Like the cats, they also were too weak to cry; and yet, they had the strength to scratch each other.
I separated them, and my first contact with that soft, cool flesh awoke in me a new emotion, an indefinable feeling of tenderness: they were mine!
One died a few days later; the other allowed me time to grow to love her, with all the passion of a father who, having nothing else, makes his child the focus of his life. She was cruel enough to die when she was barely a year old, and had become so very pretty, with fair curls which I twisted in my fingers and kissed tirelessly. She called me “Daddy”, and I would immediately answer “My little girl,” and again, “Daddy”, all quite meaningless, like birds twittering to one another.
She died along with my mother, on the same day and virtually at the same hour. I was desperate how to divide my attention and my sorrow. I would leave my little one resting, and rush to see my mother, who cared nothing about herself and her impending death, but asked about her grand-daughter, suffering because she would not see her again, would not kiss her one last time. This torture lasted nine days. So, after nine days and nights keeping constant vigil, without closing my eyes even for a moment, I must admit, and many would perhaps be too ashamed, but it is only human: at the time I felt no sorrow. For an appalling, brief while, I was stunned, bleak, then I slept. Of course, I had to sleep first. Then, when I awoke, sorrow attacked me, a vicious, fierce pain for my little child and my mother, who were both gone. I thought I would go mad. For a whole night I wandered through the village and the countryside, my mind full of vague ideas; all I know is that eventually I found myself at La Stia. near the millstream, and that Filippo, the old miller and caretaker, took me aside and made me sit under the trees, away from the water, and spoke to me for a long while, about my mother and father, and the happy times in the past. He said I should not weep and despair like that, because in the other world my daughter was being looked after by her grandmother, her kindhearted granny, who had hurried over and would hold her in her lap and talk to her about me, and never ever let her be lonely.
Three days later, Roberto sent me five hundred lire, as if he hoped to pay me for my tears. He wanted me to arrange a proper funeral for our mother, he said; but Aunt Scolastica had already seen to it.
The money was left between the pages of a book in the library.
However, later it did come in useful and was, as I shall explain, the reason for my first death.
Only the ivory roulette ball, gracefully whirring in the opposite direction to the spin of the wheel, seemed to be enjoying the game. Certainly not the people watching, who were suspended in the torment which its caprice occasioned, and to whose whim so many hands had sacrificed on the yellow squares of the table-top, as in a votive offering, gold, gold and more gold, hands which now trembled in painful suspense, unconsciously fingering yet more gold, the money they were going to wager next. Meanwhile, their eyes seemed to beg:
“Go wherever it pleases you to fall, pretty ivory ball, our cruel goddess!”
By chance I had ended up in Montecarlo.
I had had one of the usual scenes with my wife and mother-in-law. After my recent double loss, which had left me depressed and exhausted, they both aroused in me an uncontrollable sense of revulsion. I could no longer bear the boredom, or worse, the self-disgust, at living like that. I was quite wretched, without the merest hope of improvement in my life, without the comfort that my sweet child brought me and without any compensation, however minimal, for the bitterness, squalor and detestable bleakness into which I had been plunged. A sudden impulse had made me flee the village, on foot, with Berto’s five hundred lire in my pocket.
As I walked, I decided to go to Marseilles. I would take the train from the next village, which was where I had been heading. When I arrived in Marseilles, I would buy a third-class ticket to America, and off I would go in search of adventure.
After all, what could happen to me that could be worse than what I had suffered and was suffering now at home? I might have acquired other shackles, true, but none heavier than those I was about to shrug off. In any case, I would see other countries, other peoples, a different way of life, and at least I would escape the oppression which was suffocating me and crushing my spirit.
The problem was that when I arrived in Nice I lost heart. My youthful impetuousness had died down long ago: by now, boredom had gnawed away too long inside me, and had even blunted my sorrow. I was discouraged mainly by the paucity of the sum of money which would accompany me on my voyage into the dark night of my destiny. I could not face going so far, to a completely unknown life, without any preparation.
I got off the train at Nice, not yet decided whether or not to return home, and wandered round the town. I found myself in front of a large building in the Avenue de la Gare, which bore this sign in large, gilt letters:
Dépôt de roulettes de précision
Several roulette wheels, of all sizes, were on display, together with other instruments of the game and various booklets, with pictures of the roulette wheel on the cover.
It is common knowledge that unhappy people easily turn superstitious, however much they deride other people’s credulity and the kind of hopes which they themselves occasionally entertain, thanks to superstition, but which of course are never realised.
I recall reading the title of one of these booklets: Méthode pour gagner à la roulette, and turning away from the shop with a disdainful and pitying smile. However, after a few steps, I returned and, (for curiosity’s sake, nothing else, of course) still wearing that disdainful and pitying smile, I entered the shop and bought the booklet.
I knew nothing about the game, what it consisted of, what the point was. I settled down to read, but understood very little.
“Perhaps it’s because my French is so poor,” I thought. No-one had ever taught me French, I had learnt on my own, dipping into books in the library.
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