The Novel of Ferrara

by André Aciman

  But even in the years that were to follow it’s not as if the relationship between me and Marco ever changed. The truth is that every now and then, when I tried to gain his confidence, I would receive a brush-off, polite but no less unwavering for that.

  Just as an example: at university, when I too had got there, I enrolled in the Arts faculty in Bologna. It should be understood that Ferrara is very different from Bologna, where literary studies are very much the norm. Among us, literature students are seen somewhat as priests—undoubtedly considered with respect, even reverence, but always kept at a distance.

  And afterward? Afterward I got married, left Ferrara, put down roots elsewhere, had children, wrote and published books: with all the multiplying fortunes and tribulations that entails. In any case I kept myself busy, as they say here in Rome, working, struggling, living.

  And by contrast he, Marco Giori, who already at twenty-one owned a fine American car, and who, besides, in 1933, had even managed to persuade his father to buy him a blue Bugatti that could have competed in the Mille Miglia (although he very soon had a serious accident, on the Monselice highway, resulting in some fatalities: after which his grimo, his dad, wouldn’t buy him anything else, not even an old third- or fourth-hand Balilla, and so from then on he had to undertake the commute between Ambrogio and Ferrara in just the same way as did the old man, that is, by local bus); by contrast he—who to hear him, only aspired to get the hell out of Ambrogio, Ferrara, Italy, to go and live abroad somewhere—never left the region, and was only waiting, it seemed, for one thing: that his father should finally decide to die, and so leave him all his lands and property.

  The dissimilarity between Marco and his father, Signor Amleto, had always amazed me. Between them, however, with time, something in common would emerge, as we shall see. Certainly, some thirty years ago they didn’t look even remotely related.

  Let’s leave aside how they dressed. Marco, in the English style, seemed to have walked straight out of a men’s fashion magazine, while the old man, with his cloak, with his felt hat lowered over his little round eyes of blue porcelain, with a toothpick between his thin lips, with his low, black or brown boots with nailed soles (he went around this way—they used to say in town—to strike pity into the heart of the tax collector) looked no different from the usual agricultural middlemen who on Mondays and Thursdays are still found in droves in Piazza della Cattedrale or Corso Martiri della Libertà.

  But in their physiques as well, what a difference between the two of them! Squat, with short arms and legs, the skin of his face and neck intensely tanned from working in the fields—rather than skin, it looked like thick leather—one would have said that the elder Giori belonged to a different breed.

  And Signora Carmen, Marco’s mother? I never knew her in person.

  All I know of her are two things: that she died of pernicious anaemia in 1939 and that she remained her whole life confined to Ambrogio, a huddle of poor, rustic roofs that crouched on the right bank of the Po, thirty kilometers from Ferrara, never setting foot in the city. Perhaps it was her that Marco resembled. From the Veneto, Vicenza, I think, she was said to be tall, blonde, slender and with an aristocratic air.

  Until a few years ago, I had never even set eyes on Ambrogio. I happened to chance on the place late one October afternoon, returning in the company of some Roman friends from a trip to the Delta.

  At a walking pace the car crossed the wide, misshapen, semi-deserted village square. It must have been around six o’clock. We were planning to have supper in Ferrara. So we had all the time in the world to stop and have something at the only bar there was.

  We got out, entered the bar—to tell the truth, more of an ugly little restaurant, a kind of basement absolutely devoid of customers—and ordered in loud voices, some choosing an espresso, others a small glass of Bosco wine, still others a fizzy drink.

  Taking a sip from the little coffee cup, I then returned to the entrance on my own. How sad—I said to myself, casting my gaze around. In those few minutes, the square had become even more grey and exhausted. It had turned into a huge, shapeless expanse, about to be obliterated by the oncoming darkness.

  When, suddenly, at the end of the square, almost touching the squalid, stocky parish church, I saw a house. It was not a hovel like the others, but a small bourgeois villa on two floors, with the facade covered with ivy, a little balcony protruding over the entrance, a modest garden in front which was guarded right round by a robust fence of varnished iron railings.

