A Life (5 page)

“I saw it, superb!” exclaimed Alfonso, and to give himself importance he asked: “Who is it by?”

“I don’t remember the painter’s name, I remember the picture,” replied Macario. “I’m my aunt’s son.”

Alfonso laughed, but Macario did not. Even when his remarks sounded jocular, they were said with some deep rancour, and Alfonso did not feel at ease speaking like that with him, a stranger. He began wondering whether Macario could be drunk and had not shown it at the Mallers.

Worse came.

“Certainly no man worth his salt would marry Annetta. D’you know the tales of Franco Sacchetti? They’re worth reading, or one unforgettable one, anyway. A friar stays at a house where
he finds his host a weak man maltreated by his wife. In his anger the friar makes a vow to punish the woman by marrying her if circumstances allow. A plague comes; the husband dies and so do all the other friars of the monastery, which is then dissolved. The friar carries out his vow, marries the woman and, as he had intended, beats her. One would like to make a vow like that about Annetta, to destroy that rude and boring haughtiness of hers. One would get the worst of it, though, for when it came to the point one would find oneself the person beaten.”

Maybe Macario had decided to tell truths in a tone which made them seem said in jest, and had unintentionally abandoned that tone. This occurred to Alfonso on seeing Macario now begin to explain why he was so loquacious.

“Don’t think I’m in the habit of making such confidences to the first person who comes along. I find you sympathetic; believe me or not, but I do.”

Alfonso, confused, muttered his thanks. Macario went on:

“I’m glad you felt such a strong urge to revenge yourself on Annetta, and glad too that you didn’t satisfy it. Oh! I’m observant, denial’s useless! People aren’t stupid because they’re not ready with an offensive word. On the contrary!” Then, thinking he had justified himself, he added another crude comment, with a laugh, though: “When I come across women so active and aggressive, so disturbing, in fact, I think of an Englishman telling some overeager woman that he pays to kiss and not to be kissed!”

On the station square he shook Alfonso’s hand, murmured a farewell, then left him and moved off towards a cafe. Alfonso felt cold and set off homewards at a run.

T
HAT YEAR
there was a heatwave in May: for some weeks, from a cloudless sky, scorching beams that were anything but spring-like.

“It’s not right for us to be sweating in May on such wretched pay,” said Ballina.

Work had not yet slackened off. From Signor Cellani’s office, through Sanneo’s, into the correspondence room flowed huge piles of incoming letters. Even Giacomo grumbled at carrying them about.

In June work began to lessen slightly, and Miceni, who had a methodical nature, explained to Alfonso the laws regulating this decrease.

“In June the richest bankers, the brains of the banking world, the people who initiate speculations, withdraw to the country. Our daily work remains the same because they don’t influence that, but we haven’t the sudden rushes of work, the issues and conversions, that torture subordinates so. In July work lessens, not because of any change in the banks, but because the richer merchants begin their holidays. In August, our best month of the year, off go bank managers and the like, even shopkeepers. Only the bare essential number of clerks stays on.”

Maller’s did not correspond to the rules. In May and June some clerks and department heads took their holidays; in July, Signor Cellani, the assistant manager; and Signor Maller had a few days in August.

First to leave was Sanneo, who took a fortnight’s holiday even though he had a right to a month’s. The clerks said that Signor Sanneo could not bear to be deprived too long of his daily
sustenance
of post and polemics.

Alfonso happened to be present when Sanneo gave his
instructions
to Miceni, who was to act for him in his absence. Sanneo’s office was next to Signor Cellani’s and darker because the light was cut off by a building opposite. This room also had carpets in winter, but, except for a comfortable wide desk of black wood handed on by the assistant manager, who had taken another, the
furniture was identical to that in the other offices: two wooden cupboards with rough yellow paint, a chair with a plaited seat, and beside the only window another desk from which the shelf had been taken.

Sanneo, seated, was handing over to Miceni, standing on his right, a big pile of letters one by one, pointing out exactly what he was to do on a given day or after receiving such-and-such a letter. Some letters he put back even after giving full instructions about them, observing with a wry look that there was no need for an immediate reply, and he would do it in his own time. Obviously he did not like handing over all his work to Miceni.

Miceni returned to his room with his head high, his slight body tense, and a stiff step. He sat down and muttered with a smile of contempt: “As many explanations as if I’d joined the bank yesterday!” Then some details of his interview with Sanneo occurred to him and he laughed: “What’ll you bet that at the last moment he regrets going and stays?”

Alfonso longed to get away and could not imagine others
wanting
to stay.

Soon after, Sanneo came in to say he was deferring his departure till the next day. Miceni looked at Alfonso, and, when Sanneo went out, exclaimed angrily, “Was it worth keeping me there an hour and giving me all those instructions I didn’t need?”

