Free The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani Page A

course you were always frightfully good at Italian, right from the start. Meldolesi was just mad about some of the essays you wrote at school. I think he even brought some along to read to us.”
    “That’s nothing to laugh at. And what about you, what are you doing?”
    “Nothing. I ought to have taken my degree in English at Venice lastJune. But what the hell. Laziness permitting, let’s hope I do this year. D’you think they’ll let those who are Juori corso* fmishjust the same?”
    * See note on page 66.
    “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m perfectly sure they will. Have you picked your thesis yet?”
    “Well, yes, I have: on Emily Dickinson, you know, that nineteenth-century American poet, a rather ghastly old girl. . . . But what am I to do? I’d have to trail round after the prof, and spend whole fortnights at Venice, and after a bit the Pearl of the Laguna makes me . ... In all these years I’ve been there as little as possible. And besides, to be quite honest, I’ve never been terribly good at that sort of thing.”
    “Liar. Liar and snob.”
    “No, honestly, I swear. And to go and sit there like a good little girl this autumn-well, I feel less like it than ever. I say, d’you know what I’d really like to do, instead of burying myself in the library?”
    “Let’s hear.”
    “Play tennis, dance and flirt, just imagine!”
    “Well, that sounds harmless enough, dancing and tennis included, but you could perfectly well do it all in Venice, if you liked.”
    “Oh, I bet . . . with my uncles’ housekeeper always at my heels!”
    “Well, tennis at any rate you can perfectly well manage. Now me, for instance, the minute I can I dash off by train to Bologna to . . . ”
    “Oh, come off it, you’re off to see your girl friend. Confess, now.’’
    “No, no. I’ve got to take my degree next year as well. I still don’t know whether it’ll be in the history of art or in Italian, but I think it’ll be Italian, now. And when I feel like it, I just allow myself an hour’s tennis. I hire a court, in via del Cestello or at the Littoriale (they’re hard courts, as you can imagine: with warm showers, a bar, all mod. cons. . . .) and nobody can object. Why don’t you do the same, in Venice?” “The trouble is that for playing tennis or dancing you need a partner,* and in Venice I just don’t know a soul that’s right. And then I must say, Venice is all very beautiful, I’m not arguing that, but I just don’t fit in there. I feel on the hop, an outsider ... a bit like being abroad.”
    “D’you sleep at your uncles’ house?”
    “Yes, of course: sleep and eat.”
    “I see. Well, I’m grateful to you for not coming to the university for that business two years ago. Honestly. I feel it’s the blackest page in my life.”
    “Why? After all. . . . D’you know that at one point as I knew you’d be there I actually had the idea ofgoing along to cheer . . . you know, just to raise the flag. . . . But listen: d’you remember that time on the Wall of the Angels out here, the year you failed in maths? Poor old thing, you must have been crying your eyes out: they looked like nothing on earth ! I wanted to cheer you up. I even had the idea of making you climb over the wall into the garden. Well, why didn’t you? I know tftat you didn’t come in, but I can’t remember why.”
    “Because someone surprised us, bang in the middle.” “Ah, yes, Perotti, that old hound the gardener.” “Gardener? Coachman, I thought he was.” “Gardener, coachman, chauffeur, porter, everything.”
    “Is he still alive?”
    “Goodness, yes ! ”
    “And the dog, the real dog, the one that barked?” “Who? Yor?”
    “Yes, the Great Dane.”
    * In English in the original.
    “Oh, he’s alive and kicking as well.”
    She repeated her brother’s invitation (“I don’t know if Albert’s rung you up, but why don’t you come here for a game with us?”); but without pressing