The Novel of Ferrara

by André Aciman

  16.

  HE CALLED me up two days later, at lunchtime. We were just sitting down at the table. Since she was the only one not yet seated, it was my mother who answered. She leaned her head out from the little telephone cupboard, searching me with her eyes. “It’s for you,” she said.

  “Who is it?”

  She came toward me, shrugging her shoulders.

  “A gentleman . . . I didn’t catch his name.”

  Distracted, impractical, forever in a dream, she was never very good at managing this kind of thing, and since we had returned from the seaside, she was worse than ever.

  “All you need do is ask,” I replied irritably. “It’s not that difficult.”

  I got up with a sigh of annoyance. But a secret quickening of the pulse had already warned me who it might be.

  “Yes, who is it?”

  “Hello, it’s me, Fadigati,” he said. “I’m sorry to disturb you. Were you already having your lunch?”

  I was surprised by his voice. In the receiver it sounded sharper. Even his Venetian accent was more marked.

  “No, no . . . sorry, could you hold on a moment?”

  I opened the door again, thrust my head out as my mother had, and without saying who was on the line, nodded to my mother, with an attempt at a smile, to cover my soup bowl with a plate. Fanny was quick to forestall her. Astonished, immediately jealous, my father stared at me, lifting his chin as if to ask “what’s going on?” But I had already shut myself up again in the dark little room.

  “Please continue.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” the doctor said with a faint laugh from the other end of the line. “You asked me to call you, and so . . . but I’ve called at a bad time, tell the truth!”

  “Not at all,” I protested. “Quite the opposite—it’s a pleasure to hear from you. Would you like to meet?”

  I hesitated briefly, which he was sure to have noticed, and then added: “Listen, why not come round to visit us. I know my father would be really happy to see you. Do you think you might?”

  “No, but thank you . . . you’re very kind . . . it’s so kind of you! No . . . perhaps later on, it would be a real pleasure . . . provided that . . . it would be wonderful!”

  I did not know what to say. After a rather long pause, during which nothing reached me through the receiver except a heavy, heartfelt sigh, it was he who began to speak.

  “Speaking of meeting, that dog followed me home, do you remember?”

  For a moment I could not understand him.

  “What dog?”

  “You know, the dog the other night . . . the unnatural mother!” he laughed.

  “Oh, that one . . . the mongrel.”

  “Not only did she accompany me all the way home,” he continued, “but when we got to the door there, in Via Gorgadello, there was no refusing her, she absolutely had to come in. She was hungry, poor thing! From the cupboard I scraped together a scrag-end of salami, some old bread crusts, a rind of cheese . . . You should have seen the appetite with which she bolted it all down! But that’s not all. After that, just imagine it, I had to take her with me into the bedroom.”

  “What, to bed as well?”

  “Well, almost . . . we arranged ourselves with me on the bed, and her on the floor in a corner. Every now and then she woke, started whining with a tiny voice, and went to scratch at the door. “Lie down!” I shouted at her in the dark. For a while she’d be good and keep quiet, for a quarter of an hour, half an hour. But then she’d start again. A hellish night, I can tell you!”

  “If she wanted to go, why didn’t you let her?”

  “What can I say? Laziness. It annoyed me to have to get up, take her all the way down . . . you know how it is. But as soon as it was obvious what she was after, I quickly did what she wanted. I got dressed and accompanied her outside. That’s it, it was me accompanying her this time. It struck me that she might not know the way home.”

  “You came across her near the aqueduct, isn’t that right?”

  “Exactly. But listen to this. Right at the end of Via Garibaldi, at the corner of the Spianata, at a certain point I heard someone crying “Vampa!” It was a baker’s-boy, a dark-haired lad on a bicycle. The dog immediately threw herself into his arms, and I’ll spare you the details of all the hugs and kisses. In short, great reciprocal celebrations. Then off they went, he on his bicycle, she trotting behind.”

  “You see what women are like?” I joked.

