Zeno's Conscience Part 14

"You didn't know?" the old woman asked me, her eyes wide with surprise.

Pensive, distracted, I murmured: "I heard of it yesterday. I wasn't sure Carla actually meant today."

I left, after politely saying good-bye. I was gnashing my teeth, but in secret. It took some time to muster the courage to be angry publicly. I entered the Public Garden and strolled there for half an hour, to gain the time to understand things better. They were so clear that I couldn't make heads or tails of anything. All of a sudden, with no pity at all, I was forced to maintain such a resolution. I felt ill, really ill. I limped, and I struggled also with a kind of shortness of breath. I have those attacks: I can breathe perfectly, but I start counting the individual breaths, because I have to take them consciously, one after the other. I have the sensation that if I am not careful, I will die of suffocation.

At that hour I should have gone to my office, or rather to Guido's. But it was impossible for me to leave this place in my present state. What would I do now? This was very different from the day before! If I had only known the address of that wretched maestro who, while singing at my expense, had taken my mistress from me!

In the end I went back to the old woman. I would find a word to send to Carla, to persuade her to see me again. Now the main endeavor was to bring her within reach as quickly as possible. The rest wouldn't involve great difficulties.

I found the old woman seated at a window in the kitchen, intent on darning a stocking. She took off her eyegla.s.ses and, almost timorously, cast an interrogative glance at me. I hesitated. Then I asked her: "Do you know if Carla has decided to marry that Lali?"

To me, it seemed I was breaking this news to myself. Carla had already told it to me twice, but the day before I had paid little attention. Those words of Carla's had struck my ear, and distinctly, because I had recalled them, but they had slipped away without penetrating more deeply. Now they barely reached my viscera, which were twisting in pain.

The old woman looked at me, also hesitant. Surely she was afraid of committing any indiscretions for which she could then be reproached. Finally she burst out, obviously and completely joyful: "Carla told you? Then it must be so! I believe she would be doing the right thing! What do you think?"

Now she was laughing happily, the cursed hag, who, I had always believed, was informed about my relations with Carla. I would gladly have struck her, but I confined myself to saying that first I would have waited until the maestro had made a position for himself. To me, in other words, it seemed they had rushed matters.

In her joy the Signora became talkative with me for the first time. She didn't share my opinion. When a couple marries young, the career has to be made afterwards. Why did it have to be made first? Carla had so few needs. Her voice, now, would cost less, since her husband would also be her teacher.

These words, which could have seemed a reproach to my n.i.g.g.ardliness, gave me an idea that appeared magnificent and that for the moment raised my spirits. In the envelope I always carried in my breast pocket there should by now be a tidy sum. I took it from my pocket, sealed it, and handed it to the old woman to give to Carla. Perhaps I also had the desire to pay off my mistress finally in a seemly fashion, but the stronger desire was to see her again and possess her again. Carla would see me again whether she wanted to return the money to me or whether it suited her to keep it, because then she would feel the need to thank me. I could breathe: all was not over forever!

I told the old woman that the envelope contained a little money, what was left of the sum given to me for them by poor Copier's friends. Then, greatly rea.s.sured, I said to tell Carla that I would remain her good friend for the rest of my life, and that if she ever needed help, she could call on me freely. In this way I could send her my address, which was that of Guido's office.

I left with a far more buoyant step than the one that had brought me there.

But that day I had a violent quarrel with Augusta. It was over a trifle. I said the soup was too salty and she claimed it wasn't. I had a mad fit of rage because I had the impression she was making fun of me. I violently pulled the cloth toward me, making the dishes fly from the table to the floor. The baby, in her nurse's arms, began screaming, which mortified me greatly because the little mouth seemed to be reproaching me. Augusta blanched as only she could blanch, took the child in her arms, and went out. It seemed to me her reaction was also excessive: Would she now leave me to eat alone like a dog? But immediately, without the child, she came back, laid the table again, sat opposite me in her usual place, where she moved her spoon as if she wanted to resume eating.

Under my breath, I was cursing, but I already knew I was a plaything in the hands of the intemperate forces of nature. Nature, who found little difficulty in acc.u.mulating those forces, found even less in unleashing them. My curses now were directed against Carla, who pretended to act only in the interest of my wife. And this was what the girl had done to her!

Augusta, true to a system she has continued to follow, when she sees me in that state, didn't protest, didn't cry, didn't argue. When I meekly began to beg her pardon, she wanted to explain one thing: she hadn't laughed, she had only smiled in the very way that had so often pleased me and that I had so often praised.

