by Italo Svevo
“Terribly hard?” she repeated, turning to the cupboard. The cup slipped from her hand but did not break. She picked it up, wiped it carefully and put it back in its place. Then she sat down by Emilio. “Another twenty-four hours,” he said to himself.
Next day Emilio could not prevent Balli from coming with him as far as the door of his house. Stefano looked up absent-mindedly at the first-floor windows, but looked down again immediately. He must have caught sight of Amalia at one of the windows, and he had not waved a greeting! Soon afterwards Emilio ventured to look up himself, but if she had been there she must already have withdrawn. He had meant to scold Stefano for not having made any sign to her, but he could not be sure that he had really seen her.
He climbed the stairs with a heavy heart. She must surely have understood.
She was not to be found in the dining-room. She came in soon after, walking very fast. She stopped when she saw him and began doing something to the door which refused to shut. She had evidently been crying. Her eyelids were red and her hair was wet. It was clear that she had been bathing her face so as to remove all traces of tears. She asked no questions, though during the whole meal he felt himself continually on the point of being threatened by one. She was evidently so agitated that she could not pluck up courage to speak. She tried to explain her agitation by saying that she had slept badly. Balli’s glass and coffee cup were not put out on the table. Amalia had given up waiting for him.
But Emilio was still waiting. It would have been a great relief to him to see her cry, to hear some sound of grief. But it was a long time before he had that satisfaction. He used to go home every evening divided between hope and dread of finding her in tears, ready to confess her despair, but instead he found her quiet and depressed, and always with the same slow movements of someone who is tired. She apparently did all the work of the house with the same care as usual, and she began talking about it again to Emilio as she used to do in the days after their parents died, when the brother and sister, left alone in the world, had done what they could to beautify their poor home.
It was a nightmare to have that unuttered sorrow always beside him. And her pain must be continually embittered by every kind of doubt. Emilio sometimes even wondered whether she guessed the truth, and shuddered at the thought of having to explain to her why he had done what he did, for his action now seemed to him quite incomprehensible. Sometimes he felt her gray eyes turned on him with a questioning, suspicious air. Oh—there was no sparkle in those eyes! They looked gravely and fixedly at things, as if trying to discover the cause for so much suffering. At last he could bear it no longer.
One evening when Balli was engaged—with some woman probably—he had made up his mind to stay with his sister. But it became painful to sit by her in the silence which so often reigned between them, since they could not talk about what filled both their thoughts. He took up his hat to go out.
“Where are you going?” she asked. With her head resting on her arm, she was amusing herself by idly tapping her plate with her fork. The question was enough to make him lose heart to leave her. She needed him. If the evening would be dreary for the two of them together, what would it not be for Amalia alone?
He threw down his hat and said: “I was going to try and walk off my desperation.” The nightmare vanished immediately. He had had an inspiration. If he could not talk to her about her troubles, he could at least distract her by talking about his own. She had at once stopped tapping her plate and turned round facing him, in order to see what despair looked like on someone else’s face.
“Poor boy!” she murmured, seeing how pale and troubled he looked, but unable to guess all the cause of his anxiety. She wanted him to confide in her, and asked: “Haven’t you seen her again since that day?”
It was a real relief to him to open his heart to her. He said he had not seen her once. Out of doors he did nothing else but look for her, though he took care not to let it be seen, and never stopped in places where he knew she was likely to pass at a certain time. But he had never seen her, never. It almost looked as if she avoided being seen in the street since he had left her.
“Yes, that is very likely,” Amalia said, whole-heartedly and devoutly bent on probing her brother’s wound, in the hope of healing it.
Emilio could not help laughing at this. It was impossible, he said, for Amalia to picture to herself the stuff of which Angiolina was made. A week had passed since he left her and he could be perfectly certain that she had entirely forgotten him by now. “Please don’t laugh at me,” he said, though he saw she was very far from laughing at him. “She is made like that.” And he began to tell Angiolina’s story. He talked of her frivolity, her vanity, and all the other qualities which had proved so fatal to him, and Amalia sat listening to him in silence, without betraying the least surprise. Emilio thought she was making a study of his love-affair in order to discover in it analogies to her own.
They had passed in this way a delicious half-hour. It seemed as if all cause of division between them had disappeared, or helped now to unite them, for whereas hitherto he had never talked about Angiolina except in order to relieve himself of the burden of his love and desire, now he was doing it solely in order to give his sister pleasure. He felt very tenderly towards Amalia; he fancied that in listening to him she was solemnly assuring him of her forgiveness.
It was his very tenderness which led him to say something that made the evening end very differently. He had finished his story, and without a moment’s hesitation he asked: “And you?” He had really spoken without thinking. After resisting for so long the temptation to ask his sister to confide in him, he yielded to it in a moment of weakness. It had been such a relief to him to confide in her that it seemed only too natural to try to get Amalia to return his confidence.
