Read When the Night for Free Online

the bath, to calm him but also because I think he’s old enough now to understand what I’m saying.
    ON THE ISLAND there’s a beach where the sand is so hot you could fry an egg on it. Three black rocks rise out of the water, which is as calm as a lake. I used to go swimming there with my sisters until late in the afternoon. The red, liquid sun would sink into the sea, and then we would scream and yell and dive into the golden ribbons of dying light. The water was like hot ink, and my mother would call out to us, towels in hand.
    “Marina, come here! You’re the last one, as usual.”
    “I’LL NEVER MAKE you get out of the water unless you want to. You love the water, so you’ll be a good swimmer. ButI can’t give you a bath tonight, because of your cold. No, don’t climb up there, it’s dangerous! You’ll fall.”
    “Mamma, no!”
    “Stop that! You can’t go there, there are bottles and you’ll hurt yourself. Don’t cry, come on, let’s play a game. Let’s play with blocks. We’ll build a tower and then you can knock it down. I can see you’re not interested … Why do you have to climb up on that? Look, there’s nothing there for you, just two wine bottles, a bottle of oil, the salt and pepper shakers, the sugar bowl, the coffee jar.
    It’s good wine. I don’t scrimp on wine. I don’t smoke, I don’t go out, but I like to have a drink in the evenings. Yesterday I drank almost a whole bottle. I mustn’t tell Mario, or he’ll think I have a problem, on top of everything else. Wine helps me relax, it warms me up inside, and I don’t feel so lonely and tired.
    “Get down from there! Good boy. Play with your toy cars.”
    Vroom vroom
. He calms down for a bit. That way I can think for a few minutes. A minute is already something, sixty seconds, a long time. I have to use my minutes well, but then it’s so difficult to pull myself out of my thoughts. Sit down, Marina, take advantage of this moment, you can clean up later.
    My mind wanders. How wonderful it is to think! When you’re young you don’t realize it. On Sunday mornings you can stay in bed and daydream as long as you please. In class, you listen, dream, sleep. How lucky you were, but of course you didn’t enjoy it to the fullest. One should never miss an occasion to think! Ever since the baby was born, you’ve become awareof how precious time is. At cafés and in the street, people walk, smoke, and converse, carefree and unaware, with no sense of haste. They have all the time in the world. They don’t realize how lucky they are. I push the baby stroller; once I too was like them.
    In the fall I’ll go back to work, part-time. I’ll leave him with my mother in the mornings. I’ll have to take him to her because she doesn’t go out early in the morning. Before eight o’clock; it will be cold. How long before he gets sick? When he does, I won’t be able to go to work. If I hire someone, she’ll have to come every morning and it will be too expensive.
    Mario doesn’t understand.
    “Why don’t you ask for leave until he can go to day care? After all, your salary isn’t very large.”
    I’ll never be able to get an important position now, but at least they pay you to think, what a privilege! If I can’t go to work for part of the day, I’ll go crazy. I know that other women don’t feel this way; they suffer when they have to leave their child to go to work. My sister quit her job to be a full-time mother. She said: “It was hell. At home all I could think about was the office, and at the office all I could think about was home. This is the life I want.”
    But now she’s always tense and bosses everyone around. Maybe the same will happen to me and I’ll end up wanting to stay home, but now all I can dream about is the office.
    In the corner of sky I can make out from my office I can see seagulls and swallows in the spring. I have my own computer, my pens, my paper. There’s a balance sheet to read, a report towrite. Hours