Still I didn’t leave. Aunt Rosina’s favorite among her nieces was Ada. I felt a desire to win the old woman’s friendship, too, and I searched for some engaging remark to address to her. I remembered vaguely that on the last occasion when I had seen her (or, rather, glanced at her, because then I had felt no need to look at her), the nieces, as soon as she had left, had remarked that she wasn’t looking well. Actually, one of them had said: “She must have poisoned her blood in some rage with her maid.”
I had found what I had sought. Looking affectionately at the old lady’s broad, wrinkled face, I said to her: “You look much better, Signora.”
I should have kept my mouth shut. She stared at me, amazed, and protested: “I’m the same as always. Better than when, according to you?”
She wanted to know when I had last seen her. I didn’t remember that date exactly, and I had to remind her that we had spent a whole afternoon together, seated in that same living room with the three young ladies, not where we were now but on the other side. I had intended to show her my interest, but the explanations she demanded made it all last too long. My falsity oppressed me, producing genuine pain.
Signora Malfenti spoke up, smiling: “Surely you didn’t mean to say that Aunt Rosina has put on weight?”
Good Lord! So this was the reason for Aunt Rosina’s annoyance. She was very heavy, like her brother, and she hoped to grow thinner.
“Put on weight? No, indeed! I just wanted to say that Signora Rosina’s color is better.”
I tried to maintain an affectionate tone, whereas I had really to make an effort not to utter some piece of insolence.
Still, Aunt Rosina didn’t seem satisfied. She had not been ill lately, and she couldn’t see why she should have appeared ill. And Signora Malfenti agreed with her.
“Indeed, her color never alters: it’s part of her,” she said, turning to me. “Don’t you think so?”
I thought so. Indeed, it was obvious. I left immediately. With great cordiality I held out my hand to Aunt Rosina, hoping to smooth her ruffled feathers, but she looked away as she gave her hand to me.
As soon as I had crossed the threshold of that house, my mood changed. What a liberation! I no longer had to ponder the meanings of Signora Malfenti, or make an effort to please Aunt Rosina. I actually think that if Aunt Rosina hadn’t spoken up so sharply, that strategist Signora Malfenti would have achieved her purpose fully and I would have left that house, quite pleased with her cordial treatment. I skipped down the steps. Aunt Rosina had been a kind of gloss on Signora Malfenti. Signora Malfenti had suggested I stay away from her house for a few days. Too kind, dear lady! I would content her beyond her expectations, and she would never see me again! They had tortured me: the Signora, the aunt, and even Ada! With what right? Because I had wanted to marry? But I no longer gave it a thought! How beautiful freedom was!
For a good quarter of an hour I strode through the streets, accompanied by these feelings. Then I felt the need for an even greater freedom. I had to find a way to mark definitively my determination never to set foot in that house again. I rejected the idea of writing a letter in which I would take my leave. My abandonment became even haughtier if I didn’t communicate my intention. I would simply forget to see Giovanni and his whole family.
I found the gesture, discreet and mannerly and therefore a bit ironic, with which I would thus seal my determination.
I rushed to a florist and selected a magnificent bouquet, which I addressed to Signora Malfenti accompanied by my card, on which I wrote only the date. Nothing more was needed. It was a date I would never forget thereafter, and perhaps Ada and her mother wouldn’t forget it either: May 5, the anniversary of the death of Napoleon.
I insisted on immediate delivery. It was important for the flowers to arrive that very day.
And then? Everything had been done, absolutely everything, because there was nothing left to do! Ada remained separated from me, with all her family, and I had to live, doing nothing more, waiting for one of them to come seeking me, giving me the opportunity to do or say something else.
I rushed to my study to reflect and to shut myself away. If I had succumbed to my painful impatience, I would have immediately hurried back to that house, with the risk of arriving there before my flowers. There could be no lack of pretexts. I might even have forgotten my umbrella!
I didn’t want to do anything of the sort. In sending that bouquet, I had taken a splendid stand, and it had to be maintained. Now I had to keep still, for the next move was up to them.
The introspection I achieved in my study, from which I had anticipated solace, only made clearer the reasons for my despair, exacerbated to the point of tears. I loved Ada! I didn’t yet know if that was the right verb, and I continued my analysis. I wanted her not only to be mine, but to be my wife: she, with that marmoreal face and that unripe body, but only she, with her gravity, that made her unable to understand my wit, which I would not impart to her, but would renounce forever while she would instruct me in a life of intelligence and work. I wanted all of her, and I wanted all from her. In the end I concluded the verb was correct: I loved Ada.
It seemed to me that I had thought of something very important, which could guide me. Away with all hesitation!
It was no longer important to know if she loved me. I had to try to win her, and it was no longer necessary to speak with her if she was Giovanni’s to bestow. Everything had to be cleared up promptly, to arrive at happiness at once or else to forget everything and be healed. Why did I have to suffer so much in this waiting? When I had learned—and I could learn it only from Giovanni—that I had definitively lost Ada, at least I would no longer have to battle with time, which would continue passing slowly without my feeling any need to push it. What’s definitive is always calm, because it is detached from time.
