Spring came and one day Signor and Signora Dido left for a city in northern Italy. They came back after a month. Signor Dido opened the door with his key. There was no Rosa Profumo; the house had been ransacked.
Signor and Signora Dido found enormous bills from the butcher, the grocer, the other retailers of the quarter. Besides that, Rosa Profumo, abusing the name of Signora Dido, had taken whole lengths of fabric on credit from Signor Ciccio, the tobacconist, who, along with selling salts and tobaccos, also ran a little emporium. The promissory notes he had signed himself for the acquisition by installments of the blond lambskin coat came back to Signor Dido, rejected.
Great was the pain of Signora Dido; still greater was her surprise. Rosa! A thief! Who would have thought it?
Signora Dido telephoned a lawyer who was a friend of the house: she asked him to proceed against a certain Profumo Rosa through legal channels. Profumo Rosa was accused before the judicial authorities; the accusation was committed to the District Court. Signora Dido received a summons hand delivered by the court clerk to present herself at the District Court on such and such a day, at such and such an hour.
Signora Dido presented herself at the District Court, waited a long time in an extremely unpleasant place and among extremely unpleasant people, and was finally informed by a very skinny little old man, poorly dressed and manifestly atrabilious, that the case had been adjourned.
Why? . . . A mystery.
The promissory notes had meanwhile been paid by Signor Dido, and so had the debts to the retailers. The rancor in Signora Dido’s soul died down. She telephoned the lawyer who was a friend of the house and asked him to withdraw the accusation.
Three months passed. Signora Dido received a summons hand delivered by the court clerk to present herself at the District Court on such and such a day, at such and such an hour.
How so? The accusation had been withdrawn . . .
Years passed. Every three months, Signora Dido received a summons hand delivered by the court clerk to present herself at the District Court on such and such a day, at such and such an hour.
Caught in the august net of Justice, Signora Dido, no longer knowing where to turn, turned to Signor Dido.
“What are we to do?”
“Diké,” replied Signor Dido, “is universal Justice. According to Orpheus, she sits beside the throne of Zeus, from where she watches over the actions of mortals. Diké protects the innocent and punishes the guilty. But the sense of justice is so profound in Justice that the protection she gives to the innocent is no less severe than the punishment she gives to the guilty.”
“What are we to do?” Signora Dido asked again.
“Nothing,” replied Signor Dido. “Nothing. Diké is venerable and inexorable. And what’s more, she’s blind.”
“Enough!” cried Signora Dido. “One can’t talk with you!”
The front doorbell. “Signora Dido Anna Maria? . . . A summons to present yourself . . .”
The Bearded Gentleman
IT HAPPENED ON THE EVENING OF December 31, in the Dido household. And the Dido family was puffed up with pride: Signora Marta, Signorina Marfisa, twenty-two years old, and even Signor Dido himself a little.
The young Rinaldo Dido, a senior in high school and the protagonist of the event we are about to narrate, was also puffed up with pride. Less puffed up, however, than the deuteragonists, that is, his parents and sister. Soldiers on the field rejoice less at a battle won than combatants on the internal front, in their armchairs and with newspapers in their hands.
We will add that the pride which swelled the breast of the Dido family on the evening of December 31, and which today, more than a month later, has still not ceased to swell it, was felt but unspoken. Except by Signor Dido the father, who not only did not keep silent about this feeling, but commented on it. Because in the bosom of his own family, Signor Dido sometimes played the part of the devil’s advocate.
It was the vacation at year’s end. On the morning of December 31, young Rinaldo Dido, together with a friend of his, set out at an early hour for the Terminillo.
His mother had outfitted him thoroughly: hobnailed boots, thick gloves, a knitted cap that came down over the ears.
Young Rinaldo left, and that same evening, at around eight, he reappeared on the threshold of the paternal home, supported by the friend, and his leg dangling.
A skiing fracture.
The Dido family was puffed up with pride.
It had happened like this. The ski had sunk into the soft snow, and, in sinking, had bent edgewise, compelling the foot which was fastened to the ski to bend as well, and then the leg which is the continuation of the foot. “A classic skiing fracture,” the orthopedist diagnosed after a summary examination, as a man much experienced in this sort of fracture, so frequent in our era of winter sports.
The x-ray confirmed the fracture of that outer bone of the leg which everyone calls the fibyoola, and which is properly called the fiboola.
The orthopedist came back the next day, dressed in a white coat, and set the limb in plaster. He was assisted by a Herculean orderly in a leather jacket, who left a big red motorcycle lying on its side in the entryway of the Didos’ house.
The young man spent two days in bed. On the third day, he slipped his trousers over the white statue’s leg, and, on his own, slowly made his way to the family table.
The members of the Dido family, silent and happy, had their heads bent over the evening soup.
Each time someone happened to tell him that a young boy or girl had broken a leg or an arm while practicing the sport of skiing, Signor Dido rejoiced.
A natural joy.
Signor Dido did not belong to the winter sport generation.
At the time when he himself was young, there were as yet no winter vacations: there were only summer vacations.
