up and overturned tables laden with glasses. As I lay in bed, the sounds of othersâ wakefulness reached me, muffled, without gusto or color, as if through a fog; the voice over the loudspeakerââSide dish of French fries... Whereâs that ravioli?ââhad a nasal, resigned melancholy.
At about half past two the âUrbano Rattazziâ beer hall pulled down its metal blinds; the waiters, turning up the collars of their topcoats over the Tyrolean jackets of their uniform, came out of the kitchen door and crossed the courtyard, chatting. At about three a metallic clanking invaded the courtyard: the kitchen workers were dragging out the heavy, empty beer drums, tipping them on their rims and rolling them along, banging one against the other; then the men began rinsing them out. They took their time, since they were no doubt paid by the hour; and they worked carelessly, whistling and making a great racket with those zinc drums, for a couple of hours. At about six, the beer truck came to bring the full drums and collect the empties; but already in the main room of the âUrbano Rattazziâ the sound of the polishers had begun, the machines that cleaned the floors for the day that was about to begin.
In moments of silence, in the heart of the night, next door, in Signorina Margaritiâs room, an intense talking would suddenly burst forth, mingled with little explosions of laughter, questions and answers, all in the same falsetto female voice; the deaf woman couldnât distinguish the act of thinking from the act of speaking aloud and at all hours of the day or even when she woke up late at night, whenever she became involved in a thought, a memory, a regret, she started talking to herself, distributing the dialogue among various speakers. Luckily her soliloquies, in their intensity, were incomprehensible; and yet they filled one with the uneasiness of sharing personal indiscretions.
During the day, when I went into the kitchen to ask her for some hot water to shave with (she couldnât hear a knock and I had to get within her eyeshot to make her aware of my presence), I would catch her talking to the mirror, smiling and grimacing, or seated, staring into the void, telling herself some story; then she would suddenly collect her wits and say: âOh, I was talking to the cat,â or else, âIâm sorry, I didnât see you; I was saying my prayersâ (she was very devout). But most of the time she didnât realize she had been overheard.
To tell the truth she did talk to the cat often. She could make long speeches to him, for hours, and on certain evenings I heard her repeating âPss... pss... kitty... here, kitty...â at the window, waiting for him to come back from his roaming along the balconies, roofs, and terraces. He was a scrawny, half-wild cat, with blackish fur that was gray every time he came home, as if he collected all the dust and soot of the neighborhood. He ran away from me if he even glimpsed me in the distance and would hide under the furniture, as if I had beaten him at the very least, though I never paid any attention to him. But when I was out, he surely visited my room: the freshly washed white shirt which the landlady set on the marble top of the dresser was always found with the catâs sooty paw prints on its collar and front. I would start shouting curses, which I quickly cut short because the deaf woman couldnât hear me, and so I then went into the other room to lay the disaster before her eyes. She was sorry, she hunted for the cat to punish him; she explained that no doubt when she had gone into my room to take the shirt, the cat had followed her without her noticing him; and she must have shut him up inside and the animal had jumped up on the dresser, to release his anger at being locked in.
I had only three shirts and I was constantly giving them to her to wash becauseâperhaps it was the still disordered life I led,
At about half past two the âUrbano Rattazziâ beer hall pulled down its metal blinds; the waiters, turning up the collars of their topcoats over the Tyrolean jackets of their uniform, came out of the kitchen door and crossed the courtyard, chatting. At about three a metallic clanking invaded the courtyard: the kitchen workers were dragging out the heavy, empty beer drums, tipping them on their rims and rolling them along, banging one against the other; then the men began rinsing them out. They took their time, since they were no doubt paid by the hour; and they worked carelessly, whistling and making a great racket with those zinc drums, for a couple of hours. At about six, the beer truck came to bring the full drums and collect the empties; but already in the main room of the âUrbano Rattazziâ the sound of the polishers had begun, the machines that cleaned the floors for the day that was about to begin.
In moments of silence, in the heart of the night, next door, in Signorina Margaritiâs room, an intense talking would suddenly burst forth, mingled with little explosions of laughter, questions and answers, all in the same falsetto female voice; the deaf woman couldnât distinguish the act of thinking from the act of speaking aloud and at all hours of the day or even when she woke up late at night, whenever she became involved in a thought, a memory, a regret, she started talking to herself, distributing the dialogue among various speakers. Luckily her soliloquies, in their intensity, were incomprehensible; and yet they filled one with the uneasiness of sharing personal indiscretions.
During the day, when I went into the kitchen to ask her for some hot water to shave with (she couldnât hear a knock and I had to get within her eyeshot to make her aware of my presence), I would catch her talking to the mirror, smiling and grimacing, or seated, staring into the void, telling herself some story; then she would suddenly collect her wits and say: âOh, I was talking to the cat,â or else, âIâm sorry, I didnât see you; I was saying my prayersâ (she was very devout). But most of the time she didnât realize she had been overheard.
To tell the truth she did talk to the cat often. She could make long speeches to him, for hours, and on certain evenings I heard her repeating âPss... pss... kitty... here, kitty...â at the window, waiting for him to come back from his roaming along the balconies, roofs, and terraces. He was a scrawny, half-wild cat, with blackish fur that was gray every time he came home, as if he collected all the dust and soot of the neighborhood. He ran away from me if he even glimpsed me in the distance and would hide under the furniture, as if I had beaten him at the very least, though I never paid any attention to him. But when I was out, he surely visited my room: the freshly washed white shirt which the landlady set on the marble top of the dresser was always found with the catâs sooty paw prints on its collar and front. I would start shouting curses, which I quickly cut short because the deaf woman couldnât hear me, and so I then went into the other room to lay the disaster before her eyes. She was sorry, she hunted for the cat to punish him; she explained that no doubt when she had gone into my room to take the shirt, the cat had followed her without her noticing him; and she must have shut him up inside and the animal had jumped up on the dresser, to release his anger at being locked in.
I had only three shirts and I was constantly giving them to her to wash becauseâperhaps it was the still disordered life I led,
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