Her Husband (14 page)

Oh, that Don Buti, what a disappointment! In that white rectory with the garden, Silvia had imagined quite a different man of God. Instead she had found a tall, thin, bent priest, his nose, cheeks, chin all sharply angular, and a pair of tiny round eyes always staring and alarmed. Disappointment on the one hand, but on the other, what pleasure she had felt on hearing that good man speak about the marvels of an old telescope he used as a very efficacious instrument of religion, nearly as sacred to him as the chalice of the main altar.

Don Buti thought that men were sinners because they see things up close, the things of the earth, all too well, as if enlarged, but the heavenly things that they should think about most of all, the stars, they see poorly and in miniature, because God put them too high and far away. Uneducated people look at them and say, sure they’re beautiful, but they seem so tiny that people can’t appreciate them, and don’t know how to appreciate them, so a great part of God’s power remains unknown to them. The uninstructed need to see that the real greatness is up there. Hence, the telescope.

On clear nights Don Buti would set up his telescope in the churchyard and call all his parishioners to gather around. They even came down from Rufinera and Pian del Viermo, the young people singing, the old leaning on sticks, the children dragged along by their mothers,
to see the “great mountains” on the Moon. How the frogs at the bottom of the streams laughed about it! And it seemed that even the stars had flashes of hilarity in the sky. Lengthening or shortening the instrument to adapt it to the sight of the person bending to look, Don Buti took charge of turns, and out of the confusion his shouts could be heard in the distance: “With only one eye! With only one eye!”

Of course! The women and children particularly would open their mouths wide, twisting their lips to keep their left eye closed and their right eye open, huffing and puffing so that they clouded the telescope lens. Don Buti, in the meantime, thinking they were already seeing something, would shake his hands in the air with thumb and index finger joined and exclaim: “The great power of Our Lord, eh? The great power of Our Lord!”

What delightful little scenes when he came to talk about it with Uncle Ippolito and Monsù Martino in that dear warm nest in the mountains, full of the secure familial comfort that breathed from all the objects, almost animated now by old memories in the house, sanctified by religious, honest, loving care; what scenes especially on rainy days when it was impossible to go outside even for a moment!

But just when Silvia was beginning to savor the peace of domestic life, here would come the postman with the mail, and the wind of glory would sweep in, upsetting everything with those bundles of newspapers from one city or another that her husband sent her.

The New Colony
was a success everywhere. And its author, cheered by all the audiences, was there, in that little house lost on that green plateau of the Piedmont.

Was it really she? Or was it not a moment of her life that had been? A sudden mental flash, a vision, that surprised even her. .. .

Now she really couldn’t imagine how or why that
New Colony
, that island with those sailors, had come to her mind…. What a laugh! She didn’t know, but they all knew, all the drama and nondrama critics of all the daily and nondaily newspapers of Italy. How much they talked about it! How many things they discovered in that play of hers, things she had never dreamed of thinking! Oh, but all those things, let’s admit
it, were the source of great pleasure, because they were precisely what brought her the greatest praise, praise that actually belonged to the critics who had discovered those things she had never thought, rather than to her. But maybe, who knows! those things were really there if those top-notch critics had found them. . . .

In his hastily written letters Giustino let her read between the lines his satisfaction, or rather his great happiness. He portrayed himself, it is true, as someone caught in a whirlwind, and he never finished complaining about his extreme fatigue and his struggles with the administrators of the companies and the impresarios, and about his anger with the actors and journalists. But then he would write about the big theaters bursting with spectators and of the losses that the directors would voluntarily take upon themselves when they stayed weeks beyond the limits of their contracts in one place or another to satisfy the request for additional performances by a public that never tired of applauding deliriously.

While reading those newspapers and letters, the fascinating vision of those theaters, of the multitudes that applauded her–applauded her, the author–flashed before her eyes. Silvia felt relief from those stinging chills she had experienced in the waiting room of the Rome train station, when, unprepared, prostrate, lost, she was faced with her success for the first time.

