by André Aciman
Well, as I was saying, that morning I’d had the bright idea of spending some hours in the library. Except that I’d only just had time to sit myself down at a table in the Reading Room and get out all the stuff I needed, when one of the staff, a certain Poledrelli, a man in his sixties, fat, jovial, a famous eater of pasta and incapable of putting two words together which weren’t in dialect, came up to me to suggest that I leave, and forthwith. All puffed up, trying to keep his belly in and even managing to speak in proper Italian, the good Poledrelli had explained in a loud official voice how the Director had given him very definite orders on this matter, and therefore—he repeated—would I be so kind as to get up and be gone. That morning the Reading Room was particularly full of boys from the middle school. The scene had been followed, in a sepulchral silence, by no less than fifty pairs of eyes and the same number of ears. As you can imagine, I went on, it was no joy to drag myself up, gather together all my things from the table, replace them in my briefcase and then to reach, one step at a time, the big glass entrance door. It’s true—that poor wretch Poledrelli was only following orders. But he, Malnate, should take great care, in case he should get to meet him (who knows if Poledrelli himself didn’t also belong to the schoolmistress Trotti’s circle!), take great care not to be taken in by the deceptively amiable look of that big plebeian face. Inside that chest as huge as a wardrobe there lived a little heart no bigger than this. It might well pump good working-class blood, but it was no more dependable for that.
And then, and then!—I grew yet more heated—wasn’t it at the very least out of place for him to come here preaching at, let’s leave aside Alberto, whose family has always kept itself apart from the communal life of the city, but at me who, on the contrary, was born and brought up within a family that might even have been too inclined to be open, and to mix with others of every class? My father, a volunteer in the war, had joined the Fascist Party in 1919, and I myself until yesterday had belonged to the GUF. Then since we ourselves had always been very normal people, even banal in our normality, it would be absurd to expect us now, out of the blue, to start behaving abnormally. Called into the Federation to hear himself expelled from the Party, then chased out of the Merchants’ Club as an undesirable person—it would be very odd for my father, poor fellow, to respond to such treatment with an expression any less anguished and bewildered than the one I saw on his face. And if my brother Ernesto wanted to go to university, should he apply to the Polytechnic in Grenoble? And should my sister Fanny, just thirteen, continue with her schooling at the Jewish College in Via Vignatagliata? From them too, abruptly torn away from their school friends, from the friends of their childhood, was it also fair to expect some especially appropriate behavior? What nonsense! One of the most odious forms of anti-Semitism was precisely this: to complain that Jews aren’t sufficiently like other people, and then, the opposite, once they’ve become almost totally assimilated with their surroundings, to complain that they’re just like everybody else, not even a fraction distinguished from the average.
I had got carried away by my anger, had moved somewhat outside the topic of our disagreement, and Malnate, who had carefully followed everything I’d been saying, did not fail to make a point of this. He an anti-Semite?—he stammered: it was frankly the first time he’d ever been referred to in that way! By now over-heated, I was about to return to the fray, to redouble my attack. Just at that moment, as he passed behind the back of my opponent with the ruffled speed of a frightened bird, Alberto cast a begging look toward me. “Please stop!” that look was saying. That he, unbeknownst to his bosom buddy, should this once make such an appeal to what was most secretly and exclusively shared between the two of us, struck me as extraordinary. I held back and said nothing more. Just at that moment, the first notes of a Beethoven quartet played by the Busch lifted into the smoky atmosphere of the room to seal my victory.
The evening was not only important because of this. Around eight o’clock it began to rain with such violence that Alberto, after a speedy telephone exchange perhaps with his mother, speaking in their usual jargon, asked us to stay for dinner.
Malnate said he’d be very glad to accept. He’d been dining at Giovanni’s nearly all the time, he told us, “lonely as a dog.” It seemed almost unbelievable to him to be able to spend an evening “with a family.”
I also accepted, but asked if I could phone home first.
“Of course!” Alberto exclaimed.
I sat down where he usually sat, behind the desk, and dialled the number. As I waited, I looked to the side, through the windowpane striped with rain. Against the thick darkness, the dense trees hardly stood out at all. Beyond the black gulf of the park, hard to say where, a small light glimmered.
Finally my father was heard to reply in his usual complaining tones.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said. “We were beginning to get worried. Where are you phoning from?”
“I’m staying out for supper,” I replied.
“In this rain!”
“Exactly. Because of it.”
“You’re still at the Finzi-Continis’?”
“Yes.”
“Whenever you get back, stop in to see me, will you? Anyway, I can’t get to sleep, as you know . . . ”
I put down the receiver and lifted my eyes. Alberto was looking at me.
“Done?”
“Done.”
All three of us went out into the corridor, crossed through various large and small rooms, descended a big staircase at the foot of which, in a dinner jacket and white gloves, Perotti was waiting, and from there we passed directly into the dining room.
