The Novel of Ferrara

by André Aciman

  What on earth was Nives getting at?

  She smiled, tightening her lips.

  “Well, it’s up to you” she continued. “But you know what I’m thinking? It would be a pleasure to go there, to La Montina, once in a while, perhaps even to be taken there by someone. That’s something I might enjoy! You may think everything’s fine. But the effort to be polite, not to ruffle anyone’s feelings ends up, little by little, with them taking possession of it all, of the land. And nothing will stand in their way, just see if I’m wrong.”

  This meant one of two things: either she didn’t know what had happened to him last April at La Montina, and in that case by “them”—when she pronounced it, he noticed, her upper lip lifted to form a circumflex—she meant to refer in general to the thousands of Pimpinatis, Benazzis, Callegaris, Callegarinis, Patrignanis, Tagliatis etc. who were in political “agitation” in the whole Bassa region of the Ferrara countryside from the city gates to the sea, always after more and more from the landowners. Or she knew, and so was inviting him to speak about it, to open up, to confide in her.

  This latter prospect suddenly filled him with a kind of fear. Confide in Nives! And tell her what exactly?

  “Listen to what Prearo told me yesterday evening” Nives continued. “He told me that . . .”

  “It’s not because of that” he interrupted her. “It’s so as not to have to drive another ten kilometers as well. And then, if it rains, there’s the risk of getting stuck in the mud.”

  He moved back brusquely from the bed, and turned his back.

  “If you start back later than five o’clock,” Nives shouted out behind him, “beware of the fog!”

  He turned slightly, lifting a hand to stop her making a fuss.

  “Fine, yes, I understand.”

  Although she was sleeping alone, she was well organized. On the bedside table, apart from an image of the Virgin Mary Help of Christians, to whom the main church in Codigoro, the one in the square, was dedicated, she had also arranged the miniature radio, the basket with her sewing things, the photographs of her parents and a stack of papers. Why did they still live together?—he wondered as he left the room. Why didn’t they finally separate?

  He paused in the corridor, in front of the Browning, once more unsure what to do. He checked the time on his Vacheron-Constantin wristwatch—another keepsake from Switzerland. It said four fifty-eight. Late, he was late—he said to himself. Still. . . . Suddenly deciding not to shoulder his second rifle, he drew a flashlight from his jacket pocket and walked toward the door of his daughter’s bedroom.

  He turned off the corridor light, lit the flashlight, lowered the latch, and very slowly entered the room. To separate, yes!—he thought, advancing on tiptoe amid the faint smell of talc, school exercise books, chalk dust and floor wax which always wafted between those walls. To separate—it took nothing to say the words. But in practice how would they manage to accomplish such a thing? How much would it cost in lawyers’ fees? Not a little, that was for sure. And in that case, how would it be possible for him, the landowner of nothing, to gather together what was needed? “At the end of the day, La Montina is still ours, if I’m not mistaken,” Nives had said just a moment ago, laying the stress on “ours” and “mistaken.” Truly she couldn’t have found a turn of phrase that was more effective in reminding him how things actually stood.

  But aside from that, what about Rory?

  Having drawn up to her little bed, he halted. Almost holding his breath as he felt his heart beat throbbing darkly in his throat, he directed the beam of light first at the tiny Christmas tree placed in a pot at the bedside, and then at the small body stretched out under the fluffy pink angora wool blanket—beginning with the slight swelling of her feet and ascending as far as her shoulders and the lower part of her cheek. And while he stood contemplating Rory, astonished as ever at how beautiful, how lively, how strong she was (her face perhaps somewhat resembled his own, especially the eyes, which, however, were bigger than his—they were huge!—and in the shape of the lips) he was suddenly overwhelmed by an inexpressible anxiety, by a sense of inconsolable desolation. He did not know why. It was as though, silently and without warning, it had leaped upon him. As though he had been attacked by a wild beast.

