Zeno's Conscience Part 2

To keep up the conversation, I asked: "So your older daughter owes her life to this other man?"

Again in a low voice, she admitted to believing as much, also because of a certain resemblance. She was very sorry she had betrayed her husband. She said this, but was still laughing because these are things you laugh about even when they hurt. But that was only after his death, because, before, since he didn't know about it, the matter couldn't have any importance.

Impelled by a certain fraternal friendliness, I tried to allay her sorrow; I told her I believed the dead do know everything, but certain things they don't give a d.a.m.n about.

"Only the living suffer over them!" I cried, banging my fist on the table.

I bruised my hand, and there is nothing better than physical pain to provoke new ideas. It occurred to me that while I was here tormenting myself with the thought of my wife's taking advantage of my confinement in order to betray me, perhaps the doctor was still in the clinic, in which case I could recover my peace of mind. I asked Giovanna to go and see, saying that I felt a need to tell the doctor something, and promising her the whole bottle as a reward. Protesting that she wasn't all that fond of drinking, she still complied at once and I heard her climb unsteadily up the wooden steps to the upper floor, to emerge from our cloister. Then she came down again, but she slipped, making a great racket and screaming.

"The devil take you," I murmured fervently. Had she broken her neck, my position would have been greatly simplified.

Instead, she joined me, smiling, because she was in that state where pains aren't so painful. She told me she had spoken with the attendant, who was just going to bed; though, even there, he remained at her disposal, in the event that I turned nasty. She raised her hand, index finger pointed, but she tempered those words and that threatening gesture with a smile. Then, more sharply, she added that the doctor had not returned after seeing my wife out. Not a sign! Indeed, for some hours, the attendant had hoped the doctor would return, because a patient needed to be looked at. Now the attendant had given up hope.

I looked at her, studying the smile that contorted her face, to see if it was habitual or if it was totally new, inspired by the fact that the doctor was with my wife rather than with me, his patient. I was seized by a fury that made my head spin. I must confess that, as always, in my spirit two persons were combating, one of whom, the more reasonable, was saying to me: "Idiot! What makes you think your wife is unfaithful? She wouldn't have to get you locked up to create the opportunity." The other, and this was surely the one who wanted to smoke, also called me an idiot, but shouted: "Don't you recall how easy things are when the husband is away? And with the doctor you are paying money to!"

Giovanna, taking another drink, said: "I forgot to lock the door upstairs. But I don't want to climb those steps again. Anyway, there are always people up there, and you'd look really foolish if you tried to run away."

"Yes," I said, with that modic.u.m of hypocrisy now necessary to deceive the poor creature. Then I, too, gulped down some cognac, and declared that with all this liquor now at my disposal, I didn't give a d.a.m.n about cigarettes. She believed me at once, and then I told her I actually wasn't the one who wanted me to break the smoking habit. It was my wife. Because when I smoked as many as ten cigarettes a day, I became something terrible. Any woman who came within reach of me then was in danger.

Giovanna began to laugh loudly, sinking back in the chair: "So it's your wife who prevents you from smoking the ten cigarettes you need?"

"That's exactly how it was! At least she used to keep me from smoking."

Giovanna was no fool once she had all that cognac inside her. She was seized by a fit of laughter that almost made her fall out of the chair, but when she had recovered enough breath to gasp out a few words, she painted a magnificent scene suggested to her by my illness. "Ten cigarettes... half an hour... you set the alarm... then ..."

I corrected her. "For ten cigarettes I'd need an hour, more or less. Then, for the full effect, about another hour, give or take ten minutes..."

Suddenly Giovanna became serious and rose almost effortlessly from her chair. She said she would go and lie down because she was feeling a slight headache. I invited her to take the bottle with her, because I had had enough of that strong liquor. Hypocritically, I said that the next day I wanted to be provided with some good wine.

But she wasn't thinking about wine. Before leaving, as she held the bottle under her arm, she looked me up and down, with a leer that frightened me.

She left the door open, and a moment or two later a package landed in the center of the room. I picked it up immediately: it contained exactly eleven cigarettes. To make sure, poor Giovanna had chosen to be generous. Ordinary cigarettes, Hungarian. But the first one I lighted was very good. I felt enormously relieved. At once I thought, with smug pleasure, how I had outsmarted this place, fine for shutting up children, but not me. Then I realized I had outsmarted my wife too, and it seemed to me I had repaid her in her own coin. Why, otherwise, would my jealousy have been transformed into such acceptable curiosity? I remained in that room, calmly smoking those nauseating cigarettes.

