Among Women Only

by Cesare Pavese

  "You're all a bunch of hams. What you want is Carmen."

  "It would be better to have a masquerade."

  "The poetic word should echo in the void."

  "But how many of you have read it?"

  I glanced across the room where the irascible old lady held forth to her circle. The men in the flickering firelight kept their eyes on the carpet; the women moved restlessly and the first cups of tea had appeared in their hands.

  Loris was saying slowly: "We don't want to repeat the traditional theater. We're not so civilized. What we want is to give the naked word of a text, but we can't do it without a mise-en-scène because even now in this room, dressed like this, between these walls, we are part of a mise-en-scène that we have to accept or reject. Any ambiance at all is a mise-en-scène. Even the light..."

  "Then let's give it in the dark," a girl shrieked.

  While Loris was talking, Mariella got up and went off to supervise the serving and then she called the girls. I stayed with the others and that Loris who was silent and smiling disgustedly.

  "There's something to be said for the darkness idea," a young man put in.

  We looked at Loris, who was staring at the floor.

  "Ridiculous!" said a small woman in a slipper-satin gown that was worth more than a lot of words. "One goes to the theater to see. Are you or aren't you giving a show?" She had libidinous eyes that laughed in the boys' faces.

  The painter wouldn't stoop to this conversation and changing expression said crossly that he didn't want tea, he wanted a drink. Meanwhile the teacups were being passed and Mariella put a bottle of cognac on the mantelpiece. She asked me if we had settled anything.

  "Must I decide?" I said. "I'm in the dark."

  "But you have to help us," Mariella shouted. "You know all about fashions."

  A general movement around the sofa indicated that something was happening. Everyone got up and moved back and Mariella ran over. The old lady was leaving. I didn't hear what she said, but a pretty maid took her thin arm and the old lady jabbed her cane on the floor, looked around tiredly out of bright eyes, and as the others bowed, the two went out slowly, with hobbling steps.

  "Grandmother wants us to keep the doors open so she can hear in bed," said Mariella, returning fresher than ever. "She wants to hear the records, the conversation, the people. She's so fond of our friends..."

  At the first chance I cornered Morelli and asked him what he meant to do now. "Bad-tempered already?" he said.

  "Less than you; you've had a good dose of the old lady... However..."

  "Don't speak badly of her," Morelli observed. "You don't see many like Donna Clementina. They died out some time ago. Did you know that she's a concierge's daughter; she's been an actress, a ballerina, a kept woman, and of the three sons she gave the old count, one got away to America and another is an archbishop. Not to mention her daughters..."

  "Poor old thing. Why doesn't she retire to the country?"

  "Because she'd so full of life. Because she likes to run her house. You should get to know her, Clelia."

  "She's so old... it scares me."

  "That's a good reason for knowing her. If you're afraid of old people, you're afraid to live."

  "I thought you brought me here to meet those others ..."

  Morelli looked around at the seated groups, the couples chattering at the other end.

  He frowned and muttered: "Drinking already?"

  6

  There was no more talk of mise-en-scènes that evening. I saw Loris's bow tie fluttering about, but I drifted alone and Mariella must have understood because she took me among a group of women, including her mother, who were talking fashions. Did she think she was pleasing me? She went back to the subject of her friend at the first party, said that she would have liked to go but still felt too young. The stretcher and the tulle gown came back in my mind.

  "Oh, you could have come," said the little woman in satin. "It was all quite proper. I know people who changed the place of their party right in the middle of it, for fun."

  "Just a nice family evening?" Mariella said, grinning.

  "Really, it was," another girl said.

  "Playing post office in the dark, more likely," Mariella concluded, looking around. The older woman smiled, scandalized and happy. Mariella was by no means a fool; she was the presiding hostess and had been born to such talk. I wondered if she would have known how to make out if she had begun at the bottom like her grandmother. I remembered Morelli's lecture and stopped short.

