A Life (31 page)

If on his return he found Annetta still loved him, he would marry her because he was aware of his duties. But he would warn her and try to show her what a huge mistake they would make by their union. He would say, “I’m like this, and you’re like that, but on becoming your legal husband and master I’ll use every means at my disposal to change you, your tastes and your habits.” And also: “Of course I love you but not enough to love and tolerate your defects. When I first knew you, I despised you for a long time, sometimes even when I was showing love.”

He felt these thoughts stir his blood, making his forehead sweat and his sight dim. The struggle in which he was about to engage was serious, and coming immediately after that period of sweet fever which had made him live among dear ghosts of the past, he felt its harshness all the more.

But if, on the other hand, Annetta no longer loved him and was already engaged to another, as Francesca had foreseen, then he would withdraw into solitude and live calmly and happily. The affair’s only consequences would be to take away his chances of promotion in the Maller bank. That was no great disaster because his pay was adequate as it was. Anyway, he had not enough
aptitude
for commerce to give him any right to much advancement, and he lost very little by destroying the chance of getting it for other reasons.

He smiled at the ghost of his mother who seemed to approve his propositions. His conscience was calm. He was doing what was right according to a definite moral code, for on the one hand he declared himself ready to carry out his obligations towards
Annetta, although he regretted having assumed them, and on the other he was renouncing riches because he did not want them if stolen and not freely given.

If Annetta no longer loved him, he would opt out of life, lose all interest in it and, in the contemplative life to which he intended to dedicate himself, would have no need to flatter or pretend, and run no risk of one fine day finding himself involved in another love affair born of vanity or cupidity. He would live with desires that were simple, sincere and everlasting.

That evening the doctor found he still had a slight temperature and expressed a fear that it might rise again. Alfonso was not afraid of this because he knew the causes of the worsening better than the doctor, and in fact, after a long dreamless sleep, he found his head clear and himself so much stronger that he could spend all day sitting up in bed.

On the last day which he spent in bed he received a visit from Creglingi concerning the sale of the house. By chance Mascotti had come half-an-hour before to warn him hurriedly that Faldelli was making a better offer than Creglingi. Faldelli wanted to open another tavern in that house and use the upper rooms as granaries and the lower ones, two of which were very big, as cellars. He was offering twelve thousand francs. Creglingi’s visit was unexpected because Mascotti had promised to warn him that they were not
prepared
to sign a contract on the terms of his offer. But Alfonso would have been sorry to see his father’s house turned into a tavern and asked Mascotti to get Creglingi to increase his offer. On first seeing him he thought Creglingi was coming after a word with Mascotti, but instead found him surprised and angry to hear himself asked to increase his offer. Alfonso explained that Faldelli had offered more, and so he could not give him preference although he wanted to. He was quite sincere. Had he not feared Mascotti’s derision, he would have accepted Creglingi’s offer without more ado. He would have liked to hand his house over to pretty Rosina, and indeed what most induced him to favour Creglingi was the fear that the latter would think him an enemy because he was marrying an old love of Alfonso’s. The difference of two thousand francs seemed
insignificant
. When he mentioned his preference for him, an ironical smile passed over Creglingi’s face. Alfonso was deeply wounded.

“Even if I wanted to,” he shouted, “my trustee wouldn’t let me accept your offer.”

“Maybe!” said Creglingi insolently, “but before deciding to increase my offer I want a word with Faldelli.”

He did not even pretend he believed Alfonso.

“Listen,” said Alfonso, whose weakness had made the blood rush violently to his head from anger, “once you leave this room I warn you I’ll consider all dealings between us at an end.”

Creglingi lost his temper and said that he did not believe in personal considerations in business and would not give in to
pressure
.

“Business matters can’t just be arranged like this on the spot!”

Faldelli, who came alone too, found Alfonso still angry. Without reading the contract which Faldelli had brought, Alfonso signed it at once although he had not been asked to do so in such a hurry. Some clauses were to be filled in later, and finding the other so ready to accept the contract, Faldelli lowered his offer. The
furniture
was older than he had thought, he said.

Although Creglingi had heard that the contract was already signed, he came to visit Alfonso once again, this time obviously to hurt him. He said two or three times that if he had been given time to reflect he would have paid very much more. This assertion left Alfonso calm, and he smiled contemptuously; but Creglingi interpreted this contempt in a way Alfonso had not intended.

