306
PARTISAN
RIEVIEW
bones.... The future, ugh! It's America's turn now.... It's all
yours.... I give
it
to yOU! Bah!"
The girl blushed with genuine modesty, a virgin shrinking from
the bad taste of an overwhelming offer. "No, really, I don't think
you should say that! ... It's lovely here.... Honestly!"
Marchese Ferrero attempted lightness. "We may revive some
day.... Look at China!"
"Twenty-four hours. They've incredible discipline," Miss Major
went on. "It's something to watch, right here even. The Mayor
of Florence was trained in Moscow, you see.... You see?"
"Oh, Madge!" the old expatriate lady said. "Don't laugh at
me.... I'm as sentimental as a dove, yes, but Florence! The Duomo,
the Uffizi, Donatello and the rest, Santa Croce ... the Medici,
things like that! In Moscow you say, dear . . . Extraordinary. The
Mayor of Florence!" She coughed and pondered bleakly, stiff with a
half-century of Italian winters. This gentle Florentine relic had only a
modest stipend, just enough to see her through years and years in
the arctic chambers of the Biblioteca Nazionale and the library of
the British Institute. There she was "working" on her favorites
among the great Italian women-Bianca Capello, Vittoria Colonna
and Isabella D'Este-and with terrible patience digging away at
these figures' awesome heroism, down, down to the pure ore, which
this old scholar, rheum-eyed with labor, saw in the dim shape of her
own fatigued fortitude and stubborn competence. These diggings
and strikes brought the battered American lady all the consolations
of religion and philosophy.
"Mmm ... " the photographer said indifferently, shuddering
at the obsolescence of
his
compatriot who had now turned her book–
weary face to
him,
as if for protection.
An old servant, an immense woolen creature, a sort of quarter–
master corps on two legs, padded and stuffed with underwear and
mysterious layers from head to toe, bowed them out. When they had
gone, she sleepily peered through the shutters and looked down at
the wind disturbing the muddy flow of the Arno. In the moonlight,
the derricks and tanks, rebuilding the Ponte alIa Garraia which had
been blown up by the Germans in 1944, shone like siIover. Muttering
her evening complaints and prayers the servant went off to bed,
pulled a mountain of covers, old sheets and stuffings up to her neck
and, turning now on her side, fell into a blessed, illiterate sleep.
