A Life

by Italo Svevo

  Alfonso forced a smile. The continual effort to appear at ease tired him. If he could have found a way, he would have left at once.

  Francesca, sitting at the piano, had taken a bundle of music on her knees and was telling Annetta the titles. Annetta rejected each with a shake of the head, keeping a hand to her cheek as a sign of reflection. Finally she cried with a burst of laughter: “That one! That one!”

  After a few introductory notes the Signorina started up a rudimentary but lively accompaniment.

  Annetta began to sing in a sweet level voice, then to Alfonso’s great surprise she began to sway to the rhythm and pretend to run. Francesca roared with laughter; Macario laughed too, and even the singer could not contain herself, to the grave detriment of the song itself which broke off again and again. Then she became serious again, and so did Macario: Alfonso had only laughed in order to do as the others did.

  As Annetta sang, she assumed various postures, pretended to be tired, crossed her arms over her breast as if to run better, avoided an obstacle which she cleverly mimed, asked pardon of a person she had bumped into as she ran.

  Alfonso knew French, but he had a poor ear, so he found it difficult to understand. Macario, staring fixedly at Annetta and speaking in one phrase at a time in order to interrupt the song less often said:

  “It’s a song sung … by a man … running after a bus,” he interrupted himself and murmured admiringly: “You’re doing it splendidly!”

  Now Annetta really was tired; she was still pretending to run but jerking around less. She put a hand to her breast, and her voice broke into gasps.

  “I can’t do any more,” she said and stopped.

  Francesca, laughing, started the accompaniment again. After a few moments of standing still Annetta began to sing again. Her voice sounded fresh and sweet. She was now singing less vivaciously and pausing on a note or two, prolonging it with such feeling that Alfonso, who had not understood the words, began to find this song sad.

  Those sweet notes showed him why he felt so miserable. They made him long to hear a friendly word from the superb creature with such a fine voice and realize that so far he had not had one. She had greeted him brusquely, interrupted ruthlessly when he had begun to speak, and not addressed a word to him. Why? She had never seen him before. It must all be contempt for an inferior, someone badly dressed; now he knew how badly dressed he was compared with Macario.

  When Annetta stopped, Macario clapped with enthusiasm and Alfonso joined the applause. He rather overdid it, and soon realized this, but did not want them to know he was offended. The pretence made him suffer greatly and he realized that he had definitely lost all the small store of ease which he had brought with him. Macario in his enthusiasm held for a long time a hand which Annetta left in his.

  “The Signorina speaks French very well!” said Alfonso as if asking a question. No one bothered to reply, and he was silent, feeling himself a stupid bore.

  Annetta served tea, helped by a maid. She insisted on Macario also taking something else, and told the maid to carry a cup over to Alfonso, whose eyes were agleam with anger. He began to feel he should react; what worried him most was a fear that Macario, seeing him put up so humbly with such impertinence, would despise him. He would have given his eye tooth to hit on a suitably caustic phrase.

  “I never take tea,” he said then in courteous tones as if asking to be excused, nettled at finding no other phrase and at being unable to give the words any other intonation.

  “Would you care for some brandy?” asked Annetta, without looking at him.

  “No,” was all he said, but an involuntary bow made even this monosyllable sound courteous.

  Macario now began addressing himself more and more to Alfonso, who thought that he might have noticed Annetta’s odd behaviour and wanted to make up for it by his own attentions. Alfonso answered Macario more calmly but still in monosyllables.

  “D’you play an instrument?”

  “No.”

  Macario congratulated him; there was nothing worse than a dilettante strummer.

  “Singing, as my cousin does, is all right. One can’t understand all her words, but she has quite a pleasant voice. It pleases even me: my enthusiasm a short time ago was genuine.”

  Annetta thanked him ironically, but it was obvious that she was more offended by the reproof than she wished to appear. This was also realized by Alfonso with deep satisfaction. Now she too was searching, without finding, for an answer to wound with or defend herself by.

