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By Root 750 0

uneven, roughedged tear in one of the yellow curtains at the windows; and even a large, black, gaping hole in one corner of the ceiling. Why had Cecilia’s parents not taken the trouble at least to paste back the strip of wallpaper, to mend the curtain, to have the ceiling repaired as best as possible? And as for Cecilia—was this, then, the house which was a house, the living room which was a living room, the furniture which was furniture? Was it possible that she lived in a flat which in its own squalid way was so peculiar, and had never become conscious of it? With these thoughts in my mind I followed her into the smaller part of the room, beyond the arch, which was arranged as a dining room, with furniture in the same dark, massive, Renaissance style I had already noted in Balestrieri’s studio. From near one of the windows, breaking the silence, came the jerky sounds of popular music on the radio. Possibly because of a certain icy quality in this silence, when I heard these sounds I realized suddenly that although it was already the beginning of December the flat was not heated. Cecilia, who was in front of me, said: “Dad, let me introduce my drawing teacher.”

Cecilia’s father rose with an effort from the armchair in which he was sitting listening to the radio and held out his hand to me without speaking, at the same time pointing to his throat as if to warn me that, owing to his disease, he was unable to talk. I recalled the strange whispering, breathing sound that I had heard on the telephone some days before and realized that it had been he who had answered me, or rather had tried in vain to answer me. I looked at him as he fell back into his old leather armchair that was all blackened and worn, and then as he bent forward and turned down the volume of the radio. He must have been what is generally called a handsome man, with that slightly vulgar kind of handsomeness that is to be found in some over-symmetrical faces. Of that handsomeness there was now nothing left. Disease had ravaged his face, causing it to swell in some places and contract in others, reddening it here and whitening it there. And there was death already, it seemed to me, in his black hair, which lay flat and lifeless and glued down by an unhealthy sweat upon his brow and temples; in the purplish color of his lips; and, above all, in his round eyes, with their expression of intense dismay. These eyes seemed to say things which his mouth, even if it had not been speechless, would have passed over in silence; and they brought to mind, not merely the dumbness produced by his disease, but, even more, the kind of forced helplessness of one who has been bound and gagged and left, alone and defenseless, to face a deadly peril.

Cecilia told her father to sit down, and she invited me to do the same and to keep her father company, as she had to go to the kitchen: she spoke in a loud voice, mentioning her father as if he were some inanimate object to be disposed of as one liked. I sat down, therefore, opposite the invalid, and, not knowing what to say, began talking in a flattering way about Cecilia’s artistic talent. Her father listened to me, rolling his terrified eyes as if, instead of talking to him about his daughter, I were hurling threats at him. From time to time he also talked, or rather tried to talk, as he had done on the telephone that day when he answered me; but the sounds that issued from his mouth, blown forth rather than articulated, were to me incomprehensible. Rather abruptly, without much ceremony and with the involuntary bad manners of the healthy when confronted with the sick, I said I must wash my hands, and I got up and left the room.

I was urged to do this by the same curiosity that had made me ask Cecilia to introduce me to her parents. In the passage I went, at random, to the first of the four doors leading from it, and opened it. A little bedroom of a chilling poverty met my eyes; the cold, subdued light came from the courtyard through the panes of curtainless windows. A black-painted iron bedstead with a consecrated olive-branch