All Our Yesterdays Read Online Free Page B

said to them, particularly when he bullied Ippolito about the tobacco and about the dog ; and how surprised he must have been to find that purgatory existed, when he had so often said that almost certainly there is nothing for the dead, and it is better so because at least you can sleep at last—he himself being such a bad sleeper.
    The maid came to tell her that Signor Giuma had now arrived. It was the boy, the one who played ping-pong. He came running in, whistling, his hair over his eyes ; he threw down his books, which were tied together by a leather strap, on the desk. He seemed surprised to see her ; he gave a little cold, shy bow, stooping his shoulders slightly. He started looking round the room for something, whistling as he looked. From a drawer he took an exercise-book and a pot of glue, and stuck some things into the book : they were big faces of film actors, cut out of a magazine. It appeared to be very important to stick them in, and very tiresome too, for the boy panted and snorted, throwing back his hair from over his eyes. Beside the desk was a big revolving globe and from time to time he looked on it for some country or other and then wrote hastily in the exercise-book underneath the film-actors’ faces. The red-haired girl came in. Her hair was short and clipped in a fashion which was popular that year and which was called á la fièvre typhoïde. But only her hair was fashionable ; her dress, on the contrary, was wide and ungraceful, with a round neck to it, and was of an ugly sort of lemon yellow. The girl held her usual broom in her hand and she swept the carpet violently and then said, “Giuma, it’s not very amusing for this little girl. Leave the film-actors and show her The Child’s Treasure-House, or take her into the garden and play ping-pong with her.”
    They looked at The Child’s Treasure-House. There were several volumes of it and all sorts of things were to be seen in it—flowers and birds and machines and cities. In front of each picture, Giuma stopped for a moment and they both looked : then he said, “Finished ? ” and she said, “Yes”. “Finished” and “yes” were the only words they spoke. Giuma’s thin, brown hand turned the pages. Anna was ashamed of having thought they would become great friends. Then all of a sudden a great clamour was heard all through the house, and she jumped and Giuma laughed : he had white, sharp teeth like a wolf’s. He said, “It’s the gong. We must go to lunch.”
    The old gentleman sat at the head of the table. He was deaf, and had a little black box on his chest, with an electric wire which he kept hooked on to his ear. He had a white beard which he placed on top of his table-napkin when he started to eat; he had a gastric ulcer and could eat only cooked vegetables and pieces of soaked bread with oil. Beside him sat the red-haired girl, who was called Amalia, and it was she who helped him to food and seasoned it with oil and poured mineral-water into his glass. At the other end of the table sat his wife, wearing a very hairy blue woollen jumper and a little pearl necklace ; then there was a person that you couldn’t be quite sure who he was, he wasn’t a guest because he was wearing slippers ; he had Giuma beside him and Giuma poured water into his wine out of spite and then laughed with his fist over his mouth ; the man took no notice of him and talked stocks and shares with the old gentleman, but he had to yell because the little box was slightly broken. Then they all started talking about Amalia’s new way of doing her hair,  á la   fièvre   typhoïde , and the Signora said she wanted to do hers like that too, because she was a bit tired of her fringe. Amalia shouted the conversation into the old gentleman’s ear. The little box was called “Papa’s apparatus” ; and even the old gentleman alluded to himself as “Papa