Ah, Women, Women

Erminio, A Cousin of Mine from Viterbo, had come to Rome for the first time and wanted to see everything and everybody; I had to show him round, and one evening I suggested we should go to the cinema. We were in Piazza Mastai, so I went over to the kiosk with the intention of buying a newspaper to see what was playing. Fiammetta, the newspaper seller, was just shutting up to go home; however, as a favor to me, she slipped a paper out of a bundle and gave it to me, saying: "If you look at it quickly, I'll take it back without making you pay for it." So I opened the paper, saying to Erminio: "It doesn't look to me as if there is anything much"; then all at once I realized that he was paying no attention to me but gazing instead at Fiammetta. Have you ever seen Fiammetta? If you haven't, go to Piazza Mastai and there you'll see a big kiosk all decked out with newspapers and magazines, and amongst all these papers and magazines, a little sort of proscenium formed also of papers and magazines, and, inside the proscenium, a woman's face, of a most lovely oval shape, surrounded with big fair curls, with blue eyes, a tiny little nose and charming red lips. It looks like the face of a doll, of the kind that turn up their eyes, show their little teeth and say "Papa" and "Momma." It is Fiammetta's face, and generally it is bent over some illustrated magazine: as she spends her whole day among papers and magazines, she has acquired the habit of reading. But tell her you want such-and-such a magazine that is not within reach but hanging up outside; and then she will come out of the kiosk, rather like a puppet showman out of his box, backward, and you'll be astonished that all this profusion of delights can sit huddled together on the little chair amongst the bundles of printed paper. For Fiammetta has a shapely, rounded figure, just like a beautiful doll with all its parts turned to perfection -- arms, shoulders, hips, legs, et cetera. A rare beauty is Fiammetta; who does not know her? And who does not know that she has been betrothed for years to Ettore, the barman at the café in Piazza Mastai, who, from his counter, can keep his eye on her through the window at all hours of the day? Everyone knows it, everyone, that is, except a person like Erminio, who does not belong to the quarter or even to Rome but to Viterbo.

Well then, seeing that he was paying no attention to me but gazing at Fiammetta with desire clearly depicted upon his face, I said, with teeth clenched: "Fiammetta, let me introduce my cousin Erminio." Fiammetta was making a pile of newspapers inside the kiosk; however, she came out and shook Erminio by the hand, turning upon him a dazzling smile and at the same time throwing him a caressing look from her big blue eyes -- a piece of feminine coquettishness which Fiammetta lavished on everyone and of which, for some time, nobody had taken particular notice. But Erminio did not know this and was immediately excited by it, as I saw from his troubled expression. Fiammetta now closed the kiosk and was just on the point of picking up from the (continued on page 184)ah, women, women(continued from page 101) ground a large bundle of magazines tied together with string. Erminio said promptly: "If you like, I'll carry it for you." Another smile from Fiammetta and another glance. "Thank you, but I live a long way off." "Never mind," he said, "it's a pleasure." Fiammetta cast a hesitant look toward the bar on the other side of the piazza, where, through the window, could be seen the sprightly figure of Ettore standing behind the counter; then she accepted: "All right, then, thank you." At this point I intervened: "What about the cinema?" But Erminio said hurriedly: "We'll see each other tomorrow, Alessandro; we can go to the cinema another day." So off they went, she tall and he short, she upright and a little stiff, just like a doll, he with his whole body turned toward her, looking as though he were dancing the tarantella. I wanted to shout after him: "Go slow, don't get so excited, Fiammetta is engaged and will soon be married"; but then I reflected that it was their affair, so I shrugged my shoulders, crossed the piazza and went into the bar.

Ettore, as he worked the levers of the machine, asked me, with a gloomy expression on his heavily mustached face (he has a harelip and this always gives him a menacing look): "Who's that little tyke who was with Fiammetta?" "Oh, it's nothing, nothing," I replied hastily; "a cousin of mine from Viterbo, who leaves tomorrow morning." He pulled down the levers with his muscular arms, and then said: "Fiammetta's always far too familiar with every Tom, Dick and Harry -- I don't mean your cousin, of course. Anyhow, it's high time she stopped it."