  “There’s some truth in that!” he sighed. “She had already gone some distance, they were about to enter Via Piangipane, when she turned to look at me—can you believe it?—as if to say: ‘Sorry to dump you, old man, don’t be upset, but I really have to go off with this young fellow here.’”

  He laughed on his own, not in the least embittered.

  “You’ll never guess though,” he added, “why all through the night she’d wanted to go.”

  “Don’t tell me the thought of her little ones had kept her awake.”

  “You’ve guessed right. Exactly that—the thought of her little ones! Do you want the proof? In my room, in the corner I wanted her to stay in, I later found a large puddle of milk. During the night she’d been suffering from the so-called surfeit of milk: that was why she was so restless and kept whining. The spasms she must have been suffering only she could tell, the poor thing!”

  He kept on talking: of the dog, of animals in general and their feelings, which are so like those of people—he said—even if “perhaps” they’re more straightforward, more directly subject to the laws of nature. As for me, by then I was feeling an intense discomfort. Worried that my father and mother, undoubtedly all ears, would have worked out whom I was talking to, I confined myself to monosyllabic replies. I was hoping, in this way, to encourage him to cut it short. But no luck. It seemed as though he was unable to detach himself from the receiver.

  It was Thursday. We arranged to see each other the following Saturday. He would phone me just after lunch. If the weather was fine, we would take the tram, go to Pontelagoscuro and see the Po. After the last rains the river must have reached close to the flood-warning level. Just imagine what it looks like!

  But finally he wound up:

  “Goodbye, my dear friend . . . keep well,” he repeated several times, emotionally. “Good luck to you, and to your family . . .”

  17.

  IT RAINED all Saturday and Sunday. Perhaps also for that reason I forgot Fadigati’s promise. He did not phone me, nor did I call him: but only out of forgetfulness, I would like to stress, not from any deliberate decision. It rained without a moment of truce. From my room I watched the trees in the garden through the window. The torrential rain seemed to mount a particular assault on the poplar, the two elms and the chestnut tree, from which it gradually tore the last leaves. Only the black magnolia, at the center, intact and dripping in the most exuberant manner, seemed to visibly enjoy the downpour that was battering it.

  On Sunday morning I helped Fanny go over her Latin homework. She had already started again at school, but was having difficulties with the grammar. She showed me a translation from Italian that was chock-full of mistakes. She just did not understand, and it infuriated me.

  “You’re an idiot!”

  She burst into tears. The suntan from the seaside had already vanished; the skin of her face had returned to its pallid, almost diaphanous state, so much so that the blue veins in her temples showed. Her straight hair fell gracelessly over her sobbing shoulders.

  Then I hugged and kissed her.

  “Won’t you tell me why you’re crying?”

  I promised her that after lunch I would take her to the cinema.

  But I left alone. I entered the foyer of the Excelsior.

  “Circle?” asked the ticket-seller, who recognized me, from the height of her pulpit.

  She was a shapely woman of uncertain age, with dark curly hair, and wearing a thick layer of powder and make-up. How long had she been there, lazily surveying us
from under her heavy lids, a grotesque urban idol? I had always seen her there: from when my mother had sent us, as children, to the cinema with the maid. We usually went on Wednesday afternoons, as there was no school on Thursday; and every time we would go up to the circle.

  The plump white hand, with its lacquered nails, proffered me the ticket. There was something very assured, almost imperious, in the gesture.

  “No, could you give me a ticket for the stalls?” I replied coldly, not without having to overcome an unexpected feeling of shame. And at that very moment I had an image of Fadigati.

  I showed the ticket to the usher, slipped into the stalls, and despite the crowd quickly found a seat.