Removed from that onslaught and now alive and energetic, she asked herself why she shouldn’t be where they applauded her with such enthusiasm, instead of here, hidden, set apart, secluded, as if she were not the one they were calling for!

But yes, if Giustino hadn’t said it outright, he let it be clearly understood that she wasn’t important, that he had to do everything, since he was the one who knew how to do everything.

Oh, yes, him… Silvia pictured him in her mind. She saw him sometimes working excitedly, other times in a fury, still other times exultant among the actors and journalists, and a feeling came over her–not of envy or jealousy, but rather an anxious annoyance, an irritation still not well defined, somewhere between anguish, pain, and spite.

What must all those people think of her and of him? Of him especially, seeing him like that? But also of her? That she was stupid perhaps? Stupid, no, if she had written that play… Anyway, someone who didn’t know how to act or talk. Unpresentable?

Yes, it was true: without him
The New Colony
might never have reached the stage. He had taken care of everything, and she had to be grateful. But it would have been all right if his great flurry of activity just hadn’t been so blatant while her name and fame were still not widespread, and she could have stayed in the shadows, retiring, aloof. Now that success had come to crown all his frantic work, what impression was he making, alone there, in the midst of it? Would she be able to keep standing aside, leaving him there by himself, exposed, as the creator of everything, without making them both look ridiculous? Now that success had come, now that he had finally–in spite of her reluctance–accomplished his purpose of pushing her, launching her toward the blinding light of glory, she–against her will–yes, even against her will, and harming herself, had to step out and be seen; and he–against his will–had to withdraw now and stop being so dogged, so preoccupied, always in the middle, always focused on himself!

Silvia got the first inkling of the ridicule she was beginning to see with her own eyes in a letter from Signora Barmis. In it she spoke of Gueli and of Giustino’s rash visit to get him to write the preface for the publication of
The New Colony
. Giustino hadn’t even hinted about such a visit in his letters. Some of Signora Barmis’s vague insinuations about Gueli had made her tear up the letter in disgust.

A few days later an equally ambiguous letter arrived from Gueli that only increased her bad humor and agitation. Gueli begged to be excused for not being able to write the preface for the publication of her play, along with puzzling hints about personal reasons that had kept him from staying to the end on opening night. He also spoke of certain tragic and at the same time ridiculous concerns (without saying what they were) that entangle the spirit and block the way when they don’t actually do one in. The letter ended with a request that she address her letter (if she wanted to reply to him) not to his house, but to the office of
the director of
Vita Italiana
, where he went to talk to Borghi from time to time. Silvia ripped up this letter also in exasperation. That request at the end had offended her. But the whole letter was offensive. The tragic and at the same time ridiculous concerns he wrote about could only be related to Signora Frezzi, but he spoke as if it were something she should understand and know well from her own experience. In short, it was a clear allusion to her husband. And the offensiveness of that allusion grew proportionately as she began to realize her husband’s absurdity.

In the meantime winter had settled in, terrible at that elevation. Continual rain and wind, snow and fog. A suffocating fog. If she hadn’t already had so many reasons for feeling anxious and oppressed, that weather would have given them to her. She would have run away, alone, to join her husband, if the thought of leaving her baby before it was time hadn’t stopped her.

She had moments of anxious tenderness for the little creature, feeling unable to be the mother she would have wished. And even the anxiety that thoughts of her son caused her she blamed, with dull rancor, on her husband, who with that stubborn mania of his had pushed her so far from normal affectionate relationships and cares.

Perhaps he had plotted all this: to make her write there, like a machine, and to keep all glitches out of the machinery, to keep her away with the child, isolate her, then do all the rest himself, manage that great new literary enterprise. Oh, no! Oh, no! If she could no longer be a mother .. .

