The Novel of Ferrara

by André Aciman

  It’s true, she’d said that, but what did it mean? She didn’t yet have anyone else. That was certain. If she had, you could be sure some kind soul would have taken the trouble to warn him! And since she didn’t have anyone else, everything still remained possible. To see her again, to speak to her: that was the essential thing. All that was needed was to find a way . . . the evening was falling slowly. With a book resting on his knees, Bruno lost himself within an infinite maze of speculation.

  Later, when he went up to eat, his mother would inform him of the afternoon telephone calls. Often her memory would be vague, and she’d mix up the names.

  Nothing provoked him more than this. It could make him shout or stamp his foot. Like a madman.

  At least in part so as to avoid meeting his father (who, for his own reasons, intimidated by the icy expression of his son and scared of arguments about politics, had adopted the habit of never returning home before nine), after his meal, Bruno would hurriedly put on his coat and hat, and go out.

  By mid November it was already bitterly cold. After an entire day spent shut indoors, in a slothful inertia, the fresh air, any movement at all, excited him. He kept away from the center and its cafes, monopolized by the hated bourgeoisie, hated and loved. He chose the back streets and by ways. Instead of Corso Giovecca, Viale Cavour, and Corso Roma, he preferred Via delle Volte, Via Coperta, Via San Romano, Via Fondo Banchetto, Via Salinguerra and so on, where he could slip into some restaurant or shady bar. Standing beside the billiards table, he watched long games played by shabby figures (not infrequently of a questionable character) . . . His arrival nearly always passed unnoticed, as did his presence, at least when he hadn’t offered his services as scorer.

  Sometimes, before returning home (if, that is, he hadn’t ended up in a brothel), he went as far along the city walls as the section beside Porta Reno, where since summer a small, wretched fair had established itself: a carousel, two or three stalls, one of which was a shooting gallery, a little puppet theater, at that hour invariably closed with a great many boards and bolts. Why did he never tire of returning there, to such a desert, to such squalor? What kept luring him back? Not even he knew why.

  It wasn’t the girl in the shooting gallery, whose every movement was followed in mute contemplation by several wistful admirers, with their elbows leaned on the stall counter, no—he thought—between her and Adriana there was absolutely nothing in common. For a start, she wasn’t as tall. Then, she had a straight but ungenerous profile, and blue eyes, it’s true, but cold, hard, evil. Finally, there were her almost manly hands, which she used to snap open the air-rifles with a controlled and energetic gesture, reddened, swollen hands with square and deformed thumbnails. And yet he had to admit it. Those hands, those eyes, that animal body tightly sheathed in a pink sweater, her crude Tuscan accent, everything about her attracted him, fascinated him. He watched as did the others—insatiably. Every detail of her appearance spoke to him of secret vice, of mad depravity. He continuously sought her out with his gaze. If he managed to catch her eyes, he felt his heart leap. From this he extracted a bitter pleasure, a kind of vindictive joy.

  He was always the last, or almost the last, to leave. Behind the stall, in the shadows, the oblong shape of a Gypsy wagon could just be seen. Three small windows adorned with curtains permitted a view of the brightly lit interior.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he exclaimed in a trembling, strangled voice, while the girl continued loading the rifle. “Do you have a generator?”

  She didn’t deign to reply.

  But one night, one of the windows opened, releasing the sound of a gramophone, and some dark, curly hair, that of a man.

  He wanted to laugh.

  “Mon beau tzigan, mon amour . . .” he started reciting in a low voice, his eyes half closed.

  The Tuscan girl hardly looked at him; then, having set down the rifle she was preparing for him, made off without haste toward the wagon. She reappeared from there some twenty minutes later. And while she resumed her place behind the counter, and handed him the rifle, she winked in the direction of the now lightless window, puffing out her thick, repainted lips.

  The next night the shooting gallery and the wagon were no longer there. Gone, disappeared. Almost as if he had dreamed them, merely dreamed them.

