Edward Benson - Up and Down

"She laid the photograph before me, and, indeed, you could hear Vincenzo laughing. The merry handsome face was thrown back, with mouth half open.

"'And such news!' she said. 'He has done better than ever this year, and has bought a piece of land, or he would have sent even more money home. And at the end – ' she turned over the sheets, 'at the end he writes in English, which he is learning. What does it mean, Signor?'

"This is what Vincenzo had written:

"'My corrospondence must now stopp, my Teresina, but never stopps my love for you. Across the sea come my kisses, O my Teresina, and from the Heart of your Vincenzo. I kiss my corrospondence, and I put it in the envelop.'

"I translated this and turned to the dim-eyed Teresina.

"'And that is better than all the money,' she said.

"Then she became suddenly conscious that she was carrying my trousers, which she was brushing when the knock of the postman came.

"'Dio! What a slut is Teresina!' she exclaimed. 'Scusi, Signor.'

"I went back to England at the termination of my lease of the Villa Bardi, for interviews with stormy uncles, and the settlement of many businesses, and it was some months later that I set off on my return here, with finality in my movements. On the way I had intended to stop half a week in Naples to take my last draught of European culture. But the sight of Alatri on the evening I arrived there, harp-shaped and swimming molten in a June sunset, proved too potent a magnet. Besides, there was reputed to be a great deal of cholera in Naples, and I have no use for cholera. So, early next morning I embarked at the Castello d'Ovo to come back to my beloved island.

"It was a morning made for such islanders as I: the heat was intense but lively, and the first thing to do on landing was to 'Mediterranizer' myself, as Nietzsche says, and bathe, wash off the stain of the mainland and of civilization, and be baptized, finally baptized, into this dreamland life. I often wonder whether dreams – "

"Stick to your story," said I. "It's about Teresa."

Francis shifted on his elbow.

"There was a bucketful of changes here," he said, "and I was disconcerted, because I expected to find everything exactly as I had left it. Alatri is the sleeping-beauty – isn't it true? – and the years pass, and you expect to see her exactly as she was in the nineties. But now they were talking of a funicular railway to connect the Marina with the town, and Giovanni the boatman had married, and they said his wife had already cured him of his habits. Oh, she brushed his hair for him, she did! And a damned American had started a lending library, and we were all going to enlarge our minds on a circulating system, and there was a bathing establishment planned, where on Sunday afternoon you could drink your sirop to the sound of a band, and see the sluts from Naples. But it fell into the sea all right, and the posts of it are covered with barnacles. Far more important it was that Teresa had opened a cake-shop in a superb position, as you know, close to the Piazza, so that when you come in from your walk you cannot help buying a cake: the force of its suggestion is irresistible. She opened it with good money, too, the money that Vincenzo had sent her back from Buenos Ayres. The cake-shop was now proceeding famously, and it was believed that Teresa was making twenty per cent. on her outlay, which is as much as you can hope to get with safety. But it had been – the cake-shop – a prodigious risk; for a month when the island was empty it had not prospered, and Teresa's family distended their poor stomachs nightly with the cakes that were left unsold that day, for Teresa had high ideas, and would have nothing stale in her shop. She brought the unsold things home every night in a bag, for fresh every morning must be her cakes, and so the family ate the old ones and saved the money for their supper. Rich they were, many of them, and stuffed with cream.

"But after an anxious four weeks the forestieri began to arrive, and under their patronage, up went Teresa's cake-shop like a rocket. Customers increased and jostled; and Teresa, the daring, the audacious, took good luck on the wing, and started a tea-place on the balcony above the cake-shop, and bought four iron-legged, marble-topped tea-tables, and linen napkins, no less. She washed these incessantly, for her tea-place was always full, and Teresa would no more have dirty napkins than she would have stale cakes. That is Teresa!

"Business expanded. One of the two young brothers (whose heads she so soundingly knocked together) she now employed in the baking of her cakes, and for the other she bought, straight off, a suit of white drill with ten thousand bone buttons, and gave him employment in bringing the tea-trays up to the customers in the balcony. She paid them both good wages, but Satan, as usual, entered into their malicious heads, and once in the height of the season they confabulated, and thought themselves indispensable, and struck for higher wages. Else they would no longer bake or hand the bakeries.

"A less supreme spirit than Teresa's might have given in, and raised their wages. Instead she hurried their departure, and no whit discouraged, she rose at four in the morning, and baked, and when afternoon came had all ready, and flew upstairs and downstairs, and never was there so good a tea as at Teresa's, nor so quickly served. In three days she had broken the fraternal strike, and the baffled brothers begged to be taken back. Then Teresa, who had been too busy to attend to them before, for she was doing their work in addition to her own, condescended to them, and told them what she really thought of them. She sat in a chair, did Teresa, and loosed her tongue. There was a blistering of paint that day on the balcony, though some said it was only the sun which had caused it…

"Two sad-faced males returned to their work next day, at a stipend of five francs per month less than they had hitherto received. The island, which had watched the crisis with the intensest interest, loudly applauded her spirit, and told the discouraged but repentant labour-party that only a good-hearted sister would have taken them back at all. She had not even smacked them, which she was perfectly capable of doing, in spite of their increasing inches, but perhaps her tongue was even more stinging than the flat of her hand. Great was Teresa of the cake-shop!

"All this I heard, and the best news of all remained to tell, for Vincenzo was even now on his way back from Buenos Ayres. He had made a tremendous hit with the land he had bought last summer, had money enough to pay off the mortgages on his father's farm at Santa Agatha, and he and Teresa would marry at once. Then, alas! Alatri would know Teresa no more, for she would live with her husband on the mainland. Already she had been made a very decent offer for the appurtenances and goodwill of the cake-shop, which, so she told me, she was secretly inclined to accept. But according to the proper ritual of bargaining, she had, of course, refused it, and told Giorgio Stofa that when he had a sensible proposition to make to her, he might call again. Giorgio, a mean man by all accounts, had been seen going to the bank that morning, and Teresa expected him to call again very soon.

"This conversation took place in the cake-shop while all the time she bustled about, now diving into the bake-house to stimulate the industry of Giovanni, now flying up to the balcony to see if Satan's other limb had put flowers on the marble-topped tables. Then, for a moment there was peace, and love looked out of Teresa's eyes.

"'Eh, Signor,' she said. 'Vincenzo will be home, if God wills, by the day of Corpus Domini. What a festa! Dio! What a festa will that be!'

"The serene island days began to unroll themselves again, with long swimmings, long baskings on the beach, long siestas on grilling afternoons, when the whole island lay mute till the evening coolness began, and only the cicalas chirped in the oleanders. Then, as the heat of the day declined, I would often have tea on Teresa's balcony, and on one such afternoon the great news came, and Teresa put into my hand the telegram she had just received from Naples, which told her that Vincenzo's ship had arrived, and that her lover had come back. Business necessary to transact would detain him there for a day, and for another day he must be at Santa Agatha, but on the morning of Corpus Domini he would come to Alatri, by the steamer that arrived at noon…