As a Man Grows Older

by Italo Svevo

  Angiolina tried on another occasion to stimulate a religious feeling which had stood her in such good stead once before, but she was unsuccessful, and she soon began to make game of it in the most shameless way. When she had had enough of his kisses, she would push him away with the words: Ite missa est, thus sullying a mystic idea which Emilio in all seriousness had several times expressed at the moment of parting from her. She would ask a deo gratias when she had a small favor to ask of him, and cry mea maxima culpa when he became too exacting, or libera nos, domine, when he began saying something she did not want to hear.

  Though he had never possessed her completely, his incomplete possession gave him perfect satisfaction, and if he tried to go farther it was really from lack of self-assurance, and because he was afraid of being an object of derision to all those men who looked down on him from the wall. She defended herself energetically. Her brothers would kill her, she said. Once, when he was more than usually aggressive, she burst into tears. He did not really love her, she said, if he wanted to make her unhappy. Then, pacified and happy, he gave up his offensive. She had not belonged to anyone and he could be certain of not being an object of ridicule.

  But she solemnly promised to give herself to him if she could do it without getting herself into trouble or making difficulties for him. She talked about it as if it were the simplest thing in the world. One day she had an inspiration: they must find a third person on whom to put the burden of any complication that might arise from their relationship, and whom it would be great fun to deceive. He listened enraptured to her words, which he interpreted as a declaration of love for himself. There was small hope of finding a third person of the kind Angiolina imagined, but he felt now that he could rest assured of her feeling for him. She was in very truth all that he could have desired her to be, and she gave him her love without trying to bind him, without apparently endangering his independence.

  It was true that his whole life was at the moment taken up by his love; he could think of nothing else; he could not work; he could not even attend satisfactorily to his office duties. But so much the better. His life had taken on a new aspect for a short while, and afterwards he would find it almost a distraction to return to his former untroubled state. His love of images led him to see his life as a straight, uneventful road leading across a quiet valley; from the point at which he had first met Angiolina the road branched off, and led him through a varied landscape of trees, flowers, and hills. But only for a short while; after that it dropped to the valley, and became again the straight high road, easy and secure, but less tedious now because it was refreshed by memories of that enchanting, vivid interlude, full of color and perhaps too of fatigues.

  One day she told him she was obliged to go and do some work at the house of some acquaintances of theirs, called Deluigi. Signora Deluigi was a kind woman; she had a daughter, who was a friend of Angiolina, and an old husband; there were no boys in the family. All the household were devoted to her, Angiolina said. “I like going there very much, for I have a much better time than in my own home.” Emilio could not say anything against it, and resigned himself to seeing her only in the evening, though even then less often than before, for she got back late from her work and it would not be worthwhile to come out again.

  So he found himself again with some evenings free, which he could devote to his friend and his sister. He still attempted to deceive them—as indeed he deceived himself—about the importance of his adventure, and he even went so far as to try and make Balli believe that he was glad Angiolina was sometimes engaged in the evening, so that he was not obliged to keep her company every day. But he blushed when Balli turned on him his calm scrutinizing gaze, and not knowing how else to hide his passion he began to make fun of Angiolina, confiding to Balli certain observations which he was engaged in making upon her, but which did not in reality in the least diminish his tender feeling towards her. He would laugh heartily at his own witticisms, but Balli, who knew him well enough to detect a false ring in his words, let him laugh alone.

  She used to try and talk the Tuscan dialect, but in such an affected manner that her accent was more English than Tuscan. “Sooner or later,” said Emilio, “I must cure her of that habit; it is beginning to irritate me.” She had a way of carrying her head continually bent towards her left shoulder. “A sign of vanity, according to Gall,” Emilio remarked, and with the gravity of a man of science engaged on an experiment, he added: “Who knows whether Gall’s observations were not much less inaccurate than is generally supposed?” She was greedy, he said, she liked plenty to eat and drink, and she must feed well; he pitied anyone who was saddled with her! In this he was lying shamelessly, for he liked just as much to see her eat as to hear her laugh. He made a point of mocking at all the little weaknesses which he specially liked. He had been much moved one day when, in talking about some woman who was very ugly and very rich, Angiolina had come out with the exclamation: “Rich! Then she is not ugly!” She set so much store by beauty, yet she was ready to put it beneath the feet of that other power. “A vulgar woman!” Now he could afford to laugh with Balli.

  Gradually, between his way of talking to Balli and his way of talking to Angiolina, Brentani had come to build up two distinct individuals who lived quietly side by side, and whom he never made any effort to reconcile. At bottom he did not really lie either to Balli or to Angiolina. He could never confess to himself that he loved talking for its own sake, and he felt as safe as the ostrich who thinks he can elude the hunter merely by not looking at him. But when he was alone with Angiolina he gave himself entirely up to his own feeling for her. Why should he try to resist the strong and joyful impulse of his love? What danger could there be to him in loving her? What reason to stem his love? For it was not only desire he felt for her, but love. He almost felt within him the stirrings of paternal love, when he thought how weak, how unprotected she was, like some young tender animal. Her very lack of intelligence was but one weakness the more, and constituted one more claim on his tenderness and protection.

