Radical Shadows

by Bradford Morrow

  So this man—who before had given me the impression of being underhanded or even stupid—now planted this unexpected feeling inside me. And I wanted to assure him that we could be friends, so we walked in silence together by the sea.

  The wind was mighty, almost thunderous. The sea roared. Lightning burst out from the blackest cloud and flashed all the way from where we stood to Rimini.

  He said to me, “Let’s go into your house in case she comes out. She mustn’t see us together.”

  We went inside, but it was impossible to speak and so we stood looking out the open window. I was troubled and he tried to calm me with his eyes and a kind expression. But I would not be calmed—after all, he had said that Virginia might be coming.

  The water grew more restless, and it was getting dark. Bolts of lightning lit up the entire sea, a sudden, gloomy turquoise, sliced by white streaks of foam; the sea almost gleamed.

  Trembling, Secci said to me, “There she is!”

  I turned towards Virginia, anxiety coursing through my soul. She passed under my window, tall and soft with long legs; her breasts like those of the most sublime Grecian statue. I realized that the moment had arrived in which I must speak, yet I was terrorized by voluptuous anticipation. I fell to my knees.

  Secci smiled and handed me a glass of water.

  HOUSE FOR SALE

  I knew the three men had come to see me about my house, which was for sale, but I was still pleased to overhear them asking for me. From my room, I could hear that the maid didn’t want to let them in. She tried to tell them I wasn’t home, but I flung open my door and came out. My voice trembled when I greeted them, then my body followed suit. They laughed as they answered me, winking to each other, and making a joke out of my foolishness. They probably thought I didn’t notice. They didn’t seem to care one way or another, anyway. I knew very well what was going on, but didn’t intend to let it dampen my spirits. I jumped right in, wringing my hands, “Have you come to see the house? You’ll be glad you came.”

  First, I led them through my apartment, which was the smallest in the house. They examined everything. They even paused in front of a loose brick. The one with the cane, Signor Achille, tapped the walls, trying to determine how thick they were. They picked up objects off the tops of the furniture, they felt the curtains. One of the other gentlemen, Signor Leandro, leaned out the window to spit. Then we moved on to the other apartments, where my boarders lived. The boarders welcomed me with hostility and amazement. But since I was happy to pretend I wasn’t listening, they began to say nasty things about me to the three buyers. Plans were already being made for when they would take over as landlords. No one gave me any respect. I walked at the back of the group. They all stood and talked as long as they pleased, while I looked at the walls of my house, maybe for the last time ever. Then I stopped looking at the walls. I went in and out of rooms as if I didn’t know what I was doing or why I was even there.

  When we returned to my apartment, the third gentleman let me know his nickname was Piombo—for lead. He said, “We have already wasted too much time. What are you asking, Signor Torquato?”

  I wanted to remove myself from the entire affair. I didn’t even want to consult anyone else. I could have asked ten thousand, but I said eight thousand. I was worried even that would be too much, and the men would leave without making a counteroffer.

  Signor Achille chided me severely. “Which one of us do you want to sell to? There are three of us.”

  I responded, “I thought you all wanted to buy it, the three of you together.”

  Piombo answered, “I wouldn’t even give you three thousand for it.”

  I was confused and risked commenting, “That wouldn’t be enough to cover the mortgage, which is seven thousand. I was asking eight thousand so I could have at least one thousand left over for me.” Smiling, I turned red.

  “And what would you do with a thousand lire?”

  “I … I don’t have anything else. I could live a few months on that.”

  “One month more or less, what does it matter?”

  “That’s true,” I answered.

  “But you can’t make a deal with all three of us at the same time.”

  “I agree.”

  “So you should keep quiet.”

  Then Signor Leandro proposed, “I’ll give you seven thousand. That will take care of the mortgage.”

