The Novel of Ferrara

by André Aciman

  It was like a hand had grabbed hold of my stomach and twisted it.

  “Many?” I managed to bring out.

  Stretched out supine as she was, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, she slightly raised one arm.

  “I wouldn’t really know,” she replied. “Let me think.”

  “So you’ve had a lot, then?”

  She gave me a sidelong look with a sly, decidedly louche expression, which I didn’t recognize in her and which completely floored me.

  “Well . . . let’s say three or four. Five to be precise . . . but all little flirtations, I should make it clear, quite innocuous . . . and also fairly boring as it happens.”

  “What kind of flirtations?”

  “Oh, you know . . . long walks along the Lido . . . two or three routine trips to Torcello . . . every now and then a kiss . . . a great deal of holding hands . . . and going to the flicks. Orgies of cinema.”

  “All with fellow students?”

  “More or less.”

  “And Catholics, I imagine.”

  “Of course. Not as a point of principle, though. You understand: you have to make do with what’s there.”

  “But with . . . ”

  “No. With Judim, I have to say, not once. Not that there weren’t any in the classes. But they were so serious and ugly.”

  She turned once more to look at me.

  “However, no one at all this winter,” she added, smiling. “I could swear an oath on that. I’ve done nothing else but smoke and work, so much so that Signorina Blumenfeld herself had to prompt me to go out.”

  She took out from under the pillows a packet of Lucky Strikes, unopened.

  “D’you want one? As you can see I’ve started off on the strong ones.”

  I silently pointed to the pipe which I kept in my jacket pocket.

  “You as well!” she laughed, highly amused. “That Giampi of yours really is growing a crop of disciples!”

  “And you, you keep on grumbling about having no friends in Venice!” I complained. “What a lot of lies. It’s clear you’re just like the other girls.”

  She shook her head, though I wasn’t sure whether in sympathy with me or with herself.

  “Flirtations, even insignificant ones, are not to be had with friends,” she said with sadness, “and so, when I was speaking to you about friendship, you should see I was only being a bit dishonest. But you’re right. I am just like other girls—a liar, a deceiver, unfaithful . . . in the end not much different from an Adriana Trentini.”

  She had said “un-faith-ful” separating each of the syllables in her usual fashion, but with an extra quality of bitter pride. She went on to say that if I had a fault it was that I’d always thought a bit too highly of her. In saying this she hadn’t the least intention of excusing herself. And yet she’d always seen in my eyes so much “idealism” that it had somehow forced her to appear better than she actually was.

  Nothing much else was left to say. A little later, when Gina came in with the supper—it was already past nine o’clock—I stood up.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go now,” I said, holding out my hand.

  “You know the way, don’t you? Or would you like Gina to accompany you?”

  “No, there’s no need. I can manage it on my own.”

  “Take the lift, it’s a lot easier.”

  “I shall.”

  At the door I turned round. She was already bringing the spoon to her lips.

  “Bye,” I said.

  She smiled at me.

  “Bye. I’ll phone you tomorrow.”

  • 4 •

  BUT THE worst part only began about three weeks later, when I returned from a trip to France I made in the last fortnight of April.

  I’d gone to France, to Grenoble, for a very particular reason. The few hundred lire every month, legally permitted for us to send my brother Ernesto, were only enough, as he kept repeating in his letters, to pay for his rented room, at Place Vaucanson. So it was vital he received more money. For this reason, when I returned home later than usual one night, my father, who had been staying awake especially to speak to me, pressed me to take him the money in person. Why didn’t I make the most of the opportunity? A chance to breathe some different air from “what wafts around here,” to see a bit of the world, to have a wander: that’s what I ought to do! It would be good for my morale, and my body as well.

