Zeno's Conscience
She was the only one who had noticed me walk into the hall; when she saw me come back, she gave me an apprehensive look. Was she afraid of a scene? I wanted to reassure her at once. I passed her and murmured: “Forgive me if I offended you!”
She took my hand and, relieved, pressed it. It was a great comfort. For a moment I closed my eyes, to be alone with my soul and to see how much peace it had now gained.
As my fate would have it, while all the others were still concerned with the child, I found myself seated next to Alberta. I hadn’t seen her, and I became aware of her presence only when she spoke to me, saying: “She didn’t hurt herself. The only misfortune is with Papà. Whenever he sees her crying, he gives her a grand present.”
I stopped analyzing myself, because I could see myself whole! To gain peace, I would have to behave in such a way that this room would no longer be forbidden me. I looked at Alberta. She resembled Ada! A bit smaller, and her body still bore some traces of childhood, not yet outgrown. She was quick to raise her voice, and her often excessive laughter contracted her little face and made it turn red. Strange! At that moment I recalled some advice of my father’s: “Pick a young woman and it’ll be easier for you to mold her as you wish.” This memory was decisive. I looked at Alberta again. My mind was busy undressing her, and she appealed to me, sweet and tender as I supposed she was.
I said to her: “Listen, Alberta! I have an idea: Have you ever thought that you’re at an age to take a husband?”
“I have no thought of marrying!” she said, smiling and looking at me meekly, without embarrassment or blushes. “I’m thinking of going on with my education. That’s what Mamma wants, too.”
“You could continue your studies after you’re married.”
I had an idea that seemed witty to me, and I said it at once: “I’m thinking of resuming my studies, too, after I’m married.”
She laughed heartily, but I realized I was wasting my time; such foolishness was no use in winning a wife and gaining peace. I had to be serious. This was now easier because I was being treated quite differently from the way Ada had treated me.
I was truly serious. My future wife, in fact, had to know everything. In a choked voice I said to her: “A short while ago I made Ada the same proposal I’ve made to you. She refused, with scorn. You can imagine the state I’m in.”
These words, accompanied by a sad expression, were nothing less than my final declaration of love for Ada. I was growing too serious, and with a smile I added: “But I believe that if you would agree to marry me, I would be most happy, and with you I would forget everybody and everything else.”
She became very serious as she said: “You mustn’t take offense, Zeno, because that would grieve me. I know you’re a good sort and you know many things, without knowing it, whereas my professors know exactly what they know. I don’t want to marry. Maybe I’ll change my mind, but for the moment I have only one ambition: I’d like to become a writer. You see how much I trust you. I’ve never told anyone this, and I hope you won’t give me away. For my part, I promise you I won’t mention your proposal to anyone.”
“Oh, you can tell everyone!” I interrupted her crossly. I felt threatened again with expulsion from that living room, and I hastily sought a remedy. There was only one way to lessen Alberta’s pride in having been able to reject me, and I adopted it the moment I discovered what it was. I said to her: “Now I’ll make the same proposal to Augusta, and I’ll tell everyone that I married her because her two sisters refused me!”
I laughed with an excessive good humor that had come over me after my strange behavior. It wasn’t into words that I put the wit of which I was so proud, it was into actions.
I looked around for Augusta. She had gone out into the hall, carrying a tray on which there was only a half-empty glass with a sedative for Anna. I ran after her, calling her name, and she leaned back against the wall, waiting for me. I stood facing her and said: “Listen, Augusta. Would you like for the two of us to get married?”
The proposal was truly crude. I was to marry her, and she me, and I didn’t ask what she thought, nor did I think that it might be up to me to offer some explanations. I was doing only what everyone wanted of me!
She raised her eyes, widened in surprise, so the skewed one was even more distinct than usual from the other. Her velvety smooth white face first blanched, then was immediately flushed. With her right hand she grasped the glass that was rattling on the tray. In a tiny voice she said to me: “You’re joking, and that’s not right.”
I was afraid she would start crying, and I had the curious idea of consoling her by telling her of my sadness.
“I’m not joking,” I said, serious and sad. “First I asked for the hand of Ada, and she rejected me angrily, then I asked Alberta to marry me, and with some fine words she also refused me. I don’t bear either one a grudge. But I feel unhappy, yes, very unhappy.”
Confronted by my sorrow, she regained her composure and began to look at me, touched, reflecting intensely. Her gaze resembled a caress, which gave me no pleasure.
“So I must know and remember that you don’t love me?” she asked me.
What did this sybilline sentence mean? Was it the prelude to an acceptance? She wanted to remember! To remember for her whole life, which would be spent with me! I had the sensation of a man who, to commit suicide, has placed himself in a dangerous position and now has to make an immense effort to save his life. Wouldn’t it be better if Augusta also rejected me and I was forced to return, safe and sound, to my study, where I hadn’t felt too bad even on that day?
