A Life (10 page)

“Really!” queried Alfonso, showing surprise.

He tried to find some answer to refuse the invitation.

Macario behaved as if Alfonso had already accepted, and,
followed
by him, he crossed the Corso and entered Via Ponte Rosso. Alfonso was still undecided.

“You’ll see! She’s at her prettiest! Half her day she spends at her desk. This new vocation doesn’t worry anyone, by the way; in a few months she won’t even mention it. I think what stirred her up is the fame being won by other women in Italy. Women! One begins, and the others follow like sheep. Men’s example doesn’t count at all. They imitate this, they imitate that, and never realize what they are imitating, because their tiny brains know so
little
about originality that they consider it equivalent to accuracy, accuracy in imitation. The really original woman is the one who first imitates a man.”

Alfonso laughed.

“What about Signorina Annetta?”

“About Signorina Annetta as a writer I know nothing. She’s so cautious that until she’s imitated something very closely she’ll show no one a thing; so one must wait before giving a definite
opinion
, as it’s a matter of knowing whom she’s chosen to imitate. My
opinion of Annetta you already know. Highly developed
mathematical
qualities …” and he made his usual gesture to accentuate the hint. “Anyway, now we’ll go and pay her our homage.”

They entered Via dei Forni; Alfonso stopped him.

“I’m not coming, I can’t come. I’m expected at home, and then in this state …”

His face was flushed, and he spoke with far more warmth than was needed to refuse Macario’s invitation.

“I can’t make you, of course. It’s a pity though! If someone is waiting for you, of course you’re right to refuse, but if it’s because of your clothes, you’re wrong. Firstly you’re quite decent. Then, now that Annetta is a literary girl, she likes bohemians. So come along, do!”

But Alfonso resisted. He had already realized from what Macario had said that Annetta would treat him pleasantly, but he wanted to be begged to come. He had been unable to obtain any other satisfaction from the offence done to him and intended to obtain at least that.

“You still remember Annetta’s coldness months ago.”

But Alfonso protested and, like a child, asserted that he no longer remembered.

Next evening they both met again in the library. Alfonso went there more willingly. He was amused by Macario’s conversation and flattered by his company.

Macario’s wit always won over Alfonso’s knowledge, and Macario was convinced that he was doing the teaching. He was mistaken. If Alfonso learnt anything from him, it was by observing him as an object of study.

He had understood now the quality of Macario’s wit. He noticed mistakes; he realized when Macario puffed up an idea to show it off more easily, and if he did sometimes show admiration it was because he admired the ease with which Macario made denials or assertions where superior minds would hesitate.

Macario often fell into contradictions, but never on the same day. He was subject to moods. He would put on borrowed clothes and live in them as if they were his own, and he would never take them off. That was easy for him, thanks to his superficial culture, which was extensive enough for him to create the image of an easily
civilized personality, and not deep enough to give him any firm convictions of the sort that are not renounced even in jest.

That second evening he attacked the press. He said that those who wrote for the press always had to pretend and could never be sincere. In public the old was called new, the blameworthy praised and so on. All this was rather weak stuff so far, but then he got under way. What use was learning? Apart from those who
dedicated
themselves to original research on a certain subject, others were wrong to bother too much about it. They tired out their brains and drew no advantage, because someone who
understands
one part of something well has educated his brain just as much as another who has studied more parts. Thus printed paper damages the brain more than it advances it. That ‘thus’ did not follow quite directly, but Alfonso gave no sign of noticing this, and Macario was pleased at his own reasoning.

“This is good!” exclaimed Macario one evening at the library, putting in front of Alfonso a little book he had just finished
reading
: Balzac’s
Louis Lambert
.

Alfonso also read it in two or three days with no less admiration. Apart from a love-letter of such deep and sensual passion that it transcended love, he did not admire the book’s artistic merits as much as the original way a whole philosophic system was explained briefly but completely, with every part indicated, and all handed over by the author to his hero with a grandee’s generosity.

Macario asked Alfonso how he had liked it, and Alfonso was about to give him his sincere opinion. But Macario quickly imposed his own ideas, as if fearing they would be stolen.

“D’you know why it’s such a fine book? It’s the only one of Balzac’s that is really impersonal, and it became that by chance. Louis Lambert is mad, all those around him are mad, and this time the author, to conform, makes himself mad too. So it’s a little world presented intact, by itself, without the slightest influence from outside.” Alfonso was amazed by this criticism, as original as it was false. It must have been made according to a method which Alfonso avoided mentioning only because he feared being also put into that ‘little world presented intact’.