  So I went. I stopped for two hours in Turin, four at Chambéry, and finally reached Grenoble. In the pensione where Ernesto went to eat his meals I immediately got to know various Italian students, all in the same situation as my brother and all enrolled at the Polytechnic: a Levi from Turin, a Segre from Saluzzo, a Sorani from Trieste, a Mantuan Cantoni, a Florentine Castelnuovo, a Pincherle girl from Rome. I didn’t hitch up with any of them. During the dozen days left to me, most of the time I spent in the Municipal Library, leafing through Stendhal’s manuscripts. It was cold in Grenoble, and rainy. The peaks of the mountains at the back of the lodgings, hidden by mists and cloud, were only rarely visible, while in the evenings the blackout trials dampened any desire to go out. Ferrara seemed very far away to me, as though I’d never return. And Micòl? Since I’d left I had ceaselessly heard her voice in my ear, her voice the time she’d said to me: “Why are you doing that? It’s no use.” One day, however, something happened. As I was reading through one of Stendhal’s notebooks and chanced upon these isolated words in English: “All lost, nothing lost,” as though by a miracle, I had a sudden feeling of being freed, healed. I got hold of a postcard, and wrote that line from Stendhal on it, just that, and then sent it off to her, Micòl, without adding a single word, not even a signature—she could make of it what she wanted. All lost, nothing lost. How true that was! I told myself. And felt I could breathe again.

  I was fooling myself. Returning to Italy in the first days of May, I found the spring in full bloom, the meadows between Alessandria and Piacenza broadly swathed with yellow, the roads of the Emilian countryside thronged with girls on bikes revealing bare arms and legs, the big trees of the Ferrara walls laden with leaves. I’d arrived on a Sunday, toward midday. As soon as I got back home, I had a bath, took lunch with my family and answered a host of questions patiently enough. But the unexpected frenzy that gripped me the very moment when, from the train, I’d seen the turrets and belltowers of Ferrara rise up from the horizon, made any further delays intolerable to me. At half past two I was already on my bike racing along the Mura degli Angeli, my eyes fixed on the motionless green abundance of the Barchetto del Duca, which gradually drew closer on my left. Everything had turned back to how it was before, as though I’d spent the last fortnight asleep.

  They were playing, down there on the tennis court—Micòl and a stout young man in long white socks who, it wasn’t hard for me to make out, was Malnate. I too was quickly noticed and recognized, for the two of them stopped knocking up and began to wave their rackets in the air with extravagant gestures. They were not alone, however; Alberto was also there. Emerging from the leafy border, I saw him rush to the center of the court, look out toward me and raise his hands to his mouth. He whistled two, three times. Might they be informed what it was I was doing on top of the walls?—each of them, in their own way, seemed to be asking. And why on earth had I not come immediately into the garden, strange creature that I was? So then I steered toward the opening of Corso Ercole I d’Este, pedaling alongside the surrounding wall, and had come in sight of the gate when Alberto unleashed another of his “oliphants.” “Make sure you don’t slink off!” his ever powerful whistles now seemed to be saying, though they had become in the meantime somehow good-natured, a shade less admonitory.

  “Greetings!” I shouted as usual, when I emerged into the open from the gallery of climbing roses.

  Micòl and Malnate had gone back to their game, and without stopping, replied together with another “Greetings.” Alberto stood up and came to meet me.

  “Would you tell us where you’ve been hidi
ng all these days?” he asked. “I phoned your house a fair few times, but you were never there.”

  “He’s been in France,” Micòl replied on my behalf from the court.

  “In France!” Alberto exclaimed, his eyes full of an astonishment that seemed to me truly felt. “Doing what?”

  “I’ve been to see my brother Ernesto in Grenoble.”

  “Oh, of course. It’s true. Your brother’s studying at Grenoble. And how is he? How is he coping?”

  In the meantime we had parked ourselves on two deckchairs, placed one beside the other in front of the side entrance to the court in an excellent position to follow the state of play. As distinct from last autumn, Micòl was not in shorts. She was wearing a pleated, white woolen skirt, very old-fashioned, a shirt that was also white, with its sleeves rolled up, and curious long white cotton socks, almost like those of a Red Cross nurse. Covered in sweat, and red in the face, she was concentrating on striking the balls into the furthest corners of the court, powering her shots. Yet although he’d put on weight and was quite out of breath, Malnate was effortfully holding his own against her.

  A tennis ball, rolling along, came to a stop within a short distance of us. Micòl approached to collect it, and for a moment our eyes met.

  I saw her pull a face. Evidently annoyed, she brusquely turned back toward Malnate.

