All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg Page B

Emilio Sbrancagna, Concettina would be Signora Sbrancagna, a fine name too. Emanuele wanted Ippolito to go at once to Concettina and persuade her to give up this fellow ; couldn’t they hear how she was crying, she was marrying him because she was desperate and discouraged and goodness knows what ideas she had got into her head, perhaps she had got it into her head that if she didn’t get married now she would never get married at all. But Signora Maria said that she had looked at this young man from the window and he was tall, and distinguished-looking, and she had also sought a little information about his family, because she always thought of everything. It was an extremely good family and in good circumstances, they lived in a villa a little way out of the town, the father owned a chemical works and the son worked there too. At this moment Danilo appeared, and asked what they were doing sitting round the table with that troubled look on their faces. So Emanuele explained to him that Concettina wanted to marry Signor Sbrancagna, a Fascist. Danilo asked what was so tragic about that, the Fascist would help them when they got into trouble. Then he at once started talking about something else, as though Concettina had been any ordinary person and he had never waited for her for whole afternoons at the gate.
    Next day Signora Maria started cleaning the house, because Concettina had told her that Emilio Sbrancagna was bringing his parents to see her. The sitting-room windows were thrown open and Signora Maria climbed up on a ladder to clean the panes. Anna in the meantime had to dust the piano and the furniture, and she tried to move the piano to see if there were still any pink and green pamphlets hidden behind it. There was nothing, only a few flakes of dust on the floor. Concettina did not help with the cleaning, Concettina stayed lying on the bed in her room, stifling a sob in her handkerchief from time to time. Signora Maria thought she was weeping because of the trousseau, and said Ippolito ought not to allow her to sell anything, he ought to go and draw the money out of the bank, she was convinced there was a heap of money in the bank and that Ippolito was unwilling to touch it. Every now and then she came down from the ladder and went to comfort Concettina, she told her that as a matter of fact not much was needed for a trousseau, just a few practical, washable things, no artificial silk because it was vulgar, just linen or batiste. By eight o’clock in the evening the sitting-room was ready, with the stove lit and the teacups ready on the piano, and Signora Maria had put on her black dress with the lace jabot and had suddenly started ordering everyone about, Giustino was to warn Danilo that he was not to appear, Concettina was to wash her eyes with boracic lotion and smooth back her fringe, Emanuele was to appear for a moment, say how d’you do and go away at once.
    Emanuele, however, refused utterly to go into the sitting-room, he crept away into the kitchen with Anna and together they watched the Sbrancagnas getting out of their car, the father a tiny little man and slightly deformed, with long hay-coloured moustaches, the mother tall and white-haired, the young man with his hair cut en brosse, a black feather-brush above a brow high and narrow as a tower. Emanuele kept on saying, “Poor Concettina, what a terrible business, what a terrible business,” and cursed Ippolito for not doing anything to stop the marriage ; he just let things slide, he always let everything slide, in reality nothing and nobody mattered to him, in reality he was a cynic. Concettina, who had helped to burn the newspapers, was fated to finish her career amongst the Sbrancagnas, she was fated to end up in a family of Fascists, with a portrait of Mussolini at the head of the bed, she, the daughter of her father, a man who had died in sorrow at not seeing the revolution. Concettina, out of melancholy, out of spite, goodness