After about half an hour, I remembered I had to escape from that clinic, where Giovanna was awaiting her reward. I took off my shoes and went out into the corridor. The door of Giovanna's room was ajar and, judging by her regular, noisy breathing, I imagined she was asleep. Cautiously I climbed up to the third story where, behind that door-Doctor Muli's pride-I slipped on my shoes. I stepped out onto a landing and started down the other stairs, descending slowly so as not to arouse suspicion.

I had reached the landing of the second floor when a young lady in a rather elegant nurse's uniform came after me, to ask politely: "Are you looking for someone?"

She was pretty, and I wouldn't have minded smoking the ten cigarettes in her company. A bit aggressively, I smiled at her: "Dr. Muli isn't in?"

She opened her eyes wide. "He's never here at this hour."

"Could you tell me where I might find him now? At my house there's someone ill who needs him."

Kindly, she told me the doctor's address, and I repeated it several times, to make her believe I wanted to memorize it. I wouldn't have been in any hurry to leave, but, irritated, she turned her back on me. I was actually being thrown out of my prison.

Downstairs, a woman was quick to open the door for me. I hadn't a penny on me, and I murmured: "I'll have to tip you some other time."

There's no knowing the future. With me, things are often repeated: it was conceivable that I might turn up there again.

The night was clear and warm. I took off my hat, the better to feel the breeze of freedom. I looked at the stars with wonder, as if I had only just conquered them. The next day, far from the clinic, I would give up smoking. Meanwhile, pa.s.sing a cafe that was still open, I bought some good cigarettes, because it wouldn't be possible to conclude my smoker's career with one of poor Giovanna's cigarettes. The man who waited on me knew who I was and gave me the pack on credit.

Reaching my villa, I rang the bell furiously. First the maid came to the window, and then, after not such a short time, my wife. I waited for her, thinking, perfectly cool: Apparently Dr. Muli is here. But, recognizing me, my wife laughed, and her laughter, echoing in the deserted street, was so sincere that it would have sufficed to dispel all suspicion.

Once inside, I postponed any inquisitorial action. When I had promised my wife to tell my adventures, which she thought she knew already, the next day, she asked me: "Why don't you go to bed?"

As an excuse, I said: "I believe you've taken advantage of my absence to move that armoire."

It's true that, at home, I always believe things have been moved, and it's also true that my wife very often does move them; but at that moment I was peering into every corner to see if the small, trim body of Dr. Muli was concealed somewhere.

My wife gave me some good news. Returning from the clinic, she had run into Olivi's son, who had told her the old man was much better, having taken a medicine prescribed by a new doctor.

Falling asleep, I thought I had done the right thing in leaving the clinic, because I had plenty of time to cure myself slowly. And my son, sleeping in the next room, also was surely not preparing to judge me yet, or to imitate me. There was absolutely no hurry.

MY FATHER'S DEATH.

THE DOCTOR has left town, and I really don't know if a biography of my father is necessary. If I describe my father in over-scrupulous detail, it might turn out that, to achieve my own cure, it would have been necessary to a.n.a.lyze him first. I am going bravely ahead, because I know that if my father had needed such treatment it would have been for an illness quite different from mine. In any case, to waste no time, I will tell only as much about him as is necessary to stimulate my memory of myself.

"15.4.1890. My father dies. L.C." For those who do not know, those last two letters do not stand for Lower Case, but for Last Cigarette. This is an annotation I find in a volume by Ostwald on positivistic philosophy, with which, full of hope, I have spent many hours and never understood. No one would believe this, but, despite its brevity, that annotation records the most important event of my life.

My mother died before I was fifteen. I wrote some poems dedicated to her-hardly the same as weeping-and, in my sorrow, I was accompanied always by the feeling that at this moment a serious, industrious life was to begin for me. My grief itself hinted at a more intense life. At that time a still-active religious feeling attenuated and softened the terrible misfortune. My mother continued to live, though far from me, and she would derive satisfaction from the successes for which I was preparing myself. Very convenient! I remember precisely my condition at that time. Thanks to my mother's death and the salutary emotion it inspired, everything was going to improve for me.

