“No, my good man! Owner, indeed!” he spat out defiantly. “You’re certainly not the sole proprietor!”
“Who else then? You? Mr. Firbo?”
“What about your father-in-law? Plenty of others!”
“But my name’s the only one on the bank!”
“No, your father founded the bank, so that’s his name!”
“Fine. Then I want the name taken off!”
“What do you mean, taken off? It’s impossible!”
“Oh, come on! Don’t I have any say over my own name? Or my father’s?”
“No, because that name’s in the bank’s charter—it’s the name of the bank. Your father gave it life, just like he gave you life! And it has the exact same right to bear his name as you do!”
“Oh, so that’s how it is, now?”
“Yes, that’s how it is!”
“And the money? The money my father put into it, his own money? Did he leave that to the bank, or to me, that money?”
“To you, but invested in the bank’s operations.”
“What if I don’t want that anymore? What if I want to take my money out and invest it elsewhere, wherever I want. Don’t I have the right to do that?”
“But that would ruin the bank!”
“Do you think that matters to me? I don’t want to hear another word about it, I’m telling you!”
“But it matters to other people, let me tell you! You’d be destroying investments all around—yours, your wife’s, your father-in-law’s!”
“Hogwash! Everyone else can do as they please. They can keep their money there. But I’m pulling mine out!”
“So you want to force the bank out of business?”
“I don’t know a damned thing about that stuff! What I do know is that I’ll withdraw my money—I will, do you understand me? I will, I will, I will, and that’s final!”
It’s clear to me now that these nasty back-and-forth arguments are really boxing matches between two opposing wills, each trying to deliver a knockout blow to the other—jabbing, parrying, punching again, each certain his latest blow will floor his opponent. It only ends when they finally reach a point where each becomes thoroughly convinced from the evidence of his adversary’s unflagging resistance that it’s useless to persist. Meanwhile, they look absolutely ridiculous as they speak, or rather, yell furiously, instinctively accompanying their words with fists literally raised to within inches of their respective adversary’s snout, without touching it, all the time with teeth clenched, nostrils flared, eyebrows scrunched, entire body trembling.
My parting volley of those three consecutive “I wills” must have made a good dent in Quantorzo’s resistance. He brought his hands together in a gesture of prayer: “Could you at least tell me why? All of a sudden, like this?”
Seeing him like that gave me a kind of vertigo. I suddenly realized that explaining there on the spot to him and to my wife, both hanging on my every word—he imploring and she apprehensive and afraid—the reasons behind my stubborn determination, of such consequence to everyone, just wasn’t possible. Those reasons were no longer clear, even to me—they felt all tangled inside me at that moment, made delicate and contorted by my long throes of cogitation. My furious confusion had torn me from that terrible steady light glowing gloomily from what I’d discovered in my solitude: darkness for everyone else who lived blind and secure in the habitual fullness of their emotions.
I suddenly realized that even revealing a single one of my reasons would make me seem irremissibly crazy to them both—for example, the fact that, up until a short while back, I had never seen myself as they had always seen me, that is, as someone who lived a tranquil, absent-minded life off the profits of the bank’s usurious interest rates, without even having to openly acknowledge it. I’d just barely acknowledged it in their presence, and here they both thought it was so implausibly ingenuous that it made him launch into that comically furious gesturing and her to break out in that interminable laughter.
And how could I tell them now that I was basing the total weight of my resolve on this “implausible ingenuity” as they saw it? What if I’d always been a loan shark, always, even before I was born? Hadn’t I seen myself with my very own eyes walking down the fast lane to madness by carrying out an action that must have seemed to everyone as inconsistent, literally the opposite of my normal self, tossing my will out like a handkerchief dug from my pocket? Hadn’t I myself admitted that Mr. Vitangelo Moscarda, loan shark, could certainly go insane, but couldn’t possibly self-destruct?
Well this was precisely the “sore spot” inside me that had been injured, and it was currently blinding me and stealing my comprehension of the big picture. A shady loan shark, no. I’d never seen myself as one, and now I didn’t want to be one for anyone else, either. No, I wouldn’t be one anymore, even if it meant ruining every aspect of my life. And this feeling was finally internalized (although I’d already sensed it with a certain apprehension and suspicion), well cemented now by the willpower that derived from the same firm stability, deaf and closed into itself like a stone, that others possessed.
That was all my wife needed. Taking advantage of my sudden disorientation, she snapped into action, ordering her Gengè to stop, once and for all, with that ridiculous bossiness he was trying to pull off. She approached me, telling me off, waving her hands practically in my face. That was enough to extinguish the light in my eyes again. I grabbed her by the wrists, shook her, and pushed her backwards, forcing her to sit back down in the chair.
“No, you knock it off with your Gengè! That’s not me! That’s not me! That’s not me! Enough of that puppet! I want what I want, and I’m going to get what I want!”
I turned to Quantorzo: “Have I made myself clear?” Furious, I stormed out of the drawing room.
BOOK SIX
1 ~ Tête-à-tête
A little later, shut in my room like a caged beast, I was fuming over how rough I’d been with my wife (first time ever), unable to forget the sight of her slender, white-clad, fluttering figure, that seemed to crumble away as I clutched her wrists, shook her, and pushed her back down onto the chair.
