by Italo Svevo
Emilio thought that it was the inactivity of his own fate which had been responsible for his misfortunes. If only once in his life he had had to untie a rope and knot it again at a given moment; if the fate of one fishing-boat, no matter how small, had been entrusted to him, to his care, to his courage, if he had been compelled to override with his own voice the clamor of the wind and sea he would have been less weak and less unhappy.
He went to his appointment. His grief would return immediately afterwards; for the moment he loved, in spite of Amalia. He could not feel pain at a time when he was able to do exactly what his nature required. He tasted with delight the calm feeling of resignation and forgiveness. He could think of no words in which to convey his state of mind to Angiolina, so that their last meeting would seem to her absolutely inexplicable; for he should act as if a being of greater intelligence were present to judge both him and her.
The weather had changed, and now a cold, continuous wind was blowing; there was no longer any war in the air.
Angiolina came to meet him down the Viale di Sant’ Andrea. When she saw him she burst out in great irritation—painfully discordant to Emilio’s present state of mind—“I have been here half an hour already. I was just on the point of going away.”
He led her gently to a lamp-post and showed her the hands of his watch, which pointed exactly to the hour appointed for their meeting.
“Then I must have been mistaken,” she said, not much more pleasantly. While he was turning over in his mind how to tell her that this would be their last meeting, she stood still and said: “You had really better let me off this evening. We shall meet tomorrow. It is so cold, and besides...”
He was snatched suddenly from his interrogation of his own thoughts, and began examining her; he at once realized that it was not the cold which had made her want to get away. He was further struck by the fact that she was dressed with greater care than usual. A very smart brown dress, which he had never seen before, seemed to have been fetched out for some great occasion; her hat looked new too, and he even noticed that she had on thin little shoes which were quite unsuited for walking about at Sant’ Andrea in weather like that. “And besides?” he repeated, halting beside her and looking her straight in the face.
“Now listen. I am going to tell you everything,” she said, assuming an air of self-assurance which was quite out of place; and she continued imperturbably, without noticing that Emilio’s look was becoming more and more grim: “I have received a telegram from Volpini, announcing his arrival. I don’t know what he wants, but he must have got to the house by this time.”
She was lying, there was no doubt about it. Only that morning they had written that letter to Volpini, and here he was arriving, before he had received it, full of apologies, and eager to beg her pardon. Sick at heart he said, smiling sadly: “What? You mean to say that the man who wrote you a letter like that only yesterday has come here today to take it back again in person, and even sends you a wire to warn you that he is coming. Just the sort of thing he would be likely to wire about! And supposing you happen to have made a mistake and that you found someone else there instead of Volpini?”
She continued to smile, still sure of herself: “Ah, I suppose Sorniani has been telling you that he met me the night before last in the street, rather late, with a gentleman? I had just left the Deluigis and as I was afraid to walk alone in the streets at night, I was very glad of his company.” He was not listening to what she said, but the last sentence of what she thought a very sufficient justification struck him by its oddity: “That was a deo gratias if ever there was one.” Then she continued: “It is a pity I forgot to bring the telegram with me. But if you don’t believe me, so much the worse. Don’t I always arrive punctually at all my appointments? Why should I have to invent all that nonsense today, to get out of one?”
“It is not very difficult to see why!” said Emilio, laughing furiously. “Today you have got another appointment. Be off to it at once! Someone is waiting for you.”
“Well, if that is what you think of me, I had certainly better go!” She spoke with determination, but did not stir from the spot.
Her words had the same effect on him as if they had been immediately accompanied by the act. She was going to leave him! “Wait a moment, I have something to say to you first.” Even under the influence of tremendous anger which pervaded his whole being, he wondered for a moment whether it were not still possible for him to return to the state of calm resignation in which he had been before. But wouldn’t he be justified in striking her down and trampling on her? He seized her by the arm to prevent her getting away, supported himself against the lamp post just behind him, and brought his own contorted face close to her calm, rosy one. “This is the last time we shall ever meet!” he shouted.
“All right, all right,” she said, wholly occupied in trying to release herself from his grasp, which hurt her arm.
“And do you know why? Because you are a...” he hesitated a moment, then flung the word at her, which even in his rage had seemed to him too strong, shouted it triumphantly, triumphant over his own doubt.
“Let me go,” she screamed, shaking with anger and fear. “Let me go, or I shall call for help.”
“You are a whore...” he repeated, ready to give over shaking her, now that he saw he had really roused her. “But do you imagine that I haven’t known for a very long time whom I had to deal with? When I met you dressed like a servant, on the staircase at your house” (he remembered every detail of that evening) “with that common handkerchief tied round your head, and your arms still warm from bed, the name I have just called you by came into my head at once. I decided not to say it and went on amusing myself with you like all the others—Leardi, Giustini, Sorniani and Balli.”
“Balli!” she laughed scornfully, and raised her voice to a scream so as to be heard above the noise of the wind and Emilio’s voice. “Balli is boasting; there’s not a word of truth in it.”
