But I didn't tell Clelia what happened afterward. Ginio and Doro started another song and this time we all bawled it out. It ended with a furious voice from the farmhouse yelling to shut up. In the sudden quiet Biagio shouted back some insolence and took the song up again defiantly. Doro began again too, when Ginio jumped to his feet. "No," he stammered, "he recognized me. It's my father." But Biagio didn't give a damn. Ginio and Doro had to jump him to stop his mouth. We were still swaying and sliding around on the same spot of grass when Doro had an idea. "The Murette sisters," he said to Ginio. "We can't sing here, but they used to sing once. Let's go see Rosa." And he set off right away, while the Biagio character grabbed my arm and whispered in a panic: "Oh, my God. That's where the brigadiere lives." The situation looked bad, but I caught up with Doro and pulled him back. "Don't mix wine and women, Doro," I shouted. "Remember we're supposed to be gentlemen."
But Ginio came up in a determined manner, admitted that the three girls must have put on weight, still, we weren't going for that but only to sing a little, and suppose they are fat, what the hell? a woman should be well-rounded. He yanked and hauled at Doro, saying: "Rosa will remember, you'll see." We were on the main road under the moon, all milling excitedly around Doro, who was strangely undecided.
Rosa won, because Biagio said nastily: "Can't you see they won't want you because you're filthy with lime?", at which point he got a punch in the face that sent him stumbling to the ground three yards away. He then disappeared as if by magic and we heard him calling out in the silence of the moon: "Thanks, engineer. Ginio's father will hear about this."
Doro and Ginio had already started up again, and I with them. I couldn't make up my mind what to say. If I had second thoughts, it was only that this dirty bricklayer would shame me in front of Doro in the intensity of their common memories, which they ran through excitedly as they approached the village. They talked at random, and that rough dialect was enough to restore to Doro the true flavor of his life, of the wine, flesh, and joy in which he had been born. I felt cut off, helpless. I took Doro's arm and joined them, grumbling. After all, I had drunk the same wine.
What we did under those windows was rash. I realized that Biagio must have hid himself in some corner of the little square and said so to Doro, who ignored it. Laughing and grinning like an idiot, Ginio led off by knocking at the worm-eaten door, under the moon. We were talking in stage whispers, amused and half cocked. But nobody answered; the windows stayed shut. Then Doro began to cough; then Ginio collected pebbles and began throwing them up,- then we argued because I said he was going to crack the windows; then Doro finally let himself go with a terrible howl, bestial, like country drunks at the end of a song. All the silences of the moon seemed to shudder. Various distant dogs from who knows what courtyards joined in hideously.
Doors slammed and shutters creaked. Ginio started singing, something like the earlier song, but Doro's voice soon joined in and blanketed his. Someone was shouting from the other side of the square; a light glimmered at a window. A chorus of curses and threats had just begun when the bricklayer threw himself against the door, raining kicks and thumps with his fists. Doro grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into the belt of shadow from a nearby house.
"Let's see if they douse him with a washbasin," he whispered hoarsely, laughing. "I want to see him drenched like a goose."
A dog howled from very close by. I began to feel ashamed. Then we were silent. Even Ginio, who was holding one bare foot in his hands and hopping around on the cobblestones. When we shut up, so did the voices from the windows. The light disappeared. Only the intermittent barking kept on. It was then we heard a shutter up above being carefully creaked open.
Ginio squatted in the shadow between us. "They've opened," he breathed in my face. I pushed him away, remembering he was dusted with lime. "Go on, introduce yourself," Doro told him dryly. Ginio shouted from the darkness, peering up. I felt his cold, rough neck under my hand. "Let's sing," he said to Doro. Doro ignored him and gave a low whistle as if he were calling a dog. They were chattering among themselves up there.
"Come on," said Doro, "introduce yourself," and shoved him out into the moonlight.
Ginio, lurching into the light, kept laughing and raised his arm as if to ward off some missile. All was quiet at the window. His trousers began falling, tangled a foot, and nearly toppled him. He stumbled and sat down.