I was profoundly ashamed. I begged for the child to be brought to us at once, and holding her in my arms, I played with her for a long time. Then I made her sit on my head, and under her little dress, which covered my face, I dried my eyes, wet with the tears that Augusta hadn't shed. I played with the baby, knowing that in this way, without humbling myself to apologize, I was drawing closer to Augusta, and in fact her cheeks had already regained their usual color.

So that day also ended very well, and the afternoon resembled the previous one. It was exactly the same as if that morning I had found Carla in the usual place. I hadn't lacked my relief. I had repeatedly begged forgiveness because I had to coax Augusta to resume her motherly smile when I said or did anything eccentric. It would have been dreadful if, in my presence, she had been forced to a.s.sume a fixed att.i.tude or repress even one of those familiar, affectionate smiles that seemed to me the fullest and most benevolent judgment of me that could be expressed.

In the evening we talked again about Guido. Apparently his peace with Ada was complete. Augusta was amazed at her sister's goodness. This time, however, it was I who had to smile, because obviously she didn't realize her own goodness, which was immense.

I asked her: "And if I were to besmirch our home, wouldn't you forgive me?"

She hesitated. "We have our child," she cried, "whereas Ada has no children that bind her to that man. "

She didn't love Guido; at times I think she bore him a grudge for having made me suffer.

A few months later, Ada presented Guido with twins, and Guido never understood why I congratulated him so warmly. Now that he had children, even in Augusta's opinion, the housemaids could be his without his risking any danger.

The following morning, however, at the office, when I found on my desk an envelope addressed to me in Carla's hand, I breathed again. Now nothing was finished and I could go on living supplied with all the necessary elements. In a few words Carla agreed to meet me at eleven that morning at the Public Garden, by the entrance just opposite her house. We would not be in her room, but still in a place very close to it.

I couldn't wait, and I arrived at the meeting place a quarter-hour early. If Carla was not there, I would go straight to her house, which would be far more comfortable.

This day, too, was steeped in the new spring, tender and radiant. When I turned off the noisy Corsia Stadion and entered the garden, I found myself in the silence of the countryside, which was not really broken by the light, constant rustle of the boughs stirred by the breeze.

With rapid steps I was nearing the gate of the garden when Carla came walking toward me. She had my envelope in her hand and she approached me without a smile of greeting, but rather with a stern determination on her pale face. She was wearing a simple cotton dress, coa.r.s.ely woven, with pale blue stripes, which was very becoming. She, too, seemed a part of the garden. Later, in the moments when I hated her, I accused her of having dressed like that deliberately to make herself more desirable at the very moment when she was denying herself to me. It was, instead, the first day of spring that clothed her. It must also be remembered that in my long but brusque love, my woman's adornment played a very small part. I had always gone directly to that studio room of hers, and modest women are always very simple when they are staying home.

She held out her hand, which I pressed, saying to her: "I thank you for coming!"

How much more decorous it would have been for me if, during that conversation, I had remained so meek!

Carla seemed moved, and when she spoke, a kind of tremor affected her lips. At times, also when she sang, that movement of the lips impeded the note. She said to me: "I would like to oblige you and accept this money from you, but I can't, I absolutely can't. Please, take it back."

Seeing her close to tears, I immediately obeyed, accepting the envelope, which later I found still in my hand long after I had abandoned that place.

"You really want nothing more to do with me?"

I asked this question, not thinking that she had answered it the day before. But was it possible that, desirable as she appeared to me, she could refuse herself?

"Zeno!" the girl answered, with some sweetness. "Didn't we promise ourselves we would never see each other again? After that promise, I have made a commitment similar to the one you had before knowing me. It is as sacred as yours. I hope that by now your wife has realized you are entirely hers."

So in her thoughts Ada's beauty continued to be important. If I had been sure this abandonment was Ada's fault, I would have had a way of taking reparatory measures. I would have told Carla that Ada wasn't my wife and I would have let her see Augusta, with her asymmetrical eye and her healthy wet-nurse figure. But wasn't the commitment she had made now more important? That had to be discussed.

I tried to speak calmly while my lips were also trembling, though with desire. I told her she didn't yet realize how much she was mine and how she no longer had the right to dispose of herself. In my head was stirring the scientific proof of what I wanted to say, namely that famous experiment of Darwin's on an Arab mare, but, thank heaven, I am almost certain I didn't say anything about it. I must have talked about animals, however, and their physical fidelity, in a meaningless stammer. Then I gave up the more difficult arguments, inaccessible to her and also to me at that moment.

