Sagittarius E-Book

Natalia Ginzburg

• Herausgeber: Daunt Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 164

Beschreibung

At long last she was playing the role she had always dreamt about, that of a mother, full of anxious solicitude, preparing to confide her daughter into the hands of a young man with good intentions, good prospects and a good character. A domineering mother moves from a small town to the suburbs of a city with her daughter and son-in-law, yet soon grows restless with her new life. When she strikes up a friendship with the mysterious Scilla, her world suddenly seems rich with potential and before long, the pair are planning to open an art gallery together. After a series of afternoons spent over coffee granitas in local bars, however, it quickly becomes apparent that there is more to Scilla than meets the eye. Class, in all its manifestations and aspirations, is at the heart of Sagittarius, as misplaced confidence and ambition gone awry leads inexorably towards the downfall of a family.

Leseprobe

I’m utterly entranced by Ginzburg’s style – her mysterious directness, her salutary ability to lay things bare that never feels contrived or cold, only necessary, honest, clear.’ Maggie Nelson

‘In sparse, economical prose, Ginzburg portrays the emotional and social limits placed on women.’ Observer

‘Written in cool, detached tones but propelled by fierce emotional currents, it’s no surprise that Ginzburg’s books are adored by everyone from Sally Rooney to Zadie Smith.’ Stylist

‘Filled with shimmering, risky, darting observation.’ Colm Tóibín

Selected works by Natalia Ginzburg

Valentino

All Our Yesterdays

The Road to the City

The Dry Heart Voices in the Evening

Happiness, As Such

Family Lexicon

The Little Virtues

Sagittarius

NATALIA GINZBURG

Translated by Avril Bardoni

DAUNT BOOKS

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGESAGITTARIUSABOUT THE PUBLISHERABOUT THE AUTHORCOPYRIGHT

MY MOTHER HAD BOUGHT a house in the suburbs of the city. It was a modest house on two floors, surrounded by a soggy, unkempt garden. Beyond the garden there was a cabbage patch, and beyond the cabbage patch a railway line. It was October when she moved, and the garden lay beneath a carpet of wet leaves.

The house had narrow wrought-iron balconies and a short flight of steps down to the garden. There were four rooms downstairs and six upstairs, and my mother had furnished them with the few belongings that she had brought with her from Dronero: the high iron bedsteads, shaky and rattly, with coverlets of heavy flowered silk; the little stuffed chairs with muslin frills; the piano; the tiger skin; a marble hand resting on a cushion.

My mother brought my sister Giulia and her husband to the house with her, and the eleven-year-old daughter of our Cousin Teresa who was to attend the grammar school, a white poodle puppy and our maid Carmela, a sullen girl with untidy hair and bandy legs who was consumed with homesickness and spent every afternoon leaning on the kitchen windowsill, gazing at the misty horizon and the distant hills beyond which, she thought, lay Dronero, her home and her old father sitting on the doorstep with his chin in his hand, cursing and muttering to himself.

My mother had raised the money to buy this house in town by selling off some plots of land that lay between Dronero and San Felice; and she had quarrelled with all her relations, who had been opposed to the sale and the division of family property. But my mother had cherished a dream of leaving Dronero for many years, and immediately after the death of my father she began to think about it, discussing the idea with everyone she chanced to meet and writing letter after letter to her sisters in town asking them to help her find somewhere to live. My mother’s sisters, who had lived in town for many years and ran a little china shop, were none too happy about her project and harboured a vague premonition that they might have to lend her some money. Miserly and timid as they were, this thought caused them much bitter anguish, but they knew that they would never find the strength to refuse her. My mother found the house for herself; it took her half an hour one afternoon when she came into town. And immediately after agreeing to buy she charged round to the shop to ask her sisters for a loan because the sale of the land could not possibly realise sufficient for her needs. My mother adopted an air of prickly innocence whenever she had a favour to ask; her sisters had no choice and parted with a sum of money which they had no hope of ever seeing again.

Then my mother’s sisters were tormented by another anxiety, that my mother, having moved to town, would take it into her head to help them in the shop. And this premonition, like the first, was duly realised. The day after she alighted in town with the cases, the beds and the piano, my mother had abandoned a dazed and bewildered Carmela in the new house, surrounded by sawdust and straw, and, fur-coated with beret jammed askew over wiry grey hair and cigarette clutched in gloved hand, was pacing about the shop giving orders to the delivery man and dealing with customers. Her sisters dejectedly sought refuge in the stockroom, sighing as they listened to the imperious clatter of her high heels. Long familiarity had made words almost superfluous: a sigh told all. The two of them had been living together for more than twenty years in the dark, old shop frequented by a handful of regular customers, elderly ladies whom they regarded almost as friends and whom they would engage from time to time in little whispered conversations between the glove trays and the tea services. They were genteel and timid and dared not tell my mother that her presence disturbed and irritated them and that they were even a little ashamed of her, of her brusque manner and vulgar, moth-eaten fur coat.

