Her Husband (22 page)

Dora Barmis, breaking into tears, threw her arms around him. All the others gathered around, solicitous and distressed, and as a group they entered the living room. Once there, Dora Barmis, an arm still
around him, nearly had him sitting on her lap. While shedding copious tears she kept sighing: “Poor dear . . . poor dear . . . poor dear . ..”

Softened by this sympathy and feeling somewhat consoled, his heart was gradually warmed by the display of esteem and affection of all those literary and journalist friends.

“What a disgrace!” Giustino said, looking each in the face piteously. “Ah, my friends, what a disgrace! This betrayal to me, to me! You are all witnesses to what I’ve done for this woman! Here, here, all around us, even the things talk! I did everything for her! And look at the reward I get! Yesterday I came back from Paris . . . glory there, too, in one of France’s greatest theaters . . . parties, banquets, receptions . . . everyone gathering around me to hear news about her, about her life, her work… and then I come back here! Ah, what a disgrace, my friend, my friend, dear Baldani, thank you! What a disgrace! What an indignity! Thank you! Dear Luna, you, too! Thank you. Dear Betti, thank you. Thanks to all of you, my friends. You, too, Jacono? Yes, real treachery, thank you! Oh, dear Zago, poor Zago . . . see? see? No!” he suddenly shouted, noticing the four reporters intent on copying his wife’s letter that must have fallen from his hand. “No! Let them tell everyone! Let the press have it and let all Italy hear! All of you might as well know and all my friends in France, too. Here, in this letter, she says she leaves me everything! But I’m leaving everything to her. I’m sick of it! I’ve given her everything . . . and I’m ruined! I’ll leave everything here .. . house, money . . . everything, everything . . . and I’ll go back to my son, with nothing, ruined. To my son … I hadn’t even thought of my son . . . it’s all been for her! For her!”

At this point Barmis couldn’t stand it anymore. She jumped on her feet and frantically embraced him. To everyone’s amazement, Giustino burst into a flood of tears and buried his face on the shoulder of his consoler.

“Sublime, sublime,” Luna whispered to Baldani as they left the room. “Sublime! Ah, it’s absolutely essential that some other woman writer take that poor man as a secretary! Too bad Signora Barmis doesn’t know how to write. . . . He’s just sublime, poor man!”

2
A line from the
Elegies
of Tibullus (IV, XIII, 6): “Displeasing to others, so I will be safe and secure.”

7
A LIGHT GONE OUT

“And your common sense? Where’s your common sense, little dummy?”

The little boy, astride old man Prever’s legs, looked at him with big, intent, laughing eyes; then he stopped, raised his tiny hand, and with his index finger touched his forehead.

“Right here.”

“Not true!” the old man yelled, grabbing him with his thick hands, playfully poking him in the stomach: “It’s here, here, here.”

The boy collapsed with laughter at this often repeated joke.

At that explosion of fresh, ingenuous, childish laughter, his grandmother turned to look at the inverted curly head of the little boy. Didn’t he laugh too much? And there was a pesky fly buzzing so annoyingly in the room. A bad omen. No use trying to find it. Sadly, she turned to look at her son standing by the window, head on his chest, hands in his pockets, glum and taciturn.

It was nearly nine months since he had come back from Rome with nothing much but those clothes on his back. Would that he had lost just his clothes and job! He had lost everything–his heart, his mind, his whole life–all because of that woman, who must be wicked. In Signora Velia’s more than sixty years she had never seen a man reduced to such a state by a good and honest woman.

For goodness’ sake, not even a smidgen of love for that little boy anymore, or her! Look at him there. He didn’t want to think anymore.
He stared and didn’t seem to see or hear anything, cut off from every sensation, empty, destroyed, lifeless.

He seemed to come alive only at some reminder of her presence left in the house, like a dog that lies on his dead master’s things, brooding over the lingering odors as if to preserve them. Giustino just stayed there, hanging around. There was no way to send him out for a little distraction.

Many times Prever had suggested he go with Graziella for several months, for a week, for a day anyway, to his villa on Braida hill. Besides, he was old now and Giustino could help a little with the administration of his estate. This last suggestion had some effect, but it was like the weight of an obligation and made him even more cruelly despondent. So much so that Prever immediately excused him, even though the priest, Don Buti, thought he should have insisted, letting him believe it was a coldhearted obligation.

“It’s good medicine,” he said. “Don’t worry if he finds it a little bitter.”

Signor Prever didn’t want to be medicine–or anyway, not bitter medicine.

