Adam’s Breed

mia donna, rub just here where my ankle is swollen⁠—that is better⁠—and now you might rub the other ankle.” Perhaps she would look tired, as very well she might and then his conscience would smite him. “Poverina,” he would murmur, “I have kept you awake⁠—I will try to come in very quietly tomorrow, you will see, I will creep in like a mouse.” Yet although he intended to creep in like a mouse, he always managed to wake her. A hairbrush would drop or perhaps he would cough, and then there would be the electric light. Once she was awake it seemed natural to talk, Maddalena was an excellent listener; he had never had such a fine listener before, one to whom everything he said or did mattered. But long after Gian-Luca had talked himself to sleep, his wife would lie awake thinking. She would worry a little because of the English whom he served and flattered while secretly despising them. She would wonder if he bore them a grudge in his heart because of his long-ago schooldays, those days when they had taunted him and left him out of things⁠—he had told her about those days.

“But no,” she would think, “he cannot be so childish⁠—it is only that we Latins feel differently, think differently; they are good, we are good, but our goodness is different, we find it very hard to draw together.”

And then she would remember that Gian-Luca was English⁠—English in the eyes of the law, and her simple, honest mind would grow puzzled and troubled, knowing that he owed so much to this England, that in fact they all owed so much.

II

She prayed a great deal, because Gian-Luca would not pray, so that she had to pray for them both; and her prayers, unlike Teresa’s had once been, were quiet and utterly trustful. If she prayed very often that Gian-Luca might love God, she prayed still more often that he might love Maddalena; and doubtless her God who was one with His creature, listened and understood.

She felt very sure of the friendship of her Maker, and would tell Him about all sorts of everyday things. For instance she told Him how much it grieved her that she could not more often prepare her man’s food. Gian-Luca had nearly all his meals at the Doric, and Maddalena longed to cook what he ate herself, to spend hours downstairs in her spotless kitchen making his favorite dishes. He was young and hungry, he liked good things to eat, his wife knew quite well what he liked. Fritto misto he liked, and ravioli, and her father had said that no woman in Rome could make ravioli as she could. When Gian-Luca had his day off once a month, then it was that Maddalena got her chance; she would plan the meals for that day a week ahead, but when the time came she herself could eat nothing for the joy of seeing him eating. He would settle down to be greedy like a schoolboy, praising her cooking between mouthfuls.

“Give me some more!” he would order, laughing. “Millo and all his chefs can go to the devil when my Maddalena turns cook!”

Getting up she would eagerly serve her husband; and he, whose whole life was spent in serving others, would find it pleasant and rather amusing to be served in his turn by Maddalena. He would play with her, suddenly thumping the table in order to make her jump.

“Come along, waiter! I am starving!” he would thunder; “send me the maître d’hotel!” And then he would grumble to a mythical Gian-Luca: “Look here, Gian-Luca, what’s the matter today? I’ve been waiting three minutes for that partridge!”

They would laugh, and in the middle of their laughter he would kiss her, and say that never was there such a waiter and such a splendid chef rolled into one as his wonderful Maddalena. After their dinner they would go for an airing; Maddalena loved Kensington Gardens. They would jump into a taxi on that one day a month, and be driven as far as the Serpentine Bridge; from there they would stroll through the gardens arm-in-arm, Maddalena watching the children. If it was wet he would go to his bookcase and get a volume of Doria’s poems; he would read Maddalena the “Gioia della Luce,” she not understanding a word. He might look up and see her bewildered face, but still he would go on reading, not to please her but to please himself⁠—for the joy he took in the rhythm. When he had finished he would probably relent and read her some simple poem, or to please her, the Latin hymn she loved best⁠—the beautiful “Te lucis ante terminum” from the quiet service of Compline. His voice would grow solemn and very sweet because he adored the sound of the Latin, not because he was moved by the meaning of the words⁠ ⁠…

She would think that he looked like some medieval saint, so aesthetic were the hands that held the prayerbook, so thoughtful the line of his brow. But then he would laugh as he shut up the book.

“Well, there you are, piccina,” he would say, “it is lovely because the language is lovely, but it is not the ‘Gioia della Luce.’ ”

III

Everyone was anxious to be kind to Maddalena, and yet Maddalena was lonely. It was almost as though Gian-Luca’s loneliness in leaving him had found harborage in her, as though she had drawn it into herself, so that now she must bear it for him. Rosa came very often to see her and would talk of the infant Gian-Luca, telling of the time when he clung to her breast, telling of the day when he first said “Nonno,” and this made Maddalena feel lonelier than ever. Rosa was very maternal that autumn, for her Geppe had gone to