I
“Fabio,” said Teresa, “come here, my Fabio, there is something I want to show you.”
She was sitting at the table which was strewn with papers; a ledger and two passbooks lay open before her, and her voice when she spoke was unusually gentle, there was something caressing about it. Fabio drew up a chair to her side and adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses.
“So many papers!” he exclaimed with a smile.
“So much good money,” she answered.
Her hand began straying among invoices and bills, letters and order-sheets: “Today I have heard from yet one more restaurant; they send a large order for immediate delivery—I am thinking we had better get another cart and horse, and another young man to drive it.”
Fabio scratched his head and looked rather frightened: “It seems that we grow,” he murmured.
“We grow,” agreed Teresa; “we are getting quite well known; the Casa Boselli prospers.” She let her eyes dwell on one of the passbooks, then she pushed it over to Fabio. “The total will show you that we grow,” she said, pointing; “that sum represents our deposit alone, and here is the drawing account.”
He stared incredulously, frowning a little. “I had not realized—” he stammered.
“We have not gone over the accounts together for more than a year,” she remarked, smiling quietly. “Will you now check these figures, Fabio?”
He fished a stump of pencil from his waistcoat pocket and wetted the lead with his tongue.
“First the ledger,” said Teresa, “and then the two passbooks, after which you might total up the orders.”
Fabio ran his pencil down the long columns: “Trenta, trentotto, cinquanta—” he muttered, then: “Cento, cento dieci, duecento, trecento—” From time to time he sucked at his pencil or licked the end of his thumb. Presently he raised his eyes to Teresa. “Our Lady is good,” he said softly.
Teresa shrugged her shoulders: “Our wares are good, you mean; I am very well pleased with our business.”
“It would seem,” said Fabio, “that you and I grow rich.” But his voice lacked enthusiasm. He was thinking: “We grow rich—yes—but Olga is dead—the dead have no use for money.”
Perhaps Teresa divined his thoughts, for her face closed up like a secret door that, in closing, is one with the surrounding structure; when she spoke her voice was no longer caressing. “I have not let life crush either of us, Fabio.”
“That is true,” he said humbly; “you speak the truth, Teresa—but somehow—” He paused and began to rub his eyes. “But somehow, those pains in my back, when they come, make me timid—they make me feel old. I am old to to be useful in so large a business, it begins to frighten me a little. I am stupid about money, and the pains in my back—”
“They are only lumbago; you drink too much red wine,” she told him, closing the ledger.
He nodded: “I know—but I love my Chianti, it takes my hand like a friend—when I feel it in my gullet I am more of a man—however, those pains in my back—”
Teresa, strong as a tall steel girder, surveyed him a moment in silence. “I will rub you tonight. Does it pain now?” she inquired.
He shook his head.
“Very well, then, that is good, for I want to talk about Gian-Luca.”
He had known that this was coming, that it had to come—the boy had been idle for weeks. But Fabio, these days, shrank from all mental effort as a sea-anemone will shrink from a touch—he had lived too long with Teresa. Something told him that he would be left to decide upon a career for the child; that now that Gian-Luca was no longer a baby, Teresa would feel even less obligation towards him than she had done in the past; and his fears were confirmed, for Teresa was saying:
“He is not a baby any more; it is now your turn, Fabio—I have done what I had to—it is time that you took a hand.”
“You mean—?” he faltered.
“That Gian-Luca must work; we are not like the English—idle.”
He nodded; she was right, Gian-Luca must work—Fabio had no doubt at all about this, for Fabio came of a thrifty peasant stock. They might spoil their children while they were little, but once they left school they no longer spoilt them; their children then, as a matter of course, became part of the earning machine. Nor did it occur to Fabio to consider those sums lying at the bank; that had not been the way with his peasant forbears, it was not the way now with Fabio. He loved Gian-Luca, patiently, tenderly, bearing him no resentment; but the idea of giving him a better education than that provided by the local Board School never crossed his horizon. When he himself had been Gian-Luca’s age he had worked at any employment that offered; that had been and still was the way of his people, they were not afraid of small beginnings. Adaptable and infinitely painstaking in business, with an eye always on the future, they respected hard work, sagacity and money, but completely lacked imagination.
Fabio laid his hand on Teresa’s arm: “Will you not advise—?” he began.
Teresa shook her head: “I have no advice to give; now it is you who must decide. The boy is twelve years old, he will soon be a man, he will not be backward, I think. While he was little I did my duty, I saw that he was clothed and fed and kept clean—he is no longer little, he needs me no more, therefore I may rest from Gian-Luca.”
“How you hate him!” exclaimed Fabio in spite of himself.
Teresa looked surprised: “You are wrong, I do not hate him, but to me he is alien—from the moment of his birth he has always been alien flesh.”
Fabio stared at her dumbly, then he cleared his throat and turning, spat into the fire. He was thinking: “I must go and consult with Nerone, perhaps he will tell me what to do.”