“They’ll be all right for tomorrow,” replied Alfonso, who could not understand anyone getting angry about business.

“He’ll no more leave tomorrow than he has today.”

But Sanneo did leave. That evening he went round the offices saying goodbye to the clerks. He gave a hand to Alfonso, who stuttered in wishing him a pleasant holiday and was thanked with a really kindly smile. In spite of what had been said, Alfonso thought he could see, in those restless eyes, a gleam of joy at a fortnight’s freedom.

Miceni occupied Sanneo’s room so as to be on hand for the directors. He received his orders straight from Signor Maller and Signor Cellani, and Alfonso envied the easy manner with which he treated these high personages.

For Alfonso this was an interval of rest from all the copying he had to do for Sanneo, and afterwards he missed that fortnight.
Miceni did not care whether large numbers of offers were sent out; to carry out his responsibilities all he asked for was the necessary work to be completed without errors. He had the sense to abandon Sanneo’s system at once. The latter had passed on current mail only to Miceni and two other clerks; all the others merely copied out letters and revised accounts: “One clerk who knows his job is worth a dozen who are fools,” Sanneo used to say. Miceni called on all their assistance, and Alfonso was given the job of writing short letters about contracts for Italy, less and more varied work than he had done till then.

Alone in his room he found time to read books brought from home. He read no novels, still having a boy’s contempt for
so-called
‘light’ literature. What he loved were his school texts, which reminded him of the happiest time of his life. One of these, a treatise on rhetoric containing a small anthology of classic writers, he read and re-read constantly. There was a lot in it about style flowing or not, and about language pure or impure, and Alfonso absorbed all this theory and dreamt of becoming a great writer who would unite good qualities and be immune from bad ones.

Towards evening, a number of correspondence clerks would meet to gossip in Alfonso’s room, which was the most separate. When Signor Sanneo was there, they had to be on the alert all the time, as he would appear unexpectedly, always in a rush and shouting as he came in, whatever the hour, “Don’t waste time, now, don’t waste time!” Nobody risked a reply, and the group melted away like a flock dispersed by an angry sheep dog.

Miceni, on the other hand, even now came to spend a quiet half-hour some evenings in Alfonso’s room. He would lie silently on an old sofa, tired but pleased by his day, rather worried by the importance of his work.

Ballina treated him with affected respect but derided him. One day, in the stress of work, Miceni had rebuked him for slowness, and the other did not forgive this. When Miceni tried to justify his outburst, Ballina laughed in his face.

“You seem to think the bank’s business is your very own! I can understand Signor Maller or Signor Sanneo bossing us, but not someone who’s just head of the correspondence department for a fortnight.”

Even Alfonso noticed that Ballina must be a happy man, for he obviously enjoyed his mechanical labour, though
unwilling
to admit it. Ballina called himself Head of the Information Office out of vanity, though actually he was its only member. He himself asked for information, copied it out and filed it away alphabetically inside a big cupboard. He had nothing pending as his work did not require it, and had a habit of staying at the office many more hours than he needed to. He would clean bone cigarette-holders, of which he had many, mend locks, sharpen razors, and shave in the office when he did shave. A great smoker, he always had a big pile of tobacco on oiled paper in a drawer. It was a mixture of different kinds, scented by some root which gave his room a strong smell of resin. That room was his real home: he had introduced his own little comforts, even nailed a bit of leather over his straw seat for greater comfort. One drawer of his desk was set aside exclusively for food and drink; bread, sometimes butter, often a bottle of beer, always a little flask of grog which he offered to any friends who came to pay a visit. Obviously he was not very cosy in his other home. The room where he slept was so small, he said, that it was filled by his bed and a cupboard, and a chair cluttered up the door. As it was essential, he had thought up an ingenious mechanism.

“I tied the chair to a rope which I attached to the top of the door jamb after passing it through a hook on the wall. When the door opens the chair goes up and leaves my entrance clear; when the door’s closed I find the chair beside me and can sit down without moving a step.”

There was perhaps some exaggeration in this but some truth as well. One day in front of Alfonso he handed over the keys of this room of his to one of the bank’s porters, telling him to find him a new room and to take his few belongings there. His real home, for which he had a womanly affection, was his office.

For all his sedate appearance, Ballina had got through a small legacy which had come to him, he said, before he understood the value of money. For one short year of pleasure he had spent many in poverty and was to spend many more “probably till I die” he would say—while if he now had had even a small sum, he could have done better for himself, being so ingenious. As things were
he had always worked for others, in a factory for cigarette-holders, another for vinegar, as a salesman in an exhibition, in a shop that sold walking-sticks and so on, always for bad pay. Eventually he had landed up at Maller’s where he had become so fond of the work that he was resigned to a poor salary.