Oh, how light and delicate she was in that snowy dress trimmed in flounces and frills as I so violently and brutally shoved her!
Broken now, like a fragile doll, flung there with such fury, onto the chair, and I’d surely never be able to put her back together. And my whole life, the one spent with her so far, playing with that doll, was shattered and done, perhaps forever.
The quivering horror of my violence lived on in my still-trembling hands. I realized this horror wasn’t so much from the violence of what I’d done, but from the blind rush of emotion and will that had finally given me body: a bestial body that had struck terror and instilled violence into my hands.
I was becoming “one.”
Me.
Me who now wanted to be that way.
Me who now felt that way.
Finally!
No longer a shady loan shark (enough with that bank!), and no longer Gengè (enough with that puppet!).
But my heart kept racing in my chest. It took my breath away. I opened and closed my hands, digging my nails into my flesh. Without realizing it, one hand was lightly scratching the other palm as I paced around the room, face contorted like a horse who can’t stand the bit. I was raving deliriously.
“But if I’m one, who, who?”
What if my eyes could no longer see myself as the one that I was to me? Eyes, so many eyes—I could still feel everyone’s eyes staring at me, but I couldn’t possibly know how they would see me now, in my newly minted determination, when I didn’t even know yet how I was going to appear to myself.
No more Gengè.
Someone else.
That’s exactly what I wanted.
But what else did I have inside me, besides this agony that revealed I was no one and a hundred thousand?
This new determination of mine, this new perspective of mine, could r
ise up blindly from my wounded sore spot, the one I didn’t even recognize, but would immediately fall back, collapsing under that terrible steady light glowing gloomily from what I’d discovered.
But to put myself back together, I wanted to catch a glimpse of what I could assemble with a drop of blood from that wound, with that bit of torn, tormented perspective, on the rickety skeleton of that shred of determination. Oh, a bony little man, constantly fearful of everyone’s eyes, clutching his satchel of money gained from the bank’s liquidation. And how could I keep that money now?
Didn’t I earn it through my own hard work? Pulling it out of the bank now so that it wouldn’t yield further exorbitant interest—would that be enough to clean the stench of its usurious origin? Then what? Throw it away? Then how would I live? What could I possibly do for work? And Dida?
She, too—I clearly felt it, now that I didn’t have her in the house anymore—she, too, was a sore spot in me. I loved her, despite the agony resulting from my perfect awareness of not truly inhabiting the body that she loved. But I still savored the sweetness my body received from her love, blinded by the voluptuousness of her embrace, even though I was practically tempted to throttle her at times when I saw her with her moist, feverish lips, caught in a frenzied battle between a smile and a sigh, trembling to form a stupid name: Gengè.
2 ~ Into the Void
Every object in the room was suspended in stillness when I returned, as though magnetically drawn by the silence that had formed there. That armchair where she’d been sitting a few minutes ago, that davenport where Quantorzo had floundered about, that bright lacquered coffee table with gold trim, and the other chairs and drapes—it all gave me such a dreadful feeling of emptiness, a void, that I turned to look at the servants, Diego and Nina, who’d informed me that the lady of the house had left with Mr. Quantorzo, instructing them to collect all her things, pack them in trunks, and send them to her father’s house. Now they were standing there, gawking at me with astonishment, open-mouthed and vacant-eyed.
The sight of them irritated me. “Very well!” I shouted. “Do as you were instructed!”
An order to carry out was at least something, in this void—for them anyway. For me, too, since it got those two out of my hair for the time being.
When I was alone, strangely, suddenly, almost laughing, I thought: “I’m free! She’s gone!” But it didn’t seem real to me. I had the weirdest feeling that she’d left to test the merits of my discovery, which had assumed such a huge, overarching importance for me that, in comparison, everything else could only have a minor, relative importance, even if it cost me my wife. Actually, even because it did cost me my wife.
“What if it is real!”
Only the test was horrible. All the rest—yes, come on!—could also seem ridiculous, like the way she up and left with Quantorzo, or the way I got all worked up over that stupid nonsense about people calling me a filthy loan shark. But then what? Is this what I’d become? Someone who couldn’t take anything seriously anymore? And what about my wound a bit ago, the one that drove me to that violent outburst?
Yeah. But where was this wound? Inside me?
Touching myself, wringing my hands, yes, I said “me,” but who was I talking to? And for whose benefit? I was alone. In the entire world, alone. By myself, alone. And in a momentary shudder that made me tremble to the roots of my hair, I felt the icy timelessness of that infinite solitude.
Who was I saying “me” to? What does “me” even mean, if everyone else had their own meaning and value of “me” that I could never share? And for me, so estranged from everyone else, wouldn’t assuming one of their versions of “me” mean immediately plunging into the horror of this void and this solitude?
3 ~ I Keep Making Matters Worse
A visitor came the following morning. My father-in-law.
