The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl

by Italo Svevo

  When the pain and the fear went, he began to consider once again the subject that occupied all his thoughts. Perhaps he hoped by this means to begin a great cure. How important was the part played by the girl in his life. It was on her account that he had been taken ill. Now she was persecuting him in his dreams and threatening him with death. She was more important than everyone else and than all the rest of his life. Even what he despised in her was important. The very legs which in their reality had filled him with indignation had corrupted him in his dream. In the dream she had appeared dressed in bright-coloured old clothes, but her legs had been those of the day before, clothed in silk stockings.

  The doctor came with his usual prescriptions and his usual confident calm, imperturbable so long as he had to do with the angina, intent only upon the cure. He declared that this would be the last attack. The great pain was, in fact, a favourable symptom, seeing that debilitated organisms are not subject to great pain. Then: Fine weather would soon be here. The war was certainly coming to an end and the old man could go to some good spa.

  His nurse did not forget to tell the doctor of the visitor the old man had entertained on the previous day. The doctor smiled and advised that there should be no more visits of the kind till he gave his permission.

  With manly decision the old man refused to obey. The doctor must cure him without any prohibitions. The visits could not have done him any harm, and he resented the idea as an insult. In the future he should invite the girl to come and see him and he would see her often. The doctor might, had he wished, have discovered for himself that her visits could not do him harm.

  The old man’s behaviour on the very day after having suffered so much was a display of really noble heroism. He himself felt that he was giving proof of strength. The others could not know that the violent angina was not the most important adventure of that night. His life must not be carried on in the old convalescent style any longer. It must become more intense and less narrow, because his thoughts could not centre in his own poor self. He meant to follow strictly the doctor’s prescriptions, but he believed that he knew something else which was important for the recovery of his health, and which he would not tell the doctor.

  The doctor did not argue, because, good practical man that he was, he did not believe in the curative effects of argument.

  Relief from a great pain is a great delight, and the old man lived upon it for that day. Freedom to move and to breathe is a real happiness for one who has been deprived of it, even if only for a few minutes. However, he found time to write that very day to the girl. He sent her the money he had intended to give her since the day before and informed her that he would send her more in the future. He begged her not to come to him until he sent for her, as he had been taken ill.

  He knew now that he loved the girl of the bright-coloured old clothes and loved her as a daughter. She had been his in fact, as she had been in his dream, or rather in two dreams. In both dreams, remarked the old man to himself, not being aware that dreams occur at night and are completed by day, there had been great suffering, which was perhaps the cause of the illness with which he was seized, the suffering of compassion. Such had been the girl’s fate, and he had played his part in it. It was his fault that she had walked the streets with the bell fastened to her feet to attract attention, or, actually tied to a trolley, had made the round of that circle, offering herself to the eyes and the hands of the men. It did not matter that the girl who had come to see him the previous day had failed to awaken in him any feeling of pity or affection. That was what she was like now, and he must save her, changing her, so as to make her become once again the dear, good girl who, alas! had been his, and whom he now loved for her weakness.

  How much pleasure he got from his purpose, a pleasure that invaded every fibre! It affected everything and everybody, even his nurse, nay, even his old illness, which he thought he would be able to fight.

  On the following day he sent for his lawyer and made a will. Except for a few legacies, which seemed important to him, but which were insignificant in comparison with his estate, he left everything he possessed to the girl. At least she would no longer be under the necessity of selling herself.

  The girl’s education was to commence when he had picked up in health sufficiently to be able to undertake it. He spent some days in revising the notes which he had made the previous day, and which were to be the foundation of the moral lectures he proposed giving her. Then he tore them up, not feeling satisfied with them. He had now completely diagnosed the fault committed by them both, which had been the cause of his illness and her ruin. It was not the fact that he had not paid enough for her love or that he had abandoned the girl which should give him cause for regret. His mistake had been in accosting her in the way he did. That was the error he must study. So he began to draw up fresh notes on the relations that were permissible and possible between the old and the young. He felt that he had no right to forbid the girl to love. Love might still be moral for her, but he must forbid her all irregular relations, and above all relations with old men. For some time he tried to include in his notes besides the old men an order to avoid also the young rake with the smart umbrella whom he had not yet got out of his mind. This complicated his task, and made his notes less sure and direct. Then the young man disappeared from his notes and there remained, face to face, only the old man and the young girl.

  Time passed, and he never felt ready to send for the girl. He had written a great deal, but he must get some order into his notes, so that they might be ready to hand at the moment when he wanted them. Every week he sent the girl, through his own confidential clerk, a fixed sum, and wrote to her that he was not yet well enough to see her. The nice old man believed that he was speaking the truth, and it was true that he was not quite well, but he was certainly no worse than he had been before his last attack. Now, however, he was aiming at the complete health of an active man, and he had not yet reached that.