  Suddenly he understood two things: that only from that moment on could he truly know what the word “suffering” meant; and that the memory of that expression of the shooting gallery girl (an expression which the evening before had unexpectedly filled him with happiness, jealousy, and an obscure sense of wretchedness) would remain printed on him for many years to come, for who knows how long. Like a small mark, tiny but indelible.

  3.

  AFTER SPENDING a winter, a spring and a summer steeped in solitude, hardly finding the strength to achieve anything, reading little, studying nothing, the draft of his thesis was no more than a third done, and only going at most once a fortnight even to Bologna to meet his old university companions (all of them now graduated), toward the end of August 1939 Bruno Lattes began seriously to consider seeing Adriana Trentini one more time.

  It’s not as though he was nursing any excessive hopes. He understood. In the year since Adriana had left him, and with the Racial Laws which day by day became ever more rigid and oppressive (it was no joke: to be caught together would mean she would end up in the police station as a common streetwalker, and he would be sent into internal exile), in such conditions only a madman would think it conceivable they might actually get together again. And yet, wasn’t it just possible that Adriana, at the seaside, far away from Ferrara, might be persuaded to make love with him one last time? She had to be! For the little it would cost her . . . This was the only way, he was now certain, that he would ever manage to break free. Having shaken the yoke of servitude off his shoulders, he might finally turn the page and begin to live again. In a few days he’d be able to finish off his thesis on Berchet,† and then he could graduate.

  That year the Trentinis had chosen a novel resort for their holiday by the sea. Instead of renting the usual little villa in the usual Rimini, barely a hundred kilometers from Ferrara, they had ended up in Abbazia: an out of the way place, the other side of Istria, that took hours and hours to reach by train. All the better for that. In Abbazia, a slingshot from Yugoslavia, there were not likely to be any Ferraresi, apart from the engineer Trentini and his family: father, mother, the two sisters, Adriana and Rosanna, and Cesare, their younger brother. Without any Ferraresi getting under their feet, he and Adriana would be able to disport themselves almost with total freedom. Should the prospect appeal to them, they could even take a stroll together . . .

  He left by the express train early morning on the 29th, a Tuesday, and reached Trieste around two o’clock in the afternoon. From here he chose a different mode of transport. He’d worked everything out. By local bus he could arrive at his destination at least three hours before the train, and so well before dark. And this would give him plenty of time and leisure to seek out a good room, not too expensive, but one suited to his needs.

  He would need to eat as well. And yet, as soon as he’d entered the big square outside the station, and had spotted the bus parked at the sidewalk with its engine running, he immediately realized that he’d have to skip the meal. He smiled. Patience—he said to himself, quickening his pace, despite the suitcase. In Montefalcone, an hour before, he’d had a ham roll and a beer. He could easily keep going on that till the evening.

  Having climbed to the top of the heights that overlooked the city, the local bus began to advance into a vast region of undulating meadowland, of scattered woods of firs and birches, and of boulders, everywhere, mounds of them, white as bones. Bruno sat next to the window. He looked at the meadows, the trees, the heaps of stones, trying to affix every last detail in his memory, noticing among other things that although the afternoon light was blinding up there, the air had become much cooler. But it was all for nothing. Curled up in his corner, wi
th an empty stomach, soon enough his thoughts returned to their habitual groove.

  Adriana and the international situation: since he had boarded the train he’d practically thought of nothing else.

  After the pact between Nazi Germany and the USSR—he kept asking himself—what fate would befall Poland? Would the guarantee of France and England be enough to protect it from a German invasion? The Polish Army mainly relied on its cavalry, that same cavalry which, in 1920, performing miracles of heroism, had pushed back the Russian troops that had arrived at the gates of Warsaw. But what good would romantic cavalrymen armed with lances, sabres and pistols be against the thousands and thousands of tanks at the disposal of the Wehrmacht? It was true that Hitler had swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia in a couple of bites, unopposed, but was it really possible that at this point they would let him gobble Poland up as well? And Italy? And the Italian Jews? No way—this time Hitler wouldn’t dare. If he dared, there would be war. And nothing would make him risk another war on two fronts, on one side Great Britain and France, on the other Poland—he had already said that and even repeated it in Mein Kampf.

