“I think not, Gian-Luca—they may not know—and yet you are not quite as other children—but if you are honest and good and hardworking that will not harm you, my child.”
“Yes, but how am I different?” he questioned anxiously. “I cannot myself see any difference.”
“Some day you will understand,” she told him, “and meanwhile be patient—work hard.”
“Yes, but how am I different? Why am I different?” Gian-Luca suddenly wanted to cry.
“You are all that we wish you to be,” broke in Fabio. “Is it not so, Teresa?”
“He is all that he can be,” she answered slowly. “Gian-Luca is all that he can be.”
Gian-Luca forced back his tears with an effort: “You do not know if my father is alive?”
“No,” said Fabio, “we do not, piccino—but we sometimes think that he is.”
“And he does not wish to see me, who am his son?”
“It would seem not, my little Gian-Luca.”
“But why?”
“Because,” intervened Teresa, “he does not love you, Gian-Luca.”
“Dio Santo!” exclaimed Fabio; “you tell things too soon.”
“I think not,” she answered coldly.
Gian-Luca looked from one to the other; he was trying to understand; he was trying to visualize quite a new world, a world where the most unheard-of things happened—where fathers, for instance, might not love their children. He thought of Nerone’s affection for Rosa, of Mario’s devotion to Berta and Geppe; of Rocca, who would shake his head and say sadly: “If only I had a son!” For with all these people among whom he lived, the love of children was a primitive instinct like that of eating and drinking—no higher and no lower—just a primitive instinct. A man loved his body and in consequence he fed it; a man loved the children who sprang from his body, because they were part of himself.
Gian-Luca, aged eleven, could not know all this—nor would he have cared very much if he had. All that concerned him deeply at the moment was the love that he felt himself to be missing. His thoughts turned to Berta and Geppe with their howls, their rages, their insatiable greed; and then to Mario with his tiredness, his bunion, and his infinite, long-suffering patience. He himself had found such patience in Fabio—he remembered this now—he had found it in Fabio. And Teresa? She had been patient with him, too, coldly, enduringly patient. But something had been lacking even in Fabio, and all in a moment he knew what it was; Fabio’s patience had lacked a certain quality of joy—the quality of joy that made Mario laugh sometimes at the sins of his small man-child. And as though Teresa had divined Gian-Luca’s thoughts, she turned her gaze full on his face.
“Remember,” she said, “that you always have yourself, and that should suffice a man.”
He nodded. He drew himself up, grateful to her for thinking of him as a man. “I am Gian-Luca,” he announced quite firmly, “also, I am an Italian!”
“You are not that,” she told him. “Nonno is naturalized—your mother became English, so you are English—you are English in the eyes of the law.”
“But I do not feel as they do!” he exclaimed in quick resentment. “At school they know that I do not feel as they do and they always leave me outside!”
“Nevertheless you are English,” said Teresa, “and perhaps it is better so.”
Then Gian-Luca forgot that she had called him a man, forgot to be more than eleven years old. “Non voglio! Non voglio!” he wept in fury. “I wish to be as Geppe is—Italian. I shall say to them all that I am an Italian—I will not pretend any more.”
“That is foolish,” Fabio told him gently. “In the eyes of the law you are English.”
“I am not! I wish only to be an Italian—I hate the English and Nerone hates them too—”
“And that is also foolish—” said Fabio patiently, “for the English provide us with money.”
“And some day you will earn their money,” said Teresa, “and by doing so you will grow rich.”
Gian-Luca stopped crying and eyed her gravely: “Is it not that I have no real country, Nonna, just as I have no real father?”
There was silence for a moment while she too looked rather grave. “You have yourself,” she repeated firmly. “No one can take that from you, Gian-Luca—remember that you always have yourself.”
III
That evening Rosa came in to supper, bringing her Berta and Geppe. Berta was now nearly ten years old; her locks as stiff and as black as horsehair—they were tied up with pale pink ribbon. Berta had enormous, flashing brown eyes, and large round calves to her legs. She was wearing a number of silver bangles and a pair of minute coral earrings. Berta was already decidedly feminine—she looked at Gian-Luca, who was reading, and she frowned. Presently she went up and snatched at his book, then she darted away as though frightened.
Gian-Luca felt unfriendly. “Get out!” he muttered. “Get out and leave me alone!”
At that Berta ran and complained to her mother. “He has pinched me!” she whined mendaciously.
“What is the matter with Gian-Luca?” inquired Rosa. “I think he has a devil on his back! Why will he not show his book to Berta? When she asked him so prettily, too!”
Geppe, as always, was busy sucking something, and what he sucked oozed down on to his chin. He looked like his father—very red, very black—and he clung to his mother’s hand with the persistence and the vigor of an octopus. Rosa made as though to disengage her hand whereupon Geppe started to howl.
“He is timid,” said Rosa, smiling round the room, “and moreover he adores his Mammina.” She lifted her son to a chair at the table, then seated herself beside him. Having tied a large napkin under his chin—“You must eat, tesoro!” she commanded.
The supper consisted of a cake of polenta, pastasciutta, a salad, some gruyère cheese, and a stout fiaschone of Chianti. Berta was greedy and kept asking