  I looked at the house, the pointed black iron spears of the main entrance gate. Without even turning to ask the sleepy-looking, little, middle-aged woman who was seated behind the bar whether that house down there, flanking the church, was actually the home of the Gioris, being sure that I wasn’t mistaken, I could think of nothing but Marco’s mother all the while. For years, for decades—I let my imagination run wild—old Giori had kept her locked away in the house. Never letting her go to church, just a few steps away. Never letting her visit the graveyard just beyond the village, not even on November 2, All Souls’ Day. Never a trip to the city. Only allowed into the garden in summer, toward evening, to read or to embroider. It was to be supposed that he, judging her guilty of who knows what crime, had decided to make her pay in this manner, with perpetual exile in a village inhabited almost entirely by illiterate farmhands, such as Ambrogio was.

  Still looking at the house, I also thought of Marco. In this last period he had returned to Ferrara far more rarely. I hadn’t seen him for more than two years. It was very likely that in the meanwhile his grimo had died, and that Marco, as soon as he’d laid hands on his paternal inheritance, had rushed to sell the lands, the Ambrogio house, everything. Who knows where he’d be on this very day. Perhaps in Paris like that fine figure Pelandra (if Pelandra did indeed end up in Paris), perhaps in London, perhaps New York, giving himself up without restraint to that life of pleasure and luxury of which he had always dreamed. And if one day or another I had happened to meet him in Rome? It was just as if I could see him. Bounding from the threshold of the Excelsior Hotel, he would come smiling toward me, at last, with his hand extended, and with a free and happy “Ciao” on his lips . . .

  The gate shut, the doorway and windows perhaps bolted from within, the house seemed empty, uninhabited.

  We left the bar-restaurant and walked toward the car. Wanting to stretch our cramped legs, we had parked on the opposite side of the square in front of the church. The sound of the Angelus bell sorrowfully drifted through the evening air.

  In the center of the churchyard, his biretta, worn low at the back of his head, and his arms folded, a dark-haired, pale-faced, corpulent priest was conversing with two men, one young, the other old. Hearing us approach, they stopped talking and all three turned round together.

  Straight away, I recognized the two men—Marco Giori and his father: the latter, a little more stooped, but as lively and sunburnt as ever, and as ever his mouth sporting the reliable toothpick.

  “Ciao,” I said, raising my arm, not without registering, even if much quietened, the quickened pulse of old.

  Signor Amleto raised his hat. The priest gave a slight bow.

  It seemed to me that Marco hesitated for a moment. Then he left the others and came toward me.

  “What on earth brings you here?” he asked in dialect, in a calm, quiet voice, twisting his lips in his customary sardonic sneer.

  Before I could reply, it was he, however, who explained his reason for being there, in Ambrogio. His father was more than eighty. It wasn’t as if he was ill. Just a bit weaker, that’s all, and he couldn’t run the business on his own anymore.

  “You can guess the delights of five hundred hectares. And then with all the problems we have nowadays . . . ”

  I observed him, and didn’t know what to think. He was wearing an old, tobacco-colored, woolen jacket with misshapen pockets, and unsightly grey vicuña trousers, threadbare and stretched at the knees, inadmissible even for
the country.

  But as for his health, he looked well. He had grown stouter, more robust, as often happens at around fifty.

  And while I introduced him to each of my friends, and he, in his turn, introduced them all to his father and the priest, I saw that the skin of his neck had grown deeply furrowed with age. His skin was thick, baked by the sun, almost black.

  It reminded me of leather. Thick leather.

  2.

