THE MAID'S SHOES
left her name and address, and she went to her house on the Via
Appia Antica near the catacombs and told her an American was
looking for a maid, mezzo servizio; she would give
him
her name if
the maid agreed to make it worth her while. The maid, whose name
was Rosa, shrugged her shoulders and looked stiffly down the street.
She said she had nothing to offer the portinaia. "Look at what I'm
wearing," she said. "Look at this junk pile, can you call it a house?
I live in it with my son and his bitch of a wife, who counts every
spoonful of soup that I put into my mouth. They treat me like dirt,
and dirt is all I own."
"In that case, I can do nothing for you," the portinaia said. "I
have myself and my husband to think of." But she returned from
the bus stop and said she would recommend the maid to the American
professor if she gave her five thousand lire the first time she was paid.
"How much will he pay?" the maid asked the portinaia.
"I would
ask
for eighteen thousand a month. Tell
him
you have
to spend over two hundred lire for carfare every day."
"That's almost right," Rosa said. "It will cost me forty one way
and forty back. But if he pays me eighteen thousand, I'll give you
five, if you sign that that's all lowe you."
"I will sign," said the portinaia, and she recommended the maid
to the American professor.
O. E. Krantz was a nervous man of sixty. He had mild gray
ey~,
a broad mouth and a pointed, clefted chin. His very round head
was bald and he had a bit of a belly, although the rest of
him
looked thin. He was a somewhat comical-looking man but an au–
thority in law, the portinaia told Rosa. The professor sat at a table
in his study, writing all day, yet was up every half hour or so on some
pretext or other to look nervously around. He worried about how
things were going and often came out of his study to see. He would
watch Rosa working, then went in and wrote. Mter a half hour he
would come out, to wash
his
hands in the bathroom or drink a glass
of water, but in reality he was passing by to see what she was doing.
She was doing what she had to. Rosa worked quickly, especially
when he was watching. She seemed, he thought, to be unhappy,
but that was none of his business. Their lives, he knew, were full of
troubles, often sordid; it was best to be detached.
This was the professor's second year in Italy; the first he had
