All Our Yesterdays Read Free Page B

seeing that there was nothing else to do at Le Visciole except sunbathe, and Concettina sat all day long in a deck-chair in front of the house, with dark glasses and a book that she did not read ; she would look at her legs and take care that they got nicely sunburnt, and then she had the idea that if she kept them sweating in the sun they might grow a little thinner ; for Concettina, besides being heavy in the hips, was heavy in the legs as well, and she used to say she would give ten years of her life to be slimmer from the hips down. Signora Maria would arrange her clothes about her as she sat under the pergola, her extraordinary clothes cut out of old curtains or bedspreads, with a hat made out of a newspaper on her head and her feet crossed on a footstool. Far away, on the brow of the hill, Ippolito could be seen going backwards and forwards with his gun and his dog : and the old man would curse the stupid dog and Ippolito’s mania for wandering about the countryside, when all the time he needed him to give him his injection and do some typewriting, and he would send off Giustino to chase him.
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    It was at Le Visciole that the old man felt ill for the first time. He was taking his coffee, and all of a sudden the hand that held the cup started trembling, and the coffee was spilt on his trousers, and his body was bowed down, and he was trembling and breathing heavily. Ippolito went on a bicycle to fetch the doctor. But the old man did not want the doctor and said that he felt a little better ; he said the doctor was a humbug and he wanted to leave for the town at once. The doctor came, a humbug of the most insignificant kind, hardly taller than Signora Maria, with fair hair that looked like chickens’ feathers, and big baggy trousers like a Zouave and check stockings. And all at once he and the old man made friends. For the old man discovered that he was not a humbug at all, and that he hated the local Fascist Secretary and the Superintendent of Police and the stone young man in the village square. The old man said he was very pleased he had been ill, because in that way he had discovered this little doctor, a person whom he had believed to be a humbug whereas he was really a fine fellow ; and every day they used to have a chat and tell each other all sorts of things, and the old man was almost inclined to read him some bits out of the book of memoirs, but Ippolito said better not. Ippolito could not now go roaming over the countryside, but had to sit all day long in his father’s room and give him injections and drops and read aloud to him : but the old man no longer wanted Goethe, he now wanted detective stories. Luckily there was the little doctor coming all the time, and the old man was perfectly contented : only he had told him to stop wearing those check stockings, because they did not suit him and were rather ridiculous.
    They left, as usual, at the end of September : however Giustino and Signora Maria left earlier, because Giustino had to sit again for his examination in Greek. In the town the old man began to be ill again, growing thin and coughing, and a. doctor came to see him, a doctor who was entirely different from the little doctor with hair like chickens’ feathers, a doctor who did not sit and chat with him, who did not listen to him and who treated him badly. He had forbidden him to smoke : and the old man gave Ippolito his tobacco-pouch and told him to lock it up in a drawer and keep the key ; but after a short time he wanted the tobacco, he wanted just a little of it, and Ippolito paid no attention to him and stood there with his hands in his pockets, and so then the old man said how ridiculous Ippolito was, who took everything literally and was lacking in commonsense, lacking a touch of commonsense and imagination, and the world was ruined by people like that, by people who took everything literally, and he couldn’t get over having produced such a ridiculous, stupid son, who stood