"Rosina, O Rosina." He stretched his mouth but choked back his voice. "Do you know who it is?"
A low laugh came from topside, then suddenly stopped.
Ginio went back to playing the eel, this time on hard ground. Pushing with his hands, he wriggled back toward the edge of the shadow. Doro was now standing, ready to give him a kick. But Ginio jumped out quickly, shouting meantime: "It's Doro, Doro of the Ca Rosse, come back from Genoa to see you all." He seemed out of his mind.
There was a movement above and a creak of lighted windows being opened. Then a heavy thump from behind the door, swinging it out, splitting the moonlight that soaked it. Ginio, nailed to the spot in the middle of his dance, was two steps from the doorway. A thickset man in shirtsleeves had appeared.
Just at that moment a harsh, insolent voice sounded from the bottom of the square—the voice of that Biagio. "Marina, don't open,- they're drunk as beasts." Exclamations and scufflings came from the window. I could vaguely see waving arms.
But already the man and Ginio had collided on the stairs and were crashing around, panting like mad dogs. The man had black trousers with red piping. Doro, who was gripping my shoulder, let go suddenly and joined the fight. He kicked out at random, trying to find an opening, circling around. Then he quit and stood under the window. "Are you Rosina or Marina?" he said, looking up. No reply. "Are you Rosina or Marina?" he yelled, his foot on the doorstep.
A crash followed; something had fallen, a vase of flowers as we discovered later. Doro jumped back, still looking up to where at least two women were fussing around. "We didn't do it on purpose," said a sharp-voiced woman in exasperation. "Did we hurt you?"
"Who is speaking?" Doro shouted.
"I'm Marina," a softer, rather caressing voice answered. "Are you hurt?"
At that point I left the shadow, too, to speak my piece. Ginio and that other man had broken apart and were circling each other, grunting and fanning the air. But suddenly the carabiniere jumped over to the door, pulled Doro away, and shoved him back. The women upstairs squealed.
All around the square, windows opened again; there was a cross fire of hard, angry voices. The man had shut the door and one could hear him slamming down the wooden bar behind. A rosary of insults and complaints cascaded around us, dominated by the sharp voice of the first of the two women. I heard—and this is what finally sobered me—Doro's name running from window to window. Ginio set up a new storm of shouting and kicking the door. From windows around the square, apples and other hard projectiles—peach stones perhaps—began to rain down, and then, when Doro was seizing hold of Ginio and pulling him away, a flash from the window and a great explosion that silenced everybody.
3
The first evening, walking along the seashore with Clelia, I told her what I could about Doro's exploit, which wasn't much. Still, the extravagance of the thing brought a grudging smile. "What egotists," she said. "And me bored down here. Why didn't you take me with you?"
Seeing us arrive the afternoon after our escapade, Clelia showed no sign of surprise. I had not seen her for more than two years. We met her on the stairs of the villa, she in her shorts, sunburned and chestnut-haired. She held out her hand to me with a confident smile, her eyes under the tan showing brighter and harder than when I last saw her. Right away she began to discuss what we were going to do the next day. Just to please me, she postponed her descent to the beach. I jokingly pointed out how sleepy Doro was and left them alone to make their explanations. That first evening I went looking for a room and found it in a secluded back alley, with a window that gave on a big, twisted olive tre
e unaccountably growing up from among the cobbles. Many times afterward, coming home alone, I found myself contemplating that tree, which is perhaps what I remember best from the whole summer. Seen from below, it was knotty and bare, but made a solid, silvery mass of dry, paperlike leaves. It gave me the sensation of being in the country, an unknown country; often I sniffed to see if perhaps it might smell of salt. It has always seemed peculiar to me that on the outer rim of the coast, between land and ocean, flowers and trees should grow and good fresh water should run.
