Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

Author:Jhumpa Lahiri [Lahiri, Jhumpa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

5 · two brothers

The two brothers sitting on the steps at sunset to drink a beer remember that, when they’d first moved to Rome with their parents, the staircase was still an out-of-the-way gathering spot. The brothers were eight and ten years old back then, but now that the younger one is fifty and the older one is fifty-two, their distant memories are either very precise or very blurred. They recall certain silly things, for example, like how the washing machine in their apartment didn’t work well, so one of their first errands was to go buy socks and underwear in a tiny store run by an elderly couple, and how the woman pulled the merchandise out from a series of boxes stacked up on the shelves, as if they held currency, while the gentleman kept his eye on the flustered family, mildly suspicious, even though it would have been impossible in such a cramped store to steal or spoil or even touch anything.

The older brother remembers (still with a certain irritation) the time they waited for more than half an hour to take a bus to visit their new school—an orange building behind a tall green gate, surrounded by tennis courts and soccer fields—just to have a look, given that it was still summer and the school was closed and the place was empty.

The younger brother doesn’t remember that excursion, but he does have a clear memory of the gray school bus that took them to their school filled with students from all over the world, and the flags in the courtyard, and the principal—a short, enigmatic man with an elegant but eccentric sense of style, wearing brightly colored shoes and large eyeglasses with whimsical frames—who was always seated on a bench just outside the entrance in the mornings, to welcome everyone in. And he remembered the mothers with their little handbags and jewelry and high heels (unlike their own mother with her short hair and flat shoes and no makeup and casual, forgettable clothes) who seemed ready to go out dancing at eight in the morning. They remember some of their teachers: the science teacher was also the soccer coach and made them play even when it was raining; their strict history teacher, with her pursed lips covered in fuchsia lipstick, who had taken them to Ostia and Tarquinia.

Both brothers recall the room they shared in a yellow palazzo at the foot of the steps, in a first-floor apartment that seemed frozen in time, full of dingy, uncomfortable furniture, with a deep tub in the stark white bathroom that attracted mosquitoes even in winter. If it rained in the evening they couldn’t hang the wash out to dry on the roof. The primitive dryer was in even worse shape than the washer, but their mother, feeling desperate once, had turned it on and blown a fuse. All the lights went out and they had to call the landlady, who lived overseas, to find the fuse box, hidden behind an ugly still life in the hallway.

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