  He leaned down to brush his lips against the little girl’s forehead, retraced his steps across the room, and went out a third time into the corridor. He turned on the light switch and looked at the time. It was five minutes past five. He went back to pick up the rifle leaning on the window handle, slung it over his left shoulder, and went on his way. And soon after, with the sensation of falling into a well, slowly, and without any sign of haste, he descended the dark spiral staircase which led down to the entrance.

  3.

  AT THE doorway it was very cold: a damp insidious cold which could really have been that of a well, of an underground cellar. In sudden gusts through the street door, which Romeo for some reason had left wide open, the wind made the little blackened ironwork lamp sway perilously where it hung from the coffers of the dark ceiling.

  The caretaker stood still down there at the threshold, intently staring out toward the invisible facade of the house across the way. What was he doing looking out there? With his slightly hunched shoulders, like those of a worker on strike, stubbornly turned, he not only seemed unaware of his presence but also to have forgotten that before leaving he still needed to have his coffee and besides that, always, especially in winter, the motor was meant to be warmed up slowly, without any hurry.

  The melancholy, familiar, faithful shape of his dark-blue Lancia Aprilia waited outside the door with its fenders pointed toward the gate that opened onto the courtyard and that had remained half-shut. He went round the car, placed the rifles on the chest which stood up against the wall opposite the staircase, retraced his steps, opened the car’s right-hand-side door and sat behind the steering wheel. While he fumbled with the starting key—the motor seemed loath to start up: doubtless due to the cold, but also due to the battery, as ancient as the rest of the vehicle—he didn’t detach his gaze from the motionless shape of Romeo reflected in the rearview mirror. For the almost thirty years he’d helped with these early morning departures for the country, never, he said to himself, had he behaved like this. Was he, perhaps, now for the first time, suddenly irritated to have had to get up before dawn and on a Sunday too? Was that what he wanted to convey? Given the times, everything was possible. However it was, here was another novelty, and not in the least a pleasant one.

  After a series of coughs, the motor finally came to life. With an effort, thanks to the cartridge belt wound round his waist, he leaned forward to find the choke under the dashboard. When he sat back up again he was surprised to find himself face to face with Romeo. He stood there beside the car door, slightly stooping, looking down at him from under his heavy tortoise-like eyelids.

  “Will you be wanting your coffee?” he asked slowly in dialect.

  He knew the caretaker’s character inside out—brusque, sometimes surly, but still affectionate and unfailingly faithful. And so—he told himself, and his breast expanded with relief—not only did Romeo not harbor the least rancor toward him but, on the contrary, from the vague hint of jokiness hovering around his prominent cheekbones, one could guess that he was content, privately delighted and gratified to see him after so many years once again going off on a duck shoot.

  He got out of the car.

  “Is it ready?”

  Romeo nodded. Then, pointing with his chin toward the two rifles, he asked if he should pack them in the boot.

  “If you give us the keys” he said in dialect, “I’ll put everything in.”

  “No, it’s not necessary,” he replied, trying to maintain the usual tone, between benevolent and self-composed, which typified their relations. “It’s better you put them on the back seat. And this as well if you don’t mind.”

  He took off the cartridge belt and laid it on the caretaker’s outstretched arm, aft
er which he went with rapid steps toward the lit-up entrance to the Manzolis’ apartment.

  The apartment where they lived comprised three inter-connecting rooms, railroad-style. On one side the kitchen, which overlooked the courtyard; on the opposite side the bedroom, with its window onto Via Mentana; in between a huge room which, since their daughter Irma had gone to live with her husband, the two old folk had piled up with rows of polished furniture, but which in practice they never occupied. As always happened since that event of last April in La Montina, and now, once again, stepping into the caretaker’s flat—and especially into their kitchen which was so pretty and neat, so well-lit and above all so well heated by the glowing plates of the cheap stove—suddenly lifted his morale. That was it—he exclaimed to himself once again—here he felt at ease, truly and completely as if at home! The Manzolis were utterly dependable!