  We were talking about Morelli, as it happened, and the life he led. By mentioning Rome, some Roman villas, and a few carefully chosen big names, I silenced the most prudish of the group. I let them know that Morelli was at home in certain houses and that Rome was the only city it was never necessary to leave. Everyone came there. Mariella clapped her hands and said that we were having such a good time and that some day she would go to Rome. Someone spoke of Holy Year.

  "Those poor things," Mariella said suddenly. "What are they doing? Shall we go and listen?"

  So our circle broke up and the various groups swarmed around Loris's bow tie, who was holding forth to several eager girls. Just for sport, he and the others had drunk all the cognac and now were squabbling about some question or other—whether in life one could be oneself or whether one had to act. I was surprised to hear a thin girl with bangs, thick lips, and a cigarette mention the name of the brunette I had met the first evening, Momina "Momina said so, Momina said so," she repeated. After Mariella joined our group and all those distinguished gentlemen gathered around, a quavery voice went up: "When you make love, you take off your mask. That's when you're naked." While Mariella was passing drinks, I turned to Morelli. He looked pleased with himself, watching as though he wore a monocle. I caught his eye and when he was close I asked him sotto voce why they didn't send the drunks into the garden. "They'd be out in the open and wouldn't make trouble."

  "You can't," he said. "The indecencies must be kept up only in company; the ladies and heavy fathers must hear them. More orderly that way."

  I asked him who these awful children were. He told me names, giving me to understand that they weren't all respectable people, that the young were corrupted and getting worse: "It's not a question of social class, for God's sake, but after the war and even before it, what has any of that mattered?" According to him, one used to be able to mix with people only on condition of knowing who one was. "Now these people don't know any more who they are or what they want," he said. "They don't even enjoy themselves. They can't talk: they shout. They have the vices of the old, but not the experience..."

  I thought of the girl in the hotel and was about to ask him if he had heard any more about her. But I didn't do it; I realized he was stubborn in such matters, that for all his manners he had hair on his stomach, was graying and getting old. "He's as old as my father," I thought. "He knows so much and doesn't know anything. At least Father kept still and let us alone."

  Morelli was now in the crowd, arguing. He was telling the bearded fellow that they should learn how to handle women instead of discussing nonsense with them, that they should learn how to live and stop being children; while the other, naturally, wanted to convince Morelli and make him agree that in life people are only acting. I have never seen Morelli so annoyed. The women were amused.

  I caught Mariella as she went by, smiling easily at a preoccupied gentleman; I took her aside and said that we—that is, I—wanted to say good night and thank her for the evening. She was surprised and said that she still wanted to see me again, we had many things to talk over; she wanted to persuade me to so something for them, Momina had told her how nice I was.

  "She didn't come this evening," I said, just to say something.

  Mariella brightened and excused Momina. She said Momina had telephoned saying she didn't know, she thought she would visit the Molas.

  "You know... ?" she said, lowering her voice and raising her eyes.

  "Yes," I said.
"How is Rosetta?"

  Then Mariella colored and, flustered, said that if I knew Rosetta we would have to talk about it; poor thing, her parents didn't understand her and made life impossible for her, she was strong and sensitive, she absolutely needed to live, to have things, she was more mature than her years and she, Mariella, was afraid that now their friendship wouldn't survive that terrible experience.

  "But she, the girl, how is she?"

  "Yes, yes, she's recovered, but she doesn't want to see us, she doesn't want to see anyone. She only asks for Momina and won't see anyone else..."

  "That's nothing," I said, "provided she gets better."

  "Of course, but I'm afraid she hates me..."

  I looked at her. She seemed upset.

  "It must be the nausea after the Veronal," I said. "When one's sick to the stomach, one doesn't want to see people."

  "But she sees Momina," Mariella shot back immediately. "It makes me sick."

  I thought: You've some growing up to do, my dear. I hope I could control myself better in your place.

  I said: "Rosetta didn't take Veronal just to spite you." I said this with a goodbye smile. Mariella smiled and held out her hand.

