“Dio! That Fabio is a fool!” said Nerone. “Any man is who is ruled by a woman, but then Fabio was always a poor fool.”
IV
That summer came a series of rather bad air raids, and Fabio was openly afraid. He would sit in the office under the pavement, praying, with his fingers stuffed in his ears, or begging Teresa to take him to the Tube, where Rosa had gone with the twins. Teresa, however, despised such precautions.
“If we die, we die,” was her motto. “The Tube is for mothers with little children, not for old men like you and old women like me. No, I will not let you go to the Tube,” she would say. Then Fabio would begin to cry.
The raids added much to his misery, for now he could never go to sleep. “Do you think they will come tonight?” he would enquire, peering anxiously up at the sky.
Nor could he be sure that they would not come by day—there had been a bad daylight raid—and sometimes now, while he kneaded his dough, he would pause to listen, mistaking the whirr of the wheels for an aeroplane. He began to suffer from stupefying headaches and a full, tight feeling in his head; the dough he was kneading would go round and round, and with it the machines and the room. If he stood in a draught he would feel his lumbago, that terrifying pain across his back—supposing a raid should come at that moment and catch him unable to move—
But one day in October, the God of his lumbago drew nearer, becoming the God of his soul; and Fabio’s old knees gave under him, and his head fell forward and lay upon the table, and his cheek lay buried deep in the flour that his weak hands had failed to mix.
That was how they found him two hours later—just a little, old bundle that had once been a man, with flour on its clothes, on its hands, on its face; flour, too, on its halo of white hair. All foolish weakness he had been, that Fabio, and very often afraid; afraid of Teresa, afraid of God, and latterly terribly afraid of the Germans. He had little enough to tell of himself, now that he must face St. Peter at the Gate—but perhaps he said: “I tried to make pasta—I did try very hard to make pasta—”
V
Now that he was dead and gone, everyone knew how much they had liked poor Fabio. They missed the mild-eyed, deprecatory figure that had wandered about Old Compton Street for more years than they cared to remember. But Nerone knew how much he had loved Fabio, and that was a very different thing. Nerone mourned the friend of his youth, and with him the passing of his own generation.
“I suppose it will be my turn next,” said Nerone. “I am not so very much younger than he was; but God grant that I die in Italy—when this war is ended Nerone goes home.”
“So you shall, papa,” comforted Rosa.
“Ma sicuro!” Mario said kindly.
After the funeral Nerone spoke little, but he went to the cupboard and found his dominoes. He turned them out on to the sitting-room table, where he dusted them one by one; from time to time he spat on his finger and rubbed some dirt off an ivory face, then, he laid them back gently, reverently even, as though they were poor little corpses. He made Rosa go out and buy him some striped ribbon—the green, white and red that they were selling in the shops—and with this he carefully tied up the box, then put it at the back of the cupboard. Thus, the dominoes had a small military funeral, being laid to rest in the colors of their country; and all this for the love and honor of Fabio, who had not had a military funeral.
Teresa was alone now at the Casa Boselli, alone, too, at night in her bed. No need to lie stiffly not twitching a muscle, for now there was no old husband to wake—Fabio was sleeping very soundly. All night long she could think undisturbed. Oh, and Teresa had very many thoughts, some of them coming unbidden to her mind—queer, faraway thoughts about sunshine and youth at a time of the gathering-in of the grapes. And the thoughts would paint pictures for old Teresa, and then she would begin to remember. Into these pictures that worried and perplexed her would come walking a quiet, unimportant little man; a man with the eyes of a patient dog whose importunate loving wearies the master, who, nevertheless, must keep it to guard him. Then, less dimly, would come the figure of that other—so gallant, so merry, so passionately young, so anxious to drink youth down to the dregs—ay, and to make her drink with him. And face to face they would stand, those two men, as perhaps they were standing now—who could tell? For she was the debt that had lain between them, the debt that Fabio had paid for that other, who had been unwilling to pay.
How futile a thing was this so-called life, which always ended in death—the death of Olga, the death of Fabio, the approaching death of the Casa Boselli. Struggle and sweat and sweat and struggle to make fine good pasta in the turmoil of war—that was what Fabio had done, and had failed, for down he had dropped like a little old bundle, beside his huge mountain of flour—Fabio the patient, the timid, the foolish—Fabio, the father of Olga.
Thoughts, always thoughts, intolerable thoughts; but not pity, no, for pity was weakness—weakness that might lead you to