  He felt better because he had recovered confidence. For a time this confidence increased regularly in a direct ratio with his attachment to life, that is to his work. One day, as he reread what he had written, there arose in the mind of the old man a theory, pure theory, from which both the girl and himself were eliminated. Indeed, the theory actually came into being through these two eliminations. The girl who was getting from him nothing but money soon lost all importance. The strongest impressions end by leaving in the mind only a slight echo which we do not notice or look for, and by now the old man was aware of the rising from the memory of the girl, whom he had loved and who no longer existed, of a chorus of youthful voices calling for help. As for himself, he underwent a double metamorphosis, as a result of the theory. First and foremost he became quite different from the selfish old man who had seduced a girl in order to enjoy her and not pay her, because he saw himself as one of a crowd of a thousand others who would gladly have done or did the same things. It was not possible to suffer for it. His own head stood beside thousands of other white heads, and beneath those hoary locks there was in each case the same evil look. Now he was transformed into something quite different from all the others. He stood on high, the pure theorist, cleansed of all evil by his sincerity. And it was an easy sincerity, because there was no question of confessing, only of studying and discovering.

  He wrote no longer for the girl. He would have had to put himself on her own low level to be understood by her, and it was not worth while. He believed that he was writing for the world at large, perhaps even for the law-giver. Was not he examining an important part of the moral laws, which, in his view, ought to rule the world?

  The confidence awakened in his mind by the work was boundless. The theory was a long business, and therefore he could not die till he had completed it. It seemed to him that he need not hurry. A higher power would watch over him in order that he might bring to a conclusion a work of such importance. He wrote the title in his fine, large hand: Of the relations between age and youth. Next, when he
was beginning work upon the preface, it occurred to him that for publication he would have to have a beautiful vignette designed to illustrate the title. He did not see how he could put into it the footboard of the tram with the girl driving and an old man carrying her off from work. It would be hard, even for the cleverest of draughts-men, to give clear expression to the idea by means of such elements. Then he had an inspiration—even an inspiration did not fail him. The drawing must show a boy of ten leading a drunken old man. He actually sent for a draughtsman to design the drawing at once. But he made a mess of it, and the old man rejected it, saying that, when he was quite well, he would himself look for an artist in the town to suit his purpose.

  In the fine weather that had at last come, the old man settled down to work early in the morning. He gladly left his writing to go through the usual cures, because that did not mean an interruption of his work. Nothing could distract his thought which continued to progress and develop. Then he wrote again till lunch time. Then he had a short hour’s nap in an arm-chair, a peaceful, dreamless sleep, and went back to his desk to stay there writing and thinking till the hour of his daily drive. He went to Sant’Andrea with his nurse, or, sometimes, with his doctor. He took a short stroll by the shore. He looked at the horizon, where the sun was setting, with a very different eye for the beauties of nature, or so it seemed to him, from what he had had in the past. He felt himself to be more intimately a part of it now that he mediated upon high problems instead of carrying on a business. And he looked at the coloured sea and the brightly polished sky, associating himself to a certain extent with so much purity, because he felt himself worthy of it.

  Then he had supper and spent another hour enjoying his own work, reading over the pages that were being piled up in a drawer of his desk. In his bed, unsullied, with his theory as his companion, he slept a placid sleep. Once he dreamt of the dear girl, dressed in her brightly coloured old clothes, and in his dream he did not even remember the existence of the other girl with the silk stockings. With her he talked German, which she spoke intelligibly. Nothing exciting happened even then, and to him it seemed a striking proof of recovered health.

  He would have liked to have someone at hand to whom he could read his work, checking it by the sound of his own living voice and by the expression on the face of someone else. But this blessing was not for him. He knew from the practice he had already had as an author that there was one great danger for his theory, that of getting out of the course set it by the facts. Many were the pages he tore up, because he had let himself be led astray in them by the sound of the words. To help him he had sketched out his point of view on a separate sheet, which he kept always in front of him: An old man is constituted in such a way that the power he possesses may prove harmful to the young man, who alone is of value for the future of humanity. This fact must be impressed upon him. But since he holds to the power he has acquired during his long life, he must use it for the advantage of the young. In his desire to stick to facts the moralist then referred in detail to his own adventure: It is essential to bring it about that the old man should not desire the pretty girl on the footboard of the tram, but should listen only to the appeal for help addressed to him by her. Otherwise life, now passionate and corrupt, would become pure, but cold as ice.

  There followed a number of exclamation marks to bring out the difficulty of the task the moralist had set himself. How would it be possible for him to convince old men that it was their duty to look after like daughters, girls whom, if they were allowed, they would take as lovers? Experience taught that old men would show a heartfelt interest only in the fate of girls who had already been their mistresses. It was necessary to prove that it was not essential to pass through love in order to reach affection.

