Free Voices In The Evening by Natalia Ginzburg Page B

a cambric dress with white spots.
    Betta says,
    â€˜Did you like the steak, Tommasino?'
    Betta addresses him familiarly, having known him as a child.
    â€˜And tomorrow,’ she says, ‘as there is some of the beef left, I will cut it up in small pieces and do it ever so slowly with onion.’
    She says, ‘Now I’ll finish the dishes, and then sweep and then wash out those two cloths. Then I’ll put the beans to soak, so that tomorrow, when I come, I can put them on to cook with a httle parsley, garlic and meat, eh?’
    Tommasino sits down in the arm-chair with his book near the light.
    â€˜Alone like this, poor dear,’ says Betta. You should find yourself a beautiful wife. You are rich, you are good-looking, you are young, and here in the village there are plenty of good girls, rich and pretty, who are waiting for you.’
    She says, ‘Do you want me to bring you that thingummy, Tommasino?”
    The thingummy is a tape-recorder. When Tommasino is alone there in the evening, he talks into the recorder if any ideas come to him.
    Then he takes it to bed with him, because when he is in bed and about to go to sleep still more ideas come to him.
    The dining-room at the Casa Tonda is a big one with large windows, and almost empty, because nobody has ever thought of putting settees or pictures there.
    â€˜I,’ says Betta, If I was rich as you, I would put a side-table there with shelves above it up on that wall. As it is, it’s awkward with the plates, and I have to go to the kitchen for them.’
    From the windows one sees the hillside all bare then the trees of the Villa Rondine, the village, the lights of Castello and Castel Piccolo, the night sky.
    Says Betta, ‘A lad like you should never be alone. A lad like you, so rich, should have friends and girls, always something going on.’
    She says ‘If I had all that money, I wouldn’t stay here. I should always be going about and enjoying the world—travelling. I should never stay still, I should always be travelling.’
    She says, ‘Purillo has just diddled you out of the factory.’
    She says, ‘The money, you have that, but as for managing, he manages, and when Vincenzino’s children arrive here, grown up, they will get nothing, because it will all be Pepè’s.’
    She says, ‘But that is just of no concern to you; you haven’t the itch for it, and at the end of the month you get your money all the same.’
    She says, ‘You are a nice kind gentleman, and you haven’t the guts to fight against Purillo.’
    She says, ‘Now I am going home, I shall sit by the stove, and remake a dress. It is a brown dress, old; it is not so ugly, but I do not like it any more, so I thought like this. I am unstitching it, as Magna Maria has given me some red silk, not very much, all small pieces. With these small pieces I am entirely remaking the sleeves with the cuffs and the collar.’
    â€˜A happy thought,’ says Tommasino
    â€˜Then the buttons—I have bought the hearts, and am taking them to Cignano to have them covered.’
    â€˜You have bought the hearts?”
    â€˜Those black little balls, for buttons.’
    â€˜Ah.’ 
    â€˜The collar—I am making it round.
a la Carletta.’
    â€˜Good.’
    â€˜Well, good night,
ciao, 
Tommasino!'
    â€˜ Ciao !’
    Tommasino remains therehi and twists his hair round his fingers. Then he sweeps his hair back, goes to his typewriter, and taps out some words.
    Then he gets up, slips on his overcoat, leaves the house and goes down the hill. He has an old overcoat, too short and worn at the cufis, with the pockets out of shape. Gemmina for some time has said that he ought to get a new one made for him.
    He keeps his motor-car in the Concordia garage. The car cannot get up as far as Casa Tonda.
    At the bar of the Concordia he has a Martini with quinine, because there is not much choice