“Ask them,” I said to Mattia, “what time I shall see my mother and father?”
Mattia did as I told him, and my grandfather, upon hearing one of us speak English, seemed to feel more amiable.
“What does he say?”
“He says that your father has gone out for the day and that your mother is asleep, and that if we like we may go out.”
“Did he only say that?” I asked, finding this translation very short.
Mattia seemed confused.
“I don’t know if I understood the rest,” he said.
“Tell me what you think you understood.”
“It seemed to me that he said that if we found some bargains in the city we were not to miss them. He said that we lived at the expense of fools.”
My grandfather must have guessed that Mattia was explaining what he had said to me, for with the hand that was not paralyzed, he made a motion as though he were slipping something into his pocket, then he winked his eye.