The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani

synagogue, was wearing one of his usual pale, light-weight linen suits, with a black ribboned panama hat pulled down over his thick pince-nez, and, as he walked, leaning on a bamboo cane. She, all in black, was carrying a large bunch of chrysanthemums obviously picked in some remote part of the garden, during their walk. She held them clasped sidelong to her bosom, holding them in her right arm in a tenderly possessive, almost maternal way. Although she was still straight, and a fuil head taller than her husband, she too seemed to have aged a great deal. Her hair had become completely grey, an ugly, dismal grey; under her bony, jutting forehead, her intensely black eyes still glittered with the same fanatical, sickly glow as before.
    Those of us sitting round the umbrella rose and those who were playing stopped.
    “Don’t get up,” said professor Ermanno, in his pleasant, musical voice. “Please don’t disturb yourselves. Do go on playing.”
    Of course he wasn’t obeyed. Micol and Alberto introduced us at once: Micol did most ofit. Apart from giving our full names, she stopped to say what she supposed would arouse her father’s interest in each one of us: what we were studying and doing, in the first place. She started with me and Bruno Lattes, speaking of us both in a remote, noticeably objective tone: as if to stop her father, in those special circumstances, from showing the least sign of special friendships and preferences. We were the two “literary ones in the gang”, two “really bright ones”. Then she went on to Mal-nate, joking about his “rare” passion for chemistry which had made him leave a town as full of resources as Milan (“Mi7c« /’e on gran MHanl * * “What a big city Milan is!”: Milanese dialect. ) to come and bury himself in a “poky hole” like Ferrara.
    “He works in the industrial zone,” explained Alberto, simply and seriously. “In one of the Monte-catini factories.”
    “They’re meant to produce synthetic rubber,” Micol went on, “but it seems they’ve not managed it yet.”
    Possibly afraid her ironic tones might hurt the stranger, her father hastened to speak.
    “You were at the university with Alberto, weren’t you?” he said, speaking directly to Malnate.
    “Well, in a way we were,” said Malnate. “But actually I was three years ahead of him, and in a different faculty too. But we were the best of friends all the same.
    “I know, I know. My son’s often spoken about you. He’s told us he was often at your home, and that your parents were extremely kind to him on several occasions. Will you thank them for us, when you see them again? In the meantime we’re delighted to have you here, in our house. And do come back, won’t you? . . . Come back whenever you like.”
    He turned to Micol and asked her, indicating Adriana:
    “And this young lady, who is she? If I’m not mistaken she’s a Zanardi. Or am I wrong?”
    The conversation dragged on like that, until all the introductions were completed, including those of Car-letto Sani and Tonino Collevatti, whom Micol defined as the two “white hopes” of tennis in Ferrara. In the end, professor Ermanno and signora Olga, who had stayed by her husband the whole time without saying a word, just smiling benevolently at times, walked away towards the house still arm in arm.
    Although professor Ermanno haO said good-bye with a cordial: “See you again soon,” qo one would have dreamt of taking this very seriously.
    But the following Sunday, while Adriana Trentini and Bruno Lattes on one side, and Desiree Baggioli and Claudio Montemezzo on the other, were playing a tremendously keen match in which, according to Adriana, who had got it up, they would repay her and Bruno, “morally at least”, for the ugly trick played on them by marchese Barbicinti (but things didn’t seem to be going quite the same way this time : Adriana and Bruno were losing, and pretty definitely