448
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Can't you keep quiet for
.a
minute?" asked the older sister,
turning around.
"I'll talk when I choose," replied the younger.
After this reply the older one drew herself up and definitely
turned her back on them. Apparently she had decided in desperation
to try to give the impression that she had nothing to do with them
at all. She opened her bag and began to powder her nose. In the
mirror of the compact Giacomo could see the hardness and ill
humor of her eyes under the fleshy lids.
The bus made its last stop in a dark square. Through the black,
pointed leaves of the palm trees in a public garden they could see the
round, yellow headlight of a tram.
"That's ours," said the older woman, quickening her pace.
The tram was almost full, but they managed to seat themselve<;
in the same arrangement as before. At the second stop a man about
fifty years old with a conical head and greying hair got in. He
was dressed in a black suit, a white shirt and a black tie and had
a prominent red-tipped nose in the middle of his wooden face. He
sat down beside Rina and raised his hat somewhat as if it were the
cover of a pot.
"When are you going back to Milan?" Giacomo asked his
companion.
"Not for some time," the girl said. "I want to have some fun.
My sister's always taking me to the best places, but the people we
run into there have a way of never turning up again, like the one
with whom we had an appointment this evening. I'd rather go to
a businessmen's restaurant. . . . They tell me that the . . ."-and
here she named a fashionable establishment- " ... is just the place
to go."
Her sister stirred on her seat but did not turn around.
"Yes," Giacomo assented. "They have good food there."
"I want to have fun, I say," the girl went on. "What's the name
of that place where they have a vaudeville show and between acts you
can dance on the floor?"
"The Eden?" Giacomo suggested.
"I went there some time ago with a man from the south ... he
was very generous with his money.... What would you say if we
were to go together one of these evenings?"
