454
PARTISAN REVIEW
felt stabbing pangs of annoyance, disappointment and futility.
Looking at the woman who sat in her black slip on the edge of the bed
she had vainly prepared a short time before, he saw that she was in
tears.
"To think of all I did for her!" she said in a quivering voice.
"When she was a small child and I was sixteen years old I worked
to support her. What would she have become without me? I gave
her summer holidays, bought her clothes and everything.... When
she was older I found her a job as a model.
. For years I
deprived myself in order to send her money.. . . And now, see
how she has treated me!"
She shook her head and looked up at him from beneath her
fleshy eyelids, and now there was nothing vicious in her eyes.
"Come, come!" said Giacomo, forcing himself to sit down
beside her and taking her hand in his. "She'll come back."
"No, I know her. She'll not come back so soon, in fact she'll
never come back at all." And she drew a handkerchief out from
under the pillow and blew her nose.
Giacomo wondered whether he should suggest that the two
of them go ahead as if nothing had happened. Even in her tear–
ful and dishevelled state Rina would probably have consented, but
she would have made a most unsuitably melancholy partner in love–
making.
"I think I may as well go home," he said, getting up.
"I'm not urging you to stay," she said, following his example.
"I feel so very badly.... You saw how she treated me.... The
wicked, ungrateful girl!"
So saying she went into the corridor. At the door Giacomo
took her into his arms and gave her a kiss. She returned it with
something like gratitude.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"It doesn't matter," Giacomo answered.
When he got outside he looked hopefully around for the angry
Lori. But he could see only great black pools of asphalt, rows of
street lamps and dark apartment houses. "One more day is gone," he
reflected spitefully. And he started off in the direction of the lamps.
(Translated from the Italian by Frances Frenaye)
