by André Aciman
Astonished, my father opened his mouth to say something. But as usual Signora Lavezzoli brooked no interruption from him. With the air of changing the topic, and addressing herself directly to him, she had already begun to expound on the contents of an “interesting” article which had appeared in the last issue of Civiltà Cattolica, signed by the celebrated Padre Gemelli.
The theme of the article was the “ancient and vexed question juive.” According to Padre Gemelli—the Signora continued—the recurrent persecutions to which the “Israelites” had been subjected everywhere in the world for almost two thousand years could not be explained other than as a sign of celestial ire. And the article concluded with the following question: is it permitted for a Christian, even if his heart recoils, as one can understand, from every idea of violence, to venture a judgement on historic events through which the will of God is so clearly manifest?
At this point I got up from the wicker sofa and without too many courtesies made myself scarce.
I was then standing with my back leaning against the frame of the big glass screen that separated the dining room from the terrace, and the orchestra had just struck up, if I’m not mistaken, the opening chords of “Blue Moon.”
Ma tuu . . . pallida luna, perchèe . . .
sei tanto triste, cosèe . . .
sang the habitually saccharine voice. Suddenly I felt the hard touch of two fingers on my shoulder.
“Hello,” Deliliers said.
It was the first time that he had bestowed a word on me in Riccione.
“Hello,” I replied. “How are things?”
“Today a bit better,” he said, winking. “And you, what are you up to?”
“I’ve been reading . . . studying . . .” I lied. “I have to take two exams in October.”
“Ah, so you do!” sighed Deliliers, his little finger scratching pensively among his locks shining with brilliantine.
But this was of no interest to him. At a stroke his face changed expression. In a low voice, with the air of sharing an important secret with me, and looking behind him every now and then as if he were afraid of being taken unawares, he gave me a brief, jocular account of the swim he had had at Rimini and of the two girls from Parma.
“Why not come along too, tomorrow morning in the car? I’m going back for more. Go on, be a sport and help me! I can’t be expected to take on two girls at once. And give the studying a rest!”
Fadigati appeared at the end of the hall, in his smoking jacket. Narrowing his short-sighted eyes behind the lenses of his spectacles, he was looking round. Where was the white jacket of Deliliers? Well-suited for “Blue Moon,” the almost lunar half-dark prevented him from seeing clearly.
“I don’t know if I can,” I said.
“I’ll be waiting for you in the hotel.”
“I’ll try to make it. What time should we leave?”
“Nine thirty. Agreed?”
“OK, but I can’t promise.”
I nodded with my chin toward Fadigati.
“So that’s settled then?” Deliliers said, turning on his heels and making his way toward his friend, who was intently and feverishly polishing his glasses with a handkerchief.
And only a few moments later, the unmistakeable throaty hum of the Alfa Romeo rose from the big square beneath to inform the whole hotel that the two “lovebirds,” perhaps to celebrate their apparent reconciliation in proper style, had decided to reward themselves with a special night out.
11.
THE NEXT morning, I have to admit, I was tempted for a moment or two to go with Deliliers to Rimini.
What most drew me was the prospect of the drive along the coast road. But then what?—I almost immediately began to ask myself. Those sisters from Parma, what kind of girls would they really be? The usual sort to take secretly into the pinewoods (without any let or hindrance), or else two well-brought-up young ladies from a good family to entertain on the beach under the vigilant eyes of another Signora Lavezzoli? In either case (although some eventuality between the two couldn’t entirely be discounted . . .) I didn’t consider myself a good enough friend of Deliliers to accept his invitation light-heartedly. Strange. Deliliers had never shown me much friendliness or real consideration, and now he was asking, almost begging, me to go out with him on an amorous excursion. Strange indeed. Wasn’t he, primarily, using me to broadcast that he was with Fadigati not because of any vice but only to have him pay for the holiday, and that anyway he always preferred girls?
“Và la, patàca!”# I grumbled in Romagnolo dialect, having already decided not to go.
