The Conformist (13 page)

“Tell me, do I resemble your guests?”

“You mean … physically?”

“No. I wanted to know if, according to you, I have any points in common with them … in the way I look and act, in appearance … I mean, if I resemble them.”

“You’re better than any of them to me,” she answered impetuously, “but as far as the rest goes, yes, you’re a person like them. You’re serious, educated, well-mannered, cultured … I mean, you can see that you’re a decent, respectable person, like them. But why do you ask?”

“Just thinking.”

“How strange you are,” she said, gazing at him almost curiously. “Most people want to be different from everyone else, but it seems that you want to be just
like
everyone else.”

Marcello said nothing and handed her the list, observing mildly, “Anyway, I don’t know a single one of them.”

“What do you think, that I know them all?” asked Giulia gayly. “Only mamma knows who a lot of them are. Besides, the reception will be over quickly … an hour or so and then you’ll never see them again.”

“I don’t mind seeing them,” said Marcello.

“I was just talking … Now, listen to the menu from the hotel and tell me if you like it.” Giulia pulled another piece of paper from her pocket and read aloud:

“
Cold consommé

Filets of sole alla mugnaia

Young turkey hen with rice and supreme sauce

Seasonal salad

Assorted cheeses

Ice-cream and cake

Fruit

Coffee and liqueurs

“What do you think?” she asked, in the same doubtful yet satisfied tone with which she had spoken of her mother’s bedroom a little earlier. “Does it sound good to you? Do you think we’re giving them enough to eat?”

“It sounds very good and generous to me,” said Marcello.

Giulia continued, “As far as champagne, we’ve chosen Italian champagne. It’s not as good as the French but it’s good enough to make toasts with.” She was silent a moment and then added with characteristic unpredictability, “Do you know what Don Lattanzi told me? That if you want to get married you have to take comunion and if you want to take comunion you have to go to confession … otherwise, he won’t marry us.”

For a moment Marcello, caught by surprise, didn’t know what to say. He was not a believer and it had been perhaps ten years since he had entered a church for any religious purpose. Besides, he had always been convinced that he nurtured a distinct dislike of all things ecclesiastical. Now instead, he realized to his astonishment, this idea of confession and comunion, far from annoying him, actually pleased and attracted him, somewhat in the same way the wedding reception, those guests he didn’t know, his marriage to Giulia, and Giulia herself — so ordinary, so similar to all the other girls — pleased and attracted him. It was one more link, he thought, in the chain of normality with which he sought to anchor himself in the treacherous sands of life. And what was more, this link was made of a nobler and more enduring metal than the others: religion. He was almost surprised not to have thought of it earlier and attributed this forgetfulness to the obvious and pacific nature of the religion into which he had been born and to which he had always felt he belonged, even without practicing it. He said, however, curious to hear what Giulia would respond, “But I’m not a believer.”

“So who is,” she replied calmly. “Ninety percent of the people who go to church — do you think they believe? And the priests themselves?”

“But do you believe?”

Giulia made a gesture with her hand in the air. “Sort of, up to a certain point … Every once in a while I say to Don Lattanzi: You don’t fool me with all your stories, you priests … I believe and I don’t believe. Or rather,” she added scrupulously, “let’s say that I have a religion all my own … different from the priests’ ”

“What does it mean to have your own religion?” thought Marcello. But knowing by experience that Giulia often spoke without knowing too well what she was talking about, he didn’t insist. Instead he said, “My case is more radical. I don’t believe at all, and I have no religion.”

Giulia made a gay, indifferent gesture with her hand. “So what does it cost you? Go all the same … It matters so much to them, and it does you no harm.”

“Yes, but I’ll be forced to lie.”

“Words … and anyway, it would be lying for a good end. You know what Don Lattanzi says? That you have to do certain things as if you believed, even if you don’t … faith comes afterwards.”

Marcello was silent a moment and then said, “All right, then I’ll confess and take comunion.” And as he said this, he felt once more that shiver of dark delight that the guest list had inspired in him earlier. “So,” he added, “I’ll go confess to Don Lattanzi.”

