Zeno's Conscience Part 16

Therefore I was not allowed to preach morality to her, and it was too bad for me. In preaching morality to her I would surely have arrived at a higher level of sincerity, perhaps attempting again to take her into my arms. I would not torment myself any more for having wanted to play that false role of Mentor.

Several days each week, Guido never even put in an appearance at the office, for he was an impa.s.sioned hunter and fisherman. I, on the contrary, after my return, was a.s.sidus for a while, occupied with bringing the books up to date. I was often with Carmen and Luciano, who considered me their manager. It didn't seem to me that Carmen suffered at Guido's absence, and I imagined she loved him so much that she was overjoyed to know that he was having a good time. She must also have been advised which days he would be absent, because she showed no sign of anxious expectation. I knew from Augusta that with Ada, on the contrary, it was a different story, for she complained bitterly of her husband's frequent absences. In any case, that wasn't her only complaint. Like all unloved women, she complained of great wrongs and small ones with the same fervor. Not only was Guido unfaithful to her, but when he was at home he constantly played the violin. That violin, which had caused me such suffering, was a kind of Achilles' spear in the variety of its functions. I learned that it had also pa.s.sed through our office, where it had enriched the wooing of Carmen with some beautiful variations on the Barber. Then it had moved on, as in the office it was no longer needed, and had returned home, where it spared Guido the boredom of having to converse with his wife.

There was never anything between me and Carmen. Quite soon I felt an absolute indifference toward her, as if she had changed s.e.x, something similar to what I felt for Ada. A keen sympathy for both, and nothing more. That was it!

Guido showered me with kindnesses. I believe that in that month when I had left him alone, he had learned to value my company. A girl like Carmen can be pleasant from time to time, but you can't really bear her for whole days. He invited me hunting and fishing. I detest hunting, and firmly refused to accompany him. But one evening, driven by boredom, I did end up going fishing with him. A fish lacks any means of communicating with us, and cannot arouse our compa.s.sion. He gasps even when he's safe and sound in the water! Death itself doesn't alter his appearance. His suffering, if it exists, is perfectly concealed beneath his scales.

One day, when Guido had invited me to go fishing in the evening, I put off my decision until I could see if Augusta would allow me to stay out so late that night. I told him I wouldn't forget that his boat would be casting off from the Sartorio dock at 9:00 p.m. and, if it was possible, I'd be there. So I a.s.sumed he, too, would immediately know he wouldn't see me that evening and, as I had done so many other times, I would fail to turn up at the appointed hour.

Instead, that evening I was driven out of the house by my little Antonia's screams. The more her mother caressed her, the more the little one screamed. Then I tried a system of mine that consisted of shouting insults into the tiny ear of that yelling monkey. The only result was to alter the rhythm of her screams, because she began to cry out also in fright. Then I thought to try another system a bit more vigorous, but Augusta recalled Guido's invitation just in time and accompanied me to the door, promising to go to bed by herself if I was late coming home. Indeed, if it would send me away, she would even contrive to take her coffee without me the next morning, if I were still out then. There is a little divergence of opinion between me and Augusta-our only one-about how to treat troublesome babies: it seems to me that the baby's suffering is less important than ours and that it's worth letting the infant endure it in order to spare the adult greater distress; she, on the contrary, feels that as we made the children, we must also put up with them.

I was in plenty of time to reach the dock, and I crossed the city slowly, looking at the women and at the same time devising a mechanism that would prevent any disagreement between me and Augusta. But for my device mankind was not yet sufficiently mature! It was destined for the distant future and could be of no help to me except in showing me the trivial cause that made my disputes with Augusta possible: the lack of a little device! It would have been simple, a domestic tramway, a high chair equipped with wheels and tracks on which my child would spend her day: an electric switch, at one touch, would send chair and screaming baby off, at top speed, toward the most remote point in the house, whence its voice, muted by the distance, would actually seem pleasant. And Augusta and I would remain together where we were, serene and loving.

It was a night rich in stars and without a moon, one of those nights when you can see a great distance, a night that therefore softens and soothes. I looked at the stars that might still bear the mark of my dying father's farewell glance. The horrible period in which my children soiled and screamed would pa.s.s. Then they would be like me; I would love them dutifully and effortlessly. In the beautiful, vast night I was completely rea.s.sured and had no need to make resolutions.

At the end of the Sartorio dock, the lights from the city were cut off by the old building from which the point itself extends like a brief pier. The darkness was perfect, and the water, deep and dark and still, seemed to me lazily swollen.

