by Italo Svevo
Balli wrapped the figure in its damp shroud. He was satisfied with his work and excited by it.
They went out together. Balli’s art was really the only point of contact between the two friends; they came together again in talking over the sculptor’s idea, and during the whole of that afternoon their relationship recovered an intimacy which had long been lacking to it. For this reason the one who was least amused of the three was Angiolina, who almost felt herself de trop. Balli, who did not care to be seen about in such company during the daytime, insisted on her walking on in front of them; which she did, holding herself disdainfully erect, with her nose in the air. Balli went on talking about the statue while Emilio followed the girl’s every movement with his eyes. There was no room for jealousy during all those hours. Balli was dreaming, and when he thought at all about Angiolina it was only to keep her at a distance, neither joking with her nor bullying her.
It was cold, and the sculptor proposed going into a tavern to drink some warm wine. As there were a great many people inside and a strong smell of food and tobacco, they decided to sit outside in the courtyard. At first Angiolina protested, saying she would catch cold, but when Balli said it would be an original thing to do she wrapped herself up in his cloak and enjoyed seeing herself admired by the people who came out of the hot inside room, and by the waiter who hurried to serve them. Balli did not notice the cold and kept gazing into his glass as if he were reading his own ideas there. Emilio was busy warming Angiolina’s hands, which she willingly gave him to hold. It was the first time she had allowed him to caress her in Balli’s presence and it gave him intense pleasure. “Sweet creature,” he murmured, and went so far as to kiss her cheeks which she pressed against his lips.
It was a clear, blue night; the wind was whistling above the tall house which protected them from it. Fortified by the warm, aromatic drink which they swallowed in great quantities, they resisted the chilly temperature for about an hour. It was for Emilio another unforgettable episode in his love-story: the dark courtyard under the blue night sky and their little group at one end of the long wooden table. Angiolina definitely given over to him by Balli and showing herself a docile, more than docile—a tender mistress.
On the way home Balli said that he was obliged to go to a masquerade that night; he was horribly bored at the thought, but had arranged to meet a doctor-friend of his who said he could only go to the masquerade if he was in respectable company like that of the sculptor, so that his clients might the more readily excuse his presence in such a place.
Stefano would have preferred to go early to bed, so as to return fresh to work next morning. He felt shivers go through him at the idea of passing all those hours at a bacchanal.
Angiolina asked if he had a stall for the season and wanted him to tell her its exact position. “I hope,” Balli said laughing, “that if you are masked you will come and speak to me.”
“I have never been to a masquerade,” Angiolina emphatically protested. Then she reflected a moment and, as if she had just discovered that such a thing existed, she added: “I should like so much to go to one.” It was agreed on the spot that they were to go to the masquerade which was to be given the following week for a charity. Angiolina jumped for joy and seemed so sincere that even Balli smiled amiably at her, as if she had been a child whom at small cost to oneself one has made happy.
When the two men were alone together Emilio confessed that he could find nothing to say against the sitting. Balli, however, poisoned all the pleasure he had felt that day by saying as they parted: “So you are pleased with us? You must acknowledge that I did my best to give you satisfaction.”
So he owed Angiolina’s show of affection to Balli’s recommendation! The idea mortified him profoundly. Here was a fresh and important ground for jealousy. He determined to tell Balli that he did not care to owe Angiolina’s tenderness to the influence of someone else. And he resolved to take the first opportunity to show less gratitude for demonstrations of affection which had so lately raised him to the seventh heaven of happiness. Now he understood why she had allowed herself to be caressed so willingly in Balli’s presence. How submissive she was to the sculptor! For his sake she was willing to sacrifice her affectation of virtue and the lies from which Emilio could never escape. She was quite different with Balli. She would unmask herself for Balli who had not possessed her, but for him what would she do?
Next morning, early, he hastened to Angiolina, anxious to see how she would treat him when Stefano was not there. Perfectly! She opened the door to him herself, after making sure that it was he. She was lovelier still in the morning. The night’s rest had restored her blooming, virginal air. Her white wrapper striped with blue, a little faded, followed the firm lines of her body, leaving her white neck bare.
“Do I intrude?” he asked gloomily. He refrained from kissing her, preferring to save that up till after the quarrel which he meant to have with her.
But she did not seem to notice his sulks. She took him to her room: “I must dress quickly,” she said, “for I have to be at Signora Deluigi’s at nine. You can be reading this letter while I dress.” She took a letter nervously out of a basket: “Read it carefully and give me your advice.” Her face clouded over, and the tears came to her eyes. “Read what is happening. I will tell you all about it. You are the only person who can help me. I have told mother all about it too, but she, poor soul, can’t do anything but cry.” She left the room, but at once looked in again and said: “If mother says anything to you about it, remember that she knows everything except that I have given myself to Volpini.” With that she threw him a kiss and went out again.