I said to her: “Yes! I love only Ada, and now I would marry you…”
I was about to tell her I couldn’t resign myself to becoming a stranger to Ada, and therefore I would be content to become a brother-in-law. That would have been going too far, and Augusta might again have believed I wanted to make fun of her. So I said only: “I can’t resign myself to being left alone.”
She remained leaning against the wall, whose support perhaps she felt she needed; but she appeared calmer, and the tray was now held by a single hand. Was I saved? Did I have to abandon that living room, or could I stay, and would I have to marry? I said a few more words, only because I was impatiently awaiting hers, which were reluctant to come: “I’m a good sort, and I believe a person could easily live with me, even without any great love.”
This was a sentence that in the long preceding days I had prepared for Ada, to induce her to say yes, even without feeling great love for me.
Augusta was a little short of breath and still remained silent. That silence could also mean refusal, the most delicate refusal imaginable: I was almost ready to rush off for my hat, still in time to put it on a rescued head.
But Augusta, her mind made up, with a dignified gesture I will never forget, stiffened her back and abandoned the support of the wall. In the narrow passage she moved still closer to me, who stood facing her. She said: “You, Zeno, need a woman who wants to live for you and help you. I want to be that woman.”
She held out her plump hand, which I kissed, as if by instinct. Obviously it was impossible to do anything else. I must then confess that at that moment I was filled with a contentment that made my breast swell. I no longer had to resolve anything, because everything had been resolved. This was true clarity.
Thus it was that I became engaged. We were immediately, immensely feted. My success resembled somewhat the huge success of Guido’s violin, so great was the general applause. Giovanni kissed me and promptly started calling me tu. With an excessive display of affection, he said to me: “For a long time I have felt like a father to you, ever since I began giving you advice about your business.”
My future mother-in-law also turned her cheek, which I grazed with the kiss I couldn’t have eluded even if I had married Ada.
“You see? I had guessed everything,” she said to me with incredible nonchalance, which went unpunished because I was unable and unwilling to protest.
r /> She then embraced Augusta, and her immense fondness was revealed in a sob that escaped her, interrupting her display of joy. I couldn’t endure Signora Malfenti, but I must say that her sob, at least for the duration of that evening, cast a pleasant and important light on my engagement.
Alberta, radiant, pressed my hand. “I mean to be a good sister to you.”
And Ada said: “Bravo, Zeno!” Then, in a whisper: “Believe me: never did a man who thought he was acting hastily behave more wisely than you.”
Guido gave me a great surprise. “Already this morning I realized you wanted one or the other of the Malfenti young ladies, but I couldn’t figure out which.”
They can’t have been very intimate if Ada hadn’t told him about my courting! Had I really acted hastily?
But a little later Ada also said to me: “I want you to love me as a sister. The rest must be forgotten; I will never say anything to Guido.”
For the rest, it was wonderful to have provoked so much joy in a family. I couldn’t enjoy it much myself, but only because I was very tired. I was also sleepy. That proved I had acted with great wisdom. I would have a good night.
At supper, Augusta and I witnessed silently the festivities in our honor. She felt it necessary to apologize for being unable to take part in the general conversation: “I can’t say a thing. You must all remember that, half an hour ago, I had no idea of what was about to happen to me.”
She always spoke the exact truth. She was between tears and laughter and she looked at me. I, too, wanted to caress her with my eyes; I don’t know if I succeeded.
That same evening at that table, I suffered another wound. It was inflicted by Guido himself.
It seems that shortly before I arrived to participate in the séance, Guido had told the others how, that morning, I had declared I wasn’t absentminded. They immediately gave him so many proofs of my falsehood that, in revenge (or perhaps to show he knew how to draw), he made two caricatures of me. In the first I was portrayed with my nose in the air while I leaned on an umbrella stuck in the ground. In the second the umbrella had broken and the handle had stabbed me in the back. The two caricatures achieved their purpose and provoked laughter through the simple device of making the individual meant to represent me—actually he bore no resemblance, and was distinguished only by great baldness—identical in both the first and second sketch; thus he could be considered so absentminded that he didn’t change his expression even when he had been skewered by an umbrella.
They all laughed very much, indeed too much. I was deeply grieved by the highly successful attempt to ridicule me. And it was then that, for the first time, I was seized by my sharp pain. That evening it was my right forearm and hip that hurt. An intense burning pain, a numbness of the nerves as if they were threatening to snap. Dumbfounded, I put my right hand to my hip and with my left hand I gripped the affected forearm.
“What’s wrong?” Augusta asked.
I replied that I felt a pain in my wrist, bruised by that fall in the café, which had been discussed earlier that evening.
