Zeno's Conscience

  By now Augusta was wrong to be jealous of Ada. It wasn’t to see Ada that I twisted my neck in that fashion. Guido, with his chatter, helped me pass those long hours. I was already fond of him, and I spent a part of my days with him. I was bound to him also by the gratitude I felt for his high opinion of me, which he communicated to others. Even Ada listened to me with attention when I spoke.

  Every evening, with some impatience, I awaited the sound of the gong that summoned us to supper, and what I remember chiefly of those suppers is my perennial indigestion. I overate in my necessity to keep active. At supper I lavished affectionate words on Augusta, insofar as my full mouth would allow, and her parents must have had the nasty impression that my great affection was diminished by my bestial voracity. They were surprised, on my return from our wedding journey, that I hadn’t brought back the same appetite. It disappeared when I was no longer required to display a passion I didn’t feel. The bride’s parents must not find you cold at the moment when you are preparing to go to bed with the bride! Augusta particularly remembers the fond words I murmured to her at that table. Between mouthfuls I must have invented some magnificent ones, and I am amazed when I am reminded of them, because they do not seem mine.

  Even my father-in-law, the sly Giovanni, let himself be deceived, and as long as he lived, whenever he wanted to furnish an example of great amorous passion, he would cite mine for his daughter. For Augusta, that is. He smiled blissfully at it, good father that he was, but it increased his contempt for me because, in his view, a man who places his entire destiny in a woman’s hands is not a real man at all, especially if he remains unaware that, besides his own, there are also some other women in this world. This demonstrates how I was sometimes unfairly misjudged.

  My mother-in-law, on the other hand, didn’t believe in my love, not even when Augusta herself settled into it, with total trust.

  For long years the Signora scrutinized me with a distrusting eye, dubious about the fate of her favorite daughter. Also for this reason, I am convinced she guided me in the days leading up to my betrothal. It was also impossible to deceive her, as she must have known my mind better than I did myself.

  Finally came the day of my wedding, and on that very day I felt a last hesitation. I was to be at the bride’s house at eight in the morning, but at seven-forty-five I was still in bed, smoking furiously and looking at my window, where, taunting me, the early morning sun shone brightly. I was pondering the idea of abandoning Augusta! The absurdity of my marriage was becoming obvious now that remaining close to Ada no longer mattered to me. Nothing of great moment would happen if I failed to turn up at the appointed hour! And besides: Augusta had been a lovable fiancée, but there was no way of knowing how she would behave after the wedding. What if she were immediately to call me a fool because I had let myself be snared like that?

  Fortunately Guido came, and instead of resisting, I apologized for my delay, declaring that I thought a different hour had been set for the wedding. Rather than reproach me, Guido started telling me about himself and the many times that he had failed to keep engagements. Even when it came to absentmindedness he wanted to be superior to me, and I had to stop listening to him in order to get out of the house. So it was that I went to my wedding at a run.

  I arrived very late, all the same. Nobody scolded me, and all except the bride were satisfied with some explanations that Guido offered in my place. Augusta was so pale that even her lips were livid. Though I couldn’t say I loved her, certainly I would never want to cause her any pain. I tried to make up for my enormity and I was fool enough to blame my tardiness on three different causes. That was too many, and they revealed so clearly what I had been pondering in my bed while looking at the winter sun that we had to delay our leaving for the church to allow Augusta time to regain her composure.

  At the altar I said yes absently, because in my real sympathy for Augusta, I was confecting a fourth explanation for my delay, and it seemed to me the best of all.

  But then, as we came out of the church, I realized that Augusta had regained all her color. I was a bit irked, because that yes of mine certainly shouldn’t have sufficed to reassure her of my love. And I was preparing to treat her very roughly if she were to recover enough to call me a fool because I had allowed myself to be ensnared like that. But, on the contrary, at her home, she took advantage of a moment when they had left us alone, to say to me, in tears: “I will never forget that, even without loving me, you married me.”

  I didn’t protest because the matter was so obvious that protest was impossible. But, filled with compassion, I embraced her.

  None of this was ever discussed again between Augusta and me because a marriage is far simpler than an engagement. Once married, you don’t talk anymore about love, and when you feel the need to speak of it, animal instincts quickly intervene and restore silence. Now, these animal instincts may become so human that they also become complex and artificial, and it can happen that, bending over a woman’s head of hair, you also make the effort to find in it a glow that is not present. You close your eyes and the woman becomes another, only to become herself again when you leave her. You feel only gratitude, all the greater if the effort has been successful. This is why, if I were to be born again (Mother Nature is capable of anything!), I would agree to marry Augusta; but never to be engaged to her.