The letter was from Volpini, a formal letter of farewell. He began by telling her that he had always behaved honestly towards her while she, he knew now, had been false to him from the first. Emilio began reading the almost illegible writing again more carefully, fearing to find himself mentioned as the motive for Volpini’s desertion. But his name was not mentioned in the letter. Volpini had been informed that she was never Merighi’s fiancée but his mistress. He had always refused to believe it, till a few days ago he had had absolute proof that she had been seen at several masquerades, always in the company of a fresh young man. There followed a few insulting phrases, badly put together, which gave the impression that the poor man was perfectly sincere, though one could not help laughing at a long word put in here and there which he must have looked up laboriously in a dictionary.
Old mother Zarri came in. With her hands as usual hidden under her apron she leaned against the bed and waited patiently till he had finished reading the letter. “What do you think of it?” she asked in her nasal voice. “Angiolina says no, but it seems to me it’s all over with Volpini.”
Only one of Volpini’s assertions had caused any surprise to Emilio. “Is it true,” he asked, “that Angiolina has so often been to the masquerades?” All the rest, such as her having been the mistress of Merighi and of a great many others too, was nothing new to him. He knew it was absolutely true, and the fact that others had been deceived as much as, and more, than himself, aroused his anger less than those lies of hers which he had always so hated. But even for him there was something new to be learned from the letter. She could act even better than he thought. The day before she had taken in Balli with her expression of joy at the thought of going to a masquerade for the first time.
“It is a pack of lies,” said the old woman, with the calm air of someone saying what she is sure will be believed. “Angiolina comes straight home every evening directly she has finished her work, and goes to bed at once. I see her into bed myself.” Clever old woman! She had certainly not been taken in herself, and she would not admit that anyone should think they were being taken in by her.
Directly the mother had gone out, in came the daughter.
“Have you read it?” asked Angiolina, sitting down beside him. “What do you think of it?”
Emilio replied coldly that he thought Volpini was quite right, fo
r a girl who was engaged ought not to go to masquerades.
Angiolina protested vigorously. She go to the masquerades? Hadn’t he seen how happy she had been the evening before at the thought of going to one, the first she had ever been to?
Quoted in such a way her argument lost all its force; the very joy she mentioned as a proof of her innocence must have cost her a great effort for it to have been so deeply impressed on her memory. But she brought forward many other proofs as well. She had spent every evening with him, when she had not been obliged to go to the Deluigis; she hadn’t got a single rag to dress up in for a masquerade, and she had been counting on his help for the one they had planned to go to together. Emilio was not convinced; he felt certain now that she had frequented all the masquerades during that carnival, but he could not help being softened by the seductive eloquence with which she offered him her many proofs. She was not offended with him for having insulted her by doubting her veracity. She clung to him, trying to convince him and soften his heart, even though Balli was not there!
But he soon realized that she needed his help. She did not want to let Volpini off so easily, and she counted on Emilio’s advice as to how she could hold him, for she had in him the boundless confidence which the uneducated always have in a writer. This fact did not, however, deprive Emilio of the satisfaction her endearments gave him; it was anyway better than being indebted for them to Balli. He wanted to show himself worthy of them and set about seriously studying the problem she had put before him.
He was obliged at once to confess that she understood it better than he did. She very acutely observed that in order to know how she ought to behave she must first of all know whether Volpini himself really believed the things he stated or whether he had written that letter to try and get her to clear up certain vague rumors which had reached him; also, whether he had written it with the firm intention of breaking with her or whether it was only a threat and he was ready to give way at the first move Angiolina might make. Emilio, when he read the letter again, was obliged to confess that Volpini mixed up his proofs too much for him to be able to disentangle any single good one. He quoted no name except Merighi’s. “As to that, I have a very good answer,” said Angiolina with great display of anger. “He can’t deny that I gave myself to him first.”
Once put on the track, Emilio made a discovery which corroborated Angiolina’s point of view. In the grandiloquent close of his letter Volpini declared that he was leaving her first of all because she was false to him, and secondly because she was very cold to him and he was sure she did not love him. Was it the moment to complain of a defect which lay perhaps in her nature, if the other charges he brought against her were as serious as the writer wanted to make out? She was immensely grateful to him for that point, which proved the truth of her own interpretation, and it did not occur to her that it was she herself who had put him on the track. Oh, she knew she was not lettered like him, and she didn’t want to get credit for it! She was in the thick of the fight and girded on with equal energy every arm that was offered her which she thought would serve her purpose, without troubling to see who had forged it.
She could not write to Volpini immediately because she was obliged to run off at once to Signora Deluigi, who was expecting her. But she would be home at mid-day and begged Emilio to come then as well. She would be waiting for him, and between now and then they must both spend all their time in thinking over that one question. She wanted him to take the letter with him to his office to study it at his leisure.
They went out together, but she told him that they must part before they got into the town. She was sure now that Volpini had employed people to spy on her in Trieste. “The cad!” she exclaimed emphatically. “He has ruined me.” She hated him for having promised to marry her; it was that which had ruined her, she said. “Now, of course, he would be glad to get out of fulfilling his promise, but he will find he has me to deal with!” She admitted that she detested him. He disgusted her, he was a filthy beast. “It is your fault that I ever gave myself to him.” When she saw that Emilio looked surprised at such a charge, which she had never brought so violently before, she corrected herself, and said: “Well, if it wasn’t your fault, I did it for your sake.”
