I
Although Gian-Luca had noticed before his departure that Teresa was very short-handed, the exigencies of his work at the Doric, and later on of his military training, had prevented his suspecting the full depths of the disaster that threatened the Casa Boselli. Even Maddalena who now went there daily, only vaguely suspected the truth at first; for how could she know the amounts that were owing? Teresa never spoke of these things; the deeper her trouble the less it became vocal—that was Teresa’s way.
It was not a dearth of customers that was killing the business, but a dearth of commodities to sell them; a stoppage of nearly all the supplies that should have come from Italy or France. Italy was producing less and less, while daily requiring more and more for home consumption; one after another her exports were failing, and with them the tiny, struggling atom known as the Casa Boselli. Those fine new glass cases that had cost so much money, and that should have been harboring delicious things to eat, now harbored nothing but mendacious tins—mendacious, because they were all completely empty. Fabio had scrubbed them and soldered down their tops, then set them along the shelves, for anything was better than the heartbreaking void in those acquisitive glass cases.
One by one the men employed by Teresa had been consumed by the war; like the food—the salami, prosciutto, mortadella, parmesan cheeses and decadent tomatoes—they had ceased to contribute to individual stomachs. For now there was only a universal stomach, whose size and capacity no man could gauge; the stomach of a horribly greedy modern Moloch, for whom the armies must be fattened.
The new shop was now almost entirely deserted, there being no Italians to tend it. Two young English girls who had stayed for a fortnight had left to work in an aeroplane factory; Teresa’s eyes had got on their nerves—always watching, always spying, they had said. There had followed a series of young girls and men, all most unsatisfactory, according to Teresa; the English did not like her imperious ways, and she on her part thought them lazy, and said so. No doubt they were trying, but then so was Teresa, who spoke little, it is true, but those words when they came, were as hard and as sharp as her eyes. And then there had been those zeppelins over London, which, while failing to strike real terror to the heart, had succeeded in laying a fuse to all tempers. People felt peppery after a raid, and Teresa’s employees had proved no exception.
Maddalena was ordered to serve in the old shop, in which were now gathered together all the forces that remained to the Casa Boselli, that is, all save the last adventurous stronghold that still stood to Teresa as the symbol of success, her unique macaroni factory.
The macaroni factory! All night long she lay awake, as straight and as stiff as a corpse, beside Fabio; scarcely twitching a muscle in case she should rouse him, in case he might talk, disturbing her thoughts. All night the thoughts whirred like wheels in her head—like the wheels of the macaroni factory—wheels made of steel that turned faster and faster, stretching their leather bands tighter and tighter—and the bands were somehow a part of her head. All night those wheels whirred out first this thought then that, frightening thoughts because of the darkness. Not a German and Austrian invasion combined, not a sky full of zeppelins, not a world full of fire, could have equaled in terror those whirring thoughts that came as she lay beside her husband.
For the macaroni factory was threatened on all sides, the forces of disruption were closing in upon it. There was now no expert left to attend to the machines, or to mix that enormous mountain of flour—sixty pounds with an egg to each pound. Francesco had been called up and with him the others, and in their stead, one poor, bewildered Anglo-Saxon struggled resentfully to cope with the pasta; and the longer he struggled the less apt he became in its delicate fabrication. And then there was the flour—a dreadful, grey mixture of wheat, barley, maize, and Heaven alone knew what other disgusting adulteration; a gravelly, husky, unpalatable outrage. Why, the very machines spewed it forth. You could turn it into something resembling dough, you could stir it and knead it and put it through the rollers—one hundred times you could roll it and more—and when you had finished, your fine rubber sheeting would be lumpy and harsh and vile to the touch as a hand that is covered with corns. Who could cut pasta from such stuff as this? Who could produce the simple lasagne, let alone the ornate bicorni?
“And yet,” Teresa would think in the darkness, “I will never abandon my beautiful factory! Life itself has not beaten Teresa Boselli, then shall it be said that she is beaten by flour—so flimsy a thing, so foolish a thing, that a puff of breath can disperse it? I will master this accursed new filth they call flour—yes, but how? But how? But how?”
Every morning she would get up looking gaunter than ever, and would hurry down to her factory. There she would gaze with something like despair at the untidy traces of yesterday’s failures. When the poor Anglo-Saxon arrived she would point with an angry, accusing finger.
“So much waste!” she would exclaim. “You must make the flour go further.”
“Cawn’t be done!” he would assure her, loudly sucking his teeth.
“It has got to be done,” Teresa would say coldly. “If you cannot do it there are others who can.”
One day he had retorted: “Very well then, you find ’em.” After which he had demanded his wages and had left.
“Imbecile! I am glad that he has gone,” frowned Teresa. “I am glad to be rid of the untidy pig. I must find a younger man to take over this work.” But no one whom she found gave satisfaction.