Zeno's Conscience

  Still laughing, Augusta interrupted me again: “This party isn’t in our honor; it’s in honor of Ada and Guido! Talk about them!”

  All agreed noisily. I also laughed, realizing that thanks to me we had achieved a genuine, noisy jollity that is the norm on such occasions. But I could find nothing more to say. I felt as if I had talked for hours. I swallowed several more glasses of wine, one after the other.

  “Here’s to Ada!” I straightened up for a moment to see if she had crossed her fingers under the tablecloth.

  “Here’s to Guido!” And I added, after gulping down the wine: “With all my heart,” forgetting that at the first glass I hadn’t added a similar declaration.

  “Here’s to your firstborn!”

  And I would have drunk a number of those glasses for all their children, if I had not finally been stopped. For those poor innocents I would have drunk all the wine remaining on that table.

  Then everything turned even darker. I recall clearly only one thing: my chief concern was not to seem drunk. I held myself erect and spoke little. I distrusted myself, I felt the need to analyze every word before saying it. While the general talk continued, I had to renounce taking part in it because I wasn’t given time to clarify my murky thinking. I wanted to broach a subject myself, and I said to my father-in-law: “Have you heard Exterieur has dropped two points?”

  I had mentioned something that didn’t trouble me in the least, something I had overheard at the Bourse; I wanted only to talk about business, serious matters that a drunk usually wouldn’t recall. It seemed to me that for my father-in-law this was not a matter of such indifference, and he accused me of being a bird of ill omen. With him I could never get anything right.

  Then I turned to my neighbor, Alberta. We talked about love. To her it was of interest in theory, and to me, for the moment, it was of no interest whatsoever in practice. Therefore it was the perfect subject to talk about. She asked me for some ideas, and I immediately discovered one that seemed to me obvious from my experience of that very day. A woman was an object whose value fluctuated far more than any stock on the market. Alberta misunderstood me and thought I meant to say something well-known to everyone: namely that a woman of a certain age had quite a different value from one of another age. I made myself clearer: a woman might have a high value at a certain hour of the morning, none at all at noon, and then in the afternoon be worth twice her morning value, only to end in the evening at an actually negative value. I explained the concept of negative value: a woman had that kind of value when a man was calculating how much he’d be willing to pay to send her very far away from himself.

  Still the poor playwright didn’t see the accuracy of my discovery, while I was sure of myself, recalling the shifts of value that, just today, Carla and Augusta had suffered. The wine then intervened when I chose to explain further, and I veered completely off course.

  “You see,” I said to her, “supposing that you now have the value of x and you allow me to press your little foot with mine, your value immediately increases by another x at least.”

  I accompanied immediately the words with the action.

  Bright red, she withdrew her foot and, wishing to seem witty, she said: “But this is practice, not theory. I’ll put it to Augusta.”

  I have to confess that I, too, felt that little foot as something quite apart from arid theory, but I protested, crying out with the most innocent manner in the world: “It’s pure theory, the purest! And it is wrong on your part to take it as anything else.”

  The fancies of wine are authentic events.

  For a long time Alberta and I didn’t forget that I had touched a part of her body, informing her that I did so to feel pleasure. Word had underlined action; and action, word. Until she married, she always had for me a smile and a blush; afterwards, on the contrary, blush and wrath. That’s how women are. Every day that dawns brings them a new interpretation of the past. Their life cannot be very monotonous. For my part, on the contrary, the interpretation of that action of mine remained always the same: the theft of a small object of intense flavor; and it was Alberta’s fault if, at a certain time, I tried to make her recall that action whereas later I would have paid any sum for it to be forgotten completely.

  I recall, too, that before I left that house, something else happened, far more serious. I remained, for a moment, alone with Ada. Giovanni had long since gone to bed and the others were saying good night to Signor Francesco, whom Guido was escorting back to the hotel. I looked for a long time at Ada, all dressed in white lace, her arms and shoulders bare. For a long time I was dumb, although I felt the need to say something to her; but, having studied it, I suppressed any phrase that came to my lips. I remember I pondered also if it were permissible for me to say to her: How happy I am that you are marrying at last and that you are marrying my great friend Guido. Now finally all will be over between us.

  I wanted to utter a lie because everyone knew that between us all had been over for several months, but it seemed to me that the lie was a lovely compliment, and it is certain that a woman, dressed like that, requires compliments and basks in them. After long reflection, however, I did nothing. I suppressed those words because in the sea of wine in which I was swimming, I found a plank that saved me. I thought that I would be wrong to risk Augusta’s affection in order to please Ada, who didn’t love me. But, in the doubt that troubled my mind for a few instants, and even afterwards, when I wrenched myself free of those words, I gave Ada such a look that she rose and left, after turning to observe me with fear, ready perhaps to start running.

  Actually a glance of one’s own can be remembered as well as a word, perhaps even better. It is more important than a word because in all the dictionary there is no word that can undress a woman. I know now that my glance then falsified the words I had conceived, simplifying them. To Ada’s eyes, it had tried to penetrate her clothing and also her epidermis. And it had certainly meant: Would you like to come to bed with me at once?