I no longer looked at either heaven or sea. A few paces from me there was a woman who aroused my curiosity, thanks to a patent-leather boot that for an instant gleamed in the darkness. In this brief s.p.a.ce and in the darkness, to me it seemed this woman, tall and perhaps elegant, and I were enclosed in a room together. The most enjoyable adventures can occur when least expected, and, seeing that woman suddenly and deliberately approach me, for an instant I had a most pleasant sensation, which vanished immediately when I heard the hoa.r.s.e voice of Carmen. She tried to act pleased at discovering that I, too, was one of the party. But in the darkness and with that voice, she couldn't pretend.

I said to her roughly: "Guido invited me. But if you want, I'll find something else to do and leave you to yourselves!"

She protested, declaring that, on the contrary, she was happy to see me for the third time that day. She told me that the entire office would be united in this little boat, because Luciano was there, too. What a disaster for our business if we were to sink! Surely she had told me about Luciano's being there only to prove to me that the meeting was innocent. Then she continued chatting volubly, at once informing me that this was the first time she was going fishing with Guido, then confessing it was the second. She had involuntarily let me know that she didn't mind sitting on the bottom of the boat, the bilges, and it seemed strange to me that she should know the term. Thus she had to confess that she had learned it when she had gone out fishing with Guido the first time.

"That day," she added, to reveal the complete innocence of her first excursion, "we went fishing for mackerel, not bream. In the morning."

Too bad I didn't have time to encourage her to chatter more, because I could have learned everything that mattered to me, but Guido's boat was emerging from the darkness of the Sacchetta and rapidly coming toward us. I still hesitated. Since Carmen was there, shouldn't I go away? Perhaps Guido hadn't even meant to invite us both, because, as I recalled, I had practically refused his invitation. Meanwhile the boat tied up and, jauntily, confident even in the darkness, Carmen stepped down, not bothering to take the hand Luciano held out to her. As I hesitated, Guido cried: "Don't waste our time!"

With one bound, I was also in the boat. My leap was almost involuntary: a result of Guido's cry. I looked at the land with great desire, but a moment's indecision sufficed to make it impossible for me to go ash.o.r.e. Finally I sat at the prow of the not-large boat. When I grew accustomed to the darkness, I saw that at the stern, facing me, sat Guido and at his feet, on the bottom, Carmen. Luciano, who was rowing, separated us. I felt neither very confident nor very comfortable in the little boat, but I soon grew accustomed to it and I looked at the stars, which again soothed me. It was true that in the presence of Luciano-a devoted servant of the family of our wives-Guido would not risk betraying Ada, and so there was nothing wrong in my being with them. I keenly desired to be able to enjoy that sky, that sea, and the vast calm. If I were going to feel remorse and therefore suffer, I would have done better to stay at home and submit to the torture of my little Antonia. The cool night air swelled my lungs and I realized that I could enjoy myself in the company of Guido and Carmen, of whom I was, after all, fond.

We rounded the lighthouse and were out at sea. A few miles farther on, the lights of countless sailing boats were shining: there, quite different traps were being set for the fish. From the Military Baths-a ma.s.sive, blackish establishment on stilts-we began to move up and down along the Sant'Andrea seafront. It was a favorite spot with fishermen. Beside us, silently, many other boats were following our same course. Guido prepared the three lines and baited the hooks, spearing some shrimp by the tail. He gave each of us a pole, saying that mine, at the prow-the only one provided with a sinker-would attract the most fish. In the darkness I could discern the pierced tail of my shrimp, and it seemed to be moving slowly the upper part of its impaled body, that part that hadn't become a sheath. This movement made it seem to be meditating rather than writhing in pain. Perhaps whatever produces pain in large organisms can be reduced, in the very small, until it becomes a different experience, a stimulus to thought. I dropped the shrimp into the water, lowering it, as I had been instructed by Guido, about thirty feet. After me, Carmen and Guido dropped their lines. Guido, at the stern, now also had an oar, which he used to propel the boat with the skill required to keep the lines from tangling. Apparently, Luciano wasn't yet sufficiently skilled to guide the boat like that. In any case, Luciano was now a.s.signed the little net with which he would lift from the water the fish our hooks brought to the surface. For a long time he had nothing to do. Guido chattered a lot. Who knows? Perhaps he was drawn to Carmen more by his pa.s.sion for instruction than by love. I would have preferred not to sit there listening, but rather to think of the little animal I kept exposed to the voracity of the fish, suspended in the water, and that, nodding its tiny head-if it continued to do so in the water-would lure fish all the better. But Guido called to me repeatedly, and I had to hear his theory of fishing. The fish would nibble the bait several times and we would feel them, but we should take care not to pull on the line until it became taut. Then we should be ready to give it the jerk that would drive the hook squarely into the fish's mouth. Guido, as usual, was lengthy in his explanations. He wanted to explain clearly to us what we would feel in our hands when the fish nibbled the bait. And he continued his explanations when Carmen and I already knew from experience the almost aural sensation produced on the hand by every contact the hook underwent. Several times we had to draw in the line to replace the bait. The little pensive animal remained unavenged in the maw of some clever fish able to elude the hook.