“You don’t really have to go to him,” said Giulia. “You can go to any confessor, in any church.”

“And for holy comunion?”

“Don Lattanzi will do that the day we get married … We’ll take it together. How long has it been since you went to confession?”

“Well … I don’t think I’ve confessed since I made my first comunion, when I was eight,” said Marcello with some embarassment. “Then I never did again.”

“Just think!” she exclaimed joyfully. “Who knows how many sins you have to tell!”

“And if they don’t give me absolution?”

“They’ll give you absolution for sure,” she replied affectionately, caressing his face with one hand. “Besides, what sins could you have? You’re good, you have a gentle heart, you’ve never done any harm to anyone. They’ll absolve you right away.”

“It’s complicated to get married,” said Marcello.

“Yes, but for me all these complications and preparations are so enjoyable … After all, we’re going to be united for the rest of our lives, aren’t we? And by the way, what are we deciding about the honeymoon?”

For the first time Marcello felt, along with his usual indulgent and lucid affection, a sense of pity for Giulia. He knew that there was still time for him to backtrack, to go somewhere else for their honeymoon instead of to Paris, where he was to carry out his mission. He could tell the minister he declined the task. But at the same time he realized that this was impossible. The mission was perhaps the firmest, most compromising and decisive step on his way to absolute normality. His marriage to Giulia, the wedding reception, the religious ceremonies, confession and comunion were steps in the same direction, but less important ones.

He stopped only a moment to analyze this reflection, whose dark and almost sinister depths did not escape him, and said quickly, “Well, I thought we might go to Paris.”

Giulia clapped her hands for joy. “Oh, good, Paris! My dream!” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him feverishly. “If you knew how happy I am … I didn’t want to tell you how much I wanted to go to Paris … I was afraid it would cost too much.”

“It will cost about the same as any other place, more or less,” said Marcello, “but don’t you worry about the money. For this once we’ll come up with it.”

Giulia was ravished. “How happy I am,” she repeated. She pressed herself passionately against Marcello and murmured, “Do you love me? Why don’t you kiss me?”

And so once more Marcello had his fiancée’s arm around his neck and her mouth on his. This time the ardor of her kiss seemed redoubled by gratitude. Giulia sighed; her whole body wriggled; she took Marcello’s hand and crushed it against her breast, rapidly and spasmodically moving her tongue in his mouth.

Aroused, Marcello thought, “If I wanted to I could take her now, right here, on this couch,” and it seemed to him that he perceived, one more time, the fragility of what he called normality.

At last they separated and Marcello said, smiling, “It’s lucky we’re getting married soon. Otherwise I’m afraid we’d become lovers one of these days.”

Giulia, her face still all flushed from the kiss, shrugged her shoulders and answered with her own kind of exalted and innocent impudence, “I love you so much, I couldn’t ask for anything better.”

“Really?” asked Marcello.

“Even right away,” she said passionately, “even here, now.…”

She had taken one of Marcello’s hands and was kissing it slowly, looking up at him with shining eyes full of feeling. Then the door opened and Giulia pulled back as her mother came into the room.

She too, thought Marcello as he watched her approach, was one of the many people brought into his life by his quest for a redemptive normality. He had nothing in common with this sentimental woman, who was always overflowing with a consuming, yearning tenderness — nothing but his desire to bind himself deeply and enduringly to a solid, established human society. Giulia’s mother, Signora Delia Ginami, was a corpulent woman in whom the breakdowns of advancing age seemed to manifest themselves in a kind of decay both of body and spirit, the first afflicted by a trembling, boneless obesity, the second by a tendency to mawkish, physiological outbursts of sentimentality. With every step she took it seemed that entire parts of her swollen body listed and shifted on their own under her shapeless clothes; and at the least trifle, a wracking emotion seemed to overwhelm her faculties of self-control, filling her watery blue eyes with tears as she joined her hands together in a gesture of ecstasy. Lately the imminence of her only daughter’s wedding had plunged Signora Delia into a condition of perpetual emotionality: she did nothing but cry — for joy, she explained — and she felt a constant need to hug Giulia or her future son-in-law of whom, she declared, she was already as fond as if he were her son. Marcello, whom these effusions filled with embarrassment, understood nonetheless that they were simply one more aspect of the reality in which he wished to insert himself; and as such, he endured and even appreciated them, with the same slightly melancholy satisfaction that the ugly furniture in the house, Giulia’s monologues, the wedding celebrations, and Don Lattanzi’s religious demands inspired in him.