• • •

I live with my mother, alone, in Via della Lungarina; and we have two rooms and a kitchen. For Erminio we had put up a camp bed in the kitchen; and to get to it he had to pass through my room. That night I waited quite a long time for him to come in; finally, privately cursing all cousins from Viterbo, I tried to go to sleep. I was awakened suddenly by someone shaking my arm; automatically I looked at the alarm clock on the bed table and saw that it was five o'clock. Quickly I sat up in bed, saying: "What is it?" Sitting on the end of the bed, Erminio was smiling at me in a way that seemed to me positively painful. "Goodness me," I said, "are you mad, waking me up at this hour?" "I woke you up to tell you something very important," he replied. "And what is this thing that's so important?" "It really is important: I'm going to marry Fiammetta." I leaped up in bed and said: "Hey, you've been drinking, have you?" "No, I haven't been drinking," he said. "Fiammetta and I spent some hours together yesterday evening and at the end I realized that she's exactly the right woman for me, so I asked her to be my wife and she accepted." "She accepted?" "Yes -- well, it's exactly as if she'd accepted." "But she's engaged to Ettore, the barman; didn't she tell you that?" "Yes, she told me, and I pointed out to her that he's not at all the right type for her, so she asked me for a little time to make up her mind and to break with him." I looked at him in astonishment and thought I must still be asleep and dreaming; he went on talking quietly, saying that it had been like a bolt from the blue, as they say; that he and Fiammetta were made for each other; that they had the same tastes, even for the country, which she loved and where he would take her to live as soon as they were married. At last he said: "Well, I'll leave you now. I've been wandering round all night; I was so happy I didn't want to sleep, but now I feel tired"; and off he went, leaving me sitting there, still unable to determine whether I was really awake.

Later that morning I went straight to Piazza Mastai. From a long way off I could catch a glimpse, inside the kiosk, of Fiammetta's big blonde head, bending forward: as usual, she was reading. I went over and, as I put down the money for a newspaper, I said to her: "Well, so we shall be eating this wedding cake quite soon."

She lifted her head and smiled at me: "Not so very soon; in four months' time."

"Oh, well, that's nothing. I'm very pleased, really very pleased. Only I'm sorry you're leaving Rome and that you'll forget us poor people in Trastevere."

She opened her eyes wide. "Leaving Rome? But why?"

"Well, he lives at Viterbo."

"He? Who?"

"My cousin Erminio."

"But how does Erminio come into it?"

Suddenly I saw that there was a confusion, and I explained myself. She listened to me and then said: "Your cousin's crazy. It's true that we spent yesterday evening together, and it's true that, at the end, crazy as he is, he asked me to marry him. But I told him that I was engaged and that he mustn't even think of it. Even apart from that, having to live in the country----"

"Why, he told me you had a passion for the country."

"Don't you believe it."

So none of it was true. Finally, however, Fiammetta remarked: "Now that I come to think of it, when we parted he said to me: 'I count on it, then; you'll choose between Ettore and myself'; and I, having done all I could to persuade him that such a choice did not exist, shrugged my shoulders and didn't bother to answer him. He must have taken my silence for consent."

"I daresay," I said, "you gave your consent not only by your silence, but with your mouth and your eyes too, by smiling and looking at him. Why do you have to be so flirtatious?"

"I'm not flirtatious, I'm just good-natured."

After that morning, things still went on in the same way. Erminio saw Fiammetta and then told me that it was now an accomplished fact and that she was merely hesitating as to the best way to get rid of Ettore; Fiammetta, on the other hand, told me that there was no truth in it and that Erminio was putting things into her mouth that she would never have dreamed of saying, and was mistaking politeness for love; Ettore, on his side, was losing patience and, by what he said, threatening bloodshed. The time came for me to leave for Terni, with my uncle's brick lorry. So I said to Erminio one morning: "The sooner this is settled, the better; besides, I've got to go away. Come along now to Piazza Mastai, to the bar, and get things straightened out with Ettore and Fiammetta." "I ask nothing better," he replied.

