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[...] Giuma knew nothing of the child that was inside her. They lay down and made love in the bushes by the river, and then they were silent with their faces in the grass and Anna hunted for words in which to tell him of the child that was inside her. But she looked at Giuma’s face in the grass and allowed all the words to escape from her. It seemed to her that she had become grown-up since the moment when she realized she was to have a baby, and it seemed to her that he, on the contrary, was still a little boy, with his heat-flushed face and his rumpled hair. He started to complain of how Emanuele would never let him touch the car, he would begin shrieking every time he saw him go near the garage. If they had had the car perhaps they might have been able to go and swim in the lake, it was a tepid, dirty pool but perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad to take a dive into it once in a way. But they couldn’t go there on foot. He himself, in any case, would be leaving in a short time, Mammina had arranged for the villa up above Stresa and in a short time would be coming back to fetch him, she had also arranged for a tutor to give him lessons, in October he was to take his final exams.
[...] She thought how she had neither father nor mother, and how she had found her brother dead on a seat and how she had a baby inside her. But she had not the courage to tell anybody about the baby, nor had she the courage to go and look for a midwife in the town. It seemed to her that she would have courage only for starting a revolution. She ran in despair through the rain. [...]
amazing
[...] She said she had not yet thought of how she wanted to spend her life. He asked her how old she was and she said she was sixteen. He said that at sixteen a person ought to begin to know how he wanted to spend his life. She said she wanted to spend her life making a revolution. Then he started laughing heartily, he had small teeth but not like a wolf’s, he had separate, gay little teeth like so many grains of rice. He told her that there was no question of a revolution now.
He asked her if she would marry him. In that way she would not have to get rid of the baby. The streets were full of babies and certainly they grew up into men with scowling, nasty faces, and yet it seemed to him sad that one of them should be got rid of. [...]
[...] 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?