This time, however, Signora Delia was not tender but indignant. She was waving a piece of paper in her hand and after she had greeted Marcello, who had risen to his feet, she said, “An anonymous letter … But first of all let’s go eat, it’s ready.”

“An anonymous letter?” cried Giulia, rushing after her mother.

“Yes, an anonymous letter. How disgusting people are, really.”

Marcello followed them into the dining room, trying to hide his face with his handkerchief. This news of an anonymous letter had deeply shaken him and it was important to him not to let the two women see it. Hearing Giulia’s mother exclaim, “An anonymous letter,” and immediately thinking, “Someone wrote about what happened with Lino” had been one and the same thing for him. At this thought the blood rushed from his face, he couldn’t breathe; he was assaulted by feelings of dismay, shame, and fear — inexplicable, unexpected, lightning-swift — that he had never experienced since the first years of his adolescence, when the memory of Lino had still been fresh. It was stronger than he was; and all his powers of self-control had been swept away in one moment, the way a thin cordon of policemen is swept away by the panicked crowd it was supposed to contain. He bit his lips till the blood came as he approached the table. So he had been mistaken, in the library, when he had looked up the news of the crime and been convinced that the ancient wound was completely healed: not only was the wound not healed, but it was also much deeper than he had suspected. Luckily his place at the table was against the light, with his back to the window. Silently, rigidly, he sat down at the head of the table, with Giulia on his right and Signora Ginami on his left.

The anonymous letter now lay on the tablecloth, next to Giulia’s mother’s plate. Meanwhile, the child-maid had come in, holding in both hands a platter heaped with spaghetti. Marcello sank the serving fork into the red, oily skein of spaghetti, lifted out a small amount, and deposited it on his plate.

Immediately the two women protested, “Too little … what, are you fasting … take some more.” Signora Ginami added, “You’re a working man, you need to eat.”

Giulia impulsively forked up some more spaghetti from the tray and put it on her fiancé’s plate.

“I’m not hungry,” said Marcello, in a voice that seemed to him absolutely anguished and spent.

“Appetite comes with eating,” replied Giulia emphatically as she served herself.

The little maid left, taking away the almost empty platter, and the mother said immediately, “I didn’t want to show it to you … I didn’t think it was worth it. What a world we live in, though …”

Marcello said nothing, but bent his head over his plate and filled his mouth with spaghetti. He was still afraid that the letter had to do with Lino, although his mind told him that this was impossible. It was an irresistible fear, stronger than any reflection.

Giulia asked, “Well, for goodness’ sake, will you tell us what’s written in it?”

Her mother answered, “First of all, though, I want to tell Marcello that even if they had written things a thousand times worse, he could still be sure that my affection for him would stay the same … Marcello, you’re a son to me, and you know that a mother’s love for her son is stronger than any insinuation.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears and she repeated, “A real son.” Then, grabbing Marcello’s hand and bringing it to her heart, she said, “Dear Marcello.”

Not knowing what to do or say, Marcello remained still and said nothing, waiting for the effusion to be over.

Signora Ginami gazed at him with soft eyes and added, “You have to forgive an old woman like me, Marcello.”

“Mamma, that’s ridiculous, you’re not old,” said Giulia, too used to these maternal outbursts to give them any weight or even be surprised by them.

“Yes, I’m old, and I don’t have many years left to live,” replied Signora Delia. This imminent death was one of her favorite subjects, perhaps because she thought it had the power to move others as much as it moved her. “I’ll die soon and that’s why I’m so happy to be leaving my daughter with a man as good as you, Marcello.”

Marcello, whose hand Signora Delia was pressing against her heart, and who found himself in an uncomfortable position over his spaghetti, could not repress a very slight movement of impatience, which did not escape the old woman. However, she took it as a protest of her excessive praise.