Read Online The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Giorgio Bassani
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expelled from the tennis club, by any chance? Without a thought for my brother Ernesto, who was always gaping at me, openmouthed, poor boy, and imitating me as if I was heaven knows what haham,t I’d stopped going to the tennis club: and I was wrong, I must really let him say it, quite wrong to shut myself away, and segregate myself, and refuse to see anyone, and then, with the excuse of the university and my season ticket, slink off to Bologna three or four times a week. (I no longer wanted to see even Nino Bottecchiari, Sergio Pavani, and Otello Forti, my inseparable friends until a year ago, here in Ferrara; and you couldn’t say they’d let a month go by without ringing me up, sometimes one and sometimes another of them, poor chaps!) Whereas look at young Lattes, now. As far as one gathered from the sports pages of the Corriere Jerrarese, he wasn’t just taking part regularly in the last tournament of the season, which was now in full swing, but getting on splendidly in the mixed doubles, where he was partnered by that pretty Adriana Trentini, whose father was chief engineer of the province: they’d won three matches easily, and were now getting ready for the semi-finals. Oh, no, you could say what you liked about old Barbicinti: that he was rather too keen on his own (pretty modest) family arms, for instance, and not quite keen enough on the grammar of the articles promoting tennis which the party’s Federal Secretary got him to write every now and then for the Corriere Jerrarese. But that he was a man of integrity and honour, for all that, not the least bit hostile to the Jews, and pretty mildly fascist-and as he said “fascist” my father’s voice quivered, very slightly and timidly quivered-no one could doubt or dispute.
* “Maidservant” in Hebrew.
t Hebrew term meaning “sage” or “scholar”.
Now, about Alberto’s invitation, and the behaviour of the Finzi-Continis in general: why, like a bolt from the blue, this sudden excitement of theirs, this sudden passionate need to get in touch?
What had happened last week at the synagogue, at Roshashana, was odd enough already (as usual, I’d refused to come: and once again, ifl’d forgive him saying so, I’d been wrong). Yes, it had been pretty odd already, bang at the height of the service, and with the pews full to bursting, to see Ermanno Finzi-Contini all of a sudden, and his wife and mother-in-law, followed by the two children and the inevitable Herrera uncles from Venice-the whole tribe, in fact, male and female all bundled in together-solemnly re-entering the Italian synagogue after a good five years of disdainful isolation in the Spanish synagogue: and looking so smug and so benign, too, for all the world as if they meant their presence to reward and forgive not just everyone present but the entire Jewish community. But, quite obviously, this hadn’t been enough. They’d now got to the pitch of actually inviting people to their house: to Barchetto del Duca, just think of that now, where since Josette Artom’s day no outsider had set foot, except strictly in emergencies. And would I like to hear just why? Well, obviously, because they were pleased with what was happening, hahi* as they'd always been (all right, all right, they’d been against fascism, but halti most of all), deep down they actually liked the racial laiwsl If they’d only been good Zionists, now. At least, seeing that here, in Italy and in Ferrara, they had always felt so much out of things, so much on loan as it were, they could have taken advantage of the situation to transfer themselves to Israel once and for all. But no. Apart from digging out a bit of money for Israel just occasionally-and there was nothing very odd about that, in any case-they’d never done a thing. When they really forked out, it was always for some aristocratic nonsense: like the time in ’33, when, to find an ehal and a parochct
* “Maidservant” in Hebrew.
t Hebrew term meaning “sage” or “scholar”.
Now, about Alberto’s invitation, and the behaviour of the Finzi-Continis in general: why, like a bolt from the blue, this sudden excitement of theirs, this sudden passionate need to get in touch?
What had happened last week at the synagogue, at Roshashana, was odd enough already (as usual, I’d refused to come: and once again, ifl’d forgive him saying so, I’d been wrong). Yes, it had been pretty odd already, bang at the height of the service, and with the pews full to bursting, to see Ermanno Finzi-Contini all of a sudden, and his wife and mother-in-law, followed by the two children and the inevitable Herrera uncles from Venice-the whole tribe, in fact, male and female all bundled in together-solemnly re-entering the Italian synagogue after a good five years of disdainful isolation in the Spanish synagogue: and looking so smug and so benign, too, for all the world as if they meant their presence to reward and forgive not just everyone present but the entire Jewish community. But, quite obviously, this hadn’t been enough. They’d now got to the pitch of actually inviting people to their house: to Barchetto del Duca, just think of that now, where since Josette Artom’s day no outsider had set foot, except strictly in emergencies. And would I like to hear just why? Well, obviously, because they were pleased with what was happening, hahi* as they'd always been (all right, all right, they’d been against fascism, but halti most of all), deep down they actually liked the racial laiwsl If they’d only been good Zionists, now. At least, seeing that here, in Italy and in Ferrara, they had always felt so much out of things, so much on loan as it were, they could have taken advantage of the situation to transfer themselves to Israel once and for all. But no. Apart from digging out a bit of money for Israel just occasionally-and there was nothing very odd about that, in any case-they’d never done a thing. When they really forked out, it was always for some aristocratic nonsense: like the time in ’33, when, to find an ehal and a parochct
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