The City and the House Read Online Free PDF Page B

teacher but couldn’t find a job. It infuriates him that I have a job in Rome. He won’t leave it alone. When I go in the shop where he works he gets sulky and goes off in a corner. Then he tells my mother that everyone thinks there is something peculiar about me and that they ask if perhaps I haven’t finished up in the Red Brigade.
    My mother and brother say I go around dressed like a beggar. I answer that I have to send a good proportion of my salary to them. They answer that I could go to a Standa department store and that I needn’t spend much. They really hate my jeans and cheap shoes.
    And then at home I have to sleep with Maura and Gina. It’s really awful sleeping with Maura and Gina. All of us sleep in a big double bed with a red quilt. I’m too hot, they’re too cold, I push the quilt off, they haul it back again. They chatter away in the dark to each other nineteen to the dozen, they giggle and shriek with laughter. When I got the job in Rome and found my bedsit, I was particularly happy in the evenings when I got into my little bed by myself. I’ve no idea why people say being alone is so unpleasant. Being alone in Rome is lovely. It’s not so nice on Sundays if you are waiting for the phone to ring and it doesn’t. On the other days it’s lovely.
    I would be very happy to make a little trip to America too, but I don’t even have enough money to buy myself a new pair of shoes.
    You must have heard about the Women’s Centre. Yesterday we spent hours cleaning the floor. We were ready to drop afterwards. We went back to
Le Margherite
and Lucrezia shut herself in her room to write to you and told me to give Vito his supper. This was quite a job because Vito runs from one room to another and you have to follow him with the plate. Yesterday that Swiss girl they were expecting arrived. But she had taken the dogs for a walk. She says she adores dogs. Perhaps she prefers the. dogs to the children, and she’s quite right to because though Lucrezia’s children are very beautiful they’re quite impossible to put up with.
    Afterwards Piero took me into Pianura by car, just in time for me to catch the last train.
    I wanted to write you just a couple of words, and instead I have written you a proper, long letter.
    Ask me over to supper tonight. Ask Egisto over too. You have to spend a little money on these suppers you keep giving us, but these are the last days you will be with us.
    Albina

EGISTO TO LUCREZIA
    Rome, 30th October
    Disagreeable. You really are disagreeable. You don’t want me to bring Ignazio Fegiz to see you, and I won’t bring him. So much the worse for you. You will miss the opportunity of meeting a really agreeable person.
    I’m sending you this letter by post. I’m not coming either. I’m going to Tarquinia with Ignazio Fegiz, to stay with some of his friends who have a beautiful house there.
    Look after your still-lives and your onions.
    Egisto

EGISTO TO LUCREZIA
    Rome, 4th November
    I apologise. My letter was a bit curt. Piero phoned me and apologised. He said that these days you are depressed and irritable. Perhaps Giuseppe’s leaving has made you depressed. It’s made all of us depressed. I apologised too. Piero said I was to bring whoever I liked.
    I will come with Ignazio Fegiz next Saturday. We didn’t go to Tarquinia because his friends asked us to postpone the trip, their water system had broken down.
    Egisto

GIUSEPPE TO LUCREZIA
    Rome, 5th November
    The Lanzaras came today. I told you, they are the people who are buying my house. They came to look at the house and furniture properly and to decide on how the rooms should be arranged. I called Roberta and she came up immediately. I wanted her to meet them, seeing that she says they have led me up the garden path. Also Roberta has a way of making me more at ease with people. She had some caviar and brought it along. I made tea and toasted some bread. I