On board was some beer and sandwiches. Guido spiced everything with his ceaseless garrulity. Now he talked about the enormous riches that lay in the sea. He didn't mean fish, as Luciano believed, or the riches sunk there by man. In the water of the sea, gold was dissolved. Suddenly he recalled that I had studied chemistry, and he said to me: "You should also know something about this gold."

I didn't remember much, but I nodded, venturing a remark of whose truth I was unsure. I a.s.serted: "The gold of the sea is the most expensive of all. To acquire one of those napoleons lying dissolved down here, you would have to spend five."

Luciano, who had eagerly turned to me to hear me confirm the riches on which we were floating, now looked away, disappointed. He no longer cared about that gold. But Guido agreed with me, believing he could recall that the price of such gold was exactly five times its market value, just as I had said. He even glorified me, confirming my a.s.sertion, which I knew was a total invention of my brain. Obviously he felt I represented no great threat, and he harbored not a shadow of jealousy regarding that woman curled up at his feet. I thought for an instant of embarra.s.sing him by declaring that now I remembered more clearly, and to extract one of those napoleons from the sea, ten would be necessary, or perhaps a mere three would be enough.

But at that moment I was summoned by my line, which suddenly tautened at a mighty tug. I gave a tug in reply, and I shouted. With a leap, Guido was beside me; he s.n.a.t.c.hed the line from my hand. I gladly let him have it. He started pulling it up, first in short lengths, then, as the resistance lessened, in great ones. And in the murky water the silvery body of a big animal could be seen shining. It now swam rapidly and without resistance, following its pain. So I understood also the pain of the silent animal, because it was shouted by that haste in rushing toward death. Soon I had it, gasping, at my feet. Luciano had drawn it from the water in the net and, yanking the hook with no consideration, he removed it from the fish's mouth.

He squeezed the heavy fish.

"A seven-pound bream!"

In admiration, he quoted the price it would have fetched at the fish market. Then Guido observed that at this hour the water was still, and it would be hard to catch any more fish. He told how fishermen believed that when the water neither waxed nor waned, the fish didn't eat and therefore couldn't be caught. He philosophized on the danger an animal risked because of its appet.i.te. Then, starting to laugh, unaware that he was compromising himself, he said: "You're the only one able to fish this evening."

My catch was still wriggling in the boat when Carmen let out a cry. Without stirring, and with a great desire to laugh audible in his voice, Guido asked: "Another bream?"

Confused, Carmen answered: "I thought so! But it's already let go of the hook!"

I'm sure that, overwhelmed by his desire, Guido had given her a pinch.

At this point I felt uncomfortable in that boat. I no longer followed the activity of my hook with my desire, indeed, I jerked the line so much that the poor fish couldn't bite. I declared I was sleepy, and I asked Guido to put me ash.o.r.e at Sant'Andrea. Then I wanted to allay his suspicion that I was leaving because I was annoyed by what Carmen's cry must have revealed to me, so I told him of the scene my little girl had made that evening, and of my desire now to make sure she wasn't sick.

Obliging as always, Guido drew the boat up to the sh.o.r.e. He offered me the bream I had caught, but I refused it. I suggested giving it back its freedom by throwing it into the sea, which provoked a cry of protest from Luciano, as Guido good-naturedly said: "If I knew I could give it back health and life, I would. But by now the poor animal can go nowhere but into a pan!"

I followed them with my eyes, and I could verify that they didn't exploit the s.p.a.ce I had left free. They were huddled close together, and the boat went off a bit high at the prow and too heavy at the stern.

It seemed to me a divine punishment when I learned that my baby had come down with a fever. Hadn't I caused her illness, feigning for Guido a concern for her health that I didn't feel? Augusta had not yet gone to bed, but Dr. Paoli had been there a short time before and had rea.s.sured her, saying he was sure the fever, as sudden as it was violent, could not indicate any serious illness. We stood a long time watching Antonia, who lay limp on her little cot, the skin of her face dry and flushed intensely below her disheveled dark curls. She didn't cry out, but moaned now and then, a brief lament arrested by an imperious torpor. My G.o.d! How close her sickness brought her to me! I would have given a part of my life to free her respiration. How could I dispel my remorse for thinking I couldn't love her, and having spent all that time, when she was suffering, far from her and in that company?

