"And you think I'm not sorry too?" Clelia grumbled.
Doro was counting on his fingers. "It'll be more or less..."
"Knock it off," Clelia said.
Instead of going by train, they went in Guido's car. Doro kept me company as far as the village, confiding a certain distaste for having to discuss it all with everybody; he would have preferred a dislocation or a fracture. He chattered and joked about trivialities.
"You're more worked up than Clelia," I told him.
"Oh, Clelia is resigned already," Doro returned, "so resigned it gives me a pain."
"Didn't you expect it?"
"It's like a lottery," Doro said. "You put your ticket in your pocket and forget about it."
That afternoon I was with Clelia, saying goodbye, when Guido brought his car to the gate. I watched her circulate through the rooms, as she did up parcels, the maid running about. Every so often Clelia would sigh and come to the window where I was leaning, like a hostess making the rounds of her guests who reserves for one of them the privilege of hearing about her tiredness and boredom.
"Happy to be going back to Genoa?" I asked.
She gave a distracted smile and nodded.
"Doro likes unexpected journeys," I said. "Let's hope this is the last."
Even this allusion escaped her. She merely said that in these things one couldn't be sure of anything; then she blushed as she got the point, saying: "You brute."
I told her that I, too, would be leaving the coast. I was going home. "I'm sorry," she said. At the least, I told her, I was happy to have spent with her her last summer as a girl. For a second Clelia became that girl of past days: she stood still and straight and said softly: "It's true. What a nuisance I was. You must have been very bored, you poor boy."
They left halfway through the afternoon with a joking Guido. Clelia wasn't exactly in the mood for badinage, so I imagine he soon left off. They told me to wait for them because they meant to return in a few days; I felt a bit sad watching them go. The truth is that I had wanted Doro to take me with them.
The next morning I was with Ginetta on the beach, and after talking a while about Clelia I didn't know what more to say, when some young men came to take her away. I circulated among the umbrellas. I caught sight of Nina and turned toward the sea. I expected Berti to show up any moment.
But instead, on my way back to the road, I met Guido. He had already dropped the car at the garage. He told me the couple were staying on at Genoa. Their doctor was away, and Clelia hadn't taken the trip very well. "It's a bore," he said. "Everybody's leaving this year."
Berti, as usual, put in an appearance at the trattoria. He crept in like a shadow; I was conscious of him standing in front of the table before I raised my eyes. He seemed quite calm.
fudging by his bored and empty expression, I would have said that he knew about the departure. Instead he asked me if I had gone to the beach that morning. As we talked, I worried about what I should say to him. I asked him when he was going back to the city.
He made an irritated gesture.
"They are all going back," I said.
When he heard Clelia's news, he fiddled with his box of matches. I had not explained the reason for her departure. He seemed rather cast down,- then it occurred to me that perhaps he might be thinking that he was the reason, because of the dance incident, so I told him that the signora, according to his own lights, had been a good wife and conceived a child. Berti looked at me without smiling, then smiled unaccountably, threw away the matchbox, and stammered: "I expected it."
"It's annoying," I told him, "that these things happen. Women like Clelia should never fall."
Without my having noticed the transition, Berti had become inconsolable. I remember that we returned to the house together. I was silent; he was silent, staring vacantly around.
"Are you going back to Turin?" I said.
But he wanted to go to Genoa. He asked me to lend him the money for the trip. I told him he was mad. He replied that he might have lied and told me he wanted the money to pay off a debt, but that sincerity was wasted on me. He merely wanted to see Clelia again and say hello.
"What are you thinking?" I exclaimed. "That she remembers you?"
He fell silent again. I was thinking how strange the situation was: I had the money for the trip but wasn't going. Meanwhile we arrived at our lane and the sight of the olive tree rubbed me the wrong way. I began to see that no spot is less habitable than a place where one has been happy. I understood why Doro, one fine day, had taken a train to his hills and the morning after had returned to his destiny.
The same evening we met at the cafe. Everyone was there, even Guido—Nina, too, at her table—and I persuaded Berti to return with me to Turin. Guido wanted to take us dancing; he was even willing to take Berti. But that night we both left.
The Beach Page 7
