Rocca said: “Give them a thrust from me, a good thrust in the belly, Gian-Luca, and remember to say as your bayonet goes in: ‘This is a present from Rocca!’ ”
Mario, whose eyes were moist with emotion, dared not speak because of the lump in his throat. Teresa was silent because, since the war, she so seldom spoke at all.
In the end Rosa threw her arms round Gian-Luca and her tears splashed on his tunic, just as they had splashed long ago on to his head, spoiling his appetite for breakfast. Everyone promised to be at the station to see the troop train depart; everyone kissed Gian-Luca on both cheeks, then seized both his hands and kissed him again—all save Teresa who kissed him on the forehead, coldly, as though she kissed because she must. And at that Maddalena’s heart swelled with anger, and finding Gian-Luca’s hand she pressed it. She, who was so gentle, hated old Teresa at that moment for a woman of iron and steel, for a woman without the bowels of compassion, who all through Gian-Luca’s life had denied him.
But as they walked home together that evening, Gian-Luca said: “Listen, my Maddalena, she grows old, the Padrona of the Casa Boselli—they are very short-handed in the shop, I notice. Will you not go and help Nonna sometimes? I think she would be very glad.”
Maddalena marveled at his infinite patience, the patience that could keep him loyal to Teresa.
“I admire her so much,” he was saying thoughtfully, “she is rather a splendid old woman, I think—and what a fine head she still has for business!”
Who could deny him so simple a request? Certainly not Maddalena at that moment. “All that you wish I will do,” she promised, glancing at his calm, happy face in the lamplight—so calm, so happy, in spite of the fact that in three days’ time he would leave her.
VII
I
Although Gian-Luca had noticed before his departure that Teresa was very short-handed, the exigencies of his work at the Doric, and later on of his military training, had prevented his suspecting the full depths of the disaster that threatened the Casa Boselli. Even Maddalena who now went there daily, only vaguely suspected the truth at first; for how could she know the amounts that were owing? Teresa never spoke of these things; the deeper her trouble the less it became vocal—that was Teresa’s way.
It was not a dearth of customers that was killing the business, but a dearth of commodities to sell them; a stoppage of nearly all the supplies that should have come from Italy or France. Italy was producing less and less, while daily requiring more and more for home consumption; one after another her exports were failing, and with them the tiny, struggling atom known as the Casa Boselli. Those fine new glass cases that had cost so much money, and that should have been harboring delicious things to eat, now harbored nothing but mendacious tins—mendacious, because they were all completely empty. Fabio had scrubbed them and soldered down their tops, then set them along the shelves, for anything was better than the heartbreaking void in those acquisitive glass cases.
One by one the men employed by Teresa had been consumed by the war; like the food—the salami, prosciutto, mortadella, parmesan cheeses and decadent tomatoes—they had ceased to contribute to individual stomachs. For now there was only a universal stomach, whose size and capacity no man could gauge; the stomach of a horribly greedy modern Moloch, for whom the armies must be fattened.
The new shop was now almost entirely deserted, there being no Italians to tend it. Two young English girls who had stayed for a fortnight had left to work in an aeroplane factory; Teresa’s eyes had got on their nerves—always watching, always spying, they had said. There had followed a series of young girls and men, all most unsatisfactory, according to Teresa; the English did not like her imperious ways, and she on her part thought them lazy, and said so. No doubt they were trying, but then so was Teresa, who spoke little, it is true, but those words when they came, were as hard and as sharp as her eyes. And then there had been those zeppelins over London, which, while failing to strike real terror to the heart, had succeeded in laying a fuse to all tempers. People felt peppery after a raid, and Teresa’s employees had proved no exception.
Maddalena was ordered to serve in the old shop, in which were now gathered together all the forces that remained to the Casa Boselli, that is, all save the last adventurous stronghold that still stood to Teresa as the symbol of success, her unique macaroni factory.
The macaroni factory! All night long she lay awake, as straight and as stiff as a corpse, beside Fabio; scarcely twitching a muscle in case she should rouse him, in case he might talk, disturbing her thoughts. All night the thoughts whirred like wheels in her head—like the wheels of the macaroni factory—wheels made of steel that turned faster and faster, stretching their leather bands tighter and tighter—and the bands were somehow a part of her head. All night those wheels whirred out first this thought then that, frightening thoughts because of the darkness. Not a German and Austrian invasion combined, not a sky full of zeppelins, not a world full of fire, could have equaled in terror those whirring thoughts that came as she lay beside her husband.
For the macaroni factory was threatened on all sides, the forces of disruption were closing in upon it. There was now no expert left to attend to the machines, or to mix that enormous mountain of flour—sixty pounds with an egg to each pound. Francesco had been called up and with him the