  And then Adriana again, their imminent encounter.

  The Trentinis, he’d been able to check, were staying in a hotel: the Victoria, a very superior establishment. Excellent: as soon as he got off the bus, this would give him the chance to phone and ask the receptionist for her, for the Signorina Adriana. But wait—would it be better to ask for Adriana, or rather for her sister, Rosanna? He remembered clearly: when it all began, four years ago, the then twelve-year-old Rosanna had been very well-disposed and biddable. On many occasions, when, for example, there’d been the need to arrange something—this evening we’ll go to the cinema, at seven we’ll stop by at Zanarini’s, Adriana told me to tell you that she’d booked the court for tomorrow morning at eight at the Grand Hôtel, and so on—it was usually Rosanna who would rush off on her bicycle between the two villas, to lend a helping hand and act as go-between. But now? After everything that had happened, the Racial Laws and all the rest (sisters would talk to each other, as a general rule: that for almost a year he had spent scores of nights in Adriana’s bedroom was a fact Rosanna was sure to have known about), wasn’t it possible that she would now say, No, that’s enough, I’m no longer prepared to be the dogsbody? She must be sixteen herself now. She might well have become a different character, she could have turned sulky, moralistic. Even a hypocrite, expressing concern that her sister shouldn’t waste any more time on a mad and pointless relationship, while actually only being jealous. For all of that, better not. Wiser to ask straight off for Adriana. To avoid any catastrophic and irreparable miscalculations.

  With Adriana, however things fell out, supposing she would be willing to sleep with him (and as the bus drew gradually closer to Abbazia it seemed ever more likely that she would be), with Adriana he would have to act with the utmost care—with all the calm and tact he could muster. No tragic, long faces, no staring eyes, none of the gross gestures of a mad or famished beggar, no hurry. To start off, he would have to take her out for a walk exactly as they used to do in the early days, when they had returned to Ferrara after that famous summer in Rimini and would arrange to see each other at all hours of the day and in all kinds of places, including Montagnone and the Mura degli Angeli. One evening they might perhaps go to some dance hall similar to Zanarini’s in Rimini, or to the Saviolo in Riccione, locales always perfect for dancing cheek-to-cheek, and even closer. Later, not perhaps the very same evening, but on a second occasion, he might persuade her to come round to his room. With this end in view, he’d need some care in the choice of a room. A hotel room, no, that wouldn’t do. Preferably a room in a pensione. Even better would be a self-catering room of one’s own. A garçonnière, yes, that was what was called for: to rent for two or three days, and without bothering too much about the cost. Sure, at Abbazia, something of the kind wouldn’t easily be found. Beyond Abbazia, however, he could scout around nearby Fiume, a sea port and border town. And if, because of this, he were forced to put off his return home, well, he could always alert them with a telegram.

  One image provoked by his fantasy, however, came back every now and then to fill him with a paralyzing sense of uncertainty, of disbelief: the great pink-and-blonde image of Adriana on the bed, naked, her skin smooth and golden, her full lips those of an American vamp, her hair so fair it seemed shot with platinum, her breasts, her belly, her thighs, her smell. Suddenly dejected, he would then say to himself:

  “What chance is there?”

  He phoned from the pensione at seven o’clock that same evening. Taken by surprise yet very calm, Adriana said that she’d be happy to meet him, but not just then: she and Rosanna had to go out to see some friends. Yes, for dinner and then a dance—she clarified, in response to his question. But why didn’t he come by—she added—tomorrow morning around ten? First they could go for a swim. Then they could all eat together. Her mother would also be very pleased to see him again (her father unfortunately wasn’t there: he’d had to return to Ferrara straight after the August Bank Holiday, and from that point on he’d had to bury any thought of Abbazia).

