Giovanni greeted me with a shout, which did me good, and urged me to take a seat in the easy chair placed against the wall opposite his desk.
“Just five minutes, and I’ll be right with you!” And a moment later he added: “Why, you’re limping!”
I flushed. But I was in an improvisational mood. I told him I had slipped as I was leaving the café, and I named the very café where the accident had befallen me. I was afraid he might attribute my spill to a mind clouded by alcohol, and, laughing, I added the detail that when I fell, I was in the company of a person suffering from rheumatism, who limped.
A clerk and two porters were standing at Giovanni’s desk. Some irregularity in a consignment of goods had to be checked, and Giovanni was interfering ponderously in the operation of his warehouse, with which he rarely concerned himself, preferring to keep his mind free—as he said—to do only what no one else could do in his place. He shouted more than usual, as if he wanted to engrave his instructions in his employees’ ears. I believe it was a question of establishing the procedure of operations between office and warehouse.
“This paper!…” Giovanni shouted, passing from his right hand to his left a paper he had torn out of a ledger, “will be signed by you, and the clerk who receives it from you will give you one just like it, signed by him. “
He glared straight at his interlocutors, through his eyeglasses and then over them, concluding with another shout: “Understand?”
He decided to repeat his explanation from the beginning, but it seemed to me he was wasting time. I had the curious feeling that if I hurried, I would be able to fight better for Ada, but then I realized to my great surprise that no one was expecting me and I was expecting no one, and nothing could be done for me.
I went toward Giovanni, with outstretched hand. “I’m coming to your house this evening.”
He turned to me at once, as the others moved aside. “Why haven’t we seen you for such a long time?” he asked simply.
I was overcome by an amazement that left me bewildered. This was the very question Ada had failed to ask me, and to which I would be entitled. If those other men hadn’t been present, I would have spoken sincerely to Giovanni, who had asked me that question and had proved his innocence in what I now felt was a conspiracy against me. He alone was innocent and deserved my trust.
Perhaps I did not then think at once with such clarity, and the proof is the fact that I didn’t have the patience to wait till the clerk and the porters had left. Besides, I wanted to see if Ada had perhaps been prevented from asking that question by the untimely arrival of Guido.
But Giovanni also prevented me from speaking, with a great show of haste to return to his work.
“We’ll see each other this evening, then. You’ll hear a violinist whose like you’ve never heard before. He claims to be an amateur only because he has so much money that he wouldn’t condescend to making the violin his profession. He plans to go into business.” He shrugged, with a gesture of contempt. “Much as I love business, in his place I would peddle nothing but notes. I don’t know if you’ve met him. Name of Guido Speier.”
“Oh, really? Really?” I said, pretending to be pleased, shaking my head and opening my mouth, in other words moving everything I could command with my will. That handsome youth could also play the violin? “Really and truly? That good, is he?” I was hoping Giovanni had been joking and, with the exaggeration of his praises, had wanted to suggest that Guido was no more than a tormentor of the violin. But he kept shaking his head with great awe.
I shook his hand. “Until later.”
Limping, I went off to the door. A suspicion stopped me. Perhaps I would have been better advised not to accept that invitation, in which case I should inform Giovanni. I turned to go back to him, but I saw that he was watching me with great attention, leaning forward to see me more closely. I couldn’t bear this, and I left!
A violinist! If it was true that he played so well, I, quite simply, was a man destroyed. If only I didn’t play that instrument or at least hadn’t allowed myself to be induced to play it at the Malfentis’. I had taken the violin into that house not to win people’s hearts with my tone, but as an excuse to prolong my visits. How idiotic of me! I could have invented so many other, less compromising pretexts!
