A Very Italian Christmas. Джованни Боккаччо

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      SIGNOR GIORGIO’S MANUSCRIPT

      I had been suffering terrible stomach pains for several days. I could not eat. I had been dining alone at the Cavour Inn that evening, and I had to leave the table after the soup. The room was cold and virtually empty. There were three Germans, sighing at every mouthful, and a Frenchman, in despair at not knowing whom to bore to death, chatted desultorily with the waiters, saying that for him there had never been any such thing as Easter, or Christmas, or New Year’s Day, or any other women’s foolishness or childish nonsense. Then, happy to have solemnly professed his strength and freedom of spirit, he stuck his snout into his plate.

      In the street, the reddish, almost dark glow of the streetlamps could be picked out, one by one. But the very thick fog was suffused with a pale whitish glimmer, both brighter and denser around the lamps, by which it was barely possible to discern a stretch of shining wet pavement, the dim shadow of a person who bumped into you in passing, the indistinct shape of a carriage driving by, cautiously and soundlessly. Otherwise, the streets, usually so full of people and vehicles, were almost deserted: the silence seemed full of pitfalls. Everything became vast and mysterious. You lost your bearings. You suddenly found yourself at the corner of a street that you thought was still some distance ahead, or you assumed you had reached a crossing that was farther on. You sought your way through the mist, soaked through, stiff with cold, suspecting that you had turned deaf and blind.

      I stumbled on the steps projecting from the church of San Francesco, and a woman’s cry emerged from the thick fog. Then a ragged child came running between my legs, begging for money, and wishing me a Merry Christmas, or some such thing. I pushed him aside. I gave him nothing. He persisted. I threatened him. I was in an ugly state of mind. In the Galleria, a reeling drunkard was singing some tedious old song. Under the portico in the Piazza del Duomo, there were two police officers walking along slowly, with measured steps.

      In the narrow streets beyond Piazza Mercanti, the fog, trapped between the tall houses, had thinned a little. You could see that all the shops were shut, even the inns had their doors closed. But high-spirited sounds of merriment emerged from windows here and there. Happiness reigned in every dining room. I heard the clinking of glasses, shrieks of joy, loud choruses of vulgar, shameless laughter. It was an orgy—but the blessed orgy of the family. I stopped to listen beneath one of the noisiest balconies. At first I could make out nothing at all, then gradually I managed to distinguish voices amid the great clatter of plates and glasses. A child was shouting, “Mama, another slice of panettone.” Someone else was clamoring, “Papa, another drop of wine.” And I could tell what the mother and father were saying, and I could just see the jovial grandfather and smiling grandmother. I pulled up the collar of my coat over my ears.

      I did not know what to do. The streets were like a graveyard, the theaters were all closed; owing to the Christmas holiday there were no newspapers. I was all by myself, alone in Milan, where I had no friends, male or female, no acquaintances: alone in the world. This time a year ago, on Christmas day, after lunch in the handsome dining room of our СКАЧАТЬ