"She looks like Ada!" Augusta said with a sob. It was true! We noticed it then for the first time, and that resemblance became more and more obvious as Antonia grew, so that sometimes I feel my heart quake at the thought that she could suffer the fate of the poor woman she resembles.

We lay down, after setting the baby's cot beside Augusta's bed. But I couldn't sleep: I had a weight on my heart as I did on those evenings when my misdeeds of the day were reflected in nocturnal images of suffering and remorse. The baby's illness weighed on me as if it were my own doing. I rebelled! I was pure and I could speak, I could tell everything. And I did tell everything. I told Augusta about the meeting with Carmen, the position she occupied in the boat, and then her cry, which I suspected had been provoked by a brutish gesture of Guido's, though I couldn't be sure. But Augusta was sure. Because otherwise, immediately afterwards, why would Guido's voice have a tone of hilarity? I tried to temper her conviction, but then I had still more to tell. I confessed also my own part, describing the boredom that had driven me from the house, and my remorse at not loving Antonia more. I immediately felt better and I fell sound asleep.

The next morning Antonia had improved; the fever was almost gone. She lay there, calm and breathing freely, but she was pale and drawn as if she had been consumed by a struggle disproportionate to her little organism; obviously she had emerged from the brief battle victorious. In the consequent peace, which also affected me, I recalled with regret how horribly I had compromised Guido, and I wanted Augusta to promise me she would communicate her suspicions to no one. She objected that they weren't suspicions, but obviously certainties, which I denied, without managing to convince her. Then she promised everything I wished, and I went off to the office with an easy mind.

Guido hadn't yet come in, and Carmen told me they had had quite a run of luck after I left. They had caught another two bream, smaller than mine, but nice and plump. I was reluctant to believe it, and I thought she was trying to convince me they had abandoned the occupation in which they had been involved while I was there. Hadn't the water become still? How late had they stayed out on the water?

To convince me, Carmen also made Luciano confirm the catching of the two bream, and from that time on I imagined that, to ingratiate himself with Guido, Luciano was capable of anything.

Still during the idyllic calm that preceded the copper-sulfate affair, something fairly strange occurred in that office, which I have been unable to forget, both because it confirms Guido's boundless presumption and because it places me in a light where I can hardly recognize myself.

One day all four of us were in the office, and the only one who was talking about business was, as always, Luciano. Something in his words sounded, to Guido's ear, like a reproach, which in Carmen's presence was hard for him to tolerate. But it was equally hard for him to defend himself, because Luciano had the proofs that a transaction he had advised months before, which Guido had rejected, had later earned a large sum of money for the person who accepted the offer. Guido ended by declaring that he scorned commerce, and he a.s.serted that if fortune failed to a.s.sist him in business, he would find a way of making money through other, far more intelligent activities. Playing the violin, for example. All were in agreement with him, including me, though I expressed one reservation: "Provided you study a lot."

My reservation displeased him, and he said at once that if it were just a matter of studying, then he could have gone into many other fields-literature, for example. Here, too, the others agreed, and so did I, but with some hesitation. I didn't recall clearly the physiognomies of our great men of letters, and I tried to evoke them, to find one that resembled Guido.

He then cried: "Would you like some nice fables? I'll improvise some, like Aesop!"

All laughed, except Guido himself. He asked for the typewriter and, fluently, as if he were writing under dictation, with broader gestures than practical typewriting demands, he wrote down his first tale. He was about to hand the little page to Luciano, but then he thought better of it, took it back, replaced it in the machine, and wrote a second; but this one cost him greater effort than the first, and so he forgot to keep simulating inspiration with his gestures, and he had to revise his words several times. So I believe the first of the two fables wasn't his and only the second truly issued from his brain, of which it seems to me worthy. The first tale was about a little bird who happened to notice that the door of his cage had been left open. At first he thought to take advantage of this oversight and fly away, but then he changed his mind, fearing that if, during his absence, the door was closed, he would have lost his freedom. The second concerned an elephant, and it was truly elephantine. Suffering from weak legs, the heavy animal went to consult a man, a famous physician, who, seeing those ponderous limbs, cried, "I never saw stronger legs!"

Luciano didn't let those tales affect him, because he didn't understand them. He laughed abundantly, but it was clear that what seemed comic to him was the notion that something of this sort had been presented to him as salable goods. He laughed also out of courtesy when it was explained to him that the bird was afraid of being deprived of its freedom to return to the cage, and the man admired the elephant's legs, no matter how weak. But then Luciano asked: "What can you get for a pair of stories like that?"

Guido a.s.sumed a superior tone. "The pleasure of having created them, and then, after creating some more, also a great deal of money."

