Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     No sooner had Giorgio and Marina gone out, hurtling down the steep stairs, than quietness took possession of the house again, from room to room. Signora Elsa put shoes and chairs back in their places; tightened a dripping tap; her slightly veined hand soundlessly closed the shutters, ran a small rag over the edge of the chest of drawers. It was still the same furniture as in the old days, although after the misfortune they had been forced to draw in their horns a bit. As soon as everything was tidy, in the half-light, Signora Elsa sat down and began to recall those times: when she was a young wife and they had just settled in the town, she and Franco and the little ones. Above all, she thought about that day, the last.

     Bit by bit so many details of that day came back to her. Especially she seemed to be certain of this: on that day Franco (for example, when he came into the kitchen to say goodbye to her) had something in his eyes, a foreboding, a sadness. At times this thought almost maddened her, because since that day Signora Elsa had never seen those grey, affectionate, still youthful eyes again. Now she was almost always dressed in dark colours, and in the forms she had to fill in from time to time she wrote: “Widow”.

*  *  *

     That morning it had been raining a little; a few trailers of mist had remained on the heights. Beside the double bed Franca dressed slowly and felt somehow bewildered, perhaps because every day for many years (since he had his office in the town and his house in the hills) he had had to rush off in a hurry in the morning, while the children were still asleep, and haste had given him no time to think of anything.

     That day, on the contrary, the little voices of the children, already up in the next room, the tick-tack of the pendulum clock, the hours passing slowly among the quiet sounds of the house — all this gave him a feeling as of convalescence, brought to mind vague memories. While he waited for the time when the train was due to leave, he began to look at the old photographs in their frames, especially one showing him as a young lad, a handsome boy, with eyes that looked somehow spellbound. He didn’t like leaving; also because, fundamentally, he could have avoided the little journey and would now have been at work, that terrible work which nevertheless gave him a living.

     He looked at his dark suit laid over the chair, slightly funereal, thinking to himself that for some reason we always end up wearing our best suits only for relations’ weddings; or they only emerge from wardrobes, after several years, to be put laboriously on gentlemen lying on their backs with their eyes closed, who soon afterwards are laid in a fine chest with brass fittings. How Giancarlo, the neighbours’ child, was laughing in the next room, having come to see his little friends! Really it wasn’t so very long ago that he, Franca, had also had a little voice like that.

*  *  *

     Signora Elsa remembered very well that when Franco came into the kitchen the children were battling with a kitten brought by Giancarlo. From time to time the little creature, a tabby and tiny, with a ribbon round its neck, took refuge in an impregnable hiding-place under the kitchen-cabinet, which was not more than four inches off the floor. Then Giancarlo dragged a ball of paper to and fro in front of it at the end of a peice of string. Very soon the kitten jumped out, fell upon the ball of paper, tapped it two or three times with its paw, but tightly, then, after making a few comical jumps this way and that, raced off with its belly to the ground to disappear under the kitchen cabinet again. Little Giorgio, wildly excited, ran to cut off the kitten’s retreat. His father, who was standing on one side smiling, caught his son as he shot past. He was so fond of Giorgio and Giorgio was so fond of him. If the little fellow now pushed him aside whining and stretching out his little arms, it was only because the game, in order not to be distracted from it. Nevertheless, it is true, we always feel a foolish stab of pain when a being we love pushes us away, even if only in fun.

     Perhaps that was why, when Franca returned from the kitchen, although he was still smiling, there was something serious, almost sad, in his expression. Perhaps that was why, thought Signora Elsa.

*  *  *

     Although it was still early, Franco took his suit from the chair and began to put it on. He didn’t know what to do, and naturally his wife, poor thing, hadn’t much time to bother about him with so many things to occupy her: she had to look after the children, to keep an eye on the gas stove, to call out to the maid, answer the neighbour who had come to borrow an egg. To overcome his slight feeling of loneliness, Franco thought about the office. How many troublesome matters to be brought to a conclusion! How many worries in all these years, from the accountant s apartment to Marina’s tonsils! He remembered, two days ago, in the avenue, seeing the muddy hole where there used to be a tree: all those severed roots. The same thing would happen if, by some chance, he were to fall ill, maybe die. He looked at himself in the mirror.

