how perfectly preserved she was. The walls of the houses in the narrow alley reverberated, we hooted and howled so much. And we kissed and we hugged, and we tried in three minutes to exchange accounts of what had happened in three decades.
She was widowed twice, I never was; she married a third time, I haven’t; she has one daughter, and I have one son and two daughters. So far so good. And we’re both in marvelous health.! wanted to tell you about this meeting because of how Lorenza looked. Years ago no one would have believed she would live so long and look so wonderfully fit.
In those days she had just started studying English, and she wondered if she could take advantage of the fact that my father and I were going to England and come along with us, since it was her first time. In those days traveling was a serious business. You went to London by
Orient Express—not
the melancholy nostalgic imitation it is today; it was a real train that took you to faraway places that made poets say, ‘‘Leaving is a little like dying.”
The time we went with Lorenza, my mother came to the station as usual with a white batiste handkerchief to wave us a last farewell as the train pulled out of the station and to wipe away her tears comfortably and discreetly. In those days a lot of emotion was expressed at train stations.
What I remember very clearly from that trip is the excitement of smoking a cigarette in front of my father for the first time. And with his permission.
We stayed the first few days in London at a small hotel owned by a woman who was totally deaf and had patronized Harry’s Bar. There were two rooms on each floor and one bath on the landing. My father and I slept in one room, and Lorenza stayed in the other on the same floor.
With the excuse of going to the bathroom, I went to her room the evening we arrived. We had exchanged a couple of furtive glances on the train, and I got the impression Lorenza would not have been averse to some affectionate attention. There wasn’t much time for preliminaries, because I didn’t want my father to start wondering where 1 was and come to the logical conclusion. The first thing Lorenza said was that she felt very sad and lonely. 1 felt sorry for her, and it was mainly to console her that 1 put my arms around her. Perfectly normal. But I never expected what happened next.
The melancholy sighs ended almost at once, and Lorenza began sobbing. I didn’t know what to say or do, and then suddenly our bodies were intertwined. I think it was because she was so sad. I tried even harder to console her, and I must confess that I forgot the boundaries between proper and improper conduct. At some point Lorenza’s nightgown was off and she was all but shouting that I was killing her. Those were her exact words: “Help me, Arrigo, you’re killing me!” And she said it over and over again.
Look, I’m an ordinary person and I have never had homicidal feelings toward anyone, but I was so intoxicated by the accusation that I did everything I could to make her keep on, and she shouted louder and louder, ‘‘Help, you’re killing me!”
The upshot was that I was more dead than alive when 1 left her room. You might have expected Lorenza to die right after the last thrilling high note came from her gasping throat, but instead she recovered at once without a trace of loneliness or homesickness.
And that wasn’t an isolated incident, because every night I left my room with the excuse that I had to go to the bathroom, and every night Lorenza and I played the same death scene. When I went back to bed the last night, my father put down the book he was pretending to read and looked at my face. He was worried because I looked so pale, and wondered if I had diarrhea, the only ailment that alarmed the family ever since an acute gastroenteritis almost sent me to my Maker when I was two years old.
Then I went to the famous manor house in Somerset, leaving Lorenza in London in full bloom. She
She was widowed twice, I never was; she married a third time, I haven’t; she has one daughter, and I have one son and two daughters. So far so good. And we’re both in marvelous health.! wanted to tell you about this meeting because of how Lorenza looked. Years ago no one would have believed she would live so long and look so wonderfully fit.
In those days she had just started studying English, and she wondered if she could take advantage of the fact that my father and I were going to England and come along with us, since it was her first time. In those days traveling was a serious business. You went to London by
Orient Express—not
the melancholy nostalgic imitation it is today; it was a real train that took you to faraway places that made poets say, ‘‘Leaving is a little like dying.”
The time we went with Lorenza, my mother came to the station as usual with a white batiste handkerchief to wave us a last farewell as the train pulled out of the station and to wipe away her tears comfortably and discreetly. In those days a lot of emotion was expressed at train stations.
What I remember very clearly from that trip is the excitement of smoking a cigarette in front of my father for the first time. And with his permission.
We stayed the first few days in London at a small hotel owned by a woman who was totally deaf and had patronized Harry’s Bar. There were two rooms on each floor and one bath on the landing. My father and I slept in one room, and Lorenza stayed in the other on the same floor.
With the excuse of going to the bathroom, I went to her room the evening we arrived. We had exchanged a couple of furtive glances on the train, and I got the impression Lorenza would not have been averse to some affectionate attention. There wasn’t much time for preliminaries, because I didn’t want my father to start wondering where 1 was and come to the logical conclusion. The first thing Lorenza said was that she felt very sad and lonely. 1 felt sorry for her, and it was mainly to console her that 1 put my arms around her. Perfectly normal. But I never expected what happened next.
The melancholy sighs ended almost at once, and Lorenza began sobbing. I didn’t know what to say or do, and then suddenly our bodies were intertwined. I think it was because she was so sad. I tried even harder to console her, and I must confess that I forgot the boundaries between proper and improper conduct. At some point Lorenza’s nightgown was off and she was all but shouting that I was killing her. Those were her exact words: “Help me, Arrigo, you’re killing me!” And she said it over and over again.
Look, I’m an ordinary person and I have never had homicidal feelings toward anyone, but I was so intoxicated by the accusation that I did everything I could to make her keep on, and she shouted louder and louder, ‘‘Help, you’re killing me!”
The upshot was that I was more dead than alive when 1 left her room. You might have expected Lorenza to die right after the last thrilling high note came from her gasping throat, but instead she recovered at once without a trace of loneliness or homesickness.
And that wasn’t an isolated incident, because every night I left my room with the excuse that I had to go to the bathroom, and every night Lorenza and I played the same death scene. When I went back to bed the last night, my father put down the book he was pretending to read and looked at my face. He was worried because I looked so pale, and wondered if I had diarrhea, the only ailment that alarmed the family ever since an acute gastroenteritis almost sent me to my Maker when I was two years old.
Then I went to the famous manor house in Somerset, leaving Lorenza in London in full bloom. She
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