The Novel of Ferrara

by André Aciman

  He yawned. He passed his hand over his cheek and chin, rough with stubble, pushed back the covers, set his feet down onto the floor, took from a chair his fawn-colored towel dressing-gown, put it on over his pyjamas, shuffled on his slippers; and after a few moments stood before the window and looked out over the courtyard through the glass and the half-closed shutters.

  There was hardly anything to be seen. The courtyard was so steeped in darkness that he could barely make out the well at its center. And yet from the kitchen window of the Manzolis, the caretakers, streamed a bar of the whitest light: intense enough to reach the top of the high surrounding wall which faced toward Via Montebello, the upmost branches of the tall climbing rosebush which, in summer, almost completely covered the inner side of the wall. Gusts of the sirocco shook and ruffled it. The gusts were dry and light and sudden as though impelled by an electrical discharge. It wasn’t raining. As long as the wind blew it wouldn’t rain.

  He turned to look toward the entrance. The door of the ground floor apartment the Manzoli family occupied was open. From it another light shone out, though far weaker than that from the kitchen window, and suddenly a bent and burdened figure was seen in profile against it.

  “Romeo’s already up and about” he muttered to himself.

  Attentive and motionless, he followed the caretaker’s every move. He saw him go up to the wrought iron gate which divided the entrance from the courtyard, half open one of the wings of the gate, step out into the street, look up at the dark sky, and finally, evidently having become aware of him, the owner, he doffed his beret.

  He opened the double casement window, and was caught by a gust of soft, damp, almost warm wind as he swung the blinds wide and leaned out to fix them to the wall.

  He straightened up.

  “Good morning” he said, addressing the caretaker. “Would you please tell Imelda, if she’s already up, to make me a coffee.”

  “Will you be going anyway, sgnór avucàt?”* asked the other in dialect, he too in a soft, lowered tone.

  He nodded in the affirmative, and then closed the windows. Moving away from the windowsill, he was in time to notice Romeo once again doffing his beret. How many long years had the Manzolis been in service at their house? he wondered as he entered the bathroom, slightly distracted just as he passed the gun cabinet by the subdued gleam of the rifle barrels behind the glass. They must have been with them, he concluded, for maybe a little more, a little less than forty years.

  He took off his dressing gown, hung it on the hook fixed high on the door, let the water in the basin run till it was hot, and took his shaving kit from the leather washbag, all the while observing himself in the mirror.

  That face was his own, and yet all the same he stood there observing it as if it belonged to someone else, as if not even his own face belonged to him. He checked every detail meticulously and diffidently: his bald convex forehead; the three horizontal and parallel furrows that were etched almost from one temple to the other; the faded-blue eyes; the sparse, too emphatically arched eyebrows that gave his whole physiognomy a perenially uncertain and perplexed expression; the nose rather pronounced, and yet handsome, well-designed, aristocratic; the lips big and protuberant, a little like a woman’s; the chin disfigured at its tip by a kind of dint in the form of a comma; the brick-red coloration of his long, lugubrious cheeks, darkened with stubble that was so black it seemed bluish. How malicious and unpleasant, how absurd, even his face was! His mother had always maintained, naturally with gratification, how much it resembled that of the former King Umberto. That might well be so. One thing for sure was that, if the current tide of Communism were to keep on swelling—truly one couldn’t see who might be able to halt it . . . De Gasperi?† With a face like that?—all the proprietors of farms of a certain size, and among these, as fate would have it, they too, the Limentani, with their La Montina estate of over four hundred hectares, would very soon be forced to relinquish their ownership.

  He began to lather his face, beginning with the point of his chin. And as the lines of his face gradually disappeared under the foam, he began to feel, even more markedly than before, the burden of the day of hunting that awaited him.

