Voices In The Evening Read Free

night to wake up Balotta and Signora Cecilia. He told them to dress at once and come away, because the Fascists were intending to come and get them Balotta protested and said he would not move. He said that everyone in the neighbourhood liked him and no one would venture to do anything to him. But Purillo with a face like marble had seized a suitcase and stood there with his hands on his belt saying,
    â€˜We mustn’t lose time. Put some things in this and let us go.’
    Thereupon old Balotta got up and began to dress. He fumbled over his braces and buttons with his freckled hands that were covered with white wrinkled skin.
    â€˜Where are we going?' he said.
    â€˜To Cignano.’
    â€˜To Cignano, to Cignano! And to whose house?
    â€˜I am thinking.’
    Signora Cecilia, in her alarm, wandered round the roohis picking up at random what she found there, some flower vases which she put in a bag, silver spoons and old camisoles.
    Purillo got them into a motor-car. He drove without saying a word, with his long beaky nose curving over his black bristling moustache his little mouth tight shut, his cap drawn over his ears.
    â€˜You, Purillo,’said old Balotta, ‘are probably saving my life. All the same, you are distasteful to me, and I cannot bear you.’
    And Purillo this time said
    â€˜I am not bound to be to your taste.’
    â€˜That is true,’ said old Balotta.
    Purillo always spoke formally to old Balotta, because Balotta had never told him to say
thou
.
    At Cignano, Purillo had rented a small apartment for them. They passed the days in the kitchen, where the stove was. Purillo came to see them almost every evening.
    The Fascists did actually come to La Casetta and they broke the windows and ripped up the chairs with bayonets.
    Signora Cecilia died at Cignano. She had struck up a friendship with the landlady, and passed away holding her hand. Old Balotta had gone to find a doctor. When he returned with one his wife was dead.
    He just could not believe it, and went on speaking to her and shaking her. He thought she had merely fainted.
    Only he and Purillo were at the funeral, and the lady who owned the house. Barba Tommaso and Magna Maria were ill, with fever.
    â€˜Funk fever,’ said old Balotta.
    Purillo did not appear there any more. So Balotta was alone, though he seemed to want Purillo. Every minute he was asking the landlady,
    â€˜But where has Purillo run off to?’
    It became known that Purillo had escaped to Switzerland, having been threatened with death either by the Fascists or by the Partisans. The factory remained entirely on the shoulders of an old surveyor one Borzaghi. But the factory meant nothing any more to old Balotta.
    His memory began to fail somewhat. He often fell asleep on a chair in the kitchen with his head bowed. He would wake up with a start and ask the landlady,
    â€˜Where are my children?’
    He asked her this with a threatening air as though she had got them hidden from him in the store-room cupboard.
    â€˜The boys, the grown-up ones, are at the war,’ said the landlady. ‘Don’t you remember that they are at the war? Little Tommasino is at school; and the girls, Gemmina is in Switzerland and Raffaella is in the mountains with the Partisans.’
    â€˜What a life!' said old Balotta.
    And then he went to sleep again, bending forward, and starting up from time to time and looking round with his lack-lustre eyes like one who did not know where he was.
    After the Liberation, Magna Maria came to take him away in a car, with the chauffeur. He recognized him, as he was the son of one of his workmen, and embraced him. He held out two flabby fingers to Magna Maria, looking askance at her.
    He said,
    â€˜You didn’t come to Cecilia’s funeral.’
    â€˜I was in quarantine,’ said Magna Maria.
    They took him to La Casetta. Magna Maria had cleared away the broken glass and tidied up the rooms a little with