His company must have pleased Macario, who often sought him out, even some evenings going to fetch him from the office.

Alfonso soon guessed the reason for this sudden affection. He owed it to his docility and, he thought, also to his size. He was so small and insignificant that Macario felt fine beside him. The friendship pleased him none the less for this. Courtesies, however expensive, are pleasant. He did not esteem Macario the less. He found certain qualities in this young man who was so elegant, an unconscious artist, intelligent even when speaking of things he knew nothing about.

Macario owned a little sailing-cutter and often invited Alfonso for morning trips in the bay. Alfonso’s life being so empty, those trips were a real joy. In the boat it was also easier for him to agree with Macario’s assertions, most of which he did not even hear. He was still trying hard to acquire the health necessary, he
considered
, for the life of hard work he intended to undertake, and sea air should help him find it.

One morning a gusty wind was blowing, and, at the end of the mole where they were standing waiting for the boat to come and fetch them, Alfonso suggested to Macario putting off their sail that morning as it seemed dangerous. Macario began to jeer and would not hear of it.

The cutter approached. Heeling under white sails swollen in the wind, it seemed about to turn over every instant but
straightened
up at the last second. Alfonso, on land, was seized by those nervous tremors which people get when they see others in danger of falling and, had it not been for his fear of Macario, would have happily let him leave alone.

Ferdinando, a port-worker who had been a sailor, was in charge of the boat. He left his place at the helm to Macario, who sat down after taking off his jacket as if in preparation for great efforts.

“Let her go now!” he called to Ferdinando.

Ferdinando jumped on land and dragged the cutter by the bowsprit from one corner of the mole to the other; then he jumped back and with one foot on land and the other on the boat he gave it a push out to sea.

Alfonso looked at him, frightened of seeing him fall into the water; the imminence of danger, small as it was, startled him.

“How agile!” he said to Ferdinando.

He felt himself to be in the man’s hands and had an unconscious
desire to make friends. Ferdinando raised a head, youthful in spite of baldness and the grey in his beard, and thanked him. As this was not his real job, he very much wanted to seem good at it. But he misunderstood the purpose of Alfonso’s comment. He strained the sail towards himself and fixed it, putting all his weight into stretching it taut. Immediately the wind which seemed to blow up that very moment swelled it out and the boat heeled right over on the very side where Alfonso was sitting.

He had intended making a great show of cool-headedness, but his intentions could not cope with his sudden terror. He was just able to avoid shouting out loud but leaped to his feet and flung himself on to the other side, hoping to straighten up the boat by his weight. Now that he felt further from the water he grew a little calmer and sat down, gripping the gunwale.

Macario looked at him with a slight smile. He felt well and calm, and to emphasise the distance between himself and Alfonso more clearly he kept the cutter very close to the wind. Alfonso saw the smile and tried to look calm. He pointed out to Macario some white mountain tops on the horizon whose bases were not visible.

As they passed the lighthouse, he was able to measure the speed with which they were cutting across the water—then started as the boat seemed about to crash against rocks.

“Can you swim?” asked Macario, all serene. “If the worst comes to the worst we can swim back. But—” and he pretended to be very worried, “even if you feel you’re drowning, don’t seize me, because then we shall both be lost. Ferdinando and I will see to you. Won’t we, Nando?”

The other gave a roar of laughter, and promised.

Macario then began pensively discoursing on the effects of fear. Every ten words he raised and languidly waved an
aristocratic
hand, and all the hints in the hollowed hand Alfonso knew referred to him and to his fear.

“More people die from fear than from courage. For example, if they fall into the water, those who seize whatever’s nearest to them are the ones who die” and he winked towards Alfonso’s hands nervously clutching the gunwale.

They passed by green Sant’Andrea without Alfonso being able to master himself. He looked but did not enjoy.

The town, when he saw it on the way back, had a gloomy look. He felt very unwell and tired out, as if he had come a long way some time ago and not had a good rest since. This must be
seasickness
, and he provoked Macario’s laughter by telling him so.

“In this sea!”

In fact the sea was lashed by an off-shore wind and had no waves. Wide patches were crinkly, others beaten by wind which seemed to have smoothed off the surface. In the dips there was a gay murmuring like that produced by innumerable washerwomen moving their washing about in running water.