My father's death, on the contrary, was a great, genuine catastrophe. Heaven no longer existed, and furthermore, at thirty, I was finished. This was the end for me, too! I realized for the first time that the most important, the decisive part of my life lay behind me, irretrievably. My grief was not merely egoistic, as these words might suggest. Not at all! I wept for him and myself together, and also for myself alone, because he was dead. Until then I had gone from one cigarette to another and from one university department to another, with an indestructible faith in my ability. And I believe that faith, which made my life so sweet, would have endured perhaps even till today, if my father had not died. With him dead, there was no longer a tomorrow to which I could address my determination.

Time and again, when I think about it, I am amazed by the strange way this despair of myself and my future came into existence at my father's death and not before. Generally speaking, these are recent events, and to recall my great sorrow and every detail of that catastrophe, I certainly have no need to dream, as the a.n.a.lysis gentlemen would like. Until his death, I did not live for my father. I made no effort to be close to him and, when it was possible to do so without hurting him, I kept out of his way. At the university, everyone knew him by the nickname I had given him: "Old Silva Moneybags." It took his sickness to make me attached to him; the sickness that quickly became death, for it was very brief and the doctor gave him up for dead at once. When I was in Trieste, we saw each other perhaps an hour a day at most. We were never so close or so long together as in my time of mourning. If only I had taken more care of him and wept less! I would have been less sick myself. It was hard for us to be together, not least because intellectually we had nothing in common. Looking at each other, we both had the same pitying smile, his made more bitter by his keen paternal anxiety about my future, mine, on the contrary, all indulgence, convinced as I was that his weaknesses by now were inconsequential, as I attributed them in part to his age. He was the first to distrust my energy and-it seems to me-too soon. All the same, I suspect that even without the support of any scientific conviction, he distrusted me because he had made me, and that was all I needed-now with confident scientific conviction-to increase my distrust of him.

He enjoyed, true, the reputation of being a clever businessman, but I knew that for many years his affairs had been handled by Olivi. Lack of talent for business was a point of resemblance between him and me, but there were no others; I can say that, of the two of us, I represented strength, and he weakness. What I have already recorded in these notebooks proves that I possess and always have possessed-perhaps my supreme misfortune-an impetuous drive toward the future. All my dreams of stability and strength can be defined only in those terms. My father knew nothing of all this. He lived in perfect harmony with the way he was made, and I must believe that he never exerted any effort to improve. He would smoke all day and, after Mamma's death, when he could not sleep, also at night. He drank a fair amount, too, like a gentleman, in the evening, at supper, so that he could be sure of finding sleep readily the moment he laid his head on the pillow. But, to hear him, smoking and alcohol were good medicines.

As for women, I learned from some relatives that my mother had had some cause for jealousy. Indeed, that mild woman apparently had sometimes to resort to violent measures to keep her husband in line. He allowed himself to be guided by her, whom he loved and respected, but apparently she never managed to wring any confession of infidelity from him, and thus she died in the conviction that she had been mistaken. Still, my good kinfolk tell how she caught her husband virtually in flagrante at her dressmaker's. He excused himself on the pretext of absentmindedness and so firmly that he was believed. The only consequence was that my mother never returned to that dressmaker, nor did my father. I believe that in his shoes I would have ended up confessing, but I would not have been able to abandon the dressmaker afterwards, for where I stand, I put down roots.

As a true paterfamilias, my father knew how to defend his peace and quiet. He possessed this peace and quiet both in his house and in his soul. The only books he read were bland and moral, not out of hypocrisy on his part, but from the most genuine conviction: I think he felt deeply the truth of those moralizing sermons, and his conscience was appeased by his sincere support of virtue. Now that I am growing old and turning into a kind of patriarch, I also feel that a preached immorality is more to be punished that an immoral action. You arrive at murder through love or through hate; you propagandize murder only through wickedness.