No one can say I succumb to illusions about myself. I know I have a profound feeling for music, and it is not affectation that makes me select the most complex pieces; however, that same profound musical feeling warns me and has warned me for years that I will never succeed in playing well enough to afford listeners pleasure. If I still go on playing, it’s for the same reason that I continue to take care of my health. I could play well if I weren’t ill, and I am pursuing health even when I ponder the equilibrium of the four strings. There is a slight paralysis in my organism, and on the violin it reveals its entire self and therefore is more easily treated. Even the lowest creature, when he knows what thirds are, or sixths, knows how to move from one to the other with rhythmic precision, just as his eye knows how to move from one color to the other. With me, on the contrary, when I have played one of those phrases, it sticks to me and I can no longer rid myself of it, and so it intrudes into the next phrase and distorts it. To put the notes in the right place, I have to beat time with my feet and my head, so nonchalance flies out the window, along with serenity, and with the music. The music that comes from a balanced organism is one with the tempo it creates and follows. When I achieve that, I will be cured.
For the first time I thought of abandoning the field, leaving Trieste, to go elsewhere in search of distraction. There was nothing more to hope for. Ada was lost to me. I was sure of that! Didn’t I know she would marry a man only after having tested and judged him as if it were a matter of awarding him an academic honor? It seemed ridiculous to me because, honestly, among human beings the violin should not count in the choice of a husband, but that thought didn’t save me. I felt the importance of that sound. It was decisive, as it is among songbirds.
I shut myself up in my study, though, for others, the holiday was not yet over! I took the violin from its case, undecided whether to smash it to smithereens or to play it. Then I tried it as if I wanted to bid it a last farewell, and finally I started practicing the eternal Kreutzer. In that same room I had made my bow travel so many kilometers that, in my bewilderment, mechanically, I began traveling some more.
All who have dedicated themselves to those accursed four strings know that as long as you live in isolation, you believe that each tiny effort produces a corresponding progress. If this weren’t so, who would voluntarily subject himself to that regime of endless hard labor, as if he had had the misfortune to murder someone? After a little while it seemed to me that my battle with Guido was not definitively lost. Who knows? Perhaps I would be allowed to come between Guido and Ada through a victorious violin?
This was not presumption, but my usual optimism, of which I was never able to rid myself. Every threat of disaster at first terrifies me, but then is immediately forgotten in the greater certitude of being able to elude it. Now I had only to adopt a more benevolent opinion of my own talents as a violinist. In the arts generally, as everyone knows, confident evaluation comes from confrontation, which here was lacking.
And yet one’s own violin, resounding so close to the ear, finds the shortest path to the heart. When I grew tired and stopped playing, I said to myself: “Good for you, Zeno. You’ve earned your keep.”
Without the slightest hesitation, I went to the Malfentis’. I had accepted the invitation and now I couldn’t fail to appear. I thought it a good omen when the maid welcomed me with a cordial smile, asking me if I had been ill; as I hadn’t been there for so long, I gave her a tip. Through her mouth the whole family, whose representative she was, was asking me that question.
She led me into the living room, which was plunged into the deepest darkness. Arriving there from the bright light of the vestibule, I saw nothing for a moment and didn’t dare move. Th
en I could discern several figures seated around a little table at the end of the room, at some distance from me.
I was greeted by Ada’s voice, which, in the darkness, seemed sensual to me. Smiling, caressing. “Have a seat over there and don’t disturb the spirits!” At this rate, I would surely not disturb them.
From another point at the table’s rim, another voice resounded, Alberta’s or perhaps Augusta’s: “If you want to take part in the summoning, there’s still a free place.”
I was firmly determined not to let myself be ostracized, and I strode resolutely toward the point from which Ada’s greeting had come. I banged my knee against a corner of that little Venetian table, which was all corners. The pain was intense, but I didn’t allow it to stop me, so I went and sank onto a chair offered me by someone or other, between two young ladies, of whom I thought one, the one on my right, was Ada, and the other Augusta. Immediately, to avoid any contact with the latter, I shifted toward the other. I suspected, however, that I might be mistaken and, to hear the voice of my neighbor to the right, I asked her: “Have you already received some communication from the spirits?”
