Mothers and Daughters
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Год: 1961
- Язык: английский
- Год: Simon and Schuster
- Жанр: Современная русская и зарубежная проза
Электронная книга - «Mothers and Daughters». Краткое содержание книги:
“‘Carlo Stefano,’ she said to the table, ‘will you give us some sign that you are truly Carlo Stefano?’ The table knocked once, signifying that Carlo, wherever he was, had answered positively. ‘Will you let your presence be known?’ my grandmother asked, and again the table knocked once. ‘Will you give us a sign through something in the room?’ Cristina asked and the table answered ‘yes’ with a single knock.
“My grandfather was beginning to get a little impatient. He was also beginning to hope the food on the stove would not burn. He folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb, the smell of cooking food in his nostrils, his stomach beginning to make noises. My grandmother said to the table, ‘Will you give us a sign through the broom?’ The table knocked twice. No. ‘Will you give us a sign through the curtains?’ Knock-knock, the table said. No again. ‘Through the pitcher?’ No. ‘Through the ladle?’ No. My grandmother was beginning to run out of objects when her eye fell upon Fidelio. Fidelio was a mangy alley cat my grandfather had found in Naples outside his tailor shop. He had put a string around her neck and walked her home one evening, and the cat had become a common fixture around the house, usually asleep on the mantel of the fireplace, which is where she was when my grandmother spied her.
“‘Will you give us a sign through Fidelio the cat?’ she asked, and every eye in the room swung toward that lazy creature asleep on the mantel. There was a long silence. The table would not answer yes or no. My grandfather waited. Every woman in the room waited. Impatiently, Cristina said, more firmly this time, ‘Will you give us a sign through Fidelio the cat, who is asleep on the mantel?’
“Again there was a silence. And then the table knocked. Once. Yes, the table had answered! Yes, Carlo Stefano had answered! The eyes were riveted to the cat. And then suddenly, whether something alarmed her in her sleep, whether she was bitten by an insect, whether she lost her balance, whatever it was, the cat suddenly let out a horrible shrieking sound and leaped into the air, and scrambled to the floor, her back bristling, her tail fat, and Julia, my darling, that was only the beginning. The women had got the sign they were looking for. Carlo Stefano had spoken, dramatically and emphatically, and now the ones at the table leaped up from their chairs, knocking over the table, rushing into the ones who lined the room, screaming at the tops of their lungs and finally, finally in their mad confusion to get out of that room, which was suddenly filled with the presence of death, finally to my grandfather’s horror as he stood in the doorway, one of those screaming rushing hysterical women banged into the stove and knocked the big pot of supper to the floor!
“‘Stupide!’ my grandfather shouted from the doorway. He stamped into the room and walked directly to the fireplace. He picked up the ax and marched back to the three-legged table and fell upon it with such anger and such fury that my grandmother could only stand by speechless while the wood splinters flew around her. He demolished that table completely. He was a gentle man, and a tailor, but he destroyed that table as if he had been felling trees all his life. And he told my grandmother that if she bought another three-legged table, if those screaming women were ever inside his house again, if he ever came home in the evening and found his supper still on the stove, he would take the ax to her, and do to her what he had done to the table.”
Renato turned to her. He took one hand from behind his head and cupped her chin, and he looked into her face very seriously and said, “You see, my darling Julia, we have a person in Italy now who plays with a three-legged table, calling upon the dead legions of Caesar, muttering his own incantations to the gullible old women. But there are no longer any tall men with axes, Julia. And even if there were... Julia, Julia darling, my grandfather destroyed the table too late, don’t you see? His supper had already been knocked to the floor. His supper had already been knocked to the floor.”
She knew almost immediately after that day il Duce spoke in the Piazza Venezia. All the signs were there, all the symptoms. She knew exactly what they meant. She read them correctly and told herself, No, this cannot be, but she recognized the truth nonetheless, and nonetheless refused to face it. Il Duce’s speech had been made on November 31, she had looked at the calendar before leaving the villa in Aquila to join Renato. And this was December 5, and all the doubt, all the fear, seemed to crystallize in the letter from Arthur, and the news that he and David were coming to Italy for Christmas. He will know, she thought. He will look, and he will see, and then my world will crumble. He is sure to see. He is sure to know what I know, what I only suspected in November but what I know for certain now. He is not a stupid man. He will know.
She did not want to leave Italy.
But if Arthur read the signs correctly, and he was not a stupid man, what would he demand, what would he ask of her? She could not leave Italy, she could not leave Renato, not now, not yet. And afterward, when it was over, when it came to an end as it inevitably and always did, what then? And where?
Oh Renato, Renato, she cried out to him alone, but she did not tell him of her doubts or fears. There is time, she thought. There is always time.
They came to the villa in Aquila two days before Christmas. She was waiting in the garden for them. She was wearing a yellow dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat, and a sweater was thrown over her shoulders. Her eyes filled with tears when she first saw them. Not because she felt she knew them, not really, there was another world for her now, and it did not include Arthur Regan, it did not include her fourteen-year-old son who embraced her clumsily, lean and awkward, his face festering with pimples. “David, you’re getting to be a man,” she said, and he blushed and said, “I tried out for the handball team in school, Mom,” and she hugged him to her and wept.
But only because he was a stranger. Only because two strangers had entered her garden in the villa, and she greeted them with the fabricated affection of a wife and mother, but she felt nothing because there was a new life for her now, a new life.
“Hello, Julia,” Arthur said. He seemed embarrassed. Arrivals and departures always embarrassed him. He hugged her close, and she felt nothing for him, yes, a sympathy because he was embarrassed by this meeting, but nothing beyond that. Awkwardly, he said, “You’re as round as a partridge, Julia. Rome agrees with you,” and only then did she see the happiness beneath his embarrassment. She looked more closely at his face. She felt an extreme sense of loss for everything they had ever known together and shared together, somehow nullified by Renato and her love for him, and she thought it sad that love was so exclusive, that love nourished and at the same time killed. She almost said this aloud to Arthur. She almost, through habit, through years of living with a man she had known since girlhood, almost-voiced her thoughts and waited for the tilting of his head and the contemplative look in his eyes and the slow, considered answer. She almost confided to him a world that did not belong to him.
“Have you been eating well?” she asked.
“Yes. You look well, Julia.”
“Who’s been taking care of you, my darling?” she asked. She wanted to know. She touched his face tenderly. She was confused in that moment, confused by an affection different from what she felt for Renato, and yet unmistakably warm.
“We’ve had Mrs. Donovan.”
“She’s a good cook.”
“Yes.”
“Mom, will we go to Rome?” David asked.
“Yes, darling.”
“Mom, there was a player from the New York Yankees on the boat coming over!”