  “And for me?”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  I felt very sympathetic toward Signor Leandro. Meanwhile, the other two men were putting on a show of being upset that I had figured out there was only one real buyer in the group. The other two had come along to pretend they were interested in buying the house, to offer less and bring the price down. I understood perfectly well, but didn’t mind. Actually, I was offended that they thought they needed to resort to such tactics—as if I weren’t honest, and as if I would try to get more money than I would need to cover the mortgage. I didn’t want anything anyway. I wanted to be left with nothing.

  Signor Leandro, the real buyer, was a merchant, though I don’t know what he sold—maybe grain. He had a red face and a black mustache. Signor Achille was blond, and Piombo was old with gray hair. While we were busy having this discussion, I told Tecla, the maid, to make us all some coffee. They couldn’t have cared less. The real buyer said impatiently, “Enough chatter! Let’s get this over with. Do you accept or not? We don’t need to drink your coffee, we can afford to buy coffee for ourselves elsewhere.”

  I answered, “I only asked her to make coffee because I was trying to be friendly. I wanted to make you feel welcome.”

  “Who cares!”

  So the old man said, “Rather than making coffee, you could give me the chance to make an offer. I wouldn’t give you more than six thousand for this house.”

  The blond man shook his head, as if he pitied the other two men for their stupidity, offering me all that money. It seemed I had set them against each other. This made me feel so embarrassed and humiliated I wanted to just give them the house, but there was still the mortgage to think of. Now I was ashamed of my mortgage because it didn’t leave me free to act as I would have liked under the circumstances.

  Signor Leandro continued, “If you are satisfied with my first offer, even though I already regret it, we can draw up the contract today at my lawyer’s office.”

  I couldn’t have possibly refused. Hoping he hadn’t noticed how fragile I was feeling, I proposed, “I can come before lunch, if that would be better for you?”

  But he was offended. “I have other, much more important things than this to take care of!”

  In order to stop him from speaking to me so rudely, I said, “Forgive me. I had no idea.”

  “Let’s stop the small talk, okay? Two o’clock, no later, I’ll meet you at my lawyer’s office.”

  I was embarrassed I didn’t know who his lawyer was, but I had to take the risk of asking him. He told me his lawyer was Sig. Bianchi, Esquire—“Do you know where his office is?”

  “If I could just have his address—I wouldn’t want to make any mistakes.”

  Tecla had brought the coffee in the meantime. But it had absolutely no flavor and was burnt, so I was at an utter loss for words and very concerned they would notice how awful it was.

  Signor Achille, the blond man, said: “Now that you have forced your coffee on us, don’t you think we should discuss the brokerage fee for me and him?” He pointed to Piombo with his cane.

  As if I had just begun to wake up, I answered, “The brokerage fee?”

  “Of course! Do you think we came along for fresh air?”

  “But I don’t have a cent!”

  Now I didn’t know if they were ever going to forgive me. Indeed, Signor Achille raised his cane as though he were going to crack me over the head.

  “Do you think so little of us?” He grabbed my arm. I wanted to tell them they should get the fee from the buyer, but I was too worried about how Piombo would react.
I looked around and, pale with emotion, I said, “If you please, I could give you this wardrobe …”

  “Is that all you have?”

  I responded quickly, hoping to make everything seem more friendly, “There’s my bed over there. And the copper pans in the kitchen.”

  “Are they still good?”

  “It’s all still good,” and I asked the maid to bring some pans in to show.

  “I thought we were going to do serious business here!” said the old man Piombo with a look of indulgence.

  Which made my heart ache. But I just didn’t have anything else to give them. I even scanned the ceiling for something, but there was really nothing left at all.

  They drank the coffee and finished the sugar, eating whole chunks of it at a time. I preferred not to fill my cup, hoping they would realize I had made the coffee especially for them. I really wanted them to know that. But they didn’t so much as thank me. Piombo suggested, “Why don’t you add these cups to the brokerage fee, Signor Torquato?” At that, Signor Achille landed him a blow on the neck. “And which one of us should he give them to?”