  It was he alone who had decided on it. And why had he done so? To what end? Wouldn’t it have been far better once and for all to give up on the idea of going to the hide to shoot duck. His cousin Ulderico Cavaglieri, for instance, although he’d settled for good in Codigoro, and therefore within a stone’s throw of the valleys, although, protected as ever by the big patriarchal Catholic family he’d assembled over some fifteen years, and although he could at this stage entirely disregard even the Communists, as earlier he’d disregarded the Fascists of the Salò Republic and the German SS, all the same he hadn’t considered it wise to hang around waiting all this time. On the contrary. In 1938, in the autumn of ’38, soon after the Racial Laws had been declared—Ulderico was then forty years old while he himself was now forty-five—no, he hadn’t let that deny him his gun licence. Not a chance. He hadn’t even put in a request as it had simply been renewed. And in ’45, just after the Liberation, he had taken care not to make the mistake of reapplying for it.

  He shaved with his usual care, after which, waiting for the bath to fill, he slipped out of his pyjama bottoms and sat on the toilet. For some years emptying his bowels in the morning had become a bit troublesome, and when he couldn’t go—either because he’d eaten too much the evening before or because he’d got up too early—then for the whole day he’d feel in the worst of moods, and even suffer from palpitations. As he’d expected, today it wasn’t going to be easy. But it would hardly be a good idea setting off in this state! There was the risk that he’d have to stop halfway, perhaps without even the possibility of washing.

  So he sat there, in the thunderous roar of the water cascading into the bath, and keeping an eye on the level which was rising meanwhile. He thought about the hunt in the valley, about how it had been before the war and how it might be now. Before the war—he remembered—a gentleman from Ferrara could go and fire off a few shots in the region of Codigoro or Comacchio on a Sunday and be quite sure of a good reception and of general respect. More than that, from the practical, the organisational perspective, everything would be precisely prearranged—and one could tell that it had been so for centuries—because the same gentleman would find it straightforward to travel and stay there, and have something to eat, in short to find everything he needed in situ. But today? Apart from already being a considerable danger, traveling through the countryside in an automobile—exactly as in 1919 or 1920 there were those who had seen a windscreen smashed by a big millstone thrown by persons unknown from behind a hedge—what else might he expect to find there, with or without a double-barrelled shotgun slung over his shoulder, except dark looks, backs stubbornly turned or even open and challenging sneers? The times of courteous smiles, of the doffing of hats, of respectful bows were over. For everyone—the politically and the racially persecuted alike.

  He thought too, as for several months he had been unable not to, of the unpleasant occurrence that befell him, he of all people, last April at La Montina, that day he decided to go and see how the land-levelling works were proceeding.

  What a brilliant idea! And, above all, what a glorious scene!

  He once again saw himself in the midst of endless fields, seated on the verge of a ditch, with some thirty field hands—familiar faces, for the most part, the majority of whom he’d known for years and years—who, ready to bring their raised hoes down on his skull, demanded the immediate revision of their sharecropping agreements. He’d had no option but to yield, and Galassi-Tarabini, his family solicitor whom he had consulted as soon as he returned to town, had unconditionally approved of his “tactic.” And yet this was what had resulted from the advice that his lawyer had then dispensed, not to give the least regard to the promise he had given, but rather to report the threats of violence he’d suffered to the Codigoro Carabinieri: from that day on he
hadn’t dreamed of setting foot in La Montina again, so his manager and accountant Prearo needed to visit the farm on his behalf every now and then to tally his accounts with Benazzi, the farm overseer. And because, since 1939, the entire inheritance of agricultural and real estate of the deceased Leone Limentani was now in the name of his daughter-in-law Nives, Nives Pimpinati, Catholic, Aryan and at that time eight months pregnant, his son Edgardo and his widow Erminia Calabresi, his direct heirs, could now consider, definitively, the over four hundred hectares of the holding, if not also the Ferrara house in Via Mentana where for good or ill they still lived, the property of another person.

