Luciano didn’t let those tales affect him, because he didn’t understand them. He laughed abundantly, but it was clear that what seemed comic to him was the notion that something of this sort had been presented to him as salable goods. He laughed also out of courtesy when it was explained to him that the bird was afraid of being deprived of its freedom to return to the cage, and the man admired the elephant’s legs, no matter how weak. But then Luciano asked: “What can you get for a pair of stories like that?”
Guido assumed a superior tone. “The pleasure of having created them, and then, after creating some more, also a great deal of money.”
Carmen, on the contrary, was overcome with emotion. She asked permission to copy out those two little stories and she gratefully thanked Guido when he made her a present of the page on which he had written them, after he had also signed it with his pen.
What did I have to do with this? I didn’t have to fight to win Carmen’s admiration, which, as I have said, meant nothing to me; but remembering my behavior then, I have to believe that even a woman who is not an object of our desire can drive us to fight. In fact, didn’t the medieval heroes fight over women they had never seen? To me that day it so happened that the shooting pains in my poor organism suddenly became acute, and I thought I could alleviate them only by dueling with Guido, immediately writing some fables of my own.
I had them give me the typewriter, and I really did improvise. True, the first tale I wrote had been in my thoughts for many days. I improvised the title: “Hymn to Life.” Then, after reflecting an instant, I wrote below that: “Dialogue.” It seemed to me easier to make animals speak than to describe them. Thus my fable took the form of a brief dialogue:
The pensive shrimp: Life is beautiful, but you have to take care where you sit.
The bream (rushing to the dentist): Life is beautiful, but we should eliminate those traitorous little animals that, inside their tasty flesh, conceal sharp metal.
Now I had to make up the second fable, but I had run out of animals. I looked at the dog lying in his corner, and he looked back at me. Those timid eyes evoked a memory: a few days earlier Guido had returned from hunting covered with fleas, and had gone to clean himself up in our little closet. I immediately had my fable, and I wrote it in one breath: “Once upon a time there was a prince, bitten by many fleas. He called on the gods, beseeching them to inflict a single flea on him, big and ravening, but just one, and the others were to be assigned to the rest of mankind. But none of the fleas would agree to remain alone with that beast of a man, and so he had to keep them all.”
At that moment my fables seemed splendid to me. The things that issue from our brains have a supremely lovable appearance, especially when you look at them the moment they’re born. To tell the truth, I like my dialogue even now, when I have had plenty of practice in creating. The hymn to life made by the doomed creature is something very pleasurable for those who are watching his sentence being executed, and it is also true that many who are moribund expend their dying breath to tell what, to them, seems the cause of their death, thus intoning a hymn to the life of the others, who will be able to avoid that misfortune. As for the second fable, I don’t wish to speak of it, and it was wittily commented on by Guido himself, who shouted, laughing: “That’s not a fable: it’s a way of calling me an animal.”
I laughed with him, and the pains that had impelled me to write immediately abated. Luciano laughed when I explained to him what I meant, and he believed nobody would pay anything for my fables or for Guido’s. But Carmen didn’t like my stories. She gave me an inquisitorial glance, truly new for those eyes, and I understood it as if it had been spoken aloud: You don’t love Guido!
I was absolutely distraught because at that moment she surely was not mistaken. I thought I was wrong to behave as if I didn’t love Guido—I, who, after all, worked altruistically for him. I had to be more careful of my behavior.
I said meekly to Guido: “I’m willing to admit that your fables are better than mine. But you must remember these are the first fables I’ve ever written.”
He didn’t back down. “Do you think I’ve written others?”
Carmen’s gaze had already softened and, to make it even less harsh, I said to Guido: “You surely have a special talent for fables.”
But the compliment made them both laugh and me, too, immediately afterwards, but all good-naturedly, because it was obvious I had spoken without any malicious intent.
The copper-sulfate deal brought a greater seriousness to our office. There was no more time for fables. Almost all the offers proposed to us now were accepted. Some brought in a profit, but slight; others entailed losses, large ones. A strange avarice was the chief defect in Guido, who, outside of business, was so generous. When a deal worked out, he liquidated it hastily, eager to collect the small profit he gained by it. When, on the contrary, he found himself involved in a losing venture, he could never seem to extricate himself, not if he could postpone the moment when he had to dig into his own pocket. This, I believe, is why his losses were always considerable and his profits slight. A businessman’s qualities are only what is generated by his whole organism, from the ends of his hair to his toenails. A saying the Greeks have could be applied to Guido: “clever fool.” Truly clever, but also truly foolish. He was full of cunning, which served only to grease the slope down which he slid farther and farther.
Along with the copper sulfate, the twins unexpectedly arrived. His first impression was of surprise, and far from pleasant, but then, immediately after announcing the event to me, he managed to make a witticism that made me laugh heartily, and so, pleased with its success, he couldn’t go on looking angry. Connecting the two babies with the sixty tons of sulfate, he said: “I’m doomed to operate wholesale!”
To console him, I reminded him that Augusta was again in her seventh month and that soon, in the baby department, my tonnage would equal his.