Carmen, on the contrary, was overcome with emotion. She asked permission to copy out those two little stories and she gratefully thanked Guido when he made her a present of the page on which he had written them, after he had also signed it with his pen.

What did I have to do with this? I didn't have to fight to win Carmen's admiration, which, as I have said, meant nothing to me; but remembering my behavior then, I have to believe that even a woman who is not an object of our desire can drive us to fight. In fact, didn't the medieval heroes fight over women they had never seen? To me that day it so happened that the shooting pains in my poor organism suddenly became acute, and I thought I could alleviate them only by dueling with Guido, immediately writing some fables of my own.

I had them give me the typewriter, and I really did improvise. True, the first tale I wrote had been in my thoughts for many days. I improvised the t.i.tle: "Hymn to Life." Then, after reflecting an instant, I wrote below that: "Dialogue." It seemed to me easier to make animals speak than to describe them. Thus my fable took the form of a brief dialogue: The pensive shrimp: Life is beautiful, but you have to take care where you sit.

The bream (rushing to the dentist): Life is beautiful, but we should eliminate those traitorous little animals that, inside their tasty flesh, conceal sharp metal.

Now I had to make up the second fable, but I had run out of animals. I looked at the dog lying in his corner, and he looked back at me. Those timid eyes evoked a memory: a few days earlier Guido had returned from hunting covered with fleas, and had gone to clean himself up in our little closet. I immediately had my fable, and I wrote it in one breath: "Once upon a time there was a prince, bitten by many fleas. He called on the G.o.ds, beseeching them to inflict a single flea on him, big and ravening, but just one, and the others were to be a.s.signed to the rest of mankind. But none of the fleas would agree to remain alone with that beast of a man, and so he had to keep them all."

At that moment my fables seemed splendid to me. The things that issue from our brains have a supremely lovable appearance, especially when you look at them the moment they're born. To tell the truth, I like my dialogue even now, when I have had plenty of practice in creating. The hymn to life made by the doomed creature is something very pleasurable for those who are watching his sentence being executed, and it is also true that many who are moribund expend their dying breath to tell what, to them, seems the cause of their death, thus intoning a hymn to the life of the others, who will be able to avoid that misfortune. As for the second fable, I don't wish to speak of it, and it was wittily commented on by Guido himself, who shouted, laughing: "That's not a fable: it's a way of calling me an animal."

I laughed with him, and the pains that had impelled me to write immediately abated. Luciano laughed when I explained to him what I meant, and he believed n.o.body would pay anything for my fables or for Guido's. But Carmen didn't like my stories. She gave me an inquisitorial glance, truly new for those eyes, and I understood it as if it had been spoken aloud: You don't love Guido!

I was absolutely distraught because at that moment she surely was not mistaken. I thought I was wrong to behave as if I didn't love Guido-I, who, after all, worked altruistically for him. I had to be more careful of my behavior.

I said meekly to Guido: "I'm willing to admit that your fables are better than mine. But you must remember these are the first fables I've ever written."

He didn't back down. "Do you think I've written others?"

Carmen's gaze had already softened and, to make it even less harsh, I said to Guido: "You surely have a special talent for fables."

But the compliment made them both laugh and me, too, immediately afterwards, but all good-naturedly, because it was obvious I had spoken without any malicious intent.

The copper-sulfate deal brought a greater seriousness to our office. There was no more time for fables. Almost all the offers proposed to us now were accepted. Some brought in a profit, but slight; others entailed losses, large ones. A strange avarice was the chief defect in Guido, who, outside of business, was so generous. When a deal worked out, he liquidated it hastily, eager to collect the small profit he gained by it. When, on the contrary, he found himself involved in a losing venture, he could never seem to extricate himself, not if he could postpone the moment when he had to dig into his own pocket. This, I believe, is why his losses were always considerable and his profits slight. A businessman's qualities are only what is generated by his whole organism, from the ends of his hair to his toenails. A saying the Greeks have could be applied to Guido: "clever fool." Truly clever, but also truly foolish. He was full of cunning, which served only to grease the slope down which he slid farther and farther.

Along with the copper sulfate, the twins unexpectedly arrived. His first impression was of surprise, and far from pleasant, but then, immediately after announcing the event to me, he managed to make a witticism that made me laugh heartily, and so, pleased with its success, he couldn't go on looking angry. Connecting the two babies with the sixty tons of sulfate, he said: "I'm doomed to operate wholesale!"

To console him, I reminded him that Augusta was again in her seventh month and that soon, in the baby department, my tonnage would equal his.

He answered, still wittily: "To me, good bookkeeper that I am, it doesn't seem the same."