  At the station Ada held up her cheek for my fraternal kiss. I saw her only then, dazed as I was by all the people who had come to say good-bye, and I thought at once: You’re the very one who got me into this! I held my lips to her velvety cheek, while taking care not even to graze it. This was my first satisfaction that day, because for an instant I felt the advantage I was deriving from my marriage: I had avenged myself, refusing to exploit the only opportunity offered me to kiss Ada! Then, as the train was speeding along, seated next to Augusta, I suspected I had done the wrong thing. I feared that my friendship with Guido had been jeopardized. But I suffered even more when I thought that Ada perhaps hadn’t even noticed that I had not kissed the cheek she offered me.

  She had noticed, but I learned this only when, in her turn, many months later, she set off with Guido from that same station. She kissed everyone. But to me she held out her hand, with great cordiality. I clasped it coldly. Her vengeance actually arrived late, because circumstances had completely changed. Since my return from my wedding journey, our relations had been those of brother and sister, and there could be no explanation for her having denied me the kiss.

  WIFE AND MISTRESS

  In my life I believed at various times that I was on the path to health and happiness. But never was this belief stronger than during the period of my wedding journey, and for a few weeks after our return home. It began with a discovery that stunned me: I loved Augusta and she loved me. At first, still dubious, I would enjoy one day and expect the next to be something quite different. But the next day followed and resembled the previous one, radiant, all filled with Augusta’s tenderness and also—this was the surprise—my own. Every morning I rediscovered in her the same touching affection and in myself the same gratitude that, if it was not love, still bore a close resemblance to it. Who could have foreseen this, when I was limping from Ada to Alberta, to arrive at Augusta? I discovered I had not been a blind fool manipulated by others, but a very clever man. And, seeing my amazement, Augusta said to me: “Why are you so surprised? Didn’t you know this is how marriage is? Even I knew it, and I’m so much more ignorant than you!”

  I’m not sure whether it came before or after my affection, but in my spirit a hope was formed, the great hope finally to come to resemble Augusta, who was the personification of health. During our engagement I hadn’t even glimpsed that health, because I was totally absorbed in studying myself first and, after myself, Ada and Guido. The glow of the oil lamp in that drawing room had never reached Augusta’s thinnish hair.

  Her blush was nothing! When it vanished as simply as the dawn colors vanish in the direct light of the sun, Augusta
confidently followed the same path that all her sisters on this earth had followed, those sisters who can find everything in law and in order, or who otherwise renounce everything. Even though I knew her security was precarious, as it was based on me, I loved, I adored that security. Faced with it, I had to act at least with the modesty I assumed when faced with spiritualism. The latter could exist, and so faith in life could also exist.

  Still it amazed me; her every word, her every action made it clear that, deep in her heart, she believed in eternal life. Not that she called it that: indeed, she was surprised when, on one occasion, I, who was repelled by errors until I began to love hers, felt obliged to remind her of life’s brevity. What?! She knew everyone had to die, but all the same, now that we were married, we would remain together, together, together. She was thus unaware that when two are joined in this world, the union lasts for a period so very, very short that we cannot comprehend how we arrived at intimacy after an infinite time when we hadn’t known each other, and we were now prepared never to see each other again for an equally infinite time. I understood finally what perfect human health was when I realized that for her the present was a tangible truth within which one could curl up and be warm. I sought admission and I tried to remain there, resolved not to make fun of myself and her, because this attack could only be my old sickness and I should at least take care not to infect anyone entrusted to my charge. Also for this reason, in my effort to protect her, for a while I was capable of acting like a healthy man.

  She knew all the things that could drive me to despair, but in her hands these things changed their nature. Just because the earth rotates, you don’t have to get seasick! Quite the contrary! The earth turned, but all other things stayed in their proper place. And these motionless things had enormous importance: the wedding ring, all the jewels and dresses, the green, the black, the dress for the afternoon stroll, which had to go straight into the closet on her return home, and the evening dress that was never under any circumstances to be worn during the day, or when I was unwilling to don my tailcoat. And the meal hours were strictly observed, as were the hours intended for sleeping. They existed, those hours, and were always in their place.

  On Sunday she went to Mass, and sometimes I accompanied her to see how she could bear the representation of suffering and death. For her it wasn’t there; and that visit filled her with peace for the entire week. She went there also on certain feast days, which she knew by heart. And that was all—whereas I, had I been religious, would have guaranteed my eternal bliss by spending the whole day in church.

  There was a world of authorities also here below that reassured her. To begin with, the Austrian or Italian authority that guaranteed our safety in the streets and in our houses, and I always did my best to share that respect of hers. Then came doctors, those who had pursued their studies in order to save us when—God forbid—we came down with some illness. I employed that authority every day; she, on the contrary, never. But for this reason I knew what my ghastly fate would be when mortal illness struck me, whereas she believed that even then, firmly sustained up on high and here below, there would be salvation.

  I am analyzing her health, but I fail, because I realize that in analyzing it I convert it into sickness. And in writing about that health, I begin to suspect it perhaps needed some treatment or instruction in order to heal. But when I was living at her side for so many years, I never harbored that suspicion for a moment.

