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[...] Cenzo Rena suddenly stopped the car, he asked her if she really wanted to get rid of the baby. Anna asked what else she could do, Giuma would never marry her and possibly she herself would not have at all liked marrying him, she had made a mess of everything and so what would that baby have if it came into the world, nothing but a mother who had made a mess of everything and had no courage. Cenzo Rena said that no one found himself with courage ready-made, you had to acquire courage little by little, it was a long story and it went on almost all your life. They had stopped at the gates of the town, the tin roofs of the soap factory could be seen. He told her that up till that day she had lived like an insect. An insect that knows nothing beyond the leaf upon which it hangs.
She said yes, she would marry him. But she told him she felt a little cold at the thought of having decided something for the whole of her life. Cenzo Rena said he himself felt very cold too, he felt long, cold shudders down his back, but anyone who was afraid of a cold shudder did not deserve to live, he deserved to hang on a leaf all his life. And she, now, had got to come away from her leaf, only insects remained on leaves, with their little staring, sad eyes, and their little motionless feet, and their short, sad little breathing. In order to get married it was necessary to know whether you felt free and happy together, with cold shudders down your back because even joy has its cold shudders, and with a great fear of making a mistake and a real desire to go forward. And he himself had never felt so free and happy as he had the day before when he had begun to think he might marry her, for he had thought of it at once and had been awake all night thinking about it, and he had had such long, cold shudders that he had got up and drunk some brandy and put on his sweater over his pyjamas.
[...] For them there had been no fanfare of trumpets, he said. And that was a good thing, because when fate announced itself with a loud fanfare of trumpets you always had to be a little on your guard. Fanfares of trumpets usually announced only small, futile things, it was a way fate had of teasing people. You felt a great exaltation and heard a loud fanfare of trumpets in the sky. But the serious things of life, on the contrary, took you by surprise, they spurted up all of a sudden like water. She had not quite understood what it was, this fanfare of trumpets, she asked him as he was sitting in the revolving chair with his face all covered with soap. A fanfare of trumpets, he said, a fanfare of trumpets. The way fate had of teasing people. Some people waited all their lives for some little fanfare or other, and their lives passed without any fanfares and they felt defrauded and unhappy. And others heard nothing but fanfares and ran about hither and thither, and then they were very tired and thirsty and there was no water left to drink. There was nothing left but dust and fanfares. As they went out of the shop they took another look in the mirror, she told him that at all events she never again wished to wear dresses made out of curtains. Cenzo Rena said she was wrong, dresses made out of curtains suited her very well. When they were inside the car he bent down and kissed her, and then she saw very closely the grey streaks in his hair and moustache and his tortoiseshell spectacles and all the grains of rice.
Cenzo Rena explained to Anna that these were not among the most wretched of the villages, the truly wretched villages were still further south, villages of utterly poor contadini, without either schools or chemists’ shops or doctors. At Borgo San Costanzo there was a doctor and a school, but the doctor took no interest in illness and the schoolmistress took no interest in teaching, with the years they became more and more depressed and more and more cynical, allowing their work to crumble away in their hands. And so even that was a fairly wretched village, and after the war there would have to be a revolution. Anna, at the mention of revolution, woke up and asked if he would allow her to take part in the revolution with him. But starting a revolution meant, to Cenzo Rena, going to the municipal offices and pulling out all the old deeds crumbling in the drawers, and making the Marchesa disgorge money for improving the drainage and setting up a dispensary, with an active doctor who would not let himself crumble away. All these were things that at present seemed like a dream, because Fascism was in power and Fascism wanted people to let themselves crumble away. This kind of revolution did not please Anna, revolution to her meant shooting and escaping over the roof-tops, and she felt sad at the thought of Cenzo Rena’s dull revolution, just a few deeds thrown away and a quarrel with the old Marchesa.
lmao
The Turk was very pleased that the war was not going well, in Africa the Italians were running away over the desert, in Greece there was slush and snow and mud and the Italians were unable to advance. But Cenzo Rena told him in Turkish not to delude himself too much, the war would go on for a very long time yet, the Italians were not fighting well because they had no boots and because they did not like the war, but the Germans had boots and everything, and they liked the war very much because they liked killing. The Turk trembled and grew pale at the mention of the Germans, if the Germans won the war what would happen to him, a Turkish Jew, he would never go back home again. With the Italians he had no great quarrel, all they had done to him was to send him to San Costanzo, they had spotted him in Rome selling carpets in the street and had put him in prison for a little and then had sent him here. He was getting on all right but he was very cold, even with Cenzo Rena’s sweater and the coat with red and yellow checks, all they put in his room at the inn was a bowl with charcoal embers in it, which was barely enough to warm his hands. You could see he had sold carpets because he always kept his shoulders bent, as though beneath a heavy weight of carpets, you could easily picture him walking with long carpets hanging down from his shoulders.
