The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (23 page)

At once, next day, I began to realize it was going to be very hard for me to get back on the same footing with Micol.

After much hesitation, I tried ringing up at about ten o’clock. I was told (by Dirce) that the young people were still in their rooms, and asked ifl would be good enough to ring again about midday. To get over the waiting, I flung myself down on my bed. Haphazardly I picked up a book: Le
Rouge et le Noir;
but however hard I tried I couldn’t concentrate. Supposing-I won-dered-I didn’t ring up at midday? But I soon changed my mind. Suddenly I felt I wanted only one thing from Micol now: her friendship. It was very much better-I said to myself-to behave as if nothing had happened last night than to vanish. Micol would understand. Struck by my tact, fully reassured, she’d very soon trust me completely, and give me her dear confidence, as she had before.

So, on the dot of midday, I plucked up courage and dialled the Finzi-Continis’s number for the second time. I had to wait a long time, longer than usual. “Hullo,” I said at last, my voice broken with feeling. “Oh, is that you?”

It was actually Micol’s voice. She yawned: “What’s up"?

Disconcerted, my mind a blank, for a minute I found nothing better to say than that I’d already rung up two hours before. It was Dirce-I stammered-who’d suggested I should ring up about midday.

Micol heard me out. Then she started complaining about the day she had ahead of her, with so many things to see to after months and months away, suitcases to unpack, books and papers to tidy, etc. etc., and then the not exactly alluring prospect of a second “symposium”. That was the trouble with going away -she grumbled-: afterwards, when you got back to the old routine and tried to pick up the threads again, it was even more of an effort than the pretty frightful effort of getting away in the first place. Was she coming to the synagogue later?-she said, in answer to a timid question of mine. Well, she might. She might and she might not. Just at this particular moment she didn’t feel much like guaranteeing it.

She hung up without inviting me back that evening, or arranging when and where we should meet again.

I didn’t ring again that day, and even stayed away from the synagogue, although she had said I might see her there. But about seven, as I went along via Mazzini, and noticed the Finzi-Continis’ grey Dilambda parked behind the corner ofvia Scianze, on the side where the stones are, with Perotti, in chauffeur’s cap and uniform, sitting at the wheel, I couldn’t resist the temptation to stand at the angle of via Vittoria and wait.

For a long time I waited in the freezing cold. It was the busiest time of evening, when people were out before supper. Along both pavements of via Mazzini, slushy with half-melted, dirty snow, a crowd of people was hurrying in both directions. At last I had my reward: because at the end of the service, although from a distance, I saw her suddenly come out of the synagogue door and stop, alone, on the threshold. She was wearing a short leopard-skin coat drawn in at the waist with a leather belt, and, her blonde hair gleaming in the light of the shop windows, looked about as if in search ofsomeone. Could I be the one she was looking for, taking no notice of the many who turned to gape and admire? I was just going to come out of the shadows and move forward, when the family, who had obviously followed at a distance down the stairs, appeared in a group behind her. They were all there, including grandmother Regina. Turning on my heels, I hurried off along via Vittoria.

Next day and the days that followed I kept on ringing up, but managed to talk to her only rather rarely. Someone else nearly always answered: Alberto, or professor Ermanno, or Dirce, or even Perotti, all of whom, with the exception of Dirce, who was as brief and impersonal as a switchboard operator, and for that very reason embarrassing and off-putting, involved me in long, pointless conversations. After a bit, admittedly, I could break in on Perotti. But with Alberto and professor Ermanno it wasn’t so easy. I let them talk, always hoping they’d mention MicOl. No good. As if they were avoiding it deliberately, and in fact had agreed among themselves to do so, her father and brother left me the initiative of mentioning her; with the result that very often I hung up without having dared to ask them to put me through to her.

Then I started going there again: either in the mornings, with the excuse of my thesis, or in the afternoons, to see Alberto. I never made the smaUest move to tell Micol I was in the house. I was certain she must know, and that some day she would appear spontaneously.

The thesis, actually, although it was finished, still needed copying out again. So I brought my typewriter from home, and as soon as its tapping broke the silence of the billiard room, professor Ermanno came to his study door.

“What are you up to? The final copy already?” he cried gaily.