“Fine thing,” Prever said to Madama Velia as soon as Don Buti went on his way. “He comes here with his telescope for medicine, and I should come here with my bookkeeping.”

In fact, when Don Buti saw that Giustino would never visit the parish house a few steps away, he brought his famous old telescope under his cloak one evening to let him admire
the great power of Our Lord
, as he did as a child, when in order to keep his left eye closed he screwed up his mouth:

“Like this, little mouse!”

But Giustino was not moved by the sight of the old telescope. Just to please the good man, he had looked at “the great mountain” of the moon and had frowned and shaken his head slightly when Don Buti repeated the customary refrain with the customary gestures:

“
The great power of Our Lord, eh? The great power of Our Lord!
”

The refrain was followed by a long lecture full of
ohs!
and
ahs!
because
that nodding head and frown made Don Buti think that the great power of God, if not exactly doubted, was recognized as capable of allowing much evil to be done to a poor innocent man. However, Giustino listened impassively to the talking-to, accepting it as something Don Buti had to do as a priest, which had nothing to do with him, so removed from priestly obligation as he was, and able to think
TO EACH HIS OWN
, as was written on the church tower.

Giustino had been shaken somewhat from his grim spiritual torpor by the new doctor recently arrived in Cargiore with a woman who no one knew whether she was his wife or not. She must have been a rich
madama
, because Dr. Lais had rented a beautiful villa from some people in Turin and said he wanted to buy it. Tall, thin, stiff, and precise as an Englishman, with a still-blond mustache and with thick, very short, already graying hair, he gave the impression of practicing his profession just to have something to do. He dressed with expensive and simple elegance and always wore a pair of splendid leather leggings that he seemed purposely to forget to hook in the house, so as to have to finish the job outside on the street in order to call attention to them. Literature was of special interest to Dr. Lais. Called to the house because of a slight upset of the boy, and learning that Boggiolo was the husband of the famous writer Silvia Roncella, who had also been involved with literature for years, the doctor bombarded him with questions and invited him to his villa, where his signora would certainly be pleased to hear him talk, passionate lover of literature and insatiable reader that she was.

“If you don’t come, watch out!” he had said. “I’m just apt to bring her here.”

In fact, he did bring her. And the two of them–he who seemed so English, and she who seemed Spanish (she was from Venice), all ribbons and bows, mincing, dark, with two very dark, dancing eyes and two very red fleshy lips, her little nose proudly straight and impertinent–made Giustino talk the entire evening. They were both amazed and irritated by certain details, certain opinions contrary to their passionate impressions as provincial amateurs. “That’s too much!” she
protested. “You say Signora Morlacchi… Flavia Morlacchi! Really, no one appreciated her in Rome? But her novel,
The Victim
… so wonderful! … But
Snow Flakes
.. . marvelous poems!. . . And the play. What was it called?
Conflict
, yes, yes, no,
The Conflict
. . . My goodness, so well received at Como four years ago!”

Signor Martino and Don Buti listened and looked, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and Signora Velia grew concerned about her Giustino, who, however unwittingly, was so stimulated by those two that he started talking about those things again, growing more and more heated…. Oh, dear, no. Signora Velia preferred to see him glum, taciturn, sunk in mourning rather than animated like that. Away with that temptation! She was relieved a few days later when those two had the effrontery to send a maid to ask for a certain book of his wife’s and to invite him to lunch and Giustino replied that he didn’t have the book and was unable to attend the luncheon.

In this way he got free of them.

“What can be wrong with him today?” little Signora Velia wondered as she watched her son at the window while Vittorino was cutting up on Prever’s knees.

He might be more preoccupied than usual that day because in the morning–owing to a foolish oversight on Graziella’s part–he had discovered a letter that had arrived a few days earlier and that had not been destroyed like all the others had been, whenever possible, without his knowledge.

So many letters still arrived for him, forwarded from Rome, even from France and Germany. When they arrived Signora Velia shook her head, as if the extent of the harm that woman had done to her son could be measured by the distance from which the letters came.

He would throw himself on those letters like a starving man, close himself up in his room, and begin to reply. However, he didn’t send those letters with the replies directly to his wife. Signora Velia learned by way of Signor Martino, who heard from Monsù Gariola, owner of the post office building, that her son sent them to a certain Raceni in Rome. Perhaps through this friend he would suggest to his wife how she ought to be behaving.

And such was the case.

