Letter from Casablanca Read Online Free PDF

nothing to do, poor little thing. In the elementary school they don’t take make-up exams in September. For a little while she tried to while away the time in her
pied-à-terre
, or she dragged her Belafonte on his leash as far as the gate in order to see a bit of the world. But then she got fed up, she even lost the desire to sing “Banana Boat’’ and she came on tiptoe up to my window and said to me, “I’m bored. Come to my
pied-à-terre
a little while and play 'Visiting.’ I’ll be the lady and you be the architect who comes to court me.” I sent her away in a low voice so as not to disturb Mama, and if she insisted I told her,
strix-strigis strix-strigis
, which was an offense she understood very well, and she went away with a furious look, sticking out her tongue at me.
    But Mama wasn’t asleep and I knew it. I was aware that attimes she cried silently with her head bowed. I would see two tears slide down her cheeks under the handkerchief that covered her eyes. And her hands in her lap, apparently motionless, were imperceptibly trembling. Then I would close my Latin grammar for a while, stare lazily at the sepia-colored Minerva on the cover, and then slip out into the garden by the screen door of the back-kitchen and through part of the garage in order not to be involved in Nena’s stupid games in which I would have to be the architect. On that side the grass was rather tall because Tommaso was not able to cut it, and, immersed in the sticky heat, feeling the savoy cabbage brush against my bare legs, I liked to walk there, as far as the metal grating of the low wall that bordered on the open country. I would go to look for lizards, which nested in that part and which sat on the stones motionless in the sun with their heads raised and their eyes pointing at nothing. I even knew how to catch them with a reed snare which a schoolmate had taught me to make, but I preferred to observe those small bodies, uncomprehending and suspicious of the least little noise as if absorbed in an undecipherable prayer.
    I often felt like crying, and I didn’t know why. The tears ran down without my being able to do anything about them, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of my Latin—by then I knew the parisyllabics and the imparisyllabics from memory. Mama was right after all—for these things there’s no need to take lessons or leave the house, a little study is enough. It was just that I felt like crying. And then I sat on the wall watching the lizards and thinking about the previous summer. The memory that made me cry the most was an image of Papa and me on a tandem, he in front and I behind, and Mama and Nena following us on a tandem shouting, “Wait for us!” In the background was the dark pine grove of Forte dei Marmi and in front of us the blue of the sea; Papa wore white trousers, and whoever arrived first at the Balena bath would be the first to eat bilberry ice cream. And then I couldn’t hold back thesobs and I had to cover my mouth with my hands so as not to let Mama hear. My repressed voice was a weak muttering that was like the sound Belafonte made when he refused to be dragged along on his leash. And the saliva, mixed with tears, soaked the handkerchief that I desperately stuffed in my mouth, and then I felt like biting them—my hands—but slowly, very slowly, in nibbles. How strange! At that point everything was mixed up, and I tasted on my palate, sharp, very distinct, with an unequivocal aroma, the flavor of bilberry ice cream.
    It was that taste that succeeded in calming me. I felt suddenly exhausted, without strength to cry anymore, to move, to think. Around me in the grass the gnats buzzed and the ants walked by. I seemed to be in a well. I felt an enormous weight inside my chest. I couldn’t even swallow. I remained staring beyond the hedge at the pall of heat that dimmed the horizon. Then slowly I got up and went into the kitchen again. Mama was still pretending to sleep in the armchair, or