• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1315 0

match this," he answered, "she wanted me to get married, to have a kid. You're sure to have one, she said to me every time: and then she would cry. When I told her I was getting married (at first she wouldn't believe it), that I was going to live in Genoa, as soon as I showed her the snaps of Renata, well, no, I can't say she was jealous, not the way another woman would have been . . . No. Isn't she beautiful? she said, but kind of with her teeth clenched. A brunette, isn't she? A pretty girl: just right for you, since you're as blond as an angel. And she started crying. As soon as she was convinced about the wedding, that it wasn't just a story . . . Doctor, you won't believe it. . . sometimes I think I'm going crazy myself . . . she made me swear, right away, that I'd have a kid, as soon as I could: a little Valdarena. A Valdarenuccio, she said, through her tears. Now swear! A darling little innocent. She was out of her mind, our poor Liliana. She would adopt that first one: because Renata and I, she said, would promptly make another, and a third, a fourth: and those would be for us. But she had a right to the first one, she said. Providence would give us, Renata and me, all the babies we wanted. Because that's how the good Lord is, she said: everything to one person, and nothing to another." And it is in this guise, indeed, that He displays His mysterious perfection. "You're young, she said, you're healthy . . . (like a bull, Doctor, I can tell you) like all the Valdarenas. The minute you're married, you'll make a baby: I can almost see him, almost hear him ... If you don't have one on the way already. She laughed, and went on crying, too. And you've got to swear that you'll give him to me. I was to let her adopt it, in other words: like it was her child.

"What'll you give me, if I give you my baby? I said to her once. Christmas was already past, and New Year's ... it was after the Epiphany. Why, it was past the middle of January. I was only joking. She bowed her head. Like she was thinking . . . tired, sad: like a poor thing who didn't have anything to trade me: as if she had to ask for charity. Love? No, no, I didn't want that: I didn't mean love—I said, joking. She went pale, and flung herself down in a chair, like she was desperate." Ingravallo paled, too. "She looked at me with those eyes of hers, imploring. They were clouded with tears. She took my fingers, my right hand. She looked at my mother's ring, this one here: and she began to slip it off my finger. You've got to leave this with me for a few days, she said. Why? Because I say so. Because I want to match something, the present I'm going to give you. So I left it with her. And the next time I went to see her—Remo was off on a trip, he was in Padua, and without knowing it, I went to the house to see her—the next time ... as soon as she saw me, she gave me my ring back, then, without saying anything, she made like a sign to me ... a smile, the way you smile at a kid. Here, she said, and she looked at me: here! She took my hand, and slipped that ring on my finger, her grandfather's ring; this other one, my mother's, I wear on my middle finger, as you can see. Here, Giuliano, now take care of it, it's grandfather's ring. My grandfather. Your great-grandfather: what a good and handsome and strong man he was! He was a real man, like you! like you!" (That like you, like you, made the bulldog grit his teeth.) "And this is grandfather's watch chain . . . And she showed me that, too (it's this one that they took from me in Via Nicotera) and she turned her eyes to the portrait, you know? the oval one, in the gold frame with the ivy leaves, you know?" "Ivy leaves?"

"Yes, bright green, in the living room: the big portrait of her grandfather, Rutilio: you can see the chain on his stomach. This very one." He touched it, extending his hand to the desk, sadly. "With the fob . . ." He shook his head. "Then she said to me. Lilianuccia . . . poor Liliana said to me: you told me you have to go to Genoa. Before you get married, you have to fix up your house: on the shore at Albaro,