Guido, who seemed to be sitting opposite, interrupted me, shouting imperiously: “Quiet!”
Then, more mildly: “Collect your thoughts and concentrate intensely on the dead person you wish to summon.”
I have nothing against any sort of attempt to peer into the world beyond. Indeed, I was annoyed that I hadn’t been the one to introduce the little table into Giovanni’s house, since it was obviously enjoying such a success. But I didn’t feel like obeying Guido’s orders, and therefore I didn’t concentrate at all. Besides, I had already reproached myself so much for having let things reach this pass without ever speaking clearly to Ada that, as I now had the young lady at my side, in this favoring darkness, I intended to clarify everything. I was curbed only by the sweetness of having her so close after fearing I had lost her forever. I sensed the softness of the warm fabrics that brushed against my clothes, and I thought, too, as we were pressed so close to each other, my foot was touching her little foot, which, as I knew, in the evening was shod in a tiny patent leather boot. It was even too much after such long torture.
Guido spoke again: “Please concentrate, everybody. Now beg the spirit you are summoning to make his presence known by moving the table.”
I was glad that he would go on dealing with the table. By now it was obvious that Ada was resigned to bearing almost all my weight! If she hadn’t loved me, she wouldn’t have borne me. The moment of clarification had come. I took my right hand from the table and, very slowly, I put my arm around her waist: “I love you, Ada!” I said in a low voice, moving my face close to hers to make myself more audible.
The girl did not answer immediately. Then, a wisp of a voice—Augusta’s voice, however—said: “Why did you stay away so long?”
My surprise and dismay almost made me fall off my seat. Immediately I felt that, while I had finally to eliminate that irritating young lady from my destiny, I was still obliged to show her the consideration that a proper gentleman like myself must show the woman who loves him even if she is the ugliest female ever created. How she loved me! In my sorrow I felt her love. It could be only love that had led her not to tell me she wasn’t Ada, and to ask me the question I had awaited in vain from Ada, while her sister certainly had been ready to ask me it the moment she saw me again.
I followed my instinct and did not answer her question, but, after a brief hesitation, said to her: “Actually, I’m glad I’ve confided in you, Augusta, because I believe you are so good!”
I immediately regained my balance on my stool. I couldn’t have the clarification with Ada, but meanwhile there was now total clarity between me and Augusta. Here there would be no further misunderstandings.
Guido repeated his warning: “If you’re not willing to be quiet, there’s no point in spending our time here in the dark!”
He didn’t know it, but I still needed a bit of darkness to isolate myself and collect my wits. I had discovered my mistake, and the only balance I had recovered was that of my seat.
I would talk with Ada, but in the clear light. I suspected it was not she on my left, but Alberta. How to verify this? The doubt almost made me fall to the left, and to recover my balance, I leaned on the table. The others all started to shout: “It moved! It moved!” My involuntary action could lead me to clarity. Where did Ada’s voice come from? But Guido’s voice now covered all the others, as he imposed the silence that I, quite willingly, would have imposed on him. Then, in a changed voice, pleading (the fool!), he spoke to the spirit, whom he believed present.
“I beg you! Tell us your name, spell it out in our alphabet!”
He thought of everything: He was afraid the spirit would use the Greek alphabet.
I kept up the farce, still peering into the darkness in search of Ada. After a slight hesitation I made the table move seven times so that the letter G was reached. It seemed a good idea to me, and though the U that followed required endless movements, I dictated quite distinctly the name of Guido. I have no doubt that, in dictating his name, I was led by a desire to relegate him to the spirit world.
When the name of Guido was complete, Ada finally spoke. “Some ancestor of yours?” she suggested. She was seatedjust at his side. I would have liked to move the table and shove it between the two of them, separating them.