  He had met her at Campo Marzio just as she, vexed at not finding him already there waiting for her, was on the point of going away. It was the first time he had ever kept her waiting, but he was able to prove to her, watch in hand, that he was really not at all late. When her anger had calmed down she confessed that she had been more than usually in a hurry to see him that evening, so that she had come rather early herself. Such strange things had happened to her, which she wanted to tell him all about at once. She leaned affectionately on his arm. “I have cried ever so much today,” and she wiped away some tears, which in the darkness he was unable to see. She refused to tell him anything till they had reached the terrace, and they climbed arm in arm up the long, dark avenue leading to it. He was in no hurry to arrive. The news she had to tell him could not be very bad, since it had made Angiolina more affectionate than usual. He stopped several times to snatch a kiss from her.

  When they reached the top he made her sit down on the low wall, rested one arm lightly on her knee and sheltered her with his own umbrella from the fine, penetrating rain which had not stopping falling for the last few hours.

  “I am engaged,” she said, in a voice into which she attempted to put a touch of sentimentality, which was very soon banished by a strong impulse to burst out laughing.

  “Engaged!” Emilio repeated the word. At first he was so incredulous that he at once began to try and discover her reason for telling him such a lie. He peered into her face, and in spite of the darkness he thought he could detect in her expression the sentimentality which had at once disappeared from her voice. It must be true then. Besides, what reason could she have had for telling him a lie? So they had at last found the third person they stood in need of!

  “Will you be happy now?” she asked him in a cajoling voice.

  She was far indeed from suspecting what was taking place in his mind, and he was ashamed to speak the words which his lips were burning to utter. But by no possibility
could he have feigned the joy she seemed to expect from him. His anguish was so acute that he remained there petrified, till he heard her reminding him that he had never minded before hearing her talk about that plan of theirs. But so long as it had been only a plan Angiolina’s lips had seemed to turn it into a caress. He, too, had toyed with the idea, had dreamed of its becoming a reality and of all the happiness that would ensue from it. But how many other plans had not passed through his brain, without leaving any trace behind? In the course of his life he had dreamed of theft, murder, and rape. He had experienced imaginatively the criminal’s courage, strength, and perverse desires, he had even dreamed the results of his crime, above all that he should invariably escape punishment. But then he had had the double satisfaction of indulging in his dream and of discovering all the things he had wanted to destroy still intact, so that his senses were satisfied and his conscience at rest. He had committed a crime without any harmful result. But now that what he had dreamed and hoped for had actually materialized, he was as much astonished as if the dream had never been his; he could not even recognize it as his, so different was its aspect now from that under which he had known it.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me who I am engaged to?” He pulled himself together with a sudden tremendous effort.

  “Do you love him?”

  “How can you ask me such a thing?” she cried in genuine astonishment. Her only reply was to kiss the hand which was holding the umbrella over her.

  “Then don’t marry him!” he commanded. To himself his words seemed quite intelligible. She was his already; he did not desire her in any other way. Why must he give her up to someone else just in order to possess her more completely? Seeing her increasing astonishment he tried to argue with her. “You would never be happy with a man you did not love.”

  But such scruples as his were unknown to her. For the first time she complained to him about her family. Her brothers did no work, her father was ill; how was it possible to make both ends meet? And it was none too cheerful at home. He had seen it in the most favorable light, when the boys were out. Directly they came home they began quarreling among themselves, and finding fault with their mother and sisters. Of course she wouldn’t have chosen the tailor Volpini for a husband if she could have got anyone better. But though he was forty, he was a decent man, kind and gentle enough, and she thought she might grow to be fond of him in time. How could she hope for anyone better? “You love me, I know, don’t you? But you never admit the possibility of marrying me.” He was very touched at hearing her allude to his egotism without the slightest resentment.

  Yes, perhaps after all she was doing the best for herself. With his usual tendency to follow the line of least resistance, when he found himself unable to convince her he finally succeeded in convincing himself.

  She told him she had got to know Volpini at the Deluigis. He was a tiny little man: “He only comes up to here,” she said laughing, and pointing to her shoulder. “He is a jolly little man. He says he may be small, but that his love is big.” Suspecting perhaps—but in this instance quite without cause—that Emilio might be feeling jealous, she hastened to add: “He is fearfully ugly. His face is covered all over with hair the color of straw. His beard reaches right up to his eyes, even up to his eyebrows.” Volpini’s business was at Fiume, but he had told her that when they were married he would allow her to spend one day a week in Trieste, and till then, as he was away most of the time, they would be able to go on seeing each other in peace, just as before.

  “But we must be very careful,” he insisted. “Very careful indeed,” he repeated. If it really was a good thing for her, wouldn’t it be better to give up seeing her altogether, then and there, so as not to compromise her in any way? He felt himself capable of any sacrifice which should quiet his uneasy conscience. He took her hand and held it against his forehead, and in that attitude of adoration told her all that was in his mind: “I would give you up altogether rather than that any harm should happen to you through me.”

