The Road To The City Read Free

mean?’ he answered. ‘I’m earning good pay.’ And he said he was getting ahead in the factory and hoped soon to send some money back home.
    The next time I was in the woods, smoking a cigarette with Giulio, I told him about Nini and how I had gone to see him.
    â€˜You shouldn’t do a thing like that,’ he said.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜There are things you’re too much of a child to understand.’
    I told him that I wasn’t a child at all, that I was seventeen years old, the age at which my sister had married. He said again that I couldn’t understand and that no young girl should go to the house of a man who is living with a woman that is not his wife. I went back home in a bad humour that evening, and as I undressed for bed I thought of how Giulio was always kissing me there in the woods, but he hadn’t yet asked me to marry him. I was in a hurry to get married, but I wanted to enjoy myself afterward too. And perhaps with Giulio I shouldn’t be so free. He might treat me the way his father treated his mother, shutting her up on the pretext that a woman’s place was in the home, until she had turned into an old hag who sat all day long by the window, waiting for someone to go by.
    Somehow I missed having Nini around the house, with his torn raincoat and his books and the lock of hair hanging over his forehead, telling me the way he always did that I ought to help my mother. Once, just to annoy Giulio, I went to see him. It was a Sunday afternoon and they served tea and cakes on an embroidered tablecloth and Antonietta kissed me on both cheeks and made a great fuss over me. She wore good clothes and painted her face, and she had blonde hair, wide hips, and narrow shoulders. Her children were there, too, doing their homework, and Nini sat listening to the radio instead of reading a book the way he used to do at home. They showed me the whole apartment, the bedroom and bath and the potted plants all over. The place was neater and cleaner than Azalea’s. We talked about one thing and another, and they told me to be sure to come again.
    Nini walked back with me part of the way, and I asked him why he didn’t come home. I began to cry and told him it was worse than ever there without him. He sat down on a bench with me and stroked my hands and told me not to cry or else the mascara would run off my eyelashes. I told him that I didn’t paint myself up like Antonietta, who looked like a perfect fright, and that he’d do a lot better to come home. The best thing of all, he said, would be for me to get a job and come and live in the city, and then he’d take me to see the films. But the point was for me to earn my own living and be independent. I told him he might just as well put that idea out of his head because I didn’t have the slightest intention of doing anything of the sort. I was going to marry Giulio and come and live in the city with him, because he didn’t like the country either. And that was how we said good-bye.
3
    I told Giulio that I'd been to see Nini, but this time he wasn’t angry. All he said was that he was sorry to see me do something that displeased him. I told him about Antonietta and her apartment, and he asked me if I’d like to have a little place like that of my own. Then he said that when he’d taken his medical degree we’d get married, but it wasn’t possible any sooner. Meanwhile, he said, I shouldn’t be so hard on him.
    â€˜I’m not hard on you,’ I answered.
    Then he asked me to go with him the next day to Fonte Le Macchie. This was a long walk, a large part of it uphill, and I was afraid of snakes.
    â€˜There aren’t any snakes up that way,’ he said. ‘And we’ll eat blackberries and stop for a rest whenever you are tired of walking.’
    I pretended not to see what he was driving at and said Giovanni might come with us, but he said that he wanted us to be alone