The Heron

by Giorgio Bassani

  He dreamed he was once again on the stairs of the Bosco Elìceo, once again climbing up them, step by step, intending to reach the second floor. What he was going to do up there was not clear. He was simply ascending, effortlessly, with a mysterious lightness, even. He shook his head. A moment before, down below, Bellagamba, winking, had offered to have him carried up on a stretcher by a pair of sturdy youths he’d recruited as waiters from the neighbouring countryside – he happened to have a stretcher in the entrance made of rough hemp exactly like those used in Ferrara’s Sant’Anna Hospital to bear the very ill from one ward to another – as though he were weak in the legs or had a heart ailment or something worse. But the opposite was the case. Agile, calm, he went up the stairs as though borne along by a favourable wind, as though he had wings. It was neither night-time nor was it early morning. Through the porthole fitted above the first set of stairs, the sky appeared as a deep, sunlit blue. It was two or three o’clock on a lovely late-spring afternoon in May or June. The time, just after lunch.

  The hotel was full of people. Although there wasn’t a living soul on the stairs, outside every facing pair of rooms along the two first-floor corridors, in perfect order, some lit by the oblique rays of the sun, one could see two pairs of shoes, one male, the other female. Heavens, how many shoes! But it wasn’t surprising. Even without having spotted all those shoes, it was clear that the ground-floor restaurant was a cover for what was happening up here on the first as well as the second floor. Each room of the hotel, rented out by the hour, hid a couple. They came by car from everywhere, even from as far away as Milan. They talked, they chatted, they whispered, shut two by two into their cramped rooms, each with its wretched porcelain basin, brand new, but already chipped, with its metal bidet, with its wobbly, straw-coloured plywood furniture, with its miserable, skewed bedside rugs and its wan central light. Enough just to lend an ear to perceive the buzz, the hum, part-beehive, part-industrial plant, that secretly ran through the entire establishment from wall to wall and floor to floor.

  But at his back, the sound of a dropped, metallic object ringing out on a stair startled him and made him turn abruptly. On the landing below, that of the first floor, was the same dark-suited woman who from the moment he’d entered the dining-room till a couple of minutes ago when he’d left it, had never stopped looking at him. In slippers and a dressing-gown that tightened round her thighs as she crouched to pick up the key that had slipped from her hand, she was staring at him with the same insistence, turning her face three-quarters way round towards him. She was no longer as made-up as before, in fact she was without make-up. She was smiling and staring at him, now far younger-looking, much more like a girl. At last she stood up, the key in her hand. And without detaching her eyes from his, she stuck her tongue out and began to lick her upper lip.

  He could only see the tip. But from the little of it that was visible he could guess that it was thick and short, bestial in its shape as much as in its colour, which was a wine-dark mauve. She was obviously local, perhaps a peasant – black and shining, even her eyes seemed like those of certain animals you find in the country, cows, for example, or horses – one of the many employed by Bellagamba as scullery maids, but really their main job was to entertain solitary and needy customers wanting company in the rooms upstairs. But what did she think she was doing showing him her tongue like that? he wondered as he went on up the stairs, still observing her. Did she think it would impress him? If so, she was mistaken. Seeing her make a show of her tongue like that did nothing but disgust him.

  Now, without knowing how or why, he was leaving a bathroom on the second floor and once again she was standing there, waiting for him outside the door, this time adopting a pose, leaning with her back against the landing’s handrail with the dressing-gown gathered around her legs to show the thickness of her thighs.

  She came towards him and, silently staring up at him, began to touch him. He, while letting her do so and taking in the smell of roast eel that wafted from her hair, told himself that she must work here, in the Bosco Elìceo, and not even as a waitress, but as a scullery maid. In a few moments, the bellowing voice of Bellagamba would sound from the depths of the stairs and order her back down to tend to the stoves or the dishes.

  ‘Give it a rest, will you?’ he tried to grumble at a certain point. ‘What d’you want from me?’

  She continued touching him and smiled to disclose her big teeth with gaps between them.

  ‘Me? Nothing.’

  ‘Can’t you see I haven’t time? Let me get on – I’m already late.’