  A strange feeling of unease kept drawing my eyes away from the screen. Every now and then I thought I had spotted his homburg hat, his overcoat and his shining lenses in the smoke and darkness, and I waited for the intermission with increasing anxiety. Finally the lights came on. And then, in the light—having looked round everywhere, in the rows of seats where green-grey uniforms stood out most numerously, or in the side aisles, by the heavy curtains draped at the doorway, or even up there in the circle, filled to the rafters with young men returned from the match, with women of all ages in hats and furs, with army or Militia officers, with old or middle-aged men all more or less dozing off—then, in the light, I came to realize at each suspected sighting that it was not him, that he was not there. No, he was not there, I told myself, trying to feel reassured. But why on earth should he have been? In Ferrara, after all, there were three other cinemas. And had he not always preferred to watch films after dinner?

  When I left, toward seven thirty, it was no longer raining. Torn into strips, the mantle of clouds allowed zones of the starry sky to be seen. A cold, tense wind had rapidly dried the pavements.

  I crossed the Listone and took the Via Bersaglieri del Po. From the corner of Via Gorgadello I looked round toward the five windows of his apartment. All shut, all dark. I then tried to phone him from the public telephone booth in Via Cairoli. But nothing, silence, no reply.

  I tried again a little later from home, and again from the public phone booth the next morning, Monday: always with the same result.

  “He must have gone away,” I told myself on this last occasion, stepping out of the booth. “When he gets back, he’s bound to let me know.”

  I descended Via Savonarola in the sunny quietness of one o’clock in the afternoon. A few people were scattered along the sidewalks; from open windows came snatches of radio music and cooking smells. Walking, I raised my eyes every so often to the perfect blue sky against which were sharply etched the profiles of cornices and guttering. Still wet with the rain, the roofs around the small square of the church of San Girolamo seemed more brown than red, almost black.

  Exactly in front of the entrance to the Maternity Hospital I bumped into Cenzo, the newsvendor.

  “How is SPAL doing this year?” I asked him, stopping to buy the local Padano. “Is there a chance of making it into Serie B?”

  Perhaps suspicious I was making fun of him, he gave me a sidelong glance. He folded the paper, handed it to me along with the change, and went off, shouting the headlines at the top of his voice.

  “Bologna’s resounding defeat at Turiiiin! SPAL ends up beaten in Carpiii!”

  I inserted the key into the lock of the door to our house, and could still hear his distant voice echoing through the deserted streets.

  Upstairs, I found my mother happy and excited. My brother, Ernesto, had sent a telegram from Paris, telling them that he was returning to Italy that very evening. He would be staying in Milan for half a day, but was meaning to be in Ferrara by supper time.

  “And has Papa heard?” I asked, slightly vexed by her tears of joy as she kept examining the yellow sheet of the telegram.

  “No. He went out at ten o’clock. He had to go to the Town Hall first, then to the bank, and the telegram arrived at about eleven thirty. How happy he’ll be! Last night he could hardly sleep. He kept saying, “If only Ernesto were home as well!”’

  “Has anyone phoned for me?”

  “No . . . or, wait a moment, yes they did . . .”

  She screwed up her face in the effort to remember, while looking to the left and the right: as though the name of the person who had called might be written on the walls or the floor.

  “Oh, yes . . . it was Nino Bottecchiari,” she finally recalled.

  “And no one else?”

  “I don’t think so. Nino made a point of asking you to phone him back . . . Why not go to see him sometime? He seems such a good friend.”

  We sat down at the table, just the two of us—as Fanny was out with a school friend of hers who had invited her to lunch. My mother spoke of Ernesto. She had already started worrying. Should he enroll for a course in Law or rather Medicine? In any case English, which by now he knew to perfection, would without doubt be of great use to him, in his studies, his life . . .

  That day my father was later than usual. When he arrived, we had already started on the fruit.

  “Great news!” he exclaimed, throwing wide the breakfast-room door.

  He let his full weight fall into the chair with a satisfied “Aah!” He was tired, pale, but radiant.

  He looked toward the kitchen doorway to assure himself that Elisa, the cook, was not about to enter. Then, opening his blue eyes wide in excitement, he leaned forward over the table with the evident intention of spilling the beans.

  He had no success. My mother was at the ready and put the unfolded telegram beneath his nose.