You left for the country in a carriage, on the example of Signor Quintiliano and his four sons: Ernesto, Gigetto, Adolfo, and Arturino, known as Little Shrimp.1
Country life, in those days, was slower, more limited. Instead of the not yet invented instruments for abbreviating time and space, there was fantasy. And when you returned to the city, the memory of the village summer stayed with you like the memory of paradise lost.
The fracture suffered on the Terminillo by his own son awakened in Signor Dido’s heart that malicious but natural reaction of joy. And Signor Dido had the effrontery to show it. At the table. Amidst the exultant silence of the family.
But no one paid any attention to him.
Signora Dido looked at her son with grave eyes. Like a hero. Looked at him with new eyes.
She said:
“What a mustache you’ve grown yourself, Rinaldo! What sideburns!”
Indeed, a brown downiness shaded the boy’s upper lip and descended over his cheeks.
Signor Dido, to whom it seemed unbelievable that the malicious words just spoken had been ignored, said:
“We’ll soon be buying him a Gillette.”
Signora Dido’s face blazed.
“Not for anything do I wish your son also to shave his beard with a Gillette, as you’ve done all your life. We will buy Rinaldo an electric razor.”
For Signor Dido, the outburst of Signora Dido was an unexpected success. He had not been thinking, at that moment, that a generation also distinguishes itself from the previous generation by the different instruments it uses to remove the hair on its face. But under the impression of the words spoken with such indignation by Signora Dido, Signor Dido recalled that when, forty years ago, he had bought himself a safety razor and begun shaving his beard with this new instrument, he himself had looked with disdain upon those retrogrades who went on shaving their beards with a straight razor.
While these memories were coming back to Signor Dido’s head, the door to the dining room slowly opened, and a tall, extremely pale, and bearded gentleman appeared on the threshold.
Signor Dido’s father, whom Signor Dido had not seen for more than
forty years.
The tall, bearded gentleman smiled, and with an extremely thin hand pointed to the beard that encircled his face.
But he did not speak.
Because the dead do not speak.
The Children Speak Softly
THE DIDO FAMILY IS AT THE TABLE: Signor Dido, Signora Dido, and their two children, twenty-year-old Armida and sixteen-year-old Rinaldo. In the Dido household they are not very talkative; nevertheless, a few words pass now and then from plate to plate. Signora Dido asks young Rinaldo how things went at school today. Young Rinaldo replies in such a low voice that Signora Dido does not understand his reply. The Didos’ friends praise the Didos because their two children speak softly, unlike so many Italians who do not so much speak as bombard each other. “How well you’ve brought up your children,” say the Didos’ friends. Signor Dido accepts the praise and is pleased that, unlike so many Italians who do not so much speak as fire off mortars, his children speak softly; but this speaking so softly as to render incomprehensible the few replies that Armida and Rinaldo make to the few questions of their parents arouses Signor Dido’s curiosity. And Signor Dido discovers that Armida and Rinaldo speak so softly so that their parents will not understand them. Signor Dido discovers that this speaking so softly is a barrier between generations. Signor Dido notices that even among their friends, if the parents are present, Armida and Rinaldo speak softly, but their friends understand them. And therefore this speaking softly is also a secret speaking: a speaking among prisoners. Why?
The Small Plate
FOR SOME TIME NOW, SIGNOR DIDO has been restricted to a special diet for reasons of health.
At the table, during mealtimes, the food destined for Signor Dido’s wife and children arrives on a big plate; the food destined for Signor Dido arrives on a small plate.
The big plate and the small plate are both brought to the table by Trebisonda, the Dido household’s maid of all work.
Trebisonda is a native of a little country town in the Abruzzi.
Rural populations, unlike city populations, believe in the magic of names. They think that one’s name influences one’s destiny, and thus they choose the names they give to their children with great care. What hopes was the father of the maid of all work in the Dido household nursing when he fixed upon his daughter the name of Trebisonda?
Trebisonda venerates her parents. She venerates them for different reasons. In her father she venerates the man of intellect; in her mother she venerates the univira.1
In her mother Trebisonda also admires the mature beauty.
One day Trebisonda said to Signora Dido:
“My mother is still very beautiful. And she’s already going on forty.”
In Trebisonda’s opinion, forty is very old.
Trebisonda added:
“My mother has splendid teeth. She’s only missing one: in front. From an accident.”
“A fall?” asked Signora Dido.
“No,” replied Trebisonda. “My father knocked her down one day with a backhand.”
Trebisonda actually said, not “a backhand” but “a smack in the kisser.”
Trebisonda’s father was famous locally as an extemporaneous poet. Poets, as we know, are subject to furor.
Trebisonda is furnished with a limited intelligence. She mangles the names she hears on the telephone; she is incapable of understanding the simplest conversation. Her voice, to make up for it, is confident and persuasive. The absurd, on her lips, acquires the ring of truth.
After Trebisonda has spoken, you think: “Why, yes. That’s true.” It is only on second thought that the veil is rent and the absurdity appears.
Trebisonda’s conversation gives the impression of a dream.
