Zeno's Conscience

  My complete lack of success with Ada became evident at the very moment when I judged that I should finally speak out clearly. I received the evidence with surprise and, at first, with incredulity. She had not uttered one word indicating her aversion toward me, and I had meanwhile shut my eyes so as not to see those little acts that suggested no great liking for me. And yet I myself hadn’t said the necessary word, and I could always imagine that Ada didn’t know I was there ready to marry her and she might believe that I—the eccentric and not very virtuous student—was seeking something quite different.

  The misunderstanding kept being prolonged because of my intentions, which were too decidedly matrimonial. It is true that now I wanted all of Ada, whose cheeks I had assiduously polished, whose hands and feet I had made smaller, whose figure I had thinned and refined. I desired her as wife and as lover. But the way a woman is approached the first time is decisive.

  Now for three times consecutively it so happened that I was received at the house by the other two girls. Ada’s absence was explained the first time with the excuse of a call that had to be paid, the second with an indisposition, and the third I was given no excuse at all until, alarmed, I inquired. Then Augusta, whom I had addressed, didn’t answer. In her place Alberta, at whom she had glanced as if seeking help, replied: Ada had gone to their aunt’s.

  My breath failed me. Obviously Ada was avoiding me. Even the day before, I had still tolerated her absence and had indeed prolonged my visit, hoping that in the end she would appear. This day, on the contrary, I stayed barely another few moments, unable to open my mouth, and then, pleading a sudden headache, I rose to leave. Strange: as I encountered Ada’s resistance that first time, my strongest feeling was fury, outrage! I even thought of appealing to Giovanni to call the girl to order. A man who wants to marry is capable of such actions, repetitions of those of his ancestors.

  This third absence of Ada was to become even more significant. By sheer chance I discovered she was in the house, but shut up in her room.

  First of all I must say that in the house there was another person I hadn’t succeeded in winning: little Anna. She no longer attacked me in the presence of others, because they had scolded her sharply. Indeed, at times she actually joined her sisters and listened to my stories. But when I left, she would overtake me at the door, politely ask me to bend down to her, then stand on tiptoe, and when she was actually able to press her little mouth to my ear, lowering her voice so that only I could hear her, she would say, calling me tu: “You are crazy, really crazy!”

  The funny thing is that when the others were there, the little minx addressed me formally. If Signora Malfenti was in the room, the child would promptly take refuge in her mother’s arms, and the Signora would stroke her, saying: “How polite my little Anna’s become! Hasn’t she?”

  I never protested, and the polite Anna often would call me crazy again in the same fashion. I received her assertion with a cowardly smile that could have looked like thanks. I hoped the child wouldn’t have the nerve to tell the grownups of her aggressions, and I was unwilling to inform Ada of her little sister’s opinion of me. In the end that child really embarrassed me. If, when I was speaking with the others, my eye met hers, I immediately had to find an excuse to look elsewhere, and this was difficult to do with any naturalness. I blushed, certainly. It seemed to me that the innocent little creature, with her opinion, could do me harm. I brought her presents, but they didn’t mollify her. She must have been aware of her power and of my weakness, and in front of the others she looked at me, studying me with insolence. I believe we all have, in our conscience as in our body, some tender, concealed spots that we do not like to be reminded of. We don’t even know what they are, but we know they’re there. I turned my eye away from that childish gaze that wanted to delve into me.

  But on this day as, alone and dejected, I was leaving the house, she overtook me, to make me bend down and hear the usual compliment, I leaned over to her and held out toward her my hands contracted into talons, with a face so distraught, a real madman’s, that she ran off weeping and screaming.

  So I managed to see Ada also this day, because it was she who came running at those cries. The child, sobbing, told her I had threatened her terribly because she had called me crazy.

  “Because he really is crazy and I want to tell him so. What’s wrong with that?”

  I didn’t listen to the girl, amazed to see Ada was at home. So her sisters had lied, or rather only Alberta had, to whom Augusta had handed over the duty, exempting herself! For a moment I had justice on my side, I was totally aware, guessing the whole story.