  Apart from Galassi-Tarabini and his accountant Prearo, he had never spoken to a soul about the incident at La Montina, neither to his mother nor to his wife. His mother for sure—just a glance at her and you could see how unruffled she was—had heard nothing about it up until now. But Signora Nives? Was it possible that she hadn’t been informed of everything by Prearo with whom he would so often see her confabulating in the administrative offices? Then with respect to the farming community of Codigoro and its district, as far at least as Pomposa—above all the community of farm laborers—fat chance that they wouldn’t have drummed the whole affair into the heads of all and sundry at the local trade union council!

  But precisely because of this: if that was how things were, what point would there be in risking worse, what the devil would make him take that chance? Was it worth provoking further trouble, perhaps even of a physical nature, for the simple desire to fire off some shots?

  Which was more important, all considered, the hunt or else . . . ?

  Abruptly he decided to wait no longer.

  “It’s all pointless, anyway” he grumbled morosely.

  He raised himself, shifted to one side and stretched out over the bath to turn off the taps, and was standing upright once again.

  In the meantime the room had filled up with thick tepid steam.

  2.

  STANDING MOTIONLESS before the closed door, touching the latch without lowering it, he wondered if he might still manage to slope off unnoticed.

  His mother and his wife had said goodbye to him the previous evening, when, soon after dinner, he’d left them in the dining room to knit away in silence in front of the smoking coals of the fireplace. It was true: the previous evening he hadn’t been able to say goodbye to Rory, his baby girl, since he’d come home from the Unione Club at nine and by nine Rory would already have been asleep for a good hour. Yet now was certainly not the time to hesitate. If giving Rory a kiss meant he’d have to face an additional series of goodbyes from Nives, who occupied the double bedroom next to his own, opposite the baby’s room (his mother’s bedroom looked out at the front: far enough away and safely isolated, by the grace of God!), then no thanks, he would gladly have done without that kiss.

  He opened the door slowly.

  As soon as he was outside he switched on the light, turned to shut the door, then made a few tentative steps across the linoleum of the corridor. Although he was wearing short American military boots without nails in their soles, nevertheless he put down his feet with extreme care. His usual weight was about eighty kilograms. But today swathed as he was in his hunting clothes, and laden with the weight of two rifles, the Browning and his old Three Rings Krupp, today without doubt he must have weighed another twenty kilos. The merest creak provoked by his hundred kilos from the parquet beneath the lino, and Nives, who had always been a light sleeper, would in all likelihood awake and call him.

  “Dgardo!”

  “Ssh!” was his instinctive reply.

  Who knows how but Nives had managed to hear him. “What a pain!” he grumbled. If he didn’t immediately enter her room, she’d be sure to start yelling for him.

  He poked his head into the utterly dark room.

  “Ssh! What’s wrong? Wait a second.”

  It irked him to have to enter his wife’s bedroom with the rifles, the cartridge belt round his belly, and all his gear: the five-shot rifle in its conspicuous bag of écru leather, especially, which despite every announced program of tight economy he had bought the previous September at Gualandi’s , the foremost gunsmith in Bologna. Slowly then, taking pains with every movement, he offloaded the Browning, hanging it from its strap on the window handle there at his side. He was about to do the same with the double-barrelled shotgun, but there’d be no harm showing that gun to Nives, he reflected. She had seen it in his hands even as far back as their time in Codigoro, when she was only his mistress, so most likely, she would hardly notice it now. It could also serve to avoid a scene of any kind—an intention of that sort wasn’t out of the question: she was more than capable of starting a quarrel at just such a moment—by making it clear to her he was just about to leave, and hadn’t a minute to spare for a chat or anything else.

  He entered the room.

  Nives was switching on the bedside table lamp. With his righthand thumb hooked between the gun’s leather strap and the bristly tweed of his jacket, he moved toward the center of the room. And so, approaching the double bed of carved pinkish wood where he, the only son, had been conceived, and where from 1939 on he had slept so rarely with his wife, for the second time that morning he felt himself pervaded by a strange sense of absurdity. Once again it was as if between himself and the things he saw around him a thin transparent layer of glass had been interposed. Everything, there, on the other side, and he on this side looking at them one by one in a state of wonder.

