daughter was a Nazi—she felt that he was dead. If he hadn’t been he would have looked for her, he knew where she lived, and Cagliari isn’t Milan. Truly the Veteran must no longer be alive, and so she wept. Grandfather picked her up and sat her down on the only bed under the small attic window. He consoled her. He put a glass in her hand for a farewell toast and her sister and brother-in-law made a toast to meeting in better times, but grandfather didn’t want to toast better times—he wanted to toast that very visit, when they had all been together and had eaten well and had some laughs.
Then grandmother, with the glass in her hand, thought that maybe the Veteran was alive—after all, he had survived so many terrible things, why shouldn’t he make it in normal life? And she thought, too, that she still had an hour, with the tram ride to the Central Station, and the fog was lifting. But, when they reached the station, there was only a little time before the train left for Genoa, where they would get the boat and then another train; and life would begin again, where in the morning you water the flowers on the terrace and then make breakfast and then lunch and dinner, and if you ask your husband and son how things are going they answer, “Normal. Everything normal. Don’t worry,” and never tell you things, the way the Veteran did, and your husband never says that you’re the only one for him, the one he was waiting for, and that in May of 1943 his life changed—never, in spite of the increasingly refined services in bed and all the nights you sleep there together. So now if God didn’t want her to meet the Veteran let him kill her. The station was dirty, littered with trash and spit. While she sat and waited for her husband and son to get the tickets, because papa never chose to stay with her but preferred to stand in line with grandfather, she noticed a wad of gum stuck to the seat and smelled the odor of the toilets and felt an infinite disgust for Milan, which seemed to her terrible, like the whole world.
As she followed grandfather and papa, chattering to each other, up the escalator leading to the trains, she thought that if she turned back they wouldn’t even realize it. The fog had cleared now. She would continue to look for the Veteran throughout all the disgusting streets of the world, despite the winter cold that was approaching; she would beg and maybe even sleep on benches, and if she died of tuberculosis or hunger so much the better.
She let go of her suitcases and packages and rushed down, crashing into all the people going up, saying “Excuse me, excuse me!” But right at the end she stumbled, and the escalator swallowed up a shoe and a piece of her coat and tore the beautiful new dress and her stockings and her woolen cap, which had fallen off, and the skin of her hands and legs, and she had cuts and scrapes all over. Two arms helped lift her up. Grandfather had run down after her, and now he was holding her and caressing her as he would have done with a child: “Nothing happened,” he said to her, “nothing happened.”
When they got home she started to do the laundry, all the dirty clothes from the visit, shirts, dresses, undershirts, socks, underwear: all the new things they had bought for the trip to Milan. They were doing well now, and grandmother had a Candy washing machine with two settings, for normal clothes and for delicates. She separated the clothes: those that were to be washed at a high temperature and those to be done in warm water. But maybe her thoughts were elsewhere, who knows, and she ruined everything. Papa told me that she hugged him and grandfather, amid sobs and tears, and got the knives from the kitchen and put them in their hands so that they could kill her; she scratched her face and beat her head against the wall and threw herself on the floor.
Later, my father heard grandfather telephoning the aunts and saying that, in Milan, she hadn’t been able to
Then grandmother, with the glass in her hand, thought that maybe the Veteran was alive—after all, he had survived so many terrible things, why shouldn’t he make it in normal life? And she thought, too, that she still had an hour, with the tram ride to the Central Station, and the fog was lifting. But, when they reached the station, there was only a little time before the train left for Genoa, where they would get the boat and then another train; and life would begin again, where in the morning you water the flowers on the terrace and then make breakfast and then lunch and dinner, and if you ask your husband and son how things are going they answer, “Normal. Everything normal. Don’t worry,” and never tell you things, the way the Veteran did, and your husband never says that you’re the only one for him, the one he was waiting for, and that in May of 1943 his life changed—never, in spite of the increasingly refined services in bed and all the nights you sleep there together. So now if God didn’t want her to meet the Veteran let him kill her. The station was dirty, littered with trash and spit. While she sat and waited for her husband and son to get the tickets, because papa never chose to stay with her but preferred to stand in line with grandfather, she noticed a wad of gum stuck to the seat and smelled the odor of the toilets and felt an infinite disgust for Milan, which seemed to her terrible, like the whole world.
As she followed grandfather and papa, chattering to each other, up the escalator leading to the trains, she thought that if she turned back they wouldn’t even realize it. The fog had cleared now. She would continue to look for the Veteran throughout all the disgusting streets of the world, despite the winter cold that was approaching; she would beg and maybe even sleep on benches, and if she died of tuberculosis or hunger so much the better.
She let go of her suitcases and packages and rushed down, crashing into all the people going up, saying “Excuse me, excuse me!” But right at the end she stumbled, and the escalator swallowed up a shoe and a piece of her coat and tore the beautiful new dress and her stockings and her woolen cap, which had fallen off, and the skin of her hands and legs, and she had cuts and scrapes all over. Two arms helped lift her up. Grandfather had run down after her, and now he was holding her and caressing her as he would have done with a child: “Nothing happened,” he said to her, “nothing happened.”
When they got home she started to do the laundry, all the dirty clothes from the visit, shirts, dresses, undershirts, socks, underwear: all the new things they had bought for the trip to Milan. They were doing well now, and grandmother had a Candy washing machine with two settings, for normal clothes and for delicates. She separated the clothes: those that were to be washed at a high temperature and those to be done in warm water. But maybe her thoughts were elsewhere, who knows, and she ruined everything. Papa told me that she hugged him and grandfather, amid sobs and tears, and got the knives from the kitchen and put them in their hands so that they could kill her; she scratched her face and beat her head against the wall and threw herself on the floor.
Later, my father heard grandfather telephoning the aunts and saying that, in Milan, she hadn’t been able to
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