A few days afterwards, he was overcome with great affection for the two little mites. Augusta, who spent a part of every day at her sister's, told me he devoted several hours to them daily. He petted them and sang them to sleep, and Ada was so grateful to him that between the two a new fondness seemed to blossom. During those days he deposited a fairly conspicuous sum with an insurance firm so that when the children turned twenty, they would receive a little nest egg. I remember it, because I debited that sum to his account.

I, too, was invited to see the twins; actually, Augusta had told me that I could also say h.e.l.lo to Ada, who, as it afterwards turned out, was unable to receive me, having to remain in bed even though ten days had gone by since the delivery.

The two babies lay in two cradles in a little room adjoining their parents' bedchamber. From the bed, Ada cried to me: "Aren't they beautiful, Zeno?"

I remained surprised by the sound of that voice. It seemed softer to me: it was a genuine cry, because you could hear the effort it cost, and yet it remained so sweet. No doubt the sweetness in that voice came from motherhood, but it moved me because I had discovered it only when it was addressed to me. That sweetness made me feel as if Ada hadn't called me simply by my first name, but had also prefixed to it an affectionate qualifier, such as "dear" or "dear brother"! I felt a keen grat.i.tude, and I became kind and affectionate.

I replied gaily: "Beautiful and dear, pictures of you, two wonders." To me they looked like two blanched little corpses. Both were whimpering, and not in harmony.

Soon Guido returned to his former life. After the sulfate affair, he came more regularly to the office, but every week, on Sat.u.r.day, he went off hunting and didn't return until late Monday morning, barely in time to look in at the office before lunch. He went fishing at night, and often spent the night on the water. Augusta told me of Ada's sorrows, for she suffered not only from frantic jealousy but also from being alone so much of the day. Augusta tried to calm her, reminding her that hunting and fishing don't involve women. But-from someone, there was no finding out whom-Ada had been informed that Carmen sometimes accompanied Guido fishing. Guido, then, had confessed as much, adding that there was nothing wrong in his being kind to an employee who was so useful to him. And besides, wasn't Luciano always present, too? In the end he promised not to invite her again, as it made Ada unhappy. He declared he was unwilling to give up either his hunting, which cost him so much money, or his fishing. He said he worked hard (and, in fact, at that time there was a great deal to do in our office) and it seemed to him that he was ent.i.tled to a little distraction. Ada was not of this opinion, and it seemed to her that he would have enjoyed a finer distraction with his family, and on this score she had the unconditional agreement of Augusta, whereas for me this latter distraction was a bit too noisy.

Augusta then exclaimed: "Aren't you at home every day, at the proper hours?"

It was true, and I should have confessed that between me and Guido there was a great difference, but I couldn't bring myself to boast about it. I said to Augusta, caressing her: "The merit is all yours, because you used some very drastic methods of training."

Moreover, for poor Guido, things were worsening every day: first there were two babies all right, but only one wet nurse, because everyone hoped that Ada would be able to feed one of the children. But she couldn't, and they had to engage a second wet nurse. When Guido wanted to make me laugh, he would walk up and down the office beating time to the words: "One wife ... two babies... two wet nurses!"

There was one thing Ada particularly hated: Guido's violin. She put up with the babies' crying, but she suffered horribly at the sound of the violin. She once said to Augusta: "I want to bark like a dog when I hear those sounds!"

Strange! Augusta, on the contrary, was blissful when she pa.s.sed my little study and heard my faltering sounds coming from it!

"But Ada's marriage also was a love-marriage," I said, amazed. "Isn't the violin Guido's greatest a.s.set?"

This sort of talk was completely forgotten when I saw Ada again for the first time. It was I, indeed, who first became aware of her illness. One day early in November-a cold, damp, sunless day-against my usual practice I left the office at three in the afternoon and hurried home, thinking to rest and to dream for a few hours in my warm little study. To reach it, I had to walk down the long pa.s.sage, and outside Augusta's workroom I stopped, because I heard Ada's voice. It was sweet or tentative (which is the same thing, I believe), as it had been that day when it was addressed to me. I entered the room, impelled by the strange curiosity to see how the serene, the calm Ada could a.s.sume that voice, slightly reminiscent of one of our actresses when she wants to make others weep without weeping herself. In fact, it was a false voice, at least that's how I heard it, simply because even without even seeing its owner, I perceived it, for the second time after so many days, still equally moved and moving. I a.s.sumed they were talking about Guido, for what other subject could have made Ada so emotional?