  Her tone had been jesting for some time, but as Macario continued to pay her compliments on her beauty and grace but did not withdraw what he had said, eventually she showed her annoyance openly. Looking serious and even a little pale she cried: “Tell me definitely where I went wrong? As criticism,” she was trying to be pungent, “joking’s not enough.”

  Macario began laughing so heartily that Alfonso envied him.

  “D’you set so much store by your reputation as a performer? Forgive my comment, I withdraw it!”

  Alfonso was the first to get up. Francesca also rose to her feet and asked him to give her good wishes to Signora Carolina. Annetta remained seated, arguing with her cousin. But the latter now also decided to go and called to Alfonso: “If you wait a moment, I’ll come with you.”

  Flattered, Alfonso waited.

  Macario, still very gay, said to Annetta as he shook hands: “Another time, dear cousin, don’t doubt it, I’ll give my criticism in detail.”

  Joking but haughty, Annetta replied: “I don’t care; if I need correction I’ll find a way to correct myself.”

  She offered her hand to Alfonso too; their two hands touched, both inert, and fell. Seeing her so pale, Alfonso had a second’s alarm followed quickly by a sense of satisfaction at having found a way of showing indifference.

  In the street the two men stopped.

  “Are you going that way?” asked Macario, pointing towards the sea.

  “No,” replied Alfonso, “towards the Corso, actually.”

  “Do please give me the pleasure of your company for a little of the way.”

  He buttoned his fur coat, while Alfonso thrust his hands into the pockets of his overcoat with a shiver. Without waiting for a reply, Macario moved slowly towards the seashore.

  “Is this the first time you have seen my cousin?” On hearing Alfonso’s “yes”, he asked “And the last time too, eh?” with a laugh which in the dark supplemented his habitual expression of amusement.

  Alfonso thought he showed great courage by replying frankly: “I hope so!”

  “It’s not worth being put out by women’s whims; my cousin’s a silly!”

  “I didn’t think so!” replied Alfonso with some emotion.

  Obviously Macario wanted to diminish the bad impression produced in Alfonso by Annetta’s behaviour.

  “D’you know why you were treated so coldly? One of my uncle’s clerks recently had begun to pay court to Annetta almost as soon as he was introduced. Apparently he even boasted of a correspondence between them. My uncle heard of it and had a good laugh at his daughter for some time. That clerk was a dark little man with short curly hair, and no fool. Annetta always acts by general maxims, and will have nothing more to do with her father’s employees.”

  They had reached the shore. The sea was rough, and there was the sound of waves crashing on the quay. In the darkness of the moonlit night, beyond buildings lined along the shore, the sea seemed a vast black emptiness. Only a revolving ray from the lighthouse was reflected in the water and lit its surface.

  Macario drew Alfonso off to the right towards the railway station.

  “I wish I hadn’t been invited. Anyway, you can be sure I won’t complain to anyone.”

  He had a suspicion that Macario wanted this promise.

  Macario began to laugh.

  “Oh, you can tell everyone for all I care! D’you think I’m so fond of my dear relatives? Didn’t you see how I enjoyed my little cousin taking offenc
e? Vain little thing!”

  Obviously he was no longer thinking of Annetta’s bearing towards Alfonso, but speaking on his own account, and with some agitation.

  “How could I praise her after hearing her sing that Gavroche song as if it came from Tosti? Very soon I’ll be able to lie about it, as I’ll have forgotten the song and will only remember her face looking so pretty in excitement. Don’t you feel that my cousin’s face isn’t lively enough, usually? Why—just as Napoleon was only really lucid on a battlefield, so my cousin is only really beautiful when she’s excited! It’s difficult to excite her though!”

  By the light of a street lamp Alfonso noticed he had not made the usual gesture. With pleasant frankness Alfonso then asked Macario if he was not really very fond of his cousin.