But Amalia thought otherwise. She stared at him with wide-open, terror-stricken eyes. “I? I don’t understand.” If she had not understood before she must have done so when she saw the embarrassment into which he was thrown at sight of her confusion. “I think you must be mad!” She had understood, but evidently she was still at a loss to explain to herself how Emilio had succeeded in guessing the secret she had guarded so jealously.
“I asked if you—” stammered Emilio, as disturbed as herself. He hunted round for a falsehood, but Amalia had meanwhile discovered the most obvious explanation, and she blurted it out at once. “Signor Balli has spoken to you about me.” She positively shouted it at him. Her pain had found utterance. The blood rushed to her cheeks, her lips curled with an expression of the utmost disdain. For a moment she had become strong. In this she was exactly like Emilio. She revived the moment she could transform her pain into anger. She was no longer a weak woman given up to silent despair: she was a fury. But anger made too great demands upon her strength and could not last long. Emilio swore that Balli had never spoken to him about Amalia in such a way as to make him suppose he guessed the nature of her feelings. She did not believe him, but the faint hope which she drew from Emilio’s words deprived her of all courage and she began to cry: “Why doesn’t he come and see us anymore?”
“It is a mere chance,” said Emilio. “He will certainly come in a few days’ time.”
“He will never come,” cried Amalia, her violence returning with discussion. “He pretended not to see me.” Her sobs prevented her from saying any more. Emilio ran to her and took her in his arms, but she could not endure his pity; she got up impetuously, escaped from his arms and rushed to her room to recover herself. Her sobs had become cries. Very soon they ceased altogether and she came back and went on talking as before, interrupted only by an occasional tremor which ran through her whole body. She remained standing by the door. “I don’t know why I keep on crying like this,” she said. “The least thing throws me into such a state. I must be ill. I have done nothing which could give that man the right to behave like this. You do believe me, don’t you? Well, that is all I care about. And besides, what could I have done or said to
make him think it?” She went and sat down on a chair and began crying again, but more quietly.
It was clear that Emilio’s first task must be to remove all blame from his friend, and he did his best, but without success. The feeling of opposition only excited Amalia the more.
“Let him come!” she shouted. “He shan’t see me even if he wants to; I won’t let myself be seen by him.”
Then Emilio had what seemed to him a good idea. “Do you know,” he said, “what has made Balli change towards you? Someone asked him in front of me whether he intended to get engaged to you.”
She stared at him fixedly, as if she were trying to discover whether he was to be trusted; she seemed not to have understood, and repeated the words as if it would help her to analyze them. “Someone said that he was going to get engaged to me?” She laughed loudly, but it was only her voice which laughed. So he was afraid of having compromised himself, and of being obliged to marry her. But who could have put such an idea into his head? He didn’t look as if he was as stupid as all that. Had he supposed she was only a flapper who would fall madly in love the first time a man looked at her or spoke to her? “I admit,” she went on, her admirable strength of will enabling her finally to speak in a tone of real indifference, “I admit that Balli’s company was not unpleasant to me, but it never occurred to me that it could be so dangerous as all that.” She tried to laugh again, but this time her voice broke and she burst into tears.
“I don’t see in that case what you have to cry about,” said Emilio timidly. He would have preferred now to put a stop to the confidences he had so lightly provoked. But words did not relieve Amalia, they only made her grief more bitter. In that she was not like himself.
“Haven’t I the right to cry when I am treated like that? He flies from me as if I had run after him.” She had begun shouting again, but the effort used up all her strength. Emilio’s words had taken her by surprise, for she had not, even after all this time, decided what her behavior should be. She again tried to soften the impression which the whole scene must have produced on Emilio. “It is my lack of strength which makes things upset me so easily,” she said, resting her head on both her hands. “You must often have seen me cry over something much less important, haven’t you?”
Without admitting it to each other the thoughts of them both were carried back to the evening when she had burst into tears only because Angiolina had taken her brother away from her. They sat looking gravely at each other. She was thinking that at that time she had cried about nothing, and just because she had not experienced the hopeless despair which weighed on her now. He, on the contrary, was thinking how much that other scene had resembled this one, and he felt a fresh weight on his own conscience. This scene was clearly a continuation of the other.
But Amalia had made up her mind. “I think it is your duty to defend me, don’t you? I don’t see how you can go on being friends with someone who has insulted me without any reason.”
“He has not insulted you,” Emilio protested.
“You are free to think as you like about it. But he has got to come back to this house, otherwise you will be obliged to turn your back on him. For my part, I promise you that he will find no change in my behavior; I shall make a great effort to treat him much better than I think he deserves.”
Emilio was obliged to acknowledge that she was right, and said that even though he could not admit the matter was so important as to lead him to break off all contact with Balli, he would see that he understood that he was expected to come to the house as before.
But even this promise did not satisfy the mild Amalia. “So an insult to your sister seems a mere trifle, does it? Do as you think fit then, but I also shall act as seems best to me.” She was cold and disdainful and threatening. “Tomorrow I shall apply to the agency over the way for a post as housekeeper or servant.” She spoke so coldly that he could not doubt that her intentions were serious.