“Because he wouldn’t, the fool, out of consideration for me, as if it could matter to me whether you have slept with one man more or less, you...” and for the third time he called her by that name. She redoubled her efforts to escape from his grasp, but the effort to hold her fast had now become an all-absorbing motive to Emilio; he dug his fingers voluptuously into her soft flesh.
He knew that the moment he set her free she would go away and leave him, that all would be over between them and in such a different manner from that which he had dreamed of. “And I loved you so much,” he said, trying perhaps to soften his own heart, but adding at once: “But all the time I knew what you were. Do you know what you are?” Oh, at last he had found some compensation; he must compel her to confess what kind of a woman she was: “Speak up, now! Tell me what you are!”
And now, having apparently reached a point of complete exhaustion, she became terrified of him; the color left her cheeks, she stared at him with a look which craved for pity. She let him shake her without any effort to resist, and he thought she was on the point of falling to the ground. He loosened his hold and supported her. Suddenly she broke free and began running for her life. So she had been lying again. He never even attempted to catch her up; he stooped down and looked for a stone, but when he could not find one he collected some small pebbles which he hurled after her. The wind carried them along, and one must have hit her, for she uttered a cry of terror. The others struck the dry branches of the trees and produced a sound which was ridiculously out of proportion to the anger which had raised his arm to throw them.
What was he to do now? The last satisfaction he craved had been denied him. In contrast to his resignation everything around him remained harsh and cruel, and he himself had behaved brutally. The blood hammered in his veins from over-excitement; cold though it was, he was burning with fever, burning with rage, as he stood there motionless, his legs refusing to move. Already the calm observer had come to life in him and condemned the part he had played.
“I shall never
see her again,” he said, as if in response to a reproof. Never! never! And when he was able to walk again, that word kept echoing in the sound of his own footsteps, and in the wind which whistled over the desolate landscape. He smiled to himself as he went back over the same road by which he had come, and remembered the ideas which had accompanied him to that rendezvous. How astonishing reality was!
He did not go straight home. He could not have played the part of sick-nurse in his present state of mind. His dream still possessed him utterly, so much so that he could not have said which road he had taken to go home. Oh! if his meeting with Angiolina had been what he had intended it to be, he would have been able to go straight to Amalia’s bedside without even having to alter the expression of his face.
He discovered a fresh analogy between his relation with Angiolina and that with Amalia. He was obliged to detach himself from both of them without being able to say the last word which would at least have softened his memory of the two women. Amalia could not hear what he said; and to Angiolina he could not say it.
13
HE PASSED the whole of that night by Amalia’s bedside in one uninterrupted dream. Not that he was thinking the whole time of Angiolina, but between him and his immediate surroundings there was a veil which prevented him seeing clearly. A great weariness forbade him indulging in the hopes which had persisted in visiting him from time to time during the afternoon, no less than in the fits of despair from which he had sought relief in tears.
Everything at home appeared to be exactly as he left it. Only Balli had given up his corner and gone to sit at the end of the bed beside Signora Elena. Emilio gazed for a long time at Amalia, hoping to be able to weep again. He scrutinized her, he analyzed her, so as to be able to feel her sorrow and to suffer with her. Then he looked away again, ashamed of himself; he had become conscious that in his emotion he had gone in search of images and metaphors. He again felt the need of doing something for her, and told Balli that he would release him now, thanking him warmly for the help he had given.
But Balli, who had not even thought to ask how the interview with Angiolina had gone, took him aside to tell him he had no intention of leaving. He seemed embarrassed and sad. He had something to say, and it seemed to him so delicate that he did not dare say it without a preliminary preamble. They had been friends for so many years, and any misfortune which happened to Emilio he felt to be in a measure his own. Then he said with decision: “That poor girl often mentions my name; I must stay.” Emilio pressed his hand without feeling any great sense of gratitude; he was certain now—so certain that it gave him a great sense of tranquillity—that there was no longer any hope for Amalia.
They told him that for some minutes past Amalia had been talking continually about her illness. Might not this be a sign that the fever was diminishing? As he sat listening to her, he was quite convinced that they were mistaken. And in fact she was delirious. “Is it my fault that I am ill? Come back again tomorrow, Doctor, and I will be quite well.” She did not appear to suffer; her face was small and pinched, the very face which was suited to such a body. Still looking at her, he thought: “She will die!” He pictured her dead, at rest, freed from all her pain and delirium. Then he blamed himself for having entertained such a heartless idea. He went a short distance away from the bed and sat down at the table, where Balli also was sitting.
Elena remained by the bed. By the dim candle-light Emilio noticed that she was crying. “I feel as if I were by the bedside of my son,” she said, perceiving that her tears had been seen.
Amalia suddenly said she felt quite well, very well indeed, and asked to be given something to eat. Time did not pass normally by that bedside for those who were following the course of her delirium. Every moment she seemed to be in a new state of mind or to be experiencing fresh adventures, and she made her attendants pass with her through phases which in everyday life take days and months to develop.