[...] Cenzo Rena had been ashamed to take the money to those fat women combing their hair, and yet that was what he ought to have done, but shame was the thing that spoilt human beings, probably without shame human beings would have been a little less nasty. But now there was no time left to argue about shame, there was no time left to trouble about one’s soul, the houses built for human beings were falling to the ground and mattresses and babies were pouring out of them because the earth was going to ruin. And Giustino, said Anna, Giustino, where in the world was he? Giustino, said Cenzo Rena, Giustino, where indeed?
[...] In any case it was useless to talk any more about Mussolini, no one was thinking about Mussolini now. Now there was the King, the collector of coins, who gradually had pulled himself together and wanted to try and take command. The King would dig out goodness knows what old ministers, because Italy had had quite enough of Fascists with big muscular torsos and of athletic processions and had a great longing for white-haired, mild old gentlemen with crooked, trembling knees. In a short time Italy would certainly be flooded with mild old gentlemen, dressed as generals and ministers and dragging behind them elderly wives, trembling and white-haired, and Italy would clap her hands at these elderly wives, sick as she was of the women that Fascism had brought into fashion, bronze breasts and thighs crowned with ears of corn on the bridges and the fountains. The King would go about Italy sometimes on horseback and Italy would clap her hands at him, he had never imagined that the King’s crooked knees could be pleasing to Italy and yet now it was just those crooked knees that Italy was greeting with joy and relief, and the wizened, disdainful, monkey-like little face under the peaked cap that was too big for him. If anyone fired a shot in the air the little monkey would run off and hide himself in the place where he had been for so many years, the little monkey would run off to the cellar where his collection of coins was kept, but at present Italy was pleased and was not thinking of firing any shots immediately. The police-sergeant made as if to rise, because he could not bear to hear the King called a little monkey. His father had received a medal from the King’s own hands. Cenzo Rena held him firmly by his cloak and poured him out some more wine, perhaps later on he and the police-sergeant might become enemies but not yet, not that day, that day they must drink together over the downfall of Mussolini. Later on, after the little monkey had also been put aside, they would have to begin to do something really fine, but he did not want to tell the police-sergeant what, because he did not want to cause him pain that day.
lol
[...] And Giustino, said Anna, what on earth had become of Giustino and Concettina, there were always stories about Rome but about the North no one knew anything, Concettina’s last letter, a little before the armistice, had said that Giustino was at Turin, but after that no more letters had come and Cenzo Rena said it was useless to write, Italy was all broken up and a letter took days and days to arrive and when it did arrive what was written in it had ceased to be true.
[...] One day the Fascists went into the forest guard’s house and started shooting at the looking-glass in the way the Germans did, and then they took the forest guard’s boots, the forest guard himself had for some time been in hiding at a farm-house and there was only his wife in the house, and when she wept and screamed a German came to see what was going on. The German stayed all night with the forest guard’s wife, and the Fascists ran off with the boots, and next day the forest guard’s wife ate some rat poison, but the doctor came and made her vomit in time. When she was better, the forest guard’s wife packed a bag and went off to her parents at Teramo, the German gave her a lift in a lorry.
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The German stood looking on while they dug the hole, he went on repeating how hard he had jammed on his brakes, his whole back was still hurting him because of the jar that sudden braking had given him. Then he sat down in the kitchen and began playing with the little girl, the child had a little bucket full of horse-chestnuts and he started carving faces on the chestnuts with his penknife. The German was tall and young, with a long, glossy, brown head, and he told them that before the war he had been a waiter in a small restaurant at Freiburg, and after the war he would start being a waiter again if there was still a need for waiters after the war, and he wondered if he would still be able to turn and twist among the little tables with the dishes, it was a job that needed a great deal of patience and he had lost his patience in the war. He had deep white scars on the backs of his hands, Cenzo Rena asked him if they were war scars, but he explained that one day in the kitchen of the restaurant he had upset some boiling soup on his hands out of a tureen. It was the fault of the under-cook, who had knocked into him as he was coming forward with the tureen. The under-cook used to go to bed with him and she made a great lamentation over his hands. But then she had left him, because she couldn’t help weeping every time she looked at his hands. Women were like that, he said, they hurt you and then they ran away out of remorse. Men were very often like that too, said Cenzo Rena, but the waiter said no, men were different, for instance he had killed the dog and had not run away. [...]
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