First, I should (but I won’t) say where my imagination had led me in its delirious ravings which had lasted most of the night, wildly jumping to conclusions about the situation I’d gotten myself into, not only with others, but also with myself. Gasping, I awoke from a brief and leaden slumber, feeling the weight of everything as a hostile oppression, even the water I’d scooped up in the palms of my hands to wash my face, even the towel I’d used to dry myself. Then, when they announced the visitor, I suddenly felt completely relieved by a rapid reawakening of that cheerful mood which fortunately still wafted through my spirit from time to time like a restorative breeze.
I tossed the towel away and said to Nina: “Fine, fine. Show him into the drawing room and tell him I’ll be right there.”
I gazed into the bedroom mirror with irresistible confidence, even winking to show that Moscarda there that the two of us were on the exact same wavelength. And I swear to you, he winked right back at me, confirming our agreement.
(I know, you’re going to say it was because that Moscarda there in the mirror was me—demonstrating that once again, you haven’t understood a word I’ve said. He wasn’t me, I can guarantee you that. But actually, a second later, just before stepping out of the room, I turned my head just a bit to take another look at him in the mirror, and he was already someone else, even to me, with a diabolical gleam in his sharp, clear eyes. It would’ve scared you. Not me. Because I’d seen it before. And I swear to you, he waved back.)
All this was just the prologue. The play itself was to follow in the drawing room, with my father-in-law.
Four of us?
No.
You’ll see how many different Moscardas I enjoyed coming up with that morning, once I got started.
4 ~ Doctor? Lawyer? Professor? Congressman?
No doubt my father-in-law was behind the unexpected rebound in my mood, perhaps due to the disrespectful reality (oh, my God) I’d assigned him up to then: a totally stupid, eternally smug man.
Not only were his clothes neat, but his hair and moustache were well-groomed down to the very last light-blond hair. His appearance wasn’t what I’d call ordinary, but at any rate it was unremarkable. He could’ve saved himself the trouble of all that meticulous grooming, because his clothing, although of impeccable workmanship, never seemed to suit him, as though it still belonged to the tailor. Even that head of his, with its hair so neat and tidy, and those hands of his, so shapely and smooth, didn’t seem like real-life flesh and blood attached to his collar and shirtsleeves, but rather could’ve been disembodied wax displays in a hairdresser’s or glove-maker’s shop window. Hearing him talk, watching him bat his sky-blue enamel eyes, with a perpetual blissful smile for everything that issued from his coral lips, then seeing him open those eyes once more, the right eyelid remaining a bit taut and stuck, almost as if it couldn’t bear to pull away so abruptly from the magnificent enjoyment of some private satisfaction that no one would ever have assumed was in him. He couldn’t help but make a bizarre impression, looking so artificial, like (I repeat) a tailor’s dummy or a display in a hairdresser’s window.
Since I was expecting to see him like that, the surprise of finding him in front of me, all anxious and disheveled, only served to stir my abrupt desire to experience that exquisite risky thrill you get when you’re smiling and unarmed as you approach an armed and menacing enemy who’s ordered you to halt.
My rekindled good mood actually forced my lips into a defiant smile and my forehead into a smooth look of absent-mindedness at the thought of the little game that was to follow—a dangerous game, since so many grave interests were in play, affecting the man in front of me and many others as well. The fate of the bank and my family hung in the balance. Further proof was coming of the terrible thing I already knew—that is, that I’d inevitably be perceived as insane, more than ever, thanks to the remarks I was preparing to make as I hurtled at breakneck speed down the slope of that unbelievable and implausible naivete that had totally dumbfounded Quantorzo and made my wife burst out in laughter.
In fact, if I thoroughly reflected on everything at this point, that conscience I’d intended to rely
on couldn’t serve me as a valid excuse. Could I seriously feel guilty about profiting from usury when I’d never intended to be a part of it? Sure, I’d signed bank contracts as a formality, and up to that moment I’d lived off the bank’s profits without once giving it a second thought, but now that I’d finally realized what was going on, I was going to pull my money out of the bank immediately, and to get my house in order, I’d get rid of it all, one way or another, setting up some charitable institution of something like that.
“What? Is all this a laughing matter to you? My God, so then it’s true?”
“What’s true?”
“That you’ve gone mad! What about my daughter, what do you plan to do with her? How are you going to live? Off what?”
“Yes, yes, this does seem important to me. The matter requires some study.”
“Are you going to throw your entire future away? Since the dawn of time, everyone has looked out for his own best interests.”
“Great. So I’ll do the same, starting now.”
“How are you looking out for your best interests if you’re throwing away all the money your father earned in his many years of working?”
“I went to college for six years.”
“Oh, so you want to go back to school?”
“I could.”
He made a move to stand up. I restrained him, asking: “Excuse me, but it’ll take some time before the bank’s actual liquidation, I suppose?”
He stood up, livid, waving his arms. “What do you mean, liquidation? Liquidation! Liquidation!”
“If you’d let me finish—”
He whipped around to face me. “What are you trying to say? You’re raving!”
“I’m entirely calm,” I pointed out. “I wanted to tell you that I’d already made a lot of progress in several fields before I dropped out.”
He stared at me slack-jawed. “Several fields? What does that mean?”
One, No One & 100,000 Page 13