He answered, still wittily: “To me, good bookkeeper that I am, it doesn’t seem the same.”
A few days afterwards, he was overcome with great affection for the two little mites. Augusta, who spent a part of every day at her sister’s, told me he devoted several hours to them daily. He petted them and sang them to sleep, and Ada was so grateful to him that between the two a new fondness seemed to blossom. During those days he deposited a fairly conspicuous sum with an insurance firm so that when the children turned twenty, they would receive a little nest egg. I remember it, because I debited that sum to his account.
I, too, was invited to see the twins; actually, Augusta had told me that I could also say hello to Ada, who, as it afterwards turned out, was unable to receive me, having to remain in bed even though ten days had gone by since the delivery.
The two babies lay in two cradles in a little room adjoining their parents’ bedchamber. From the bed, Ada cried to me: “Aren’t they beautiful, Zeno?”
I remained surprised by the sound of that voice. It seemed softer to me: it was a genuine cry, because you could hear the effort it cost, and yet it remained so sweet. No doubt the sweetness in that voice came from motherhood, but it moved me because I had discovered it only when it was addressed to me. That sweetness made me feel as if Ada hadn’t called me simply by my first name, but had also prefixed to it an affectionate qualifier, such as “dear” or “dear brother”! I felt a keen gratitude, and I became kind and affectionate.
I replied gaily: “Beautiful and dear, pictures of you, two wonders.” To me they looked like two blanched little corpses. Both were whimpering, and not in harmony.
Soon Guido returned to his former life. After the sulfate affair, he came more regularly to the office, but every week, on Saturday, he went off hunting and didn’t return until late Monday morning, barely in time to look in at the office before lunch. He went fishing at night, and often spent the night on the water. Augusta told me of Ada’s sorrows, for she suffered not only from frantic jealousy but also from being alone so much of the day. Augusta tried
to calm her, reminding her that hunting and fishing don’t involve women. But—from someone, there was no finding out whom—Ada had been informed that Carmen sometimes accompanied Guido fishing. Guido, then, had confessed as much, adding that there was nothing wrong in his being kind to an employee who was so useful to him. And besides, wasn’t Luciano always present, too? In the end he promised not to invite her again, as it made Ada unhappy. He declared he was unwilling to give up either his hunting, which cost him so much money, or his fishing. He said he worked hard (and, in fact, at that time there was a great deal to do in our office) and it seemed to him that he was entitled to a little distraction. Ada was not of this opinion, and it seemed to her that he would have enjoyed a finer distraction with his family, and on this score she had the unconditional agreement of Augusta, whereas for me this latter distraction was a bit too noisy.
Augusta then exclaimed: “Aren’t you at home every day, at the proper hours?”
It was true, and I should have confessed that between me and Guido there was a great difference, but I couldn’t bring myself to boast about it. I said to Augusta, caressing her: “The merit is all yours, because you used some very drastic methods of training.”
Moreover, for poor Guido, things were worsening every day: first there were two babies all right, but only one wet nurse, because everyone hoped that Ada would be able to feed one of the children. But she couldn’t, and they had to engage a second wet nurse. When Guido wanted to make me laugh, he would walk up and down the office beating time to the words: “One wife … two babies… two wet nurses!”
There was one thing Ada particularly hated: Guido’s violin. She put up with the babies’ crying, but she suffered horribly at the sound of the violin. She once said to Augusta: “I want to bark like a dog when I hear those sounds!”
Strange! Augusta, on the contrary, was blissful when she passed my little study and heard my faltering sounds coming from it!
“But Ada’s marriage also was a love-marriage,” I said, amazed. “Isn’t the violin Guido’s greatest asset?”
This sort of talk was completely forgotten when I saw Ada again for the first time. It was I, indeed, who first became aware of her illness. One day early in November—a cold, damp, sunless day—against my usual practice I left the office at three in the afternoon and hurried home, thinking to rest and to dream for a few hours in my warm little study. To reach it, I had to walk down the long passage, and outside Augusta’s workroom I stopped, because I heard Ada’s voice. It was sweet or tentative (which is the same thing, I believe), as it had been that day when it was addressed to me. I entered the room, impelled by the strange curiosity to see how the serene, the calm Ada could assume that voice, slightly reminiscent of one of our actresses when she wants to make others weep without weeping herself. In fact, it was a false voice, at least that’s how I heard it, simply because even without even seeing its owner, I perceived it, for the second time after so many days, still equally moved and moving. I assumed they were talking about Guido, for what other subject could have made Ada so emotional?
On the contrary, the two women were taking a cup of coffee together, discussing domestic matters: linen, servants, and so on. But it sufficed for me to see Ada to understand that the voice was not false. Her face, too, was touching, and for the first time I found it so changed; if that voice was not inspired by a feeling, still it mirrored precisely an entire organism, and for this reason it was real and sincere. This I sensed at once. I am not a doctor, and therefore I didn’t think of an illness, but I tried to explain to myself the change in Ada’s appearance as an effect of her convalescence after giving birth. But how to explain the fact that Guido hadn’t noticed this change that had taken place in his wife? Meanwhile, I, who knew those eyes by heart, those eyes I had so feared because I had promptly realized how coldly they examined things and people before accepting them or rejecting them, I could now verify at once that they were changed, enlarged, as if, in order to see better, they had forced their sockets. Those great eyes were a false note in that dejected, faded little face.