We had so little in common, the two of us, that he confessed to me how, among the people in the world who made him uneasy, I was number one. My yearning for health had driven me to study the human body. He, on the contrary, had been able to dispel from his memory any thought of that frightful machine. For him the heart did not beat and there was no need to recall valves and veins and metabolism, to explain how his organism lived. Exercise? No, because experience told him that whatever moved eventually stopped. The earth itself was, for him, unmoving and firmly attached to its hinges. Naturally he never said this, but he suffered if anything was said to him that did not conform to this view. He interrupted me, revolted, one day when I mentioned the antipodes to him. The thought of those people with their heads upside down made him queasy.

He reproached me for two other things: my absentminded-ness and my tendency to laugh at the most serious matters. When it came to absentmindedness, he differed from me because he kept a little notebook in which he jotted down everything he wanted to remember, reviewing its pages several times daily. In this way he thought he had overcome his ailment and didn't suffer from it anymore. He imposed that notebook method also on me, but in mine I jotted down nothing except a few last cigarettes.

As for my contempt for serious matters, I believe his great defect was to consider serious too many things in this world. Here is an example: When, after having transferred from the study of law to that of chemistry, I sought his permission to return to the former, he said to me amiably: "The fact remains that you are certifiably crazy."

I wasn't in the least offended, and I was so grateful to him for his acquiescence that I thought to reward him by making him laugh. I went to Dr. Canestrini for an examination and a certificate. It wasn't an easy matter because I had to submit to long and thorough tests. When I was given a clean bill of mental health, I triumphantly carried the doc.u.ment to my father, but he couldn't laugh at it. In a heartbroken voice, tears in his eyes, he cried: "Ah, you really are crazy."

And that was my reward for the laborious and innocuous little farce. He never forgave me and so never laughed at it. To persuade a doctor to examine you as a joke? To have a certificate drawn up, as a joke, complete with tax stamps? Madness!

In short, compared with him I represented strength, and at times I think that the disappearance of his weakness, which had strengthened me, was something I felt as a reduction.

I remember how he demonstrated his weakness when that rascal Olivi persuaded him to make a will. The 'will was important for Olivi, who wanted to have my affairs placed under his guardianship; and apparently he worked for a long time on the old man to induce him to perform that painful task. Finally my father made up his mind, but his broad, peaceful face turned grim. He thought constantly of death, as if that doc.u.ment had brought him into contact with it.

One evening he asked me: "Do you think everything stops when we're dead?"

The mystery of death is something i think about every day, but I was not yet in a position to give him the information he was asking of me. To please him, I invented the happiest faith in our future.

"I believe pleasure survives, because sorrow is no longer necessary. Decomposition could recall s.e.xual pleasure. Certainly it will be accompanied by happiness and repose, since recomposition would be so toilsome. Decomposition should be the reward of life!"

I was a total failure. We were at table after supper. Without answering, he rose from his chair, drained another gla.s.s, and said, "This is no moment for philosophizing-least of all, with you!"

And he went out. Distressed, I followed him, thinking to stay with him and distract him from his sad thoughts. He sent me away, saying I reminded him of death and its pleasures.

He could not dismiss the thought of his will until he was able to announce it to me as a fact. He remembered it every time he saw me. One evening he blurted: "I have to tell you something: I've made my will."

To relieve his nightmare, I immediately mastered my surprise at his communication and said to him: "I'll never have to undergo that nuisance, because I hope all my heirs will die before me!"

He was promptly disturbed by my laughing at such a grave matter, and he rediscovered all his desire to punish me. So it was easy for him to inform me of the fine trick he had played on me, making me Olivi's ward.

I must say I behaved like a good boy. I gave up any idea of objection, and to tear him from the thought that was making him suffer, I declared that I would comply with his last wishes, whatever they might be.

"Perhaps," I added, "my future behavior will lead you to alter your last wishes."

He liked that, also because he saw that I was attributing a very, very long life to him. Still, he actually wanted me to swear that, unless he decreed otherwise, I would never try to reduce Olivi's authority. 1 swore a formal oath, since my simple promise wasn't enough for him. I was then so meek that now, when I'm tortured by remorse for not having loved him enough before he died, I always summon up that scene. To be sincere, I have to add that it was easy for me to submit to his arrangements because at that time I found the idea of being forced not to work rather attractive.