Alfonso was so pale that Macario took pity on him and ordered Ferdinando to shorten sail.

They were inside the port but to reach the point of departure had to tack in front of it twice.

Little calls of seagulls could be heard. To distract Alfonso, Macario wanted him to observe the flight of these birds, as calm and straight as if on a highroad, and their rapid falls like bits of lead. They looked lonely, each flying on its own account, with great white wings outstretched and a disproportionately small body covered with light feathers.

“Made just for fishing and eating” philosophized Macario. “How little brain it takes to catch fish! Their bodies are small. Think what size their brain must be! Negligible! Those wings are the danger to fish, who end in a seagull’s beak because of them! What eyes and stomach, what an appetite, to satisfy which such a drop is nothing! But brain? What has brain to do with catching fish? You study, you spend hours at a desk nourishing your brain uselessly. Anyone who isn’t born with the necessary wings will never grow them afterwards. Anyone who can’t drop instinctively and at the right second like lead on prey will never learn, and there’ll be no point in his watching others who can, as he’ll never be able to imitate them. One dies in the precise state in which one is born, our hands mere organs made for catching instinctively or letting what one has fall through one’s fingers.”

This speech impressed Alfonso. He felt miserable at having been seized with agitation about something so unimportant.

“And have I got wings?” he asked, sketching a smile.

“Yes, to make poetic flights!” replied Macario, waving a
hollowed
hand, though the phrase contained no underlying hint requiring a gesture of that kind for it to be understood.

A
NNETTA HAD RETURNED
to town about a month before her father, who had gone straight from the country to Rome on business. In that month a number of Maller’s telegrams passed through Alfonso’s hands, carelessly jotted, higgledy-piggledy. They were about business, and Alfonso was loth to take the
trouble
to read them. The last was shown to him by Starringer, the dispatch-clerk, through whose hands all correspondence passed and who had to read everything. Maller’s last telegram ended with the words: “
Warn family of my arrival tomorrow, and arrange carriage to meet me at station
.”

Signor Maller must have been back twenty-four hours, and Alfonso had not yet seen him. He expected at any moment to meet him face to face and walked more timidly than usual along the passage.

Miceni came to tell him that he had just come from Maller’s room where he had been to welcome him. Maller had greeted him with great courtesy and shaken his hand twice. Miceni was usually acidly democratic when speaking of his superiors, but that day, under the impression of those two handshakes, he was gentler; they seemed to have made him forget his quarrel with Sanneo. Not only did he praise Signor Maller for his courtesy but was pleased, as a loyal employee, at finding him so well.

“D’you advise me to go and welcome him too?”

“Nearly everyone has; do whatever you think best.”

Alchieri had gone, but that was no precedent, for Sanneo had sent him to the manager’s office on business, and so he had welcomed Maller by chance. White could even less be used as an example for Alfonso because the managers’ offices were like his own, and he spent half his day in them.

Ballina did not want to go. He was firm. “One doesn’t jeer at Jesus, but one does at his vicars. When Sanneo returned, I went to welcome him because I knew he liked that and was not clever enough to understand that I only did it as a diplomatic gesture. But Signor Maller already knows that he is master of us all, and I don’t allow myself any jokes with him.”

For a whole day Alfonso remained undecided. He had
forgotten
to ask the advice of Macario, who would have swept away all doubts with a single word. Anything at all doubtful eventually became important for Alfonso. He feared that by going he would bore Maller, who might show it, but if he didn’t, his absence would be taken as lack of respect.

He was about to leave the bank, putting off the difficult decision till the next day, when it was made easier by seeing a number of clerks waiting in the passage to go into Maller’s office and
welcome
him. Quickly he decided to join them.

Out of the manager’s room came old Marlucci, a Tuscan who always spoke regretfully of the grand-ducal government. He was about sixty and, by sitting for twenty years or so behind a big ledger, had become a great friend of Jassy. They came and went together, linked by the same misfortune, weakness of the legs; but while Jassy had a vacillating brain and weak, twitching hands, the Tuscan had calm black eyes and limpid and precise speech. Daily in his ledger he lined up his given quota of neat ordered figures, and there were no corrections in his books apart from those made necessary by other sections’ mistakes.

Alfonso, following the impulse given by his preoccupation, asked him: “And what does one say to Signor Maller?”

“If you don’t know, keep silent!” replied Marlucci laughing, and passed him by.