After he returned to Cargiore, and until a few months ago, Giustino had frequently received letters from Barmis and Raceni, from which he learned with indescribable torment what a disorderly life his wife was living in Rome.

Now he was more than ever convinced that nothing had happened between Silvia and Gueli, and he believed the proof was the fact that Gueli, almost miraculously healed from the two wounds, even with his right arm amputated, had returned to live with Signora Frezzi, who had been released by the court as mentally incompetent, after five months of preventive detention, precisely because of the support of Gueli himself and at his insistence.

If only he hadn’t let himself be overcome by the scandal in the beginning and had run to Ostia to get his wife, who was still blameless except for wanting to escape from him! No, no, no: he couldn’t believe, in spite of that deception of the trip to Orvieto–he couldn’t believe she could stay with Gueli. He should have run to Ostia and brought his wife back himself, who then certainly wouldn’t be so lost. Who was she living with now? Signora Barmis said with Baldani; Raceni suspected a relationship with Luna. Apparently she was living alone. The villino and all the furniture sold. In his last letters Raceni implied that she was in some financial straits. Of course! Without him … Who knows how badly they were cheating her! Maybe now she knew what it meant to have a man like him beside her! Everything sold . . . What a shame! That villino . . . that Ducrot furniture . . .

For about two months neither Signora Barmis nor Raceni, nor any other friend from Rome, had written. What had happened? Perhaps they saw no reason to keep corresponding with someone who had by now almost disappeared from life. Signora Barmis had tired first. Now not even Raceni wrote.

But he was not more sullen than usual that day because of their silence nor for the reason his mother supposed.

From the time of his return no newspapers had entered the house because of the promise he made his mother not to read them anymore. How he regretted that promise now! But he didn’t dare show how
much he wanted to read those from Turin at least, for fear his mother would think he was still obsessed with that woman. As long as Signora Barmis and Raceni had written, he hadn’t suffered that privation so much, but now . . .

Well, then, that morning, in a twenty-day-old newspaper, in which Graziella had wrapped the freshly ironed collars and cuffs she brought to his room, under the rubric of theaters he had read two notices that had upset him.

One was from Rome: the coming performance at the Argentina Theater of his wife’s new play, the same one he had left before his job was finished,
If Not This Way
. . . . The other notice was that the Carmi-Revelli Company was performing at the Alfieri Theater in Turin.

Devoured by the wish to know how that new play fared in Rome and perhaps in other cities as well, maybe even in Turin if the Carmi-Revelli Company was there, and by the wish to talk to Signora Laura or Grimi, or to anyone, he didn’t know how to tell his mother he wanted to go to Turin the next morning. Also, he was afraid Signor Prever would want to go with him. He knew how anxious his mother was for him. To tell her he wanted to go alone so far so suddenly, when he had refused to take two steps outside the house up to that day, would worry her. And then, he didn’t have much money left over from what he had earned in Paris. He was almost ashamed to say it to himself–just imagine then asking his mother for money. She had only a little pension from her husband, and now with the added burden of him it was a struggle for the poor thing. Signor Prever, of course, helped out from time to time, with one excuse or another. But if his mother was now down to nothing and had to ask Signor Martino for help, he would learn of his plan and certainly offer to go with him.

He waited for Prever to go home after supper, and to provoke a new and more urgent suggestion from his mother that he find some kind of distraction, he complained about a terrible mental weariness. Her concern, as he expected, brought the suggestion: “Go to Braida tomorrow.”

“No, I would rather … I’d rather see people. Maybe this solitude is not good for me. . ..”

“You want to go to Turin?”

“Yes, I’d rather.”

“Of course, immediately, tomorrow!” his mother hastened to say. “I’ll send Graziella to reserve a seat for you in Monsù Gariola’s carriage.”

“No, no,” Giustino said. “Don’t. I’ll go by foot to Giaveno.”

“But why?”

“Because . . . Never mind! It’ll do me good to walk. I’ve been in the house too long. Instead… for the tram from Giaveno… Mamma, I…”

Signora Velia understood at once and brought a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes, as if to say: “Don’t even say it!”

When he went to his room, accompanied by his mother, who brought the lamp, he noticed she had put three ten-lire bills on the dresser.

“No, no!” he exclaimed. “What do you want me to do with so much? Take them, take them. One’s enough for me!”

His old mother moved away, parrying with her hands, with a sad, and at the same time a little mischievious, smile on her lips and in her eyes.

“Do you really think your life is finished, my son?” she said. “You’re still practically a boy. Go on!”

And she closed the door.