And I said: "What commitment can you have made? What importance can it have compared with an affection like the one that has united us for over a year?"

I grabbed her roughly by the hand, feeling the need of some energetic action, but finding no words to complement it.

She freed herself as vigorously from my grasp as if it were the first time I had taken such a liberty.

"Never!" she said, in the att.i.tude of someone taking an oath. "I have made a holier pledge! With a man who also has made the same pledge to me."

There was no doubt! The blood that suddenly colored her cheeks had been driven there by rancor toward the man who had not made any commitment to her.

She made herself even clearer: "Yesterday we walked along the streets, arm in arm, in the company of his mother."

It was obvious that my woman was running away, farther and farther from me. I ran after her madly, leaping like a dog when he is denied a tasty morsel of meat. Again I seized her hand violently.

"Well," I suggested, "let's walk like this, hand in hand, through the whole city. In this unusual fashion, to make ourselves even more visible, we'll go along Corsia Stadion, then past the Chiozza arcades, and across the Corso as far as Sant'Andrea, then return to our room by another route, so the whole city can see us."

There, for the first time, I was renouncing Augusta! And it seemed a liberation to me because she was the one who wanted to take Carla from me.

Again she removed her hand from my grasp and said sharply: "That would more or less be the same walk he and I took yesterday!"

I started again: "And does he know? Everything? Does he know that you were mine yesterday, too?"

"Yes," she said proudly. "He knows everything, everything."

I felt lost, and in my anger, like the dog who, when he can't reach the desired morsel, bites the clothes of the one withholding it, I said: "This husband of yours has an excellent stomach. Today he digests me. Tomorrow he will be able to digest everything you like."

I didn't hear the exact sound of my words. I knew I was shouting in pain. She, on the contrary, had an expression of indignation of which I wouldn't have believed her dark, mild gazelle eyes capable.

"You say this to me? And why don't you have the courage to say it to him?"

She turned her back on me and rapidly walked toward the gate. I was already feeling remorse for the words I had said, bewildered, however, by my great surprise that I was forbidden to treat Carla less gently now. It kept me nailed to the spot. The little figure, blue and white, with quick, short steps, was already reaching the exit, when I made up my mind to run after her. I didn't know what I would say to her, but it was impossible for us to part like this.

I stopped her at the door of her building and spoke, sincerely, only of the great sorrow of that moment. "Are we going to part like this, after so much love?"

She went on without answering me, and I followed her up the steps. Then she looked at me with hostile eyes: "If you want to see my husband, come with me. Can't you hear? He's the one playing the piano."

I heard just then the syncopated notes of Schubert's Abschied in the Liszt transcription.

Though since my childhood I have never handled a sabre or a club, I am not a fearful man. The great desire that had impelled me thus far had suddenly vanished. Of the male character, all that remained in me was the combativeness. I had asked imperiously for something not rightfully mine. To lessen my error now I had to fight, because otherwise the memory of that woman threatening to have me punished by her husband would have been unbearable.

"Very well!" I said to her. "If you will allow me, I'll come with you."

My heart was pounding, with no fear-except the fear of not behaving properly.

I continued climbing the stairs with her. But suddenly she stopped, leaned against the wall, and started crying, wordlessly. Up above, the notes of the Abschied continued to resound on that piano which I had paid for. Carla's tears made that sound very moving.

"I'll do whatever you want. Do you want me to go?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, barely able to utter that brief word.

I slowly went down the stairs, also whistling Schubert's Abschied. I don't know if it was an illusion, but I seemed to hear her call me: "Zeno!"

At that moment she could even have called me by that strange name of Dario that she sometimes considered a pet name, and I wouldn't have stopped. I had a great desire to go away, and I was returning once again, pure, to Augusta-as the dog, when his approach to the female is fended off with kicks, runs away, totally pure for the moment.

When, the next day, I was again reduced to the state in which I had found myself at the moment I headed for the Public Garden, it seemed to me simply that I had been a coward: she had called me, though not by our pet name, and I hadn't answered! It was the first day of suffering, which was followed by many others of bitter desolation. No longer understanding why I had gone off like that, I blamed myself for having been afraid of that man or afraid of scandal. Now I was ready to accept any compromise, as I had been when I suggested to Carla that long walk through the city. I had lost an opportune moment, and I knew very well that, with certain women, such a moment occurs only once. For me that one time would have sufficed.