About a year before his death, I once took rather vigorous action for the sake of his health. He confided to me that he felt unwell, and I forced him to go to a doctor, accompanying him there myself. The doctor prescribed some medicine and told us to come back the following week. But then my father refused, insisting that he hated doctors as much as undertakers, and he didn't even take the prescribed medicine because that also reminded him of doctors and undertakers. For a couple of hours he didn't smoke, and for a single meal, he gave up wine. He felt very well when he could say good-bye to the treatment, and I, seeing him happier, thought no more about it.

There were also times when I saw him sad. But I would have been amazed to see him really happy, alone and old as he was.

One evening toward the end of March, I was a bit late coming home. Nothing unusual: I had fallen into the hands of a learned friend, who wanted to expound to me some of his ideas about the origins of Christianity. For the first time I was obliged to think about those origins, yet I endured the long lesson to please my friend. It was cold and drizzling. Everything was unpleasant and gloomy, including the Greeks and the Jews of whom my friend spoke; still, I submitted to that suffering for a good two hours. My usual weakness! I could bet that even today I'd be equally incapable of resisting, if someone made a serious attempt to persuade me to study astronomy for a while.

I entered the garden surrounding our villa, which was reached by a short driveway. Maria, our maid, was waiting for me at the window and, hearing me approach, she cried into the darkness: "Is that you, Signor Zeno?"

Maria was one of those maidservants who are no longer to be found. She had been with us for about fifteen years. Every month she deposited a part of her wages in the savings bank against her old age: savings that proved of no use to her, however, for she died in our house, still on the job, shortly after my marriage.

She told me that my father had come home a few hours before, but had insisted on holding supper for me. When she protested that meanwhile he should begin eating, she was dismissed rather rudely. Afterwards he asked for me several times, anxious and uneasy. Maria hinted that she thought my father wasn't feeling well. He seemed to be having difficulty speaking and was short of breath. I must say that, being alone with him so much, she often got it into her head that he was ill. There were few things for the poor woman to observe in that lonely house, and-after the experience with my mother-she expected everyone to die before her.

I rushed to the dining room, somewhat curious, not yet concerned. My father rose immediately from the sofa where he was lying, and welcomed me with a great joy that did not move me because I first caught his expression of reproach. But at the same time his joy rea.s.sured me, as it seemed a sign of health. I didn't notice the stammering and shortness of breath Maria had mentioned. Then, instead of scolding me, he apologized for having been obstinate.

"I can't help it," he said, in a good-natured tone. "The two of us are alone in the world, and I wanted to see you before going to bed."

If only I had behaved with simplicity, putting my arms around my dear father, whom illness had made so meek and affectionate! Instead, I began coldly to make a diagnosis: Had the old Silva become so meek? Was he ill? I looked at him suspiciously and could find nothing better to do than scold him myself: "Why did you wait this long to eat your supper? You could have eaten, and then waited for me."

He laughed, very youthfully: "I eat better in company."

This jollity could also indicate a good appet.i.te: I was rea.s.sured, and I started eating. In his house slippers, his legs unsteady, he came to the table and occupied his usual place. Then he sat and watched me as I ate, while he, after a few scant spoonfuls, took no more food and even pushed away the plate, which revolted him. But the smile persisted on his aged face. I remember only, as if it were something that had happened yesterday, how a couple of times, when I looked into his eyes, he avoided meeting my gaze. They say this is a sign of insincerity, but now I know it's a sign of illness. The sick animal will not allow himself to be observed at any orifice through which disease or weakness can be perceived.

He was still expecting to hear how I had spent all those hours during which he had waited for me. And seeing that it meant so much to him, I stopped eating for a moment and said curtly that until now I had been discussing the origins of Christianity.

He looked at me, dubious and perplexed: "So you, too, are thinking about religion these days?"

It was obvious that if I had agreed to think about it with him, I would have given him consolation. But, on the contrary, as long as my father was alive, I felt combative (afterwards no longer); and I replied with one of those trite remarks heard every day in the cafes around the University: "For me religion is merely an ordinary phenomenon, something to be studied."

"Phenomenon?" he said, disoriented. He groped for a ready retort and opened his mouth to utter it. Then he hesitated and looked at the second dish, which at that moment Maria was offering him. He didn't touch it. Then, to gag himself, he stuck into his mouth a cigar stub and lighted it, allowing it to go out at once. He had granted himself a kind of interval, to reflect calmly. For an instant he looked at me resolutely: "Surely you don't mean to laugh at religion?"