And a little later, on the beach, making out the doctor under his umbrella in the distance, abandoned to a solitude that suddenly struck me as unbounded, irremediable, I felt a great inner relief at having renounced the trip. At least I hadn’t treated him as a dupe. Rather than assisting someone keen to betray and exploit him, I had had the strength to resist, and had showed him at least a minimum of respect.
A moment before I reached the umbrella, Fadigati turned round.
“Ah, it’s you,” he said, without surprise. “It’s kind of you to pay me a visit.”
Everything about him expressed the weariness and pain of a recent quarrel. Regardless of the promises he had most likely made the evening before, Deliliers had still gone off to Rimini.
He closed the book he had been reading and put it down on a stool next to him, half in the shade, half in sunlight. It was not the usual detective novel, but a slim volume in an antique cover adorned with flowers.
“What were you reading?” I asked, nodding at the volume. “Poetry?”
“Take a look, do.”
It was a scholastic edition of the first book of The Iliad, supplied with an interlinear translation.
“Mènin aèide, theà, peleiàdeo Achillèos,”** he slowly recited, with a bitter smile. “I found it in the suitcase.”
My father and mother were arriving exactly at this moment, my mother holding Fanny by the hand. I raised an arm to let them know I was there, and gave a version of our family whistle: the first bars of a Schubert lied.
Fadigati turned, half raised himself from the reclining deckchair and lifted his panama hat deferentially. My parents replied in harmony: my mother by drily nodding her head and my father by touching the visor of his shining, brand-new, white canvas cap. I immediately understood that they were unhappy to find me in Fadigati’s company. As soon as she saw me, Fanny turned to ask my mother something: I was sure it was whether she could come over to me. My mother visibly held her back.
“She’s such a delight, your little sister,” said Fadigati. “How old is she?”
“Twelve. Exactly eight years younger than me,” I replied in embarrassment.
“But there are three of you, aren’t there?”
“That’s right. Two boys and a girl: four years between each of us. Ernesto, the second, is in England . . .”
“What an intelligent little face!” Fadigati sighed, continuing to look in Fanny’s direction. “And how well that tiny pink costume suits her. It’s such good luck for a girl to have grown-up brothers.”
“She’s still very much a little girl,” I added.
“I see what you mean. I would have thought her only ten at the most. Still, that doesn’t mean much. Little girls mature all at once . . . You will be taken by surprise . . . Is she at junior school?”
“Yes, in the third form.”
He shook his head in melancholic disapproval as though he was weighing up within himself all the trouble and pain it cost every human being to grow and become an adult.
But his thoughts were already elsewhere.
“And the Lavezzolis?”
“Hmm. I don’t think we’ll be seeing them this morning until noon. Because of the Mass.”
“Ah, it’s true, today is Sunday,” he said, startled.
“Well, given this chance,” he went on after another pause, while standing up, “let’s go and say hello to your parents.”
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br /> We walked side by side on the sand that was already unbearably hot.
“I have the impression,” he said en route, “I have the impression that Signora Lavezzoli hasn’t the most friendly feelings toward me.”
“Oh no, I don’t believe that.”
“Still, it’s better, I think, to make the most of her absence.”
In the Lavezzolis’ absence, my mother and father were incapable of sustaining their firm resolve to keep their distance. Especially my father, who in no time started up a conversation of the most cordial kind.
A light wind was blowing from landward, the Garbino.††† Although the sun had not yet reached its zenith, the sea, without a sail in sight, was already dark: a compact mantle, the color of lead. Perhaps because he was fresh from a reading of the first book of The Iliad, Fadigati spoke of the Greeks’ feeling for nature and the meaning he thought should be given to epithets such as “purple” and “violet,” which Homer bestowed on the waters of the ocean. My father, in his turn, spoke about Horace, and then about the Odi barbare,‡‡‡ which represented, as he would repeat in his almost daily arguments with me, the highest ideal in the field of modern poetry. In short, their conversation showed how much in sympathy they were with one another—the fact that Deliliers was not about to emerge from the beach huts from one moment to the next seemed to have a calming effect on the doctor’s nervous system—so that by the time the Lavezzolis, fresh from Mass, joined our gathering, just before midday, Fadigati was strong enough to withstand the inevitable barbed remarks of the signora, and even to respond, not ineffectively, to some of them.