“It could be!” Guido said. He thought he had ancestors, but that didn’t frighten me. His voice was affected by a genuine emotion that afforded me the joy a fencer feels when he realizes his adversary is less fearsome that he had believed. He wasn’t making these experiments in cold blood. He was a genuine fool! All weaknesses, except his, easily arouse my sympathy.
Then he addressed the spirit: “If your name is Speier, make one movement. Otherwise move the table twice.” Since he wanted to have ancestors, I satisfied him, rocking the table two times.
“My grandfather!” Guido murmured.
After this, the conversation with the spirit proceeded more quickly. The spirit was asked if he had some news to communicate. He answered yes. Business or otherwise? Business! This answer was preferable because answering it required only a single movement of the table. Guido then asked if it was good news or bad. Bad was to be indicated by two movements, and I—without the slightest hesitation this time — chose to move the table twice. But the second movement encountered opposition, so there must have been someone in the group who wanted the news to be good. Ada, perhaps? To produce the second movement, I actually flung myself on the table and easily had my way! Bad news!
Because of the struggle, the second movement proved excessive and actually jolted the entire company.
“That’s odd!” Guido murmured. Then, firmly, he cried: “That’s enough! Somebody here is making fun of us!”
It was a command, which many obeyed at the same time, and the living room was suddenly flooded with light, as lamps were turned on in several places. Guido seemed pale to me! Ada was mistaken about that individual, and I would open her eyes.
In the room, besides the three girls, were Signora Malfenti and another lady the sight of whom made me feel embarrassed and uneasy because I believed it was Aunt Rosina. For different reasons the two ladies received from me a cool greeting.
The best of it was that I had remained at the table, alone at Augusta’s side. It was again compromising, but I couldn’t resign myself to joining all the others, clustered around Guido, who, with some vehemence, was explaining how he had realized the table was being moved not by a spirit but by a flesh-and-blood devil. It was he himself, not Ada, who had tried to arrest the table, as it had become too garrulous.
“I was restraining the table with all my might,” he said, “to prevent its moving a second time. Someone must actually have leaned hard on it, to overcome my resistance.”
Fine spiritualist, he was! As if a powerful force couldn’t come from a spirit!
I looked at poor Augusta to s
ee her expression after she had heard my declaration of love for her sister. She was very flushed, but looked back at me with a kindly smile. It was only now that she brought herself to confirm having heard that declaration.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said to me in a low voice.
I was very pleased.
“Thank you,” I murmured, pressing her hand, not small but perfectly shaped. I was prepared to become Augusta’s good friend, whereas previously it would have been impossible, because I’m unable to be friends with ugly people. But I felt a certain fondness for her waist, which I had clasped and found slimmer than I had believed. Her face, too, wasn’t bad, and it seemed malformed only because of that eye that looked in an errant direction. I had surely exaggerated that malformation, believing it extended also to the thigh.
They had ordered lemonade for Guido. I approached the group still surrounding him, and encountered Signora Malfenti as she was moving away from it.
Laughing heartily, I asked her: “Does he need a tonic?”
Her lips curled in a faint movement of scorn. “He doesn’t seem much of a man,” she said sharply.
I flattered myself that my victory could be of decisive importance. Ada couldn’t think differently from her mother. The victory immediately produced the effect inevitable in a man of my temper. All bitterness vanished, and I didn’t want Guido to suffer further. Certainly the world would be a sweeter place if more people resembled me.
I sat beside him, and without looking at the others, I said: “You must forgive me, Signor Guido. I allowed myself a little joke in bad taste. I was the one who made the table declare it was moved by a spirit bearing your name. I wouldn’t have done it had I known your grandfather actually had that name, too.”
Guido’s complexion, which went pale, betrayed the importance my confession had for him. But he was unwilling to admit it, and he said: “These ladies are too kind! I really don’t need any consolation. The matter is of no significance. I appreciate your sincerity, but I had already guessed that someone had put on my grandfather’s wig.”