“Yes,” he muttered bitterly on seeing that the question of money did not affect Alfonso, “what you really care about is harming me.”

Alfonso did not defend himself because he realized that
however
he behaved this man’s enmity would find some reason for increasing. They parted brusquely, never to see each other again.

He did see Rosina again and felt a sense of repulsion as if he had met Creglingi himself. Alfonso made an effort to control himself; he did not want to identify her with her future husband, and gave her a smiling greeting, even raising his hat courteously. Rosina’s big black eyes widened with surprise, and she gave him a hesitant ‘good day’. Obviously Alfonso’s form of greeting would never become familiar in the village.

Some days before his departure Mascotti asked him to go and pay a farewell visit to his daughter, but Alfonso did not go
although he had promised to do so. He felt no rancour but found it bothersome to have to hear her gossip or backbiting. Mascotti became very cold towards him and only on the last day did he grow warmer.

That day Faldelli brought him all the money, one franc piled on another, as he had said. Mascotti wanted to leave, but Faldelli, who had arrived unexpectedly, asked him to stay and witness the exchange of documents. Instead of twelve thousand francs he paid nine thousand only, and to cover the gap, handed over a receipt from Mascotti with various items. In his first surprise Alfonso, somewhat offended, asked Mascotti why he had not waited to be paid the money due to him. Mascotti, confused, declared that he had acted thus to avoid bother for him, and Alfonso had time enough to convince himself that it would be indecorous to make a single word of complaint about the large amount subtracted and did not examine the items till he was alone.

There were mainly chemists’ bills, although they did not come to more than a few hundred francs altogether, then a receipt from Giuseppina for a sum which Alfonso did not find higher than she deserved, and a receipt from Frontini for an amount which would have made the most wretched doctor in town smile with contempt. Finally there was a little note from Mascotti to justify the lack of the remainder, over half. On it were two words in pencil, of which Alfonso could only decipher one—‘Trusteeship’—and then the sum.

Alfonso’s behaviour seemed to have pleased Mascotti, for
without
being asked he suggested accompanying him on the visit which Alfonso made to the cemetery before his departure.

“Leave you alone in that place with your sorrow? I wouldn’t have the conscience!”

His presence helped to calm Alfonso’s emotion. He had expected to feel emotional and was surprised not to feel overwhelmed. He stood there motionless in front of the little heap of bare earth, his mother’s tomb, still without the headstone which had been
commissioned
, and felt so cold that he tried to find excuses for himself. What lay beneath there? A ravaged body which maybe no longer bore even any traces of ‘who’ had lived in it. That ‘who’, soul or occult force, faith of philosophers, was not in that tomb.

The cemetery was arranged like any other plot, surrounded by a wall. The tombs, mostly furnished with little stone crosses, were arranged regularly one behind the other with inscriptions
facing
the main road which ran by the short side of the cemetery. It looked like an oblong field on which a hoe had made long, regular furrows. A single alley divided it and led to a small chapel opposite the entrance.

Old Nitti’s tomb was near the entrance, but two rows away from the dividing alley. To reach it Alfonso had to walk over those tombs. He came opposite a raised stone with his father’s name and the years of his birth and death. How many tears Alfonso had shed on that tomb! How simple and how strong had been his
feelings
at his father’s death!

The night before his departure Giuseppina told him that Faldelli had taken her on and told her what changes he intended to make in the house. The new owner would be putting the building to
better
use than the Nittis had been able to. Meanwhile, the part most useful to him would be that completely abandoned by the Nittis. “In the hands of those people,” he had told Giuseppina, “it was so much dead capital.” Like all ambitious men he liked chatting about his plans.

Alfonso was almost turned out of the house. He was woken up at four in the morning by Faldelli in person and warned that he could go on sleeping and that he, Faldelli, had only come to ask if he could put all the furniture in the house into that room. Alfonso got up and, before leaving for the station, stood for half-an-hour looking at workmen carrying into that room pieces of furniture whose existence he had forgotten.

“Would you like this?” asked Faldelli, proffering a long wooden pipe with a meerschaum bowl.