We went to Piazza Mastai and I called Fiammetta out of the kiosk and took her by the arm; I took Erminio by the arm too, and thus made my entrance into the bar, announcing: "Ettore, here's the engaged couple."

It was early and there was no one in the bar. Ettore immediately rushed out from behind the counter, exclaiming: "Look here, is this a joke? What do you mean, engaged couple?"

"Let's sit down," I said calmly. "And now let's do a little cross-questioning. You, Erminio, just repeat what Fiammetta said to you yesterday evening."

"She said," he replied impudently, "that she had to choose between me and Ettore, that she knew it and only wanted a little time."

"And you, Fiammetta, what have you to say?"

"That I said exactly the opposite; that he had no reason to hope."

"Yes, but you said it in a certain sort of way, as if you wanted to make me understand that I could have some hope, after all."

"Don't you believe it."

Ettore, who had remained standing, hands on hips, intervened threateningly at this juncture, looking like a wild boar, his harelip raised above his white teeth. He went up to Erminio and, putting his closed fist, big as a child's head, under his nose, he turned it round and round as though he wanted to make him smell it thoroughly, and then said: "Here's your choice: this fist or the journey back to Viterbo. And now, get out----"

"But I----"

"Get out, you miserable wretch; otherwise, even if you are a cousin of Alessandro, who's a friend of mine----"

When we were outside the bar, Erminio rubbed his hands together. "I'm staying where I am," he said. "Did you see how she looked at me? And how she smiled at me? I feel it, I feel it, all I need is to persevere and I'll bring it off. Ah, women, women; you don't know them as I do."

"Now listen," I said, "why don't you come with me to Terni? It'll be a nice trip and we'll enjoy ourselves."

"For goodness' sake, not now when she's on the point of deciding. I must stay here. I must strike while the iron is hot."

So I went off alone, that same afternoon. I was away for three days and came back on the evening of the fourth. I happened by chance to go to Piazza Mastai and saw that Fiammetta was dismantling the kiosk before shutting it up, as she was accustomed to do every day at that time. I went across to her, and she said at once: "I was sorry about Erminio. But really he asked for it."

"What's happened?"

"Why, don't you know? Ettore and he came to blows yesterday morning. Luckily some of the boys from the garage next door were there to separate them. But, all the same, he punched him in the face and afterward Erminio's eye was closed up and black all round."

"Your fault, for being so flirtatious."

"His fault, for being so obstinate. But do you know what he said to me? 'You've got my address at Viterbo. As soon as you make up your mind, let me know; you might even send me a telegram.'"

"Ah, well, love prevents people from seeing straight."

"Perfectly true."

A few months later the wedding took place, at last, at the Church of San Pasquale Bailonne. After the ceremony, the wedding breakfast was to be held at a restaurant close by, in Via della Lungarina. Outside the church I slipped away, together with some other guests; it was raining and we were hurrying along, when suddenly I heard my name called: "Alessandro!"

I turned and saw Erminio beckoning to me from a narrow lane. "I was in the church and followed the whole ceremony; I was near the altar," he said.

"A nice service, wasn't it?"

"And do you know? She saw me, although I was hiding behind a pillar. And, just a moment before saying 'Yes' to the priest, she turned and smiled at me. Ah, women, women! Do you know what I say? That she's marrying against her will and that, after some time, if I want to, I might even----"

"In love," I said to him, "what counts is the feeling. Let things be. Her feeling is yours. What's left to Ettore? Only the appearance."

He seemed convinced. "That's true," he said. "But it comes to the same thing when you're speaking of women."

"Ah, indeed, women, women ..."