When she got home, sighing wearily and moaning over the lack of system at the shop, my mother threw off her shoes and stuck her feet in the air to massage her calves and ankles because she had been standing around all day, and she moaned about those sisters of hers who still had no idea how to run a shop after twenty years, and here she was having to help them out without seeing a penny for her pains, and she moaned about her own stupid generosity which always made her work herself to a shadow for others with never a thought for herself.

I had been living in town for three years. I was now in my third year at the university reading literature, I shared a one-roomed flat with a friend and gave private lessons. In my spare time I also worked as a secretary in the editorial department of a monthly magazine. So, what with one thing and another, I managed to pay my own way. I knew that my mother had told everybody that her main consideration in moving to town was to be near me, to keep an eye on me and make sure that I dressed warmly and had enough to eat; besides, it was no good for a young girl to be all alone in a big city where all kinds of things might happen to her. As soon as she bought the house, my mother showed me the room she had allocated to me; but I immediately, and quite sharply, told her that I intended to go on living with my friend and had no desire whatsoever to return to the bosom of the family; anyway, the house was too far out of town, a full hour’s journey from the centre. My mother had not insisted. I was one of the few people who could actually intimidate her and she never dared to argue with me. Even so, she wanted me to have my own room in the house; I could sleep there whenever it suited me. In fact, I did sleep there sometimes, on a Saturday night. In the morning my mother came to wake me bearing on a tray breakfast consisting of coffee and a fried egg. Convinced that I was undernourished, she watched with satisfaction as I ate the egg. She sat on my bed in a new dressing-gown of flaming red silk, her hair in a net and her face smothered with a cream as thick as butter, and told me about her projects. She had any number of projects. She had enough and to spare for the parish poor. This was an expression she often used. Firstly, she wanted to persuade her sisters to give her a share in the shop; because, when all was said and done, it was hardly right that she should slave away for them and never see a penny for her pains. She showed me how her ankles had swollen after standing about at the shop all day. Then she wanted to open a small art gallery. The difference between her gallery and every other gallery in town consisted in the fact that she would offer her visitors a cup of tea every afternoon at five o’clock. She was still debating whether or not to offer little cakes or biscuits with her tea. There was a certain kind of home-made biscuit, delicious but cheap, that one could make with cornmeal and raisins. She had plenty of cornmeal, in Cousin Teresa’s storeroom in Dronero. Enough and to spare for the parish poor. And she would ask her sisters to lend her some pretty trays. There were some extremely pretty French-style trays in the shop which nobody seemed to want to buy and it was such a shame to leave them just sitting there gathering dust, and my mother was convinced that the reason her sisters had never made a success of the business lay in their lack of any notion of presentation, and if she managed to set up her art gallery she could turn to good account any number of little things that had been lurking at the back of the stock room since time immemorial: she would set a cut-glass vase of chrysanthemums here, and a china bear holding a table lamp there, and would steer her visitors’ conversation towards the china shop and so drum up business for her sisters who would then have no option but to give her a share in the shop. And as soon as that happened, she would take driving lessons and buy herself a little runabout because she was sick and tired of waiting for trams.

The art gallery, she said, would also be interesting and amusing for my sister and myself, providing an excellent way of meeting people and making new friends. Was she not right, she asked with an enquiring look, in suspecting that my friends were rather few and far between? She had noticed that I seldom went out in the evening and seemed to know no young men. I always looked tired and worried. She would have liked to see a more animated expression, the sort of expression one could expect to see on the face of a young girl of twenty-three with her whole life before her. She was glad that I took my studies seriously and that I was so sensible and level-headed but it would have pleased her to see me with a group of friends, jolly young people to go out and do things with. For example, I never, as far as she could see, went dancing or played any sport at all. I would find it somewhat difficult to get married if I went on like this. Perhaps I hadn’t thought much about getting married as yet, but she felt that I was made for marriage and for having lots of children. She looked at me, expecting a reply. Was there no young man who sought my company, no one who interested me a little? I shook my head and turned away from her, frowning and biting my lip. I found these probings extremely distasteful. So she changed the subject and began to examine my petticoat on the chair and picked up my shoes from the carpet to examine the soles and heels. Was this my only pair of shoes? She had found a shoemaker who made shoes to measure very reasonably, and his shoes were quite lovely.

I washed and dressed beneath my mother’s attentive gaze. She was unhappy about my grey skirt which I had had for three years, and above all about my dark blue jumper with its baggy, threadbare elbows. How on earth had I got hold of such a garment? Surely to goodness I had something better to wear? And what had happened to those two new dresses that she had had made for me?

Disgruntled, my mother left me and went upstairs to get dressed. She was back in a few minutes to tell me that Giulia and her husband had used up all the hot water for their baths and now she would have to wash in cold water. It wasn’t that important, she could have a bath later at her sisters’ house, but it was still annoying to be unable to bathe in one’s own home. Ah well, it was a relief that Chaim had got round to having a bath for once, though even after a bath he still smelt un-fresh, still had that peculiar odour of mustiness and decay. She failed to understand why he took so little trouble with his appearance. If he was not particularly successful in his profession, the reason undoubtedly lay in his appearance. He would insist on wearing that dreadful old jacket with the leather collar which he could get away with in Dronero but looked positively ridiculous in town. And had I ever noticed his hands? Ugly hands with broken, chewed nails and hair all over them. How unpleasant for his patients, to be pawed with hands like those.