  Wine is a great danger, especially because it doesn’t bring truth to the surface. Anything but the truth, indeed: it reveals especially the past and forgotten history of the individual rather than his present wish; it capriciously flings into the light also all the half-baked ideas with which in a more or less recent period one has toyed and then forgotten; it ignores the erasures and reads everything still legible in our heart. And we know there is no way of canceling anything there radically, as you can cancel a mistaken endorsement on a promissory note. All our history is always readable there, and wine shouts it, overlooking whatever life has subsequently added.

  To go home, Augusta and I took a cab. In the darkness it seemed to me that it was my duty to embrace and kiss my wife, because that was how I had behaved many times in similar circumstances, and I feared that if I were not to do it, she might think something had changed between us. Nothing had changed between us: the wine also shouted this! She had married Zeno Cosini, who, unchanged, was at her side. What did it matter if, that day, I had possessed other women, whose number the wine, to make me happy, was increasing, placing among them Ada or Alberta, I can’t recall which?

  I remember that, falling asleep, for a moment I saw again Copier’s marmoreal face on his deathbed. He seemed to demand justice, namely the tears I had promised him. But he didn’t receive them now, either, because sleep embraced me, annihilating me. First, however, I apologized to the ghost: Wait a little longer. I’ll be with you at once!

  I never was with him again, because I didn’t even attend his funeral. We had so much to do in the house, and I also outside it, that there was no time for him. We talked about him on occasion, but only to laugh, recalling how my wine had killed him over and over, then resuscitated him. Indeed, he remained proverbial in the family, and when the newspapers, as often happens, announce, then retract someone’s death, we say: “Like poor Copier.”

  The next morning I rose with a bit of a headache. I felt the pain in my side slightly, perhaps because, while t
he effect of the wine lasted, I hadn’t felt it at all, and I had promptly lost the habit of it. But, basically, I wasn’t sad. Augusta contributed to my serenity, saying that it would have been terrible if I hadn’t come to that wedding supper, because, until I arrived, she had felt she was at a wake. So I had no remorse about my behavior. Then I sensed that one thing only had not been forgiven me: that look at Ada!

  When we met in the afternoon, Ada gave me her hand with an anxiety that increased my own. Perhaps, however, on her conscience she had that escape of hers, which had been far from polite. But also my glance had been a nasty action. I remembered exactly the movement of my eye, and I understood how she couldn’t forget that she had been pierced by it. I had to make amends, assuming a carefully fraternal demeanor.

  They say that when you suffer the effects of drinking too much, the best remedy is to drink some more. That morning, to restore my spirits, I went to Carla’s. I went to her with the specific desire of living more intensely, which is what leads you back to alcohol, but, walking toward her, I would have desired her to inspire in me an intensity quite different from that of the day before. I was accompanied by intentions that were not very precise, but all honest. I knew I couldn’t give her up immediately, but I could head toward that highly moral action little by little. Meanwhile I would go on talking to her about my wife. With no surprise, one fine day she would learn that I loved my wife. I had in my pocket another envelope with some money, ready for any development.

  I arrived at Carla’s, and a quarter of an hour later she reproached me with a word that, in its justice, echoed for a long time in my ear: “How crude you are, in love!” I am not aware of having been crude just then. I had begun talking to her about my wife, and the praises attributed to Augusta had sounded to Carla’s ears like so many reproaches addressed to her.

  Then it was Carla who hurt me. To pass the time, I had told her how I had grown annoyed at the banquet, especially because of a toast I had proposed, which had been totally out of place.

  Carla remarked: “If you loved your wife, you wouldn’t make unsuitable toasts at her father’s table.”

  And she gave me a kiss to reward me for the scant love I felt for my wife.

  Meanwhile the same desire to intensify my life, which had brought me to Carla, would have led me at once back to Augusta, who was the only one with whom I could have talked about my love for her. The wine taken as antidote was already too much, or else more wine was needed. But that day my rapport with Carla was to become sweeter, finally to be crowned by that fondness which—as I learned later – the poor young girl deserved. She had volunteered several times to sing me a song, eager to have my opinion. But I wanted nothing to do with her singing, which no longer interested me, not even in its naïveté. I told her that since she refused to study, it wasn’t worth her singing anymore.

  My offense was serious, and it made her suffer. Seated beside me, to keep me from seeing her tears, she looked motionless at her hands, folded in her lap. She repeated her reproach.

  “How rough you must be with someone you don’t love, if you are like this with me!”

  Good devil that I am, I let myself be touched by those tears, and I begged Carla to split my ears with her big voice in the little room. Now she turned reluctant, and I had to threaten to leave if she didn’t oblige me. I have to admit that for an instant I thought Ihad found a pretext to regain my freedom, at least temporarily, but at that threat, my humble servant, her eyes lowered, went and sat at the piano. She then devoted a very brief moment to collecting her thoughts and ran her hand over her face as if to dispel every cloud. She succeeded with a promptitude that surprised me, and her face, when that hand revealed it, bore no sign of her earlier sorrow.

