The Watcher and Other Stories (20 page)

What prevented me from entering their state of mind, I was thinking on my way home, was my wife, who had always been opposed to any fantasy. And I thought what an influence she had had on my life, and how nowadays I could never get drunk on words and ideas any more.

She met me on the doorstep looking rather alarmed, and said: “Listen, there's a surveyor here.” I, who still had in my ears the sound of superiority of those blusterers at the inn, said almost without listening: “What now, a surveyor... Well, I'll just...”

She went on: “A surveyor's come to take measurements.” I did not understand and went in. “Ah, now I see. It's the captain!”

It was Captain Brauni who was taking measurements with a yellow tape measure, to set up one of his traps in our house. I introduced him to my wife and thanked him for his kindness.

“I wanted to have a look at the possibilities here,” he said. “Everything must be done in a strictly mathematical way.” He even measured the basket where the baby was sleeping, and woke it up. The child was frightened at seeing the yellow yardstick leveled over his head and began to cry. My wife tried to put him to sleep again. The baby's crying made the captain nervous, though I tried to distract him. Luckily, he heard his wife calling him and went out. Signora Aglaura was leaning over the hedge and shouting: “Come here! Come here! There's a visitor! Yes, the ant man!”

Brauni gave me a glance and a meaningful smile from his thin lips, and excused himself for having to return to his house so soon. “Now, he'll come to you too,” he said, pointing toward the place where this mysterious ant man was to be found. “You'll soon see,” and he went away.

I did not want to find myself face to face with this ant man without knowing exactly who he was and what he had come to do. I went to the steps that led to Reginaudo's land; our neighbor was just at that moment returning home; he was wearing a white coat and a straw hat, and was loaded with sacks and cartons. I said to him: “Tell me, has the ant man been to you yet?”

“I don't know,” said Reginaudo, “I've just got back, but I think he must have, because I see molasses everywhere. Claudia!”

His wife leaned out and said: “Yes, yes, he'll come to the Casa Laureri too, but don't expect him to do very much!”

As if I was expecting anything at all! I asked: “But who sent this man?”

“Who sent him?” repeated Reginaudo. “He's the man from the Argentine Ant Control Corporation, their representative who comes and puts molasses all over the gardens and houses. Those little plates over there, do you see them?” My wife said: “Poisoned molasses...” and gave a little laugh as if she expected trouble.

“Does it kill them?” These questions of mine were just a deprecating joke. I knew it all already. Every now and then everything would seem on the point of clearing up, then complications would begin all over again.

Signor Reginaudo shook his head as if I'd said something improper. “Oh no... just minute doses of poison, you understand... ants love sugary molasses. The worker ants take it back to the nest and feed the queens with these little doses of poison, so that sooner or later they're supposed to die from poisoning.”

I did not want to ask if, sooner or later, they really did die. I realized that Signor Reginaudo was informing me of this proceeding in the tone of one who personally holds a different view but feels that he should give an objective and respectful account of official opinion. His wife, however, with the habitual intolerance of women, was quite open about showing her aversion to the molasses system and interrupted her husband's remarks with little malicious laughs and ironic comments; this attitude of hers must have seemed to him out of place or too open, for he tried by his voice and manner to attenuate her defeatism, though not actually contradicting her entirely—perhaps because in private he said the same things, or worse—by making little compensating remarks such as: “Come now, you exaggerate, Claudia.... It's certainly not very effective, but it may help.... Then, they do it for nothing. One must wait a year or two before judging....”

“A year or two? They've been putting that stuff down for twenty years, and every year the ants multiply.”

Signor Reginaudo, rather than contradict her, preferred to turn the conversation to other services performed by the Corporation; and he told me about the boxes of manure which the ant man put in the gardens for the queens to go and lay their eggs in, and how they then came and took them away to burn.