We would not see Deliliers again on the beach: not that day or any of the following. He never returned from his drives before two o’clock in the morning, and Fadigati, left on his own, came to seek out our company more and more often.
It was thus, then, that as well as frequenting our tent in the hours before noon—all things considered, to my father it seemed an unimaginable boon to be able to discuss music, literature and art with him, rather than politics with Signora Lavezzoli—in the afternoon Fadigati adopted the habit, at least when he knew that I and the Lavezzoli children had gone there, of visiting the tennis court behind the Cafe Zanarini.
Our feeble contests, the four of us—a men’s pair against a mixed pair—were certainly nothing to get excited about. If I managed to play rather indifferently, Franco and Gilberto Lavezzoli hardly even knew how to hold the racket. Then, as far as Cristina, their blonde, rosy, delicate, fifteen-year-old sister, was concerned—she had just left a college run by Florentine nuns, and the whole family kept her under constant scrutiny—as a player she was even worse than her brothers. Her face was wreathed with a little crown of tresses which Fadigati himself, once, in paternal admiration had described as “in the style of Melozzo’s musician angel.” Rather than dishevel a single curl, she would have renounced even the act of walking. So she was hardly going to care about the style of her forehand drive or dedicate herself to an effective backhand!
And yet, even though our play was so lethargic and dull, Fadigati seemed to greatly appreciate it. “Good shot!” “Out by a whisker!” “Oh, hard luck!”—he was overflowing with praises for us all, with some comment, albeit often irrelevant, forever ready for each and every shot.
Sometimes, however, the warm-up became a bit too unbearably languid even for him.
“Why not play a game?” he would propose.
“Oh, please!” Cristina would immediately complain, blushing. “When I can’t even hit one ball back . . . !”
He wouldn’t hear of it.
“Put your backs into it!” he would exclaim spiritedly. “Dr. Fadigati will reward the winning couple with two delicious bottles of San Pellegrino Orangina!”
He would then rush off to the groundsman’s hut, bring out a decrepit, wobbly umpire’s chair, at least two meters high, carry it in his arms with difficulty to one side of the court, and finally clamber up on top. The air little by little grew dark; his hat, against the light, appeared encircled by an aureole of midges. But he, perched like a big bird on a high branch, stayed up there, to announce point after point in his metallic voice, determined to play out to the end his self-assigned role of impartial umpire. It was clear: he didn’t know what else to do, in what way to fill the vast emptiness of his days.
12.
AS OFTEN happens on the Adriatic coast, in the first days of September the season suddenly changed. It rained only one day, the 31st of August. But the beautiful weather of the following day fooled no one. The sea was restless and green, the green of vegetation; the sky had the exaggerated translucency of a precious stone. Even the lukewarm air bore within itself a small persistent hint of cold.
The number of holidaymakers began to dwindle. On the beach the three or four rows of tents and umbrellas quickly reduced to two, and then, after another day of rain, to only one. From there to the cabins, a good proportion of which by this stage had been taken down, on the dunes, covered until only a few days before by a parched and stunted growth of brush, an incredible multitude of marvelous, budding yellow flowers appeared, long-stalked as lilies. To understand the full significance of that sudden flowering one needed to have a passing knowledge of the Romagnolo coast. The summer was over: from that moment on it would be nothing but a memory.
I made the most of it by settling down to my studies. I was hoping to take my Ancient History exam the following October, at least that one. So I remained shut in my room until almost midday, reading the prescribed textbooks.
I did the same in the afternoon, awaiting the time of the tennis match.
