Mavis Gallant - The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant

Carmela remembered she knew no English; she looked dumbly from one to the other. Dr. Chaffee repeated the question in Italian, straight to Carmela, and calling her “little girl.”

“Nearly thirteen,” said Carmela.

“Good God, she looks nine.”

Mrs. Unwin’s hands parted. She wore the grimace that was one of her ways of smiling. “I am remiss about everything, then? I didn’t create her. Tell me how to make her look nearly thirteen.”

“Partly heredity,” he said.

They began to chat, and Mrs. Unwin to smile widely.

“I shall do whatever you say,” said Mrs. Unwin.

After the doctor had departed — Carmela saw him in his dark suit pausing to look at the datura tree — Mrs. Unwin sent for her again. “The doctor says that part of your trouble must be spaghetti,” she said seriously, as if she did not know to a crumb what Carmela was given at meals. “You are to eat meat, fresh vegetables. And take these. Now don’t forget. Dr. Chaffee went to some trouble.” She gave Carmela a small amber bottle of dark pills, which were said to be iron. Carmela never tasted any, of course. For one thing, she mistrusted medicines; but the bottle remained among her belongings for many years, and had the rank of a personal possession.

Another thing happened about that time: Mrs. Unwin paid Carmela the first installment of her wages.

Mrs. Unwin said that the doves in the Marchesa’s garden made more noise than was required of birds. By seven in the morning, the sky was heavy and held the afternoon’s thundershower. Carmela, rushing outside to bring in washing dried on the line, felt on her face a breeze that was like warm water. She moved through heat and housework that seemed like a long dream. Someone had placed an order with Mr. Unwin to have poems printed. Mrs. Unwin parted the curtains in her bedroom and in spite of her headaches, which nearly blinded her, stitched one hundred and fifty booklets by hand. One Friday, after shopping in the French market, Carmela went to see a marvel she had been told about — two rows of plane trees whose branches met to form a tunnel. The trunks of these trees turned out to be thick and awkward-looking; they blocked Carmela’s view of shops from one sidewalk to the next. Like most trees, they simply stood in the way of anything interesting. She mentioned this to Mrs. Unwin, who walked to and fro in the kitchen, drinking out of a teacup, with a straw sun hat on her head.

“Where there are no trees there are no nightingales,” said Mrs. Unwin. “When I am feeling well I like to hear them.”

“What, those things that make a noise at night?”

“Not noise but song,” said Mrs. Unwin, cradling her teacup.

“Every creature has its moment,” said Carmela.

“What a prim creature you are,” cried Mrs. Unwin, flinging her head back, showing her teeth. Carmela was glad she had made her laugh, but she resolved to be more careful than ever: This was as far as an exchange between them need ever go.

Because of what Dr. Chaffee had said, the Unwins rented an apartment in a village away from the coast for the month of August. They squeezed into the car with the twins and Carmela and much luggage, drove past the road leading to the Nervia Valley, and climbed back into hills Carmela had never seen.

“Weren’t you born around here,” said Mrs. Unwin, without desiring an answer.

Carmela, who thought she knew all Mrs. Unwin’s voices now, did not reply, but Mr. Unwin said, “You know perfectly well it was that other road.” It seemed to matter to him that his wife should have made a mistake.

The twins were shared by Mrs. Unwin and Carmela. Both of them wanted to sit on Carmela’s lap. Mrs. Unwin was not at all jealous; some serious matters she found extremely comic. The girls slept, and when they woke and began to fret, Mr. Unwin stopped the car so they could both be moved to the back with Carmela. There was scarcely room even for her, small though Dr. Chaffee had said she was, for the back was piled with bedsheets and blankets and even saucepans. After four hours they came to a village that had grass everywhere, and wooden houses that were painted a soft brown. Their summer flat was half a house, with a long carved balcony, and mats instead of carpets, and red curtains on brass rings. It contained an exciting smell of varnish and fresh soap. The Unwins piled all the luggage in a heap on the floor and unpacked nothing to start with but a kettle and teapot and three pottery mugs. Carmela heard Mr. Unwin talking to the owner of this house in his strange nasal Italian and mentioning her, Carmela, as “the young lady who would be in charge.” They drank tea meanwhile, Mrs. Unwin sitting on a bare mattress stuffed with horsehair, Carmela standing with her back to a wall. Mrs. Unwin talked to her as she had never done before and would never again. She still seemed to Carmela very large and ugly, but her face was smooth and she kept her voice low, and Carmela thought that perhaps she was not so old after all. She said, “If there is a war, we may not be able to get money out of England, such as there is. We shall never leave Italy. I have faith in the Movement. The Italians know they can trust us. The Germans are, well, as they have always been, and I’m afraid we British have made no effort to meet them halfway. Dr. Chaffee tells me you are as reliable as an adult, Carmela. I am going to believe him. I would like you to teach the twins the alphabet. Will you do that? Don’t forget that the English alphabet has a W. Somewhere near the end. Teach them Italian poems and songs. Dr. Chaffee thinks I should have as few worries as possible just now. There will be a course of treatment at the clinic. Baths. Wet sheets. I suppose I must believe in magic.” She went on like this, perched on the edge of the bare mattress, staring out over her tea mug, all knees and elbows, and Carmela did not move or answer or even sip her tea. She wanted to make the bed and put the twins in it, because they had missed their afternoon sleep — unless one counted the fitful dozing in the automobile. Mrs. Unwin said, “I had expected a better south than this one. First we went to Amalfi. I had left my son in England. A little boy. When I was allowed to visit him he said, ‘How do you do?’ No one would speak to me. We came back to Italy. The moonlight glittered on his eyes. Before the twins came. ‘Do not think, but feel,’ he said to me. Or the opposite. But it was only being tied again — this time with poverty, and the chatter of ill-bred people. No escape from it — marriage, childbirth, patriotism, the dark. The same circle — baptism, confirmation, prayers for the dead. Or else, silence.”

From the doorway Mr. Unwin said, “ Ellen.” He came along with a walk Carmela had not seen before, slightly shambling. “What is in the cup?” he said.

She smiled at him and said, “Tea.”

He took it, sniffed it. “So it is.” He helped her up.

Unpacking, making beds, Carmela experienced a soft, exultant happiness. The Unwins were going back home early the next morning. Mr. Unwin gave Carmela a handful of money — pulled it out of his wallet without counting — and said, “That has got to last you, eh?” with an upward lift that denied this was an order. The money was more than she had ever been trusted with on the coast and actually more than she had seen at any one time. She put the twins to sleep with nightgowns round their pillows (she and Mrs. Unwin between them had forgotten to pack cases) and then shared the Unwins’ picnic supper. New people in a new place, they told Carmela to go to bed without bothering about the dishes.

She was pulled out of a deep sleep by a thunderstorm. Her heart squeezed tight in uncontrollable terror. Through the beating of horses’ hooves she heard Mr. Unwin speaking quietly. When the storm stopped, the house was perfectly still. She became prey to a hawkmoth and a mosquito. She pulled the sheet up over her head as she had against ghosts, and fell asleep and had the sea dream. She woke up still hearing a thin mosquito song nearby. Along the wall was a white ladder of slatted light that she took to be the light of morning. In her half-sleep she rose and unclasped the shutters and, looking out, saw a track of moon over the village as on the sea, and one pale street lamp, and a cat curled up on the road. The cat, wakened by being seen by Carmela, walked off lashing its tail. She had the true feeling that she was in a real place. She did not dream the sea dream again.