All Our Yesterdays Read Online Free PDF

were now the mourning clothes to be thought of. But Ippolito did not want to give her the money because he said there was very little of it: he said she must arrange for the mourning to be made at home, as so many people did. Signora Maria went to the chemist and bought some packets of black powder and put the clothes to soak in a big pot: there was a kind of broth in it that looked like lentil soup. But when the clothes were dried and ironed Concettina was not satisfied because they had not come out a fine, deep black ; it was a black that had a brownish tinge in it. Concettina was sulky with Ippolito for several days over this matter of the clothes, because she said she could easily have bought a little cheap material: and she did not come and sit at table but took her meals up to her own room.
    Anna did not expect to go and play again at the house opposite. However Giuma went on inviting her. They formed the habit of playing together and not a day passed but he invited her. Anna did not enjoy herself very much with him. She far preferred to play in the street with her own school-friends. But when Giuma invited her she had not the courage to refuse. She did not know why, but she had not the courage. She rather hoped he would lend her The Child’s Treasure-House some time : but she did not dare to ask him. And she felt rather proud that he should invite her. They scarcely ever played ping-pong ; Giuma liked the game of re-enacting films that he had seen. He would tie her to a tree with a rope and dance round her with a burning piece of paper and her arms were sore because he tied her-so tightly, if they stopped playing this game, then he would begin to talk. That first day he had hardly talked at all but now he talked, he talked so much that he even became a bore. He told her stories of things that had happened to him, but to her it seemed that almost the whole thing was an invention. He told her of prizes he had won in rugby matches and boat races—gold and silver cups ; but it was never possible to see these prizes, he had given them away or his mother had put them in a place where they could not be got at. Sometimes Emanuele and Amalia, Giuma’s brother and sister, would come out on the balcony and start listening, and would laugh loudly. “Buffoon Emanuele would say to him. Then Giuma would fly into a rage and run away upstairs to his room. He would come back after a short time with his eyes red and his hair untidy. For a little he would sit silent on the grass, but then he would find the rope and start the rope-and-tree game again. Anna would go home in the evening with her head full of Giuma’s stories, and of the stories of the friends who took part with him in his rugby matches and boat races : Cingalesi, Pucci Donadio, Priscilla and Toni. They had strange names and you could never make out whether they were boys or girls. Nor was it possible to make out why he never got them to come and play in the garden with him, and preferred to play alone with a little girl who had never taken part in a boat race in her life. Perhaps it was that with those other friends his inventions and boastings were not so successful. He would walk up and down on the lawn trailing the rope behind him, boasting and inventing. Anna sat on the grass and her neck ached from so much nodding and her lips ached too, from pretending to smile. From time to time she asked him a question or two. They were prudent questions and she pondered them silently for a little while. She asked, “Is rugby a good game ?”—or again, “Was Cingalesi there that day ?” Of Toni she preferred not to speak because she had never understood whether Toni was a girl or a boy.
    Then Giuma began to talk about when he would be going away. He was going to spend the winter at Mentone where they had a villa. Giuma did not go to school, he was given lessons by professors, and later perhaps he would go to college in Switzerland and there he