The Novel of Ferrara

by André Aciman

  But David, who was he? she now asked herself after many years. What was he looking for, what did he really want?

  In the big apartment block, in a room on the floor below, lived the family of a nurse at the Sant’Anna Hospital. They were called Mastellari, and there were six of them: the nurse, his wife and four children.

  Mornings when she went down with the pitcher to bring water from the courtyard, it wasn’t unusual for her to bump into Signora Mastellari.

  “What does your husband do?” the woman had once asked her. “Does he work in a factory?”

  “Yes—but at the moment he’s unemployed. Soon he’ll be working in the sugar factory,” she had replied calmly, utterly sure that David, a student, the son of well-to-do parents, and quite regardless of whether he was late with his graduation and had broken with his family, would never in a million years end up working in that factory.

  A factory worker—just imagine it! And yet what was it that David most aspired to be if not a “typical worker.” Wasn’t that what he kept on repeating?

  It was enough that he talked, and then everything became simple, easy, attainable. To get married? He had always considered marriage a joke—he would declare once again—one of the most typical and nauseating “bourgeois idiocies.” But seeing that she was at heart drawn to “nuptials,” he would quickly add, smiling, that she shouldn’t fret, at the most within a year, when he’d found work—“a position at the town hall”—he would undoubtedly be able to make a respectable woman of her. It was certain. He would marry her; he had no hesitation in promising her that. Confronted with her “more than legitimate and comprehensible aspiration” to become his wife, his “wife also as regards the law,” not only did he not draw back, but rather he would have done his utmost so that “the time all this would take” should be speeded up . . .

  The afternoons, those sweltering summer afternoons, he generally passed stretched out, nearly always asleep. His breathing was so slow, his cheeks so pallid under a few days’ growth of beard, that at times she—seated beside his bed exactly as she now was beside her mother’s bed—couldn’t resist the temptation to take him by the arm and give him a shake. “What is it?” he’d grumble, seemingly unable to lift his eyelids. Then, turning toward the wall—his pyjama top from behind was soaked with sweat—he would fall back into a deep sleep.

  Usually, as soon as they’d had their supper, they went out. In search of coolness, they’d adopted the habit of staying out late at Porta Mare. That rather crowded kilometer which separated the big apartment block from Porta Mare was worth putting up with. A little farther on from the Customs barrier, there was an ice-cream kiosk with ten or so small tables in front, and ice cream, as David knew, she’d always loved since she was a baby.

  Taking Via Fossato di Mortara, you came to the city walls in a few moments. And it had been up there, on one of those evenings, that she had suddenly stopped walking.

  “Listen. I think I’m going to have a child,” she said very calmly, putting her hand on David’s arm.

  At that moment, he didn’t seem surprised. Not a gesture from him, not a word.

  A little later, though, after they’d reached the usual kiosk, and she stood there with her chest leaning on the edge of the zinc counter and her eyes dazzled by the light of the acetylene lamp, he gently asked her:

  “And what would you like? Lemon or chocolate?”

  Without showing any desire to sit down, he had already begun to lick his ice cream (as ever a custard-and-vanilla combination). But he seemed sad, disappointed. While he licked his ice cream, he looked at her; he examined her from head to toe.

  “The heat’s unbearable this evening,” he’d exclaimed at a certain point, with a bitter sigh. “To think that, up in the mountains as soon as it gets dark, you have to put on a pullover.”

  He was evidently referring to his family, who from the first of June had been holidaying up in Cortina d’Ampezzo.

  “Where have they gone to stay, your family?” she’d found the strength to ask (as she too began licking her ice cream, having once again chosen a chocolate one). “Have they rented a house?”

  “No. They’ve gone to the Miramonti. Imagine a kind of castle—” he seemed eager to explain—“with a wood all round it, six or seven times the size of the Finzi-Contini garden, that one down there at Piopponi, you know, by the Mura degli Angeli, and at least a dozen times bigger than Montagnone† . . .”

  Who was David? What was he looking for? What did he want? And why?

  To these questions there was no reply, and there never would be. Besides, it was late. Someone, most likely Oreste, was knocking on the window. She needed to get up, force herself up to the street door and tell him he could come back inside.

  7.

  IT WAS indeed Oreste.

  After having caught up with the neighbors down at the entrance, for a good half-hour Oreste had stayed to talk to the women of what had happened and chiefly to listen to them. But then the cluster had moved on into the street and dispersed, and he, left alone, had begun to walk up and down in front of the doorway.

  He felt two opposite emotions colliding within him, two conflicting necessities.

  On the one hand, he felt the pressing need to rush off and lock up his workshop, so as to be able to confront with the required diligence all that the death of Maria Mantovani saddled him with. And yet the thought of Lida held him back. Several times, bending down and bringing his face close to the steamed-up windowpane, he had tried to peer into the room. Down there, next to the bed, on the right-hand side, he made out a small, curved, motionless, grey figure.

