A Life

by Italo Svevo

  For a whole day Alfonso remained undecided. He had forgotten to ask the advice of Macario, who would have swept away all doubts with a single word. Anything at all doubtful eventually became important for Alfonso. He feared that by going he would bore Maller, who might show it, but if he didn’t, his absence would be taken as lack of respect.

  He was about to leave the bank, putting off the difficult decision till the next day, when it was made easier by seeing a number of clerks waiting in the passage to go into Maller’s office and welcome him. Quickly he decided to join them.

  Out of the manager’s room came old Marlucci, a Tuscan who always spoke regretfully of the grand-ducal government. He was about sixty and, by sitting for twenty years or so behind a big ledger, had become a great friend of Jassy. They came and went together, linked by the same misfortune, weakness of the legs; but while Jassy had a vacillating brain and weak, twitching hands, the Tuscan had calm black eyes and limpid and precise speech. Daily in his ledger he lined up his given quota of neat ordered figures, and there were no corrections in his books apart from those made necessary by other sections’ mistakes.

  Alfonso, following the impulse given by his preoccupation, asked him: “And what does one say to Signor Maller?”

  “If you don’t know, keep silent!” replied Marlucci laughing, and passed him by.

  There was no other employee except White with Maller, who was giving him instructions. A woman was sitting in the embrasure of the window; without looking at her Alfonso guessed this was Annetta and felt the blood rush to his heart.

  Signor Maller interrupted his consultation with White for an instant. He held out his hand to Alfonso and with a cold smile asked him if he were well. Then he withdrew his hand and began talking to White again.

  Alfonso was just leaving when he was stopped by a sweet, feminine voice which sounded out of place in that room: “Signor Nitti!”

  He stopped and turned round. It was Annetta. She was wearing a grey dress, with the grey veil of a little round hat raised over a white forehead. A chaste but matronly figure.

  She held out her hand.

  “Are you angry with me that you refuse to see me?”

  Alfonso protested that he really had not seen her. He was stuttering but saying more than was strictly necessary.

  “Not that I’m blaming you,” she said in a softer voice and so confidentially that he quivered with joyful surprise, worrying what the others present might think. “In fact you’re quite right. Now give me your hand and in a more friendly way than last time.”

  She smiled and gazed at him, expecting to find her kindness answered. Alfonso made an effort and smiled with gratitude. He was flattered at her showing that she remembered the details of that evening.

  She looked at her hand enclosed in Alfonso’s. Alfonso opened his and looked too. Her white plump hand, half-covered by a glove, lay in his rough one whose third finger was black with ink.

  “D’you often see my cousin?”

  “Almost every evening!”

  “He talks a lot of you!”

  “Thanks!” muttered Alfonso.

  These thanks were meant for Macario.

  “Is there any chance of seeing you at our home some time? You’ll be less bored than last time, you’ll see.”

  Alfonso muttered some vague words. From their sound she understood that he was putting himself at her disposal.

  “Come tomorrow evening. There may be a few friends. But don’t bother about them, as you don’t like people, they tell me. My home is always open to you.”

  Laughing, Maller got to his feet.

  “Dear friends, this room is a business office. If you wish to chatter, go into Signor Nitti’s room.”

  Annetta was not put out by this interruption. She answered her father by suggesting he should get his business over soon, or she would go off without waiting for him any longer. Alfonso she dismissed in a gentler tone and with a polite smile, maybe partly in pity at seeing him blushing to the roots of his hair.

  Soon after, White came to see him and, as Alchieri was there, tactfully spoke in a low voice.

  “Congratulations on the friendship you’ve struck up with Signora Annetta. She’s pretty but dangerous. Take care not to fall in love with her.”

  The next evening Macario took him along to Annetta’s. On entering the hall Alfonso remembered his state of mind when leaving it some months before, and that visit seemed to assume great importance in his life. In fact Annetta had made him feel bitter at the very start of his life in town, and this bitterness had left its imprint on all he had done afterwards. It had increased his natural shyness and made his relations with Maller, Sanneo, and all his superiors more difficult. Now at last he would have somewhere other than the Lanuccis’ where he could allow himself to behave not just as a humble inferior.

  On the way to Annetta’s Macario gave him a description of the people whom he would presumably meet there.

  First Spalati, a teacher of languages and Italian literature from whom Annetta was taking lessons. To judge from his description, Macario did not like him much. He proclaimed himself a ‘realist’ but would inveigh pedantically against any Italian writer who used words not legitimized by Petrarch. Macario admitted he was also a very handsome young man, and obviously it was this quality which deprived him of his biographer’s sympathy.

  In the desire to surround herself as soon as possible with people suitable to her new interests, Annetta had drawn on her most intelligent acquaintances. Among others Fumigi, a relative of Maller’s, aged about forty. Macario said that he was known to be yearning to get free of his office work in order to dedicate himself wholly to his favourite study, mathematics. He was head of an important firm of merchants, and gossip had it that he could perfectly well be free if he wished to, which was Macario’s opinion too. It was quite natural that other desires had eventually been overridden by Fumigi’s hard everyday work.