  ‘If you’d like,’ she insisted, her voice no more than a whisper, ‘if you’d like I’ll come to your room. What number is it?’

  It was hard to tell from her accent where she was from. She hadn’t said vengo for ‘I’ll come’, but venghe. If not from Ferrara, perhaps from Emilia. But venghe? Perhaps she was a Southern Italian? Perhaps she’d been evacuated from Naples with her working-class family after the bombardment of 1942 and ended up working as a whore in a Codigoro hotel.

  ‘I don’t have a room. I’m just passing through.’

  ‘Well then, you can come to my room. It’s just upstairs, number twenty-four. I’m good at it, you know,’ and again she displayed her tongue. ‘You’ll see what a good time I’ll give you.’

  Having said this, she took his hand and hurriedly, making her slippers slap against her naked calloused heels, began to pull him behind her towards the corridor on the right.

  Disconcerted, reluctant, he’d followed her. The hand pulling him on was thick and hard and seemed greasy – the hand of someone who works in the kitchen scouring pots and pans with pumice. Yet, no differently from when as a youth he’d visited brothels – and Ulderico never stopped making fun of him for what he called his ‘silliness’ – on this occasion, too, more than any physical repugnance he felt hindered by fear, the fear of venereal disease. Without a condom, he could pick up the clap or even syphilis. If only he’d felt some desire to do what he was about to do! But anyway, how would it be possible at a quarter to eight in the morning and with nothing in his stomach except a sip of coffee? For good or ill, he ought to get rid of her. Two hundred, three hundred lire should do the trick. He wasn’t prepared to shell out any more than that.

  Next thing, they were in the room, she under the covers, he standing before the window from which could be seen, in the dusky light that pierced the racing clouds, the same things as from the bathroom, the chicken run with the hens, the sports field with its two battered goals facing each other, and so on, with the flat endless countryside all around the village as a backdrop.

  Better you don’t keep insisting – he was telling her, without turning to look at her. He hadn’t come to Codigoro to stay there, but to go on to the valleys to hunt. It was eight o’clock. Even if he left immediately, he’d arrive almost three hours late at Volano, where he’d arranged to meet someone who’d be taking him to Lungari di Rottagrande. So could he stay any longer? Clearly not.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like me at least to try kissing it?’

  How annoying! What a bore! All the same he turned and moved away from the window and, unbuttoning his trousers, drew close to her so his belly was at the level of the headboard.

  ‘What would you be kissing? Can’t you see how small it’s got?’

  ‘You’re really in a bad way,’ she then murmured, without touching him again, only looking at what he too was observing. ‘There’s nothing there at all.’

  5

  He awoke with a start, at first not realizing where he was. Although, even before he had stretched out his hand behind his head for the light cord, he was becoming minimally aware of his surroundings. So he’d been asleep. Asleep and dreaming. And the wake-up call? How come no one had bothered? It seemed as though hours had passed since he fell asleep. Perhaps it was already two or three in the morning.

  Having switched on the light, he turned on his side to reach for his watch on the shelf of the bedside cu
pboard and glanced at it. Five forty-five. He rapidly understood, while at the same time registering a sudden wave of anxiety, that he’d only slept for around an hour. Tomorrow was far, far away. Between now and then gaped the immense, almost unbridgeable gulf of an entire night, one of the longest nights of the year.

  After ten minutes or so he went down the stairs into the ever-stronger reek of rancid food.

  Down in the entrance, Bellagamba, as ever behind the desk, was trying to fix a small radio. The sports news was on, the football scores. He came closer. Leaning over the apparatus, noisy with static, the old Fascist seemed unaware of his presence. He could see well enough that he’d arrived at the least opportune moment. But on the other hand he had to get going right now. And before leaving, he had to pay for his meal and the use of the room.

  No chance. However much he insisted, the other man would have none of it. Evidently – he said, his voice raised over the noise of the radio – evidently Signor Avvocato is joking. That would be a fine thing! After all the game he’d given him. So, please, it would be doing him a favour not to talk about money any more. Otherwise, he’d be forced to return all the game, or else draw up a proper account. And then it would be clear which of them was the one in debt.