  “As for loving her …” he stopped to show he regretted his joke, and went on very seriously, “I love a different kind of girl. My cousin isn’t a girl, she’s a woman, and what’s more …” he gave a little laugh, “with so many gifts that at times she seems not to have done enough about them. She knows mathematics and philosophy, reads serious books for preference, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she understands them all, really understands them! She’s so scrupulously exact she might well be capable of telling me the whole contents. But an artist she’ll never be … Maybe during some instant of emotional disturbance …” Here he gesticulated so extravagantly that he might have been talking about some revolution. “She’s her father’s daughter … not her mother’s, who was a weak-minded ignoramus, pretty and nearly always attractive even when saying silly things. Annetta has an iron memory and outstanding mathematical qualities, a mind for the concrete and solid, like her father. They don’t understand character, they don’t appreciate music, they can’t distinguish an original picture from a bad copy. Now Annetta is interested in Chinese works of art; she’s the first to introduce them into our city, but she knows just as much as her authors tell her and understands nothing about them because she has no feeling for them. The only good picture they have in the house was bought by myself, of a road across rocks.”

  “I saw it, superb!” exclaimed Alfonso, and to give himself importance he asked: “Who is it by?”

  “I don’t remember the painter’s name, I remember the picture,” replied Macario. “I’m my aunt’s son.”

  Alfonso laughed, but Macario did not. Even when his remarks sounded jocular, they were said with some deep rancour, and Alfonso did not feel at ease speaking like that with him, a stranger. He began wondering whether Macario could be drunk and had not shown it at the Mallers.

  Worse came.

  “Certainly no man worth his salt would marry Annetta. D’you know the tales of Franco Sacchetti? They’re worth reading, or one unforgettable one, anyway. A friar stays at a house where he finds his host a weak man maltreated by his wife. In his anger the friar makes a vow to punish the woman by marrying her if circumstances allow. A plague comes; the husband dies and so do all the other friars of the monastery, which is then dissolved. The friar carries out his vow, marries the woman and, as he had intended, beats her. One would like to make a vow like that about Annetta, to destroy that rude and boring haughtiness of hers. One would get the worst of it, though, for when it came to the point one would find oneself the person beaten.”

  Maybe Macario had decided to tell truths in a tone which made them seem said in jest, and had unintentionally abandoned that tone. This occurred to Alfonso on seeing Macario now begin to explain why he was so loquacious.

  “Don’t think I’m in the habit of making such confidences to the first person who comes along. I find you sympathetic; believe me or not, but I do.”

  Alfonso, confused, muttered his thanks. Macario went on:

  “I’m glad you felt such a strong urge to revenge yourself on Annetta, and glad too that you didn’t satisfy it. Oh! I’m observant, denial’s useless! People aren’t stupid because they’re not ready with an offensive word. On the contrary!” Then, thinking he had justified himself, he added another crude comment, with a laugh, though: “When I come across women so active and aggressive, so disturbing, in fact, I think of an Englishman telling some overeager woman that he pays to kiss and not to be kissed!”

  On the station square he shook Alfonso’s hand, murmured a farewell, then left him and moved off towards a cafe. Alfonso felt cold and set off homewards at a run.

  V

  THAT YEAR there was a heatwave in May: for some weeks, from a cloudless sky, scorching beams that were anything but spring-like.

  “It’s not right for us to be sweating in May on such wretched pay,” said Ballina.

  Work had not yet slackened off. From Signor Cellani’s office, through Sanneo’s, into the correspondence room flowed huge piles of incoming letters. Even Giacomo grumbled at carrying them about.

  In June work began to lessen slightly, and Miceni, who had a methodical nature, explained to Alfonso the laws regulating this decrease.

  “In June the richest bankers, the brains of the banking world, the people who initiate speculations, withdraw to the country. Our daily work remains the same because they don’t influence that, but we haven’t the sudden rushes of work, the issues and conversions, that torture subordinates so. In July work lessens, not because of any change in the banks, but because the richer merchants begin their holidays. In August, our best month of the year, off go bank managers and the like, even shopkeepers. Only the bare essential number of clerks stays on.”