I promptly made an energetic attempt to rid myself of that pain. I thought I would be cured of it if I avenged the offense to which I had been subjected. I asked for a piece of paper and a pencil, and I tried to draw a character being crushed by an overturned little table. Beside him I put a walking stick that he had dropped as a result of the catastrophe. Nobody recognized the stick, and therefore the insult didn’t succeed as I would have liked. In order to clarify that individual’s identity and explain how he happened to be in that position, I wrote beneath it: “Guido Speier turning the table.” For that matter, all that could be seen of the wretch under the table was his legs, which might have resembled Guido’s if I hadn’t deliberately distorted them and if the demon of vengeance hadn’t intervened to worsen my already childish drawing.
The persistent pain forced me to work in great haste. Certainly my poor organism had never been so pervaded by the desire to inflict a wound, and if I had had a sabre in my hand instead of that pencil I had no gift for using, perhaps the cure would have succeeded.
Guido laughed sincerely at my drawing, but then he mildly remarked: “I don’t think the table did me any harm.”
In fact, it hadn’t, and it was this injustice that so pained me.
Ada took Guido’s two drawings and said she wanted to keep them. I looked at her to convey my reproach, and she had to turn her gaze away from mine. I was entitled to reproach her because she exacerbated my pain.
I found a defense in Augusta. She asked me to write the date of our engagement on my drawing, for she, too, wanted to keep that scrawl. A hot wave of blood flooded my veins at this sign of affection, whose importance for me I realized for the first time. The pain, however, did not stop and I was forced to think that if that gesture of affection had come from Ada, it would have caused such a rush of blood in my veins that all the flotsam accumulated in my nerves would have been swept away by it.
That pain was never thereafter to leave me. Now, in old age, I suffer less from it because, when it seizes me, I bear it indulgently: “Ah, here you are again, clear proof that I’m still young?” But in my youth it was another matter. I won’t say the pain was great, though it sometimes impeded my free movement or kept me awake for whole nights. But it occupied a good part of my life. I wanted to be healed! Why should I have to bear all my life on my very body the stigma of defeat? Become the living, walking monument to Guido’s victory? That pain had to be expelled from my body.
And so the treatments began. But, immediately afterwards, the angry origin of the disease was forgotten and it was now hard for me to retrace it. It couldn’t have been otherwise: I had great faith in the doctors who treated me, and I believed them sincerely when they attributed that pain first to my metabolism and then to a circulatory defect, then to tuberculosis or to various infections, some of them shameful. I must also confess that all the cures afforded me some temporary relief, and thus each time the plausible new diagnosis seemed confirmed. Sooner or later it proved to be less exact, but not entirely mistaken, because with me nothing functions perfectly.
Only once were they really wrong: a kind of veterinarian in whose hands I had placed myself insisted for a long time on applying his blister papers to my sciatic nerve, but in the end he was outsmarted by my pain, which suddenly, during an examination, leaped from hip to neck, in any case, far from the sciatic nerve. The sawbones became angry and showed me the door and I went off—as I well remember—not in the least offended, but rather amazed that in its new position the pain hadn’t changed at all. It remained angry and beyond reach as when it had tormented my hip. It’s strange that all the parts of our body are able to ache in the same way.
The other diagnoses, absolutely exact, all persist in my body and fight among themselves for supremacy. There are days when I suffer from uric diathesis, and others when the diathesis is defeated, or rather healed, by an inflammation of the veins. I have whole drawers full of medicines, and they are the only drawers that I keep tidy. I love my medicines, and I know that when I abandon one of them, sooner or later I will return to it. In any event I don’t believe I’ve wasted my time. Who knows how long ago and of what disease I would already have died if my pain hadn’t simulated all my ailments in advance, persuading me to treat them before they overcame me?
But even though I can’t explain its profound nature, I know when my pain took shape for the first time. Precisely because of that drawing so superior to mine. A straw that broke the camel’s back! I’m sure I had never felt that pain before. I tried to explain its origin to a doctor, but he didn’t understand me. Who knows? Perhaps psychoanalysis will throw some light on all the upheaval my organism underwent during those days and especially in the few hours following my engagement.
They weren’t really so few, those hours!
Later, when the company broke up, Augusta said to me gaily: “Till tomorrow!”
I liked the invitation because it proved I had
achieved my purpose and that nothing was over and everything would continue the next day. She looked into my eyes and found them filled with lively assent, consoling her. I went down those steps, which I no longer counted, asking myself: “I wonder—do I love her?”
This is a doubt that has accompanied me all through my life, and today I can believe that when love is accompanied by such doubt, it is true love.
But even when I had left that house behind, I was not allowed to go home to bed, to collect the fruit of that evening’s activity in a long and refreshing sleep. It was hot. Guido felt the need of an ice, and he invited me to come with him to a café. He took my arm in a friendly gesture, and I, with equal friendliness, supported his. He was a very important person for me, and I would have been unable to refuse him anything. The great weariness that should have driven me to bed made me more accommodating than usual.
We went into the very place where poor Tullio had transmitted his disease to me, and we sat down at a secluded table. As we had walked along the street, my pain, which I didn’t yet know was going to be such a faithful companion, had caused me great suffering, but for a few moments, after I was able to sit down, it seemed to abate.