     The dark, well-cut suit made him look a young man still. The few reflections of white, the shadows here and there, those thoughtful, slightly swollen eyes, merely gave him a touch of severity, or rather, on looking closer, of melancholy, almost of regret. But why? He had been a good-looking boy, with a proud expression, tall, one whom the girls looked at when he passed. Many years had gone by since then. Now, every evening, when he alighted from the tram and saw the light in the window at the little living-room, how cheerful he felt, how he hurried his step! On certain evenings, if he happened to be in some town nearby, how frantically he set off home, towards that little bit of world, that light on the table! Thinking of this, he felt somehow moved to pity. Oh well, he was in a bad mood because he wasn’t going to be able to get home tonight. Just suppose, by some chance, a mishap . . . It’s strange, we have these childish, superstitious fears pretty often, if the truth were known. Then we shrug our shoulders, think of something else. All the same, it’s true, he could have spared himself this journey, that’s what was upsetting him.

     Then he packed his bag, because he wouldn’t be home that evening, he would be sleeping far away.

*  *  *

     Yes, fundamentally, Franco went off like that, against his will, by chance. Every time Signora Elsa thought this a slight sweat of desperation broke out on her forehead. If she had told him to, Franco would have stayed; and now he would be there, she would hear him turning the pages of the newspaper, she could have called to him: “Franco”. Instead she talked to him about the sheets, two sheets which Signora Elsa remembered having left at her sister-in-law’s, but of which her sister-in-law said she had no recollection. Even during breakfast (the yellowish glasses they had been using then were still there on the tablecloth now) she had talked about nothing but those sheets, explaining at length what he had to say to her sister-in-law in order to get them back. Heavens, why did she insist like that, even rather harshly? Well, she was afraid Franca might let it go; he was so reluctant to handle such matters, so sensitive, shy. He looked at her, nodding his head, looked at her with eyes that were a little swollen, somehow sad.

     Even a little while before he left, when he came into the kitchen, after wandering about, be bent over Marina, then he turned to her, he looked at her with those eyes, blinking his eyelashes a little — it looked as though he wanted to ask her something, he smiled uncertainly. Perhaps he would have liked to stay.

     But she had some dusters on her knee which she had just washed and whose edges she was about to mend. That was why she couldn’t get up; she told him not to hang about, or he would miss the train. He was in the passage; she called out to him about the sheets again. He answered “Yes, yes”, then she heard the door bang. That was all.

     She didn’t know that she was never gong to see him again, If she had known, she would have put her arm round him, would have kissed his hands, would have yelled, would have clung to him so that she was dragged along the ground. But she didn’t know. Sometimes she moved her lips, as if to whisper: “Oh, Franco, sit down, stay here with me for a little while; let’s talk a bit”.

*  *  *

     The train moved off; the accountant who was waiting, bored, on the platform, waved goodbye with a feeling of relief and made for the exit. Goodbye. Alone. Patches of garden passed before Franco, suburban streets which he recognized, familiar trees dappled by an uncertain sun. Goodbye, goodbye.

     But why? Why, every time we go away, do we suddenly feel something almost like fear in our heart? Why on certain days, do the most insignificant signs of negligence on the part of our dear ones give us this secret bitterness? There are times when we should be so pleased if they would fuss over us, if they would understand that sometimes, notwithstanding our grave face, we are like children and feel a curious anguish at leaving them. He had hoped that as he left one of the children would be at the window to wave to him, held up by his mother, as on other occasions. But perhaps they were playing in the kitchen, on the table covered with flower-patterned American cloth. What a beautiful child Giorgio was; what a good-looking boy he would grow into. He had once read that “we are always alone, no one helps us, when we die”. What funny thoughts. The train was running through small hills. A girl, not much bigger than Marina, was looking out of the window with an excited, anxious face. She was happy to be an a train, to see villages, woods. Feeling that she was being watched, she blushed and smiled. What sincere, trusting eyes. Franca smiled at her too. The important thing was to have courage. At every moment; when you are talking to the accountant, when you die, always — to have courage. Then he felt something grow calm again inside him. The train rushed with joyous impetuosity between green woods; suddenly it seemed to be flying over green valleys; then it was submerged between echoing walls of rock. It was beautiful, it filled him with a kind of ardour. That was it: to have courage, to raise one’s head proudly and to go like this. As when Franca, so many years ago, in another train that moved out among waving handkerchiefs, went to war, with his handsome, grave face, his thoughtful eyes.