The House in Via Manno Read Online Free PDF Page B

donna Fannì’s fiancé who had been killed at Vittorio Veneto fighting in the Sassari Brigade, so the signorina was always sad on the twenty-fourth of October when everyone celebrated the victory.
    And Nonna talked, too; not about the Veteran, of course, or about the madness, or about the bordellos, but about those fleeing suitors and Nonno who, by contrast, had loved her at once and married her. The ladies would look at each other, embarrassed, as if to say that even a blind man could see he’d married her to repay her family, but they kept quiet and maybe even thought she was just a bit strange and simply didn’t realise , caught up in her macchiòri for music and the piano, which to them must have seemed pure madness, given that they themselves had a piano and never so much as touched it: they put doilies on it and various objects and vases of flowers, and Nonna would almost stroke it, and breathe on it before dusting and polishing it using a cloth she’d bought especially.
    One day, the ladies made her an offer: they’d been used to always having servants, but now they had no cash, so they couldn’t keep paying Nonna. Instead they could fix a price for the piano, and Nonna could pay it off day by day doing the housework, and she could tell Nonno that it was a gift from them, her friends. They also threw in the lamp that lit up the keyboard, but Nonna had to sell that straightaway to pay for the removal from viale Merello to via Manno, and for the tuning.
    The day the piano travelled towards via Manno, she had such an attack of happiness that she ran along viale Merello to via Manno ahead of the truck, reciting in her head the first lines of a poem that the Veteran had written for her, faster and faster, all in one breath without full stops or commas. If you have left a subtle sign in life as it rushes by If you have left a subtle sign in life as it rushes by If you have left a subtle sign in life as it rushes by . They put the piano in the big room full of light overlooking the port. And Papà was brilliant.
    And how. They even talk about him in the newspapers sometimes, and they say he’s the only Sardinian to have really made it in the music world, and they roll out the red carpet for him in the concert halls of Paris, London, and New York. Nonno used to have a bottle-green leather album especially for photographs and newspaper cuttings of his son’s concerts.
    The stories my father told me were mostly about Nonno.
    Papà loved his mother, but she felt like a stranger to him, and when she asked him how things were going, he would answer, ‘Normal, Ma, just normal.’ So then Nonna would tell him that things couldn’t just be ‘normal’, there had to be more to it than that, and it was clear that she was getting obsessed about it. Then, later in the evening, she would be jealous because when all three of them were together at the table, what she said was true — he really did have more to say. Now that his mother is dead, Papà can’t forgive himself, but he could never think of anything to say to her. She only ever went to one of his concerts, when he was still a boy, and she ran out because she was overcome by emotion. However, Nonno, who always protected her, even though he never knew what to say to her either, and was certainly not an affectionate man, didn’t follow her but stayed there and enjoyed his son’s concert. He was happy, and couldn’t stop complimenting him.
    Papà is glad that it’s been easier for me. It’s much better that way. Nonna basically brought me up. I always spent more time at via Manno than at my house, and when he and Mamma came to pick me up I never wanted to go home with them. As a child, I would make terrible scenes: I would yell and run under the beds, or lock myself in a room, and before coming out I would make them swear they’d let me stay longer. Once I even hid inside a big vase — an empty one — with some twigs stuck in my hair. The next day, it was the same