  He turned off the radio.

  ‘More to the point, did you sleep well?’ he enquired.

  ‘Not badly.’

  ‘But only briefly! For how long? An hour and a half at most. You said you wanted to be called at six. I’d have preferred to leave you undisturbed for longer …’

  He smiled, with a sly air.

  ‘I was even thinking of ringing your wife,’ he went on. ‘Just so that with this fog she shouldn’t be worried.’

  He beat his forehead with his closed fist. ‘Now, I think of it. Someone telephoned from Cavaglieri the engineer’s house, and said that when you woke up, would you be so kind as to call?’

  He narrowed his eyes, and asked:

  ‘Isn’t he your cousin, the engineer?’

  ‘But who was it on the telephone?’ he asked, without replying, and without managing to control his voice. ‘Was it the engineer himself?’

  ‘Definitely not. I don’t think it was his wife either.’

  It must have been the housemaid, he thought, the old woman who’d answered this morning.

  He stretched his hand out over the desk.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘It’s time I left. And thanks.’

  ‘If you’d like,’ Bellagamba replied, shaking the hand he’d proffered with evident reluctance, ‘you can even call from here.’

  So saying, he extracted the telephone from under the desk.

  ‘No, but thanks all the same,’ he said, shaking his head with an attempt at a smile.

  He covered the back of the other’s hand with the palm of his left hand and then, turning his back, made for the exit.

  As soon as he was outside, however, he came to halt, in two minds as to whether to go by foot to Caffè Fetman or to take the car instead. He quickly decided on the latter. A brief walk could only do him good, he told himself, crossing the street, what with that grey, coated tongue he’d recently observed in the bathroom mirror. But it was also the case that, if he walked, he would then have to return and so perhaps bump into Bellagamba again. He could imagine the scene. He, re-entering the square, and there, waiting for him and appearing just on cue behind the steamed-up glass of the entrance to the Bosco Elìceo, the bony face of Bellagamba, carried away with his usual mania of spying, nosing about and digging things up …

  Once he’d started up the car, backed out and begun moving at a walking pace towards the square – the fog still so thick it stopped him shifting even into second gear – he felt himself completely invigorated. Just as well. If the Cavaglieri family hadn’t got in touch, he doubted he’d ever have had the will to phone them. Without anything else as an excuse to stay in Codigoro, all that would have been left would be to set off on his way back to Ferrara. And, by now, he’d already be en route, threading his way through the dense fog, always in first gear, with his eyes narrowed, for mile after mile.

  He was imagining the Cavaglieri house: warm, brightly lit, and with the six girls and boys, from the oldest to the youngest, making a noisy ring around their mother and father, already middle-aged, and yet somehow still youthful, still going strong. He couldn’t work out why the prospect of dropping into the midst of all that inevitable din and confusion should attract rather than repel him, should, so surprisingly, fill him with hope and desire. Who knows, he embroidered the scene a little more, perhaps later, after the cup of tea and the home-made ciambella cake and the glass of sweet Albana (to be slowly sipped with the cake), they would all have pressed him to stay for supper and then, later still, at the end of the meal and the games of tombola that would follow it, to stay the night as well, among the whole family, like an old bachelor uncle who’d become curmudgeonly and taciturn from being so long alone, in an improvised bed – perhaps in the bedroom of the youngest – Tonino or was it Tanino? – or in that of the next youngest, Andrea, the one he’d spoken to on the phone at such length and with whom, therefore, things would have been easier, much easier than with any of the other children – to chat in the dark till his eyelids grew heavy. Perhaps, indeed, it would all fall out like this, he told himself. He really hoped so.

  He entered the square obliquely and, to steer his way through the fog, he never lost sight of either the small, dark pinnacle of the monument for the Fallen or, barely visible from where he was, the enormous I.N.A. building with its façade full of windows without shutters from which issued a vivid white light, more that of a city than a small town. Finally he arrived right in front of the Caffè Fetman. He was by now so eager to phone that, having switched off the engine and got out of the car, he forgot to lock the door, as was his habit. He only realized this later, when, stepping up on to the pavement, he was about to enter the cafe. He turned round and glanced at the Aprilia. No, he decided, it wasn’t worth the trouble. To phone and so on wouldn’t take him more than a couple of minutes at most. And in that time, given how deserted the whole place was – the town’s inhabitants were all imprisoned in their houses and the others, the visitors, had already left, were already far down the road that would take them home – no one would dream of stealing anything.