Signora Elena, recalling one of the doctor’s prescriptions, made some tea and gave it to her, and she drank it greedily. Suddenly her delirium led her back to Balli; but for a superficial observer there was a lack of connection in that delirium. The ideas were all mixed up, one was swallowed up in another, and when it reappeared one could recognize it as being identical with the one she had apparently abandoned. She had invented for herself a rival—Vittoria; she had received her graciously, but then, according to Balli, a quarrel had developed between the two women in the course of which Balli had realized that he was the patient’s idée fixe. Now Vittoria was coming back again, Amalia saw her coming and loathed her. “I won’t say anything to her! I will stay here like a mouse, just as if she wasn’t here. I am not asking for anything, so leave me in peace.” Then she called aloud to Emilio: “You are her friend, so tell her that she is inventing it all. I have done nothing to harm her.”
Balli tried to calm her by speaking to her. “Listen, Amalia! I am here and I should refuse to believe it if anyone said anything against you.”
She heard him and gazed fixedly at him for some time. “You, Stefano?”{1} But she did not recognize him. “Well, tell her then!” Her head fell back exhausted on the pillow and they all knew, by past experience, that the incident was closed.
During the interval which followed, Signora Elena pushed her chair up to the table at which the two men were sitting, and begged Emilio, who she saw looked quite worn out, to go and lie down. He refused, but the few words they interchanged started a conversation between the three which sufficed to distract them for a short while.
Signora Chierici, to whom Balli, with his usual indiscreet curiosity, had already put several questions, related that when Emilio had run into her on the stairs she had been on her way to Mass. Now, she said, she felt as if she had been in church ever since the morning, and experienced the same lightness of conscience as when one has prayed fervently. She spoke without hesitation, and in the tone of a believer who has no fear of the doubts of others.
Then she told them her own story, which was a strange one. Up to the age of forty she had lived without any close ties of affection, having lost her parents when she was very young; her days had passed in this way, solitary and serene. But then she had met a man who was a widower, and was marrying again in order to provide a mother for the boy and girl he had had by his first wife. From the very beginning the two children had treated her with antagonism, but she was so fond of them that she was confident of winning their hearts in the end. She was mistaken. They always insisted on regarding her as a stepmother, and hating her on that account. The family of their own mother kept on interfering between the children and their new mother and told them lying stories about her to turn them against her, and made them believe that the spirit of their mother would be jealous if they were to show any affection to their stepmother: “I, however, grew fonder and fonder of them, so much so that I even loved my rival who had bequeathed them to me. Perhaps,” she added, with a certain subtlety of observation, “it was just that disdainful expression on their baby faces which made me all the more fond of them.”
Soon after the father’s death the little girl was taken away from her by an aunt who persisted in believing she was ill-treated.
The boy remained with her, but even after his mother’s family were no longer there to influence him directly he continued, with astonishing obstinacy in one so young, to treat her with the same disdainful enmity, which showed itself in many unkind actions and rude words. He caught a malignant form of scarlatina, but continued to resist her even in his fever till, worn out at last, a few hours before he died, he flung his arms round her neck calling her “mother” and begging her to save him. Signora Elena took pleasure in describing in detail the boy who had made her suffer so much. He was daring, vivacious and intelligent; he understood everything, except the love which was offered him. Now Signora Elena’s life was passed between her empty house, the church in which she prayed for the child who had loved her for one single instant, and the grave, at which there was alwa
ys plenty for her to do. Yes, she must go tomorrow without fail to see what success she had had with a young tree which would not grow straight, and to which she had put some supports.
“Then I shall go away if Vittoria is here!” shouted Amalia, sitting straight up in bed. Emilio, terrified, lifted the candle to see her better. Amalia was deathly pale; her face was the color of the pillow which formed a background to it. Balli looked at her with evident admiration. The yellow candle-light irradiated Amalia’s damp cheeks, so that its light seemed to emanate from within herself. It was as if the cry came from her bright and suffering nakedness. It was like the plastic representation of a violent cry of pain. Her little face, on which firm purpose was imprinted for an instant, threatened majestically. It was only a flash; she fell back at once on her pillow calmed by words of which she could not understand the meaning. Then she resumed her solitary murmuring, accompanying by a word here and there the dizzy course of her dreams.
Balli said, “She looked like some mild good fury. I have never seen anything like it.” He had sat down, and remained gazing into space with that visionary look he wore when pursuing an idea. It made Emilio glad to see him; he felt that Amalia in dying had become the object of the noblest love which Balli could offer.
Signora Elena took up the conversation again at the point where she had left it. Probably in quieting Amalia she had never for a moment detached her mind from the thought which was dearest to her. The resentment she felt towards her husband’s relatives was another element in her life. She said they had looked down on her because she was the daughter of an ironmonger. “In any case,” she added, “the name of Deluigi is a name to be respected.”
Emilio marveled at the strange chance which had brought into his own house a member of the family so often mentioned by Angiolina. He at once asked Elena whether she had any other relations. She said no, and denied that there could be a family of that name in the town. She denied it so emphatically that he was obliged to believe her.
