Quo Vadis?

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The excerpts below are by way of publicity (gratis) for my favorite book: "The House that Nino Built" by Giovanni Guareschi (Nino), the author of "The Little World of Don Camillo" and its sequels.

Nino: Man (45)
Margherita: Wife (42)
Albertino: Son (10)
Duchess: Daughter (8)

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'We must have landed among these walls, and among these walls we must die. Just tell me which you think is the most suitable room.'

Margherita put her sewing aside and got up from the chair.

'That's true,' she said earnestly. 'It's something to think over.'

'Oh, it's not as urgent as all that, Margherita,' I hastened to say. 'God alone knows how many more hours we are to tread the mill.'

'All the more reason why we should give it a thought. In this life one must be ready for everything, including death. Think hard, Giovannino. If you were to be suddenly afflicted with a fatal disease, where would you go to die?'

I shrugged my shoulders.

'The bedroom seems a logical choice,' I replied. 'For one thing, it's roomy. There's plenty of light and air.'

Margherita shook her head sadly.

'And you would find it natural that, after all my grief, I should go on sleeping in your deathbed? That I should brush my head against your pilllow and see the last book you were reading on the bedside table?'

This was a reasonable enough remark. I have always been intolerant of egoists, and in my opinion we must die, as well as live, like ladies and gentlemen. Why should I impose such suffering on Margherita?

'Because the room is so very roomy,' I said, 'we could always put a couch over by the radiator, and I could die there instead of in our bed.'

Margherita sighed.

'It's a shame to go into such morbid details,' she said, 'but now that we've brought up the subject, we may as well go through...You say yourself that the bedroom's the best room in the house, so why should I have to give up after you're gone? Because the more I think about it, the more keenly I realize that I could never sleep in the room where you had died. It's a matter of delicacy and good taste.'

But the idea of the couch appealed to me, and I couldn't let it go.

'As a matter of fact,' I said, 'the children's room is even more agreeable than ours, and you could perfectly well exchange with them.'

At this moment, the Duchess, who had been listening from the sidelines, actively entered the discussion.

'I won't sleep in the room where you died,' she stated categorically. 'dead people scare me.'

'The first thing you've got to learn,' I retorted, 'is to respect your father's dead body!'

Margherita shared my indignation.

'Yes, your parents' bodies should be sacred to you,' she said to the children. And then, turning to me, she added: 'Nino, they don't know what they're talking about. But I'm amazed that you should insist upon dying in the bedroom. Wouldn't your study be a much more suitable place? There's a couch in there already, and it's a room where you've spent so much time that you'd feel comfortable and cosy. There's something very heroic, too, about ending your days amid the surroundings where you've worked so hard. It would be like a captain going down with his sinking ship.'

It wasn't a bad idea, and the comparison with a ship's captain was highly flattering.

But at this point Albertino had a word to put in.

'If she says she couldn't sleep in a room where you had died, how can anyone expect me to work in one? I'd be the head of the house, you know, and the study would be my headquarters. You always say that the place where a man works ought to be bright and cheerful, and if you die in the study, it will always have sad associations.'

'That's logical enough,' said Margherita. 'The boy has both feet on the ground. Now that I think about it, perhaps the room next to the study is still more intimate and cosy.'

'Nobody's going to die in my play-room!' the Duchess protested. 'I've got my homework to do! And when I'm a little older, my friends will be coming to see me and we'll want to play the gramophone. Surely you wouldn't want me to play dance music in the room where you died!'

'You ought to be ashamed of yourself!' said Margherita. 'Thinking of music and parties already! When I was your age, I didn't think of anything at all.'

'You couldn't be very bright, then,' said the Duchess. 'But how about the living-room, where you entertain your friends when they come to call?' After all, he's your husband.'

Margherita branded this suggestion as sabotage, and I didn't like the idea of such a frivolous place, either. We were left with the dining-room and the kitchen, which were excluded. Suddenly I had a new idea.

'The garage!' I exclaimed.

We made an immediate inspection, and decided that, after a thorough clean-up, this would be the perfect place.

'The wide door will facilitate the flow of visitors coming to pay their respects to the body, and also the passage of the coffin.'

Margherita and I sat down on a packing-case to smoke a cigarette.

'Well, we can put that problem behind us,' said Margherita with a sigh. 'The idea of dying in a garage is slightly depressing, Nino, but let God's will be done!'

We were silent for a moment or two, and then I recovered my natural buoyancy.

'What can we know of Fates' designs, Margherita?' I exclaimed. 'Who knows if we shall really draw our last breath in this garage? We may die in a train wreck or an automobile accident, you know. Or perhaps we'll be laid low by a stroke while we're strolling through a flower garden overhanging the sea.'

'A flower garden overhanging the sea!' said Margherita dreamily. 'Ther's a picture for you! Imagine dying just as the setting sun plunges into the water!'

'I'd rather die at dawn,' I protested, 'when the world is fresh and new....'

After some discussion, we compromised on half-past two in the afternoon, an hour when everything is quiet and motionless under the midday sun. Now, as we came out of the dark garage, we were happy to find ourselves in all the glory of a May morning.

'Life goes on!' said Margherita.

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My Guru, SDM, who had talked about everything under the sun to me, said once how nice it would be to die while calculating.

He practically did that...at 83...

And what bout ME?

I guess, while blogging would be perfect...

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I do take pains, once in a while, keyboarding passages from authors I like. It sort of enables me to watch first hand how they write...much more intimately than mere reading.


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