  For the next two days, Wednesday the 30th and Thursday the 31st, he didn’t have the chance to speak to Adriana for a minute alone: not even when they went for a swim on Wednesday morning. Rather than giving him courage, her tranquil disengagement intimidated him. She, Adriana, was large-limbed, sun-tanned, peaceful, potent. While he, nervous, pale-skinned, skeletally thin, and worse still, a terrible swimmer—how could he not cut a sorry and unprepossessing figure—someone to be rid of as soon as possible, as he hunched in the water mere yards from dry land, in the patient hope that she, the American and Aryan vamp, propelled by a few lazy strokes, way out to sea—so far out that even her graceful red rubber bathing cap was lost to sight—would finally deign to return to shore.

  There had then been lunch in the fine dining room of the old Habsburg hotel, with its prospect of the breezy and bright cerulean sea, beyond a huge, stepped terrace full of multicolored parasols: a lunch almost entirely overwhelmed by the uninterrupted and daintily complaining discourse of Signora Trentini.

  By then past forty, magnificent, the same hemp-hued blonde as her elder daughter, with the same blue eyes—in her case, though, a little protuberant—bovine, benign, infinitely humane and forbearing and above all glad to make a show of it. (Did she know or didn’t she? It seemed, naturally, as though she didn’t, but just imagine her not being fully aware of the nature of his relationship with Adriana . . . ) From the start, the good woman had declared herself more than certain that the war, believed by most to be inevitable, would not break out. As with the invasion of Czechoslovakia last year, “we” would have to intervene to make peace between the opposing sides, perhaps even at the last moment. And he? Even if Adriana’s mother hadn’t said anything outlandish (yesterday while traveling, though torn as ever between hope and fear, hadn’t he himself reached almost the same conclusions?), all the same, what scorn and agony he felt listening to her, watching her make such a show of her obtuse, egotistical, maternal and bourgeois optimism, so typically rural Emilian, and so goy! Yuk! He had to contradict her, maintaining that war would break out, and that “we” too would become involved in the vast and general massacre. They were a hair’s breadth from a full-scale quarrel, he and Signora Trentini, even though the two of them were, it was obvious, taking care not to raise their voices too much, in consideration of those seated at neighboring tables who might overhear and perhaps intervene. In the meantime, Adriana, as much as Rosanna, hadn’t risked making any comment. Separated over there, on the other side of the table, making up a couple by themselves, they had seemed to be interested in nothing other than their little brother, Cesarino. The one, big, blonde and beautiful, more beautiful than ever; the other dark-haired, still short in stature, rather insignificant: yet once more they appeared to be in agreement, like conspirators. They had literally given no quarter to their little
brother at the head of the table, at the ready to stop him eating with his hands, pouring himself too much wine, and so on. During the rare moments of calm they allowed themselves, they exchanged rapid meaningful glances, wry expressions and the odd brief phrase in a completely indecipherable jargon.

  Nothing else happened. As if with the swim and the family lunch on Wednesday 30th, every obligation of welcome and courtesy had been considered exhausted, from then on, at a stroke, Adriana had become unreachable. To phone was a waste of time and effort. It was Rosanna who always came to the mouthpiece, restricting herself to evasive, embarrassed scraps of information, and once it was even Cesarino who, evidently under orders, perhaps even prompted at a distance by signals, had explained that Adriana, in bed with a headache, could not be disturbed for any reason. If he should phone—she had told her brother before shutting herself in her room—he was to write down the number and she wouldn’t fail to get back to him . . . To return in person to the Victoria? Frankly he didn’t feel up to it, he didn’t dare. The outcome was that he had passed the whole of Thursday 31st without once leaving the pensione, stretched out on the bed with hands clasped behind his neck and eyes fixed on the ceiling. Every now and then he opened the Romancero‡ which he’d brought with him in his suitcase. Useless. Oh, he was well aware that he ought to have gone out, gone for a solitary swim, and then goodbye. But what if Adriana had called him? Or had, just suppose, suddenly decided to come to his room? Within a few days, perhaps a few hours, the war would break out: now he was sure of it. And as everything, everything, would plummet into the abyss of the war, why should he hurry to deny himself this absurd hope, why shouldn’t he wait just a little longer? Tomorrow, all the same, he would leave. Whatever the outcome.

  He went out very late, only after he’d become aware that the light had ebbed from his room.