Difficult Loves

by Italo Calvino

  It must be said that only a lucky conjunction of circumstances had rewarded Enrico Gnei with this adventure: a party at some friends’ house, a special, fleeting mood of the lady’s – a woman otherwise controlled and hardly prone to obeying whims – a slight alcoholic stimulation, whether real or feigned, and in addition a rather favorable logistic combination at the moment of good-byes: all this and not any personal charm of Gnei’s – or, rather, only his discreet and somewhat anonymous looks which would mark him as an undemanding, unobtrusive companion – had produced the unexpected result of that night. He was well aware of all this and, modest by nature, he considered his good luck all the more precious. He knew also that the event would have no sequel; nor did he complain of that, because a steady relationship would have created problems too awkward for his usual way of living. The perfection of the adventure lay in its having begun and ended in the space of a night. Therefore Enrico Gnei that morning was a man who has received what he could most desire in the world.

  The lady’s house was in the hill district. Gnei came down a green and fragrant boulevard. It was not yet the hour when he was accustomed to leave home for the office. The lady had made him slip out now, so the servants wouldn’t see. The fact that he hadn’t slept didn’t bother him, in fact it gave him a kind of unnatural lucidity, an arousal no longer of the senses but of the intellect. A gust of wind, a buzzing, an odor of trees seemed to him things he should somehow grasp and enjoy; he couldn’t become accustomed again to humbler ways of savoring beauty.

  As he was a methodical sort of man, getting up in a strange house, dressing in haste, without shaving, left in him an impression of disturbed habits; for a moment he thought of dashing home to shave and tidy himself up before going to the office. He would have had the time, but Gnei immediately dismissed the idea; he preferred to convince himself it was late, because he was seized by the fear that his house, the repetition of daily acts, would dispel the rich and extraordinary atmosphere in which he now moved.

  He decided that his day would follow a calm and generous curve, to retain as far as possible the inheritance of that night. His memory, if he could patiently reconstruct the hours he had passed, second by second, promised him boundless Edens. And letting his thoughts stray thus, without haste Enrico Gnei went to the tram terminus.

  The tram, almost empty, was waiting for the hour when its schedule began. Some drivers were there, smoking. Gnei whistled as he climbed aboard, his overcoat open, flapping; he sat down, sprawling slightly, then immediately assumed a more citified position, pleased that he had thought to correct himself promptly but not displeased by the carefree attitude that had come to him naturally.

  The neighborhood was sparsely inhabited, and the inhabitants were not early risers. On the tram there was an elderly housewife, two workmen having an argument, and himself, the contented man. Sound, morning people. He found them likeable; he, Enrico Gnei, was for them a mysterious gentleman, mysterious and content, never seen before on this tram at this hour. Where could he come from? they were perhaps asking themselves now. And he gave them no clue: he was looking at the wistaria. He was a man who looks at the wistaria like a man who knows how wistaria should be looked at: he was aware of this, Enrico Gnei was. He was a passenger who hands the money for his ticket to the conductor, and between him and the conductor there is a perfect passenger-conductor relationship; it couldn’t be better. The tram moved down towards the river; it was a great life.

  Enrico Gnei got off downtown and went to a café. Not the usual one. A café with mosaic walls. It had just opened; the cashier hadn’t arrived yet; the barman was starting up the coffee-machine. Gnei strode like a master to the center of the place, went to the counter, ordered a coffee, chose a sweet biscuit in the glass pastry case, and bit into it, first with hunger, then with the expression of a man with a bad taste in his mouth after a wild night.

  A newspaper lay open on the counter, Gnei glanced at it. He hadn’t bought a paper this morning, and to think that, on leaving his house, that was always the first thing he did. He was a habitual reader, meticulous; he kept up with even the slightest events and there wasn’t a page he skipped without reading. But that day his gaze ran over the headlines and his thoughts remained unconnected. Gnei couldn’t manage to read: perhaps, who knows?, stirred by the food, by the hot coffee or by the dulling of the morning air’s effect, a wave of sensations from the night came over him. He shut his eyes, raised his chin, and smiled.