On the contrary, the two women were taking a cup of coffee together, discussing domestic matters: linen, servants, and so on. But it sufficed for me to see Ada to understand that the voice was not false. Her face, too, was touching, and for the first time I found it so changed; if that voice was not inspired by a feeling, still it mirrored precisely an entire organism, and for this reason it was real and sincere. This I sensed at once. I am not a doctor, and therefore I didn't think of an illness, but I tried to explain to myself the change in Ada's appearance as an effect of her convalescence after giving birth. But how to explain the fact that Guido hadn't noticed this change that had taken place in his wife? Meanwhile, I, who knew those eyes by heart, those eyes I had so feared because I had promptly realized how coldly they examined things and people before accepting them or rejecting them, I could now verify at once that they were changed, enlarged, as if, in order to see better, they had forced their sockets. Those great eyes were a false note in that dejected, faded little face.

She held out her hand to me with great affection. "Yes, I know," she said to me. "You seize every possible moment to come and see your wife and your little girl."

Her hand was moist with sweat, and I know that signifies weakness. So I was all the more convinced that, upon recovering her health, she would regain her former color and the firm line of her cheeks and brow.

I interpreted the words she had addressed to me as a reproach directed at Guido, and good-naturedly I replied that Guido, as head of the business, had greater responsibilities than I, thus he was tied to the office.

She gave me a questioning look to make sure I was speaking seriously. "But still," she said, "it seems to me he could find a little more time for his wife and children." And her voice was full of tears. She recovered herself with a smile that craved indulgence, and added: "Besides business, there is also hunting and fishing! They are what take up so much of his time."

With a volubility that amazed me, she talked about the choice dishes they ate at their table as a result of Guido's hunting and fishing.

"All the same, I'd gladly do without!" she went on, with a sigh and a tear. She wouldn't say, however, that she was unhappy-no, quite the contrary! She said that now she couldn't even imagine being without her two babies, whom she adored! A bit coyly she added, smiling, that she loved them even more now that each had his wet nurse. She didn't sleep much, but at least, when she did manage to doze off, n.o.body disturbed her. And when I asked her if she really slept so little, she turned serious again and, with emotion, told me that sleep was her greatest problem.

Then, gaily, she added: "But it's already better!"

A little later she left us, for two reasons: Before evening she had to go and see her mother, and moreover she couldn't stand the temperature of our rooms, equipped with great stoves. I, who considered this temperature barely comfortable, thought it was a sign of strength to feel it was excessively hot.

"It doesn't seem you're all that weak," I said, smiling. "Wait and see how different you feel at my age."

She was very flattered to hear herself defined as too young.

Augusta and I accompanied her to the landing. Apparently she felt a great need for our friendship, because, in taking those few steps, she walked between us, grasping first Augusta's arm and then mine, which I immediately stiffened in fear of succ.u.mbing to my old habit of squeezing every female arm offered to my touch. On the landing she still talked a good deal, and as she recalled her father, her eyes were again moist, for the third time in a quarter of an hour. When she had gone, I said to Augusta that Ada was not a woman but a fountain. Although I had noticed her sickness, I attached no importance to it. Her eyes were enlarged, her little face was thin, her voice had changed, and even her character, with that displayed affection, so unlike her, but I attributed everything to the double motherhood and to weakness. In short, I proved myself an excellent observer because I saw everything, but also a big ignoramus because I didn't p.r.o.nounce the true word: illness!

The following day, the obstetrician who was treating Ada asked for a consultation with Dr. Paoli, who immediately uttered the words that I had been unable to say: morbus base-dowii. Guido told me about it, describing the disease with great erudition and sympathizing with Ada, who suffered greatly. No malice intended, I think his erudition and his sympathy were not great. He struck a heartbroken att.i.tude when he spoke of his wife, but when he dictated letters to Carmen, he displayed all his joy in living and teaching; he believed, too, that the man who had given his name to the disease was the same Basedow who was the friend of Goethe's, whereas when I looked up that sickness in an encyclopedia, I realized at once that it was a different person.

Basedow's is a great, significant disease! For me, becoming acquainted with it was highly important. I studied it in various monographs and thought I was finally discovering the essential secret of our organism. I believe that many people, like me, go through periods of time when certain ideas occupy, even cram, the whole brain, shutting out all others. Why, the same thing happens to society! It lives on Darwin, after having lived on Robespierre and Napoleon, and then Liebig or perhaps Leopardi, when Bismarck doesn't reign over the whole cosmos!

