Voices In The Evening Read Free Page A

the peasant woman’s help. But there were no mattresses or sheets, no plate or china. Complete devastation existed in the garden, just where once upon a time one saw Signora Cecilia moving about in the midst of her roses, with her blue apron, her scissors attached to her belt, and her watering pot in her hand.
    Old Balotta went away with Magna Maria to Le Pietre. Barba Tommaso was there just the same as ever, rosy faced in his clean shirt and white flannel trousers.
    Old Balotta came and sat down and suddenly began sobbing into his handkerchief, like a little child.
    Magna Maria stroked his head and kept on repeating,
    â€˜Splendid, splendid. You are splendid. How splendid you are!'
    Barba Tommaso said,
    â€˜I was the first to see the Partisans come. I was at the window with my telescope; General Sartorio was there, too. I saw them approaching up the road. I went to meet them with two bottles of wine, because I guessed they were thirsty.’
    And he said,
    â€˜At the factory, the Germans have carried off all the machinery. But it does not matter, because now the Americans will give us new machinery.’
    Old Balotta said,
    â€˜You just keep quiet. What a ninny you always are!'
    â€˜Borghazi was very brave,’ said Magna Maria ‘The Germans arrested him, but he threw hihiself out of the train as it was going, and fractured his shoulder.’
    And she said,
    â€˜You know that they killed Nebbia?'
    â€˜Nebbia?’
    â€˜Why yes. The Fascists took him and killed him, just there at the back, on those rocks there. It was at night and we heard him cry out And in the morning our woman found his scarf, and his spectacles all broken, and his cap, that fur one which he always wore.’
    Old Balotta was looking at the setting sun above the sloping rocks behind the house which is for that reason called Le Pietre, and at the clumps of pine trees which cover that side of the hill, and beyond the hills at the mountains with their sharp snowy peaks, and the long blue shadows of the glaciers and a white sugar-loaf suhimit, known as Lo Scivolo, ‘the Slide’, where his children used to go on Sundays with their friends.
    The following day the mayor came to invite him to make a speech in honour of the Liberation. They brought him out on the balcony of the town hall and below was a large crowd, the whole piazza was full. There were people also right down the street, they had climbed up the trees and telegraph poles. He recognized faces, some of his workmen, but he felt shy about speaking. He leaned with his hands on the balustrade and said,
    â€˜Viva il Socialismo!’
    Then he remembered Nebbia He took off his beret and said,
    â€˜Viva il Nebbia!’
    Loud applause broke out like the roll of thunder; and he was rather frightened and then suddenly felt very happy.
    Then he wanted to speak again, but he did not know what else to say. He gasped and fumbled with his coat collar. They led him from the balcony, because now the mayor was to speak.
    While they were on their way home Barba Tommaso said to him,
    â€˜Nebbia was never a Socialist, he was a Communist.'
    â€˜No matter,’ said old Balotta, ‘and you shut up, what a ninny you always are!'
    At home again, Magna Maria put him to bed. He was flushed and fevered and had difficulty with his breathing.
    He died in the night.
    In the neighbourhood they said what a tragedy— that old Balotta is dead. Who knows what has become of his children, and the factory is left in Purillo's hands.
    They said,
    â€˜All those children and not one of them here at the moment of his death.’
    The day after he died his younger daughter Raffaella appeared, the one who had been in the mountains with the Partisans. She was wearing trousers, a red handkerchief round her neck, and a pistol in a holster.
    She was eager for her father to see her with that pistol. She came to Le Pietre and found Magna Maria at the garden gate with black crepe on her