  AMONG THE dozen or so youths in Ferrara who, around 1937, formed the prestigious constellation of the “degenerates,” it never struck me (and it’s also the opinion of Uller Tumaòni, the photographer, nicknamed by his friends “al duterét,” the Little Doctor, who knows these things and can judge them better than anyone), no, it never struck me that the star of Mario Spisani, called Pelandra, had ever shone with any particular brightness . . . Oh all right, Uller conceded generously, at that time even Pelandro had achieved some distinction in a life of vice and indolence. But let’s be honest!—he added, immediately after—when you compare Pelandra with other eminent degenerates such as Geppe Calura or Edelweiss Fegnagnani he pales into insignificance. You can snort all the white dust you like, fuck till you slip a disc, you can even aspire to the occasional act of sodomy. But after all that? What really counts, even in such things, is that ever overlooked and undervalued attribute—sheer graft.

  Uller had good judgement and to spare. Manner, tone, in a word, authority: this, Pelandra was always more than a bit short of.

  From the age of twenty to twenty-five—until, I repeat, 1937—it was well known that he never said no to anything. A first-order habitué of brothels and gambling dens, distinguished consumer of cocaine, and ether in its pure state or, lacking that, whatever pigswill was on tap, Pelandra too had really excelled himself, as in their time had Geppe Calura and Edelweiss Fegnagnani and later, Eraldo Deliliers, Gigi Prendato and perhaps even Marco Giori himself. And yet where was to be found in Pelandra the sangfroid, the poise, the cool, unruffled superciliousness of the old masters and of those of his contemporaries not unworthy of the masters? His ashen face, when, at noon, he’d show up at the Caffè della Borsa in Corso Roma and it seemed that thanks to the tight shoes of lightest leather, shiny and pointed as daggers, every step took a great effort, but one that was more moral than physical; the sneer, that in a tremor of uncertainty was always stretching his bruised-looking lips, stained with nicotine and coffee grains (a humble, exhausted sneer, which at the same time was suffused with a vague presumption, as if he wanted to insinuate: “Yes I’m a wreck, as anyone can see, but what a thoroughbred wreck, don’t you think?”)—even at that time, when all’s said and done, it was enough to look at him to be able to deduce, without much effort, that a type like him wasn’t the great maudit he made himself out to be, and so, in the light of the fact that I will be recounting later, there’s much less to wonder at.

  A conscience is not something you invent. If it’s there, it’s there. If it isn’t, one can’t just make it up. The same with courage.

  Toward the middle of 1938, then, unprepared spectators witnessed a surprise move which suddenly revealed that Pelandra had always had a conscience; the townsfolk learned that he, Pelandra himself, had decided quite out of the blue to get engaged—yes he, that bizarre fellow with his cappuccino snout: the friend of young Marco Giori, and that other predator, who was solely responsible for the death of poor Fadigati, the ENT doctor of Via Gorgadello who died by drowning himself in the Po, that Deliliers, who should have stayed in Porto Longone and not gone abroad to live it up with money and a car! And he got engaged in all seriousness, it should be understood: it wasn’t some kind of joke! The kind of family to which his fiancée belonged, those Pasettis who lived in Via Roma (not to be confused with the ones from Via Cisterna del Follo) were, apart from their modest circumstances as proprietors of sparse agricultural lands, very respectable people, all home and church. She, Germana, a little woman who was nothing special, more plain than pretty, who, after being brought up by the nuns of Via Colombara from kindergarten until the third year of school, from the time she was fourteen had always been shut away at home; and he, in particular, from the time when he became officially engaged, no longer seemed himself, had changed from one thing to another: all this made it seem as though what was happening was something important, unprecedented, a kind of conversion.

  He had changed from one thing to another, had literally become a different person.

  That very passion he had formerly devoted to his excesses, an exaggerated passion, without class, and such as to provoke a sneer from those consummate operators who had always known how to pace themselves with drugs and brothels, now seemed to have been entirely rechannelled to conform to the meek pleasures of normal, respectable folk.