She held out her hand to me with great affection. “Yes, I know,” she said to me. “You seize every possible moment to come and see your wife and your little girl.”
Her hand was moist with sweat, and I know that signifies weakness. So I was all the more convinced that, upon recovering her health, she would regain her former color and the firm line of her cheeks and brow.
I interpreted the words she had addressed to me as a reproach directed at Guido, and good-naturedly I replied that Guido, as head of the business, had greater responsibilities than I, thus he was tied to the office.
She gave me a questioning look to make sure I was speaking seriously. “But still,” she said, “it seems to me he could find a little more time for his wife and children.” And her voice was full of tears. She recovered herself with a smile that craved indulgence, and added: “Besides business, there is also hunting and fishing! They are what take up so much of his time.”
With a volubility that amazed me, she talked about the choice dishes they ate at their table as a result of Guido’s hunting and fishing.
“All the same, I’d gladly do without!” she went on, with a sigh and a tear. She wouldn’t say, however, that she was unhappy—no, quite the contrary! She said that now she couldn’t even imagine being without her two babies, whom she adored! A bit coyly she added, smiling, that she loved them even more now that each had his wet nurse. She didn’t sleep much, but at least, when she did manage to doze off, nobody disturbed her. And when I asked her if she really slept so little, she turned serious again and, with emotion, told me that sleep was her greatest problem.
Then, gaily, she added: “But it’s already better!”
A little later she left us, for two reasons: Before evening she had to go and see her mother, and moreover she couldn’t stand the temperature of our rooms, equipped with great stoves. I, who considered this temperature barely comfortable, thought it was a sign of strength to feel it was excessively hot.
“It doesn’t seem you’re all that weak,” I said, smiling. “Wait and see how different you feel at my age.”
She was very flattered to hear herself defined as too young.
Augusta and I accompanied her to the landing. Apparently she felt a great need for our friendship, because, in taking those few steps, she walked between us, grasping first Augusta’s arm and then mine, which I immediately stiffened in fear of succumbing to my old habit of squeezing every female arm offered to my touch. On the landing she still talked a good deal, and as she recalled her father, her eyes were again moist, for the third time in a quarter of an hour. When she had gone, I said to Augusta that Ada was not a woman but a fountain. Although I had noticed her sickness, I attached no importance to it. Her eyes were enlarged, her little face was thin, her voice had changed, and even her character, with that displayed affection, so unlike her, but I attributed everything to the double motherhood and to weakness. In short, I proved myself an excellent observer because I saw everything, but also a big ignoramus because I didn’t pronounce the true word: illness!
The following day, the obstetrician who was treating Ada asked for a consultation with Dr. Paoli, who immediately uttered the words that I had been unable to say: morbus base-dowii. Guido told me about it, describing the disease with great erudition and sympathizing with Ada, who suffered greatly. No malice intended, I think his erudition and his sympathy were not great. He struck a heartbroken attitude when he spoke of his wife, but when he dictated letters to Carmen, he displayed all his joy in living and teaching; he believed, too, that the man who had given his name to the disease was the same Basedow who was the friend of Goethe’s, whereas when I looked up that sickness in an encyclopedia, I realized at once that it was a different person.
Basedow’s is a great, significant disease! For me, becoming acquainted with it was highly important. I studied it in various monographs and thought I was finally discovering the essenti
al secret of our organism. I believe that many people, like me, go through periods of time when certain ideas occupy, even cram, the whole brain, shutting out all others. Why, the same thing happens to society! It lives on Darwin, after having lived on Robespierre and Napoleon, and then Liebig or perhaps Leopardi, when Bismarck doesn’t reign over the whole cosmos!
But only I lived on Basedow! It seemed to me that he had shed light on the roots of life, which is made thus: All organisms extend along a line. At one end is Basedow’s disease, which implies the generous, mad consumption of vital force at a precipitous pace, the pounding of an uncurbed heart. At the other end are the organisms depressed through organic avarice, destined to die of a disease that would appear to be exhaustion but which is, on the contrary, sloth. The golden mean between the two diseases is found in the center and is improperly defined as health, which is only a way station. And between the center and one extreme—the Basedow one—are all those who exacerbate and consume life in great desires, ambitions, pleasures, and also work; along the other half of the line, those who, on the scales of life, throw only crumbs and save, becoming those long-lived wretches who seem a burden on society. It seems this burden, too, is necessary. Society proceeds because the Basedowians push it, and it doesn’t crash because the others hold it back. I am convinced that anyone wishing to construct a society could do so more simply, but this is the way it’s been made, with goiter at one end and edema at the other, and there’s no help for it. In the middle are those who have either incipient goiter or incipient edema, and along the entire line, in all mankind, absolute health is missing.