I decided promptly to write to Carla. It wasn't possible for me to allow even one more day to go by without making an attempt to return to her. I wrote and rewrote that letter, to condense into a few words all the intelligence of which I was capable. I rewrote it so many times also because writing it was a great comfort to me; it was the release I needed. I begged her forgiveness for my display of wrath, declaring that my great love needed some time to calm down. I added: "Every day that pa.s.ses brings me another crumb of tranquillity," and I wrote this sentence many times, always clenching my teeth. Then I told her that I couldn't forgive myself for the words I had addressed to her and I felt the need to ask her pardon. I couldn't, unfortunately, offer her what Lali was offering her and of which she was so worthy.

I imagined that the letter would have a great effect. Since Lali knew everything, Carla would show it to him, and for Lali it could be advantageous to have a friend of my worth. I even dreamed we might begin a sweet three-sided life, because my love was such that for the moment I would have regarded my fate as mitigated if I were allowed simply to pay court to Carla.

The third day I received a brief note from her. It was not addressed at all, neither to Zeno nor to Dario. She said only: "Thank you! May you also be happy with your spouse, so worthy of all good things!" Naturally, she was speaking of Ada.

The opportune moment had not lasted, and with women it never lasts unless you grab it by the braids and hold it tight. My desire was distilled into a furious bitterness. Not toward Augusta! My spirit was so full of Carla that I felt remorse, and with Augusta I forced myself to maintain a foolish, stereotyped smile, which to her seemed genuine.

But I had to do something. I surely couldn't wait and suffer like this every day! I didn't want to write her again. For women, written words have too little importance. I had to find something better.

With no specific intention, I hurried to the Public Garden. Then, much more slowly, to Carla's house and, arriving on that landing, I knocked at the kitchen door. If it were possible, I would have avoided seeing Lali, but I wouldn't have minded running into him. That would be the crisis I felt I needed.

The old woman, as usual, was at the stove, on which two great fires were burning. She was surprised to see me, but then she laughed like the good, innocent creature she was.

She said, "I'm glad to see you! You were so accustomed to see us every day, that obviously you can't bring yourself to give us up entirely."

It was easy for me to make her chatter on. She told me that Carla's love for Vittorio was immense. That day he and his mother were coming to have dinner with them. She added, laughing: "Soon he'll end by persuading her to come with him even to the many voice lessons he has to give every day. They can't bear to be apart, not even for a few moments."

She smiled at that happiness, maternally. She told me that in a few weeks' time they would be married.

I had a bad taste in my mouth, and I would almost have turned toward the door to leave. Then I lingered, hoping the old woman's nattering would inspire some good idea in me, or give me some hope. The last error I had committed with Carla had been to run away before I had studied all the possibilities that might have been available to me.

For an instant I believed I had my idea. I asked the old woman if she had actually decided to be her daughter's servant until she died. I told her I knew that Carla wasn't very gentle with her.

She went on working diligently at the fire, but she heard me out. She possessed an innocence I didn't deserve. She complained of Carla, who lost her temper over any trifle. She apologized: "Of course, I grow older every day and I forget everything. It's not my fault!"

But she hoped things would go better now. Carla's moods would be fewer, now that she was happy. And then Vittorio, right from the start, had shown her great respect. Finally, still intent on making some shapes with a mixture of flour and fruit, she added: "It's my duty to stay with my daughter. There's nothing else I can do."

With a certain anxiousness I tried to convince her. I told her that she could easily free herself from this bondage. Wasn't I here? I would continue to give her the monthly allowance that I had given Carla till now. I wanted to support somebody! I wanted to keep with me the old woman, who to me seemed part of the daughter.

The old woman showed me her grat.i.tude. She admired my goodness, but she had to laugh at the idea that she could be advised to leave her daughter. It was something unthinkable.

The hard word struck my brow, forcing me to lower my head! I was returning to that great solitude where there was no Carla, nor was there any visible path that led to her. I remember making a final effort to delude myself that some sign of such a path might remain. I said to the old woman, before leaving, that after a while she might change her mind. I begged her to remember me then.

Leaving that house, I was filled with outrage and bitterness, as if I had been ill-treated when I was preparing to perform a good action. That old woman had actually offended me with that outburst of laughter. I could hear it still reechoing in my ears, and it signified more than mere mockery of my final proposal.

