Read Online History by Elsa Morante, Lily Tuck, William Weaver - Free Book Online

widowed, was already retired. She never went to visit her husband's grave, prevented by a kind of sacred terror of burial-places; but still it is certain that her deepest bond, which made her stay in the city of Cosenza was his nearness, since he dwelt there still, in that cemetery
    She would never leave the old house, which had become her lair. She went out only rarely, in the early morn to buy food, or on the days when she had to draw her pension or send the usual money-order to Giuseppe's ancient parents. To them, as also to Ida, she wrote long letters, which the illiterate old couple had to have read to them. But in her letters she took care never to refer, even in the most indirect and reticent way, to her own pressing terrors for the future : by now she suspected censorship and inform everywhere. And in those frequent and endless communica tions of hers, she did nothing but repeat the same notion in every possible variation :
    "How strange and unnatural destiny is. I married a man eight years younger than myself, and according to the law of nature I should have been the fi to die, with Him at my side. Instead, it was my destiny to witness His death."
    In speaking of Giuseppe, she always wrote Him, with a capital letter. Her style was prolix, repetitive, but with a certain academic nobility; and

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    her handwriting was elongated, fi even elegant. ( However, in her final decline, her letters grew shorter and shorter. Her style be amputated and disjointed; and her written words, all shaky and twisted, groped across the page, uncertain of their direction .)
    Besides this correspondence, which occupied her like a mania, her usual pastimes were reading illustrated magazines or love stories or listen ing to the radio. For some time now, the tales of racial persecution in Germany had alarmed her, like a precise signal confi her old forebod ings. But when, towards spring of 1938, Italy also intoned the offi chorus of anti-Semitic propaganda, she saw the thunderous magnitude of destiny advancing towards her door, growing more enormous day by day. The news broadcasts, with their pompous and menacing voices, already seemed to be physica invading her little rooms, sowing panic; but to be prepared, she felt more and more obliged to listen to the news. And she spent her days and evenings on guard, alert to the news-broadcast sched ules, like a little, woun�ed fox that has gone to earth and strains to hear the barking of the pack.
    Some minor Fascist offi arrived from Catanza one day and spread the unoffi word of an imminent census of all Italian Jews, each of whom would be required to report himself. And after that moment, Nora no longer turn on thr. radio, in her terr of hearing the offi announcement of the govern order, wi a time-limit for reporting.
    It was the beginning of summer. Already the previous winter, Nora, now sixty-eight, had begun to suff a worsening of her ailments, due to the arteriosclerosis that had been undermining her for some time. With other people, too, her behavior (which had been shy before, but always tempered by an inner sweetness ) had become angry and harsh. She no longer spoke if someone greeted her, not even when it was a former student, now grown up, perhaps one who had until then remained dear to her. On certain nights, she had raving fi when she tore her gown with her fingern One night, she fell out of bed in her sleep, and she found herself lying on the fl her head aching and buzzing. She often would wheel around, frowning and furious on the slightest pretext, sensing mysterious insults even in innocent gestures or words.
    Of all the possible measures threatened against the Jews, the one that most immediately frightened her was the predicted obligation to report oneself for the census! All imaginable forms of near and future persecu tions, even the most wicked and disastrous, were confused in her mind like wavering phantoms, among which the terrible spotlight of that single de cree froze her in