  He sat at the table, and began to take slow sips of boiling coffee from the bowl without a handle that was kept for his use—his own mastèla dal cafe, his coffee bucket—as Romeo called it in dialect. Meanwhile Imelda, her sharp features hidden behind the black kerchief of a local peasant woman, moved busily about.

  He stared at her over the curved rim of the cup, intently following her every move.

  Neither she nor Romeo could stand Nives. More or less openly they showed their disapproval of everything to do with her, extending their disapproval to include Prearo, the accountant, as well as the cook Elsa, and even Rory—in short, every new person or thing that had made an appearance at no. 2, Via Mentana since 1938. Whenever they spoke to him about her, they never called her by name. Unfailingly they called her “your Signora,” the only true ladies of the house being “Signora Erminia,” and Lilla, the three-year-old poodle who was his mother’s tender companion, and was even allowed in her bed, her only true child to cuddle and spoil in every possible way. They had nothing in the least bit good to say about Nives, ever. He only needed to enter their house for a moment and one or other of them would start up their usual litany of complaints.

  Recently, for example, they had begun to refer to Nives’s habit, when he was away from home, of not using the entryphone. For their slightest need, both she and Elsa preferred to lean out of the window, and yell so loud that the like of it was never heard even in the big apartments of Via Mortara . . . And now—he wondered, lowering his eyes, as if by doing so it would be easier to draw on the infinite reserves of patience he needed to have at his disposal—what further offence committed by his wife would he have to hear about? Imelda was certainly brooding about something.

  He raised his eyelids again.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Once again he was mistaken. Imelda had reddened eyes, continually raising her handkerchief to her nose, but she wasn’t thinking about Nives at all. As soon as Romeo had come to the door, she began to inveigh against William “that scrounging Commie William” as she put it in dialect. Although he had all his electrician’s diplomas—she was loudly complaining—William refused to work, spent all his money at the brothel, so that they, poor and old as they were, had to carry him and his wife, both, on their shoulders.

  He turned toward Romeo.

  “Who is this William?” he asked.

  “Irma’s husband,” Romeo replied drily in dialect, bending his silver head under the light.

  For a moment he didn’t understand—as though, to protect his inner calm, his memory had stopped working.

  But then he quickly remembered.

  Of course—he reflected—the husband of Irma, their daughter. How had he forgotten about him?

  He was a young man of about twenty-five—he recalled—scrawny, straw-blond, with a fluent patter, well-mannered, someone who up until recently he’d often enough seen hanging about the entrance and the courtyard, and who had once not only offered to wash his car but, having done so, had refused any payment. A Communist? He could easily have been: it was enough to look at his thin, pale, avid face eaten up from within by who could guess what secret rage, enough to listen to his Italian that sounded like that of a radio announcer, so smooth and detached, it was true, but also so suspicious and unreliable. It was a source of wonder that Irma, such a meek girl, so refined and well brought-up, raised by the nuns in the sewing school of Via Borgo di Sotto, and ready to blush all over if anyone so much as chanced upon her in the street or greeted her, let alone talked to her, should have let herself fall for a person like that.

  Now Irma was six months pregnant—Imelda was explaining to him. And so she, working from morning till night like a “skivvy,” then had to fork out for the extravagance of that good-for-nothing husband.

  He felt a growing unease, and yet he stayed there. He still couldn’t make up his mind to leave. He looked at the time: five thirty-five. On the telephone Ulderico had been very precise about the time. The man he’d hired who was to ferry them from Lungari da Rottagrande to the hunting hide—a man called Gavino if he’d heard correctly—would be waiting for them at Volano, in front of the big Tuffanelli house, from a quarter past six. It was now five thirty-five. He had to be there at a quarter past six. The meeting with Gavino wasn’t going to work. He’d be there at the earliest by six thirty, or even a quarter to seven. And that was without taking into account that, to the best of his recollection, from the Tuffanelli house to Lungari di Rottagrande they would have to travel around more than a third of the perimeter of Valle Nuova and so that would mean a good half hour to add on before they arrived. So if everything were to go smoothly, he’d be able to hunker down in the hide no earlier than a quarter past or half past seven when it was already fully light. And that was only if he he didn’t hang around another minute and left at once.