Signor Dido is taciturn by nature. At the table even more so than away from the table. Sitting before his own small plate, glancing fleetingly at the big plate destined for his wife and children, Signor Dido keeps silent. Keeps silent and thinks. Thinks and remembers.
Remembers times long past. How old was Signor Dido back then? Two . . . Two and a half. Not more. Then, too, he sat at the family table and had special food before him. More tender.
It is the suspicion of having fallen back into infancy that humiliates Signor Dido.
No. With regard to intellectual faculties, Signor Dido is still perfectly sound.
From the point of view of alimentary quality, Signor Dido should be content. The food served to him separately on the small plate is of better quality than the food served on the big plate. Signora Dido points it out to him: “See? We’re having cutlets, but I’ve had you served the filet.” And Signora Dido bears down on her cutlet, which resists the knife.
This privileged condition does not please Signor Dido. On the contrary: it adds to his humiliation.
Trebisonda, for her part, senses and appreciates the reason why Signor Dido is served special food and of better quality. In Trebisonda’s mind there speaks a most ancient patriarchalism.
Trebisonda knows that the man of the house is to be served first and best. The big plate she places unceremoniously in the middle of the table. The small plate she places before Signor Dido with a ritual slowness.
Signor Dido stares at the blank wall before him.
Why does this special alimentary treatment humiliate Signor Dido?
Perhaps because it betrays a condition of infirmity.
The man of healthy psyche feels the condition of infirmity as a shameful condition.
Signor Dido had to follow a treatment by hypodermic injections. His doctor himself came to give him the first injection.
“Lie down,” said the doctor.
Signor Dido did not obey. He found such persuasive words that the doctor stuck the needle into Signor Dido’s back, as with one who accepts death, but standing up.
Even metaphorically, dropping one’s pants is a gesture of surrender.
Signor Dido adopted the pose of Phryne.2
A nurse came to give the succeeding injections. She was fat and was called Italia. After the third injection, Signor Dido took the syringe with the needle grafted to its tip and stuck it ten times into the pillow of the bed; the eleventh time he stuck it into his own flesh.
The aponia of this little operation astonished him. He was proud of himself. From that day on Signor Dido did his hypodermic injections himself, and thought that one day he would succeed in giving himself the intravenous ones as well.
The humiliating effect of the special food as the betrayal of an infirm condition does not fully convince Signor Dido.
There must be some other reason.
More remote.
What is it?
And here, at a stroke, comes the illumination.
Signor Dido has found it.
The common meal has a most ancient sacred significance. To consume the same food is to tighten the bond that unites us to the same god. Excluded from the food on the big plate, Signor Dido feels like the one who had no right to enter the temple and had to stand alone in the narthex.
Signor Dido’s children seemed not to have heard him.
Signora Dido listened, but without raising her eyes from the stubborn cutlet.
In her turn she uttered a few words. She uttered them softly and with her usual intonation, which is sweet.
The words uttered by Signora Dido did not confirm Signor Dido’s words, nor did they deny them. They cancelled them.
Signora Dido is defenseless against arguments and at the same time proud. She does not dispute the arguments of others; she cancels them. With sweetness. An ineffable net surrounds Signora Dido, against which the arguments of others bounce off and fall down.
Battleships were once protected against torpedoes by a net of steel.
Rage throbs in Signor Dido’s temples. It is about to burst from his eyes.
Trebisonda comes in and with a ritual gesture places the small plate before Signor Dido.
Signor Dido stares at the wall.
Berenice
THE CLOC
K ON THE WRITING DESK strikes once in the dark.
One AM.
Signor Dido is lying on his back in bed, his arms spread wide.
It is an old family clock. Signor Dido’s mother carried it with her even when she traveled. Inside her valise, on the luggage rack of the compartment, the clock went on striking the hours, the half hours. The passengers glanced at one another.
As a young man, Signor Dido went to sleep in the position of a boxer in defense.
Defense against death?
Now that he is verging on sixty, Signor Dido no longer defends himself: he lets himself go.
A light wind stirs the window curtains. The voices of passers-by rise from the street, the rapid breath of an automobile, the thin question of a child:
“Papa, is it true that . . .”
Children out at this hour?
Signor Dido keeps the door of his memories shut. Memories are dangerous. They bring shame and remorse with them.
Signor Dido opens it very rarely. And only to some light memory.
Will he open it tonight to the memory of Mary?
Mary comes in. Signor Dido’s room brightens.
The faculty of brightening was Mary’s most conspicuous quality. It had made her famous.
Signor Dido was living in Paris.
The air of Paris is subtle. An agile man who in Rome is able to jump a meter and a half, in Paris is able to jump two meters without any effort.
We are speaking of figurative jumping. The champions are named Voltaire, Stendhal . . .
The light that came from under Mary’s skin, from within her hair, from within her eyes, from between her lips, from within her smile, which was in her voice, was more than the most admirable of natural things: it was an unnatural thing, like a dog that suddenly starts singing soprano.
With the existence of Mary—a definite, indubitable existence—there competed above all the function of justifying certain episodes in classical mythology: the Milky Way, Berenice’s hair, Io the heifer who every morning restores daylight to men, to animals, to the mountains, the waters, the plants.
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