But perhaps she was being unfair. In his most recent letters her husband spoke of the new house they would get in Rome soon, in the spring, and he told her to prepare to come out of her shell, meaning that her salon would soon be the gathering place for the cream of art, literature, journalism. This idea, however, of having to play a part, the part of the “grande dame” amid the silly vanity of so many literati and journalists and so-called intellectuals disconcerted, depressed, and nauseated her.

Perhaps it was better to stay hidden there, in that nest in the mountains,
with Signor Prever and Uncle Ippolito. Even her uncle had said he never wanted to leave, never–and he had slyly winked at Monsù Martino, who was eaten up inside when he heard him talk like that.

Her poor uncle! .. . Never again, really never again, poor uncle! He really had to stay there in Cargiore forever!

One evening, while he was complaining loudly about Giustino after his letter arrived with the news that, back against the wall, he had been dismissed from his job, and while arguing with Signor Prever, who kept insisting that in the long run it wouldn’t be a great loss, because . . . some day . . . who knows! (doubtless alluding to his will)–suddenly Uncle Ippolito had rolled his eyes and twisted his mouth as if attempting to yawn. A great shudder of his powerful shoulders and head made the ribbon on his hat fall across his face, then down on his chest as his whole body collapsed.

Struck down!

In that bad weather it took a lot of time and effort for Signor Prever to find the local doctor, who, all out of breath, came to tell them what they already knew, and it took poor Graziella forever to bring the priest with holy oil!

“Careful! Careful! Don’t muss his beautiful beard!” Silvia wanted to tell everyone, moving them aside to stand there and look at her poor uncle a little longer, still and severe, his arms crossed.

“What was Signor Ippolitos profession?”

“Gardener.”

And as she looked at him she couldn’t take her eyes off the ribbon that with that horrible shudder had fallen across his face. Poor uncle! Poor uncle! He thought it all madness—Giustino’s stubborn efforts, literature, books, the theater…. Oh, yes. But perhaps all life was madness, all efforts, all cares, poor uncle!

He never wanted to leave? Now he would stay there forever. There, in the little cemetery near the white rectory. His rival, Signor Prever, who couldn’t forgive himself for having been so exasperated by his presence, had given him space in his tomb, which was the most beautiful in Cargiore.

The days that followed Uncle Ippolito’s sudden death were for Silvia full of a hard, dull, bleak gloom, which more than ever crudely typified the stupidity of everything and of life itself.

Giustino continued to send, first from Genoa, then from Milan, then from Venice, packets and packets of newspapers and letters. She didn’t open them–she didn’t even touch them.

The violence of that death had broken the easy, superficial rapport between her and the people and things around her there, a rapport that she could have maintained, but only briefly, on the condition that nothing serious and unexpected might come to reveal their real selves and the differences of their concerns and natures.

With the sudden disappearance of someone who comforted her by his presence, someone who had the same blood in his veins and represented her family, she felt alone and exiled in that house and those places–if not exactly among enemies, among strangers who couldn’t understand her or directly share in her sorrow, and who looked at her in a certain way and silently watched all her actions and the way she expressed her mourning, as though they were waiting for something. They made her better understand, almost see and touch, her solitude, exacerbating the feeling. She felt excluded on all sides. Her mother-in-law and the wet nurse, since her baby had to remain there entrusted to their care, excluded her from her maternal cares. Her husband, running from city to city, from theater to theater, excluded her from his triumph. And so everyone tore the most precious things from her, and no one cared about her, left there in that void, alone. What should she do? No one was left in her family after her father’s death, and now the death of her uncle, so far from her hometown, uprooted from everything familiar, flung onto a path she shrank from, not moving freely at her own pace, but almost as though pushed from behind by others…. And perhaps her mother-in-law inwardly accused her of having led her husband astray, filling his head with idle dreams and exciting him even to the point of making him lose his job. Yes, of course! She had already noticed this accusation in sidelong glances caught on the sly. Those vivid expressions in her pale face that she always kept turned away,
as though to hide her thoughts; they demonstrated so clearly a certain distrustful prejudice, a regret she wanted to hide, full of anxiety and fear for her son.