A steep, angular stone stairway led up the outside of the house to my room. Underneath, on the ground floor, every so often, while I was washing or shaving, an uproar of discordant voices broke out, one of them a woman's. I couldn't quite make out if they were cheerful or angry. I looked through the window grating on my way down, but it was too dark by then to see in. Only when I was a good distance away did one of the voices gain the upper hand, a fresh, strong voice I couldn't quite identify but which I'd heard already. I was about to go back and clear up the mystery when it occurred to me that, after all, we were neighbors and one always meets one's neighbors too soon in any case.
"Doro is in the woods," Clelia said that evening as we walked along the beach. "He's painting the sea." She turned as she walked, widening her eyes a little. "The sea is worth it. You watch it too."
We looked at the sea, and then I told her I couldn't understand why she was bored. Clelia said, laughing: "Tell me again about that little man under the moon. What was it he shouted? I was also looking at the moon the other night."
"Probably he was making faces. Just four drunks weren't enough to make the woman laugh."
"Were you drunk?"
"Evidently."
"What boys!" Clelia said.
Ginio's night became a joke between the two of us; all I had to do was allude to the little white man and his monkeyshines for Clelia to brighten up and laugh. But when that night I told her that Ginio was not a little bald old man but a contemporary of Doro's, she looked alarmed. "Why didn't you tell me? Now you've spoiled everything. Was he a peasant?"
"A bricklayer's assistant, to be precise."
Clelia sighed. "After all," I told her, "you had seen that place, too. You can picture it. If Doro had been born two doors up, you might be Ginio's wife right now."
"What a horrible idea!" Clelia said, smiling.
That night, after we had dined on the balcony, while Doro was stretched in the armchair smoking and silent and Clelia had gone to dress for the evening, my mind kept going over our previous conversation. A certain Guido had been mentioned, a forty-year-old colleague of Doro's and a bachelor, whom I'd already met at Genoa and found again on the beach in Clelia's circle. He was one of her friends and it came out that he had been with them on that auto trip when they had passed through Doro's village. Clelia, without being asked, and stirred by a fit of malice, told the whole story of that expedition, speaking with the air of answering a question I hadn't asked. They were coming home from some trip to the mountains,- the friend Guido was at the wheel and Doro had remarked: "Did you know that I was born in those hills thirty years ago?" Then all of them, Clelia most of all, had pestered Guido until he agreed to take them up there. It had been a crazy business,- they had to warn the following car of the delay and it never did keep up with them. They waited for it more than an hour at the crossroads. Night was falling when it finally caught up; having eaten as best they could in the village, they had to wind through mysterious little roads not on the map and cross so many hills it was nearly dawn when the cars rejoined on the Genoa road. Doro sat next to Guido to point out the places, and nobody managed to sleep. A real madness.
Now that Clelia had left, I asked Doro if he had made peace again. As I spoke, I thought to myself: "What they need is a son," but I had never brought the subject up with Doro, not even as a joke. And Doro said: "You can only make peace if you've made war. What kind of war have you ever seen me make?" At first I kept still. For all our openness, Clelia had never been a subject to discuss. I was about to say that one could, for instance, make war by catching a train and escaping, but I hesitated, and just then Clelia called me.
"What's Doro's mood?" she asked through the closed door.
"Fine," I said.
"Sure?"
Clelia came to the door, still fixing her hair. She looked for me in the shadow where I was waiting for her.
"What, you're friends and you don't know that when Doro doesn't rise when I tease him it means he's bored, fed up?"
Then I began on her. "Haven't you two made up yet?"
Clelia drew back to the bedroom and fell silent. Then she reappeared quickly, saying: "Why don't you turn on the light?" She took my arm and we crossed the room together in shadow. As we were about to emerge on the lighted landing, she gripped my arm and whispered: "I'm desperate. I wish Doro could be with you a lot because you're friends. I know you're good for him and distract him..."
I tried to stop and say something.
"... No, we haven't quarreled," Clelia added quickly. "He isn't even jealous. He doesn't even dislike me. It's only that he's become someone else. We can't make peace because we haven't fought. Do you understand? But don't say anything."