I realized that Signor Reginaudo's tone was the best to use in explaining matters to my wife, who is suspicious and pessimistic by nature, and when I got back home I reported what our neighbor had said, taking care not to praise the system as in any way miraculous or speedy, but also avoiding Signora Claudia's ironic comments. My wife is one of those women who, when she goes by train, for example, thinks that the timetable, the make-up of the train, the requests of the ticket collectors, are all stupid and ill planned, without any possible justification, but to be accepted with submissive rancor; so though she considered this business of molasses to be absurd and ridiculous, she made ready for the visit of the ant man (who, I gathered, was called Signor Baudino), intending to make no protest or useless request for help.

The man entered our plot of land without asking permission, and we found ourselves face to face while we were still talking about him, which caused rather an unpleasant embarrassment. He was a little man of about fifty, in a worn, faded black suit, with rather a drunkard's face, and hair that was still dark, parted like a child's. Half-closed lids, a rather greasy little smile, reddish skin around his eyes and at the sides of his nose, prepared us for the intonations of a clucking, rather priestlike voice with a strong lilt of dialect. A nervous tic made the wrinkles pulsate at the corner of his mouth and nose.

If I describe Signor Baudino in such detail, it's to try to define the strange impression that he made on us; but was it strange, really? For it seemed to us that we'd have picked him out among thousands as the ant man. He had large, hairy hands; in one he held a sort of coffeepot and in the other a pile of little earthenware plates. He told us about the molasses he had to put down, and his voice betrayed a lazy indifference to the job; even the soft and dragging way he had of pronouncing the word “molasses” showed both disdain for the straits we were in and the complete lack of faith with which he carried out his task. I noticed that my wife was displaying exemplary calm as she showed him the main places where the ants passed. For myself, seeing him move so hesitantly, repeating again and again those few gestures of filling the dishes one after the other, nearly made me lose my patience. Watching him like that, I realized why he had made such a strange impression on me at first sight: he looked like an ant. It's difficult to tell exactly why, but he certainly did; perhaps it was because of the dull black of his clothes and hair, perhaps because of the proportions of that squat body of his, or the trembling at the corners of his mouth corresponding to the continuous quiver of antennae and claws. There was, however, one characteristic of the ant which he did not have, and that was their continuous busy movement. Signor Baudino moved slowly and awkwardly, as he now began daubing the house in an aimless way with a brush dipped in molasses.

As I followed the man's movements with increasing irritation I noticed that my wife was no longer with me; I looked around and saw her in a corner of the garden where the hedge of the Reginaudos' little house joined that of the Braunis'. Leaning over their respective hedges were Signora Claudia and Signora Aglaura, deep in talk, with my wife standing in the middle listening. Signor Baudino was now working on the yard at the back of the house, where he could mess around as much as he liked without having to be watched, so I went up to the women and heard Signora Brauni holding forth to the accompaniment of sharp angular gestures.

“He's come to give the ants a tonic, that man has; a tonic, not poison at all!”

Signora Reginaudo now chimed in, rather mellifluously: “What will the employees of the Corporation do when there are no more ants? So what can you expect of them, my dear Signora?”

“They just fatten the ants, that's what they do!” concluded Signora Aglaura angrily.

My wife stood listening quietly, as both the neighbors' remarks were addressed to her, but the way in which she was dilating her nostrils and curling her lips told me how furious she was at the deceit she was being forced to put up with. And I, too, I must say, found myself very near believing that this was more than women's gossip.

“And what about the boxes of manure for the eggs?” went on Signora Reginaudo. “They take them away, but do you think they'll burn them? Of course not!”

“Claudia, Claudia!” I heard her husband calling. Obviously these indiscreet remarks of his wife made him feel uneasy. Signora Reginaudo left us with an “Excuse me,” in which vibrated a note of disdain for her husband's conventionality, while I thought I heard a kind of sardonic laugh echoing back from over the other hedge, where I caught sight of Captain Brauni walking up the graveled paths and correcting the slant of his traps. One of the earthenware dishes just filled by Signor Baudino lay overturned and smashed at his feet by a kick which might have been accidental or intended.

