As a child he used to visit us with his father and was the despair of my brother Berto and me.

His father had always aspired to the hand of Aunt Scolastica, ever since he was a young man, but she would have none of it, and this had been her attitude to all her suitors. This was not because she felt unable to fall in love, but because the vaguest suspicion that a man she loved might betray her, even in thought alone, would have driven her to crime (she used to say). Men, according to her, were all false, knaves and traitors. Did this include Pomino? Well no, not Pomino, but she had realised this too late. She had observed all the men who had asked for her hand, and had eventually succeeded in discovering some treachery of theirs and had derived fierce enjoyment from it. Only Pomino gave no grounds for suspicion: indeed the poor man had been a martyr to his wife.

So why did she not marry him now herself? The sad reason was because he was a widower! He had belonged to another woman and might occasionally have thought of her. There was another reason too: you could tell a mile off, in spite of his shyness, he was in love, in love with …. someone else, poor Signor Pomino. As if my mother would ever have consented. It would truly have seemed a sacrilege; but she did not even believe, poor thing, that Aunt Scolastica was serious, and she laughed in that special way of hers at her sister-in-law’s outbursts and at the protestations of poor Signor Pomino, who would be present at these discussions, and on whom the spinster lavished the most elaborate praises.

I sometimes try to count how many times he must have exclaimed as he squirmed on his seat as if under torture,

“Oh in God’s holy name!”

He was a neat little man, with gentle, pale-blue eyes. I think he used face powder and a tiny bit of rouge, just the merest hint, on his cheeks. Certainly he was proud of having kept his hair, and styled it with great care, with a centre parting, and constantly smoothed it with his hands.

I do not know what would have happened to our family if my mother, not of course for herself, but for the sake of her children’s future, had followed Aunt Scolastica’s advice and married Signor Pomino. It is beyond any doubt however, that things could not have been worse than they were, entrusted to Malagna (the mole).

By the time Berto and I were grown up, a large part of our holdings had already gone up in smoke, but we could at least have saved the rest from the clutches of that thief, and this, whilst no longer allowing us to live in luxury, would at least have protected us from actual hardship. Neither of us worked; we did not want to think about anything, but continued as adults to live as our mother had accustomed us to live when we were children.

She had not even wanted to send us to school. A fellow called Pinzone was our guardian and tutor. His real name was Francesco or Giovanni Del Cinque, but everyone called him Pinzone, and he had grown so used to this that he actually called himself Pinzone.

He was so thin it was repellent; he was also extremely tall and, God preserve us, might have been even taller if his torso, almost as if tired of towering upwards, had not suddenly curved at the shoulders in a modest little hump, from which his neck protruded painfully like a plucked chicken’s, with its huge Adam’s apple, which moved up and down. Pinzone often bit his lips in a struggle to nip, punish or conceal a sharp little smile, which was his typical expression. The effect was partially vain, because this smile, if imprisoned at the lips, escaped via his eyes, making them sharper and more mischievous than ever.

He must have noticed many things in our house with those little eyes, things which neither we nor my mother could see. He said nothing, perhaps because he did not think it his place to speak, but more probably, I think, because he took a malicious, secret pleasure in it.

We could do anything we liked with him, he just left us alone; but then, as if he wanted to appease his own conscience, when we least expected it, he would betray us.

One day, for example, my mother told him to take us to church. It was near Easter time and we had to go to confession. After confession, there was to be a brief visit to Malagna’s sick wife and then home again immediately. You can imagine how we looked forward to all that. As soon as we were in the street, my brother and I proposed a deal with Pinzone: we would buy him a full litre of wine if instead of taking us to church and Malagna’s place, he let us go birdnesting at La Stia. Pinzone agreed, delighted, rubbing his hands, his eyes sparkling. He drank, we went to the farm. He joined in our games for about three hours, helping us to climb the trees and climbing up himself. But when we returned home in the evening, as soon as my mother asked him if we had gone to confession and visited Malagna’s wife, he replied, “Well, I’ll tell you,” and with the straightest face in the world reported the afternoon’s activities in every detail.

The reprisals we took as a result of these betrayals did no good, even though I remember they were often no joke. For instance, Pinzone used to sit and sleep on the wooden chest in the entrance hall, whilst waiting for supper, so one evening, Berto and I crept surreptitiously out of bed, where we had been sent earlier than usual as a punishment. We managed to get hold of a tin tube, meant for enemas and about eight inches long, filled it with soapy water from the washing copper, and thus armed, sneaked up to him, positioned the end of the tube right under his nostrils and – whoosh! – we watched him hit the ceiling.

It is not difficult to deduce how much learning was achieved with a tutor of this kind. The fault however was not entirely Pinzone’s; he, in fact, wanted us to learn something, but had neither method nor discipline, so used a thousands expedients to try to somehow grip our attention. Often he succeeded with me, as I was extremely impressionable, but his brand of learning was somewhat peculiar, in fact eccentric.