On the wooden bedstead lay an old patchwork quilt, the labor of Teresa’s fingers, and under the quilt lay Olga, the beloved, the labor of Teresa’s body, and of Fabio, downstairs in the shop below cutting up mottled salame. But when Teresa thought of Olga, the beloved, she tried not to think of Fabio.
Teresa was forty. For forty years she had stared at life out of fierce, black eyes that had only once softened to human passion, for the rest they had softened when she looked at Olga; but when she had prayed to the Blessed Virgin, to whose gentle service she had once been dedicated, her eyes had been frightened and sometimes defiant, but not soft as when she looked at Olga. “Mea culpa, Mea culpa!” she had told the Blessed Virgin—remembering the one hot sin of her youth—“Ora pro nobis, Sancta Maria Virgio Mater Dei, Ora pro nobis.” And then: “Take care of Olga, dear Mother of Jesus, preserve her from temptation and the lusts of men—”
Tall and spare as a birch tree was Teresa, as a birch tree that has waited in vain for the spring. Her wavy black hair was defying time; it shone, and where the light touched it, it bloomed, faintly blue in the light. Her forehead had much that was noble about it, but the brows—thick and coarse as those of a man—all but met above the arch of her nose, a few isolated hairs alone dividing them. A slight shade, more marked towards the corners of her mouth, added to the strong virile look of her. Her dress was somber and rather austere, it was fastened at the throat by a large mosaic brooch, and in her ears she wore filigree gold earrings. A purposeful woman, an efficient woman, a woman who knew well that four farthings make a penny; a woman who liked the feel of those four farthings, who invested them with romance. Farthings, pennies, shillings, sovereigns—always the ultimate sovereigns. Golden things! Some people might like buttercups; Fabio did, for Fabio was simple, but Teresa preferred the cold beauty of sovereigns; sovereigns could buy flowers, but flowers could not buy sovereigns, her practical Tuscan mind told her that. And yet she was no miser, there was method in her saving, she saved for a definite reason, for Olga. Perhaps, too, she saved a little for Fabio, Fabio who was stupid where money was concerned. He could cut up salame into fine transparent slices, but only after Teresa had taught him how to do it; scolding, ridiculing, making him feel humble—Fabio who always replied: “Si, si, cara.” Long ago now, more than twenty years ago, she had said: “If you love me, you’ll marry me, Fabio, in spite of what you know has happened.”
And Fabio had said: “I will kill him first, Cane!”
But Teresa had said: “No, marry me first.”
And Fabio had replied: “Allora—”
After that he had brought her back with him to England. Fabio had already been a naturalized Englishman at the time of his meeting with Teresa in Florence—he had found it convenient in his business—yet never was man more Latin in spirit. Short flares of temper and infinite patience; the patience that sat for hours waiting for trains in the heat of a Tuscan summer; the patience that suffered the hardships of conscription, and later the heartbreaking sunlessness of England, and later still, Teresa’s cold marital endurance—Teresa who was always repenting the sin that Fabio had helped her to efface. Once back again in London among his salami, his spaghetti and his Parmesan cheeses, damped down by rain and fog and mud, and a little, perhaps, by Teresa’s endurance, Fabio had forgotten to kill his “Cane,” which doubtless was just as well. Only when Olga was born two years later did he remember how often he had prayed to Saint Joseph, the wise old patron of wedlock, that she might not be born too soon.
Sounds! The room was full of them, the house was full of them! The whole world was full of them—a hell composed of sounds! Footsteps in the shop below, the clanging of the shop bell—voices—Fabio’s voice, then others, unknown voices. A door banging, the shop door, people going in and out. And always that ceaseless din of traffic in the street, now fainter, and now louder, more vindictive. Teresa’s body tightened to do battle once again, as though by standing rigid and scarcely drawing breath she might hope to subdue the universe.
The figure on the bed moved a little and then sighed, and together with that sigh came a more imperious summons, the sharp, protesting, angry wailing of an infant not yet fully reconciled to life.
Teresa hurried to the bed. “Olga!” she whispered, “Olga!” The girl’s eyes opened and closed, then they opened again and remained fixed on Teresa; there was recognition in their gaze.
Teresa bent lower; the nurse had gone out, she would not be back for an hour. “Who was he?”—the same monotonous question. “Tell me, my darling—tell Mamma that loves you. Who was it hurt my little lamb?”
Olga’s head moved from side to side; feebly, like some sore stricken creature, she beat with her hands on the patchwork quilt.
Teresa’s strong arm slid under her shoulders. “Tell Mamma,” she whispered close to her ear, “tell Mamma, like a good child, Olga, my darling, and then the Blessed Virgin will make you well again.”
She spoke as she might have done fourteen years ago, when the five-year-old Olga had been coaxed and coerced into making some childish