He recognized it. His father had not used it in the last years of his life, so it was a memory of his happiest years when his parents had been healthy and he in his first youth in that house. Pride prevented him accepting it, but he wanted to show his gratitude to Faldelli and shook his hand affectionately when he said goodbye. The other was kind but distracted and suddenly let out a curse and a kick at a peasant who in moving a table had broken a door panel. Alfonso smiled at noticing how tight
Faldelli’s clothes stretched at this; usually they were all wrinkled round him.

During the journey Alfonso was all alone in his third-class
carriage
. At one station he heard voices quarrelling. He looked out of the window and saw a very shabbily dressed individual jumping out of a carriage with a single leap. He had been thrown out: the inspector told Alfonso he had not paid his fare and that it was only out of kindness that he was not arrested.

As the train moved off, the poor devil was still standing in the same place cleaning a filthy hat on his sleeve which had fallen as he jumped. He was looking up at the train with intense longing. Whatever would he do in that village where he had arrived by chance and knew no one?

A
RRIVAL IN THE TOWN
was dreary. Out in the country white snowflakes had swirled, but here the
sirocco
was blowing from the sea, and there was a monotonous drizzle over the city. Alfonso had a sad feeling that this weather would never change. There were no single clouds in the sky, but one dense layer of dirty grey as far as the horizon.

He was just leaving the station when he was stopped by Prarchi, who came running up and in his hurry forgot to shut his umbrella, though already under cover.

“Have you seen Fumigi?”

“No, I’ve not!”

“Could he have arrived already?” and he left Alfonso to go and speak to the stationmaster.

He returned to Alfonso, who did not understand how the
stationmaster
could have given news of a specific passenger so soon.

“He’s not arriving today. And what might you be doing around here?”

“I’ve just arrived this minute myself,” replied Alfonso, amazed the other did not know of his long absence.

“Oh really?” Then he was sorry in his turn at showing such ignorance about Alfonso’s doings and tried to correct himself: “I’m so absent-minded! Of course I knew you were away! Macario and Maller told me.”

They set off walking across the square and into Via Ghega, which from there plunged compact and narrow, deep into the city. After a few paces they had reached the main streets.

“Are you in mourning?” asked Prarchi with surprise.

“Yes, for my mother.”

Prarchi gave his condolences, then, put out at being unable to talk normally, tried to say goodbye. But Alfonso was eager to hear news of the Mallers as soon as possible and offered to accompany him in whatever direction he was going.

Then, finding Prarchi still mute, he told him that he had been away from town for over a month and no one had bothered to write him anything; and he asked for news of each and every
member of the Wednesday club. He managed to hint that there was one particular bit of news he wanted, and that a word about it from Prarchi would satisfy his curiosity.

But Prarchi did not say it and spoke of Fumigi. He repeated, partly, what Alfonso already knew. Fumigi, after the forced
liquidation
of his business, had shown symptoms of an illness which Prarchi had at once diagnosed as progressive paralysis, while
others
were uncertain between that and spinal meningitis. Prarchi’s voice showed no emotion except when he described his replies to a distinguished doctor, who had in a veiled way accused the latter of ignorance. Fumigi’s wretched fate had given the young doctor moments of great satisfaction, and he spoke of these more than of that fate. Prarchi had been correct in another assertion, confirmed by Maller’s accountant. Fumigi’s disease was not the consequence of his commercial ruin but its cause; the first symptoms of illness had shown in his business affairs themselves.

“Oh it’s tragic!” and here Prarchi became volubly sympathetic. “The work of a lifetime lost due to some little corrupted nerve! The silly man, though feeling ill, was determined to go on working and in a few weeks plunged into speculations for which a lifetime of care couldn’t compensate. It’s sometimes a great advantage to see a doctor in time.”

Still fixed on one idea, Alfonso now found a way of making Prarchi talk about Annetta.

“Didn’t he contract his illness from love of Annetta?”

“I don’t think so!” replied Prarchi. “Maybe that was the last straw, but such illnesses build up slowly. It must have been
undermining
Fumigi’s constitution for years. He worked too hard and lived a celibate life: no other explanations are needed, it seems to me. Now we can follow the progress of his paralysis, but it had surely been growing in him for a long time. A symptom is that he’s always staring at figures even now.”

