All Our Yesterdays by Natalia Ginzburg

Author:Natalia Ginzburg [DAVIDSON, ANGUS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61145-666-0
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

CENZO RENA’s village was called Borgo San Costanzo. Once there had been a train to it, but not since the beginning of the war. Now the rails lay rusting in the lush, thick grass along the river, and the house which had been the station-master’s house had for some months been turned into a dance-hall, but then had come an order forbidding dancing because of the war. Now the station-master’s house was nothing at all, its windows were smashed and its doors broken down and old men who had nowhere to sleep came and slept there, and they hung up their ragged trousers on the wooden fence, amongst dried and fallen sunflowers. The grass was lush and thick only along the banks of the river, as it rose up the slopes of the hills it became shaggy and scorched, and the hills on the west side had on them neither houses nor trees, on those to the east, on the other hand, could be seen wind-lashed vineyards amongst sandy paths and rocks, and higher up there were small, rugged pines, and where the pines began was Cenzo Rena’s house, hanging over a tumbled mass of rocks.

The village was cut in half by the road, and along the road passed the bus twice a day, swaying beneath a load of people who had climbed on the running-boards and on the roof. The bus stopped for a few minutes in the village square, the mail-bag was flung out of the window, and then the bus went on, swaying along the sandy road. In the square grew four small trees, with clipped, round heads, and there, too, the old Marchesa’s carriage always stood, with the coachman on guard chasing away with his whip the boys who tried to climb up into it. From time to time the Marchesa would come down to go for a drive, and then the little carriage with its canvas awning would go bowling up and down the street, with the Marchesa’s black feather boa fluttering in the air. The Marchesa’s palace was hemmed in amongst narrow lanes and little streams of water, amongst crooked, smoky houses and pigsties, and it had a great doorway with double doors of bronze and blue friezes painted on its façade, and in the courtyard stood an oak-tree full of birds.

Such was Borgo San Costanzo, Cenzo Rena’s village, and the day that Anna and Cenzo Rena arrived in the village square all the people had come out to see what sort of a wife Cenzo Rena had taken to himself, and they were disappointed with this little wife with her dishevelled hair, wearing Cenzo Rena’s waterproof that came down to her ankles. They decided that she looked like the daughters of the draper, but worse, and they considered that there was no need to go a long way away to find a wife like that. The old Marchesa, too, was peering out of her carriage, with her plump, powdered face and blue

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