  Attributing this pleased expression to the sports news in the paper, the barman said to him: “Ah, you’re glad Boccadasse will be playing again on Sunday?”, and he pointed to the headline that announced the return of a center-half. Gnei read, recovered himself, and instead of exclaiming, as he would have liked, Ah, I’ve got something a lot better than Boccadasse to think about, my friend!, he confined himself to saying: “Hm . . . right . . .” And, unwilling to let a conversation about the forthcoming match disrupt the flow of his feelings, he turned towards the cashier’s desk where, in the meanwhile, a young girl with a disenchanted look had installed herself.

  “So,” Gnei said, in a tone of intimacy, “I owe you for a coffee and a cake.” The cashier yawned. “Sleepy? Too early for you?” Gnei asked. Without smiling, the cashier nodded. Gnei assumed an air of complicity: “Aha! didn’t get enough sleep last night, eh?” He thought for a moment, then, persuading himself he was with a person who would understand, he added: “I still haven’t gone to bed.” Then he was silent, enigmatic, discreet. He paid, said good morning to everyone, and left. He went to the barber’s.

  “Good morning, sir. Have a seat, sir,” the barber said in a professional falsetto that to Enrico Gnei was like a wink of the eye.

  “Um hum, give me a shave!” he replied with sceptical condescension, looking at himself in the mirror. His face, with the towel knotted around his neck, appeared like an independent object, and some trace of weariness, no longer corrected by the general bearing of his person, was beginning to show; but it was still quite a normal face, like that of a traveler who has got off the train at dawn, or a gambler who has spent the night over his cards; except there was a certain look that marked the special nature of his weariness – Gnei observed smugly – a certain relaxed, indulgent expression, that of a man who has had his share of things, and is prepared to take the good with the bad.

  Far different caresses – Gnei’s cheeks seemed to say to the brush that encased them in warm foam – far different caresses from yours are what we’re used to!

  Scrape, razor – his skin seemed to say – you won’t scrape off what I have felt and know!

  It was, for Gnei, as if a conversation filled with allusions were taking place between him and the barber, who, on the contrary, was also silent, devoting himself to handling his implements. He was a young barber, somewhat taciturn, more from lack of imagination than from a reserved character; and in fact, attempting to start a conversation, he said: “Some year, eh? The good weather’s already here. Spring . . .”

  The remark reached Gnei right in the middle of his imaginary conversation, and the word “Spring” became charged with meanings and hidden references. “Aaah! Spring . . .” he said, a knowing smile on his foaming lips. And here the conversation died.

  But Gnei felt the need to talk, to express, to communicate. And the barber didn’t say anything further. Two or three times Gnei started to open his mouth when the young man lifted the razor, but he couldn’t find any words, and the razor came down again over his lip and chin.

  “What did you say?” the barber asked, having seen Gnei’s lips move, without any sound coming from them.

  And Gnei, with all his warmth, said: “Sunday, Boccadasse’ll be back with the team!”

  He had almost shouted; the other customers turned their half-lathered faces towards him; the barber had remained with his razor suspended in air.

  “Ah, you’re a *** fan?” he said, a bit mortified. “I’m a follower of ***”, and he named the city’s other footba
ll team.

  “Oh, *** has an easy game Sunday; they can’t lose . . .’ but his warmth was already extinguished.

  Shaven, he came outside. The city was loud and bustling, there were glints of gold on the windows, water flew over the fountains, the trams’ poles struck sparks from the overhead wires. Enrico Gnei proceeded as if on the crest of a wave, bursts of vigor alternating in his heart with fits of lassitude.

  “Why, it’s Gnei!”

  “Why, it’s Bardetta!”

  He ran into an old schoolmate he hadn’t seen for ten years. They traded the usual remarks, how time had gone by, how they hadn’t changed. Actually Bardetta had rather faded, and the vulpine, slightly crafty expression of his face had become accentuated. Gnei knew that Bardetta was in business, but had a rather murky record and had been living abroad for some time.