There was no other employee except White with Maller, who was giving him instructions. A woman was sitting in the
embrasure
of the window; without looking at her Alfonso guessed this was Annetta and felt the blood rush to his heart.

Signor Maller interrupted his consultation with White for an instant. He held out his hand to Alfonso and with a cold smile asked him if he were well. Then he withdrew his hand and began talking to White again.

Alfonso was just leaving when he was stopped by a sweet, feminine voice which sounded out of place in that room: “Signor Nitti!”

He stopped and turned round. It was Annetta. She was wearing a grey dress, with the grey veil of a little round hat raised over a white forehead. A chaste but matronly figure.

She held out her hand.

“Are you angry with me that you refuse to see me?”

Alfonso protested that he really had not seen her. He was
stuttering
but saying more than was strictly necessary.

“Not that I’m blaming you,” she said in a softer voice and so confidentially that he quivered with joyful surprise, worrying what the others present might think. “In fact you’re quite right. Now give me your hand and in a more friendly way than last time.”

She smiled and gazed at him, expecting to find her kindness answered. Alfonso made an effort and smiled with gratitude. He was flattered at her showing that she remembered the details of that evening.

She looked at her hand enclosed in Alfonso’s. Alfonso opened his and looked too. Her white plump hand, half-covered by a glove, lay in his rough one whose third finger was black with ink.

“D’you often see my cousin?”

“Almost every evening!”

“He talks a lot of you!”

“Thanks!” muttered Alfonso.

These thanks were meant for Macario.

“Is there any chance of seeing you at our home some time? You’ll be less bored than last time, you’ll see.”

Alfonso muttered some vague words. From their sound she understood that he was putting himself at her disposal.

“Come tomorrow evening. There may be a few friends. But don’t bother about them, as you don’t like people, they tell me. My home is always open to you.”

Laughing, Maller got to his feet.

“Dear friends, this room is a business office. If you wish to
chatter
, go into Signor Nitti’s room.”

Annetta was not put out by this interruption. She answered her father by suggesting he should get his business over soon, or she would go off without waiting for him any longer. Alfonso she dismissed in a gentler tone and with a polite smile, maybe partly in pity at seeing him blushing to the roots of his hair.

Soon after, White came to see him and, as Alchieri was there, tactfully spoke in a low voice.

“Congratulations on the friendship you’ve struck up with Signora Annetta. She’s pretty but dangerous. Take care not to fall in love with her.”

The next evening Macario took him along to Annetta’s. On entering the hall Alfonso remembered his state of mind when leaving it some months before, and that visit seemed to assume great importance in his life. In fact Annetta had made him feel bitter at the very start of his life in town, and this bitterness had left its imprint on all he had done afterwards. It had increased his natural shyness and made his relations with Maller, Sanneo, and all his superiors more difficult. Now at last he would have
somewhere
other than the Lanuccis’ where he could allow himself to behave not just as a humble inferior.

On the way to Annetta’s Macario gave him a description of the people whom he would presumably meet there.

First Spalati, a teacher of languages and Italian literature from whom Annetta was taking lessons. To judge from his description, Macario did not like him much. He proclaimed himself a ‘
realist
’ but would inveigh pedantically against any Italian writer who used words not legitimized by Petrarch. Macario admitted he was also a very handsome young man, and obviously it was this quality which deprived him of his biographer’s sympathy.

In the desire to surround herself as soon as possible with people suitable to her new interests, Annetta had drawn on her most intelligent acquaintances. Among others Fumigi, a relative of Maller’s, aged about forty. Macario said that he was known to be yearning to get free of his office work in order to dedicate himself wholly to his favourite study, mathematics. He was head of an important firm of merchants, and gossip had it that he could
perfectly
well be free if he wished to, which was Macario’s opinion too. It was quite natural that other desires had eventually been overridden by Fumigi’s hard everyday work.

“I think his only real inclination now is towards the kind of mathematics whose results can actually be touched. He keeps up his mathematician’s air because it must be pleasant to be looked upon as future discoverer of how to square the circle.”

Annetta’s evenings were also frequented by a young doctor called Prarchi, who had recently left university and was one of
the few people in this world passionately attached to his own job and not to that of others, according to Macario. “Annetta met him at a health spa, and with the small amount of good taste she has and which she owes to me, she likes to hear real things talked about, including medicine. The young man has one big defect, an exaggerated opinion of his own qualities. He so much enjoys talking about medicine that he sometimes even talks about doses. Actually Annetta has confided to me, and this must remain between us, that all this company bores her. Last year when she had genuine friendships with other people who were of less quality but lived better, I must confess the house was jollier.”

