In my idleness I was promptly seized by a desire to see Carla again. I didn’t dare rush to her, fearing Copier would find out. But I was never at a loss for pretexts. I could go to offer her further assistance, unknown to Copier, but I would first have to be sure that, in her own interest, she would agree to remain silent. And what if that genuine sick man were already the girl’s lover? I knew absolutely nothing about the truly sick, and it could easily be their habit to have their mistresses paid for by others. If so, a single visit to Carla would be enough to compromise me. I wouldn’t endanger the peace of my family; or, rather, it was in no danger unless my desire for Carla increased.
But it did increase, constantly. I already knew that girl much better than when I had shaken her hand to take my leave of her. I remembered especially that black braid that covered her snowy neck, and how it would have to be pushed aside with the nose if one wanted to succeed in kissing the skin it concealed. To stimulate my desire, I had only to remember that on a certain landing, in my own little city, a beautiful girl was available, and a short walk would be enough for me to go and take her! The battle with sin in some circumstances becomes very difficult because you have to renew it every day and every hour: as long as the girl remains on that landing, in other words. Carla’s long vowels summoned me, and perhaps it was their very sound that had instilled the conviction in my soul that when my resistance had disappeared, there would be no other resistances. However, it was clear to me that I could deceive myself, and perhaps Copier saw things with greater precision. This suspicion also helped reduce my resistance, since poor Augusta could be saved from my possible betrayal by Carla herself, whose mission as a woman was to offer resistance.
Why should my desire have caused me any remorse, when it seemed actually to have arrived just in time to save me from the menacing tedium of those days? In no way did it harm my relations with Augusta: quite the contrary, in fact. I spoke to her now not only with the affectionate words I had always had for her, but also with those that, in my thoughts, were being formed for the other. There had never been such a wealth of tenderness in my house, and Augusta seemed enchanted by it. I was always strict regarding what I called the family schedule. My conscience is so delicate that, with my present behavior, I was already preparing to attenuate my future remorse.
That my resistance was not totally lacking is proved by the fact that I reached Carla not in one outburst, but by degrees. First, for several days I arrived only as far as the Public Garden, and with the sincere intention of delighting in that greenery that seems so pure in the midst of the grayness of the streets and houses that surround it. Then, not having had the good luck to run into her casually, as I had hoped, I left the Garden and walked until I was directly under her windows. I did this with great emotion, which recalled that delightful excitement of a youth approaching love for the first time. For a long while I had been deprived not of love, but of the thrill of rushing to it.
I had barely left the Public Garden when I came upon my mother-in-law, face to face. At first I had a curious suspicion: in the morning, so early, in this neighborhood, so far from ours? Perhaps she was also betraying her sick husband. I immediately learned that I was doing her an injustice, because she had called on the doctor, for consolation after having spent a bad night with Giovanni. The doctor had had good words for her, but she was so distressed that she soon left me, forgetting even to be surprised at having come upon me in that place frequented only by old people, children, and nannies.
But just the sight of her was enough to make me feel the grip of my family again. I turned toward home with a firm step, to which I beat time, murmuring: “Never again! Never again!” At that moment Augusta’s mother, with her grief, had given me the sense of all my duties. It was a good lesson, and it lasted the whole day.
Augusta wasn’t at home because she had hurried to her father and had stayed with him all morning. At table she told me that they had discussed whether, given Giovanni’s condition, they shouldn’t postpone Ada’s wedding, which had been set for the next week. Giovanni was already better. Apparently at supper he had let himself be induced to overeat, and indigestion had assumed the appearance of a worsening of his sickness.
I told her I had already had the news from her mother, whom I had encountered that morning in the Public Garden. Augusta, too, was not surprised by my walk, but I felt called upon to furnish an explanation. I told her that for a while now I preferred the Public Garden as the destination of my strolls. I could sit on a bench and read my paper.
Then I added: “That Olivi! He’s really fixed me! Condemning me to such inactivity.”
Augusta, who on this score felt a bit guilty, had an expression of sadness and regret. I then felt fine. But I was truly quite pure because I spent the whole afternoon in my study and could honesdy believe I was definitively cured of any perverse desire. I was now reading the Apocalypse.
And despite the fact that I had thus established my right to go every morning to the Public Garden, my resistance to temptation had become so great that the next day, when I went out, I headed in exactly the opposite direction. I went to look for some music, wanting to try a new violin method that had been recommended to me. Before going out, I learned that my father-in-law had passed an excellent night and would come to us in a cab that afternoon. I was pleased both for my father-in-law and for Guido, who would finally be able to marry. All was going well: I was saved, and so was my father-in-law.
It was that very music that led me back to Carla! Among the methods the shopkeeper offered me was one written not for the violin but for the voice. I carefully read the title: Complete Manual of the Art of Singing (school of Garcia) by M. Garcia (junior), comprising a paper on the Human Memory and Physiological Observations on the Human Voice, read at the Academy of Sciences in Paris.
I allowed the clerk to serve other customers, and I began reading the little book. I must say that I read it with an agitation that at first resembled that of a depraved youth approaching pornography. Yes! This was the way to reach Carla; she needed that book, and it would be a crime on my part not to acquaint her with it. I bought it and returned home.