That night, in Guido's car as usual, we arrived at a spot high over the sea at the end of a winding road that swarmed with bathers. There was a small orchestra and a few people dancing. But the charm of the place lay in the small tables with shaded lamps scattered around in niches of the rock, looking sheerly down on the water. Flowers and aromatic plants added their scent to a breeze off the sea. Way below, along the shore, one could make out a tiny rim of lights.
I did my best to be alone with Clelia, but without success. First it was Doro, then Guido, then one of her female friends, who showed up one by one but kept changing partners so often that no real conversation was possible. Clelia was always busy. Finally I caught her and said: "I dance, too, you know," to her mild surprise, and took her off under the pines away from the floor. "Let's sit down," I said, "and you can tell me the whole story."
I tried to get her to explain why she didn't have it out with Doro. One has to bring things to a head, I told her, the way one shakes a watch to get it started again. I refused to believe that a woman like her couldn't with a simple tone of her voice bring to his senses a man who, after all, was only behaving like a boy.
"But Doro is open with me," Clelia said. "He even told me about the serenade to Rosina. Was it fun?"
I think I blushed, but more from irritation than embarrassment.
"And I am open, too," Clelia continued, smiling. She sounded sulky. "Our friend Guido tells me, in fact, that my fault is to be open with everybody; I never give anyone the illusion of having a private secret with him alone. Sweeties! But that's how I'm made. It's why I fell for Doro..."
Here she stopped and gave me a swift glance. "Do you find me improper?" I said nothing. I was bothered. Clelia fell silent, then resumed: "You see that I am right. But I am improper... like Doro. That's why we are fond of each other."
"Well then, peace ... What's all the fuss about?"
Clelia groaned in that childish way of hers.
"See, you're like all the others. But don't you understand that we can't quarrel? We love each other. If I could hate him the way I hate myself, then of course I would abuse him. But neither of us deserves it. See?"
"No."
Clelia fell silent again. We listened to the shuffling on the dance floor, the orchestra stopping and someone starting to sing.
"What advice did your Guido give you?" I asked in the same tone as before.
Clelia shrugged her shoulders. "Selfish advice. He's making love to me."
"For instance? To have a secret from Doro?"
"To make him jealous," Clelia said, embarrassed. "That fool. He doesn't realize that Doro would leave me alone and suffer in silence."
At this point, one of Clelia's female friends arrived, looking for her, calling her and laughing. I
stayed by myself on the stone bench. I was finding my usual perverse pleasure in keeping apart, knowing that a few steps away in the light someone else was moving around, laughing and dancing. Nor did I lack for something to reflect upon. I lit my pipe and smoked it through. Then I got up and circled among the tables until I met Doro. "Let's have a drink at the bar," I suggested.
"Just to have things straight," I began when we were alone. "May I tell your wife that to avoid a beating we had to run off the next morning?"
We stood there laughing, and Doro answered with the shadow of a snicker. "Did she ask you that?"
"No, I'm asking you."
"Go ahead. Tell her anything you like."
"But aren't you fighting?"
Doro raised his glass and stared at me thoughtfully. "No," he said quietly.
"Well, why is it then that every so often Clelia looks at you with that scared, doglike expression? She has the look of a woman who's been beaten up. Have you been beating her?"
Just then Clelia's voice reached us. She was walking across the dance floor with a man. "Drunks..." We saw her waving at us. Doro followed her with his eyes, vaguely nodding until she was hidden again by her partner's back.
"As you can see for yourself, she's happy," he said quietly. "Why should I beat her? We get on better than a lot of people. She's never tried to anger me. We even agree about amusements, which is the hardest thing."
"I know you get on well." I stopped short.
Doro said nothing. He looked at his glass with a depressed air, lowered his head, held the glass away, then emptied it quickly, half turning around as if to clear his throat.
"The trouble is," he said brusquely, getting up, "we trust each other too much. One of us says certain things just to make the other happy."
Clelia and Guido were approaching us among the tables.
"Does that apply to me?" I asked.
"To you, too," Doro muttered.
The Beach Page 2
