34
PARTISAN REVIEW
spent in Milan, but the second was to be
in
Rome. He had rented
a large, three-bedroom apartment, one of which he used as a study.
His wife and daughter, who had returned for a visit to the States
in
August, would use the other bedrooms; they were due back before
not very long. When the ladies returned, he told Rosa, he would put
her on full time. There was a maid's room where she could sleep;
indeed, which she already used as her own though she was in the
apartment only from nine till four. Rosa agreed to a full time ar–
rangement because it would mean all her meals in and nothing to pay
her son and his dog-faced wife.
While they were waiting for Mrs. Krantz to arrive, Rosa did
all the marketing and cooking. She made the professor's breakfast
when she arrived and his lunch at one. She offered to stay later than
four, to prepare supper, but he preferred to take that meal out. After
shopping, she cleaned the house thoroughly, mopping the marble
floors with a wet rag she pushed around with a stick, though the
floors did not look particularly dusty to him. She also washed and
ironed his laundry. She was a good worker, her slippers clip-clopping
as she hurried from one room to the next, and she frequently fin–
ished up about an hour or so before she was due to go home, so
she retired to the maid's room and there read
Tempo
or
Epoca,
or
sometimes a love story all in photographs, with the words of the
story printed in italics under each picture. Often she pulled her bed
down and lay in it under blankets, to keep warm. The weather had
turned rainy, and now the apartment was uncomfortably cold. The
custom of the condominium in this apartment house was not to heat
until the fifteenth of November, and if it was cold before then, as
it
was now, the people of the house had to do the best they could.
The cold disturbed the professor, who wrote with his gloves and hat
on, and increased his nervousness so that he was out to look at her
more often. He wore a heavy blue bathrobe over his clothes; some–
times his bathrobe belt was wrapped around a hot water bottle that
he had placed against his back, under his suit coat. Sometimes he
sat on the hot water bag as he wrote, a sight that caused Rosa, when
she saw
this
once, to smile behind her hand.
If
he left the hot water
bag in the dining room after lunch, Rosa asked
if
she might use it.
As
a rule he allowed her to, and then she did her work with the
rubliler bag pressed by her elbow against her stomach. She said she