The clerk for French correspondence, White, usually took the lead in conversation. He came from an English family transplanted to France and had been sent away from Paris by relations who feared he would get through his whole inheritance in gambling and in a
gentlemanly
life of ease. He had come into the bank as a correspondence clerk for French, first working under Sanneo, then independently after a violent quarrel with him. Maller realized that the two would not get on and separated them, not wanting to force the submission of White, who was protected by an old banker friend; his work dealt almost entirely with stocks and shares, about which he seemed to know a great deal. Apart from that he was a good employee and a quick, though rather disordered worker. Always smartly dressed, he was squat, with an uncertain gait and a bent back, and the
combination
of dandy’s clothes on an old man’s figure gave him an odd look. But he had very regular features; spectacles improved his brown face and made it look more sedate. In Trieste, which he considered provincial, he had acquired a passion for shooting, and his skin bore traces of many hours spent in the sun. He worked with great speed and, when he had nothing to do, would take a liberty which no other employees dared to and not come to the office.

An intelligent
blagueur
, he was a good talker; he read all the new French novels and spoke of them in a way that made his observations sound original. He liked few modern novels; he
realized
their merits as far as Alfonso could judge, but did not always take to them; finding one thing too much or another too little, he would end by criticizing. He shocked Alfonso’s tendency to
idolatry
by speaking with contemptuous familiarity of the most famous authors: “So and so gave his novel a certain title to attract sales, another wrote filth for the same end, a third with a reputation for great virtue, and much read by young ladies, was a rogue who beat his mother.”

He offered to lend Alfonso books, always forgot to bring them, and then one evening took him home to fetch them. He lived in
the centre of town in a spacious first-floor apartment. Crossing a small entrance hall, they entered a big room furnished only with a table and a few chairs; the windows were curtainless. With all that light and space the room looked too bare.

A woman dressed in a pink dressing-gown, fair, with features that were almost too regular, was sitting by the window working at a loom.

“My wife,” said White in French, introducing them: “My friend, Monsieur Nitti.”

The lady made a move to rise, impeded by cloth hanging from the loom. The introduced couple looked at each other, he
murmuring
a complimentary word, she waiting for him to go before settling back at her work. White had hurried into a nearby room, and Alfonso, bothered at finding himself mute with another mute, gave a bow which was returned slightly, and followed.

The bedroom contained two beds next to each other, a cupboard and some chairs. White’s books, about twenty, were lying in disorder on the floor, under the only window, also curtainless. There was not a picture on the walls; only the bare minimum; they looked like two rooms furnished as temporary shelter, not a home.

As he went out with White, the same scene with the woman was repeated. She got up just as carefully, her face calmly indifferent, and again the piece of cloth threatened to fall.

In surprise Alfonso asked White: “How long have you been married?”

White gave a roar of laughter.

“Married? For a long time, but with this hand!” and he raised his left.

A woman holding a child now entered the room.

“My son!” cried White, touching the baby with his stick. “He’s rather like me, holds himself in the same way.”

The baby was leaning his little forearms on the shoulders of the woman, who was holding him too high and so making him bend over.

“We’re more frank than you people. I do everything openly, so my relatives here loathe me, but I don’t care a jot about them.”

He spoke Italian with ease, though obviously translating from French.

One day, while White was in Alfonso’s room, Annetta came in with a friend whom she was showing round the bank. She greeted White as if she knew him well, introduced him to her friend and started up a lively chatter with him in French. As she made her farewells, she said to Alfonso with a polite smile:

“You, too … it would give me great pleasure.”

Alfonso bowed without understanding.

Annetta was in mourning for the death of a distant relative whom she had not even known. She looked better in black than in light colours, as it made her slimmer; her eyes seemed even more expressive.

“What did she say to me?” Alfonso asked White.

“She invited me to her home and invited you, too,” replied White carelessly. “I’m not going.”

“Nor am I!” affirmed Alfonso resolutely.

On Sanneo’s return he greeted the clerks more coldly than when he left. As soon as he re-entered the bank he at once went back to being their boss, while on leaving he had bid them a
leisurely
goodbye as a colleague.

Miceni spent the first day in Sanneo’s room handing over work in progress. Then things went back to their usual routine, and Miceni was the only one unable to return to his. He kept
walking
stiffly round the bank, idle because he had so buried himself in Sanneo’s work that he had neglected his own. He bemoaned his fortnight of almost sovereign rule, and praised the directors’ behaviour to him; but what he praised more than anything else was Sanneo’s job.