  “Still in Paris?”

  “Venezuela. I’m about to go back. What about you?”

  “Still here,” and, in spite of himself, he smiled in embarrassment, as if he were ashamed of his sedentary life, and at the same time irked because he couldn’t make it clear, at first sight, that his existence in reality was more full and satisfied than might be imagined.

  “Are you married?” Bardetta asked.

  To Gnei this seemed an opportunity to rectify the first impression. “Bachelor!” he said. “Still a bachelor, ha, ha! We’re a vanishing race!” Yes, Bardetta, a man without scruples, about to leave again for America, with no ties now to the city and its gossip, was the ideal person; with him Gnei could give free rein to his euphoria, to him alone Gnei could confide his secret. Indeed, he could even exaggerate a little, talk of last night’s adventure as if it were, for him, something habitual. “That’s right,” he insisted. “The old guard of bachelors, us two, eh?”, meaning to refer to Bardetta’s one-time reputation as a successful chaser of chorus girls.

  And he was already studying the remark he would make to arrive at the subject, something in the order of “why, only last night, for example . . .”

  “To tell the truth,” Bardetta said, with a somewhat shy smile, “I’m married and have four children . . .”

  Gnei heard the remark as he was recreating around himself the atmosphere of a completely heedless, epicurean world; and he was thrown a bit off-balance by it. He stared at Bardetta; only then did he notice the man’s shabby, down-trodden look, his worried, tired manner. “Ah, four children . . .” he said, in a dull voice. “Congratulations! And how are things going over there?”

  “Hmph . . . not much doing . . . It’s the same all over . . . Scraping by . . . feeding the family . . .” and he stretched out his arms with a defeated attitude.

  Gnei, with his instinctive humility, felt compassion and remorse: how could he have thought of trumpeting his own good luck to impress a wreck of a man like this? “Oh, here too, I can tell you,” he said quickly, changing his tone again, “we barely manage, living from day to day . . .”

  “Well, let’s hope things will get better . . .”

  “Yes, we have to keep hoping . . .”

  They exchanged all best wishes, said good-bye, and each went off in a different direction. Immediately, Gnei felt overwhelmed with regret: the possibility of confiding in Bardetta, that Bardetta he had first imagined, seemed to him an immense boon, now lost forever. Between the two of them – Gnei thought – a man-to-man conversation could have taken place, good-natured, a shade ironic, without any showing off, without boasting, his friend would have left for America, bearing a memory that would remain unchangeable; and Gnei vaguely saw himself preserved in the thoughts of that imaginary Bardetta, there, in his Venezuela, remembering old Europe – poor, but always faithful to the cult of beauty and pleasure – and thinking instinctively of his friend, the schoolmate seen again after so many years, always with that prudent appearance and yet completely sure of himself: the man who hadn’t abandoned Europe and virtually symbolized its ancient wisdom of life, its wary passions . . . Gnei grew excited: thus the adventure of the previous night would have been able to leave a mark, take on a definitive meaning, instead of vanishing like sand in a sea of empty days, all alike.

  Perhaps he should have talked about it to Bardetta anyway, even if Bardetta was a poor wretch with other things on his mind, even at the cost of humiliating him. And besides, how could he be sure that Bardetta really was a failure? Perhaps he just said that and he was still the old fox he had been in the past . . . I’ll overtake him – Gnei thought – I’ll start a conversation, and I’ll tell him.

  He ran ahead along the sidewalk, turned into the square, proceeded under the arcade. Bardetta had disappeared. Gnei looked at the time; he was late; he hurried towards his job. To calm himself, he decided that this telling others of his affairs, like a schoolboy, was too alien to his character, his ways; and this was why he had refrained from doing it. Thus, reconciled with himself, his pride restored, he punched the time-clock at the office.