  I waved at the nearest people, leaving Morelli in his circle with the bow tie and the girls, and went off. It was drizzling outside and I took a trolley on the avenue.

  7

  Not two days had passed before Mariella telephoned me. I hadn't seen anyone since that evening and had spent the whole time in the Via Po. The girl's voice laughed, insisted, panted with volubility. She wanted me to see her friends, to see them for her sake and help them. Would I be able to see her that afternoon for tea? Or better, could we stop a moment in Loris's studio?

  "That way we'll encourage them," she said. "If you knew how nice they are."

  She picked me up at the Via Po, dressed in a gay fur jacket in the Cossack style. The house was on the other side of the Via Po. We went under the porticoes around the square and Mariella drew away from the carnival booths without a glance. I thought of how only a few days' absence from Rome had settled me into new responsibilities and the company of true natives. Even Maurizio had sent no more narcissi.

  Mariella chattered and told me many things about life in Turin and the shops. For having seen them only as a customer, she knew them well. To judge a shop by its show window is difficult for anybody who has never dressed one. Mariella, however, understood them. She told me that her grandmother was still the terror of the dressmakers.

  We arrived at the top of a dirty stairway that I didn't much like. I would rather have continued talking. Mariella rang.

  All painters' studios are alike. They have the disorder of certain shops, but studied and done on purpose. You never can find out when they work; there always seems to be something wrong with the light. We found Loris on the unmade bed—no bow tie this time —and the girl with bangs let us in. She had on a threadbare coat and glowered at Mariella. She was smoking. Loris was also smoking, a pipe,- and both seemed put out of temper by our arrival. Mariella laughed warmly and said: "Where's my stool?" Loris stayed on the bed.

  We sat down with forced gaiety. Mariella began her prattling, asked for news, was amazed, went to the window. Loris, black and taciturn, barely responded. The thin girl, whose name was Nene, looked me over. She was a strange, heavy-lipped girl of about twenty-eight. She smoked with impatient gestures and bit her nails. She smiled nicely like a child, but her abrupt manner was annoying. It was clear that she considered Mariella a fool.

  As it happened, I expected what followed. They began to talk about their own affairs, about people I didn't know. There was the story of a painting sold before it was finished, but then the painter decided it was already perfectly finished as it stood and he didn't want to touch it again, but the client wanted it really finished and the painter wouldn't hear of it and wouldn't change his mind. Nene got heated, indignant and excited, chewed her cigarette and took the words out of Mariella's mouth. I understand how people talk shop according to their professions; but there's nobody like painters, all those people you hear arguing in the cheaper restaurants. I could understand if they talked about brushes, colors, turpentine—the things they use—but no, these people make it difficult on purpose, and sometimes no one knows what certain words mean, there's always somebody else who suddenly starts arguing, says no, that it means this other thing, and everything's upside down. The kind of words you see in the newspapers when they write about painting. I expected that Nene would also exaggerate. But no. She talked rapidly and angrily but didn't lose her childlike air: she explained to Mariella that one never stops a painting too soon. Loris sucked on his pipe in silence. Mariella, who cared nothing about painting, suddenly came out with: Why didn't we discuss the play? Loris turned over on the bed, Nene looked unpleasantly at both of us. She was aware of it herself and burst out laughing. It struck me that she laughed in dialect, as counter girls laugh, as I sometimes laugh myself.

  Nene said: "But it's all up in the air now. After what's happened to Rosetta, we can't stage a suicide..."

  "Nonsense," Mariella shouted. "Nobody'd think twice about it."

  Nene looked at us again, provocatively and happy.

  "That's all woman's stuff," Loris said, contemptuous. "It might interest the bourgeois husband, but as for me... Anyhow, we have to deal with the Martelli women, with the people putting up the cash. I don't know what Rosetta may have done... What I like, on the other hand, is this fantasia on reality in which the artistic situation jumps into life. The personal side of it doesn't concern me... But it would be too good if Rosetta had really acted under suggestion... However, the Martellis have backed out."

