesture of discouragement; maybe he thinks it’s a way of avoiding inner struggles, but I don’t think going to a new country is enough to avoid them. He brought home a brochure, an advertisement from a travel agency, that showed the mountains and lakes of Argentina. I pointed out that his trip wouldn’t be a vacation, the mountains and lakes have no importance, and Italy has plenty of mountains, too, but he wants to go anyway. Michele exhorted me not to dissuade him and, although my opinion differs from his, these decisions are up to the father, so I stopped saying anything. Michele and Riccardo often leaf through that brochure together and look at the mountains, getting excited. Michele said to him, “If you like it there, I’ll come, too.” I objected: “And us?” “You, too, of course,” he added, “we’ll all go.” Riccardo said, “You can get rich quickly over there.”
I thought that for Michele and me it would be different. We were young: just married, we would leave for Venice, we’d have a big room on the Grand Canal. My mother often said she’d had to fight with her parents for a long time in order to marry my father; she had decided to run away with him, if they wouldn’t let her. I couldn’t take what she said seriously—the very idea made me laugh. I imagined them meeting at night, in a coupé. She’d arrive breathless, holding up her dress with its train, and papa would be waiting for her, twisting the ends of his mustache. But in those clothes, in those gestures, I imagined them already old, familiar and irritated with one another, as they are now. It’s so hard to see the people around us as different from the figures t
I’d like so much to talk about these things with Michele. But if I try, I don’t know why, I get embarrassed and pretend to be joking. Last night I sat beside him as he was reading the paper and told him that Riccardo intends to get married soon, before going to Argentina. He said it would be a really bad idea, because a man who marries is no longer free to direct his life as he pleases, he’s ruined. Humiliated, I asked if, then, he … But he immediately interrupted me, saying that our case is an exception. So, almost teasingly, I asked if he was happy. With some annoyance he answered, “What difficult questions! Yes, of course, why shouldn’t I be? The children are good, they’re healthy. Riccardo will have a great career in Argentina, Mirella’s already working, then she’ll get married. What more could we wish for, mamma?” He smiled, patting my hand fondly, and went back to reading.hey’re compelled to represent for us.
[...] Today, for example, I was sorry I’d gone to the office and wasted time doing nothing: the kitchen still had to be cleaned up and Michele needs some shirts that these past evenings, in order to write, I didn’t iron. Sometimes, in a happy state of intoxication, I imagine giving in to disorder: leaving the pots dirty, the laundry to be washed, the beds unmade. I fall asleep in that desire, a violent, greedy desire, similar to the desire for bread I had when I was pregnant. At night I dream of having to remedy all that disorder and not succeeding, not finishing in time, before Michele gets home. It’s a nightmare.
Suddenly, I thought that I, too, hide a notebook, and that Mirella, looking for a hiding place for hers, might find it. If she read it, she would discover that I am different from what she thinks. She would know all my secrets, would know about the director, also of the appointment I agreed to for Saturday, of the apprehension with which I ask myself if he is in love with me. The thought of him, the fear of the notebook being discovered, and the impression that a dense mystery envelops each of us give me no peace. I see Mirella who leaves home with her diary in her purse, Michele who returns to the bank on Saturday to write his script in peace, Riccardo who has put up the photograph of the Argentine mountains on his bedroom wall, and it seems to me that, although we love each other so much, we protect ourselves from each other like enemies.
I went to the kitchen and started frying the potatoes, then the eggs. I think Mirella was lying, and in any case, if she destroyed the diary, she did it after meeting Cantoni. Soon she joined me and asked if I needed help. She rarely offers, so I looked at her with amazement. She’s really a pretty girl, her hair cut so short is very becoming. The joy of the money earned made her more ardent, and yet unusually sweet. She smiled: “Mamma, why can’t you admit that I’m happy in my way?” I told her that happiness, at least as she imagines it, doesn’t exist, I know through experience. She objected: “But you have the experience of one life alone, yours. Why don’t you want to leave me at least the hope?” I told her to go ahead and hope, it costs nothing. Then I handed her a plate with the fried eggs and asked her to bring it to her brother. She asked me why he couldn’t come get it himself. “I’ll call him,” she said. I turned to her harshly: “Take it,” I commanded. “Riccardo is tired, he studied all day.” “And didn’t you work all day?” she said brusquely. “And didn’t I work all day?” Yet she brought it to him. When she returned, she said, “That is what disgusts me, mamma. You think you’re obliged to serve everyone, starting with me. So, little by little, the others end up believing it. You think that for a woman to have some personal satisfaction, besides those of the house and the kitchen, is a fault, that her job is to serve. I don’t want that, you understand? I don’t want that.” I felt a shiver run down my spine, a cold shiver that I can’t get rid of. Yet I pretended indifference to what she said. I asked her ironically if she wanted to start being a lawyer in her own home.
It’s very difficult to talk to Riccardo about Mirella: when they’re together they’re like enemies. Maybe it’s always been that way, but until now I thought it was petty sibling spite. Now I’m afraid there’s some other reason, more profound, that I can’t define, and that grieves me deeply. I don’t want to think that Riccardo doesn’t love his sister; rather, it’s as if he poured out on her an animosity directed toward himself. Today he said that women take advantage of working to do as they like. I reminded him that I, too, work and that it was helpful for our family, including him. He replied that I do it only out of necessity, and therefore my work is a proof of solidarity with my husband, basically a proof of submission. He added that, if I could, I would do without it, and I don’t know what restraint, maybe the Saturday appointment, kept me from contradicting him.