Free The Road To The City by Natalia Ginzburg Page A

have called down to him to come and see me and we should have talked and quarrelled as we did before. After all this time he couldn’t possibly love me. But even if he did that was no reason for not coming to see me. Still my watch was all in vain and I grew ill-humoured and fought with the Sisters when they told me to go back to bed.
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    I found out the truth only when Giovanni came to see me, bringing a horn for the baby, as if he were already big enough to blow it. He was carrying a brief-case and said he was a travelling salesman for a wholesale draper. There was something nervous and evasive about his manner; he waved his arms in the air and didn’t look at me when he spoke. ‘He must be in some trouble,’ I thought to myself. ‘Perhaps Antonietta’s left him.’ Finally I asked him what it was.
    â€˜Nothing,’ he said. But he rubbed his hands nervously as he walked up and down, and finally he stopped in front of the wall with his back to me.
    â€˜It’s Nini,’ he muttered. ‘He’s dead.’
    I put the baby down abruptly.
    â€˜Yes, he’s dead,’ Giovanni repeated, starting to cry.
    I fell back into a chair, feeling as if I couldn’t breathe. Gradually Giovanni calmed down, wiped his face, and said that Nini had died some days ago, but they had told him not to let me know because I wasn’t well enough to stand the shock. He had died of pneumonia, but Antonietta said it was all because of my cruelty. She said he had always been in love with me, even when he was living with her, and I had done nothing but tease him, even when I was pregnant by another man and knew I was going to be married. After that he had lost his head and begun to live like a savage, shutting himself up in a smelly room, without eating or sleeping, and getting drunk every day. If she ever ran into me on the street, Antonietta said, she’d tell me to my face what she thought of me. But Giovanni said none of this was true. Nini was a cold fish, he said, who cared more for drink than for women. He’d found him delirious in his bed one day and, thinking he was drunk, had poured a pitcher of cold water on his head, which Antonietta said had probably made him considerably worse. Because after that he had gone to call on Antonietta, and she had seen right away that he had pneumonia. She had called a doctor, and for three days she had kept hot mustard plasters on his back as the doctor told her, and she had cleaned his room and brought fresh sheets from her own house. But Nini breathed hoarsely and never came out of his delirium. He tried all the time to get out of bed, and she had to hold him down by force until he died.
    When Giulio came to see me that evening I was walking up and down the room in tears and wouldn’t go back to bed. The supper that the Sister had brought me lay untouched and cold on the table.
    â€˜What’s the matter?’ he asked.
    â€˜Nini’s dead,’ I said. ‘Giovanni just told me.’
    â€˜Giovanni’s a jackass! I’ll settle with him!’
    He felt my pulse and told me I had a fever and ought to lie down. I didn’t answer and went on crying. Then he said that he was ashamed to have the Sisters see me standing there half naked, with my wrapper open down the front, and if I didn’t look out I’d get pneumonia myself and follow Nini to the grave. His feelings were hurt because I didn’t pay any attention, and finally, after he had telephoned to Azalea to come over, he sat down to read his newspaper without so much as looking up at me.
    When Azalea came she told him to go out and get his supper and he went away, saying that he would leave us with our secrets, since obviously he was of no importance and we didn’t need him around.
    â€˜He’s jealous,’ Azalea said. ‘They’re all the same.’
    â€˜Nini’s dead,’ I said dully.
    â€˜That’s not exactly news,’ she