II
That Christmas the pains in Fabio’s back were rather more violent than usual, and in consequence he thought a great deal about God and much less about the Casa Boselli.
It was now his duty to help Maddalena to price their diminishing stock; his the task of watching a fluctuating market that bucked up and down like a turbulent bronco, thoroughly out of hand. But somehow those pains in his poor old back, together with his thoughts about God, made such trifles as customers, food and money, seem very far off and unimportant, so that sometimes now he would make mistakes, on the wrong side, too, for the Casa Boselli. Then it was that Teresa would undress him and rub him and swathe him in yards of red flannel; after which she would push him back again between the shafts, like an antiquated horse that only stands up because it is strapped to its toil. He would hobble about consulting his price list and dolefully shaking his head.
“Is it the bacon that has risen?” he would ask, “or is it the last of those imported hams?” And Teresa would have to desert her cash-desk and reprice the stock herself.
Maddalena did all in her power to help them, but she had her own trouble to bear, for Gian-Luca’s letters from France were very brief. He had not yet got his transfer, it seemed, and was working as a sergeant in charge of a mess somewhere far back at the Base. He said very little because of the censor, but his wife could read between the lines, and what she read there was a great discontent. Those were dreary little letters that Gian-Luca wrote home from the Officers’ Mess at the Base. And yet she was thankful, oh, deeply thankful to know that her man was safe; and now she redoubled her prayers to the Madonna, begging that the transfer might never be granted, begging that the creature she loved might come home unharmed when the war was ended. But sometimes while she prayed she would feel strangely guilty as though she were betraying Gian-Luca; as though she were plotting behind his back, as though she and the Madonna were plotting.
“It is only my fancy—” she would try to tell herself. “Every poor woman, all over Europe, is praying for her husband’s safety.” Yet so anxious was she that she went to St. Peter’s to consult old Father Antonio.
Father Antonio smiled at her confession and proceeded to reassure her. “Your prayers will be answered as God thinks best. He knows that you pray for your husband’s conversion, and He knows that you must pray for his safe return, for is it not He who puts love in the heart, and who knows the way of that love? I would not worry about it, my daughter, I would just confide in the Madonna, and she, through God’s grace, will do what is best—I think I would leave it all to her.”
After that Maddalena felt a little more happy, but she wished that Gian-Luca could get leave. His letters said nothing about coming home; perhaps he was afraid of losing his transfer—perhaps he was staying out there by choice, hoping to get sent into the trenches if he stayed—could he do that? She wondered.
Meanwhile Teresa now sat long into the night, trying to balance her accounts. She would have to go upstairs to rub Fabio’s lumbago, but when she had done this she would go down again to her office and get out her ledgers. Perhaps a letter would have come that evening—a letter from the bank, requesting payment of the interest that was overdue; a letter that she dared not ignore for a moment, while not knowing how to answer. Alone in her office sat hard old Teresa facing defeat and disgrace; facing an incredibly empty world as she had done nearly thirty years ago. Then she had lost the fruit of her womb, Olga, the beloved; and now she might lose the fruit of her brain, the fruit of a lifetime of unceasing toil—the beloved Casa Boselli.
“Cento, duecento cinquanta—” she would mutter, staring down at the figures; and then she would get up to pace her small office, and then she would sit down again. She would think: “If only we could get our supplies, if only we could get our supplies!” There were moments now when she would have walked to Rome in order to fetch a tin of tomatoes. Then her thoughts would begin to spin round and round like the wheels in the macaroni factory; “My pasta—my wonderful pasta—” she would murmur, and her voice would be almost tremulous with sadness. “Who can I find who will make me my pasta, now that Francesco has gone?