For Assuntina’s present, Ferranini proposed a rosoliera.
“What’s that?” asked Nuccia.
“A service for rosolio: a decanter and glasses.”
“Good heavens, of course. In a Pirandello comedy they’ll come in with a rosoliera full of some cordial. But that was forty years ago. Today people drink large glasses of vodka. You spent fifteen days at Reparatore’s; be good and return the favor. Send a refrigerator, or, I don’t know, a television set.”
“A record player.”
Nuccia suggested consulting Reparatore’s wife to make sure someone else hadn’t already sent one. “I’ll call her; this is woman’s business.”
But everything she touched stung back; it was her fate. They’d gone inside a household appliances shop on via dei Due Macelli and she had already lifted the receiver of the phone. Walter stopped her.
“Better you don’t call.”
“Why?.”
“You told me you already called her once. Now you’re calling again on my behalf. We’re just making things worse. We’ll get what I said and that’s the end of it.”
She put down the phone and said nothing. Walter was right. They went back and got the record player.
•
Amoruso hadn’t recovered from the flu but he got up all the same to receive his guests. Besides Ferranini there was Pieraccini, a Socialist, with his wife, and a student who was getting a degree in the history of theater at the University of Naples and who had come to borrow some books from Amoruso’s collection. (This made Ferranini a bit uncomfortable, since he’d also come to borrow from Amoruso, the blue suit.)
Amoruso the bourgeois convert, “one of the hircocervuses,” he called himself, the fanciful “goat stags” of medieval legend, was born of the effort to mate the class struggle with a multi-class system. The house where he and his wife had been living for some years was by no means a convert, however. Elegant without being ostentatious (on the ground floor a single large space served as entryway, sitting room, study, and library), it was very much a bourgeois home in its nonchalant elegance, its rustic-country style, not in keeping with the canons of House & Garden but reflecting instead the charming experimentalism of the lady of the house. Adele Cariboni Amoruso, who came down from Rome every night even at the cost of missing a vote in the Senate where for two terms she’d sat with the Socialists, liked to say that furniture and books, carpets and pictures were like shoes, beautiful when comfortable to their user. Ferranini had already been there a number of times. Each time he went, he was surprised and somewhat intimidated by the odd arrangements, the fireplace with Delft tiles and the frame of books around it, the polished andirons on which, benignly and smokelessly, an oak fire burned, the ceremonious serving of coffee that “Comrade” Adele performed so gracefully. Coffee accompanied by large servings of torte with whipped cream (she made it herself; her origins in Trentino led her to Germanize in the kitchen), her guests serving themselves from the cart rolled between one armchair and another.
The dour cooperativist (and activist) was forced to confront a new world, perhaps too foreign to really interest him, except for the vague memories that floated up from his past, from the capitalist quagmire into which he’d risked sinking fifteen years ago. But he didn’t mind going down to Formia. He appreciated Amoruso’s eclectic hospitality and his library, he admired his wife: Adele had battled fearlessly against the dishonest legge-truffa in its day. She knew the errors of a Blanqui and didn’t want to repeat them. Who said you had to live in a hovel to help the people free themselves? A hundred meters away from Amoruso’s, Comrade Nenni’s house was no hovel either. And didn’t Deputy Secretary Longo own a villa in Grottaferrata?
The afternoon passed pleasantly, gusts of libeccio hurling waves of rain against the windows, while friends talked in the nice, warm sitting room under soft lights. In his dressing gown and slippers Antonino Amoruso battled the flu with glasses of slivovitz and soda and reviewed, from his armchair, the political scene with occasional assistance from Ferranini, who was feeling lazy, and from Comrade Pieraccini. Signora Pieraccini, jealous in that pathetic, banal way that often annoys the man whose fault it is, complained that her husband had too many commitments and never made time for the family. “He even works on the First of May.” Her husband observed that a Christmas holiday might be permissible, but labor day had to be celebrated by working.
A threadbare quip he instantly looked sorry for having said, wanting to apologize. But Amoruso got there ahead of him.