  “What’s she up to?” he grumbled after a while, with the affectionate impatience of someone who already considered himself a husband.

  The first shadows of evening were falling. It had stopped snowing, but it was still bitterly cold. Through the windows of houses round about could be glimpsed the insides of kitchens, cramped, illuminated dining rooms. He should get a move on and bring things to a head. At last, having yet again bent down to peer into the window (too dark—he concluded: by now he could make out nothing at all), he decided to tap on the window. He stood there, listening, his heart beating dully in his chest, until he seemed to hear Lida’s footsteps ascending the staircase inside. In response he was quick to slip through the entrance. A second before she lowered the handle and opened the door, he was already on the landing.

  Straight away, at first glance, he was aware that he once again had the upper hand. Her back leaning against the doorframe, and her eyes seeming to surrender themselves to his own, Lida stared at him in silence. That he should protect her: in her whole demeanor there was no other request.

  “Good Lord, you really oughtn’t to spend the night like this!” he said with lowered voice, in dialect, almost roughly.

  Then, still whispering, without crossing the threshold, he began to explain to her what he meant to do.

  He had to rush off and close the workshop, and since after that he also had to sort out another small matter, he wouldn’t be able to get back for at least a couple of hours. Before going to the workshop, though, he would stop for a minute at the house of one of the neighbors, Signora Bedini. As she had offered to give a hand, he’d ask her to come round.

  “Why?” he exclaimed, forestalling a possible objection on Lida’s part. “Goodness me, to keep you company . . . to make you a bit of supper . . . Or even just to pray with you!”

  At the word “supper” Lida had shaken her head as a sign of refusal. But the argument that had followed was stronger than her resistance. She lowered her eyes, and he looked at her with a smile.

  “So that’s agreed then,” he warned, “don’t put the door chain on. Better still, leave the door ajar. You understand?”

  And squeezing her hand, he disappeared up the stairs.

  The temperature fell sharply during the night. The thin pinkish light which the following morning tried to pierce through the ice-encrusted windows—Lida was stret
ched out on her bed, Signora Bedini was curled in an armchair while Oreste, who had spent long stretches of the night in prayer, was on his feet at the window scrutinizing the weather—the light seemed to have arrived from a far-away sun, lost in the vague and misty blue of the sky, a sun that gave no warmth.

  Just at that moment—Oreste calculated, with his coat collar raised over the stubbly thick silver hairs on the back of his neck while he blew on his frozen fingers—just at that moment the thermometer must be showing way below zero: ten, fifteen, twenty, who could say? That, however, should have made the weather more stable. During January, and perhaps up till mid February, the cold might drop to an even lower level: so that when the canals in the countryside, the river Reno and even the Po, had frozen over, the pipes of drinking water burst, and so on, in the end the winter would be comparable only with that of 1903. Would the farm produce suffer? Perhaps not. He at any rate felt rather sanguine (and felt not the least bit of embarrassment in admitting it), glad to have figured everything out exactly.

  Maria Mantovani’s funeral took place late afternoon that same day.

  The third-class carriage advanced, unhindered, over the flattened snow, and behind, apart from the priest and a small cleric, Oreste walked alone. Submitting to his advice, Lida had remained at home. As for him, the old schoolboy of the seminary, the favorite of Don Castelli, the veteran of the Carso front, all the extremes of the weather imbued him with energy, restored to him as if by magic the missed hours of sleep from the night before. He walked with lowered gaze. With a pace that he instinctively accorded with that of the priest, he unceasingly studied the grooves cut into the snow by the carriage’s tall thin wheels, the little slippages of snow that, detaching themselves from the wheel rims, barely powdered the shiny black varnish of the spokes and the leaf springs.

  When he got back it was already night. And from the street, rather than knocking on the windowpanes as he had in the past few days, he wanted to announce himself with the emphatic ring of the bell that was his trademark.

  Lida was awaiting him at the bottom of the stairs. She must have been asleep. And yet her face, before marked with the signs of weariness, now seemed refreshed and rested. She was completely transformed.

  He sat down in his accustomed seat, leaning his folded arms on the table, and looking over at Lida, who was keeping herself busy about the cheap stove. He didn’t miss a single gesture. He observed her with a most particular expression, a mixture of joy and gratitude, which surfaced in his eyes every time he thought he could discern in any phrase or gesture or even in a simple look of hers the attempt or desire to please him.

  “Tonight it would best to call on Signora Bedini again,” he said after a while. “I’ll stop by at hers later. Tomorrow I’m thinking of paying a visit to Don Bonora. I think that for the next couple of weeks the boy should sleep round at his house. And then we shall see.”

  Already it was he who decided, who chose what would happen in the future.

  After supper, they remained seated at a remove from the table that still had to be cleared, to discuss things. Limiting himself to Maria Mantovani and her life, Oreste spoke at length and with much tenderness. He remarked that she had suffered a great deal in her lifetime, poor thing, because she had loved very much, because she had had too much heart. He then described the plot in the Municipal Cemetery where tomorrow morning she would be laid to rest.