One day, after lunch, when I was thus studying—that morning I had not even gone to the beach: as soon as I was up, the distant crash of the waves had immediately discouraged any idea of swimming—I heard rising from the garden the sharp voice of Signora Lavezzoli. I couldn’t make out her words. I understood, though, from the tone, that she was indignant about something.
“But really . . . the scandal of yesterday evening . . .” I managed to catch.
Who had made her so cross? Why had she come to visit us?—I asked myself with irritation. And immediately, instinctively, I thought of Fadigati.
I resisted the temptation to go down to the breakfast room and eavesdrop behind the door that gave on to the garden, and when I emerged an hour later Signora Lavezzoli was no longer there. My father was sitting in the shade as usual under the pine tree. As soon as he heard the noise of my footsteps on the gravel, he put down the newspaper that was unfolded on his knees.
I was kitted out for tennis. With one hand I held the handlebars of my bike, with the other the racket. And yet still he asked me:
“Where are you off to?”
Two summers before, as always at Riccione, a fortnight after having acquitted myself splendidly in the exams for high school graduation, I ended up in bed (and it was the first time ever!) with a thirty-year-old married woman from Milan who was an occasional acquaintance of my mother. Uncertain whether to be proud or worried by my adventure, for two whole months my father had ceaselessly watched my every movement. I only had to be leaving the house, or even to move away from the beach tent, to feel his eyes glued to me.
Now once again that same expression was in his eyes. I could feel my blood rising.
“Can’t you see?” I asked.
For some moments he remained silent. Rather than troubled, he seemed exhausted. Signora Lavezzoli’s visit, evidently unexpected, had stopped him taking his usual afternoon nap.
“I don’t think you’ll find anyone there,” he said. “Signora Lavezzoli was just here. She came to tell us that her children wouldn’t be playing. Her two sons have to study, and she wouldn’t let Cristina go on her own.”
He turned his head toward Fanny, curled up at the bottom of the garden, playing with her doll. From the back, with her little shoulder blades protruding from under a T-shirt, her braids made blonde by the sun, she seemed even more frail and immature than us
ual. He pointed at last at the wicker armchair opposite his.
“Sit down for a moment,” he said, and smiled anxiously.
He wanted to talk to me, it was clear, but it made him uneasy. I pretended not to have heard.
“It was kind of her to take the trouble, but I’ll go anyway,” I said.
I turned my back on him, and made off toward the gate.
“Ernesto’s written,” my father added, in a louder, complaining tone. “Don’t you even want to read your brother’s letter?”
At the gate I turned round, and at that moment Fanny raised her head. Although so far away, I clearly discerned in her look an expression of reproach.
“Later, when I get back,” I replied, and pedaled off.
I arrived at the tennis court. Fadigati was there. Standing by the umpire’s chair left there from the afternoon before, he was staring straight ahead, smoking.
He turned.
“Ah, you’re on your own!” he said. “And the others?”
Having leaned my bicycle on the metal fence-surround, I went toward him.
“They aren’t coming today,” I replied.
He gave a feeble smile, his mouth twisted. His upper lip was rather swollen. A double crack crossed the left-side lens of his fine, gold-rimmed spectacles.
“I’m not sure why,” I added. “It seems that Franco and Gilbert have to study. But it sounds like an excuse to me. I hope, though, that –”
“I can tell you why,” Fadigati interrupted me bitterly. “It will be because of the scene that happened yesterday evening.”
“What scene?”
“Don’t take me for a fool, I beg you!” he grinned, desperately. “Well, who knows? I didn’t see you at the seaside this morning. But is it possible that your parents didn’t say anything about it later, at lunch for example?”
It was necessary for me to try to convince him to the contrary. I had, certainly—I told him—heard Signora Lavezzoli enunciate the word “scandal,” and I explained when and how, but I knew nothing more than that.
Then, after a strange, rapid, sideways glance, and a subsequent narrowing of the eyes as though he had suddenly been struck by something vague in the distance behind my shoulder, he began to relate how, in the drawing room of the Grand Hôtel, “in front of everyone,” he had had an “argument” with Deliliers.