But only I lived on Basedow! It seemed to me that he had shed light on the roots of life, which is made thus: All organisms extend along a line. At one end is Basedow's disease, which implies the generous, mad consumption of vital force at a precipitous pace, the pounding of an uncurbed heart. At the other end are the organisms depressed through organic avarice, destined to die of a disease that would appear to be exhaustion but which is, on the contrary, sloth. The golden mean between the two diseases is found in the center and is improperly defined as health, which is only a way station. And between the center and one extreme-the Basedow one-are all those who exacerbate and consume life in great desires, ambitions, pleasures, and also work; along the other half of the line, those who, on the scales of life, throw only crumbs and save, becoming those long-lived wretches who seem a burden on society. It seems this burden, too, is necessary. Society proceeds because the Basedowians push it, and it doesn't crash because the others hold it back. I am convinced that anyone wishing to construct a society could do so more simply, but this is the way it's been made, with goiter at one end and edema at the other, and there's no help for it. In the middle are those who have either incipient goiter or incipient edema, and along the entire line, in all mankind, absolute health is missing.

In Ada, too, goiter was absent, according to what Augusta told me, but she had all the other symptoms of the disease. Poor Ada! She used to seem to me the picture of health and equilibrium, so that for a long time I thought she had chosen her husband in the same cold spirit with which her father chose his merchandise, and now she had been seized by a sickness that drew her into quite another regime: psychological perversion! But, along with her, I also fell ill, a slight but prolonged sickness. For too long I thought of Basedow. I already believe that at any point of the universe where you are settled, you end up being infected. You have to keep moving. Life has poisons, but also some other poisons that serve as antidotes. Only by running can you elude the former and take advantage of the latter.

My sickness was a ruling pa.s.sion, a dream, and also a fear. It must have originated from a process of reasoning; by the term perversion we mean a deviation from health, that kind of health that accompanied us for a stretch of our life. Now I knew what Ada's health had been. Mightn't her perversion lead her to love me, whom-when she was healthy-she had rejected?

I don't know how this terror (or this hope) was born in my brain!

Was it perhaps because Ada's sweet, broken voice seemed a voice of love when she addressed me? Poor Ada had become really ugly, and I was unable to desire her any longer. But I kept reviewing our shared past, and it seemed to me that if she were overcome suddenly by love for me, I would find myself in a nasty situation somewhat reminiscent of Guido's position with the English friend and the sixty tons of copper sulfate. The same situation exactly! A few years ago I had declared my love to her, and I hadn't issued any notice of revocation beyond the act of marrying her sister. In that transaction she was not protected by the law, but by chivalry. It seemed to me I had committed myself to her so firmly that if now many many years later, she were to come to me, complete with a fine goiter, thanks to Basedow, I would have had to honor my signature.

I remember, however, that this prospect made my thoughts of Ada more affectionate. Previously, when I had learned of Ada's sufferings caused by Guido, I surely had not felt pleasure, but I still had turned my thoughts with some satisfaction to my own home, which Ada had refused to enter and where there was no suffering whatsoever. Now things had changed: the Ada who had scornfully repulsed me no longer existed, unless my medical books were mistaken.

Ada's illness was serious. Dr. Paoli, a few days later, advised removing her from the family and sending her to a sanatorium in Bologna. I learned this from Guido, but Augusta then told me that even at a time like this, poor Ada was not being spared serious distress. Guido had had the nerve to suggest bringing in Carmen to run the household during his wife's absence. Ada lacked the courage to say openly what she thought of such a proposal, but she declared that she would not move from the house unless she was allowed to entrust its management to Aunt Maria, and Guido immediately fell in with this idea. However, he continued to cherish the notion of having Carmen at his disposal in the place vacated by Ada. One day he said to Carmen that if she hadn't been so busy in the office, he would gladly have entrusted the management of his household to her. Luciano and I exchanged a glance, and surely each of us discovered a sly expression on the face of the other. Carmen blushed, and murmured that she wouldn't have been able to accept.

"Of course," Guido said, enraged, "because of that stupid concern about what people think, it's impossible to do something really helpful!"

But he, too, soon fell silent and, surprisingly, he truncated his sermon on that interesting topic.

The whole family went to the station to see Ada off. Augusta had asked me to bring some flowers for her sister.

I arrived a bit late with a fine bunch of orchids, which I handed to Augusta. Ada was observing us, and when Augusta pa.s.sed the flowers to her, she said: "I thank you both with all my heart!"

She meant she was receiving the flowers also from me, but I felt this as a show of sisterly affection, sweet and also a bit cold. Basedow certainly had nothing to do with it.

Poor Ada looked like a young bride, those enormous eyes enlarged with happiness. Her disease seemed to simulate every emotion.

Guido was leaving with her, to accompany her to Bologna and then return after a few days. We waited on the platform for the train to leave. Ada remained at the window of her compartment and went on waving her handkerchief as long as she could see us.

Then we took the weeping Signora Malfenti home. At the moment of our separation, my mother-in-law, after kissing Augusta, kissed me, too.