The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg Page B

stay at Monte Fermo even during August. This is not at all how things normally are, because they used to take the children to the seaside, but they say they don’t want to this year. Every morning the children go off with the Swiss au pair to play in the stream. As this Swiss girl is extremely stupid I’m always afraid she’ll let one of them drown. Lucrezia says she is stupid but sensible. Nevertheless she sunbathes stretched out on a rock with her eyes closed. She could at least lie there with her eyes open. I don’t know whether Piero and Lucrezia perhaps have some problem about money. He seems depressed and she seems irritable. But then it’s happened before that they have been depressed and irritable. I don’t think that there are serious difficulties - either economic or matrimonial -between them. But certainly at the moment, what with her being so irritable and him being so gloomy they are not very pleasant company and you always have the feeling you are bothering them, so I go there less willingly.
    You are always, in my thoughts.
    Yours
    Egisto

LUCREZIA TO GIUSEPPE
    Monte Fermo, 20th July
    Dear Giuseppe,
    All of a sudden I’ve a great desire to write to you. So I’ve locked the door to my room so that no one can come and annoy me while I’m writing to you.
    It’s five in the afternoon and it’s very hot. Everyone’s in a bad mood, perhaps because of the heat. A short while ago there was a great row between my mother-in law and the Swiss girl, because my mother-in-law went into the Swiss girl’s room and the bed had not been made yet and she saw that the mattress was stained with menstrual blood. Then she saw biscuit-crumbs and ants under the bed.
    This row irritated me. I found both of them unbearable. The Swiss girl said she would leave tomorrow and took her suitcases down from the top of the wardrobe. I tried to calm her down but without success. If she leaves tomorrow I shall have everything to manage - the children and the house at a time when I want to just stay quietly in my room and think.
    So many things have happened to me since you left. My life has changed. I’ve fallen in love. You will be surprised if I tell you that I’ve never been in love before, when I always kept telling you that I fall in love very easily, but they were all mistakes, and perhaps you’ll be offended if I tell you that you were a mistake too. I thought I was in love with you, I thought I wanted to live with you - what a mistake, Giuseppe - you, thank goodness, were terrified at the prospect and told me for God’s sake to stay where I was. You were wise and I thank you for it. I got on with you well enough, at the beginning, I felt happy enough, but it was all on the level of enough. When I met you my life did not change colour. Now it has changed colour. Piero accepted you, he stayed calm, more or less, my adultery with you was a bloodless affair. Now, on the contrary, my adultery is of the kind that scatters blood all over the place. I.F. and I are madly in love with each other and we are going to live together, I don’t know when. I don’t know where. We shall get a house in a town, I don’t know which one. I shall take the children with me. You were afraid of the children, he isn’t, he isn’t afraid of anything.
    When I saw him arrive here the first time and get out of his olive-green Renault and come towards me with that grey crew-cut he has, I suddenly felt scared and irritated. I said to myself ‘Now who in God’s name can this be?’ We paused for a moment and looked at each other, not moving, face to face. We are about the same height — I’m a very little taller than he is, but only a very little. The dogs started barking. They didn’t want him there. Egisto and Albina were behind him and they were surprised that the dogs were barking, usually they don’t bark. From that moment I have liked Egisto and Albina