Free Among Women Only by Cesare Pavese Page A

fitting rooms and the large salon on the first floor were to be changed; they were to be named according to the style of the decorations. We had to find mirrors, materials, lamps, prints, but they didn't know yet whether baroque or what. I had to tell the architect, make plans, take photographs, send someone to Rome. Suspend everything. Rugs and curtains, too.
    "For the fifteenth?" I asked.
    "Send the architect here."
    I didn't send him, I went myself. The next evening, after a bath in my own apartment, and after airing the rooms, I was walking on familiar cobblestone. Two miserable days of sirocco followed during which I saw the usual bored faces and nobody came to the point. That was the Rome I knew. Halfway through a discussion some man, some woman would come in, start talking, jump up, and say: "But you have to think of this..." Somebody was always missing, the person who had called the conference. Madame was on the point of summoning Febo, then gave up the idea. We had our best talk at a table in the Columbia while the others were dancing. All I managed was to convince her that it was best to open definitely in May with the summer models, but I got an idea of what they had in mind. One of them had said that Turin is such a difficult city. I explained that there are limits to what you can do even in Turin.
    Maurizio, too, got bored unexpectedly. He thought it was his duty to wait for me, stay beside me, follow me. He ostentatiously didn't mention Turin. I didn't mention Morelli. I was conscious of being much more alone in Rome, climbing those streets or dropping into Gigi's for coffee, than I had been in Turin in my hotel bed or in the Via Po. The last evening we came in late under a wind that shook the street lamps and rattled the shutters. I didn't tell him that certain hints from madame had made it clear that they were putting me in charge of the Turin shop and that I wouldn't be able to come back to Rome. I told him to stay in bed the next morning and not come to the station.
    It was drizzling in Turin. Everything was chilly, melancholy, foggy; if it hadn't been March, I would have said November. When Febo heard that I had come back from Rome, there he was, grinning, with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, but he wasn't very sure of himself. When I told him about this business of the baroque, he grinned happily again.
    "So now, Clelia," he said softly, "what will you do?"
    "I'll look for a decorator who knows baroque," I said.
    "Turin is full of baroque. It's all over the place, but never baroque enough..."
    "They know that in Rome," I said, "but they don't know what baroque is ..."
    "Let's do it like this," he said, and began throwing off sheet after sheet of rapid sketches.
    He smoked and sketched all evening. He was good. I watched that red, bony hand, scarcely aware that it was his. It annoyed me that he should know so much, young as he was, and make light of it all, as if his talent were so much money he had accidentally found in his pocket. He told me earlier that he had gone to architecture school only on days when he knew a certain girl would be there. He had learned his trade while traveling the world with his mother, a crazy old lady who furnished and refurnished houses the way she would open and close a beach umbrella. He explained gaily that there was no need to change anything in the rooms, we had only to go to the antique dealers, and it needn't all be baroque —some could be provincial, in the worst taste—but we had to arrange the things well, give them proper stage lighting. He knocked himself out laughing and tried to kiss me. We were in the hotel lobby. I let him kiss my hand.
    The next day Morelli appeared, excited, asking where I had been for so long. I told him he had to help me because the young of Turin were really in poor shape and we old people had to stick together. I asked him if he knew the antique dealers, if he knew anything about style in furniture.
    When he understood what I