  I said to Ada: “I’m glad to see you. I thought you had been at your aunt’s for three days.”

  She didn’t answer me at first because she bent over the weeping child. That delay in obtaining the explanation to which I felt entitled made my blood rush violently to my head. I was speechless. I took another step in the direction of the front door, and if Ada hadn’t spoken to me, I would have gone away and would never have come back. In my wrath, this seemed an easy step, this renunciation of a dream that by now had gone on too long.

  But at this point she turned to me, her face flushed, and said she had come in just a few moments before, because she hadn’t found her aunt at home.

  That sufficed to calm me. How dear she was, how maternally attentive to the child, who went on screaming! Ada’s body was so supple that it seemed to have become smaller the better to reach the child. I lingered, admiring her, considering her again mine.

  I felt so reassured that I wanted to make them forget my previous vexation, and I was very polite with Ada and even with Anna.

  Laughing heartily, I said: “She calls me crazy so often that I wanted to show her a lunatic’s real face and attitude. Do forgive me! You too, poor little Anna, don’t be afraid: I’m a nice madman.”

  Ada, too, was very, very polite. She scolded the still-sobbing child, and apologized to me for her. If I had really been in luck, and, if in her anger, Anna had run away, I would have spoken. I would have uttered the sentence that is perhaps found even in certain foreign-language phrase books, ready-made, to facilitate the life of those who don’t know the language of the country where they are staying: May I ask your father for your hand? This was the first time I wanted to marry, and so I found myself in a totally foreign land. Until then I had dealt differently with any women I encountered. I assaulted them, laying my hands on them right at the start.

  But I didn’t manage to say even those few words. Even they required a certain length of time! They had to be accompanied by a pleading facial expression, difficult to assume immediately after my conflict with Anna and also with Ada, and from the end of the hall Signora Malfenti was already advancing, summoned by the child’s howls.

  I held out my hand to Ada, who cordially and promptly gave me hers, and I said to her: “I’ll see you tomorrow. My excuses to your mother.”

  I hesitated, however, to release that hand, resting trustfully in mine. I could sense that, leaving now, I would be rejecting a unique opportunity with this girl so intent on showing me every courtesy, compensating for her sister’s rudeness. I followed the inspiration of the moment, I bent over her hand and brushed it with my lips. Then I opened the door and went out very quickly, after having seen that Ada, who until then had given me her right hand while her left supported Anna, clinging to her skirt, now looked with amazement at the tiny hand that had been subjected to the contact of my lips, as if she wanted to see if something were written there. I don’t believe Signora Malfenti had glimpsed my action.

  I stopped for a moment on the steps, amazed at my own absolutely unpremeditated act. Was it still possible to go back to that door I had closed behind me, ring the bell, and ask to be allowed to say to Ada those words she had sought in vain on her hand? No, I thought. My dignity would have suffered if I showed too much impatience. Besides, having informed her that I would come back, I had heralded my explanations. Now it was simply up to
her to receive them, creating the opportunity for me to express them to her. Finally I had stopped telling stories to three young ladies and, instead, had kissed the hand of only one of them.

  But then the day became rather unpleasant. I was restless and uneasy. I kept telling myself that my restlessness derived only from my impatience to see this matter resolved. I imagined that if Ada were to refuse me, I could then quite calmly go off in pursuit of other women. My attachment to her was totally the result of my own free determination, which now could be annulled by another woman, who would erase it! I didn’t then understand that for the moment there were no other women in this world for me, and that I needed Ada and only her.

  The night that followed also seemed to me very long; I lay awake for almost all of it. Since my father’s death I had abandoned my noctambulist habits and now, when I had determined to marry, it would have been odd to resume them. I had therefore gone to bed early, wishing for sleep, which makes time pass so quickly.

