“We spend!” he said faintly from time to time.
“And we earn,” his wife replied firmly. “One must always strike while the iron is hot; our iron is hot so I strike.” There were nights, however, when Fabio could not sleep for thinking of that debt to the bank.
“Are we not going to pay it off?” smiled Teresa. “You grow old, my Fabio, you grow old and afraid. Now I am not young, yet I am not afraid; I drink little, I work hard, I am always on the watch, and above all my ears are open. Millo says: ‘The pasta is such a trouble, I would like them to eat it fresh; I am more than a little ashamed of my pasta. If only the English could make macaroni! But no doubt they would make it very badly.’ Then I say to Millo: ‘You shall have your fresh pasta; the Casa Boselli will make it.’ And that,” she would conclude, “is the genius for business; that is why we now deliver our goods in a motor instead of with a horse and cart.”
And truly she possessed a great genius for business, as her friends were all bound to admit. Nerone, Rocca, the Padrone of the Capo, Mario and Rosa were all lost in admiration; even Francesco Millo would smile and call her the Napoleon of the Salumeria. Only poor Fabio, in his stuffy black coat, would sigh a little for the past, when he had handled his salami and cheeses, when the money had all lain snugly in the bank instead of uneasily in plate-glass windows, new leases, and machinery brought from Milan.
“Si, si,” he would think, “it was more peaceful then, and Teresa and I grow old.”
But on this May morning Teresa felt young as she got up briskly from her desk. “I will go and inspect my little factory,” she murmured, and, climbing the stairs, she passed through the shop and into a room beyond.
She stood quite still just inside the doorway to enjoy this, her latest acquisition. Near the ceiling were purposeful, whirring wheels, and the sound of their whirring was as music to her ears. At a table in the corner a youth in white drill was mixing a mountain of flour. Sixty pounds he would mix, with an egg to each pound, and from time to time he must pause to wash his hands, a rule imposed by Teresa. The great, generous mixture came up to his elbows as he kneaded and stirred and pressed.
“Va bene,” said Teresa, and she smiled with approval. “Va bene, but be careful of the eggshells.”
As soon as a portion of the pasta was mixed it was fed to a rotund machine, and there it was pummeled and kneaded afresh until it was ready for the large, wooden rollers. This process of rolling fascinated Teresa; she would gladly have watched it for hours. In went a shapeless lump of the pasta, and out came a species of rubber sheeting, cool to the touch and flawless in texture. Then back it would go to be rolled yet again, with each fresh rolling to grow finer and thinner, until in the end it was almost transparent, so elegant had it become.
Teresa would sometimes whisper about it. “One hundred times it must pass,” she would whisper; “one hundred times it must pass through my rollers?” And then she would laugh a little to herself, thinking of this great new adventure.
There were other contrivances in that room, among them an uncannily intelligent machine for the cutting and molding of pasta. What was your pleasure? Bircorni, Conchiglie, Stelline? Just touch a particular gadget and presto!—your etherealized rubber sheeting assumed any one of the fifty odd shapes that your need or your fancy had dictated. Upstairs would be waiting those new electric fans that sent out a stream of cold air, whereby your bicorni, conchiglie or stelline would be hardened and rendered almost immortal—that is until they were eaten.
Teresa’s defiant black eyes were glowing; they had no need of glasses to help their sight. “You have dropped in a trifle of eggshell, Francesco!” she said suddenly, pointing an accusing finger at the youth with the mountain of flour.
Those who worked for Teresa were always Italian. “The English do not work, they spend,” she would say; and her work-people feared her intensely, but respected. She was everywhere at once with her terrible black eyes, yet although her tongue lashed them they gave of their best. They said behind her back: “Che donna maravigliosa!” A grand old woman they thought Teresa, and one who knew well how to drive a hard bargain, as they would have done in her place.
II
Nerone was less fortunate in his affairs, a fact for which he blamed Geppe. Geppe was a lazy and insolent young man with a predilection for philandering. He hated the shop though he liked its contents, to which he helped himself freely. This so much enraged the miserly Nerone that he would actually threaten to send for the police; then Rosa would weep and implore forgiveness for her plump and unsatisfactory offspring.
“I spare him this time, but the next time I send,” Nerone would babble
