The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg Page A

sleeps a lot and doesn’t go out much. Every now and then the three of them have violent rows and they all yell simultaneously — I hear the yelling and go out on the balcony, but I think the rows are usually about stupid, trivial things,.the words I catch are about clothes that have to be hung out to dry or potatoes that have to be peeled. When they first moved in Nadia used to come up and ask me if she could use my washing-machine, but she doesn’t any more because they’ve bought one.
    The other day Nadia’s parents came up from Sicily. The father is a little old man with a small bristly grey beard. The mother is a tired, elegant old woman. A huge row suddenly broke out, I think between Nadia and her parents. Salvatore came up and asked me for some lemons. The row died down and from my balcony I saw them having tea and biscuits. Your cousin Roberta was there too. The two old folks, Roberta later told me, left after a few days with the idea that your son Alberico was the baby’s real father, and in the firm belief that the whole thing was a disaster. They didn’t even like Roberta and were very frosty to her.
    I tell you these things because they concern your son and I think that they will interest you. Even though I don’t go down that often I see them on the stairs and from my balcony. I don’t go down that often because, to be honest with you, I don’t feel completely at ease with them. They are more or less my age but I feel myself to be much older than them. They intrigue me, but they make me feel diffident, which is a peculiar sensation.
    I took them to
Le Margherite
. They made no comment on either Piero or Lucrezia, nor on Albina or Serena. I don’t know whether they enjoyed themselves or were bored. Nadia said only that her mattress was lumpy. Which was probably true. I’ve finished up with terrible mattresses at
Le Margherite
.
    They often have friends round. I see people in their house from my balcony. I envy them because I’m pretty much alone. I sometimes go to the Rotunnos’, or to one of my colleague’s at the newspaper, but I hold back from phoning too much, I’m afraid of seeming pushy. I’m basically very diffident, and there are few people I get on well with.
    Getting back to your son, I know that one evening they went to supper at Ippolita’s, that girl-friend of Ignazio Fegiz who lives in Porta Cavalleggeri. Afterwards this Ippolita woman came to see them quite often, and I saw her sitting on a deck-chair - their balcony is right under mine. She is a slim, elegant woman with a big hooked nose and a thick mane of golden hair. Ignazio Fegiz has been with her for a very long time. But they don’t live together.
    Albina is well. We sometimes eat together in the evenings, sometimes at Mariuccia’s where we always used to go with you and where even the walls remind us of you. To tell you the truth I’m a bit bored with her, we always say the same things, we always talk about the same people. Being with her is a bit like being alone for me. But she is a good person, she is fond of me and I’m fond of her too. When she asks me to have supper with her I don’t know how to say no. Perhaps she wants to go to bed with me, I don’t know, in any case she doesn’t attract me at all physically. I think she claims that it’s me who’s after her, and that she doesn’t want me. She’s lying, because I’ve always let her know that I’m attracted by a quite different kind of woman.
    I don’t have very much that’s new to tell you about our friends at Monte Fermo and Pianura - I mean Piero and Lucrezia and Serena. Everything is more or less as it was when^you left. The Woman’s Centre goes laboriously forward, there’s never much on there and not many people go. Serena is pleased with it but she will close it down soon because she’s going on a trip to Russia. Piero and Lucrezia will