  Ah! the importance attributed to me in her little world! On every question I had to express my wishes, in the choice of food or dress, company or reading matter. I was forced into great activity, which didn’t annoy me. I was collaborating in the construction of a patriarchal family, and I myself was becoming the patriarch I had once hated, but who now appeared to me as the emblem of health. It’s one thing to be a patriarch and another to have to revere someone who claims that distinction. I wanted health for myself even at the price of sloughing off sickness onto the non-patriarchs, and especially during our journey, sometimes I gladly struck the pose of an equestrian statue.

  But already during that journey it was not always easy for me to carry off the imitation I had prescribed for myself. Augusta wanted to see everything, as if this were an educational expedition. It was by no means enough just to go to the Pitti Palace: it was necessary to pass through all those numberless galleries, stopping at least for a moment or two at each work of art. I refused to leave the first room and I saw nothing further, assuming only the burden of finding excuses for my laziness. I spent half a day before the portraits of the founders of the house of Medici, and I discovered that they resembled Carnegie and Vanderbilt. Wonderful! So we belonged to the same race! Augusta didn’t share my amazement. She knew that those two were Yankees, but she didn’t yet know clearly who I was.

  Here her health failed to triumph, and she had to renounce museums. I told her that once, at the Louvre, I became so confused in the midst of all those works of art that I was about to smash the Venus to bits.

  With resignation, Augusta said: “Thank goodness museums are something you do on your honeymoon, then never again! “

  In fact, in real life we lack the monotony of museums. Days go by, suitable for framing; they are rich in sounds that daze you, and besides their lines and colors, they are also filled with real light, the kind that burns and therefore isn’t boring.

  Health impels us to activity, to take on a world of nuisances. When the museums were closed, shopping began. She, who had never lived there, knew our villa better than I did, and she remembered that one room needed a mirror, another a rug, and in a third there was a place for a little statue. She bought furniture for a whole drawing room, and from every city we visited, at least one shipment was arranged. It seemed to me that it would have been more convenient and less annoying to make all those purchases in Trieste. Now we had to think of transport, insurance, customs clearance.

  “But don’t you know that all goods have to travel? Aren’t you a merchant?” She laughed.

  She was almost right, but I rebutted: “Goods are shipped in order to be sold, to make a profit. Otherwise they’re left undisturbed, and they disturb nobody.”

  But her enterprise was one of the things I loved most about her. It was delightful, that enterprise, so naïve! Naïve because she had to be ignorant of the history of the world to be able to believe that she had made a clever transaction simply by buying an object: it’s when you sell the object that you judge the wisdom of the purchase.

  I thought I was well into my convalescence. My wounds had become less infected. Starting at that time, my unvaried attitude was one of happiness. It was as if, in those unforgettable days, I had made a vow to Augusta, and it was the only promise I never broke except for brief moments, times when life laughed louder than I. Our relationship was and remains a smiling one because I smiled always at her, believing her ignorant, and she at me, to whom she attributed much learning and many errors that she—so she flattered herself—would correct. I remained apparently happy even when my sickness overwhelmed me again. Happy as if my pain were no more than a kind of tickling.

  In our long progress through Italy, despite my new-found health, I was not immune to many sufferings. We had set out with no letters of introduction, and very often it seemed to me that many of the strangers among whom we moved were my enemies. It was a ridiculous fear, but I was unable to master it. I could have been attacked, insulted, and, especially, slandered; and who would have protected me?

  This fear reached a real crisis, which fortunately no one, not even Augusta, noticed. I was accustomed to buying almost all the newspapers that were offered to me along the street. One day, having stopped at a news vendor’s kiosk, I felt the suspicion that he hated me and might easily have me arrested as a thief, for I had acquired only one paper from him, while under my arm I was holding many others, bought elsewhere and as yet unfolded. I fled, followed by Augusta, to whom I gave no reason for my running off.

  I made friends wit
h a coachman and with a guide; in their company at least I was assured of not being accused of absurd thefts.

  Between me and the cabbie there were some obvious points of contact. He was very fond of the Roman Castelli wines, and he told me that from time to time his feet swelled up. He would go to the hospital, and then, cured, he would be discharged with many admonitions to give up wine. He would make an oath that he called ironclad because, along with it, he made a knot, which he tied to his metal watch chain. But when I knew him, the chain was hanging, without any knots, over his vest. I invited him to come and stay with me in Trieste. I described the taste of our wine, so different from his, to guarantee the success of this drastic cure. He wouldn’t hear of it, and refused with an expression already filled with homesickness.

  I became friends with the guide because he seemed superior to his fellows. It’s easy enough to know more history than I do, but Augusta also, with her precision and her Baedeker, verified the accuracy of many of his observations. Besides, he was young and strode confidently along the allées sown with statues.

  When I lost those two friends, I left Rome. The cabbie, having received a great deal of money from me, proved how wine sometimes also affected his brain, and he caused us to crash against a very solid ancient Roman construction. Later, the guide took it into his head one day to declare that the ancient Romans knew all about electricity and employed it extensively. He even recited some Latin verses to bear out what he said.