‘Now he is suffering like a widower,’ the young man thought, and walking beside him he stole a glance at his face. Instead, the old man still appeared to be entirely transported by that landscape. And it is right that old people experience nature so intensely, because when they are gone, it remains eternally, and the unwavering certainty of this reassures them.

‘Malpasso’

First published in the magazine Le grandi firme (27 January 1938). Later included in Pamela o la bella estate (Mondadori, 1962).

Carlo Cassola

1917–87

‘I love the periphery more than the city. I love everything in the margins.’ This declaration more or less sums up Cassola’s aesthetic. Always an outsider, he would reformulate his approach to writing throughout his life. He was born in Rome, but loved Tuscany, thanks to summers spent in Volterra and Cecina. He pursued a law degree and worked for many years teaching history and philosophy in local high schools. He suffered severe personal losses; his first wife died at thirty-one, and he had to bury a daughter from his second marriage, born with a congenital disease, when she was only six months old. Il taglio del bosco (Timber Cutting), a long autobiographical story about a young widower published in 1950, echoes the plaintive tones of Joyce’s Dubliners. Cassola’s enthusiasm for the Irish writer inspired him to write a story about discovering Joyce at a young age. In the 1970s, he curated Thomas Hardy’s works for Mondadori in order to revive interest for Hardy in Italy. His novel La Ragazza di Bube (Bebo’s Girl) was nominated for the Strega Prize in 1960, but in the weeks leading up to the vote, was publicly attacked by Pasolini, who called it a betrayal of the neoRealist movement. Cassola won anyway, and the novel was made into a film starring Claudia Cardinale. Cassola responded to widespread literary fame by reverting to an existential phase of writing; his final works were about the extinction of mankind. This story appears in a collection called La visita (The Visit), early work that showcases his signature elements: limited characters, spare prose, charged emotional subtext. Drawing attention to one of life’s interstitial moments, it illuminates, fleetingly but trenchantly, the traditional lot of married women.

At the Station

Translated by Jhumpa Lahiri

The train was already half an hour behind schedule, and a railway man said it would be later still.

– It’s nice here, said the mother. Let’s hope Dad isn’t waiting.

– If he goes to the station, they’ll tell him it’s running late, Mum.

– But you know how Dad is.

They walked in silence along the pavement, stopping at the far end of the station building. The tangle of tracks ahead of them gradually narrowed. The grey air, cold and dense, hung heavily over the countryside.

– Who knows why it’s late, said Adriana.

Her mother glanced at her without replying.

– It’s usually right on time, Adriana added.