Free Voices In The Evening by Natalia Ginzburg

skin on their backs. He had hated him so much, he had wasted so much hate on that moustache that turned-up nose—yes, he had wasted so much hatred, and so much fear also, fear that he might take the factory from him, and the power and his father's affection, and who knows what else. And now of all that great hatred there remained nothing at all any more, and even that was saddening.
    Raffaella was always coming to see Purillo. She relit the stoves which had gone out, and asked his advice about the horse, Purillo told her that he knew about horses, having had a friend in his youth who owned some stables.
    He told Raffaella that he wished to kill himself, since he had blundered so badly and his life made no sense any more.
    Raffaella said,
    â€˜But are you mad? You would not seriously want to kill yourself! Put that right out of your head!’
    She thumped him on the back with hands heavy as lead, and said,
    â€˜You were not the only Fascist. Italy was full of them!'
    Then she said,
    â€˜Come and join my party.’
    Purillo said,
    â€˜Communist, I? Never!.
    â€˜But you don’t know that I am not a Communist any longer?, said Raffaella. ‘l am a Trotzkyite. For Trotzky…. But bless me you don’t know who Trotzky was anyhow.’
    Little by little Purillo’s spirit revived. He returned to work at the factory. He also began to see something of people again, the Sartorios, the Terenzis, the Bottiglias.
    He would not join any party. He said that politics made him feel sick. Nevertheless, sometimes of an evening at General Sartorio's he nerved himself to say,
    â€˜All the same, Mussolini was the right man.’
    And he stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat.
    â€˜A pity,’ he said, ‘he sided with the Germans. If he had not sided with the Germans, things would have gone very differently. If only Italy, like Switzerland, had remained neutral.’
    He took to talking about Switzerland, where he had been so long, and which he said he knew like the seat of his trousers.
    He began going round the dairy-farms again as he did before the war, on one excuse or another, and made love to all the peasant women. In the village he had the reputation of being a Don Juan.
    In the village, when they see a peasant girl with a baby in her arms, they say,
    â€˜That’s one of Purillo’s.’
    They credit him with hundreds of children.
    Then the rumour began to go round that he was marrying Raffaella. People were staggered.
    â€˜Poor thing,’ they said. ‘Raffaella, poor thing! What a tragedy, what a tragedy!’
    Vincenzino learned of it from Gemmina. He, too, was staggered. Then he was overcome by rage and could have smashed everything before him.
    Vincenzino and Raffaella were hving in the same house. They used to have dinner and supper together. Yet she had not told him anything.
    â€˜Purillo,’ said Gemmina, ‘must have brooded over and calculated over this for some time. Perhaps even when Mama and Papa were alive.’
    She said, ‘It is a good thing that Balotta is not here to see this.’ She had a way of calling her father Balotta at times, and she added,
    â€˜Purillo is like a snake which has long sight.’
    â€˜I never knew that snakes had long sight,’ said Tommasino, who was also present.
    That evening Vincenzino said to Raffaella,
    â€˜Is it true that you are marrying Purillo?
    â€˜Yes,’ said she.
    Now that he had her before his eyes, he no longer felt angry. He was only very uneasy and put out.
    He said, ‘But why?’
    She said, ‘Because I am in love with him.’
    He reflected that when he married Catè he was not in love with her; on the contrary, he had some strange theories in his head. He remained silent.
    But all that night in bed he tossed about between the sheets and said, ‘But how can one be in love with Purillo.’
    He gave himself no peace over it, and even asked Tommasino first thing in