I don't know what my wife had brewing inside her against the ant man as we were returning toward the house; probably at that moment I should have done nothing to stop her, and might even have supported her. But on glancing around the outside and inside of the house, we realized that Signor Baudino had disappeared; and I remembered hearing our gate creaking and shutting as we came along. He must have gone that moment without saying good-by, leaving behind him those bowls of sticky, reddish molasses, which spread an unpleasant sweet smell, completely different from that of the ants, but somehow linked to it, I could not say how.

Since our son was sleeping, we thought that now was the moment to go up and see Signora Mauro. We had to go and visit her, not only as a duty call but to ask her for the key of a certain storeroom. The real reasons, though, why we were making this call so soon were to remonstrate with her for having rented us a place invaded with ants without warning us in any way, and chiefly to find out how our landlady defended herself against this scourge.

Signora Mauro's villa had a big garden running up the slope under tall palms with yellowed fanlike leaves. A winding path led to the house, which was all glass verandas and dormer windows, with a rusty weathercock turning creakily on its hinge on top of the roof, far less responsive to the wind than the palm leaves which waved and rustled at every gust.

My wife and I climbed the path and gazed down from the balustrade at the little house where we lived and which was still unfamiliar to us, at our patch of uncultivated land and the Reginaudos' garden looking like a warehouse yard, at the Braunis' garden looking as regular as a cemetery. And standing up there we could forget that all those places were black with ants; now we could see how they might have been without that menace which none of us could get away from even for an instant. At this distance it looked almost like a paradise, but the more we gazed down the more we pitied our life there, as if living in that wretched narrow valley we could never get away from our wretched narrow problems.

Signora Mauro was very old, thin, and tall. She received us in half darkness, sitting on a high-backed chair by a little table which opened to hold sewing things and writing materials. She was dressed in black, except for a white mannish collar; her thin face was lightly powdered, and her hair drawn severely back. She immediately handed us the key she had promised us the day before, but did not ask if we were all right, and this—it seemed to us—was a sign that she was already expecting our complaints.

“But the ants that there are down there, Signora...” said my wife in a tone which this time I wished had been less humble and resigned. Although she can be quite hard and often even aggressive, my wife is seized by shyness every now and then, and seeing her at these moments always makes me feel uncomfortable too.

I came to her support, and assuming a tone full of resentment, said: “You've rented us a house, Signora, which if I'd known about all those ants, I must tell you frankly...” and stopped there, thinking that I'd been clear enough.

The Signora did not even raise her eyes. “The house has been unoccupied for a long time,” she said. “It's understandable that there are a few Argentine ants in it... they get wherever... wherever things aren't properly cleaned. You,” she turned to me, “kept me waiting for four months before giving me a reply. If you'd taken the place immediately, there wouldn't be any ants by now.”

We looked at the room, almost in darkness because of the half-closed blinds and curtains, at the high walls covered with antique tapestry, at the dark, inlaid furniture with the silver vases and teapots gleaming on top, and it seemed to us that this darkness and these heavy hangings served to hide the presence of streams of ants which must certainly be running through the old house from foundations to roof.

“And here...” said my wife, in an insinuating, almost ironic tone, “you haven't any ants?”

Signora Mauro drew in her lips. “No,” she said curtly; and then as if she felt she was not being believed, explained: “Here we keep everything clean and shining as a mirror. As soon as any ants enter the garden, we realize it and deal with them at once.”

“How?” my wife and I quickly asked in one voice, feeling only hope and curiosity now.

“Oh,” said the Signora, shrugging her shoulders, “we chase them away, chase them away with brooms.” At that moment her expression of studied impassiveness was shaken as if by a spasm of physical pain, and we saw that, as she sat, she suddenly moved her weight to another side of the chair and arched in her waist. Had it not contradicted her affirmations I'd have said that an Argentine ant was passing under her clothes and had just given her a bite; one or perhaps several ants were surely crawling up her body and making her itch, for in spite of her efforts not to move from the chair it was obvious that she was unable to remain calm and composed as before—she sat there tensely, while her face showed signs of sharper and sharper suffering.