  “Shall we play a set?” she shouted out.

  “We could try,” he panted out. “How many games handicap will you give me?”

  “Not a single one,” Micòl replied, frowning. “All I’ll give you is the chance to serve first. Your service, then!”

  She threw the ball over the net and got into position to receive her opponent’s serve.

  For some minutes Alberto and I watched them playing. I felt full of unease and misery. The “tu” form with which she addressed Malnate, her show of ignoring me, suddenly and fully revealed to me the length of time I’d been away. And as for Alberto, he as usual had eyes only for Giampi. But every now and then, I noticed, instead of admiring and praising him, he would start running him down.

  There you see a type of person—he confided whisperingly, and so surprisingly that, however anguished I felt, I didn’t miss a single syllable he said—there you see a type of person who, even if he took tennis lessons every blessed day from a Nüsslein or a Martin Plaa, would still never make a halfway decent player. What was stopping him? His legs? Certainly not that, otherwise he’d never have become the accomplished mountaineer he undoubtedly was. Lungs? Nor them, for the same reason. Muscular power? He had enough of that to spare—you just have to shake his hand to feel it. What was it then? The truth is that tennis—he concluded with extraordinary emphasis—as well as being a sport is also an art, and since every art requires a particular talent, whoever’s lacking in that will remain “all elbows” their whole life.

  “I ask you!” Malnate shouted out at a certain point. “Will you two keep the noise down a bit?”

  “Play on, play on,” Alberto retorted, “and try not to let a woman get the better of you!”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Was it possible? What had happened to all of Alberto’s meekness, all his submissiveness to his friend? I looked at him carefully. His face seemed to me of a sudden wan, emaciated, as though wrinkled with the premature onset of old age. Was he ill?

  I was tempted to ask him, but I lacked the courage. Instead, I asked him if this had been the first day they’d started playing tennis again, and why Bruno Lattes, Adriana Trentini and the rest of the zòzga¶ weren’t there.

  “Well, it’s clear you know absolutely nothing!” he cried out, revealing his gums in a big laugh.

  About a week ago—he immediately launched into the tale—having seen the good weather set in, Micòl and he had made ten or so phone calls, with the worthy intention of restarting last year’s memorable tennis meets. They’d called Adriana Trentini, Bruno Lattes, that boy Sani, young Collevatti—and various splendid examples of both sexes selected from among the new generation who, last autumn, they hadn’t even thought of. All of them, “young and old” had accepted the invitation with commendable promptness, so that the day of the opening—Saturday, May 1—looked well set to be a triumphal success to say the least. Not only had they played tennis, gossiped, flirted and so on, but they’d even danced, there, in the Hütte, to the accompaniment of the “conveniently installed” Philips.

  An even greater success—Alberto went on—had attended the second session, Sunday afternoon, May 2. Except that as early as Monday morning things were already coming to a head. Heralded by a sibylline visiting card, toward eleven o’clock the lawyer Tabet arrived on his bicycle—yes, that big Fascist blockhead Geremia Tabet in person, who after being shut away in conference with Papa in his study, had passed on the mandatory order of the Party Secretary to cease forthwith the provocation of those scandalous daily gatherings that for some time had been held at the house, which apart from anything else were entirely lacking in any healthy sporting activity. It was really unacceptable, the Consul Bolognesi let it be known through his “common” friend Tabet, it was really unacceptable, for obvious reasons, that the Finzi-Contini garden was gradually turning itself into a kind of rival tennis club to the Eleonora d’Este—the latter a much-renowned institution of Ferrarese sporting life. So that was that. To avoid official sanctions, “such as a forced stay for an undetermined period of time in Urbisaglia,” from this time on no one who was a member of the Eleonora d’Este should be lured away from their natural habitat.

  “And what did your father say in reply?” I asked.

  “What could he say?” Alberto laughed. “There was nothing left for him but to behave like Don Abbondio.# To bow and murmur ‘Your obedient servant.’ I think that’s more or less how he expressed himself.”