  Nives yawned. She lazily lifted her naked arm and covered her mouth with the back of her hand. Half buried beneath the waxy fat flesh of her upturned hand, the little gold wedding ring was almost invisible.

  “What time is it?”

  “Twenty minutes to five” he replied, staring her in the face. “I have to get going.”

  “Christ almighty—it’ll be so cold! Is it really cold?”

  “No, not very. I think it’ll rain.”

  “Don’t forget to take your raincoat, Dgardo!”

  “I’ve already put it in the car.”

  “And the wellington boots?”

  “Likewise.”

  While they spoke they were observing each other: he with his hands on the bedstead, she stretched out as always on her side, the righthand side, of the bed. But what they said to each other was of no importance. It served, for her too, only to buy time. In the meantime she too was scrutinizing, studying, weighing things up.

  “I really have no idea why anyone would want to go hunting in winter,” Nives continued. “Especially between Christmas and New Year! Just see if you don’t come home with pneumonia!”

  “Why should that be? All I need to do is keep well wrapped up.”

  “Have you at least put on the woolen suit?”

  “Yes. Mamma took care to put it out on the clothes horse.”

  He hadn’t planned to say that, he could swear to it. All the same Nives grimaced.

  “Since Mamma Erminia always wants to plan ahead for you,” she said, giving a series of curt nods of her head which was full of curlers, “it wouldn’t be polite of me to get in her way.”

  Luckily, she quickly changed her tone.

  “How can anyone do that?” she continued, “Staying out soaked through for five or six hours without a break? Good Lord, you could keep in mind that you’re no longer a spring chicken! Just thinking about it I get goosebumps. Brrrr.”

  She laughed, narrowing her eyes. And he, at the end of the bed, while curiously observing their shape and every detail of that face, felt a sense of stupefaction growing within him. He could fully understand how it could have come about that this little countrywoman aged between thirty and forty, with her small grey inexpressive eyes, her short hooked nose like the beak of a raptor, and with that small mouth and its thin almost invisible upper lip and its fat prominent lower lip, had become his wife. Oh how well he understood that! Yet at the same time, watching her play the role of a lady from the most select urban society w
ho had never once set foot in the country, least of all in that of the Bassa region, he couldn’t believe it was true. Nives. That Nives. What was she called again, her surname? Ah yes: Pimpinati. Nives Pimpinati.

  “What time will you be back this evening?”

  “I’m not sure. After five.”

  “Are you going to visit your cousin as well?”

  There was nothing at all strange about her asking a question like that. It was no secret that after almost ten years he had finally decided to reestablish contact with Ulderico—only by telephone, it’s true, and with the excuse of asking if he happened to be able to suggest someone to take him by boat through the valley marshes, but the ice had thus been broken. And yet the question must have seemed to her in some way risky and indiscreet. She feigned indifference, but he knew her—though who knows what was going on inside her head now. Poor Ulderico. She was probably still unable to forgive him for doing everything in his power to persuade him not to marry her . . .

  “I don’t know” he replied. “It’s possible.”

  “And where will you go to eat?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps in Caneviè . . . or maybe even in Codigoro, at the Bosco Elòceo restaurant. It’s not as if there’s a great deal of choice.”

  Nives wrinkled her nose.

  “So you’ll go to that nice Fascist Bellagamba?” she exclaimed. “To that thug of a tupòn?‡ Sorry but rather than go there you’d do much better eating at our house in the country. You could get Benazzi’s wife to make you something, a pastasciutta, a cut of meat . . . At the end of the day,” she went on, with a harder look in her eyes, and speaking now as if the whole thing concerned her, directly, personally, as though it concerned her more than it did him, “at the end of the day the house at La Montina is still ours if I’m not mistaken!”