THINGS DID NOT HAPPEN
Daunt BooksFebruary 2019Selected by Barbara Epler
A beautiful book of small town, post-war Italian life, Voices in the Evening is narrated by Elsa, who navigates the perils of love affairs and class strictures (as well as the demands of her comically relentless mother). Ginzburg weaves a rich tapestry of provincial life, full of neighbours and relatives, their gossip and shattered dreams, heartbreaks and struggles to find happiness. Elsa yearns to be free, but in ways small and large, the dragging weight of the past like a huge unbeatable tide pulls her hopes away. Voices in the Evening is perfectly observed and full of the odd deep comfort of hard truths. — Barbara Epler
Old De Francisci was known as old Balotta or Little Ball.
He was short and stout with a big paunch, as round as round, which overflowed above the waist of his trousers, and he had large drooping moustaches discoloured by the cigars which he chewed and sucked. He began with a workshop hardly as big as “from here to there”, my father relates. He went about on his bicycle with an old haversack in which he put his lunch, and he used to eat it leaning against a wall of the yard, covering his jacket with crumbs and draining the wine from the bottle’s neck. That wall is still there, and it is known as old Balotta’s wall because in the evening after the day’s work he used to stand there with his cap on the back of his head smoking a cigar and chatting with his workmen.
My father says, “When old Balotta was here certain things did not happen.” Old Balotta was a Socialist. He always remained one, although after the coming of Fascism he dropped his habit of uttering his thoughts aloud. He became in the end melancholy and sullen. When he got up in the morning he would say to his wife Cecilia,
“What a stink, anyway.” And would add, “I cannot endure it.” Signora Cecilia would say, “You cannot endure the smell from your factory anymore?” And he said, “No, I cannot endure it anymore.” And again, “I cannot go on with this life.” “It is enough that you are healthy,” said Signora Cecilia. “You,” said old Balotta to his wife, “are always saying something fresh and original." Later he had trouble with his gall bladder and said to his wife, “Now I haven’t even got my health, I cannot go on.” “One goes on until God gives the word,” Signora Cecilia told him. “Pah! God! We should have to bring God into it!” He still took up his place against the wall in the yard.
The wall and that corner of the yard is all that remains of the old workshop. The rest now is a building of reinforced concrete, almost as big as the whole village. But he no longer ate those hunks of bread. The doctor had ordered him a diet of boiled vegetables which he was obliged to eat at home, sitting up to a table; and he had also forbidden him his wine, his cigar and the bicycle. They used to take him to the works in a motor car.
Old Balotta brought up a boy, a distant relation, who had been left an orphan as a small child, and he had him educated with his own sons. His name is Fausto, but everyone calls him Purillo; because he always wears a beret of the kind called purillo, drawn down over his ears. When Fascism came Purillo became a Fascist, and old Balotta said,
“Naturally, because Purillo is like a gold fly which when it settles, settles on dung.” ◉
As well as being a celebrated author, Natalia Ginzburg was also a political activist and prominent anti-fascist. She was a member of the Italian Communist Party in the 1930s, and was later elected to parliament representing Rome as an independent candidate in 1983.
Voices in the Evening was first published in 1961 by Einaudi Editions. Ginzburg worked for Einaudi throughout the 1940s. In 1942, when Jews were banned from publishing in Italy, it published her first novel La strada che va in città under the pseudonym Alessandra Tornimparte.