Read Online Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Italo Calvino
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Fiction - General, Literature: Classics, Interpersonal relations, Short Stories, Man-Woman Relationships, love, Italian - Translations into English
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and about how to manage with two sons who aren't earning anything; and our father says, "Look at your friend Costanzo, look at your friend Augusto." Our friends aren't like us: they've formed a partnership, buying and selling the timber rights to some woods, and they're always out and about on business, dealing and bargaining, sometimes with our father, too; they earn piles of money and soon will own their own truck. They're crooks and our father knows it; still, he would like us to be like them rather than the way we are. "Your friend Costanzo earned such-and-such an amount on that deal," he says. "See if you can go in with them, too." But our friends hang around with us in their free time, and they never suggest deals to us; they know we're lazy and good-for-nothing.
In the afternoon, my brother goes back to sleep: there's no figuring out how he manages to sleep so much, but he does. I go to the movies : I go every day; if they're showing a film I've already seen, then I don't have to make any effort to follow the story.
After supper, stretched out on the sofa, I read some long, translated novels people lend me; often, as I read, I lose the thread of the plot and can never make heads or tails of it. My brother gets up as soon as he's eaten and leaves, to watch the billiards game.
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My parents go straight to bed because they get up early in the morning: "Go to your room; you're wasting electricity here," they say to me as they climb the stairs. "I'm going," I say and remain lying there.
I'm already in bed and have been sleeping for a while when my brother comes back, around two. He turns on the light, stirs around the room, and has a last smoke. He tells me what's going on in the city, expresses kindly opinions of people. This is the hour when he is really awake and glad to talk. He opens the window to let the smoke out; we look at the hill with the lighted road and the dark, clear sky. I sit up in bed and, carefree, we chat for a long time about trivial things, until we're sleepy again.
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WARTIME STORIES
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FEAR ON THE FOOTPATH
At a quarter past nine, just as the moon was rising, he reached the Colla Bracca meadow; at ten he was already at the juncture of the two trees; by half past twelve he'd be at the fountain; he might reach Vendetta's camp by one—ten hours of walking at a normal speed, but six hours at the most for Binda, the courier of the first battalion, the fastest courier in the partisan brigade.
He went hard at it, did Binda, flinging himself headlong down short cuts, never making a mistake at crossroads that all looked alike, recognizing stones and bushes in the dark. His firm chest kept the same rhythm of breathing; his legs went like pistons. "Hurry up, Binda!" his comrades would say as they saw him from a distance climbing up toward their camp. They tried to read in his face whether the news and orders he was bringing were good or bad; but Binda's face was shut like a fist, a narrow mountaineer's face with hairy lips on a short bony body more like a boy's than a youth's, with muscles like stones.
His was a tough and solitary job, being woken at all hours, sent out even to Serpe's camp or Pelle's, having to march in the dark valleys at night, accompanied only by a French
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tommy gun, light as a little wooden rifle, hanging on his shoulder; and when he reached a detachment he had to move on to another or return with the answer; he would wake up the cook and grope around in the cold pots, then leave again with a panful of chestnuts still sticking in his gullet. But it was the natural job for him, because he never got lost in the woods and knew all the paths, from having led goats about them or gone there for wood or hay since he was a child; and he never went lame or rubbed the skin off his feet scrambling about the rocks, as so many partisans did who'd come up from the towns or the navy.
Glimpses caught as he went along—a chestnut tree with a hollow trunk, blue lichen on a stone, the
In the afternoon, my brother goes back to sleep: there's no figuring out how he manages to sleep so much, but he does. I go to the movies : I go every day; if they're showing a film I've already seen, then I don't have to make any effort to follow the story.
After supper, stretched out on the sofa, I read some long, translated novels people lend me; often, as I read, I lose the thread of the plot and can never make heads or tails of it. My brother gets up as soon as he's eaten and leaves, to watch the billiards game.
----
My parents go straight to bed because they get up early in the morning: "Go to your room; you're wasting electricity here," they say to me as they climb the stairs. "I'm going," I say and remain lying there.
I'm already in bed and have been sleeping for a while when my brother comes back, around two. He turns on the light, stirs around the room, and has a last smoke. He tells me what's going on in the city, expresses kindly opinions of people. This is the hour when he is really awake and glad to talk. He opens the window to let the smoke out; we look at the hill with the lighted road and the dark, clear sky. I sit up in bed and, carefree, we chat for a long time about trivial things, until we're sleepy again.
----
WARTIME STORIES
----
FEAR ON THE FOOTPATH
At a quarter past nine, just as the moon was rising, he reached the Colla Bracca meadow; at ten he was already at the juncture of the two trees; by half past twelve he'd be at the fountain; he might reach Vendetta's camp by one—ten hours of walking at a normal speed, but six hours at the most for Binda, the courier of the first battalion, the fastest courier in the partisan brigade.
He went hard at it, did Binda, flinging himself headlong down short cuts, never making a mistake at crossroads that all looked alike, recognizing stones and bushes in the dark. His firm chest kept the same rhythm of breathing; his legs went like pistons. "Hurry up, Binda!" his comrades would say as they saw him from a distance climbing up toward their camp. They tried to read in his face whether the news and orders he was bringing were good or bad; but Binda's face was shut like a fist, a narrow mountaineer's face with hairy lips on a short bony body more like a boy's than a youth's, with muscles like stones.
His was a tough and solitary job, being woken at all hours, sent out even to Serpe's camp or Pelle's, having to march in the dark valleys at night, accompanied only by a French
----
tommy gun, light as a little wooden rifle, hanging on his shoulder; and when he reached a detachment he had to move on to another or return with the answer; he would wake up the cook and grope around in the cold pots, then leave again with a panful of chestnuts still sticking in his gullet. But it was the natural job for him, because he never got lost in the woods and knew all the paths, from having led goats about them or gone there for wood or hay since he was a child; and he never went lame or rubbed the skin off his feet scrambling about the rocks, as so many partisans did who'd come up from the towns or the navy.
Glimpses caught as he went along—a chestnut tree with a hollow trunk, blue lichen on a stone, the
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