Like the perfect idle student I had always been, I replied, with my mouth full: "Laugh? No, I study it!"

He was silent, and looked for a long time at the cigar stub he had laid on a plate. I understand now why he said that to me. Now I understand everything that pa.s.sed through that already clouded mind, and I am surprised how I then understood nothing. I believe my spirit then lacked the affection that renders so many things comprehensible. Afterwards it was so easy for me! He avoided engaging my skepticism: a challenge too difficult for him at that moment, but he thought he could attack it on the flank, gently, as befitted a sick man. I remember that when he spoke, his breath came in gasps and impeded his speech. It's a great effort, to prepare yourself for combat. But I thought he would not resign himself to going to bed without pitching into me, and I prepared myself for discussions that then didn't take place.

"I... " he said, still looking at his now-spent cigar stub, "I feel how great my experience is, and my knowledge of life. A man doesn't live all these years for nothing. I know many things, and unfortunately I'm unable to teach them all to you as I would like. Oh, how I would like that! I see into things; and I see what is right and true and also what isn't."

I could raise no objection here. I mumbled, unconvinced, as I went on eating: "Yes, Papa."

I didn't want to hurt his feelings.

"Too bad you came home so late. I wasn't so tired before, and I could have said many things to you."

I thought he wanted to annoy me once again because I had been late, and I suggested saving that argument for the next day.

"It's not an argument," he replied, with a faraway look in his eyes. "It's something entirely different. Something that can't be discussed and that you'll know, too, as soon as I've told it to you. But it's hard to say!"

At this point I felt a suspicion: "You don't feel well?"

"I can't say I feel bad, but I'm very tired and I'm going off to bed at once."

He rang the bell and at the same time called out for Maria. When she came, he asked if everything was ready in his room. He then started off immediately, his slippers shuffling over the floor. When he was at my side, he bent his head to offer his cheek for my nightly kiss.

Seeing him move so unsteadily, I again suspected that he was ill and I asked him. We both repeated the same words several times, and he confirmed that he was tired but not ill. Then he added, "Now I'll think of the right words I'll say to you tomorrow. They'll convince you, you'll see."

"Papa," I declared with emotion, "I'll be happy to listen to you."

Seeing me so willing to bow to his experience, he hesitated to leave me: a favorable moment like this should be exploited! He ran his hand over his forehead and sat down in the chair he had been leaning on when he extended his cheek for the kiss. He was breathing with a little difficulty.

"Strange!" he said. "I can't say anything to you. Nothing at all."

He looked around as if he sought outside himself whatever he was unable to grasp within.

"And yet I know so many things. Indeed, I know everything. It must be the result of my great experience."

He wasn't suffering all that much at his inability to express himself because he smiled at his own strength, at his own greatness.

I don't know why I didn't call the doctor immediately. Instead, with sorrow and remorse, I must confess that I considered my father's words dictated by presumption, something I thought I'd observed in him several times. But I couldn't fail to notice his evident weakness, and only for that reason I didn't argue. I liked seeing him happy in his illusion of being so strong when, on the contrary, he was very weak. I was, besides, flattered by the affection he was displaying, showing his desire to pa.s.s on to me the knowledge he thought he possessed, though I was convinced I could learn nothing from him. And to encourage him and calm him, I said he shouldn't strive to find immediately the words he lacked, because in similar predicaments even the greatest scientists stored overcomplicated questions in some cranny of the brain until they simplified themselves.

He answered: "What I'm looking for isn't complicated. No, it's a matter of finding a word, just one, and I'll find it! But not tonight because I'm going to sleep straight through till morning, without the slightest concern."

Still he didn't rise from the chair. Hesitantly, after studying my face for a moment, he said: "I'm afraid I won't be able to tell you what I mean, thanks to your habit of laughing at everything. "

He smiled as if to beg me not to take offense at his words, and got up from the chair and proffered his cheek for the second time. I abandoned any idea of arguing, of convincing him that in this world there are many things that could and should be laughed at, and I tried to rea.s.sure him with a strong embrace. Perhaps my action was too strong, because as he freed himself from my hug, he was even shorter of breath, but he surely understood my affection, because he said good night with a friendly wave of his hand.

"Off to bed!" he cried joyfully, and went out, followed by Maria.