  He’d made his peace with father and mother, two timid oldsters gone white before their time thanks to their lying, idle, prodigal son, so different from his younger brother, who at twenty was already earning a living, having assumed a post at the bank. He, Pelandra, had applied for and obtained a position as an employee in the Venice General Insurance Company, and in a short time had acquired a notable circle of business contacts. When his insurance duties obliged him to pass by the Corso Roma and he reached the Caffè della Borsa, he would never take a seat. He’d pass by in an assiduous hurry, greeting whoever greeted him, of course, but without paying attention to the scornful winks of the idlers sprawled at the little tables in their usual position—legs wide apart and their hands pressed to their crotches.

  No Sunday would pass, then, without a stroll arm-in-arm with his fiancée, and behind them, they too arm-in-arm, her parents—he, very tall, gently leaning forward to let Germana clutch his coat sleeve—nor without seeing them arrive at San Carlo for the midday Mass. And if in church, at the moment of the raising of the Host, his genuflection astonished everyone, the seraphic smile which, at one o’clock, as he was leaving, suffused his chubby neophyte’s face was even more of a cause for wonder. The Mass was quite delightful—his smile declared. But Sunday afternoon which, after the home-cooked soup of tagliatelline, boiled chicken and beef garnished with slices of salami and various pickled greens, baked pear and a weak black coffee, extended before him—an afternoon to pass with the hands of his fiancée clasped within his own, both of them looking out of the drawing room windows at the little garden as it gradually succumbed to dusk—wasn’t that, all considered, equally delightful? No, being such a proper good person, one felt infinitely better. And one’s health as well was greatly improved.

  An exemplary fiancé, and following that, for ten long years, he became a no less exemplary husband and father.

  At General Insurance his career was not to be a dazzling one, but nevertheless fairly impressive—immediately after the war he had been made assistant manager and then, in 1947, he was promoted to manager. Although he was not enrolled in the Christian Democratic Party, he sedulously attended the cultural debates organized by Catholic Action in the house of Count Chiozzi in Via Santo Stefano with his wife, and at those meetings, while never taking part verbally, he showed himself to be an attentive and respectful listener. In the meantime he had bestowed on his wife no fewer than four children, two boys and two girls. And the modest pride which shone forth from his whole being, from his expression to his gait, especially on those occasions when he managed to lead all of them together, walking the length of the Corso Giovecca or Viale Cavour, was very moving, to say the least. His finances had not yet permitted him to establish his own household, so that he had had to accept the hospitality of his in-laws both on his and his family’s behalf. Yet very soon, however, he was to acquire a house of his own, if it was true, as it seemed to be, that in the spring of 1948 on the eve of the elections on April 18, Mario Spisani, the renowned and respected insurance broker, was already the owner of a paid off apartment, situated on the fifth floor of one of the many cheap little apartment buildings then being built in the vicinity of the aqueduct, and for the acquisition of which h
e had disbursed in a great wad of notes, one after the other, a round four million lire as down payment: savings which, to all appearances, had cost him a great deal of effort to accumulate.

  And then as regards the amusements that from time to time the family needed, for these too he had always met the expenses. And in a manner that, all considered, was far more than merely perfunctory.

  The Spisani couple went at least three times a month to the cinema, regularly choosing the opening nights and the best seats. There wasn’t a single summer (necessarily excluding those of 1943, ’44 and ’45 spent in the small Passetti holdings in Formignana) that they didn’t go on holiday in August with the children: once to Pievepelago, in the Modena Apennines, other times to the Romagnolo coast, for a while at Gatteo, then at Viserbella. Locales, these last two, where there weren’t many real entertainments on offer—from this perspective how could you compare Gatteo and Viserbella with nearby Rimini and Riccione or even Cesenatico?—but where sun, air, sea, the type and quality of sand and so on are better by far than any to be found in other Italian resorts. All of this, leaving aside the great opportunity extended to a young father to turn himself, without running the least risk of ridicule, into a diligent builder of sandcastles and sand motor-racing tracks for the use and enjoyment of his offspring, and to become a zealous accompanier of the same in going for a pee or a poo behind the first convenient cabin.

  Every time I return to Ferrara and pass by to say hello, it’s Uller Tumaòni, the photographer, who reminds me of all this.