History by Elsa Morante

Author:Elsa Morante [Morante, Elsa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-58642-237-0
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2015-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

At home, that morning, there was not only no gas, but also no electricity or water. Filomena, however, grateful for a little gift of flour, managed to make Ida some pèttola (pasta) and to cook it along with her own, adding a little fistful of beans, already boiled.

Ida took another portion of flour with her when she went out that afternoon. That day (like every Thursday since the schools had closed) she had to go give a private lesson in the neighborhood of the Trastevere station. And she planned, on her return, to go as far as Via Garibaldi, where she knew a man who, in exchange for the flour, would give her some meat for Useppe’s supper.

This plan for the day was tangled in her head like wire. It was the first of June, and oddly, it was like a due date, for all the accumulated fatigue of the month of May to fall on her at once. After the fear of death that had gripped her as she fled from the truck, she found herself again, worse than before, bewildered and cowardly like a pariah dog persecuted by the dogcatchers. As she headed for Via Garibaldi, she felt her legs buckling, and she sat down to rest on a little bench in the garden this side of the bridge. Her mind was distracted, so she could barely perceive, in confusion, some voices conversing nearby, in the little garden or at the tram stop not far off. The subject was not new: they were talking about an air raid that same day, in the outskirts: some said twenty deaths, some two hundred. She remained aware of being seated there in the garden, and at the same time she found herself running around the San Lorenzo quarter. She was carrying in her arms something of supreme value which must have been Useppe; but though it had the weight of a body, this thing had neither form nor color. And also the quarter, which was now enfolded in an opaque dust cloud, was no longer San Lorenzo, but a foreign space, without houses or form. She wasn’t dreaming, since she heard meanwhile the tram clanking on the tracks and the passengers’ voices at the stop. However, at the same time, she knew she was mistaken: that wasn’t the tram’s clanking, but another sound. Recovering herself with a jolt, she was embarrassed to find her lips drooping and saliva running down her chin. She stood up, unresolved, and having walked only halfway across the Garibaldi bridge, she realized she was heading for the Ghetto. She recognized the call that was tempting her there and that came to her this time like a low and somnolent dirge, still loud enough to engulf all exterior sounds. Its irresistible rhythms resembled those with which mothers lull their babies, or tribes summon their members together for the night. Nobody has taught them, they are written already in the seed of all the living, subject to death.

Ida

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