Both silent, they crossed the Via dei Forni. The Maller house, seen through that rainy atmosphere, looked just as it had through the snow on the day of his departure; grey, solemn, shut. The inhabitants of the house, in spite of the late hour, were still asleep. Prarchi had not looked in that direction. He was still thinking of Fumigi.

“Now he’s been handed over to me,” he said bitterly, “when the most interesting phase is already over. Not that I could have brought him any relief before, but now I’m watching the process with complete indifference because it’s already been described thousands of times in great detail, while before it would have been interesting to watch the clouding of his mind when still strong enough to put up a resistance.”

Alfonso did not open his mouth, despairing now of learning any news of Annetta from Prarchi. Had his conscience been clear he would have asked him outright, but he did not dare to. Only when saying goodbye did Prarchi touch on the subject. Beyond the bridge, shaking hands with Alfonso, he said point-blank, laughing at him:

“Let’s hope Signorina Annetta hasn’t ensnared another victim!” and he stared at Alfonso. “It was obvious long ago that Macario would get her in the end. You’re clever enough to have foreseen that as I did.”

Instead, though Alfonso had been forewarned, the news gave him two surprises. One the fact itself, which he had not expected, and the other a sudden stab of jealousy. As usual he was thinking up an attitude which could prevent Prarchi noticing his emotion, and too much carelessness, he thought, might arouse suspicion.

“Really?” he asked with surprise, but pleasantly so he thought. “Is it official?” Then not wanting to show he doubted the truth of the news, he added to explain his question, “Can one
congratulate
her at once?”

Suddenly it seemed that it could not be true.

Prarchi said it was not official and that he had not yet
congratulated
Macario, but it was certainly true. The Wednesday club no longer existed and Federico had come from Paris for his sister’s engagement ceremony.

“Maybe they’ll go on to the wedding at once,” added Prarchi laughing, “because Macario is said to be in a great hurry and even Annetta doesn’t want things to drag on.”

The Wednesday club no longer existing and Federico coming unexpectedly from Paris were not sufficient proof that Annetta was engaged—Alfonso soon persuaded himself that this proved the news was all a complete invention.

Prarchi went off convinced he had been wrong about Alfonso’s feelings for Annetta, and Alfonso had the satisfaction of
having
succeeded in making Prarchi believe in his indifference. This soothed him; he would behave in the same way to everyone and deceive them all as he had Prarchi.

As soon as he was alone, he realized he felt intuitively that Annetta was already engaged to Macario. There was nothing in that to surprise him. He had been warned it would happen and found it strange that on receiving Francesca’s letter, the one
giving
him that news, he had not felt the stab at the heart which had almost made him cry out in front of Prarchi. He found an explanation for that too. There in the country, seen from afar, such things lost their importance. He had been more worried by Creglingi’s hatred than by Francesca’s threats.

He crossed the piazza, lost in thought amid the din of fruit and vegetable vendors. He found himself surrounded by groups of maid-servants doing their shopping. They looked serene and had the frank air to which their hour of independence gave them a right. An occasional housewife or young lady passed hurriedly by, accompanied by her maid. He did not press through but waited for a long time until the groups dissolved and left the way free for a
single
fruit-seller, roughly dressed but wearing gleaming black boots, to move a big umbrella and let him pass. In Alfonso’s state of mind he was only too glad to be forced to walk slowly.

But he had still been in town when Francesca warned him of what was about to happen, and the impression it made on him then had been weak. Yes indeed. He had been right to leave, as he recognized even then, for he had not forgotten any of the
reasons
inducing him to that step. So why this surprise, sorrow and jealousy?

What did surprise him still was that the choice had fallen on Macario. Annetta had never shown any great sympathy for her cousin, and in his turn Macario had spoken of Annetta in a way which might show he loved and desired her, but not that he wanted to marry her. He had so disliked Annetta’s mathematical dexterity and her pretensions and caprices! It was reasonable of Alfonso to be displeased that Macario was to become Annetta’s husband rather than another, for Macario was or had been his
friend, and this relationship made his own future bearing more difficult. He saw himself invited to the wedding or even being chosen as Macario’s best man. That might do nicely as a plot for a novel, but what a bore and pretence in reality.