“Oh no, my friend. The First of May is not a celebration of labor but a celebration against it, and in fact it’s observed everywhere by abstaining from work, even in the USSR. It’s like the Day of the Dead, the way I see it: it honors the dead but neither acclaims nor honors the fact we must die. The First of May serves to remind us that labor is a deadly fate. Everyone sees it that way at heart (without saying so), and that explains why the rite is universal. I mean laborers, of course. Your work and mine is research, invention, deliberation. Without the curse of repetition, it’s not labor.”
The other man was taken aback. A plainspoken Tuscan, Pieraccini hadn’t expected to elicit such a reaction. He turned to Adele, smiling.
“Everyone’s a speech-maker in Naples, eh? Everyone’s a sophist. Even hospital department heads.”
“Being department head has nothing to do with it,” said Amoruso. “But hospitals, medicine, yes. Am I right Ferranini?”
Ferranini just nodded.
“The fact remains,” said Pieraccini, “that it’s a problem Marxist doctrine isn’t all that clear about. We’re supposed to think that one day we won’t have to work anymore, but it’s said—Marx said—that labor is natural and immutable, part of the metabolism between man and nature.”
“And you?” Amoruso asked. “You have to take a position too. Otherwise you’re no socialist.”
Imperious. But Pieraccini was too clever to take the bait; absolute positions were not to his liking.
“You know, for us Socialists, Marxism is like Gregorian chant for a priest.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that it’s not obligatory. Oh, and speaking of priests, we’ve got to get back to Rome.”
He got up. Ferranini was happy to stay a bit longer, and he hadn’t yet found the moment to mention the blue suit. Pleased by the invitation to stay for supper, he sat back down while the blond Adele went out to drive the Pieraccini couple and the student to the station. At Amoruso’s, however, new guests arrived when people left. At 6:00 p.m., the others just gone, a car came through the gate, headlights flashing across the windows, and pulled in. A broad-shouldered man with a lively, bitter, expressive face appeared, his jacket collar turned up and dripping, dowsed by the rain in the ten paces from garden to door. He tossed aside his gloves and hat and a moment later was sitting by the fireplace, warming his feet before the flames. Amoruso poured him a drink.
“Alberto, the much esteemed. Where do you rain down from? As it were.”
“My God, eight hundred kilometers in this downpour. From Taormina. You know the Taormina Prize. When I got to Naples I had an idea: Formia, Amoruso, medicine, and politics. Fruit torte mit Sahne. Adele’s not here, though.”
Ferranini was busy trying to identify that bony face, the prominent jaw and brow. Where had he seen the man? Amoruso made introductions. “Comrade Ferranini, and if it has to be said, Alberto Moravia. What were you doing in Taormina? Adele will be back in a minute. Don’t you already have enough prizes?”
“I do. I was a member of the jury.”
“They must call you regularly.”
“Naturally. How many writers are there in Italy who read other writers’ books? Three, four? Maybe only me. Ah, so the fruit torte is guaranteed.”
Adele had come in and she joined them by the fire. The conversation that followed gave Ferranini even more room to rest—and rest was in good supply these days. He was always grateful to be ignored, to remain silent. When not disturbed,
he could brood much better in company than alone.
It was a way of a being present without having to think or listen, justified by what he called “fatigue.” He didn’t so much keep his distance, as shrink physically. He turned off. In someone usually so attentive and responsive—sometimes too much so—it was strange.
The discussion between Amoruso and his friend (Adele had gone to the kitchen to make spaghetti) turned to the inexhaustible question of socialist realism, and Ferranini was asked his opinion.
“I can’t say; I know nothing about the question.” The truth was, he hadn’t been listening.
With unexpected patience, Moravia summarized the problem. He cited Engels’s famous dictum: “Realism is the truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances.”
“Now, tell us what you think.”
“Well, I would say that realism is not confined to socialists. Everyone, socialist or not, has relations with reality. It can’t be eliminated from life. Whether it can be eliminated in literature, I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem to me a requirement for literature.”
Adele, who had left the door to the kitchen open, now intervened. She quoted Marcel Jouhandeau: The most profound purpose of literature, the only one that gives it value, is to comprehend the realm of the human.