  “We too have some important news,” she said, and smiled proudly. “What do you think of that?”

  “Ah . . . it’s from Ernesto,” my father replied, distractedly. “When does he arrive? So he’s finally made up his mind!”

  “What do you mean—when does he arrive!” my mother shouted, offended. “Haven’t you read it? It’s tomorrow evening, isn’t it?”

  She grabbed the telegram from his hand. Sulking, she began to fold it up again carefully.

  “It’s as if it wasn’t to do with your own son!” she grumbled with lowered eyes, while she replaced the telegram in her apron pocket.

  My father turned to look at me. Enraged, he was calling me to his aid as a witness. But I kept silent. There was something that stopped me intervening, stopped me trying to reconcile this petty, childish quarrel.

  “Come on then, let’s hear,” my mother finally yielded, although with the air of doing so mainly for my benefit.

  18.

  THE NEWS my father wanted to give us was the following.

  A half-hour earlier, at the Credito Italiano bank, he had happened to meet the lawyer Geremia Tabet who, as we well knew, had not only always been “privy to the secrets” of Ferrara’s Fascist Party, but also notoriously enjoyed the “friendship” and the good opinion of His Excellency Bocchini, the Chief of Police.

  While they were leaving the Credito together, Tabet had taken my father by the arm. Recently he had been in Rome on business—he confided to him—which gave him the opportunity to “peep for a moment over the threshold of the Viminale.”‡‡‡‡ Given the times and the circumstances, he feared that His Excellency’s private secretary would not have announced him. On the contrary. The Prefect Dr. Corazza had immediately introduced him in the great hall where the “boss” was working.

  “My dear fellow!” Bocchini had exclaimed, seeing him enter.

  He had stood up, walked halfway across the big room to meet him, had warmly shaken his hand and made him sit down in an armchair. After which, without too much preamble, he had confronted the much-publicized question of the Racial Laws.

  “Don’t let this disrupt your own peace of mind, Tabet,” he had said in those words, “and instil, I beg you, calmness and confidence in as many of your co-religionists as is possible. In Italy, I’m authorized to guarantee to you, legislation on racial matters will never be passed.”

  The newspapers, it’s true, were
still speaking ill of the “Israelites”—Bocchini had continued—but only for ulterior motives, only for reasons of foreign policy. That had to be understood. In these last months, Il Duce had found himself faced with the “un-a-void-ab-le” necessity of making the Western democracies believe that Italy was now joined in two-step with Germany. What topic then would be more persuasive to this effect than a bit of anti-Semitism? We should keep calm. It would be enough for a countermand from Il Duce himself for all the useless watchdogs like Interlandi and Preziosi§§§§ —the Chief of Police held them in the most extreme contempt—to stop barking from one day to the next.

  “Let’s hope!” sighed my mother, her big brown eyes turned to the ceiling. “Let’s hope Mussolini decides to give it soon, his countermand!”

  Elisa entered with the oval plate of pastasciutta, and my father fell silent. At this moment, I slid my chair back from the table, and, standing up, moved toward the little radiogram. I switched it on. Then off. At last I went to sit in the wicker armchair near by.

  Why did I not share the hopes of my parents? What was it about their enthusiasm that rubbed me the wrong way? “Good God . . .” I said to myself, clenching my teeth. “As soon as Elisa leaves the room, my father will start one of his usual speeches.”

  I was desperate, absolutely desperate. And certainly it was not because I thought the Chief of Police had been lying, but because my father was suddenly so happy, or rather because he seemed so anxious to be happy again. So was it this, then, that I couldn’t bear?—I asked myself. I couldn’t bear him being happy? That the future should smile upon him as it had once, as it had before?

  I took the newspaper out of my pocket and, having given a glance at the front page, I moved directly on to the sports coverage. Despite trying with all my might to concentrate my attention on the report of the Juventus–Bologna match that had been played in Turin and ended with Bologna’s “resounding defeat,” just as I had heard Cenzo crying out, I kept finding my thoughts drawn elsewhere.