A Life (9 page)

For a minute or two he was terrified by a violent beating in his heart and temples. He took off his jacket, put it under his head and lay down on dry ground by an oak. Shortly after, though his blood was still agitated, his lungs opened, and he took a deep breath, deeper than he had taken for a long time. He looked at the little field around and enjoyed seeing it clear and green and
smiling
, as if it were his own and would one day be his home. A corner of the city was visible: some twenty close-packed houses, then others scattered one by one on the opposite hillside. Beyond was a patch of blue sea with motionless boats. The clear sky, cloudless to the horizon, the green of the country, those houses flung down haphazardly, reminded him of an oleograph in which colours 
had been levelled out by the machine, the painter’s idea muted by reproduction, its light and movement gone.

Like a child, smiling, with closed fists, he fell asleep.

He had an absurd dream about Maria, whom he recognized by her bright coloured dress. She told him that she knew that
circumstances
had prevented him from coming to that appointment. She forgave and loved him.

A
LCHIERI, RUSHED AND FLUSTERED
, holding a bundle of papers, was hurrying towards the cash-desk when he saw Alfonso, hat in hand, about to enter Sanneo’s room to announce his return to the office. He gave a cry of delight, tried to stop Alfonso, who passed by without noticing him, then grew calmer and sat down next to Giacomo, on duty in the passage and intent on deciphering a newspaper half aloud. Finding no one else to tell, Alchieri confided to Giacomo that this was the first time for a fortnight he had sat down to rest and not to write.

Sanneo greeted Alfonso cordially, then, turning back to a huge register on which he was writing in his big script, asked if he was well. Without waiting for a reply, in phrases interrupted by work which at intervals called for all his attention, he spoke of some letters left pending which needed answering as soon as possible. Then he handed him a few, to the accompaniment of
explanations
, which Alfonso only half understood, referring to things that had happened during his absence, a period which seemed to Alfonso much more than a fortnight away. Sanneo dismissed him with a piece of good news.

“Signor Alchieri will continue to help you—he works quite well … it seems.”

Alchieri stopped him in the passage and tried to hug him in thanks for returning at the exact date promised.

“I couldn’t take much more!”

Then he too began to explain various business matters and, there and then in the passage, handed over all the letters he had in his hand, statements of account or advice of drafts. He could not wait to be rid of them.

With those letters in one hand and his hat in the other, Alfonso went to pay his respects to Cellani.

He found him opening the post. With one snip of his scissors he opened an envelope, took out the contents which he threw on one side, and before putting down the envelope gave it a careful glance against the light. He too went on working while talking to Alfonso; but when the latter, with his usual shyness, murmured his thanks,
reminding him that he owed his holiday to him, Cellani got up and went to shake Alfonso’s hand with a friendly smile on his pale face. His long sportsman’s body, elegant but weak, seemed borne along rather than self-propelled, so little energy was there in his
movements
and so exactly and unhesitatingly did he pass through the narrow space between desk and chair.

“You’re looking fine,” he said to Alfonso, glancing almost
enviously
at the latter’s sun-tanned face. He was in a hurry to return to his own place. Shaking Alfonso’s hand again he said laughing: “Now …” and made a show of writing very fast with the pen in his left hand.

Alfonso found that Alchieri had diminished his pending tray, and, sitting in his place, he decided under the encouragement of Cellani’s welcome to get it all done and allow no more to
accumulate
. Alchieri, coming from a barracks, had introduced in only a fortnight a system of work far preferable to Alfonso’s, who found it easy, at least at first, to keep to this. His improved serenity,
reinforced
by the open air, made him capable of greater
concentration
, effort though it always was.

Even when back at work he continued his open-air cure, as he called it. Every morning he walked for an hour or two, usually towards the plateau because he needed the climb. Up he went with his measured pace and tramped along the whole of the wide Opicina road, whose enormous length took him up to the plateau in a single, wide, gently sloping semi-circle around the town. Alfonso would rest on this road where a lane branched off towards Longera.

From there he saw the vast, silent deserted plateau with its
innumerable
stone hillocks of all shapes; pointed, round, squat heaps of stones fallen from above and arranged as haphazardly as was Monte Re on the horizon, with its wide back, gentle slope at one side and almost perpendicular drop on the other.