“Evidently Jouhandeau thought comprehension not only possible but communicable,” said Moravia. “Lucky him.”
“My wife,” said a serious Amoruso, “is right as usual. Here you are, Alberto, a writer, or more precisely a storyteller, and so let us limit ourselves to literature. Now I would say that the most important thing we need to know before deciding whether a writer or narrator is worth reading is: has he extended the realm of consciousness in our experience of life or not? Including my own personal, individual experience. Do you see? We who don’t give much of a damn about orthodoxy believe it doesn’t really matter whether the result is achieved through socialist realism or by other means.”
He was ready to go on. But his guest had moved on to another subject. The reticent Ferranini had somehow captured his interest, and he said, “Now that I’m here and seeing there’s also a PCI colleague of yours, I’m reminded that in the next number of Nuovi Argomenti, we’re going to begin a series of comments by politicians, one for each party, about how they interpret their political role in relation to their lives, convention, today’s complex society. What I heard Ferranini say just now made me think we could begin with him. I’d need something lively and nimble, not more than three or four pages.”
Amoruso instantly approved. Enthusiastically, even.
“Perfect. Ferranini is a Communist of the first order, I guarantee you. A thoroughbred proletarian.”
“Now you, Antonio, are certainly a pillar of the PCI, but you’re a cultivated man first and a political animal second. You have, besides the hospital, your books—politics is your violon d’Ingres. Your hobby. Here I want to turn to people who are typical politicians, and probably exclusively. The politique d’abord types. Like your colleague, I’d say.”
Walter sat listening.
“We’re singing your praises,” said Moravia, “and what’s more, you should know that a few years ago we had the honor of publishing the views of your commander in chief. What do you say? I’ll need the piece in ten days or so.”
“I’ll think about it.”
•
He would think about it very soon.
The following morning at eleven, wearing Amoruso’s blue suit, he went to Assuntina’s nuptials. Only Assuntina and her husband-to-be had awakened with so much trepidation that morning.
Reparatore lived on the fifth floor of one of those ugly yellowish apartment blocks once called ministerial (they looked like graceless public buildings). No elevator. Ferranini hadn’t considered that detail. How could they expect him go all that way up on foot, he said to himself as he slowly climbed the stairs. He found a cluster of guests, some thirty, almost all relatives, spilling out of the dining room into the entryway and even into the hall, and his hopes dimmed further.
The groom (from the Catholic Veneto) was very religious. Reparatore explained they’d had a service in church.
“What can you do, this is the practice in Italy—I was about to say, praxis. I’m going to end up a sacristy socialist, I can’t help it. The boss in this household has never been me.”
Ferranini mechanically scoured the crowd while he listened, leaning against the doorframe in the corridor. He felt like he wasn’t there. In front of him the door to Nina’s bedroom was partly open. Nina, older sister of the bride. A high iron bed frame, a blue cotton bedspread, a headboard fit to hang a rosary on. The chest of drawers and walnut table were polished to a mirror shine, and there was a tidy pile of books on the table.
“Nice furniture,” he said, to distract himself.
“We Pugliesi,” said Reparatore, “are the only southerners who care about tradition. Every feast day has its own food and drink. Nina, bring Walter some taralli and wine. Now try a glass of this Zagarese. Made from special varieties our forebears brought from Zagarise in Calabria. Our dear departed Di Vittorio loved it.”
“Who?” said Ferranini. (Where was his head?)
“Who? The great Giuseppe Di Vittorio! I had hoped to get Comrade Togliatti to try it.”
“He’s not coming, is he.”
“Well, at this point, no. I spoke to him on the phone Monday and he promised he’d come. He asked who would be here and I said, ‘Ferranini, Walter Ferranini. The man from Reggio Emilia!’ ”
Walter wasn’t in a joking mood. He waited until half past noon, said his goodbyes, and left. His train departed at two and he’d have to hurry if he wanted to change and get his valise. One consolation: he and Comrade Togliatti had been of the same mind when it came to choosing the couple’s wedding present. Now they could hear music on two record players.
