And Rosa would often say to her son: “It is splendid to think of my Geppe as a soldier—how I envy you, caro, to see Italy again! But then, I was forgetting, you have never yet seen it.”
Geppe would look sulky and mutter something vague about wanting to see a bit of life, not service; for the last thing on earth that poor Geppe wanted was to become a soldier. Rocca, who knew that the hour was approaching, added greatly to Geppe’s torment. He would come to Nerone’s and buy cigarettes for the pleasure he took in talking at Geppe and making him feel afraid. Rocca would jab at the air with his stick:
“It is thus, and thus, with the bayonet,” he would say, “and the little, sharp twist in the pit of the stomach; one should always aim low for their bellies.”
Geppe’s pale face would turn even paler, and his hand would instinctively grip at his middle. Then Rocca would laugh:
“Avanti, capitano! I can see you leading your men into battle. ‘Italia! Italia! Italia!’ you shout, and then you give the small twist with your sword, for surely they will make you a captain!”
III
It was all most distressing, especially for Mario, who was more overworked than ever at the Capo; and then there was Berta, not much of a comfort either, although she was now twenty-two. Berta no longer carried boxes and ran errands; she was now very smart and served in the shop. Madame Germaine thought the world of Berta, who could always persuade a woman of fifty that she looked like nineteen in a model.
“Oh, modom, you look charming!” Berta would lie, skillfully patting and tweaking. “Too stout? Oh, no, modom, I cannot agree—this model gives such long lines.”
That was the way Berta talked in the shop; with her own special cronies it was different. “Damned old fools, if you saw them!” giggled Berta. “Heaving their stomachs up to their chins till they look like a lot of pouter pigeons!”
Berta herself had become quite slim owing to rigorous fasting; her fasts had nothing to do with the Lord, they were purely an offering to Venus. Berta had now many young lady friends who, like her, used lipstick and giggled. Their Sundays were spent on the river in summer; they were usually accompanied by one or two “boys.” Berta was young, she loved a good time, and she worked very hard all the week, so it soon came about that she missed Mass on Sundays—a new outrage to rouse up Nerone.
“Why you not go very early?” inquired Rosa. “The Mass he go on from six.”
“Good heavens!” laughed Berta. “I can’t get up at five—I’m dog-tired, anyhow, by Sunday.”
Rosa sighed; she was racking her brain for words which never came correctly in English. But Berta refused point-blank to speak Italian; she declared that she had almost forgotten it. This placed her mother at a great disadvantage, as Berta was very well aware; she was fond of her mother, but she loved her own way, and she found it much easier to get it in English.
“You who were teached by the sisters and all, and you who are a child of Mary,” wailed Rosa.
“Well, I can’t help that, it wasn’t my fault,” said Berta with disrespect.
Nerone had decided to be dumb with Berta; he ignored her existence, for which everyone was thankful. She was sharper than Geppe, and just once or twice she had got the better of her grandsire. He and Rosa and Mario would go off to Mass, dragging the discontented Geppe. Geppe was terribly bored with his Church, but was fettered by a firm belief in Hell.
Mario said to his wife in their bedroom one night: “I am thinking about our children.”
Rosa sighed: “There is much need for thought, my Mario: they are very different from us.”
Mario scratched his head, then he looked very wise, and when he spoke he did so slowly. “I was born in Milan, my Rosa. As for you, it was lucky that you came too soon, and so you got born in Siena. The baby drinks in the air at its birth, and the air it drinks goes all over. It touches the heart, it touches the brain, I think it gets into the blood. English air may agree with English babies, but it has not agreed with ours; our babies were Italian, they needed the air and the sun of their patria. And so,” he concluded a little sadly, “no child should be born on strange soil. We think only of money and we sacrifice our children—yet some of us still remain poor!”
“If we lose our children we are very poor indeed, even when we become rich,” said Rosa.
II
I
If Teresa had changed but little in six years, this was not the case with Gian-Luca, for to him had come the fullness of manhood. The touching lankiness of adolescence had given place to a well-knit figure, he was thin in proportion to his height, but his shoulders were wide above his narrow flanks. His face was less gentle, and his eyes less mysterious; they no longer seemed to be searching the beyond. Their expression was keener and more concentrated, so that now, when they rested on a client or a waiter or a table or the most minute appointments of the table, they took in at a glance significant details from which their owner would draw his conclusions, conclusions that were usually right. Very observant and prompt was Gian-Luca, and those who worked under him found him a hard master, one to whom constant small misdemeanors meant more than occasional flagrant transgressions. Gian-Luca had been known to forgive a subordinate who had come to his work very drunk one morning, having merely warned him of what would happen were the offence repeated; but a