Alfonso never passed that point, partly because he had no time. From there he could see the city with its white houses, and the sea, usually in morning calm as if the few hours of light had not yet been enough to rouse it. The green of the promontories on the left of the city and the colours of the sea contrasted strangely with the grey stones of the plateau.

He descended into a city quieter than he ever knew it except when leaving the library. Near Longera he passed without
entering
an oblong village halfway down the valley, hugging the
mountain
as if for refuge, its houses all clustered together, though it could easily have found air and space by encroaching on
surrounding
fields. People were already beginning to swarm on to the village streets at that hour, and from a distance all the outer forms of human activities and destinies seemed suggested by those few figures moving about the narrow alleys of the little place. A boy’s quick run, which Alfonso could follow from one side of the
village
to the other; a peasant leaving home with his hat on and then, before moving on, calmly examining the sky, maybe to see whether to take an umbrella; in a more remote lane a man and woman were chattering away, maybe of love already at that hour; in a courtyard grain was being beaten amid so much movement that from a distance it could be mistaken for gaiety. Then Alfonso passed prosperous San Giovanni with its scattered houses, its little white church, empty during the week but so full on Sundays that not all the faithful could enter, and peasant-women, dressed in black wool edged with wide strips of blue or red silk, crowded the little square and made their devotions out in the open.

Alfonso’s new way of life was damaging to his studies, because the first result of his frequent outings was a need for yet more air and an inability to stay shut up for long. Sometimes he would move towards the library on coming out of the office but could seldom stay there more than a half-hour; he would be seized by an invincible restlessness which took him out into the open to stand riveted to some quay, with no ideas or dreams in his head, his only preoccupation being to absorb that sea-breeze, whose beneficial effects he thought he could feel at once.

Then he would go home and at supper still intend to spend the rest of the evening with a book, but weariness would overcome him, and he would go off into ten hours of calm and restful sleep.

Yet it was precisely then that his ambition took definite form. He had found his path! He would lay the foundations of modern Italian philosophy by translating a good German work and at the same time writing an original work of his own. The translation remained purely an intention, but he did start on the original
work: a title
The Moral Idea in the Modern World
and a preface in which he declared the aim of his work. This aim was theoretical and without any practical intention, which seemed to him quite new for Italian philosophy. The idea briefly laid out in the table of contents, beyond which Alfonso himself knew no more, was to show that the only basis for a moral idea in the world was the community’s advantage. The idea was not particularly original, but his development of it could become so if treated exclusively as a search for truth with no preoccupation about possible practical consequences. For this he lacked neither the courage nor the sincerity; when writing he had all the courage that he lacked in life, and studies undertaken purely for the sake of learning would have no effect on his sincerity. He did not know and cared less what elements were needed for literary success. He wanted to work, to work well, and success would come by itself.

He did work well, but very little. Too often his thoughts were on the completed work, while phrases actually written could be counted on his fingers. Thus he imagined more and more qualities in a book which, because so far more or less non-existent, could not be damaged by his pen’s resistance. After some months,
seeing
that the result of his efforts was three or four short pages of preface, which promised to do and to attempt much while nothing was actually done or attempted at all, he felt very discouraged. Those pages represented the work of months, for no other had been done in the meantime. He had not been studying much, and those pages were the only progress he had made towards his goal; so small that it was equivalent to a tacit renunciation of all ambition.

With more reason he could persuade himself that this lack of progress was due to renunciation, for he really did find himself happier at the bank and hating less the work that was in
fundamental
antagonism, so he thought, with the intellectual labours to which he wanted to dedicate himself. Alchieri had helped to make the bank less odious, but so, he considered, had the almost
complete
abandonment of his other more intelligent activities.

For some time he tried to get back to reading at the civic library, even at the cost of leaving his philosophical writing aside for the moment. One evening Sanneo scolded him for a mistake.
Although realizing that he deserved such rebukes, he was put out by the manner of their delivery, by an over-brusque word. At other times, he remembered, he had rid himself of the bitter mood aroused by these incidents in a clerk’s life by applying
himself
more fervently to the studies which would eventually pull him out of his position of inferiority. That was what took him back to the library after a long absence.

