The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club by Marlena de Blasi Read Free Book Online Page A

of my first marriage
. Not a stand of fine old elms, it’s Nilo who is the distance between you and Filiberto.’
    â€˜And what if he is?’
    â€˜Then he is. I just think it’s good that you
know
it’s Nilo and not the trees.’
    â€˜Doesn’t change anything, does it? What name I give it?’
    â€˜No. No, it doesn’t change. But don’t you wonder if …’
    â€˜I thought we were telling truths here. Hard ones. Or are we only telling mine?’
    I stay quiet.
    â€˜Fine. Then I’ll tell one of yours. The old duke was
your unlived love
.’
    â€˜Not a truth of mine. A detour from yours.’
    For all this time that we’ve been talking, I’ve been settled on the edge of the work table while Miranda has been sitting on a stool in front of it, every now and then wiping down the great jug of
violenza
with a damp cloth, polishing it with a corner of her apron, wiping it down again. She rises now, lifts the jug, walks to the armoire with it, sets it on an empty shelf. As though she spots an errant smudge, she rubs the jug again with her apron, slams her palm down on the already tight cork. She closes the armoire doors and, still facing them, she says, ‘What are you reaching for, Chou? I think it’s guilt you want to know about, isn’t it? You want to know if I once thought or still think that I failed Nilo somehow and thus sent him racing off for succour somewhere else … Do I wonder if he’d have gone to her if I hadn’t chosen to stay in Castelpietro? Would he have wanted her if I’d been better or kinder or more beautiful? If I’d been a more faithful panderer?’
    â€˜Panderer?’
    â€˜
Si, ruffiana
. Panderer. Men need a daily dose of fawning. As we would coax a contrary child with bread and sugar so must men be coaxed. We must enoble them. The most gentle critique is censure to a man. He retreats. Even when he fights back, he is retreating, saving up small, sharp pieces of his displeasure, a bag of sticks and stones for whenever he might feel strong enough to fight. Maybe I allowed Nilo’s bag to get too full and, rather than heaving stones at me, he left. Essentially, he did
leave
me. With neither the will nor the talent to pander, I made the fatal error of being sincere. I was indeed guilty. Guilty even though I knew that fable, what’s it called? The one in which the courtiers compliment the king on his new suit while he prances naked before them. Those people knew he needed the compliment more than he needed the truth. What’s that story called?’
    â€˜â€œThe Emperor’s New Clothes” in English. I don’t know the title in Italian. Virginia Woolf said it better, though. Do you know of Virginia Woolf?’
    â€˜Do I know of
la lupacchiotta
? That’s what Signora Giacomini called Virginia. The she-wolf.’
    â€˜Who is Signora Giacomini?’
    â€˜Was. The matriarch of the clan Giacomini – four generations of them all living in the same palazzo. It’s where I was cook and housekeeper until I married Nilo.
La signora
loved English novels – in translation, of course – and she being nearly blind when I was there, it fell to me to read aloud to her after lunch. The she-wolf was her favourite and she knew by heart every line of two or three of her books so that when I’d try to skip a page or even a phrase, she’d reach out to pinch my arm, keen and mumble until I’d go back to where I’d left off. It was her lullabye, my reading, the only way she could have her afternoon sleep. Yes, I know about Virginia.’
    â€˜Sotto voce,’ I quote ‘Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice his natural size.’
    â€˜
Non capisco
. What did the she-wolf say?’
    â€˜From
A Room of One’s Own
: Women have served all these