  He looked at his watch, trying to hurry himself up, to find the necessary energy to get to his feet. Useless. A vast inertia, stronger than any exertion of his will, held him to the woven wicker seat in the Manzoli kitchen, as though he were tied down. Oh, if only, despite everything, he had could just stay there, in the warmth of the caretaker’s flat, hidden from his family and from everyone else until the evening! He would have given anything for that.

  He raised his eyes to Imelda.

  “But why on earth,” he asked, “would your son-in-law not want to work?”

  Shrugging her thin shoulders, Imelda replied that she didn’t know. “Beats me,” she said in dialect. She only knew one thing—she went on—that her son-in-law stayed in bed all day and if she, Irma, ever tried to reproach him, “to tell him off,” that Communist delinquent was quite prepared to give her a clout.

  It was true. That was guaranteed by Romeo’s face, suffused with a barely contained rancor and even more so by her face, with its eyes that spoke of fated, perhaps even willing, victimhood.

  Bewildered, he made as if to get up.

  “If he doesn’t work,” he tried to object “perhaps it’s because he can’t find any.”

  Romeo intervened.

  “Not a chance!” he said in dialect, lowering his head. “Doing nothing’s the only thing he’d dream of doing.”

  “But then why”—he persisted, turning to the question of Imelda once again—“don’t you get her, your daughter, to come back to live with you?”

  The woman sighed. She’d suggested that to her umpteen times—she said. But Irma was stubborn as a mule. She didn’t want her mother even to talk of it.

  “She’s in love,” she summed it up, twisting her thin lips into a grimace full of scorn.

  Certainly she’s in love, as he had anyway already understood. And now even the Manzoli kitchen had become uninhabitable—this too a place one had to vacate. And quickly.

  In the silence that followed Imelda’s final words—while only the muffled grumbling of the Aprilia’s motor idling at the gate reached him through the walls—he looked at his watch once again. Five fifty-two.

  “Well, I’d best get moving,” he announced.

  He grasped the edge of the table with both hands, stood up, and made his way out. And
to Imelda who scurried after him begging him to do something for Irma—if he were to speak to the son-in-law, she said, perhaps that “scoundrel” would finally make up his mind to turn over a new leaf—he replied with a “We’ll see” which he, more than anyone, knew meant nothing at all.

  Go and speak to a fellow like that?—he thought to himself while he went through the door and walked toward the car. Speak to him? Imagining the talk he would have with the young electrician with his cadaverous face, he felt invaded by a kind of disgust. A disgust mingled with fear.

  He got into his car. He turned on the headlights. Finally, he replied with a wave to Romeo’s deferential salute as he slowly negotiated the reverse maneuver which brought him out onto the street, and there, halted at the edge of the pavement, looked back at the caretaker, who was standing in silence with the faint light from the doorway at his back, as he shifted into first and drove away.

  4.

  ALL HE wanted now was to be there in Codigoro.

  For a good part of the journey, from the Prospettiva Arch right up to the outskirts of Codigoro he had driven with his eyes fixed only on the road. The ferryman would be waiting at Volano, so he had to hurry. But besides that, only after Codigoro, after Pomposa, when he saw in the uncertain light of dawn the low deserted landscape broken by stretches of apparently stagnant water—which were actually in flux, joined as they were to the open sea—only then did he begin to relax, to breathe easily.

  And yet, just at the outskirts of Codigoro, a hundred meters before turning onto the smoothly asphalted ring road, an acute spasm of pain at the level of his belt, heralded a moment earlier by a faint heart tremor, forced him to bend forward over the steering wheel.

  “Just as well that we’re here” he grumbled, glancing up through the windscreen at the two looming chimneys, the one of the Eridania sugar factory and the other of the water pump of the Land Reclamation Company.