  In order to calm Signor Achille down, I said, “I don’t use those cups anymore.”

  The buyer picked his nose. He was already immersed in making plans for the house. To that end he asked me, “When can the rooms be vacated?”

  I had been thinking about staying on for another few days, but since he had asked so directly, I answered, “I can be out today, as soon as we’ve drawn up the contract.”

  “Good. Good!”

  “I’m sorry I can’t leave sooner.”

  “It is a shame.”

  At this point, I began to feel as if my heart were being wrenched from my body. And he seemed to notice my mood immediately; he asked in a threatening tone, “You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”

  I responded with some effort, “No no! Quite the opposite! I was thinking of something else.”

  “That’s all we need now, for you to have second thoughts! We’re all adults here, not children! You probably haven’t thought about the fact that these two men here witnessed our agreement.”

  “I assure you,” I said, “I was thinking about something else!”

  “God willing, you seem to have your wits about you.” He walked over to a wall and said, “Tomorrow I’m sending someone over to clean up all these rooms and reinforce the cross beams. I’m going to have him check the roof, too, because the boarders on the top floor told me there’s a drip when it rains.”

  “Yes, it’s true, there’s a broken tile. I haven’t fixed it, because I didn’t want to spend the money.”

  “Then I’m going to have him redo the facade and paint the shutters. The whole thing is going to cost me another thousand. Doesn’t that seem like a lot of money to you?”

  I was impressed by all this work he was planning, and offered, “Then you’ll see what a beautiful house this can be!”

  “Did you think we were going to let it go to ruin the way you did?”

  It was thoughtless the way he talked to me. His tone suggested I had done something wrong. I was left without an answer for him. No matter how hard I concentrated, I couldn’t seem to come up with any words that would express my feelings. All I wanted to do was to stop him from talking to me like that. But he was blaming everything on me and I was hurt. I couldn’t think straight, so I said, “I’ll leave my family pictures on the walls, I don’t know where else to put them …”

  “You can throw those out.”

  “Are they in your way?”

  “Didn’t I just get finished telling you I’m going to clean this place up!”

  Then he took Signor Achille’s cane and knocked down almost the entire row of pictures, the ones without frames. I would have liked to pick them up, but decided to wait until after they had left. I really did want them to know that those pictures were of my mother and sister, who were both dead now. Maybe then they would understand how I felt. But I didn’t dare say anything. Signor Leandro was the new landlord and it was he who had knocked everything down. I didn’t want to do anything to upset them. There was a photograph of my father still hanging on the wall above where the others had been, so I said, “Knock that one down, too!”

  But he wasn’t interested in such nonsense, and shrugged his shoulders. What he did, instead, was to grab hold of an old flower vase I’d been keeping. It was a memento of my sister. When he realized that the dust on the vase had dirtied his fingers, he said, “I shouldn’t have touched it.”

  “Would you like to wash up?” I offered.

  Signor Leandro decided to use his handkerchief instead, even though soiling it appeared to anger him greatly. I had become terrified that something else would happen as a result of his curiosity. So I suggested, “We can go down now, if you think it’s best.”

  But one of the others asked, “Do you know if your maid steals things? Keep in mind that she’s responsible for this stuff and it’s all ours now.”

  My hand at my heart, I answered, “I swear that not a crumb will be missing!”

  “Well, just to be sure, it would be better if you gave us the keys now. That way the maid can leave with us and we’ll lock up.”

  “If you are at all concerned, we must do just as you say. Tecla, come! We’re all leaving together.”

  The maid, who was an old widow, said, “And when will I get the chance to collect a bundle of my things?”

  The buyer answered, “I’ll let you in, if you come back tonight.”

  “But what about my pay for this past month?”

  The three of them burst out laughing. I was so embarrassed I didn’t know what to say.

  “We’ll talk about it outside.”