He plunged into reading an Italian bibliographical journal. He felt that language was not obeying him and that he must go in for reading more Italian. For about an hour he read spontaneously and attentively—due to Sanneo’s brutality— a discussion about the authenticity of some of Petrarch’s letters. When he paused he felt satisfied; but the tiring of his brain reminded him of past
readings
; he felt an overwhelming sense of regret and of how much his life had changed.

On raising his head he noticed that opposite him was sitting Macario, who was gazing at him indecisively.

“Signor Nitti!” he said almost questioningly; he must have had a bad memory. Then he held out his hand in a friendly way.

They went out together.

“D’you often come here?” asked Macario, busy straightening his overcoat, a long grey garment with large bone buttons.

Alfonso replied carelessly that he came every evening and tacitly decided to make the lie into the truth in future.

“I’ve come for the last week, and it’s a pity this is the first time we’ve met,” said Macario kindly. He asked what he was studying.

“Literature.” confessed Alfonso, hesitating.

He was glad to be able to say this to Macario but hesitated because he knew and feared his malice. He explained that he was in the habit of doing an hour or two’s studying every day as a
distraction
after the day’s work.

“And what are you reading?” asked Macario, who was looking at him with surprise.

He found that Alfonso, apart from his bronzed face, seemed less rustic than in the months before. He spoke more easily, and, what was more, as Macario was sufficiently intelligent to understand, his decrying of regular work denoted a certain superiority.

Knowing how much some people despised philosophers and philosophy, Alfonso abstained from naming his favourite authors and only mentioned a critic or two. But Macario must have
realized
that he was dealing with someone who could allow himself the luxury of his own opinions and was surprised to find him so cagey. Alfonso was enthusiastic about authors whom he did not mention to Macario.

On his own side Alfonso very soon acquired some notion of Macario’s culture. He was pleased to find himself highly enough esteemed for Macario to make ill-concealed efforts to introduce subjects he knew about into the conversation. Macario spoke of contemporary realist writers. Alfonso had read some of their
novels
and a review or two and made up his mind about them with the calm of the disinterested student he then was. He admired some parts, criticized others. Macario was a resolute partisan, and his enthusiasm made Alfonso sift his own opinions. While Macario was looking at him with a rather derisive smile which meant “My flair makes my few studies worth your many”, Alfonso’s serious, attentive aspect, like a scholar at a lesson, hid his enjoyment of his own superiority. He avoided a discussion in which he had no hope of gaining a victory over Macario’s facility with words. But with such a speaker it was impossible to look indifferent, and almost involuntarily Alfonso began giving signs of assent which, to calm his own conscience, he addressed to Macario’s single phrases and not to his concepts. Some of these phrases were so fine that Alfonso suspected them to be stolen. He spoke of the creations of man which were quite up to the biblical ‘creation’ in results. The latter differed somewhat in method, but both had achieved the production of organisms which lived by themselves and bore no trace of having been created.

Macario told him he came to the library for some calm reading of Balzac, whom the realists called their ‘father’. Balzac was not that at all, or at least Macario did not consider him as such. He classified Balzac as a writer of ordinary rhetoric, typical of the first half of the century.

They reached Piazza della Legna, walking so slowly that they took half-an-hour. On the way Macario found time to admire a pretty seamstress and make a young lady blush by staring straight
into her eyes. Alfonso, though, had been unable to do anything but listen.

“Where d’you live?” asked Macario, taking his arm.

“In that direction,” and he pointed vaguely towards the old town.

“I’ll walk some of the way with you.”

How could he not be flattered by such kindness, and how could he start to defend Balzac from the taint of rhetoric? In reply to the pleasant offer Alfonso resolutely sacrificed Balzac.

“He’s often rhetorical, of course!”

They did not enter the old town but returned to the Corso.

“D’you know you ought to be very much at home now at my uncle’s? It’s quite a different place; Annetta is dedicating
herself
to literature. Would you like us to go and call on her? She’s been back from the country a week and receives friends almost every evening; she’s even more emancipated than she was in the past.”