  “I think his only real inclination now is towards the kind of mathematics whose results can actually be touched. He keeps up his mathematician’s air because it must be pleasant to be looked upon as future discoverer of how to square the circle.”

  Annetta’s evenings were also frequented by a young doctor called Prarchi, who had recently left university and was one of the few people in this world passionately attached to his own job and not to that of others, according to Macario. “Annetta met him at a health spa, and with the small amount of good taste she has and which she owes to me, she likes to hear real things talked about, including medicine. The young man has one big defect, an exaggerated opinion of his own qualities. He so much enjoys talking about medicine that he sometimes even talks about doses. Actually Annetta has confided to me, and this must remain between us, that all this company bores her. Last year when she had genuine friendships with other people who were of less quality but lived better, I must confess the house was jollier.”

  On reaching the landing they heard the sound of a piano. Macario asked Santo who was playing.

  “Signorina Annetta!” then replying as usual more than he was asked, “For the last hour or so!”

  “Oh, the wonderful patience of these people!” exclaimed Macario, turning to Alfonso. He asked Santo who they were.

  “There’s no one here!”

  “Isn’t it Wednesday today?” asked Macario, perplexed.

  “Yes, sir. But the Signorina sent to tell Professor Spalati, I know because I went myself, not to come as she had a bad headache.”

  “Then ask the Signorina if she feels like receiving us, as her headache may be for us too.”

  The sound of the piano stopped and Annetta came to meet them at the living-room door.

  “Do come in!” she cried. “My headache’s gone.”

  Macario had preceded Alfonso. He stopped firmly: “On condition you don’t give it to us. Promise not to play any more!”

  “You know quite well that you’d have to beg me to play if you were listening!”

  The
y entered. Annetta concentrated on Alfonso and let Macario sit down alone.

  Alfonso felt quite free of embarrassment, which must have been melted by Annetta’s cordiality. He found himself thinking up fine phrases as if he were alone in the room; but when he tried to say them, he lost his nerve and cut them short by stuttering.

  He muttered that he would so much like to hear Annetta play, while what he intended to say, when stopped by Macario’s taunt, was that if he’d had a headache, the sound of the piano would have cured it. Annetta thanked him, after helping him to complete his phrase, and he realized how very easy it was to cut a good figure with those who have no intention of making one cut a bad one.

  It was actually her headache, said Annetta, that had driven her to the piano. Macario did not speak; and the pair, conversing for the first time, kept to the same subject as though fearing they would not find another if they left it. Annetta said once more that she could understand music giving others a headache, but that the concentration needed to play could be a distraction from worry or sickness.

  Alfonso admired the truth of this observation and would have liked to confirm it by quoting one of his philosophers who equated pains with worry and suggested distraction as a remedy for both. But he kept silent and nodded a smile of assent. At the last moment he had taken fright at those simple but well-linked phrases of his and heroically renounced saying them, rather than expose himself to the danger of mixing them up.

  What made him rather uneasy was a careful examination of his own feelings. He had begun to do this the moment he had crossed the threshold of that room. This woman was certainly not indifferent to him. But he had suffered for months from her ill-treatment. Now on the other hand he was behaving very coldly, stupidly coldly. He sensed that to keep Annetta’s friendship he would have to show himself slightly infatuated with her, and this he could not manage to do.

  Annetta got up to hand Macario the piece of music she had been playing, and Alfonso was delighted to feel a quiver of sudden desire. She was so close to him that as she got up he could not see all of her, just a well-rounded bosom and a trim though not slim waist, firmly enclosed in her favourite grey material.

  She had been playing a Beethoven symphony arranged for piano.

  “How did you play it, I wonder?”

  “Not well,” said Annetta with a smile.

  “It must be difficult,” observed Alfonso, looking at a sheet full of notes.

  “Impossible!” corrected Annetta. She described how she had heard it played by an orchestra a short time before. It would be no satisfaction performing it on the piano. “Anyway, I put up with far less than perfection. I leave out half these notes, for instance.”

  “But,” exclaimed Alfonso, “it’s a pleasure … particularly for a listener … one seems to hear the notes left out.”

  “Yes, indeed! In one’s imagination!”

  “When one’s imagination is in tune with the player,” observed Macario calmly.

  “You’re doing some studying, I’m told?” asked Annetta seriously.

  “A little, what I can!”

  “A lot, I’m told. I do wish I could do the same! Are you writing anything? Will you publish something soon?”

  “Not for the moment.”

  The thought of his study on morality flashed into his mind, and if he had only finished the first chapter he would have spoken of it.

  “Women want immediate results!” said Macario laughing.

  Macario was defending him and treating him with more respect than when they were alone. He seemed to want Annetta to think highly of him, and only very much later did Alfonso realize that Macario had taken him to that house not for Alfonso’s advantage but to amuse Annetta, whose gratitude he wanted to earn.

  Now, from the direction which, as Alfonso knew from Santo’s explanation, must be that of Maller’s reception room, Francesca entered. Alfonso sprang to his feet. He wanted to show his thanks to his old friend, the only one who had at once received him well in the Maller home.