  “I hold Barbicinti responsible,” Micòl shouted out from the court, clearly not far enough away to have stopped her following our conversation closely. “No one will change my mind that it was him who ran off crying to complain at Viale Cavour. I can just see it. But still, you have to sympathize with him, poor thing. When one’s jealous, one becomes capable of anything . . . ”

  Although they were perhaps thrown out without any particular intent, these words of Micòl stung me deeply. I was on the point of getting up and going away.

  And who knows, maybe I would have done so, if I hadn’t stopped at that very moment, as I turned toward Alberto, almost to invoke his witness and assistance, and again noticed how grey his face was, the afflicted scrawniness of his shoulders lost in a pullover now grown too big for him (he winked, as if telling me not to take it to heart, and began to hold forth on other things—the tennis court, the work to improve it “from the foundations up” which, despite everything, would be starting within the week . . .), and if in that same instant I hadn’t seen appearing, down there at the edge of the clearing, the black mournful little figures, close together, of Professor Ermanno and Signora Olga, coming from their afternoon stroll in the park and wending their way slowly toward us.

  • 5 •

  THAT WHOLE long period which followed, up until the fateful last days of August 1939, until, that is, the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland and the phoney war, I remember as a slow progressive descent into the Maelstrom. There were only four of us left in sole possession of the tennis court, which was soon to be covered with a fine coat of red shale from Imola—myself, Micòl, Alberto and Malnate. (Presumably lost in his pursuit of Adriana Trentini, Bruno Lattes was not to be numbered amongst us.) Swapping partners, we spent whole afternoons in long doubles matches, with Alberto, even though he was short of breath and easily tired, oddly driven, unwilling to give either us or himself any quarter.

  What was it made me stubbornly return every day to a place where, as I well knew, I’d be rewarded with nothing but humiliation and bitterness? I couldn’t say with any clarity. Perhaps I was hoping for a miracle, for a sudden change in the state of affairs, or perhaps I was actually going in search
of humiliation and bitterness . . . We played tennis or else, stretched out on four deckchairs in front of the Hütte, we argued about the usual topics of art and politics. But when I asked Micòl, who, deep down, remained kindly toward me, sometimes even affectionate, for a turn in the park, it was very rarely that she accepted. If she did, she never followed me willingly, and every time her face would assume an expression poised between distaste and forbearance which made me regret having dragged her away from Alberto and Malnate.

  All the same, I wasn’t prepared to lay down my arms; I wouldn’t give up. Caught between the impulse to break it all off, to disappear forever, and its opposite: not to renounce being there, not to surrender at any cost, in the end I almost always turned up. Sometimes, it’s true, a look from Micòl that was colder than usual, an impatient gesture of hers, one of her sarcastic, bored expressions, would be enough for me to feel with utter sincerity that that was it, it was all over. But how long did I succeed in staying away? Three or four days at the most. On the fifth there I was again, parading my face with the good-humored and detached expression of someone just returned from a most rewarding journey—I was always talking of having taken trips, comparing the journeys I’d made to Milan, to Florence, to Rome: it was just as well all three of them gave the impression of believing me!—but all the same I did so with a flayed heart and with eyes that once again began to seek out in those of Micòl some answer which was now impossible. That was the time, as she was to call it, of our “marital rows.” During which, if ever the occasion permitted, I would try to kiss her. And she put up with it, never appearing to be uncivil.

  One evening in June, however, things were to go differently.

  We were seated beside each other on the steps outside the Hütte, and though it must have been about half past eight it was still not dark. I was watching Perotti, in the distance, busy taking down and rolling up the net on the tennis court, the surface of which, since the red shale had arrived from the Romagna, never seemed to him sufficiently well looked after. Malnate was taking a shower inside the hut—we could hear him panting noisily under the jet of hot water—and Alberto had taken his leave a little earlier with a melancholy “bye-bye.” So the two of us, Micòl and I, had been left alone, and I’d immediately taken advantage of this to resume my eternal, boring, absurd campaign. As ever, I kept on trying to convince her she was wrong to believe a relationship between us would not work. As ever I accused her (in bad faith) of having lied to me when, less than a month before, she had assured me there was no third party involved. I put it to her that there was, or at least there had been, in Venice, during the winter.