  This was more or less the line taken by the old man’s thought. Till now he had smiled at it, because he held that, as his methodical inquiry proceeded, he would be able to see the details of the problem more clearly.

  He tried to draw his nurse into his work. All he wanted her to do was to listen to him. At his first words she flew into a passion: “So you are still thinking of that woman?”

  Clearly any theory must die strangled if you begin by calling the girl who was its true mother that woman.

  Then he tried the doctor. Apparently he liked the theory. The doctor noticed a real improvement in the old man’s condition, and therefore could not fail to like a theory which he found useful. But it was hard for him to accept it in itself. He, too, old though he was, since he was in good health, looked at life with the keen desire of a person of intelligence and refused to admit that he was shut out from any of its manifestations.

  “At bottom,” he said to the old man, “you want to give us too much importance. We are by no means so very seductive.” He looked at the old man and then he looked at himself in the glass.

  “Yet we do seduce,” said the old man, secure in his own experience.

  “When that happens no great harm is done,” remarked the doctor, smiling.

  The old man also tried to smile, but the effort ended in a grimace. He, on the contrary, knew that a lot of harm was done.

  Then the doctor remembered that he was first of all a doctor and stopped discussing the theory, that is to say the medicine which he himself considered to be important. He even wanted to help the theory, to play a part in it, but it was natural that his touch should destroy the old man’s illusions. “If you like,” he told the old man, “I will get you a book called The Old Man. Old age is treated in it as a disease, it is true, but one which does not last long.”

  The old man argued: “Old age a disease? A part of life a disease? Then what can youth be?”

  “I believe that youth is not complete health either,” said the doctor, “but that is another matter. Youth often catches diseases, but they are generally diseases without complications. In the case of an old man, however, even a cold is a complicated disease. This must have some significance.”

  “It proves merely that an old man is weak. In fact,” cried the old man triumphantly, “he is only a youth grown feeble.” He had found it. This discovery would have its place in his theory and would help it enormously. “Therefore, to prevent his weakness becoming a disease, the old man needs a thoroughly sound morality.” Modesty prevented him from saying that his work would supply this morality, but that was what he thought.

  This conversation with the doctor, which had proved so helpful to him, should have encouraged him to continue. But one day the doctor betrayed what he really thought so clearly that the old man realised that they had nothing in common.

  One day, in the course of working out his ideas, the old man found himself obliged to go into the question of what rights old age had over youth. Great Heavens, the Bible had not been written for nothing. Did youth owe obedience to age? Respect? Affection?

  The doctor began to laugh, and when he laughed he liked to reveal his inmost thoughts. “Obedience? Instant, because old men must not be kept waiting. Respect? All the young girls in Trieste on their knees to make it more easy to choose them. Affection? The good, solid kind, arms round the neck, or somewhere else, and lips pressed to lips.”

  In fact the poor old man had no luck. He had not found a kindred spirit. He did not realise that, as the doctor had not experienced the great attack of angina, he was not an old man like himself.

  But even this discussion bore fruit, if only of a negative kind. Several pages already written were put in quarantine by the old man inside a white sheet of paper on which he wrote: “What does youth owe to age?”

  Sometimes the theory got into a tangle and it was difficult to go on. Then the old man felt really ill. He had laid aside the work, thinking that a little rest would bring him the clearness he wanted, but the days ran emptily on. Suddenly death came nearer. Now the old man had time to feel the unsteady beating of his heart and to listen to his breathing, tired and noisy.

  It was during one of these periods that he sent and asked the girl to com
e to see him. He hoped that seeing her again would be enough to reawaken his remorse, which was his chief incentive to write. But he failed to get the expected help, even from that quarter.

  The girl had continued to develop. Smartly dressed, as on her last visit, she had evidently expected to be received with kisses. The old man was not very severe, not from embarrassment this time, but from indifference. By now he loved all youth of both sexes, including the dear girl in old clothes and even this doll, so proud of her dresses that she would talk about them in front of a looking-glass.

  Indeed, she had developed to such an extent that she complained that the money was no longer enough and asked him to increase her allowance.

  This called up the old man’s business instinct. “What makes you think I owe you money?” he asked, smiling.

  “Was it not you who seduced me?” asked the poor girl, doubtless carrying out the instructions she had been given.

  The old man remained calm. The rebuke did not really affect him in the slightest. He argued the point, saying that it needed two to make love, and that for his part he had used neither force nor cunning.

  She gave way at once and did not insist. Probably she was sorry and annoyed that she had spoken as she did, she who had always done her best not to appear mercenary.

  To put her into a better frame of mind and in the hope of experiencing once again even a little of the old emotion, he told her that he had remembered her in his will.

  “I know and thank you,” she said. The old man did not point out the strangeness of the fact that she believed that she knew about his will, which had been kept secret, and accepted her thanks.

  The talk was such a disillusion to him that he thought of making a fresh will and leaving the rest of his property to some charitable institution.