Garcia’s opus consisted of two parts, one theoretical and the other practical. I continued reading it, determined to understand it well enough to be able to give my own advice to Carla when I eventually went to see her with Copier. Meanwhile I would gain some time and sleep in peace, while still diverting myself with the thought of the adventure in store for me.
But Augusta herself brought things to a head. Coming in to greet me, she interrupted my reading, bent down, and brushed my cheek with her lips. She asked me what I was doing, and, hearing something about a new manual, she thought it was for the violin and didn’t trouble to take a second look. When she left me, I exaggerated the risk I had run, and I thought it would be best not to keep that book in my study. I should deliver it immediately to its destiny, and so I was forced to head straight for my adventure. I had found something more than a mere pretext for doing what it was my desire to do.
I no longer had the slightest hesitation. Having reached that landing, I turned at once to the door on my left. But I stopped for a moment at that door to listen to the sounds of the song La mia bandiera,that echoed gloriously in the stairwell. It was as if, for all this time, Carla had continued singing the same thing. I smiled, filled with affection and desire by such childishness. I then cautiously opened the door without knocking, and entered the room on tiptoe. I wanted to see her right away, then and there. In the confined space her voice was really unpleasant. She sang with great enthusiasm and with greater warmth than on the occasion of my first visit. She had actually flung herself against the back of the chair, to be able to expel all her breath from her lungs. I saw only the delicate head bound by the thick braids, and I retreated, overcome with deep emotion at my own daring. She meanwhile had reached the final note, which she was reluctant to cut off, and I was able to go out on the landing again and shut the door behind me wi
thout her noticing. That last note had wavered up and down, before being securely anchored. So Carla was able to hear the correct note, and it was now Garcia’s job to take over and teach her how to find it more promptly.
I knocked when I felt calmer. She came immediately to open the door, and I will never forget her slender form, leaning against the jamb, as she fixed me with her great dark eyes until she could recognize me in the darkness.
But meanwhile I had grown calm and could thus be seized again by all my misgivings. I was on the way to betraying Augusta, but I was thinking that if, on the previous days, I had been content to go no farther than the Public Garden, now, all the more easily, I could stop at this door, deliver the compromising book, and leave, completely satisfied. It was a brief moment, full of the best intentions. I even remembered some strange advice once given me to rid myself of the habit of smoking, and it might work also on this occasion: sometimes, to be satisfied, it was enough to light the match, then throw away both match and cigarette.
It would have been easy enough to do this, because Carla herself, when she recognized me, blushed and seemed about to flee, embarrassed—as I later learned—at being found wearing a cheap, threadbare house dress.
Once recognized, I felt called upon to apologize: “I’ve brought you this book, which I think will interest you. If you like, I can leave it with you and go away at once.”
The tone of the words was—or so it seemed to me—rather curt, but not the sense, because all in all I left it up to her to decide whether I should leave, or remain and betray Augusta.
She decided at once, because she grasped my hand, the better to detain me, and she ushered me inside. Emotion clouded my vision, and I believe the cause was not so much the soft contact of that hand, but rather the familiarity that seemed to decide my fate and Augusta’s. Therefore I believe I entered with some reluctance, and when I recall the story of my first infidelity, I have the feeling that I committed it because I was dragged into it.
Carla’s face was truly beautiful, flushed as it was. I was delightfully surprised to realize that while she hadn’t been expecting me, she had still been hoping for me to visit. She said, with great satisfaction: “So you felt the need to see me again? To see the poor little girl who owes you so much?”
Surely, had I wanted to, I could have taken her into my arms immediately, but the thought never crossed my mind. The thought was so far from me that I didn’t even answer her words, which seemed compromising to me, and I began again to talk about Garcia and the necessity of that book for her. I spoke of it with a haste that led me to utter some ill-considered words. Garcia would teach her how to make the notes as firm as metal and as sweet as air. He would explain to her how a note can represent only a straight line—indeed, a plane, a truly polished plane.
My fervor vanished only when she interrupted me to express a painful suspicion: “Then you don’t like the way I sing?”
I was dumbfounded by her question. I had uttered a harsh criticism, but I wasn’t aware of it, and I protested in all sincerity. I protested so well that I seemed, while speaking only of singing, to return to the love that had so imperiously drawn me into that house.
And my words were so loving that they still allowed a measure of sincerity to shine through: “How can you believe such a thing? Would I be here if that were so? I stood on that landing for a long time, enjoying your singing, delicious and sublime in its innocence. Only I believe that, to reach perfection, something further is needed, and I have come to bring it to you.”
Such was the power that the thought of Augusta had over my spirit that it made me go on protesting that I had not been swept here by my desire!
Carla listened to my flattering words, which she was quite incapable of analyzing. She was not very cultivated, but, to my great surprise, I realized she was not lacking in common sense. She told me that she herself had grave doubts about her talent and her voice: she felt she was not making any progress. Often, after a certain number of hours of study, she allowed herself the pleasure and the reward of singing La mia bandiera, hoping to discover some new quality in her voice. But it was always the same: no worse, and perhaps always fairly good, as those who heard her insisted, as I had, too (and here her lovely dark eyes addressed me a humble question, revealing how she needed to be reassured as to the meaning of my words, which still seemed ambiguous to her), but there was no real progress. The maestro said that in art progress was never slow, but rather came in great leaps that brought you to the goal, and thus one fine day she would wake up, a great artist.
