Her hands were plump, with tight, dark rings she kept them folded in her lap, over a shiny purse and a jacket she had taken off to expose round white arms. The lady sat down with a composed demeanor, revealing, there beside him, less majestic proportions than he had imagined when he had seen her standing. Tomagra, a young infantryman on his first leave (it was Easter), huddled down in his seat for fear that the lady, so ample and shapely, might not fit immediately he found himself in the aura of her perfume, a popular and perhaps cheap scent, but now, out of long wear, blended with natural human odors. If its upper curves had not been tempered by a matronly softness, you would have said she was no more than thirty but when you looked at her face, at the complexion both marmoreal and relaxed, the unattainable gaze beneath the heavy eyelids and the thick black brows, at the sternly sealed lips, hastily colored with a jarring red, she seemed instead past forty.
#Italo calvino difficult loves full
Her body was in full bloom, solid, indeed a bit square. But, on the contrary, despite the vicinity of a coarse soldier like himself, she came and sat right there-no doubt for some reason connected with travel, the soldier quickly decided, a draft, or the direction of the train. Other places were free, there in the compartment, Private Tomagra noticed, and he had assumed the widow would surely choose one of them. She must have been a widow from the provinces, to judge by her dress and her veil: the dress was black silk, appropriate for prolonged mourning, but with useless frills and furbelows and the veil went all around her face, falling from the brim of a massive, old-fashioned hat. In the compartment, a lady came and sat down, tall and buxom, next to Private Tomagra. The remaining stories were translated by William Weaver: The Adventure of a Crook, The Adventure of a Wife, and The Adventure of the Married Couple for the volume Difficult Loves (London: Secker & Warburg, 1983) Smog for the volume The Watcher and Other Stories (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971) and all others for the volume Difficult Loves (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1984).ĭifficult Loves The Adventure of a Soldier The Argentine Ant was translated by Archibald Colquhoun for the volume Adam, One Afternoon (London: William Collins & Sons, 1957). The Adventure of a Skier and The Adventure of a Motorist were translated by Ann Goldstein for this volume. The stories in this collection were written during the 1950s and collected in the anthology I racconti (Turin: Einaudi, 1958). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.Ĭover design by Peter Mendelsund & Oliver Munday First published in Italy in I racconti, by Giulio Einaudi Editore, S.p.A., Torino, 1958įor information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016. Translation of Smog copyright © 1971 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. First published in Italy in I racconti, by Giulio Einaudi Editore, S.p.A., Torino, 1958 Translation of The Argentine Ant copyright © 1957 by Harper Collins. Translation of The Adventure of a Skier and The Adventure of a Motorist copyright © 2017 by Ann Goldstein Translation of The Adventure of a Crook, The Adventure of a Wife, and The Adventure of the Married Couple copyright © 1983 by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. as Gli Amori DifficiliĮnglish translation copyright © 1984, 1983 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company with the following exceptions: Copyright © 1958, 1949 by Giulio Einaudi Editore, S.p.A., Torinoįirst published in Italy by Giulio Einaudi Editore, S.p.A.