Juggling the Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

typed. 
    Egregio Signor Duckworth -
how Morris hated to see his ugly surname! And where on earth had they got it from? Had he ever mentioned it to Massimina? Had he? No. They
had
checked up, then. How terrifically suspicious they all were! And on what possible grounds? 
    Egregio Signor Duckworth
, I am writing to let you know that Massimina will not be attending any more lessons at the school. You will appreciate that this is a decision we have taken together as a family and we trust you will not try to contact her, Massimina herself agrees with us that you are not the right person for her.
    Distinti saluti
,
    LUISA TREVISAN
    There was nothing in the world for Morris then. Nothing. He couldn’t even take in a handful of wealthy peasants with their pocketful of real estate and plonky vineyards. And what had he done wrong? He, Morris? His manners had been impeccable, hadn’t they? He hadn’t eaten too much, even though he was near starving. His hand had been firm and dry when he offered it to the mother and Bobo. He had even given the old crone of a whining grandmother his arm for God’s sake, to get her into the sitting room! Not a crumb had he dropped, not a drop of wine spilt. What on earth could they have against him? His Italian had been faultless, bar the ghost of an accent. Okay, so they’d discovered he was exaggerating a little about the import-export thing. But who wouldn’t? They had brought that upon themselves with all their bourgeois need for solid incomes. And it was the kind of job he was bound to get hold of in the end. Someone of his capacity. Morris was furious. Who the hell did they think was going to marry their dumb freckled daughter when all was said and done? Who in his tiny right mind! And to have to put up with those two nuns as sisters in law!
    He went into the bathroom to look at himself. Red eyes, tousled hair. Morris! ‘Promising’ they had always written on his school essays, on his reports, his university papers. So much promise come to this! Very deliberately, slowly, he stripped himself naked to look at himself, his real skin-and-bone, fingers-and-toes, prick-and-scrotum Morris self in the mirror. Promising! He was quite bubbling over with self-pity. An anguish of it. Never felt failure so acutely before. Beaten and beaten. He saw his tears in the mirror. He looked at them up close, how they gathered along red eyelids. Mocked and trounced. So undeservedly! He picked up his Philips adjustable-head cartridge razor and hacked a tiny chunk from his arm. A bead of blood welled out slow and bright, turned into a trickle, and Morris laid himself out naked on the cold tiled bathroom floor and closed his eyes on the darkness of nothing to do and no one to be and nothing at all ever to look forward to.

4
    When Father hit her she had come to his bed and slept there. She pulled him into her breasts, kissed his hair. It was difficult to believe a memory could be so vivid still. A person of such quality like that. Even if she was dumb. Of how many people could you really say that they were people of great quality? And with that special female quality. Generosity, giving, sacrifice. The quality had to do with the dumbness in the end. That was most curious, and also true of Massimina perhaps. The quality of a sacrificial victim: dumb, as a sheep to the slaughter. Because she had never understood Morris at all. She had never realized that even as she got into his bed and wrapped him in her warm arms and pulled him into her breasts, all love, Morris was already experiencing the shame of the remarks Dad would toss at him later, already wishing she were gone.
    If he thought of Mother’s largeness in his bed, her warmth and smell, her slight dampness and breath in the morning after those nights - not frequent, but frequent enough - that Dad had hit her, Morris felt surges of emotion, confusion, deprivation. When she died it had all been rather easier in the end.
    Her