Without rising, he struck a match and lit a candle end, which he then stood on the floor. “Do you think that’s all right?” I asked, indicating the light of the candle and then the gap in the roof. “Airplanes?” he queried softly. “There’s not much for them to see.” The flame trembled.
Then, through his torn clothes, I caught sight of a large wound, dark and deep; it must have been quite old already, and it smelled. “She could have this corner here, if ever she were to come back,” he explained without a shadow of irony. “It’s more sheltered. I could organize myself over there, opposite. . . . But won’t you sit down? Must you go? It’s early yet.”
“No, no, I must go. I hope we’ll meet again soon,” I said. “And thank you so much.”
“On the contrary, it’s I who must thank you. You’ve suffered, I know. Let’s hope that another time . . .”
Now, in his attempt to overcome the cold, he was actually beating his arms against his sides, as carters do in winter. But he did it with an aristocratic detachment, as though it were an exercise, or some kind of joking reference to the poor, whose teeth chatter. Small white objects began to flutter around the candle. “It’s snowing,” he said, and sounded pleased.
The Alarming Revenge of a Domestic Pet
OF THE MANY HORRIBLE THINGS THAT I’VE HEARD IN recent years, the one that made the deepest impression on me was the following story, told to me by a young girl.
“Once when I was going through Milan,” she said, “I had to visit an aunt, already fairly elderly, whom I hadn’t seen for several years. It would have been terrible if she came to hear that I had been in Milan and hadn’t gone to see her. She’d have been mortally offended. But as I was busy in the afternoon, I telephoned her to say that I’d see her that evening, after supper. The tone of her reply implied that she was absolutely delighted—too delighted, really—at the prospect of my visit.
“She lived somewhere near Via Settembrini in a quiet, elegant house; she had an old apartment in it, kept scrupulously clean, but so full of furniture, pictures, carpets, screens, vases, curtains, stools, work baskets and general bric-a-brac that on entering you felt positively weighed down with its fussiness, with dust even. And then the lamps had the most complicated shades and gave out a depressing sort of light. No sooner was I inside the door than I felt I wanted to get out and into the open again as soon as possible.
“My aunt was in the dining room, and she wasn’t alone. Seated opposite her, on the other side of the table, was another elderly woman, a close friend I assumed from the familiar way in which she behaved. But I remember now that there were at least three other people: they were sitting farther back, in the shadow, and I couldn’t see them very well, but from what I remember there was a young woman of about thirty, another little woman rather older, quite unremarkable, and a very fulsome man, with glasses, of about fifty. As far as one could tell, they lived in the same house and came to see my aunt every evening.
“The conversation was taking the course one might expect (news of my family, our mutual relatives, the war), so that I was surprised at the way my aunt and her friends were looking at me: intensely, as though they expected not simply a polite visit but something far more important, something about which they were extremely anxious.
“At the same time, I was struck by the incredible jumble of furniture and ornaments of all sorts: here it was somehow even more stifling than in the other rooms I’d come through. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could live and move in that jungle of antiquated junk. It made me feel physically sick.
“The central table in particular was heaped almost to overflowing with a whole collection of things: a low flower stand with some unhealthy-looking little green plants, a bonbonnière, a photograph album, an inkstand, balls of wool, little vases, books and, among other things, a large tray filled with bottles, flasks and glasses. From the look of them, the bottles probably contained syrups or sticky rosolios, and I felt sickened at the thought that I would probably be offered some. In the middle, hanging from the ceiling but so low that it almost touched the central flower stand, was an art nouveau lampshade like an upside-down lily, shading a lighted lamp; at the bottom was a strange sort of protruding handle, like those on coffee grinders but of shiny brass; I thought it might have something to do with raising and lowering the lamp.
“Then suddenly, through the gloom, I saw a small animal moving restlessly about on the left arm of my aunt’s armchair. For some reason I was immediately convinced that it was a bat, though I can’t think why, since it really had very little in common with one. My aunt obviously kept it in the drawing room like a kitten and found it delightful. It had a small droopy face like a little dog rather than a mouse, a thin slender body and a long ratlike tail; but what struck me particularly were its four tiny legs, about seven inches long, with webbed feet like a duck’s, only black.”
“So it had no wings?”
“No, no wings. But with its blackish color and those slimy webbed feet, it looked more like a bat than all the bats I’ve ever seen put together.
“Weirdly elegant, the little animal moved from its position on the arm of the