On reaching the landing they heard the sound of a piano. Macario asked Santo who was playing.

“Signorina Annetta!” then replying as usual more than he was asked, “For the last hour or so!”

“Oh, the wonderful patience of these people!” exclaimed Macario, turning to Alfonso. He asked Santo who they were.

“There’s no one here!”

“Isn’t it Wednesday today?” asked Macario, perplexed.

“Yes, sir. But the Signorina sent to tell Professor Spalati, I know because I went myself, not to come as she had a bad headache.”

“Then ask the Signorina if she feels like receiving us, as her headache may be for us too.”

The sound of the piano stopped and Annetta came to meet them at the living-room door.

“Do come in!” she cried. “My headache’s gone.”

Macario had preceded Alfonso. He stopped firmly: “On
condition
you don’t give it to us. Promise not to play any more!”

“You know quite well that you’d have to beg me to play if you were listening!”

They entered. Annetta concentrated on Alfonso and let Macario sit down alone.

Alfonso felt quite free of embarrassment, which must have been melted by Annetta’s cordiality. He found himself thinking up fine phrases as if he were alone in the room; but when he tried to say them, he lost his nerve and cut them short by stuttering.

He muttered that he would so much like to hear Annetta play, while what he intended to say, when stopped by Macario’s taunt,
was that if he’d had a headache, the sound of the piano would have cured it. Annetta thanked him, after helping him to
complete
his phrase, and he realized how very easy it was to cut a good figure with those who have no intention of making one cut a bad one.

It was actually her headache, said Annetta, that had driven her to the piano. Macario did not speak; and the pair, conversing for the first time, kept to the same subject as though fearing they would not find another if they left it. Annetta said once more that she could understand music giving others a headache, but that the concentration needed to play could be a distraction from worry or sickness.

Alfonso admired the truth of this observation and would have liked to confirm it by quoting one of his philosophers who equated pains with worry and suggested distraction as a remedy for both. But he kept silent and nodded a smile of assent. At the last moment he had taken fright at those simple but well-linked phrases of his and heroically renounced saying them, rather than expose himself to the danger of mixing them up.

What made him rather uneasy was a careful examination of his own feelings. He had begun to do this the moment he had crossed the threshold of that room. This woman was certainly not
indifferent
to him. But he had suffered for months from her ill-
treatment
. Now on the other hand he was behaving very coldly, stupidly coldly. He sensed that to keep Annetta’s friendship he would have to show himself slightly infatuated with her, and this he could not manage to do.

Annetta got up to hand Macario the piece of music she had been playing, and Alfonso was delighted to feel a quiver of sudden desire. She was so close to him that as she got up he could not see all of her, just a well-rounded bosom and a trim though not slim waist, firmly enclosed in her favourite grey material.

She had been playing a Beethoven symphony arranged for piano.

“How did you play it, I wonder?”

“Not well,” said Annetta with a smile.

“It must be difficult,” observed Alfonso, looking at a sheet full of notes.

“Impossible!” corrected Annetta. She described how she had heard it played by an orchestra a short time before. It would be no satisfaction performing it on the piano. “Anyway, I put up with far less than perfection. I leave out half these notes, for instance.”

“But,” exclaimed Alfonso, “it’s a pleasure … particularly for a listener … one seems to hear the notes left out.”

“Yes, indeed! In one’s imagination!”

“When one’s imagination is in tune with the player,” observed Macario calmly.

“You’re doing some studying, I’m told?” asked Annetta seriously.

“A little, what I can!”

“A lot, I’m told. I do wish I could do the same! Are you writing anything? Will you publish something soon?”

“Not for the moment.”

The thought of his study on morality flashed into his mind, and if he had only finished the first chapter he would have spoken of it.

“Women want immediate results!” said Macario laughing.

Macario was defending him and treating him with more respect than when they were alone. He seemed to want Annetta to think highly of him, and only very much later did Alfonso realize that Macario had taken him to that house not for Alfonso’s advantage but to amuse Annetta, whose gratitude he wanted to earn.

Now, from the direction which, as Alfonso knew from Santo’s explanation, must be that of Maller’s reception room, Francesca entered. Alfonso sprang to his feet. He wanted to show his thanks to his old friend, the only one who had at once received him well in the Maller home.