I rushed at once to look for Giovanni. I sped in two directions. First toward his office, located in that street we continue to call New Houses, because that’s what our ancestors called it. Tall old houses darkened the street, so close to the seashore, almost deserted at the sunset hour, and there I could proceed rapidly. As I walked on, I thought only of preparing as briefly as possible the sentence I would address to him. I had only to inform him of my resolve to marry his daughter. I didn’t have to win him or convince him. That businessman would know what answer to give me the moment he had heard my question. Yet I was troubled by the problem of whether, on such an occasion, I should speak to him in dialect or in standard Italian.
But Giovanni had already left his office and had gone to the Tergesteo. I headed in that direction. More slowly, because I knew that at the Bourse I would have to wait longer to be able to speak to him alone. Then, arriving at Via Cavana, I had to slow down because of the crowd blocking the narrow street. And it was precisely when I ‘was fighting my way through that crowd that I was finally granted, as if in a vision, the clarity I had been seeking for so many hours. The Malfentis wanted me to marry Augusta and didn’t want me to marry Ada, and this for the simple reason that Augusta was in love with me and Ada didn’t love me at all. Not at all, because otherwise they wouldn’t have intervened to separate us. They had told me I was compromising Augusta, but on the contrary, it was she who had compromised herself, in loving me. I understood everything at that moment, with vivid clarity, as if some member of the family had told me. And I guessed also that Ada had concurred in my being sent away from that house. She didn’t love me, and she would never love me as long as her sister loved me. On the crowded Via Cavana, therefore, I had thought more purposefully than in my solitary study.
Today, when I cast my mind back to those five memorable days that led me to marriage, I am dumbfounded by the fact that my spirit was not affected on learning that poor Augusta loved me. Now cast out of the Malfentis’ house, I loved Ada wrathfully. Why did I derive no satisfaction from the clear perception that Signora Malfenti had driven me away in vain, since I continued to dwell in that house, and very close to Ada, namely
in the heart of Augusta? I actually considered a further insult Signora Malfenti’s appeal to me not to compromise Augusta and, instead, to marry her. Toward the ugly girl who loved me I felt the very disdain I could not believe was addressed to me by her beautiful sister, whom I loved.
I walked still faster, but I turned aside and headed for my house. I no longer had to speak with Giovanni, because I now knew exactly how to behave; I saw it with a clarity so disheartening that perhaps it would at last give me peace, detaching me from time, which moved too slowly. It was even dangerous to talk about it with that boorish Giovanni. Signora Malfenti had spoken in a way I would understand only there in Via Cavana. Her husband was capable of behaving differently. He might even have said to me: “Why do you want to marry Ada? Let’s see! Wouldn’t you be better off marrying Augusta?” Because he had an axiom I remembered, one that might guide him in this situation: “You must always explain clearly any business transaction to your opponent, that’s the only way you can be sure of understanding it better than he does!” Well, now what?
An open break would follow. Not until then would time be able to proceed at its chosen pace, because then I would have no reason to meddle with it: I would have arrived at the still point!
I remembered, too, another axiom of Giovanni’s, and I clung to it because it gave me great hope. I was able to hang on to it for five days, those five days that transformed my passion into illness. Giovanni used to say you must never be in a hurry to close a transaction when you can’t expect any gain: every transaction sooner or later arrives at its conclusion on its own, as is proved by the fact that the history of the world is so long and that so few transactions remain unsettled. Until the moment it is settled, any transaction may prove profitable.
I didn’t remember that Giovanni had other axioms affirming the opposite, and I clung to that one. I had to cling to something. I made an ironclad resolution not to move until I learned that some new development had redirected my transaction to my advantage. And I was thus done such harm that, perhaps for this reason, no subsequent resolution of mine ever remained with me for so long a time.
No sooner had I made this resolution than I received a note from Signora Malfenti. I recognized the handwriting on the envelope, and before opening it, I flattered myself that my ironclad decision alone had sufficed to make her regret her maltreatment of me, inspiring her now to seek me out. When I found that the note contained only the letters p.r.,* which meant thanks for the flowers I had sent her, I was in despair. I flung myself on my bed and sank my teeth into the pillow as if to nail myself there and prevent myself from running out and breaking my vow. What ironic serenity emanated from those two letters! Far greater than that expressed by the date I had written on my card, which meant first a resolution and perhaps
*p.r., for per ringaziamento: written on a calling card, these letters represented a correct but formal and cold way of saying thank you.
also a reproach. Remember, said Charles I, before they decapitated him, and he must have been referring to that day’s date! I, too, had urged my adversary to remember and to fear!
Five terrible days and five terrible nights followed, and I observed the dawns and the sunsets that meant end and beginning and brought closer the hour of my freedom, the freedom to fight again for my love.