I reminded my mother that Chaim had had many patients in Dronero; in town he was still unknown. Nevertheless, he did have work here, because he had friends at the hospital who recommended him. He had a junior post at the hospital and went there every morning, then, in the afternoon, he visited his patients, chasing all over town from one to the other on his moped. What he needed was a practice of his own in a good central location. My mother had promised to give him the money for this as soon as she had won a certain lawsuit against the local council in Dronero, concerning a property dispute; she had made the promise lightly, finding it easy to part with money that was so far away and so unlikely ever to be hers: the litigation had already dragged on for more than three years, and Cousin Teresa’s husband, a solicitor, had told us that our chances of winning were nil. So the doctor continued to chase all over town on his little moped, in a peaked cap and the old jacket that my mother despised. The truth was that he had no money for a new overcoat: he earned little, and had to hand everything over to my mother for household expenses; he kept back only some change for his cigarettes, and every time he lit a cigarette he got an accusing look from my mother.

My mother’s morning routine was unvarying: I knew every gesture by heart. She would sweep to and fro between the bathroom and her bedroom giving orders to Carmela; she brandished her lavender powder puff, creating a perfumed cloud; licking her index finger, she would draw it along her eyebrows and over her eyelashes, then, peering into the mirror, she would pluck a hair or two from her chin, wrinkling her nose and puffing out her cheeks with a malevolent gleam in her eye; she would smear her lips with a greasy lipstick, pick at her teeth with the tip of a nail, give her woollen beret a good shake, and, pulling a wry face, cram it on her head and secure it with a hatpin; then, standing in front of the mirror, smoking and humming a popular song, she would slip into her fur coat and turn round a few times to check on her stockings and the heels of her shoes. Then she would leave to go to her sisters, to see what they were having for lunch and whether they had counted the takings.

My sister Giulia sat on a deckchair in the garden, the poodle on her lap and a rug around her legs. She had been ill and had been advised to rest. However, it was my mother’s opinion that a life of such total inactivity was doing her no good at all. Both here and in Dronero, both before and after her illness, my sister had never done anything from one day’s end to the next. Every now and then she would get up from her deckchair, fasten the lead onto the dog’s collar and walk round the walls of the house with our little cousin Costanza. The lifestyle of a ninety-year-old, said my mother; how on earth could she work up an appetite? And my mother had still not discovered if Giulia liked living in town or not. She begged me to ask her; she refused to ask her again herself because Giulia’s replies were always the same: a flutter of the eyelashes, a shake of the head, a smile. And my mother was heartily tired of this kind of response. Even my own replies were none too satisfactory, she said, and she never knew what I was up to, but at least I had an intelligent face and one could tell something from my expression, whereas poor Giulia was an idiot and her expression told one nothing at all. That little smile of hers made my mother want to hit her. And anyway, what pleasure could Giulia possibly get from living in a town if she never went further than the newspaper kiosk on the corner? The only company she seemed to enjoy was that of the miserable little dog she had bought from a farm worker in Dronero and our little cousin Costanza. She never went to the cinema and had refused point-blank when my mother had suggested her joining the local cultural society. My mother had joined this society; the members listened to lectures and read magazines.

My sister’s marriage had been a profound disappointment to my mother. She had been so confident of Giulia’s marrying well. She had taken her on holidays to Chianciano and Salsomaggiore, resorts where my mother could take the waters for the good of her liver and where Giulia could meet eligible young men, and had swallowed glassful after glassful of bitter, tepid water while watching Giulia play tennis, her white dress swirling round her slim legs. The grace of those slender, shapely legs beneath the pleated skirt, the delicate line of the sloping shoulders beneath the thin blouse, Giulia’s profile when strands of her hair escaped from her loosened chignon and she raised her white arms to replace the pins, compensated my mother for the intense boredom of a combination of smelly water and the spectacle of a game of tennis. Sipping her water, my mother rehearsed her consent to Giulia’s marriage now with one and now with another of the young men leaping athletically around the courts or strolling along the terrace; or she composed the wording of the announcement she would make in Dronero of Giulia’s engagement to the extremely wealthy Tuscan industrialist of noble descent who at that very moment was sitting, all unawares, at a nearby table and gazing vacantly before him.

Giulia was soon tired and came to sit down with my mother, her racquet abandoned on her knees and a cardigan flung round the slack shoulders. My mother glanced towards the Tuscan industrialist’s table to see whether she could detect a flicker of interest in the vacant eyes. But the industrialist showed no reaction whatsoever and seemed, indeed, not to have even noticed Giulia; suddenly, he waggled a feeble finger in the vague direction of a girl in the distance and made a noise in his throat like the trilling of a bird. My mother decided he was dotty, shrugged a scornful shoulder and dismissed him from the story of her life.