  For his job, Gnei harbored that amorous passion that, though unconfessed, makes clerks’ hearts warm, once they come to know the secret sweetness and the furious fanaticism that can charge the most habitual bureaucratic routine, the answering of indifferent correspondence, the precise keeping of a ledger. Perhaps this morning his unconscious hope was that amorous stimulation and clerkish passion would become a single thing, merge one with the other, to go on burning and never be extinguished. But the sight of his desk, the familiar look of a pale green folder with “pending” written on it, was enough to make him feel the sharp contrast between the dizzying beauty from which he had just parted and his usual days.

  He walked around the desk several times, without sitting down. He had been overwhelmed by a sudden, urgent love for the beautiful lady. And he could find no rest. He entered the next office where the accountants, careful and dissatisfied, were tapping on their adding-machines.

  He began walking past each of them, saying hello, nervously cheery, sly, basking in the memory, without hopes for the present, mad with love among the accountants. As I move now in your midst, in your office – he was thinking – so I was turning in her blankets, not long ago. “Yes, that’s right, Marinotti!” he said, banging his fist on a fellow-clerk’s papers.

  Marinotti raised his eyeglasses and asked slowly: “Say, did they take an extra four thousand lire out of your salary this month, too, Gnei?”

  “No, my friend, in February,” Gnei began, and at the same time he recalled a movement the lady had made, late, in the morning hours, that to him had seemed a new revelation and had opened immense, unknown possibilities of love – “no, they already deducted mine then,” he went on, in a mild voice, and he moved his hand gently before him, in mid-air, pursing his lips, “they took the whole amount from my February pay, Marinotti.”

  He would have liked to add further details and explanations, just to keep talking, but he wasn’t able to.

  This is the secret – he decided, going back to his office – at every moment, in everything I do or say, everything I have experienced must be implicit. But he was consumed by an anxiety, that he could never live up to what he had been, could never succeed in expressing, with hints or, still less, with explicit words, and perhaps not even with his thoughts, the fullness he knew he had reached.

  The telephone rang. It was the general manager. He was asking for the background on the Giuseppieri complaint.

  “It’s like this, sir,” Gnei explained over the telephone, “Giuseppieri and Company on the sixth of March . . .” and he wanted to say: You see, when she slowly said: are you going? . . . I realized I shouldn’t let go of her hand . . .

  “Yes, sir, the complaint referred to goods previously billed . . .” and he thought to say: Until the door closed behind us, I still wasn’t sure . . .

  “No,” he explained, “the claim wasn’t made through the local office . . .” and he meant: But I realized only then that she was entirely different from the way I had imagined her, so cold and haughty . . .

  He hung u
p. His brow was beaded with sweat. He felt tired now, burdened with sleep. It had been a mistake not to stop by at the house and freshen up, change: even the clothes he was wearing irked him.

  He went to the window. There was a large courtyard surrounded by high walls, full of balconies, but it was like being in a desert. The sky could be seen above the roofs, no longer limpid, but bleached, covered by an opaque patina, as in Gnei’s memory an opaque whiteness was wiping out every memory of sensations, and the presence of the sun was marked by a vague, still patch of light, like a secret pang of grief.

  (1953)

  The adventure of a photographer

  WHEN SPRING comes, the city’s inhabitants, by the hundreds of thousands, go out on Sundays with a leather case over their shoulder. And they photograph one another. They come back as happy as hunters with bulging game-bags; they spend days waiting, with sweet anxiety, to see the developed pictures (anxiety to which some add the subtle pleasure of alchemistic manipulations in the dark-room, forbidding any intrusion by members of the family, relishing the harsh acid smell), and it is only when they have the photos before their eyes that they seem to take tangible possession of the day they spent, only then the mountain stream, the movement of the child with his pail, the glint of the sun on the wife’s legs take on the irrevocability of what has been and can no longer be doubted. The rest can drown in the unreliable shadow of memory.

  Seeing a good deal of his friends and colleagues, Antonino Paraggi, a non-photographer, sensed a growing isolation. Every week he discovered that the conversations of those who praise the sensitivity of a filter or discourse on the number of DINs were swelled by the voice of another to whom he had confided until yesterday, convinced that they were shared, his sarcastic remarks about an activity that to him seemed so unexciting, so lacking in surprises.