  Perhaps she understood him; in any case she made no further allusion to the treason they had plotted together, and that fact alone would have made this evening one of the most charming they had spent together. For once only, and for one short hour, she seemed to have risen to the level of Emilio’s feeling for her. She struck no false note, she did not even once tell him she loved him. He was able to nurse his grief secretly. The woman he loved was not only sweet and unprotected: she was a lost woman. She sold herself here and gave herself there. Oh—he could not forget how she had wanted to burst out laughing at the beginning of their conversation. If that was her attitude towards the most important step in her life, how would she behave when she was living with a man she did not love?

  She was lost! He held her closer and closer to him with his left arm, laid his head in her lap and with a feeling of the deepest compassion rather than of love for her, he murmured: “Poor child, poor child.” They remained thus a long while; then she bent over him, and certainly without intending him to be conscious of it, kissed him lightly on the hair. It was the nicest thing she had done during all the time he had known her.

  Then suddenly everything changed and became brutal and horrible. The thin, monotonous, melancholy drizzle which had accompanied Emilio’s grief with a faint undertone of pity, as it seemed to him at one moment, or of indifference at another, changed without warning into a violent downpour. A cold blast of wind from the sea shattered the rain-drenched atmosphere and hurled itself against them too, snatching them from the dream with which one sweet moment had blessed them. She was terrified at the thought of wetting her clothes, and set off running as fast as she could, refusing to take Emilio’s arm; she needed both her hands to hold up the umbrella against the wind. Her struggle with the wind and rain put her so out of temper that she would not even fix their next meeting: “It will be time enough to think about that when I have got home safely.” He watched her get into the tram, and from his dark corner saw her lovely, indignant face in the yellow lamplight, and her sweet eyes examining intently the extent of the damage done to her clothes by the rain.

  4

  OFTEN DURING their relationship torrents of rain would come like that, to snatch him violently from the enchantment to which he abandoned himself with such exquisite delight.

  Very early next morning he was on his way to Angiolina. He could not tell yet whether he should avenge himself by some biting remark for the way in which she had left him the evening before, or whether, when he saw her living face, he would recover the tender feelings which his painful reflections during the night had threatened to destroy, but of which, as he realized by the anxiety which impelled him to come all this way to seek her, he stood at the moment so much in need.

  Angiolina’s mother opened the door to him and gave him the usual friendly words of welcome, which contrasted so strangely with her parchment-like face and harsh-sounding voice. Angiolina was dressing and would come almost immediately.

  “And what do you think about it?” the old woman asked suddenly. She was alluding to Volpini’s proposal. He was so surprised that the mother should want to have his approval of Angiolina’s marriage that he hesitated to reply, and she, mistaking the nature of the doubt which she saw written on his face, began trying to convince him: “You see, don’t you, what a piece of luck it is for Angiolina? Even if she is not very fond of him it doesn’t matter; she won’t have to worry about anything, and he will make her happy, I’m sure, for he’s very much in love with her. You should just see him!” She gave a short, harsh laugh which seemed to go no farther than her lips. Evidently she was well satisfied.

  On thinking it over he felt quite gratified that Angiolina had made her mother understand how important it was to her that he should give his consent, and he expressed his unqualified approval. He was sorry, he said, that Angiolina was to marry someone else, but seeing it was for her good....The old woman laughed again, but this time her mirth was more facial than vocal, and it seemed to
him rather ironic. Did the mother know then about the pact he had made with her daughter? He would not have minded very much if she had. If that laughter was aimed at honest Volpini he had no reason to take it to heart. In this case it certainly could not be intended for himself.

  Angiolina appeared fully dressed to go out; she must be quick, for she had to be at Signora Deluigi’s by nine o’clock. He could not bear to leave her so soon, and for the first time they walked along the road together by daylight.

  “We seem to make a fine couple,” she said with a smile, seeing that everyone they passed in the street looked around at them. It was indeed impossible to pass her by without looking at her.

  Emilio turned to look at her too. Her white dress (which according to the fashion of the moment exaggerated the figure), with its pinched waist and wide sleeves, almost like inflated balloons, clamored to be looked at, and existed for that purpose. Her face rose out of all that whiteness, in no wise overpowered by it, but flaunting its roses unabashed; the thin blood-red curve of her mouth was sharply outlined against her brilliant teeth, and her lips were parted in a gay, sweet smile which she seemed to fling upon the air for the passers-by to catch. The sunlight played among her fair curls, powdering them all over with golden dust.

  Emilio blushed. It seemed to him that every passer-by cast an insulting glance at her. He looked at her again himself. It was unmistakable that her eyes gave a kind of greeting to every good-looking man they passed; she did not actually look at him, but there was a sudden lightening in her eye. There was a perpetual movement in the pupil which was continually modifying the intensity and direction of its light. The light in her eye literally seemed to crackle!. Emilio clung to this word, which he felt to characterize so well its ceaseless activity. In the small, rapid, unforeseen movements of the light it was almost as if one heard a slight sound.