  "What's all this have to do with it?" Mariella said. "Art is something else..."

  "Are you sure?" Loris argued. "It's another way of looking at the same thing, if you like, but not another thing. As for me, I'd like to dramatize the dramatic suggestion itself. I'm sure it would be fantastic... a collage of theater news ... to treat these clothes you wear, this room, this bed, as the stuff of theater ... an existential theater. Is that how one says it?"

  He looked at me, really at me, from that bed, with those hairy eyes. I can't stand these nasty-clever people and was about to tell him off when Nene jumped up, fresh: "If Rosetta had really died, one could do it. Un hommage à Rosette ..."

  Mariella said: "Who's not in favor?"

  "Momina," the other said. "The Martelli women, the president, Carla and Mizi. They were Momina's friends ..."

  "That fool should have died, it would have been better..." Mariella cried out.

  I'm used to hearing all the scandal and gossip of Rome in our shop, but this bickering between friends because a third one didn't succeed in killing herself impressed me. I was on the point of believing that the acting had already begun and that all that was going on was theatrical make-believe, as Loris wanted. Coming to Turin, I walked out on a stage and was acting now myself. "It's carnival time," I thought to myself. "You'll find that in Turin they play these tricks every year."

  "As for me," Loris said, biting his pipe, "you agree among yourselves."

  I studied Nene's bangs, her heavy lips, her faded coat. People live in strange ways. Listening to them talk about their work and the right they had to sell it unfinished, I understood that they were defending not so much the money as their arrogance. I wanted to say to her: My dear girl, you never know where the next meal's coming from, yet you put on these airs. Where do you sleep at night? Does someone keep you? Mariella, who doesn't paint, is well-born and has a fur coat.

  They began to argue again about the play and said that there wasn't time to find another, and all right, they wouldn't do anything this year.

  "That fool," Mariella said. "Let's read a single act, without action or scenery," Nene said, and then Loris jumped up, looked at them disgustedly, as the idiots they were, and said: "All right. Only leave me alone."

  I looked again at a certain unframed picture against the wa
ll under the window. It seemed dirty, unfinished: since I'd come in I'd been asking myself what it was. I didn't want anyone to notice my interest, lest Mariella should say: "Come on, show her your pictures." But that mess of violet and blackish colors fascinated me; I didn't want to look at it and yet I always returned to it; I thought to myself that it was like the whole room and Loris's face.

  I asked when they planned to give the play. "Who knows?" Nene said. "Nobody's coughed up a penny yet."

  "Don't you have an angel?"

  "The angels," Mariella said nastily, "think they can impose their tastes even on us... That's why."

  Loris said: "I'd be happy if anyone tried to impose a taste on me ... But you don't find anyone nowadays who has a taste. They don't know what they want..."

  Mariella gave a self-satisfied laugh, from inside her fur coat. Nene squirmed and said: "There are too many Martellis and too many Mizis mixed up in this. Too many hysterical women... Momina..."

  "She overdoes everything," Mariella said.

  "Momina knows what she wants. Let her do what she likes."

  "So then who will come to hear us?" said Mariella, annoyed. "Who'll do the acting? The hysterical women?"

  "Acting is out. We'll just read."

  "Nonsense," Loris said. "We wanted to paint an atmosphere..."

  They went on awhile. It was clear that the painter only wanted to daub some scenery to earn a little money. And that Mariella wanted to be an actress. Only Nene seemed without pretenses, but there was something at the bottom of her interest, too.

  Then Momina arrived.

  8

  She came in with that discontented, dominating air of hers. Her gloves alone were worth more than the whole studio. Nene, opening the door for her, seemed like a servant. Everyone said a smiling hello.

  "Why, you visit everybody," Momina said on seeing me.

  "That's not difficult in Turin," I replied.

  She moved here and there, going up very close to the pictures, and I saw that she was nearsighted. All the better. I watched Mariella closely.