Her former self forgave her, but the price of redemption was high.

‘La signorina’

Part of the collection Da un paese vicino (Mondadori, 1975).

Giovanni Arpino

1927–87

In a 1981 interview, Arpino claimed that a real writer should write at least one hundred stories in his lifetime (he wrote nearly twice that number). He also compared the pressure felt by writers to fatten stories into novels to watering down a fine wine. Born in present-day Croatia, Arpino grew up in Liguria and spent summers in the Piedmontese city of Bra. He was a mediocre student, pressured by his father, a colonel in the military, to study law in Turin. He switched to literature and produced a slim book of poems. As he matured he wrote prose as well as verse. His first novel was published when he was twenty-five. He went on to write fifteen others, including L’ombra delle colline (The Shadow of the Hills), which won the Strega Prize in 1964. His most commercially successful work, the novel Il buio e il miele (1969), translated as Scent of a Woman in English, inspired a film starring Vittorio Gassman in the original 1974 adaptation, and Al Pacino in the 1992 remake. Arpino also was a prolific sports journalist (he covered the Olympic Games in Munich for La Stampa in 1972), published over a dozen books for children and wrote avidly about art and photography. While residing in Turin with his family, he rented a room without a telephone in Milan, nearly eighty miles away, commuting back and forth in order to write undisturbed. Racconti di vent’anni (Twenty Years of Stories) is an eclectic harvest of techniques, moods and styles: traditional, Surrealist, sarcastic, sincere, elegiac, farcical. This story, featuring an animal in a starring role, is a mixing of the absurd and the pathetic, of fable and verisimilitude. Call it a perverse, latter-day pygmalion, a mordant comment on chauvinism and possession; a paean, however oblique, to female desire.

The Baboon

Translated by Howard Curtis

Poor devil. It’s really touching. She does all she can, whatever she knows, just to make me happy. There’s no end to her good intentions. I hate scolding her, but that only ever happens when I’m tired, rattled by work, by constantly rushing around the city, by taxes, business deals, sales, down payments, not to mention my lawyer, my stockbroker, my insurance agent, those who claim I owe them money and those who refuse to pay what they owe me.

No sooner have I scolded her than I immediately regret it. She huddles in the corner of her armchair and weeps, she covers her eyes with her hand, then spreads her fingers and throws me a moist glance, and again she starts moaning in that shrill, desperate little voice of hers.

‘Look, forget it, I’m sorry, let’s make peace,’ I stammer, and immediately she’s a good girl again, she calms down, runs to me, empties and brings back the ashtray and stands there looking at me as I read the newspaper, sighing slightly. Then she remembers she hasn’t yet made the coffee and rushes madly into the kitchen, giving vent to her obsession with doing things, doing them quickly, making herself useful.