In a Glass House by Nino Ricci Read Free Book Online

long I worked in counterpoint to the sun, measuring out the hours by its slow movement – midmorning break, when Gelsomina would bring out a jug of water, then lunch, then another break in mid-afternoon. The afternoons were the hardest – the other workers would be far ahead of me by that point and I’d be left alone in the silent heat, the sky so endless and blue above me it hurt my eyes to look at it. I couldn’t bear the thought then of all the work that still had to be done; if no one was around I’d stretch out in my row sometimes and close my eyes, letting myself drift a few moments near dreamy sleep. Toward evening I’d get a second wind, knowing the day was almost over, pleased at the long string of red-filled bushels stretching out behind me in the setting sun; and then the dead fatigue at night, back to our house’s strained silence with only sleep to look forward to and then work again.
    Then as the end of summer approached Gelsomina told me she would be going back to the factory soon.
    “Is the baby going away too?” I said.
    “Don’t be an idiot, where is she going to go?”
    “Who’s going to take care of her?”
    “How should I know? Maybe your father’s going to sell her to the gypsies.”
    “Maybe I’ll have to take care of her.”
    “You?” she said. “She’d be dead in a week. Anyway you have to go to school.”
    All the same, in the next days Gelsomina began a sort of clandestine instruction, turning jobs over to me whenever my father was out.
    “You don’t have to be afraid of her. There, like that, keep the pins in your mouth so you have both your hands free.”
    She made me do things over and over till I got them right, standing by unflinching though the baby was crying and I myself was close to tears. Then other times, unpredictably, she’d lose all patience.
    “
Dai
, you’ll never learn how to do it, idiot.
Maledetti
both you and your father, who thinks he can leave one baby to look after another.”
    Then at supper one evening she somehow mustered the courage to confront my father.
    “Who’s going to take care of the baby when I go?”
    My father’s eyes lit with what looked like anger but also something else, a sudden flash of interest – it seemed the first time he’d ever really noticed Gelsomina, hadn’t taken her for granted like a part of the house’s furnishings.
    “
Che scema
,” he said, strangely mocking. “You’ll have your own too, don’t worry about other people’s.”
    Gelsomina seemed put out for the rest of the evening. Then at bedtime she behaved queerly: instead of changing in the bathroom she flicked off the bedroom light and began to undress in front of me. I tried not to watch but she seemed to be willing me to look at her, stood for a moment completely naked in the window’s moonlight like an awkward statue, all stiff angles and knobby protrusions. Her breasts, small and vulnerable and pale, were capped with dark circles the size of 500
lire
coins.
    “Do you think I’m beautiful?” she whispered, fierce, daringme to contradict her though I felt only the shame of seeing her like that.
    Headlights flashed past the window: my father, returning from bringing a load into the factory. In an instant Gelsomina was cowering in a corner, arms clutched over her breasts.
    “If you tell anyone about this,” she said, “I’ll cut your little bird off.”
    Three days later Gelsomina had gone, my Aunt Teresa come from Italy to replace her. I knew nothing of her coming until I actually saw her descend from my father’s truck one evening at the back of the house, simply there like an apparition, suitcase in hand, picking her way inexpertly across the courtyard in her high heels; in the moment of recognizing her I had the sense for an instant that I myself had somehow brought her magically into being, that an image from memory had leapt across some chasm to suddenly take solid shape before me.
    “
Ciao
, Vittorio! Look at the little man you are!