He came over and wanted to see the typewriter. It was a portable Italian one, a Littoria, which my father had given me a few years before, when I passed my school-leaving exams. Its make didn’t make him smile, as I had feared it might. He seemed actually pleased, saying that “even” in Italy we could now produce typewriters that, like mine, seemed to work perfectly. They had three in the house-he said-one for Alberto, one for Micol, and one for him: all three were American, Underwoods. Those belonging to the children were portables: very strong, no doubt, but certainly not as light as this one (and he weighed it as he spoke, holding it by the handle). Whereas his was the ordinary kind: the sort you call an office typewriter, clumsy and old-fashioned, maybe, but solid, really comfortable. Did I know how many carbon copies you could make on it, if you wanted to? Anything up to seven.

He took me into his study and showed it to me, lifting a dreary metal cover, painted black, which I’d never noticed until then. It was really a museum piece, obviously used very little even when it was new. And it was hard to convince professor Ermanno that, although my Littoria couldn’t manage more than three copies, two of them on very thin paper, I’d rather go on using that.

Chapter by chapter I tapped out on the keyboard, but my mind was elsewhere. And it was elsewhere in the afternoons as well, when I was in Alberto’s study. Malnate had come back from Milan a good week after Easter, full of indignation about the recent political events (the fall of Madrid: ah, but it wasn’t all over yet!: the conquest of Albania: how shameful, what buffoonery!). As far as Albania was concerned, he mentioned sarcastically what he’d heard from some friends he and Alberto had in common in Milan. The campaign had been Ciano’s special notion, he told us; Ciano, jealous of von Ribbentrop, thought this revolting piece of baseness would show the world he could go in for flash-diplomacy just as well as the Germans. Could you believe it? It seemed even Cardinal Schuster (which was just about saying everything!) had deplored the whole business and given a warning: and although he’d spoken among the closest friends the whole of Milan had heard of it afterwards. Giampi talked about Milan as well : about a performance of Mozart’s Don
Giovanni
at the Scala, which luckily he hadn’t missed; and then about Gladys-yes, actually Gladys-whom he’d met quite by chance in the Galleria, swathed in mink and arm in arm with a well-known industrialist: and, friendly as ever, she’d turned to him as she passed and made a tiny sign with her finger, as if to say: “Ring me,” or “I’ll ring you.” What a bore he’d had to come straight back to the grind! He’d have loved to stick a pair of horns on the head of that famous steel tycoon, war-profiteer-to-be. . . . He talked and he talked: turning mostly to me, as usual, but, I had a feeling, rather less sharp and didactic than he’d been the previous months: as if his trip to Milan to see his family and friends had touched him with a new feeling of indulgence towards others and their opinions.

With Micol, as I have said, I was only rarely in touch, and that only on the telephone; and when we spoke we both avoided mentioning anything very personal. All the same, a few days after I had waited for over an hour at the synagogue door, I couldn’t resist the temptation of complaining of her coldness.

“D’you know,” I said, “on the second Seder night I saw you agam.”

“Oh, did you? Were you at the synagogue too?” “No, I wasn’t. I was going along via Mazzini, noticed your car, and preferred to wait outside.” “What an idea.”

“You were terribly smart. Shall I tell you what you were wearing?”

“Oh, I believe you, I’ll take your word for it. Where were you?”

“On the opposite pavement, at the corner of via Vittoria. At one point you looked in my direction. Tell me honestly: did you recognize me?”

“No, why should I say something when I mean something else? But the thing is I just can’t see why. ... Couldn’t you have waved, or something?”

“I was just going to, then when I realized you weren’t alone I dropped the idea.”

“Well, what a discovery, that I wasn’t alone! You’re a funny boy, aren’t you. You could have come over and said hello to me all the same.”

“Yes, I could, if I’d reasoned it out. The trouble is you can’t always reason things out. And then: would you have wanted me to?”

“Oh heavens, what a fuss!” she sighed.

The second time I managed to talk to her, no less than a dozen days later, she told me that she was il, with a “powerful” cold and a bit of a temperature.

What a bore it was! Why did I never come and see her? I’d really forgotten her !

