Read Online Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino - Free Book Online
Authors: Italo Calvino
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Fiction - General, Literature: Classics, Interpersonal relations, Short Stories, Man-Woman Relationships, love, Italian - Translations into English
Ads: Link
peeling things with those hands that become blacker and more scarred all the time, polishing glasses and furniture, jabbing at the laundry. This, too, is a protest against us, her doing housework always in silence and managing it all without any maids.
"Sell the house, and we'll spend the money," I say with a shrug when they start pestering me about how things can't go on like this. But my mother continues toiling silently, day and night, till there's no telling when she sleeps; and meanwhile the cracks in the ceilings widen and lines of ants trace
----
the walls, and weeds and brambles keep growing higher in the rank garden. Soon nothing will be left of our house but a ruin covered with vines. In the morning, however, mother doesn't come and tell me to get up because she knows it's no use anyway, and that silent attention to the house crumbling around her is her way of persecuting us.
My father, on the contrary, is already flinging open our window at six o'clock, in hunting jacket and puttees, and yelling at us: "I'm going to take a stick to you two! Bums! Everybody works in this house but the pair of you! Pietro! get up if you don't want me to hang you! And make that gallows bird of a brother, Andrea, get up, too!"
In our sleep, we have already heard him approaching; digging our heads into the pillows, we don't even roll over. We protest now and then with grunts when he doesn't let up. But he soon goes away; he knows it's all useless, this is all a play he puts on, a ritual ceremony, a refusal to admit defeat.
We grope our way back into sleep : most times, my brother hasn't even waked up, he's become so used to this and he doesn't give a damn. Egotistic and insensitive, that's my brother: sometimes he makes me mad. I act the same way he does, but at least I understand that it's not right, and I'm the first to be discontent. Still I keep on, though with anger.
"Dog," I say to my brother Andrea, "you dog, you're killing your father and mother." He doesn't answer: he knows I'm a hypocrite and a clown, and nobody's a bigger do-nothing than me.
Ten, maybe twenty minutes later, my father's at the door again, in a stew. Now he uses a different method: kindly, almost indifferent invitations, a pathetic farce. He says : "Well, who's coming to San Cosimo with me? The vines have to be tied."
----
San Cosimo is our farm. Everything is drying up and there's no manpower or money to keep it running.
"The potatoes have to be dug. Are you coming, Andrea? Well? Are you coming? I'm speaking to you, Andrea. We have to water the beans. Are you coming?"
Andrea raises his mouth from the pillow. "No," he says, and goes back to sleep.
"Why not?" My father continues his farce. "It was all settled. Pietro? Are you coming, Pietro?"
Then he explodes again and calms down again and talks about the things to be done at San Cosimo, as if it were understood that we're going. That dog, I think of my brother, that dog, he could get up and give the poor old man some satisfaction, at least this once. But I myself feel no urge to get up. and I make an effort to be immersed again in my sleep, by now disturbed.
"Well, hurry up. I'll wait for you," our father says and goes off as if we were now in agreement. We hear him pacing and fuming downstairs, preparing the fertilizer, the sulphate, the seeds to be taken up there; every day he sets out and comes back laden like a mule.
We are thinking he's already gone when he yells again, from the foot of the stairs: "Pietro! Andrea! For God's sake, aren't you ready yet?"
This is his final outburst; then we hear his hobnailed footsteps behind the house, the gate slams, and he goes off along the path, hawking and spitting.
Now we could have a good long sleep, but I can't manage to doze off; I think of my father, burdened, climbing up the track spitting, and afterward at work, in a rage with the tenants who steal from him and let everything go to rack and ruin. And he looks at the plants and the fields, where
"Sell the house, and we'll spend the money," I say with a shrug when they start pestering me about how things can't go on like this. But my mother continues toiling silently, day and night, till there's no telling when she sleeps; and meanwhile the cracks in the ceilings widen and lines of ants trace
----
the walls, and weeds and brambles keep growing higher in the rank garden. Soon nothing will be left of our house but a ruin covered with vines. In the morning, however, mother doesn't come and tell me to get up because she knows it's no use anyway, and that silent attention to the house crumbling around her is her way of persecuting us.
My father, on the contrary, is already flinging open our window at six o'clock, in hunting jacket and puttees, and yelling at us: "I'm going to take a stick to you two! Bums! Everybody works in this house but the pair of you! Pietro! get up if you don't want me to hang you! And make that gallows bird of a brother, Andrea, get up, too!"
In our sleep, we have already heard him approaching; digging our heads into the pillows, we don't even roll over. We protest now and then with grunts when he doesn't let up. But he soon goes away; he knows it's all useless, this is all a play he puts on, a ritual ceremony, a refusal to admit defeat.
We grope our way back into sleep : most times, my brother hasn't even waked up, he's become so used to this and he doesn't give a damn. Egotistic and insensitive, that's my brother: sometimes he makes me mad. I act the same way he does, but at least I understand that it's not right, and I'm the first to be discontent. Still I keep on, though with anger.
"Dog," I say to my brother Andrea, "you dog, you're killing your father and mother." He doesn't answer: he knows I'm a hypocrite and a clown, and nobody's a bigger do-nothing than me.
Ten, maybe twenty minutes later, my father's at the door again, in a stew. Now he uses a different method: kindly, almost indifferent invitations, a pathetic farce. He says : "Well, who's coming to San Cosimo with me? The vines have to be tied."
----
San Cosimo is our farm. Everything is drying up and there's no manpower or money to keep it running.
"The potatoes have to be dug. Are you coming, Andrea? Well? Are you coming? I'm speaking to you, Andrea. We have to water the beans. Are you coming?"
Andrea raises his mouth from the pillow. "No," he says, and goes back to sleep.
"Why not?" My father continues his farce. "It was all settled. Pietro? Are you coming, Pietro?"
Then he explodes again and calms down again and talks about the things to be done at San Cosimo, as if it were understood that we're going. That dog, I think of my brother, that dog, he could get up and give the poor old man some satisfaction, at least this once. But I myself feel no urge to get up. and I make an effort to be immersed again in my sleep, by now disturbed.
"Well, hurry up. I'll wait for you," our father says and goes off as if we were now in agreement. We hear him pacing and fuming downstairs, preparing the fertilizer, the sulphate, the seeds to be taken up there; every day he sets out and comes back laden like a mule.
We are thinking he's already gone when he yells again, from the foot of the stairs: "Pietro! Andrea! For God's sake, aren't you ready yet?"
This is his final outburst; then we hear his hobnailed footsteps behind the house, the gate slams, and he goes off along the path, hawking and spitting.
Now we could have a good long sleep, but I can't manage to doze off; I think of my father, burdened, climbing up the track spitting, and afterward at work, in a rage with the tenants who steal from him and let everything go to rack and ruin. And he looks at the plants and the fields, where
Similar Books