  During the day I had accepted with absolute blind faith Ada’s explanations of those three absences from her living room in the hours when I was there, a faith born of my firm conviction that the serious woman I had chosen was incapable of lying. But during the night that faith was weakened. I suspected it was I myself who informed her that Alberta—since Augusta refused to speak—had supplied the excuse of that visit to her aunt. I didn’t recall exactly the words I had addressed to her, my head aflame, but I believed I could be certain of having repeated that excuse. Too bad! If I hadn’t, perhaps she, to excuse herself, would have invented something different, and having caught her out in a falsehood, I would already have had the clarification I was yearning for.

  Here, too, I might have realized the importance Ada had for me by now, because to recover some calm I kept repeating to myself that if she wouldn’t have me, then I would renounce marriage forever. Her refusal would thus change my life. And I went on daydreaming, comforting myself with the thought that perhaps this rejection would be a stroke of luck for me. I recalled that Greek philosopher who predicted regret both for those who married and for those who remained single. In short, I hadn’t lost the capacity to laugh at my adventure; the only capacity I lacked was for sleep.

  I dozed off as dawn was already breaking. When I woke up it was so late that only a few hours separated me from the time when I was allowed to visit the Malfenti house. Thus there would be no further need to daydream and collect other clues that might clarify Ada’s thoughts for me. But it is hard to restrain one’s own mind from brooding on a subject that is too important. Man would be a happier animal if he could do that. In the midst of the attentions to my person, which on that day I exaggerated, I thought of nothing else: In kissing Ada’s hand, had I done the right thing? Or had I been wrong in not kissing her also on the lips?

  That same morning I had an idea that I believe caused me great harm, robbing me of what little manly initiative my curiously adolescent state would have granted me. A painful suspicion: What if Ada were to marry me only because her parents prompted her to, without loving me or, indeed, feeling an aversion to me? For surely all the family, that is to say Giovanni, Signora Malfenti, Augusta, and Alberta, were fond of me; I could entertain doubts only about Ada. On the horizon the usual cheap novel was looming up: the young girl forced by her family into a hateful marriage. But I would never have allowed that. Here was another reason why I had to speak with Ada, indeed with Ada alone. It wouldn’t be enough to say to her the words I had rehearsed. Looking into her eyes, I would ask: “Do you love me?” And if she said yes, I would clasp her in my arms, to feel the vibration of her sincerity.

  So I seemed to be prepared for everything. But, on the contrary, I was to realize that I was about to be given a sort of exam, but had forgotten to go over the very pages of text on which I would be interrogated.

  I was received by Signora Malfenti alone, who asked me to sit down in one corner of the great drawing room, then immediately began chattering vivaciously, preventing me even from asking for any news of the girls. I was therefore quite bewildered, but I reviewed my assignment to make sure I wouldn’t forget it when the right moment came. All of a sudden I was recalled to attention as if by a trumpet blast. The Signora was delivering a preamble. She assured me of her friendship and her husband’s, and of the affection of their whole family, including little Anna. We had known one another for such a long time. We had been seeing one another daily for four months.

  “Five!” I corrected her, having counted them during the night remembering that my first visit had taken place in autumn, and now it was full spring.

  “Yes, five!” the Signora said, thinking it over, as if to check my calculation. Then, in a reproachful tone: “It seems to me that you are compromising Augusta.”

  “Augusta?” I asked, believing I hadn’t heard her correctly.

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “You lead her on, and you are compromising her.”

  Ingenuously, I revealed my feelings: “But I never see Augusta. “

  She made a gesture of surprise and, indeed (or was it just my imagination?), of pained surprise.

  I was trying, meanwhile, to concentrate my thoughts in order to arrive rapidly at an explanation of what seemed to me a misunderstanding, whose importance, however, I had immediately grasped. In my mind, I saw myself again, visit by visit, during those five months, intent on studying Ada. I had played music with Augusta, and indeed at times I had talked more with her, who listened to me, than with Ada, but only so that Augusta could then explain my stories, enhanced by her approval, to Ada. Should I speak openly to the Signora and tell her of my designs on Ada? But a little earlier I had resolved to speak with Ada alone and plumb her heart. Perhaps if I had spoken openly with Signora Malfenti, things would have taken a different turn and, unable to marry Ada, I wouldn’t have married Augusta, either. But following the resolution I had made before seeing Signora Malfenti, and hearing the surprising things she said to me, I was silent.

