Free The Road To The City by Natalia Ginzburg

couldn’t talk to him and tell him what I was thinking. Then he sneezed and I pulled the shawl up over him. Strange, I thought, how long he had lived inside me, all the time I had sat in my aunt’s kitchen and when I had gone out walking with Nini. What had happened to Nini, anyway? Why didn’t he come to see me? But perhaps it was just as well he didn’t come because I was weak and tired and talking made my head ache. Besides, Nini would surely have said something nasty about the baby.
    Giulio came to see me every evening, when the Sisters were saying their prayers in the hall and a tiny lamp with a silk shade was lit beside my bed. As soon as he arrived I began to complain that I didn’t feel well and that my whole body ached as if it had been pounded into jelly. This was partly true, but I said so mostly because I enjoyed giving him a scare. I told him that I was sick and tired of the hospital and the time never went by and some fine day I was going to run away to the films. Then he would beg me to be patient and make a great fuss and promise to bring me a surprise if I stopped giving him so much worry. He was very tender and affectionate and said he’d do anything in the world to make me happy. In fact, he’d already rented an apartment in a building that had an elevator and every other possible convenience.
    It wasn’t true that I was unhappy at the hospital. I enjoyed myself there very much because I didn’t have to lift a finger. Whereas after I left I would have to rock the baby to sleep and boil his milk and change his nappies all day long. As long as I was in the hospital I didn’t know how to handle him at all and I was desperate every time he cried because he would get all red in the face and I thought he was going to burst. Occasionally, now that I had the money, I was impatient to get up, put on my clothes, look at myself in the mirror, and go out on the street. At times when I was bored like this there was nothing to do except to wait for someone to come and see me. My mother no longer came very often because she was busy at home and didn’t want to come to the city in her shabby clothes. She didn’t seem to be as satisfied with my marriage as she once was, and she had quarrelled with Giulio already over his refusal to lend her some money. My mother wouldn’t forgive him and extended her grudge to me as well.
    Azalea came to see me as soon as she returned from the shore. Her nose was peeling and she wore beach sandals. She wasn’t getting on very well with her lover. He was jealous and wouldn’t let her go to any dances, she said, and they fought tooth and nail most of the time.
    â€˜How’s your son?’ she inquired. I asked her if she wanted to see him, but she said she was fed up with children and tiny babies made her flesh creep.
    â€˜How are you making out with your husband?’ she said. ‘You were very wise to hold out for an apartment of your own. If you’d gone to live with his mother you’d never have a penny to call your own. You have to take a strong hand with the men because if you show any signs of weakness they’ll strip the shirt off your back.’
    The next day she brought her dressmaker to see me. I told her that I couldn’t get out of my bed to have my measurements taken, but she said that the dressmaker was just coming to make my acquaintance and tell me about the latest styles. Then Azalea began to say that it was high time for me to get up. There wasn’t a thing in the world the matter with me, she said; in fact, I was much stronger than she was.
    It was a great occasion when I got up for the first time and slipped on a feathery pink wrapper that Azalea had brought me. I walked slowly down the hall on Giulio’s arm, looking out the high windows at the street below. Who knows if Nini mightn’t be passing by? I watched out for him every day. If I’d seen him on the street I’d