The City and the House Read Online Free PDF

and he liked Doctor Corsi, his boss, a lot. He liked Perugia, he liked the office, he liked everything. Serena came to Perugia with us. Later on, when we bought
Le Margherite
, she took that room over the cinema in Pianura.
    I haven’t told you much new. You know many things about me, I’ve told you them a thousand times. But it was to tell you how I was and what happened to me when I was twenty-five.
    I will say goodbye after this extremely long letter, and go and prepare supper because if I wait for the Sicilian to do it I’ll be in a real mess.
    Egisto has written to me saying he wants to come here on Saturday with someone he likes, but I don’t want to see people at the moment. I feel depressed. Perhaps I’m sorry that you are going. I won’t say don’t go, or go only for a few days, but when you are there I shall miss you from time to time.
    Lucrezia

LUCREZIA TO EGISTO
    Monte Fermo, 27th October
    Just a couple of lines to tell you not to bring the picture-restorer, or at least not to bring him this Saturday, because I’m worn out and I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to find myself face to face with someone I don’t know. Piero doesn’t want anyone to touch the still-life. One of his clients at the office told him it was enough to gently rub an onion over it a few times and the stains would disappear and the colours come up fresh again. He has been doing this for a few days and he is satisfied with the results.
    Lucrezia

ALBINA TO GIUSEPPE
    Rome, 28th October
    Yesterday evening I phoned you when I got back from Monte Fermo, but you were out. I wanted you to ask me over for supper because my fridge was empty. So I phoned Egisto, he was in and came over straightaway; he had some more or less stale bread in his house and a tin of Campbell’s soup, and we made ourselves a little soup.
    I had two letters from Lucrezia, one for you and one for Egisto. I’ll put yours in your post box when I pass your house on the way to school, and I’ll add this note of mine, just a few words.
    Egisto and I, and all of us, think you are making a mistake in moving to America for good. We think you will be very unhappy there. Go there for a holiday and come back. It doesn’t matter if you have sold your flat, it doesn’t matter if you have sent off your trunks, because there’s a solution for everything.
    It seems terrible that you’re leaving Italy for good. It will be boring at
Le Margherite
without you. I shall certainly go there anyway, because I never have anything to do on Saturday and Sunday; if I go to see my family at Luco dei Marsi I’m ill for the whole week and if I stay in Rome I get depressed. So I shall go there anyway, but it won’t be the same without you.
    When I met you I fell in love with you, and now I want to tell you so. And I wrote you a lot of letters, but I tore them up. Then it was all over because I’m like Lucrezia in that way, I fall in love easily and then one day I wake up and it’s all over.
    I’ve never fallen in love with Egisto perhaps because he seems rather ugly to me - so squat and short and dumpy. Not that you are so good-looking to tell the truth, because you are dry and thin and sallow. Once or twice Egisto has asked me to go to bed with him, I said no, and he was hurt, because he’s very touchy; he disappeared for a few days then he came back again and everything was as before. Now we love each other like brother and sister. If I happen to go to bed with someone I tell him about it, but that doesn’t happen often, because I fall in love easily but bed is a problem for me.
    I don’t get on with my real brother. I don’t even get on with my mother and when I go home to Luco dei Marsi I have a terrible time. My father is the best, though he is old and deaf. Then there are my sisters Maura and Gina, one nine and the other ten. My brother works in a greengrocer’s. He studied to be a