“It’s a long business, all the same,” she added, looking into space and perhaps seeing again all her hours of boredom and pain.
Honesty is considered first of all that which is sincere, and it would have been very honest on my part to advise that poor girl to give up studying voice and become my mistress. But I had not yet ventured that far beyond the Public Garden, and moreover, all else aside, I was not very confident of my judgment in the realm of singing. For some moments now I had been worried about only one person, that tiresome Copier, who spent every Sunday at my villa with my wife and me. This would have been the moment to find some pretext for asking the girl not to tell Copier about my visit. But I refrained, not knowing how to disguise my request, and it was just as well, because a few days later my poor friend took a turn for the worse and died almost immediately.
Meanwhile, I told her that in Garcia she would find everything she was looking for, and for a single instant, and only for an instant, she eagerly expected miracles from that book. Soon, however, confronted by all those words, she doubted the effectiveness of its magic. I read the theories of Garcia in Italian, then in Italian I explained them to her, and when that wasn’t enough, I translated them into Triestine, but she felt nothing happen in her throat, and she could have found that book’s true efficacy only if it had then become manifest. The trouble is that I, too, soon became convinced that the book, in my hands, was of little value. Going over those sentences fully three times and not knowing what to make of them, I avenged my incapacity by criticizing them freely. Here was this Garcia, wasting his time and mine, to prove that inasmuch as the human voice could produce various sounds, it was wrong to consider it a single instrument. Then the violin, too, should be considered a conglomerate of instruments. I was perhaps mistaken to communicate this criticism of mine to Caria, but in the presence of a woman you want to win, it is hard not to exploit an opportunity, when you have one, to exhibit your own superiority. She, in fact, admired me; actually physically, she thrust away from herself the book that had been our Galeotto, though it did not lead us as far as sin. I still couldn’t resign myself to renouncing that, so I postponed it until my next visit. When Copier died, there was no longer any need. Any link between that house and mine was broken, and so any further action would be restrained only by my conscience.
But meanwhile we had become rather intimate, in an intimacy greater than might have been expected in that half hour of conversation. I believe that agreement on a critical opinion forges an intimate bond. Poor Carla took advantage of this intimacy to confide her troubles to me. After Copier’s intervention they had lived simply in that house, but without great privations. The heaviest burden for the two poor women was the thought of the future, for Copier brought them his assistance at very specific intervals, but he didn’t allow them to rely on it with certainty; he didn’t want worries, and he preferred the women to have them. And, further, he didn’t give that money for nothing: he was the real master in that house, and he had to be informed of every slightest thing. Woe to them if they allowed themselves some expenditure without his approval in advance! Carla’s mother, a short time before, had been indisposed, and Carla, the better to take care of the household tasks, had neglected her singing for a few days. Informed by the maestro, Copier made a scene and went off, declaring it was not worth their while importuning gentlemen to lend them assistance. For several days they lived in terror, afraid they had been abandon
ed to their fate. Then, when he returned, he renewed agreements and conditions and established exactly how many hours every day Carla was to sit at the piano and how many she could devote to the house. He also threatened to pay them a surprise visit at any hour of the day.
“To be sure,” the girl concluded, “he only wants what is best for us, but he becomes so angry over trivial things that one of these times, in his fury, he’ll finally turn us out on the street. But now that you have also taken an interest in us, this danger doesn’t exist anymore, does it?”
And again she pressed my hand. As I didn’t answer immediately, she was afraid I felt some solidarity with Copier, and she added: “Signor Copier says how good you are, too!”
These words were meant as a compliment to me, but also to Copier.
His personality, so disagreeable in Carla’s portrayal, was new to me, and it prompted my appreciation. I would have liked to resemble him, whereas the desire that had drawn me into this house made me so unlike him! It was quite true that the money he brought the two women came from other people, but he contributed all his own efforts, a part of his own life. That anger, which he devoted to them, was truly paternal. But I had a suspicion: What if those efforts had been inspired by desire? Without hesitation, I asked Carla: “Has Copier ever asked you for a kiss?”
“Never!” Carla replied with spirit. “When he is satisfied with my behavior, he expresses his approval gruffly, presses my hand for an instant, then leaves. Other times, when he’s angry, he refuses even to shake my hand and doesn’t even notice how I’m crying, in my fear. A kiss, at such a moment, would be a liberation for me.”
Seeing me laugh, Carla made herself clearer: “I would gladly accept a kiss from a man that old, to whom I owe so much!”
There’s an advantage of the truly sick: they look older than they are.
I made a weak attempt to look like Copler. Smiling so as not to frighten the poor young woman too much, I told her that I, too, when I took an interest in someone, ended up by becoming very imperious. Generally speaking, I too believed that when you study an art you must study it seriously. Then I became so caught up in my role that I even stopped smiling.