It was not this that afflicted him. He could not lie to himself. He felt jealousy, a sharp pain, a deep bitterness; and that was very silly. He was suffering from the results of his own actions. Since it was he who had left Annetta, no consequences of a renunciation freely made by himself should have pained him; his consciousness of being the renouncer, even if no one had known it, should have been enough to soothe his pride. Once on this road he wanted to go further. What was happening now did not concern him at all; knowing himself free of Annetta should have been enough for his happiness too. He was free! He repeated the word again in a low voice. Free of that silly chit of a girl who had abandoned him as speedily as she had given herself to him.

When he left the piazza, he was walking with a long deliberate tread, his tread of big decisions. He looked round in case he ran into Macario, as he wanted to congratulate him at once on the happy event. Happy? Poor Macario. He really was the one betrayed.

In spite of all this reasoning Alfonso remained sad. Once more, so he told himself, it showed the silliness of life, and he was not thinking of any wrong done him by Annetta or Macario but of the harm inflicted by his own strange and unreasonable feelings.

Then at the Lanuccis’ his gloom increased. Even the size of the little low rooms depressed him because in the country he had again become used to a lot of space.

The family seemed more miserable than usual. Lucia, who was embroidering in the living-room, scarcely greeted him; she looked wan and had greenish marks beneath her eyes. Old Lanucci had been in bed for a fortnight with rheumatism from which he might never recover; a grave new disaster for the poor family. Gustavo was not at home.

Old Signora Lanucci seemed to remember Alfonso’s
misfortune
only an hour later. Very tired, he had thrown himself on the bed when she knocked on the door. He went to meet her with some irritation. He did not understand why she was openly
weeping
; sobs prevented her speaking.

“What’s the matter?” he asked in alarm.

“She died, poor thing, and suffered so much!” He was calmed to hear that Signora Lanucci was only crying about his mother’s death.

“Yes, she died and told me to say goodbye to you all.”

He had tears in his eyes, but only because his eyes were so
sensitive
they filled with tears at seeing anyone cry. He had to tell her every detail of his mother’s death, and then he really was moved.

“And what have you done with the house?”

“Sold it,” and he told her how much he had got.

The conversation became affecting. Signora Lanucci embraced him and placed two hot kisses on his cheeks.

“Now I’ll be your mother, with all my heart.”

Certainly Signora Lanucci must have suffered a lot in that
interval
of time, for he had noticed from the very beginning that a new sadness had altered her features. He thought she was suffering because of her husband’s illness. She smiled and laughed,
wanting
to console Alfonso after having been herself the cause of his agitation, but they were grimaces. Before he had left, her thin lips had never lacked a smile even in her saddest hours.

Then he understood. There was other news in that house apart from Lanucci’s illness. For two weeks Gralli had no longer come to visit Lucia. He had made a formal withdrawal in a letter which Signora Lanucci now pulled all crushed from her pocket. It said that as work in the printers where he had a good position was suspended, he could no longer consider marriage.

While he read, Signora Lanucci looked at him attentively,
studying
his face to see what impression this letter made on him. She was very pale and gnawing her nails.

“Is it such a disaster?” asked Alfonso, forcing himself to laugh in order to console her more easily.

He criticized Gralli, a man whom he had never liked, his taut skinny face and short stature, certainly a man violent and insincere.

“Oh I’m not sorry about his desertion,” she tried to laugh it off, but again her face took on that expression of forced gaiety,
contorted
like someone trying to do gymnastics.

It was painful. To free himself he asked to go and greet old Lanucci, but she replied that the sick man was asleep. He then
made a decision which cost him a great effort, in spite of his
looking
as calm as if he had merely remembered a duty. He decided to go back to the bank at once. It was something which he had to do sooner or later—it was better to rid himself of that worry.

As he went he tried to acquire calm and strength by picturing the very worst possibilities to which he was exposing himself. He saw only one. To be sacked from his job. That was bad enough in itself, but the thought of all the hatred from those sacking him was so unpleasant that to avoid being disturbed by it he tried to imagine himself saved from it entirely. Francesca had written that Maller had been told everything, but she had not been present at the interview between father and daughter and might have been deceived by Annetta, who had reasons for doing so. He had only known for two hours of Annetta jilting him, but that had been enough to become used to that idea; now, remembering some of his observations about Annetta’s character, her forgetting him at once seemed so obvious that he did not even have to imagine Maller’s intervention in the matter to explain it.