The rest of the family were already there. There was Professor Ermanno, Signora Olga, Signora Regina and one of the Venetian uncles, the phthisiology specialist, who, seeing Alberto come in, got up, went toward him and kissed him on both cheeks. After which, while distractedly tugging at his lower eyelid with a finger, he began to tell him what had brought him there. He’d had to go to Bologna for a consultation—he said—and then, on the way back, between trains, had thought it a good idea to stop for supper. When we came in, Professor Ermanno, his wife and brother-in-law were sitting in front of the lighted fire, with Jor stretched out at their feet in all his considerable length. Signora Regina was, however, seated at the table, exactly under the central light.
Inevitably, the memory of my first meal at the Finzi-Contini house (I think it was still January) tends to get confused with the memories of the many other dinners at the magna domus to which I was invited in the course of that winter. I do, however, recollect with unaccustomed clarity what we ate that evening: and that was a chicken liver and rice soup, minced turkey in jelly, corned tongue with black olives and spinach stalks in vinegar as side dishes, a chocolate cake, fresh and dried fruit, nuts, peanuts, grapes and pinenuts. I also remember clearly that almost at once, no sooner had we sat down at the table, Alberto decided to announce the story of my recent expulsion from the Public Library, and that I was once more struck by the lack of surprise with which this news was greeted by the four old people. The comments which followed on the current situation and on the Ballola–Poledrelli duo, brought up again every now and then throughout the meal, were not even, on their part, especially bitter, but, as usual, elegantly sardonic, almost light-hearted. And joyful, decidedly joyful and pleased, was the tone of voice with which, later, putting his arm round me, Professor Ermanno suggested that from that time on I should make the most of the almost twenty thousand books in the house, a large number of which—he told me—concerned mid- and late-nineteenth-century literature.
But what struck me most, from that first evening on, was undoubtedly the dining room itself, with its floral-style furniture of dark red wood, its vast fireplace with a sinuous, arched, almost human mouth, its walls panelled with leather, except for one which was entirely of glass framing the dark, silent storm of the park like the Nautilus’ porthole—the whole thing so intimate, so sheltering, so—I was about t
o say—buried, and above all so well suited to who I was then—now I understand!—a shield for that kind of slow-burning ember which the hearts of the young so often are.
Crossing the threshold, both Malnate and I were received with great cordiality, and not only by Professor Ermanno, kind, jovial and lively as ever, but also by Signora Olga. It was she who showed us to our places at the table. Malnate was given the seat to her right, and I, at the other end of the table, to the right of her husband. The place on her left, between her, his sister, and their old mother, was reserved for Giulio. Even Signora Regina in the meantime, looking lovely with her rosy cheeks and her white silky hair thicker and shinier than ever, bestowed a friendly and amused gaze on all around.
The setting which faced me, complete with plates, glasses and cutlery, seemed to be waiting there prepared for a seventh guest. While Perotti was already doing his rounds with the soup tureen with the riso in brodo, I asked Professor Ermanno in a low voice for whom the seat at his left had been prepared. He just as quietly replied that now the seat was “presumably” waiting for no one—he checked the time on his big Omega wristwatch, shook his head and sighed—it being the seat which Micòl, or to be exact “my Micòl,” as he said, usually occupied.
• 6 •
PROFESSOR ERMANNO was not exaggerating. Among the almost twenty thousand books in the house, many of them on scientific, historical or a variety of scholarly topics (the latter mainly in German), there were many hundreds devoted to the literature of the New Italy. As for whatever had been published relating to Carducci’s fin-de-siècle literary circle, from the decades in which he had taught in Bologna, there was practically nothing missing. There were volumes in verse and in prose not only by the Maestro himself, but also by Panzacchi, Severino Ferrari, Lorenzo Stecchetti, Ugo Brilli, Guido Mazzoni, by the young Pascoli, the young Panzini, the very young Valgimigli—generally first editions, nearly all of them bearing signed dedications to the Baroness Josette Artom di Susegana. Gathered in three separate glass bookcases which occupied a whole wall of a huge first-floor reception room next to Professor Ermanno’s personal study, there was no doubt that these books together represented a collection of which any public library, including Bologna’s Archiginnasio’s, would be glad to boast. The collection even housed the little volumes, rare as hen’s teeth, of the prose poems of Francesco Acri, the famous translator of Plato, till then only known to me as a translator: not such “a saint,” then, as Professor Meldolesi (who had also been a scholar of Acri’s work) had, since the fifth form, insisted to us he was, as his dedications to Alberto and Micòl’s grandmother were, out of the whole chorus of them, perhaps the most gallant and showed the most heightened masculine awareness of the proud beauty to which they alluded.