“Are you . . . are you in bed?” I stammered, disconcerted, feeling the victim of an enormous injustice.

“I certainly am, and right under the bedclothes at that. I bet you won’t come because you’re scared of influenza.”

“No, no, Micol,” I answered bitterly. “Don’t make me out more of a coward than I am. I was just amazed to hear you accusing me of having forgotten you, when the fact is ... Don’t you remember,” I went on, my voice thickening, “that before you went to Venice ringing you up was easy, whereas now, you must admit, it’s become quite a feat. D’you know I’ve been to your house several times, these last few days? Did they tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Well then! Ifyou wanted to see me you knew perfectly well where to find me: in the mornings in the billiard room, in the afternoons down below at your brother’s. The truth is you didn’t want to in the least.” “What nonsense! I’ve never liked going to Alberto’s, especially when he’s got friends in to see him. And as for coming to see you in the mornings, aren’t you working? If there’s one thing I
loathe
it’s bothering people when they’re working. Anyway, if you really want me to, tomorrow or the day after I’ll come along for a minute and say hello.”

She didn’t come next morning, but in the afternoon, while I was at Alberto’s (it must have been about seven o’clock: Malnate had left abruptly a few minutes before), Perotti came in. The “signorina” asked me to go upstairs a moment-he announced stolidly, but he seemed to me in a bad mood. She apologized: she was still in bed, else she’d have come down. What would I rather do: go up right away, or else stay to supper and go up afterwards? She’d rather I went up at once, as she had a bit of a headache and wanted to put the light out very early. But if I decided to stay . . .

“No, please,” I said, looking at Alberto. “I’m coming right away.”

I got up and made ready to follow Perotti.

“Look, don’t stand on ceremony,” Alberto said, coming solicitously to the door with me. “I think that there’ll only be Papa and me at supper this evening. My grandmother’s in bed with ’flu as well, and Mummy wouldn’t think of leaving her room for a minute. So if you’d like to have a bite with us, and then go up to Micol afterwards. ... You know Papa’s always pleased to see you.”

I declined the invitation, inventing a non-existent engagement that evening, and ran after Perotti, who had already reached the end of the passage.

Without exchanging a word we soon arrived at the foot of the long spiral staircase that went up and up, as far as the base of the tower-skylight. Micol’s set of rooms, I knew, was the highest in the house, only half a flight below the top landing.

I hadn’t noticed the lift, and got ready to walk up.

“You’re young, of course,” grinned Perotti, “but a hundred and twenty-three steps is quite a climb. Wouldn’t you like to take the lift? It works, you know.”

And he opened the gate of the black outside cage, then the sliding door of the lift inside, and stood aside to let me in.

I walked into the lift, which was an antediluvian box all of gleaming wine-coloured woods, and glittering stripes of glass adorned with an M, an F, and a C elaborately interwoven; it had a pungent, faintly suffocating smell, compounded of mould and turpentine, a smell that impregnated the stuffy air in that enclosed space; and felt an unmotivated sense of calm, of fatalistic tranquillity, of positively ironic detachment, all in the space of a moment. Where had I smelt a smell like that?-I wondered.-When?

The lift started moving slowly up through the well of the stairs. I sniffed the air and stared ahead of me at Perotti’s striped linen back. The old man had left the seat upholstered in soft velvet entirely to me. Standing two feet away, absorbed, and alert, one hand on the brass handle of the sliding door, the other laid possessively and in its way tenderly on the highly-polished brass switches, that gleamed just as brightly, Perotti had shut himself up again in a silence that was pregnant with every possible meaning. But here I remembered and understood. Perotti was silent not because, as I had thought at one point, he disapproved of Micol receiving me in her bedroom, but because the chance he had of working the lift-a fairly rare chance, perhaps-filled him with a satisfaction as intense as it was intimate and secret. The lift was no less dear to him than the carriage below in the coach-house. On these things, these venerable witnesses of a past which was now his own as well, he vented his hard-won love for the family he had served since he was a boy, his grudging, old domestic animal’s fidelity.

“It goes up beautifully,” I exclaimed. “What make is it?”

“It’s American,” he replied, half turning his head, and his mouth twisted into the curious grimace of scorn behind which peasants often hide admiration.