  Signor Achille said, “Wouldn’t that be something if you couldn’t sell your house because of a maid!”

  I told him, “She doesn’t understand all this. She is not well educated. But she’ll leave with me. I’ll make sure she obeys.”

  The five of us all left together. Tecla was the last out, and she closed the door.

  The only thing I could do then was go to lunch. At two o’clock on the dot I was at the lawyer’s. Actually, I was the first to arrive. I signed the deed, which had been written on official paper, and I wrote my name as beautifully as I knew how, even though my hand was trembling. I tried to figure out if they were happy with me and whether I might have said something to contradict the impression I would have liked them to have of me. I waited to see if they wanted anything else. But the lawyer said, “You’re all set!” And he put a red stamp on the contract.

  Signor Leandro dismissed me, saying, “You may leave now, Signor Torquato.”

  I said goodbye, as I always do, with respect. Nobody answered. They were already talking amongst themselves by the time I reached the door.

  I climbed down the stairs from the lawyer’s office, walking as if a weight had been lifted from off me. I don’t remember what I did next, or how I spent the rest of the day. By evening I had nothing to eat and nowhere to sleep. I was exhausted, but did everything I could to be strong. It started pouring rain as night fell. So I went to find shelter under the drainpipes of my house that was sold now. I was so sad. I wanted to be happy, or at least as happy as I had been that morning, for I knew this was the hour when my boarders ate supper and the people down in the neighborhood usually played the piano. Those neighbors were always playing some new polka.

  ***

  AFTERWORD

  THE MYSTERIOUS ACTS OF AN UNSUNG MASTER

  Pirandello and Borgese encouraged him. Bilenchi and Moravia celebrated him. Virtually anonymous during his lifetime, ignored for half a century after his death, Federigo Tozzi (1883-1920) has come now to be recognized as one of the masters of modern Italian letters. Tozzi was a prolific writer, producing an extraordinary bulk of work—novels, essays, histories, plays, poetry, book-length aphorisms—before he died at thirty-seven. His more than one hundred short stories are stylized, structured, personal and disarming
ly complex. Employing an unassuming form of realism, yet fascinated by the preoccupations of psychology, Tozzi’s work offers innovations in form, allegory, private symbolism, and navigates the cardinal directions of Modernist narrative. Through him, we come to a deeper understanding of twentieth-century Italian literature. Tozzi remains the quintessential, yet delicate voice of an antihero; a man who struggled to find a form with which to portray his own tormented life experiences at the dawn of the age of the memoir. The intimate fictions of his short stories never once, however, abandon artifice. Tozzi juggles words like a poet, depicts landscapes expressively like a symbolist, nudges meaning out of connotation and parable.

  Tozzi’s biography reveals a difficult and bewildering character—somewhat more akin to the gloomy, awkward antiheroes of his stories than one might want to think. While his colleagues tended to represent the neuroses of their protagonists as metaphors for the crises of modernity, Tozzi, rather, seems to have authored his own crisis. Divorcing himself from his father’s world as property owner and restaurateur in Siena, Federigo was staunchly a literato. He did, however, inherit his father’s violent temperament. Expelled from four schools for bad behavior, he finally educated himself in classical and Italian literature, art history, socialism and psychology at the public library. A social misfit, he spent several years in self-imposed seclusion, leaving the house only at night, which earned him the local nickname of il pazzo (the madman). His doting mother died when he was twelve and his relationship with his father was riddled with antagonism—the two argued about religion, politics, management of the family estate and women, especially his father’s flagrant womanizing. Federigo’s own relations with women were similarly tempestuous; he was abusive, jealous and unfaithful. His eventual marriage seemed to function best when the couple was separated, communicating via letter—the mode of their early courtship. His fiction often portrays irreconcilable marriages, and many of his protagonists fall hopelessly and inarticulately in love with intelligent prostitutes, fallen or married women—unattainable figures.