Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1959)

beauty. She was thinking — very hard. Suddenly, she turned. "Luca," she said, "in a little while I will fix us our lunch." "Good Mamma," the boy said, looking up from what he was reading. "But before that," Anna said, "I would like to talk to you about something." She walked over to where he sat. "The party tonight—" she started to say. But then she changed her mind. She would tell him about that in a little while, about how she had decided to call off the party, about how she realized now it was a stupid and ridiculous idea to drag him to this party she'd planned, this party where he would be so unhappy and uncomfortable, where — Oh God, why didn't she realize it sooner — others would be dancing and tapping their feet to the music while he, Luca, would sit there, tortured, ashamed, miserable. Another idea For now instead, she thought, she would tell him about her other idea. "Luca," she said, "I have a plan— for you, and for me." She chose her words carefully as she continued to talk. "Do you know how hard I have been working these last years— here in Italy, in France, in America?" she asked. The boy nodded. "I know," he said. "Well," Anna said, "I think that in a few years I will stop working . . . and retire. Yes, I am getting tired. And I need rest. And now you are back from Switzerland and I need to be together with you more . . . And do you know what I am going to do? This I am going to do. I am going to make a few more pictures — maybe two, maybe three. And then I am going to take all the money I make from those pictures and buy a villa, far away, very far, away from everyone and everything. And you and I will go there, Luca, just the two of us, alone, and we will spend our time there, just the two of us, together . . . forever." "Why, Mamma?" the boy asked. "So no one will ever be able to hurt you," Anna wanted to say. But instead she said, "We have thirteen years apart to make up for, Luca. This is a long time for a mother to be without her son and for a son to be away from the mother who loves him so much. This way, in this villa, we will be away from everything but ourselves. And we shall make up for those thirteen years, you and I. Oh, how we shall make up for them!" She smiled and reached for her son's cheek and gave it a playful squeeze. And she waited for him to smile back. But he didn't. ''You do not like my plan?" Anna asked. ' If it is your wish," the boy said. "It is," Anna said. "Then I guess it is good," the boy said. Anna took his hand. Again, she waited for him to smile. But again the smile did not come. "Luca," she said, " — you are sure there is nothing wrong. . . ?" The boy shrugged. "Only," he said, "that I will not be able to go to the school I have been reading about." He looked down at the book in his lap. Anna followed his gaze. For the first time, really, she saw the book. It was not a magazine, as she had thought, but a college prospectus. The Rome Institute of Engineering, read its title, — A Description of Courses for the Interested Student. "Oh?" Anna said, looking back at him, surprised. "I realize it would not be easy to get into the school," Luca went on. "And I realize that if I do get in it will not be easy at first, being in a crowded classroom with so many students, after all my years in Switzerland, at the hospital, where our classes were always private and where we always studied alone. "But," he said, "though I have never told you this before, I had looked forward to trying to become an engineer, Mamma. And to getting used to being with people, and not being away from them anymore' all the time." "With people?" Anna asked, repeating him. "With people?" "Yes," the boy said. He smiled. "That is why, too, I am so happy to be in Rome now. And why tonight; this party you are having for me— why I look forward to that so much. I must learn, Mamma, not only from the books I will study, but from the people I will be with now." "But the party," Anna said, "—this morning when I reminded you of it, I thought you looked a little sad, Luca, as if perhaps you were not looking forward to it. "I was not sad, Mamma," the boy said. "I was thinking about the college. I had written to them from Circeo asking for this booklet and it had not arrived and I guess I was wondering if perhaps they did not want me and were not even sending the booklet . . . But it arrived, Mamma, just a little while after you left the apartment this morning." ''And you are happy now?" Anna asked. "Yes," the boy said. "And about the party— you are happy about that, too?" she asked. "Yes," the boy said. But he did not look so happy. "Only you are not happy about one thing I said," Anna went on, "about the villa I spoke of, the faraway villa. Is that not right, Luca?" "If it is what you want, Mamma — " the boy started to say. "No," Anna interrupted him. "I do not want that. I thought so for a minute. But no. That is not what I want." She reached over and took him in her arms and hugged him. "I want only that you are happy," she said. The boy who walked with God "I am happy now, Mamma," Luca said. "And the only way I can be any happier is to work to make you proud of me someday . . . And I will, Mamma. God will help me, I know. You just wait and see how proud you will be. You just wait until the day you hear somebody say, 'That Luca, the Magnani's son, it is a shame that he does not walk — but what an engineer he is, what a fine engineer!' " And it was as he was saying this that Anna heard the bells in the distance — the bells of St. Peter's— softly at first, and then louder and richer and more and more beautiful in their melodious confusion. She smiled. Oh, she was so proud of her boy, her good, brave boy. 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