Free The City and the House by Natalia Ginzburg

Lanzaras. I took two pies up, one cheese and one vegetable, and I gave up my diet for the evening; there were lots of different dishes and I tried them all. I think you should be psychoanalysed by Tonino Lanzara. He is a good analyst, he’s very serious and you need an analyst. You need one, let me tell you, you need one as much as you need bread to eat.
    I don’t want to lecture you because that’s not how I am, but when you come back to Rome try not to spend time in all those awful places. When you were here you got into awful habits, so much so that you finished up in jail; be careful that doesn’t happen to you again.
    I can well believe that you haven’t finished the film, but I’m sorry. Anyway, it’s been an experience for you, and perhaps you will be able to continue working in the cinema.
    I would like news of that girl Nadia whom you introduced me to in Florence that day. I’d like to know if she had an abortion or not. You say I’m to find a flat for you and for your friends. I’d like to know if these friends are the same as the ones I met that day.
    With love from
    Roberta
    Your father has bought a bicycle. The only thing he’s managed to do since he arrived in America is to buy himself a bicycle.

GIUSEPPE TO ROBERTA
    Princeton, 18th January
    Dear Roberta,
    I was really pleased to hear your voice when you phoned a few days ago with your best wishes for the New Year. Then Piero and Lucrezia phoned too from Monte Fermo, and Egisto, Serena, Albina, all our friends, they were all there together, and I think Ignazio Fegiz was there too, or at least there was a voice that seemed like his. When they phoned it was late at night because they had mixed up the time difference and they thought it was day time over here. Anne Marie came down in her nightdress to answer the phone. She has a pink flannel nightdress. There were lots of voices on the phone and I realized they were snatching the receiver from each other to say something to me, and then they were laughing and shrieking - they must have had quite a lot of wine to drink. For a moment Lucrezia’s voice was there too, but only for a moment. It was a real joy for me to hear all their voices together and to think of them all together there, at
Le Margherite
, in the sitting-room, that sitting-room I remember so well with the big oval table, the lamp-shade with its frayed border, the basket of firewood and the dogs’ cushion, the sofa in front of the fireplace, and over the fireplace the picture of King Lear.
    I start my lessons in two days, I’m not excited about it. I just have to teach Italian literature to a class of thirty people, all adults. I’m not worried. I’m pleased that I’ll have an income. I shall go every morning at nine. I shall go by bicycle. Ferruccio has shown me the road I have to take.
    When I was young I taught history and philosophy in high schools. It’s strange that here in America I should go back to doing those things I did when I was young; writing a novel, cycling, teaching.
    After the New Year Anne Marie’s daughter and son-in-law left. This was a relief to me because the house had been in a muddle and because the son-in-law often came and sat in my room, why I don’t know. I think he felt that he liked me. He is someone who is full of problems. He has difficulties at work and his relationship with his wife is not an easy one. He suffers from insomnia. He lost his father and mother, and he had an unhappy childhood, tossed backwards and forwards, entrusted to different families that for one reason or another he had to leave. He would like his wife to be kinder to him. His wife has a strong, arrogant nature. That’s what he claims. I said I didn’t see all this strength and arrogance in Chantal. She seems a gentle girl. She used to appear in the kitchen in the mornings, with her pregnant belly, her glasses, her dishevelled hair about her neck, in a cheap