“But did I ever say that I would not do what you want?” asked Emilio in alarm. “I will speak to Balli tomorrow and if he doesn’t come and see us that very day I shall see less of him in future.”
That “less of him” again roused Amalia’s anger. “Less of him? You can do exactly as you like.” She got up, and without saying good night went to her room, where the candle was still burning which she had taken in the first time she sought refuge there.
Emilio argued that she probably went on showing anger because it made it easier for her to keep herself under control.
The moment she began to soften, to the extent of saying a word of thanks or even of agreement, she would again be overcome by emotion. He wanted to follow her into the room, but he heard she was undressing, and wished her good night through the door. She replied in a low voice, and in a tone of hard indifference.
But he admitted that Amalia was right. Balli ought sometimes to come to the house. The sudden cessation of his visits was insulting, and in order that Amalia should be cured it was necessary first of all to remove all sense of outrage. He left the house in the hope of finding Balli.
Outside, at the very door of his house, he came upon the most powerful of all distractions. By a singular chance he found himself face to face with Angiolina. He immediately forgot his sister, his own remorse and Balli. It was a surprise for him. In those few days he had actually forgotten the color of her hair, which set off her face in such a halo of fairness, and her blue eyes which now really had something searching in their gaze. His greeting was brief and, in his effort to be cold, almost violent. He gave her at the same time such a penetrating look that if she had not herself been surprised and agitated she might well have been frightened by it. Yes! She was agitated. She blushed in confusion as she returned his greeting. She was with her mother, and when they had gone a few steps further she leaned over so much towards her companion as to be able conveniently to look behind her. He thought he read in her eyes that she expected him to speak to her, and it was just this which gave him the strength to pass on at a quicker rate.
He continued walking for some time without thinking where he was going, just in order to calm himself. Perhaps Amalia had been right, and his leaving her had been the best possible education for Angiolina. Perhaps she still loved him! As he walked he fell into a delicious dream. She loved him, she was following him, she was trying to attach herself to him, while he continued to fly from her and to repulse her. How gratifying to his feelings!
When he came to himself, the memory of his sister again weighed on his mind. During those few days his plight had become so much more desolate that the thought of Angiolina, which had hitherto been so painful to him, now became a refuge, though an uneasy one, from the idea that he had made his sister’s fate more bitter.
He did not succeed in finding Balli that evening. Quite late Sorniani stopped him, on his way back from the theater. After the usual greeting he suddenly said that he had seen Angiolina and her mother at the theater, in the upper circle. She was looking lovely, he said, with a belt of yellow silk, and a little hat of which you could only see two or three large roses against her golden hair. They were doing The Valkyrie, and Sorniani expressed surprise that Emilio, who among all his many other activities used to be considered one of their most advanced musical critics, had not been at the theater.
So she had gone on to the theater, in spite of the confusion and agitation she had shown on seeing him; and she had been sitting in a relatively expensive seat. It would be interesting to know who had paid for it. Another of his vain dreams shattered!
He told Sorniani that he intended to go the following evening, but he had really no such intention. He had missed the one evening when he could have got any pleasure from the theater. Angiolina would never have gone two evenings running, however much one had paid for her seat. Wagner and Angiolina! It was surprising enough that those two should have met even once.
He passed a sleepless night. He was restless and could not find a comfortable enough position in bed to lie in for long.
He got up to try and calm himself, and thought that he might find some distraction in his sister’s room. But Amalia had given up dreaming; even her happy dreams had been stolen from her now. He heard her turning over and over in bed, as if she did not find it very comfortable either.
Towards morning she heard him at her door, and asked what he wanted.
He had returned there, hoping to hear her speak, and to learn that she had found some enjoyment, even for one short spell in twenty-four hours. “Nothing,” he replied, deeply disappointed at finding her awake: “I thought I heard you moving, and wondered whether you were wanting anything.”
“No, I don’t want anything, thank you, Emilio,” she replied gently.
He felt he was forgiven and experienced such a keen, sweet sense of satisfaction that his eyes filled with tears. “But why aren’t you asleep?” It was such a happy moment for him that he wanted to prolong it, and make it more intense by letting his sister see that it was his affection for her which moved him so deeply.
“I have only just woken up; and you?”
“I have slept very little lately,” he replied; he still thought it must be some consolation to Amalia to know how much he suffered too. Then, remembering his conversation with Sorniani, he told her he had decided to go to The Valkyrie to try and distract his thoughts. “Would you like to come too?”
“Very much indeed,” she replied. “If it is not too expensive for you.”
“I can easily afford it for once,” said Emilio. His teeth were chattering from cold, but he found such comfort in standing there that he could not bear to leave his post.
“Are you in your nightshirt?” she asked, and when she heard he was, she ordered him to go back to bed.
He did so, reluctantly, but when he was there he at once found the position he had been searching for all night in vain, and slept without interruption for several hours.