I didn't want to go to Augusta in this condition. I could foresee my fate. If I went to her, I would end up ill-treating her, and she would get her revenge with that great pallor that so hurt me. I preferred to walk the streets at a steady pace that might bring a little order to my spirit. And in fact that order came! I stopped complaining about my fate, and I saw myself as if a great light had projected me, full-figure, on the pavement I was looking at. I wasn't asking for Carla. I wanted her embrace, preferably her last embrace. How ridiculous! I dug my teeth into my lips to cast some sorrow, or rather a modic.u.m of seriousness, on my ridiculous image. I knew everything of myself and it was unforgivable for me to suffer so much because I had been offered a unique opportunity to be weaned. Carla was gone, as I had so often wished.

With such clarity in my spirit, a little later in a remote street of the city, which I had reached without paying any attention, when a heavily painted woman made a sign, I rushed to her without hesitation.

I arrived quite late for lunch, but I was so sweet to Augusta that she was immediately happy. But I wasn't able to kiss my child, and for several hours I couldn't eat, either. I felt very soiled! I feigned no sickness as I had done other times to conceal and attenuate guilt and remorse. I couldn't seem to find solace in any resolve for the future, and for the first time I made none at all. It took many hours for me to return to the usual rhythm that drew me from the gloomy present to the luminous future.

Augusta realized there was something new in me. It made her laugh. "With you, there's never a chance of being bored. You're a different man every day."

Yes! That woman of the slums resembled no other, and I had her in me.

I spent the afternoon and also the evening with Augusta. She was very occupied, and I remained beside her, inert. I felt that, inert, I was being carried along by a current, a current of clear water: the honest life of my house.

I abandoned myself to that current that carried me but didn't cleanse me. Far from it! It emphasized my filth.

Naturally, in the long night that followed, I arrived at the resolution. The first was the most rigid. I would acquire a weapon to destroy myself at once if I caught myself heading for that part of the city. This resolution made me feel better and soothed me.

I didn't moan once in my bed, and on the contrary, I simulated the regular respiration of the sleeper. Thus I returned to the old idea of purifying myself through a confession to my wife, as I had thought to do when I had been on the verge of betraying her with Carl. But now the confession was very difficult, and not because of the gravity of the misdeed, but because of the complication in which it had resulted. Facing a judge like my wife, I would also have to adduce extenuating circ.u.mstances, and these would emerge only if I could tell of the unforeseen violence with which my relations with Carla had been ruptured. But then it would be necessary to confess also that now-ancient infidelity. It was purer than this latest one, but (who knows?), for a wife, more offensive. Through studying myself, I arrived at more and more rational resolutions. I thought to avoid the repet.i.tion of a similar misdeed by hastening to organize another attachment like the one I had lost and of which I obviously had need. But the new woman also frightened me. A thousand dangers would have besieged me and my little family. In this world another Carla didn't exist, and with bitter tears I mourned her, Carla the sweet, the good, who had even tried to love the woman I loved and who had failed only because I had put before her another woman, precisely the one I didn't love at all!

THE STORY OF A BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP.

IT was guido who wanted me with him in his new business firm. I was dying to be a part of it, but I'm sure I never let him guess this desire of mine. Obviously, in my inertia, the proposal of this activity, in partnership with a friend, appealed to me. But there was more to it than that. I still hadn't abandoned the hope of becoming a good businessman, and it seemed to me easier to progress through teaching Guido than through being taught by Olivi. Many in this world learn only by listening to themselves; in any case, they are unable to learn by listening to anyone else.

There were also other reasons why I wished that a.s.sociation. I wanted to be useful to Guido! In the first place, I was fond of him, and although he wanted to appear strong and self-confident, he seemed to me helpless, in need of the protection I was glad to provide him. Further, to my own conscience and not only to Augusta's eyes, it seemed that the more attached I became to Guido, the more my absolute indifference to Ada was clear.

In short, I was awaiting only a word from Guido to place myself at his disposal, and this word would have come even earlier, but he didn't believe I was so inclined toward commerce, as I would have nothing to do with the business offered me at my own firm.

One day he said to me: "I've taken every course at the Higher School of Commerce, but still I'm a bit worried about having to handle competently all those details that ensure the smooth functioning of a firm. True, a businessman doesn't have to know anything, because if he needs books, he calls the bookkeeper and if he needs the law he calls a lawyer, and for his accounts he goes to an accountant. But it's hard to have to hand over my accounts to an outsider, right at the start!"

It was the first clear allusion to his intention of having me join him. To tell the truth, I had no experience of accounting beyond those few months when I kept the books for Olivi, but I was sure that, for Guido, I was the only accountant who wasn't an outsider.

The first time we openly discussed the eventuality of our partnership was when he went to pick out the furniture for his office. Without hesitation he ordered two desks for the director's office.