  Maller’s did not correspond to the rules. In May and June some clerks and department heads took their holidays; in July, Signor Cellani, the assistant manager; and Signor Maller had a few days in August.

  First to leave was Sanneo, who took a fortnight’s holiday even though he had a right to a month’s. The clerks said that Signor Sanneo could not bear to be deprived too long of his daily sustenance of post and polemics.

  Alfonso happened to be present when Sanneo gave his instructions to Miceni, who was to act for him in his absence. Sanneo’s office was next to Signor Cellani’s and darker because the light was cut off by a building opposite. This room also had carpets in winter, but, except for a comfortable wide desk of black wood handed on by the assistant manager, who had taken another, the furniture was identical to that in the other offices: two wooden cupboards with rough yellow paint, a chair with a plaited seat, and beside the only window another desk from which the shelf had been taken.

  Sanneo, seated, was handing over to Miceni, standing on his right, a big pile of letters one by one, pointing out exactly what he was to do on a given day or after receiving such-and-such a letter. Some letters he put back even after giving full instructions about them, observing with a wry look that there was no need for an immediate reply, and he would do it in his own time. Obviously he did not like handing over all his work to Miceni.

  Miceni returned to his room with his head high, his slight body tense, and a stiff step. He sat down and muttered with a smile of contempt: “As many explanations as if I’d joined the bank yesterday!” Then some details of his interview with Sanneo occurred to him and he laughed: “What’ll you bet that at the last moment he regrets going and stays?”

  Alfonso longed to get away and could not imagine others wanting to stay.

  Soon after, Sanneo came in to say he was deferring his departure till the next day. Miceni looked at Alfonso, and, when Sanneo went out, exclaimed angrily, “Was it worth keeping me there an hour and giving me all those instructions I didn’t need?”

  “They’ll be all right for tomorrow,” replied Alfonso, who could not understand anyone getting angry about business.

  “He’ll no more leave tomorrow than he has today.”

  But Sanneo did leave. That evening he went round the offices saying goodbye to the clerks. He gave a hand to Alfonso, who stuttered in wishing him a pleasant holiday and was thanked with a really kindly smile. In spite of what had been said, Alfonso thought he could see, in those restless eyes, a gleam of joy at a for
tnight’s freedom.

  Miceni occupied Sanneo’s room so as to be on hand for the directors. He received his orders straight from Signor Maller and Signor Cellani, and Alfonso envied the easy manner with which he treated these high personages.

  For Alfonso this was an interval of rest from all the copying he had to do for Sanneo, and afterwards he missed that fortnight. Miceni did not care whether large numbers of offers were sent out; to carry out his responsibilities all he asked for was the necessary work to be completed without errors. He had the sense to abandon Sanneo’s system at once. The latter had passed on current mail only to Miceni and two other clerks; all the others merely copied out letters and revised accounts: “One clerk who knows his job is worth a dozen who are fools,” Sanneo used to say. Miceni called on all their assistance, and Alfonso was given the job of writing short letters about contracts for Italy, less and more varied work than he had done till then.

  Alone in his room he found time to read books brought from home. He read no novels, still having a boy’s contempt for so-called ‘light’ literature. What he loved were his school texts, which reminded him of the happiest time of his life. One of these, a treatise on rhetoric containing a small anthology of classic writers, he read and re-read constantly. There was a lot in it about style flowing or not, and about language pure or impure, and Alfonso absorbed all this theory and dreamt of becoming a great writer who would unite good qualities and be immune from bad ones.

  Towards evening, a number of correspondence clerks would meet to gossip in Alfonso’s room, which was the most separate. When Signor Sanneo was there, they had to be on the alert all the time, as he would appear unexpectedly, always in a rush and shouting as he came in, whatever the hour, “Don’t waste time, now, don’t waste time!” Nobody risked a reply, and the group melted away like a flock dispersed by an angry sheep dog.

  Miceni, on the other hand, even now came to spend a quiet half-hour some evenings in Alfonso’s room. He would lie silently on an old sofa, tired but pleased by his day, rather worried by the importance of his work.