  It was obvious from the Signorina’s bearing that she did not intend to stay in the room. She returned Alfonso’s greeting with a nod.

  “Please don’t get up.” She did not greet Macario and turning to Annetta said “I’m in my room if you need me.”

  She had quite a different bearing from usual, less free, more reserved; she was very pale and dressed more carelessly. Beside Annetta’s her figure lacked shape. Only the warm colour of her hair gave light to her suffering face. She went out at once, and Alfonso saw Macario looking with curiosity towards Annetta, who, when Francesca left, gave him a meaningful look as if pointing out to him how badly the other had behaved.

  “Why don’t you publish some of your work as soon as possible to make a reputation? Some young men become pedants before their time from love of accuracy—they prefer finish above all—and end by doing nothing. I know that by accounts given to me. Polish needs not only talent but critical sense. One can be an artist when one writes, but when one polishes, one has to be an artist and a scientist.”

  Her face, still very serious since Francesca’s departure, cleared at this last idea. It must have given her some satisfaction to say it. Anyway, it was an idea of which Alfonso himself would have been proud. She managed those critical concepts with great ease.

  “You are advising me to publish and give me advice but no example.” The phrase was short, very short, but it had been said without hesitation.

  “We women have other things to consider. But” she added laughing, “I hope that you won’t be able to reprove me like that in a few months’ time.”

  Alfonso congratulated her. Macario gave a cry of surprise and wanted to know something about what writing Annetta was doing, about which she had not said a word to him till then. Knowing Annetta’s literary character only by the facetious description given him by Macario, Alfonso thought that as she had been silent about it till then, her book must be in an even more embryonic state than his own and that she had mentioned it only to soothe her wounded vanity.

  Finally the subject changed, due to Annetta herself. They talked about the imminent theatrical season, but more of people in the boxes and stalls than those on the stage; and Alfonso kept silent. Macario and Annetta amused themselves naming and describing young men who frequented the stalls, and from the moment when Annetta began joking about them, and accompanying her jests by long trills of loud laughter which made her twist about and show her plump white neck on which tension drew a few faint lines, Alfonso felt uncomfortable. He felt as if he were watching her sing that peculiar song again and prancing about in front of him as shamelessly as a Roman matron before her own slave.

  They would speak of art again another time, as Annetta said smilingly at the moment of farewell. Alfonso who, on his few visits to the theatre, had soon noticed the harm done to the performance by the spectators’ chatter, suggested introducing into theatres the German system of imposing silence and lowering lights in the auditorium. He could no longer agree with Annetta for the simple reason that she took the opposite view after he had already given his. In a theatre Annetta cared less about the performance on the stage than about the audience. She said that she preferred watching people like herself rather than wretched creatures performing with other wretched creatures.

  “One misses the art, I realize that, but is the art of the theatre a real art?”

  She made a gesture of contempt which filled Alfonso once again with admiration. He was incapable of embracing other people’s ideas so blindly.

  As he went out, Alfonso noticed on the landing above a woman who hurriedly withdrew on seeing Macario. She was Francesca’s height, but Alfonso could not see her face.

  He felt drawn closer to Macario by that visit than by the months of their former relationship. At once he was indiscreet: “Odd that Signora Francesca didn’t stay and keep us company. The other time she seemed so expansive and happy. What could have made her so unsociable?”

  “A headache pro
bably,” replied Macario briefly, and changed the subject. “So you see my cousin is better than her reputation or than the idea you had of her. You heard her invitation. From now on you belong to what Spalati calls ‘The Wednesday Club’. Try and become a good friend of my cousin’s, because her friendship can be a help to you.”

  He was talking seriously. The help to which he alluded was Annetta’s protection in the office. Alfonso found the allusion tactless, and flushed; but he did not protest and in fact gave Macario a very friendly handshake when he said goodbye. He might not like to be thought of as someone trying to achieve his own ends by unusual means; but he felt he should be all the more grateful to a man who apparently wanted to help him even though thinking him unscrupulous.

  X

  SIGNORA CAROLINA wrote to Alfonso with great regularity. Her letters showed what a strain writing was for her and how only her high notion of motherly duty induced her to send her son those regular two pages in her spidery hand. Writing can take the place of talking only for the cultured. Usually these letters were filled with advice or greetings on her own and others’ account; and obviously the writer found her labour lightened when there was some big event in the village, a wedding or death involving someone they knew. Then the two pages became three or four.

  He received a letter from his mother the day after his visit to Annetta, and, even in his state of agitation at the time, its contents aroused his lively interest. It was a letter of four sides, the first two of which were as usual because obviously written without the writer thinking she would have to add the other two. In the last part Signora Carolina told how Signorina Francesca had written, asking whether there was space enough in the house to rent her a room. Signorina Francesca’s letter must have been very warm; it also contained a sad phrase or two that had surprised Signora Carolina, who was not without acumen, and supposed Signorina Francesca must be feeling very miserable to write so affectionately to someone she scarcely knew. “She seems very sad about coming: I’ve given her the room she asks for but feel I’d prefer happier company.”