Was it his fault if I, ungrateful and thoughtless, destroyed all his plans?
Two children were definitely too many.
It seemed too generous for him, perhaps because, as I said, since Roberto had already made a rich marriage, he thought he had not done him that much harm as to be obliged to give back his share too.
In conclusion, it was clear that I, amid so many fine natures, was the only one to have done anything wrong. I was therefore obliged to put it right.
At first I refused, starchily. Then, moved by my mother’s entreaties (for she already foresaw the financial ruin of our family and thought I could be saved by marrying the enemy’s niece) I gave in and married.
Hanging above my head was the terrible wrath of Marianna Dondi, the widow Pescatore.
That witch never gave up.
“You have done well for yourself,” she would say. “Wasn’t it enough for you to sneak into my house like a thief and seduce my daughter and ruin her! Well, wasn’t it?”
“No, my dear mother-in-law,” I would reply, ‘because, if I had stopped there, I would have done you a favour, a good turn …”
“Did you hear that?” she would shriek at her daughter. “He’s boasting, and he dares to boast about that fine business he got up to with that….” and here would follow a string of oaths about Oliva, then, hands on hips, elbows jabbed forward, “but what did you gain from it? Didn’t you ruin your own son too? But still, what do you care? After all, that other one’s yours as well, not your son I should say, but your b…..”
She never stopped spitting this poison, fully aware of the effect it had on Romilda’s morale. Romilda was jealous of the child that Oliva was expecting, in comfort and happiness, whilst hers would be born into poverty, uncertainty about the morrow and amid all that hostility. This jealousy was further nourished by news brought by some good woman, who, pretending to know nothing about the situation, came to report of her Aunt Malagna, who was so happy about the grace which God had finally bestowed on her that she had blossomed and had never looked so beautiful and well.
Romilda instead lay slumped in an armchair, racked by constant nausea, pale, dishevelled, ugly, never feeling well for an instant, reluctant to speak or even open her eyes.
Surely I could not be blamed for this too? But it would appear so. She did not want to see me or hear my voice any more. The situation got even worse when, in order to save the La Stia holding with the mill, we had to sell our houses and my poor mother was obliged to come and live in my inferno of a household.
In any case the sale did no good. Malagna, made confident by his impending fatherhood, felt no more restraint or scruple, and did the ultimate: he came to an agreement with the creditors and bought the houses himself, anonymously, for a pathetic sum. Because of this, the debts we had on La Stia were, for the most part, not covered, and the holding and the mill were placed by our creditors in the hands of the official receiver and we were declared bankrupt.
What could I do now? In order to provide for the most pressing needs of the family, I started to look for some sort of job, but almost without hope. I was no good at anything, and the reputation I had gained thanks to my youthful escapades and my idleness, did not incline anyone to employ me. Also, the rows I had to endure and take part in at home daily, destroyed the peace of mind I needed to gather my wits and decide what job I could do.
I felt a keen revulsion at seeing my mother there in contact with the widow Pescatore. The saintly old lady, no longer innocent of her mistakes, but in my eyes still not responsible for them, arising as they had done from her inability to believe in people’s wickedness, sat quietly, her hands in her lap, her eyes lowered. She would occupy a corner chair, but as if not quite sure that she was entitled to sit in that particular spot, as if she were expecting to leave at any moment – God willing. She was no trouble to anyone. Occasionally, she gave Romilda a sad smile; she did not even dare get near her because once, a few days after her arrival, she had tried to help the girl and was immediately pushed away rudely by the witch.
“I’ll do it, I know what’s got to be done.”
Since Romilda was actually in need of help at that moment, I said nothing, but I kept a watchful eye on them in case anyone was disrespectful to my mother.
I realised that this keeping guard on my mother subtly annoyed both the witch and my wife, and I worried that when I was not at home, they ill-treated her to give vent to their frustration and anger. I was sure that if it ever happened, my mother would not mention it, and the thought tormented me. Many times, I looked into her eyes to see if she had been crying. She gave me a lingering, loving smile, then asked me,
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
“Is everything all right, mother?”
She would make a scarcely perceptible gesture with her hand and say,
“I’m fine, surely you can see that? Attend to your wife, she really is suffering, poor thing.”
I decided to write to Berto in Oneglia, to ask him to take mother in, not to relieve me of a burden I would willingly have shouldered, even in the straitened circumstances in which I found myself, but for her good only.
Berto replied that he could not take her in: he could not because his situation with regard to his wife’s family and his wife herself was extremely delicate after our family’s decline. Now he was living on his wife’s dowry and so he could not burden her with his mother too. Besides, he said, she would probably be just as badly off in his house, because he too lived with his wife’s mother, a fine woman of course, but who might become unpleasant if provoked by the inevitable jealousies and friction that arise between mothers-in-law. It was therefore better that mother should stay with me, if nothing else, she would not be exiled from her village in her autumn years, or be obliged to change her habits and her way of life. Finally, he declared himself desolate at not being able, for all the reasons outlined above, to lend me even minimal financial support, as he would dearly have loved to have done.
I hid this letter from my mother. Perhaps if feelings of exasperation had not obscured my judgement at that time, I would not have been so indignant. I might, for example, in keeping with my natural disposition, have reflected that if a nightingale gives away his tailfeathers, he still has his song, but if a peacock is robbed of his feathers, what has he left? To disturb even slightly the equilibrium which Berto had perhaps worked hard for, and which allowed him to live cleanly and perhaps with a semblance of dignity off his wife’s back, would have been a huge sacrifice for him, an irreparable loss. Besides his good looks, charming manners and gentlemanly air, he had nothing left to give to his wife, not a crumb of soul, which perhaps would have compensated for any inconvenience my poor mother might have caused. Still, God had made him like that, had given him so little soul. What could poor Berto do about it?
Meanwhile, we became poorer and poorer, and I was unable to do anything about it. My mother’s gold, of great sentimental value, had to be sold.
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