He tried to call his friend Nuccia at the bookstore. She was out. This too annoyed him. Didn’t she know he was leaving? He went into the station restaurant.
At one table Comrade Deputy Filippetto was finishing her meal. Fanny Filippetto, a longtime MP for the PCI. The only woman to have been in the chamber since ’46, the year women got the vote. She called him over, smiling, and practically whispering in his ear, inquired, “Arriving or departing?”
“Departing, on the Milan train.”
“That’s my train; I get off at Arezzo, you can keep me company. Now go eat. I’ll wait for you here.”
As soon as they boarded the train and occupied the compartment she had chosen, she told the conductor who she was and had a “Reserved” sign put up on the door. She lowered the shades on the side of the corridor. She smiled again.
“What’s that face? Yes, I want to talk with you, but I don’t have anything dreadful to say. Relax, my dear.” Then, looking involuntarily pitiful, “It’s hot in here. Suffocating.”
“But you closed the door.”
“I’d rather it was closed. Care for a cigarette, Ferranini?.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Better for your lungs. So, you are off to cultivate your constituency. That’s what they used to call it. Oh, the belle epoque, when the voters knew their representative personally.”
She spoke of this and that, amiably and somewhat erratically. An attractive woman in her fifties (he scarcely knew her except by sight), Filippetto liked to show off her smile and the elegance she was known for. A dark suit, very well cut, on whose lapel discreetly glittered a gold badge, the Soviet peace prize. Beyond that tiny hammer and sickle on her ever so slightly matronly bosom, the rest was (once again) distinctly bourgeois. A soft hat of buckskin, worthy of a fashion house, that she tossed negligently onto the luggage rack. Looking at her, Ferranini was reminded of “Comrade” Amoruso. That whole tribe of worthies who represented the proletariat in Rome.
She told him how she’d begun her political career in Rovigo where she’d been a school principal. Oh, those were the days. N
ow, widowed and alone, she had no one but her married daughter and two grandchildren. “Grandmother of two little kids, I am. I’m off to visit them in Arezzo.” It was her one great satisfaction.
All this beating around the bush, thought Ferranini. He was flagellating his leg with a newspaper. Ever since that morning he’d been depressed, yet also (though he was far from being aware of it) elated. He’d hoped to sleep a little on the train.
But not before the train departed. Filippetto stretched out in her corner seat. She lit a cigarette.
“Well then Ferranini—please, relax!—I would have come to see you anyway if we hadn’t met up by accident. We need to talk about the situation you know about. One you’re in. One in which you haven’t weighed the consequences against your responsibilities. Now let me begin by saying this. The window.”
“Begin by saying what?”
“The window, there. Lower it, it’s stifling in here, don’t you feel it? Let me begin by saying that within the party, I direct the Schools Department and the Cultural Secretariat. I imagine you know that.”
“No!”
“Take it easy. The comments I’m about to make are not made on my own initiative. I’ve been commissioned, I’ve been asked. Unofficially. And those who assigned me this mission are counting (quite rightly) on my womanly capacities.”
“But who assigned you?.”
“I’ll let you guess that; I’ve already told you the positions I occupy, haven’t I? I can’t be any more specific. Listen, instead, to what I have to say. I’m speaking to you as a woman, I was chosen because I’m a woman, in order to facilitate our interchange.”
“But you haven’t explained anything!”
“I’m coming to the point. You have to get it through your head that this is not a personal matter. There is little that is personal in the lives of any of us at the head of the party. Do you disagree?”
“No.”
“Here’s the point, which I will gloss over slightly. A certain signora has vaunted her extramarital relationship with you. She travels with you, she stays in the same hotel, she receives you in her home. I won’t go into details. Need I observe that this is a classic, well-known, and inexcusable case of adultery? You think I’m being severe? I don’t wish to take a hard line with you; there’s somebody else much guiltier. The signora is married and she refuses to return to her husband. In short, a disgraceful ménage where there should be a marriage. Am I making myself clear, Ferranini?”
The Communist Page 19