I was preparing for that combat. By now I knew how my fair maiden wanted me to be. It is easy to remember some resolutions I made then, first of all because I made some identical ones more recently, and further because I made a note of them on a sheet of paper I have kept. I was determined to become more serious. That meant not telling those jokes that made others laugh but discredited me, while they made the ugly Augusta love me and moved my Ada to contempt. Then there was the determination to be every morning at eight o’clock sharp in my office, which I hadn’t seen for such a long time, and not to argue with Olivi about my rights, but to work with him and become capable of assuming in due course the management of my affairs. This would be essayed in a period more serene than the present; similarly, I would also stop smoking later, namely when I had regained my freedom, because it wouldn’t do to make this horrible interval even worse. Ada was entitled to a perfect husband. So there were various plans to devote myself to serious reading, and to spend a half hour every day in the salle d’armes, and to go riding a couple of times each week. The day’s twenty-four hours were not too many.
During those days of isolation, the most bitter jealousy was my constant companion. I had made the heroic vow to correct my every fault in preparation for my conquest of Ada in a few weeks’ time. But for the present? For the present, as I subjected myself to the sternest discipline, would the other males of the city remain inactive, or would they try instead to take my woman away from me? Among them there was surely one who didn’t need all these exertions in order to make himself welcome. I knew—I thought I knew—that when Ada found the man suited to her, she would immediately consent, without waiting to fall in love. During those days, when I encounted a well-dressed male, healthy and carefree, I hated him because to me he seemed to fit the bill for Ada. The thing I remember best from those days is the jealousy that descended like a fog on my life.
The horrid suspicion that I would see Ada taken from me in those days is nothing to laugh at, now that we know how things turned out. When I think back to those days of passion, I feel a great awe of my prophetic spirit.
Various times, at night, I walked beneath the windows of that house. Upstairs, they apparently continued amusing themselves as they had when I, too, had been there. At midnight or shortly before, the lights would go out in the living room. I would run off, afraid of being glimpsed by some visitor who would then be leaving the house.
But every hour of those days was torture also because of my impatience. Why did no one inquire after me? Why didn’t Giovanni do something? Shouldn’t he have been amazed, seeing me neither at his house nor at the Tergesteo? Was he, then, also in agreement about my banishment? I often interrupted my walks, day and night, to rush home and make sure no one had come asking for me. I couldn’t go to bed if there was any doubt in my mind, so I would wake poor Maria and question her. I would spend hours waiting at home, the place where I was most easily found. But no one asked for me, and surely if I hadn’t made up my mind to stir myself, I would still be a bachelor.
One evening I went to gamble at the club. For many years I hadn’t put in an appearance there, respecting a promise I had made my father. It seemed to me the promise no longer had any validity, since my father couldn’t have foreseen my painful circumstances and my urgent need for distraction. At first I won, but with a luck that grieved me because it seemed a compensation for my bad luck in love. Then I lost, and I grieved again because I seemed to succumb to gambling as I had succumbed to love. I soon became fed up with the play. It was unworthy of me, and also of Ada. That was how pure my love made me!
In those days I also realized how my dreams of love had been annihilated by that harsh reality. Now my dream was quite different. I dreamed of victory rather than of love. My sleep was once embellished by a visit from Ada. She was in bridal attire and was coming with me to the altar, but when we were left alone, we didn’t make love, not even then. I was her husband and I had gained the right to ask her: “How could you have allowed me to be treated like that?” No other rights mattered to me.
In one of my drawers I find drafts of letters to Ada, to Giovanni, and to Signora Malfenti. They date from that time. To Signora Malfenti I wrote a simple note, taking my leave before setting off on a long journey. I don’t recall having had any such thing in mind, however. I couldn’t leave the city when I wasn’t certain no one would come looking for me. What a misfortune if they were to come and then not find me! None of those letters was sent. I believe I wrote them only to record my thoughts on paper.
For many years I had considered myself ill, but the illness made others suffer more than it did me. Now I finally came to know “painful” illness, a host of unpleasa
nt physical sensations that made me genuinely unhappy.
This is how they began. At about one in the morning, unable to fall asleep, I would get up and walk around in the mild night until I came upon an outlying café, where I had never been and where I would thus not encounter any acquaintance: a welcome situation because I wanted to continue an argument with Signora Malfenti I had begun in bed, and I didn’t want anybody interfering. Signora Malfenti had addressed further reproaches to me. She said I had tried to “play footsies” with her daughters. Actually, if I had attempted such a thing, I had surely done so only with Ada. I broke into a cold sweat at the thought that the Malfenti family was now reproaching me in such a fashion. The absent man is always wrong, and they could have taken advantage of my absence to band together against me. In the bright light of the café, I defended myself better. To be sure, there had been times when I would have liked to touch Ada’s foot with mine, and once, indeed, I thought I had done so, with her acquiescence. But then it turned out I had pressed the wooden foot of the table, and that foot surely couldn’t have told on me.
I pretended to take an interest in the billiards game. One gentleman, leaning on a crutch, came over and sat down right beside me. He ordered a lemonade, and since the waiter expected an order also from me, absently I also asked for lemonade, though I can’t bear the taste of lemon. Meanwhile, the crutch, first propped against the sofa where we were seated, now slid to the floor, and I bent to pick it up with an almost instinctive movement.