  It was a really lovely place, he assured her, very respectable. Had she not seen it yet, the recently constructed arcade added to the right side of the San Cristoforo Church, making a great symmetrical curve identical to the arcade next to Via Borso, which had been built also to complete the colonnade in front of Certosa, on the Mura degli Angeli side? Well, her mother would be buried there, under those new arches. No, no—he confirmed—at midday, with the sun that would shine there from dawn to dusk, as in a greenhouse, the spot was really splendid.

  “It’s true that those places there, on that side,” he added after a pause, and tightening his lips, “will cost a tidy packet.”

  But immediately, fearing that he might have been misunderstood, he explained that God forbid, she, Lida, shouldn’t worry in any way about the expense.

  “After working for so many years,” he exclaimed, “thank heavens I’ve been able to save up a little something!”

  And since she, he continued, without quite being able to suppress a slight trembling of his lips, had let him hope, had made him believe . . . and considering besides that this would without doubt have pleased her poor mother . . .

  “In short, what is mine from now on will count as yours,” he concluded, lowering his voice.

  He leaned a little forward, staring her in the eyes—and it was the first time that he had addressed her with the informal “tu”! At last, he stood up, and hurriedly excusing himself, promised to be back in the morning.

  They had such a lot to talk about!

  8.

  “WE HAVE such a lot to talk about”—Oreste would declare at every leave-taking, or at least his serious tender expression would affirm it.

  But the one talking, if the truth be told, was always him.

  When he didn’t let himself be carried away on the wave of his habitual memories regarding both the years he spent as a boy in the seminary and the war he had later fought in the trenches of the Carso, he embarked on long monologues centered on his religious preferences, and most of all on the recent, decisive political developments, which had such a close bearing on religion.

  After the signing of the Lateran Pact, in the February of that year, his patriotism had begun to overflow, liberally, enthusiastically. Good for the Church!—he said—which for the sake of Italy and the world had been able to set aside every trivial doctrinal matter and any sense of rivalry. But good for the Italian State as well, which deserved the highest praise for being the first to set out on the path of reconciliation. And it was clear, while he expressed himself in this manner, that the Church and the State stood before him in the form of a man and a woman, who, leaving behind a prolonged and difficult relationship, often perturbed by violent crises, had finally decided to get married.

  And from that point on, how many splendid things would come to pass!—he would pursue the topic with an exultant expression. The spring that was already coming would see the onset of an era of peace and perpetual joy, a return of the legendary golden age. According to the Bible and the evangelist, according to the dream and prophesy of Dante, Church and State would acknowledge each other in perfect accord. The priest would no longer be persecuted nor held in suspicion. Civil society would no longer rebuff him, but welcome him like a father who should be heeded and revered. And if, today, as things stood, the rebirth of an actual and proper Catholic party, one such as the Partito Popolare, would be a perilous thing to hope for, it didn’t matter: for now the results already achieved were more than enough. It was no little thing, if the truth be told, that the Catholic Action Party and those young fellows of the Federazione Università Cattolica Italiana were to be left in peace! It wasn’t a small thing at all, but rather a momentous one, to find oneself able serenely to bless the Fatherland’s flag displaying so much of the Savoyan coat-of-arms!

  Carried along by the intense emotion these speeches awoke in him, but changing the tone, he would at last begin to talk of the two of them, of him and Lida, and in particular of the small villa outside Porta San Benedetto where in May, the day after their wedding, they would take up residence.

  He would complain. He would take issue with the plasterer because a wall freshly skimmed, and seeping moisture, was showing stains in various places; with the carpenter because a shutter didn’t close properly; with the surveyor because of his brusqueness and bad manners. But then, as soon as he began to describe the place where the villa was being constructed, how his face would relax and become clear again! The little dwelling was situated at the end of Corso San Benedetto—he repeated for the umpteenth time, and it seemed as though he was girding hi
mself to describe certain very special details, almost arcane ones, of a far-away city, a city infinitely more lovely, agreeable and hospitable than Ferrara. He was referring to that district beyond the walls, situated between the Customs barrier and the railway bridge, where a series of houses large and small had been built in the preceding years. Whether larger or smaller, each had at its disposal its own land, to cultivate as a garden or kitchen garden. The two of them, installed there, would be able to breathe clean air—ah! country air. And here, as though overcome, he would then fall quiet—now that the happiness which they had long been awaiting was already in sight, within his grasp, he evidently preferred not to describe it.

  May arrived.

  In the last few days Oreste had lost his calm. He seemed suddenly riddled with fear, anxiety. He had always referred indirectly to their marriage: by sign, by indirect allusion, nothing more. Now, however, after having been contented for years by a promise that had not even been made in so many words, after having consented to any prevarication, he wanted to expedite everything, not to lose a single day. The date of the ceremony had been decided some time back: they were to be married the third week of the month. And yet, why not get married earlier?—he found himself suggesting. What else did they have to do in preparation?