  He entered.

  The smoke, the steam, the noisy crowd – many of the Bosco Elìceo’s customers had relocated there to argue about the scores and the league tables on display on a wall – and the sardonic grin with which the same grimy forty-year-old he’d encountered this morning greeted him from behind the desk; all this in other circumstances would have provoked in him his usual feeling of recoil compounded with a disgust at any physical contact, an annoyance at the din, and a fear of any unpleasant encounters. But in his present state of mind he paid no heed to any of that. He asked for a telephone token. He ordered a Fernet amaro. And, meaning to drink it after his phone call, he moved decisively towards the telephone booth at the end of the big room.

  He turned on the light. Forgetting to close the door, he dialled the number, twelve.

  Almost immediately a woman’s voice answered: ‘Yes.’

  6

  It was Cesarina, Ulderico’s wife, herself.

  Addressing him quite naturally with the informal ‘tu’ not just as though they had known each other for years, for ever, but as if they had just been speaking a few hours ago, she immediately reproached him with affectionate familiarity for having waited so long to call them. Good heavens, she was saying, instead of going to Bellagamba’s to eat and to have a sleep there as well – lucky that after lunch they’d had the idea of ringing – but why, for heavens’ sake, hadn’t it crossed his mind to come straight round to theirs? Rico would have been more than happy. And the children as well …

  She had a warm, low, drawling voice, slightly querulous, and an accent exactly like Nives’. And although the ‘tu’ she’d addressed him with had initially rather disconce
rted him, he found it appropriate soon enough. When, shortly, they’d meet again, everything would go smoothly and it would save them both a great deal of embarrassment.

  ‘Just a moment,’ he said.

  He turned to close the phone-booth door.

  ‘It was past three o’clock,’ he added. ‘And I didn’t want to disturb you.’

  Disturb us! Cesarina had exclaimed. For goodness’ sake, he shouldn’t say that even as a joke. On Sundays and now – on a holiday it was always like Sunday – all of them got up very late, so they’d usually never sit down to lunch before two or a quarter past two. But apart from that, what difference would it make to set an extra place? If the table were set for nine – or ten actually, including the part-time maid – it could just as well be for eleven. And it would take nothing to prepare a bed for him for an after-lunch snooze!

  ‘Thank you,’ he had replied. ‘Next time I’ll feel free to drop in.’

  ‘Good. That’s quite right. And the hunting,’ she went on, ‘how did it go? Did you shoot anything? Soon as Rico heard you’d come here, he put his head out of the window and said that with this weather he reckoned you’d get nothing. But that was just envy,’ she’d added, laughing. ‘Anyway it seemed to me that the weather changed soon after that.’

  Since closing the cabin door he could hear her much better. She joined her phrases together with a slight whine like a hungry cat, half-nasal, half-throaty. And she seemed so close now that at one point he thought he could even hear the faint rustling of a sheet. Could she be in bed? The speed with which she’d picked up the phone favoured this notion. It wouldn’t be so outlandish that, even in Codigoro, a telephone extension might be fixed up to the bedside. The phone at the Bosco Elìceo must also have had that sort of extension.

  ‘Yes, the weather changed,’ he’d confirmed. ‘We took down some forty birds in all.’

  He had to receive her breathless exclamations, her congratulations, not, it seemed to him, without a certain air of having seen through him, as if Gavino, who might well have just called before him, had already given a very specific account of what had actually happened. On the other hand – he told himself, again registering the secret gnawing of anxiety, but not yet willing to submit to it, to fall back into it – he could hardly act any differently. Gavino or no Gavino, he wouldn’t want to seem the type to return from the valleys empty-handed. Even at the cost of going back to Bellagamba’s to pick up a brace of ducks to bring as a gift – and God knows what that would cost him, for countless reasons! – he wasn’t in the least inclined to cut that kind of figure.