  I thought hard, and therefore with a bit of confusion. I wanted to understand, I wanted to divine, and quickly. You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide. I could glimpse the possibility of their wanting to throw me out of their house. But I thought I could dismiss that. I was innocent, since I wasn’t paying court to Augusta, whom they meant to protect. But perhaps they ascribed to me intentions regarding Augusta to avoid compromising Ada. And why protect Ada in this way, when, after all, she was no longer a child? I was sure I had seized her by the hair only in my dream. In reality I had done nothing more than touch her hand with my lips. I didn’t want them to forbid me access to that house because, before leaving it for good, I wanted to speak with Ada. And so, in a tremulous voice, I asked: “Tell me, Signora, what I must do in order to offend no one.”

  She hesitated. I would have preferred to deal with Giovanni, who thought at the top of his lungs. Then, firmly, but with an effort to seem polite that was obvious in her tone of voice, she said: “For a while you should visit us less frequently—not every day, but perhaps two or three times a week.”

  Certainly, if she had told me curtly to leave and never return, I would have clung to my resolution, begging them to tolerate me in that house at least for another day or two, until I could clarify my situation with Ada. But instead, her words gave me the courage to display my pique: “Well, if you wish, I’ll never set foot in this house again!”

  What I had hoped for then occurred. She protested, again declaring the respect they all felt for me, and begging me not to be angry with her. And I made a display of my magnanimity, promising everything she wished, namely to stay away from that house for four or five days, then to come back regularly two or three times every week and, above all, not to harbor any resentment.

  Having made these promises, I decided to show I meant to keep them, and I stood up to leave.

  Laughing, the Signora protested: “With me there can be no compromising of any kind, and you may remain.”

  I begg
ed her to allow me to leave, pleading an engagement I had only just remembered, while the truth was that I couldn’t wait to be alone in order to ponder more comfortably this extraordinary adventure that had befallen me. The Signora actually implored me to stay, saying that I would thus give her the proof that I wasn’t angry with her. So I remained, subjected constantly to the torture of listening to the idle chatter the Signora now indulged in, all about female fashion, which she didn’t want to follow, about the theater, and also about this dry weather that was ushering in spring.

  A little later I was glad I had remained, because I realized I needed a further explanation. Without any ceremony I interrupted the Signora, whose words I no longer heard, to ask her: “Will the whole family know that you have asked me to stay away from this house?”

  At first she seemed not even to remember our agreement. Then she protested, “Away from this house? But only for a few days, mind you. I won’t mention it to anyone, not even to my husband; in fact, I’d be grateful if you would use the same discretion.”

  I promised this, too, and I further promised that if I were asked to explain why I wasn’t seen there so often, I would invent various excuses. For the moment I believed the Signora’s words, and I imagined Ada might be amazed and grieved by my sudden absence. An attractive picture!

  Then I stayed on, still awaiting some further inspiration, while the Signora talked about food prices, which had lately risen sky-high.

  Instead of further inspiration, Aunt Rosina appeared, Giovanni’s sister, older than he, but much less intelligent. She did possess some aspects of his moral physiognomy, enough to identify her as his sister. First of all, she had the same awareness of her own rights and of the duties of others—a fairly comical attitude, since she lacked any weapon with which to enforce it—and she also had the bad habit of abruptly raising her voice. She thought that in her brother’s house her rights were such that—as I learned later—she considered Signora Malfenti an intruder. She was a spinster, and she lived with just one maidservant, of whom she spoke always as her greatest enemy. When Aunt Rosina was dying, she charged my wife to keep an eye on the house until the maid, who had nursed her, was gone. Everyone in Giovanni’s household put up with Aunt Rosina, fearing her aggressiveness.