With an entire, specialized library at my disposal, and besides that, being oddly keen to be there every morning, in the great, warm, silent hall which received light from three big, high windows adorned with pelmets covered in red-striped white silk, and at the center of which, under a taupe cover, stretched the billiards table, I managed to complete my thesis on Panzacchi in the two-and-a-half months which followed. If I’d really wanted to, who knows, I might have been able to finish it earlier. But was that really what I wanted? Or rather hadn’t I tried to eke out the time for as long as possible so as to have the right to visit the Finzi-Contini house in the mornings as well? What is certain is that around the middle of March (news having in the meantime been received of Micòl’s graduation, with the marks of 110 out of 110), I still remained torpidly attached to the meagre privilege of these additional morning visits to the house from which she insisted on keeping such a distance. By this time only a few days separated us from the Catholic Easter, which fell that year almost at the same time as Pesach, the Jewish Easter. Although spring was almost at our doors, a week earlier it had snowed with extraordinary abundance, after which the cold had returned with a vengeance. It almost seemed as though the winter had no intention of ever ending. And I myself, my heart haunted by an obscure, shadowy lake of fear, held tight to the little desk which the previous January Professor Ermanno had had placed for me beneath the central window in the billiards room, as though, in so doing, I might be able to halt the inexorable progress of time. I would stand up, walk to the window and look down over the park. Buried under a mantle of snow half a meter deep, perfectly white, the Barchetto del Duca seemed turned into a landscape from a Norse saga. At times I surprised myself by hoping that the snow would never melt, would last for ever.
For two-and-a-half months my days remained virtually unchanging. Punctual as a government clerk, I would leave home at half past eight in the cold, nearly always by bike, though occasionally on foot. After at most twenty minutes, there I would be ringing at the big gate at the end of Corso Ercole I d’Este, and from there I’d cross the park, which was infused, around the beginning of February, with the delicate scent of the yellow flowers of the calycanthus. By nine I was already in the billiards room where I’d remain until one o’clock, and where I’d return around three in the afternoon. Later, at about six, I would call in on Alberto, sure of also finding Malnate there. Finally, as I’ve already stated, both of us were often invited to stay for supper. In fact, very soon it had become so customary for me to stay to eat, that I no longer even phoned home to tell them. I might perhaps have told my mother as I left: “I’ll probably be staying out for supper there.” “There” required no further clarifications.
I worked for hours and hours without seeing another soul, except Perotti who, around eleven o’clock, would come in bearing a small cup of coffee on a silver tray. This too, the eleven o’clock coffee, had almost immediately become a daily ritual, an acquired habit about which there was no point in either of us wasting any words. What Perotti would talk about, as he waited for me to finish sipping the coffee, was, if anything, the “running” of the house, in his view seriously undermined by the over-extended absence of the “Signorina,” who, no doubt about it, had to become a teacher and everything, but . . . (and this “but,” accompanied by a look of doubt, might have alluded to a host of things: to the fact that his masters, fortunate creatures that they were, had really no need at all to earn their living, or perhaps to the Racial Laws which in any case would have turned our degree diplomas into mere bits of paper, without the slightest practical use) . . . even if a bit of a leave, seeing as without her the house was quickly going “to the dogs,” a bit of a leave, maybe a week away then a week back here, was something she could easily have sorted for herself. With me, Perotti always found some way to complain about his employers. As a sign of mistrust and disapproval, he tightened his lips, winked and shook his head. When he referred to Signora Olga, he even went as far as tapping his temple with his rough forefinger. Naturally I didn’t encourage him, and stubbornly blanked his repeated attempts to have me join him in a servile complicity which, besides repelling me, were offensive to me personally. And so, in a short while, in the face of my silences, of my chill smiles, Perotti had no other option but to make off, leaving me once again alone.
One day his younger daughter, Dirce, arrived in his place. She too waited beside the desk for me to finish the coffee. I drank it and looked her up and down.
“What’s your name again?” I asked her, giving her back the empty cup, as my heart began to beat rapidly.
“Dirce,” she smiled, and her face was suffused with a blush.
She was wearing her usual blue cotton blouse, its thick fabric strangely redolent of the nursery. She scurried off, ducking my gaze which had been seeking hers out. A moment later I’d already begun to feel ashamed of what had happened (but what after all had happened?) as the vilest and most squalid of betrayals.
The only family member who would occasionally appear was Professor Ermanno. With special caution he would open the study door at the far end of the room, and then, on tiptoe, he would make his way across the room, so that more often than not I only became aware of his presence when he was already at
my side, leaning respectfully over the papers and books I’d laid out before me.
“How are things going?” he would ask in a contented voice. “It seems like you are going ahead full steam!”
I would make as if to get up.
“No. No. Please keep on working,” he’d exclaim. “I’ll be leaving you straight away.”
Usually he stayed no more than five minutes, during which time he always found some way of showing me all the sympathy and respect he felt for the way I stuck to my work. He looked at me with fiery, shining eyes, as though from me, from my literary future, my future as a scholar, who knows what great things could be expected, as though he was counting on me to fulfil some secret design which transcended not only himself but me as well . . . And, à propos, I remember that this behavior of his toward me, although flattering, also upset me a bit. Why did he have no such expectations about Alberto—I’d ask myself—who’s actually his son? And why had he accepted without any protests or complaints Alberto having given up his degree? And what about Micòl? In Venice, Micòl was doing exactly the same thing as I was doing here—finishing her thesis. And yet he never had occasion to name her, Micòl, or, if he referred to her it was by way of a sigh. He seemed to be implying: “She’s only a girl, and it’s better for women to be concerned with the home, rather than literature!” But should I really have believed him?