With these soft words she left him, and he remained convinced that she had brought the charge against him for the sole purpose of inducing him to support her with all his might in her impending struggle with Volpini.
He followed her for a short distance, and when he saw the impudent way she exposed herself to the gaze of every passer-by in the street, he was seized again by his old malady, which with him dominated every other feeling. Forgetting his fear that she would attach herself to him again, he felt intensely happy at what had happened. She needed him now because Volpini had deserted her, and at mid-day he would be able to have her entirely to himself for another whole hour, to feel that she really belonged to him.
In the commercial part of the town, in which at that hour no one was walking for pleasure, Angiolina with her supple, picturesque figure and firm step, and her eye which had attention to spare for so much beside her own actual passage through the street, attracted everyone’s attention. And he felt that every man who saw that seductive figure in the street must at once think of going to bed with her. He could not escape the whole morning from the excitement produced in him by that picture.
He proposed at mid-day to make Angiolina appreciate to the full the value of his help and to enjoy all the advantages which such an exceptional position seemed to bestow on him. The door was opened by old Signora Zarri, who invited him in with the utmost warmth and asked him to walk into her daughter’s room. He was glad to sit down after his rapid climb upstairs, and expected every moment to see Angiolina appear. “She has not come in yet,” said the old woman, looking towards the passage as if she also were expecting to see her daughter arrive.
“She is not here?” cried Emilio, so bitterly disappointed that he felt he could hardly believe his own ears.
“I can’t understand her being so late,” the old woman went on, still looking out of the door. “She must have been kept by Signora Deluigi.”
“How late do you think she will be?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied, in a tone of the utmost innocence. “She ought to be coming any minute now, but if she has stayed to dinner with Signora Deluigi she might not come back till this evening.” She was silent for a moment, as if thinking things over, then she added, more confidently: “But I don’t think she is likely to have her dinner out, because it’s all ready for her here.”
Emilio, who was an acute observer, saw at once that all her doubts were feigned and that the old woman knew there was no likelihood of Angiolina coming back soon. But as usual, his power of observation was not of much use to him. His desire chained him to the spot, while Angiolina’s mother kept him company in silence, and with an expression of such complete gravity that, looking back on it, Emilio decided it must have been ironical. The youngest daughter came and stood by her mother’s chair and kept rubbing herself against her back like a cat against a door-post.
He went away at last discouraged, after the kindest of farewells from the old woman and the little girl. He stroked the little girl’s hair, which was the same color as Angiolina’s. In fact she was very much like Angiolina except that she had not her healthy appearance.
He thought it would probably be wiser of him to avenge himself on Angiolina by not going to see her unless she sent for him. Now that she needed his help she would very soon come and look for him. But in the evening, directly he came out of the office, he set off again on the road to her house, saying to himself that he should just like to find out the reason for her unexplained absence. It was very possible that this really had been a case of force majeure.
He found Angiolina dressed exactly as she had been when he took leave of her in the morning. She had only that second come in. She let him kiss and embrace her with the docility she always showed when
she wanted him to forgive her for something. Her cheeks were flaming and her breath smelt of wine.
“I drank rather a lot,” she said, bursting out laughing. “Signor Deluigi, who is quite an old man, over fifty, tried to make me tipsy; but he didn’t succeed, not he!” He must, however, have succeeded rather better than she thought, judging by her uncontrollable mirth. She rocked with laughter. She was adorable with that unusual flush in her cheeks and her shining eyes. He kissed her open mouth, her bright red gums, and she let him do just as he liked, passively, as if she did not know it was herself he was kissing. She told him in broken phrases, amid her laughter, that it was not only the old man but all the family who had undertaken to make her drunk, and that though there were so many of them, still they had not succeeded. He tried to restore her to reason by talking about Volpini. “Oh let me alone with that stuff!” cried Angiolina and, seeing that he persisted, she made no answer but began kissing him just as he had done to her, in the mouth and on the neck, with an initiative which she had never shown before, so that they ended up on the bed, she still in her hat and coat. The door was ajar, and it was unlikely that the sounds of their struggle should not have reached the kitchen where her father and mother and little sister were assembled.
They had made her completely drunk. A curious house the Deluigis’ must be! He did not bear Angiolina any grudge himself because his own pleasure that evening had indeed been perfect.
Next day they met at mid-day, both in an excellent humor. Angiolina assured him that her mother had noticed nothing at all. Then she said she was very sorry indeed that he had seen her in that state. It wasn’t her fault, it was that horrible old Deluigi!
He set her mind at rest, telling her that if it depended on him he would make her drunk once a day. Then they composed the letter to Volpini with a care of which they would hardly have seemed capable in their existing state of mind.