  I immediately had a great surprise. Carla told her song, narrated it; she didn’t shout it. The shouting—as she then told me—had been forced on her by her teacher; now she had dismissed it, along with him. The Triestine song she sang,

  Fazzo l’amor xe vero Cossa ghe xe de mal Voie che a sedes’ani Stio là come un cocal…

  is a kind of story or confession. Carla’s eyes shone slyly and confessed even more than the words. There was no fear of shattered eardrums, and I went over to her, surprised and enchanted. I sat beside her and she then retold the song directly to me, half-closing her eyes to say, in the lightest and purest tone, that the sixteen-year-old wanted freedom and love.

  For the first time I saw Carla’s little face exactly: the purest oval marked by the deep, curved hollow of the eyes and the delicate cheekbones, made even purer by a snowy whiteness, now that she kept her face turned toward me and to the light, therefore not obscured by any shadow. And those soft lines in that flesh, which seemed transparent yet concealed the blood so well and the veins, perhaps too weak to appear, demanded devotion and protection.

  Now I was ready to give her much devotion and protection, unconditionally, even at the moment when I would be so prepared to go back to Augusta, because Carla at that moment asked nothing but a paternal fondness that I could grant without betrayal. What satisfaction! I remained there with Carla, I gave her what her little oval face asked for, and yet I wasn’t moving away from Augusta! My fondness for Carla became more delicate. After that, if I felt the need of honesty and purity, I no longer had to abandon her; I could stay with her and change the subject.

  Was this new sweetness due to her little oval face, which I had then discovered, or to her musical talent? Undeniably, to the talent! The strange little Triestine song ends with a strophe in which the same young girl asserts that she is old and decrepit and that by now she needs no freedom except to die. Carla continued slyly to infuse gaiety into the poor verses. It was still youth feigning age, the better to proclaim its rights from that new point of view.

  When she finished and found me filled with admiration, she, too, for the first time, while loving me, was also sincerely fond of me. She knew the little song would please me more than what her maestro taught her.

  “Too bad,” she added sadly, “that unless you want to sing in cafés chantants, there’s no way you can earn a living from it.”

  I easily convinced her this wasn’t how things stood. In this world there were many great artists who spoke their music and didn’t sing.

  She made me give her some names. She was overjoyed to learn how important her art might become.

  “I know,” she added naively, “that this kind of singing is much harder than the other kind, where you just have to yell at the top of your lungs.”

  I smiled and didn’t argue. Her art was also difficult, surely, and she knew it because that was the only art she knew. That little song had cost her long hours of study. She had said it over and over, correcting the intonation of every word, every note. Now she was studying another, but she wouldn’t have it mastered for a few more weeks. Until then she wouldn’t let me hear it.

  Delicious moments followed in that room where, previously, only scenes of brutality had taken place. Now a career was opening before Carla. The career that would free me from her. Very similar to the one Copier had dreamed of for her! I suggested I find her a maestro. At first the word frightened her, but then she let herself be convinced easily when I told her she could give it a try, remaining free to dismiss him when he seemed tiresome to her, or of little use.

  With Augusta, too, I felt that day went very well. My spirit was calm, as if I had returned from a stroll and not from Carla’s house, or as Copier’s spirit must have been when he left that house on days when the women had given him no cause to become angry. I relished it as if I had come upon an oasis. For me and for my health, it would have been very grave if all my long affair with Carla had proceeded in eternal agitation. From that day on, as a result of this esthetic beauty, things progressed more calmly, with the slight interruptions necessary to rekindle my love for Carla and my love for Augusta. True, my every visit to Carla meant an infidelity to Augusta, but all was soon forgotten in a bath of health and of good intentions. And the good
intention was not brutal and exciting as it had been when in my throat I had the desire to tell Carla I would never see her again. I was sweet and paternal: here, too, I was thinking of her career. Abandoning a woman every day only to come running after her the next day was an exertion that my poor heart would have been unable to withstand. So, on the contrary, Carla remained always in my power, and I turned her first in one direction, then in another.

  For a long time the good intentions were not strong enough to make me rush around the city seeking the teacher who would be right for Carla. I toyed with the good intention, while remaining seated. Then one fine day Augusta confided in me that she felt she was to be a mother, and then my intention for a moment grew gigantic and Carla had her maestro.

  I had hesitated so long because it was obvious that even without a teacher, Carla had been able to set to work seriously in her new art. Every week she learned a different song to sing for me, its words and its tone both carefully analyzed. Certain notes needed a bit more polish, but perhaps in the end they would be smoothed out. For me, a decisive proof that Carla was a true artist was the ‘way she constantly perfected her songs, never renouncing the best features, which she had grasped at the very start. I often persuaded her to repeat her first song, and every time I found some new and effective accent had been added. Given her ignorance, it was marvelous that in her great effort to develop a strong expressiveness, she had never thought to cram false or exaggerated sounds into the song. Like a true artist, she added every day a pebble to her little edifice, and all the rest remained intact. The song was not stereotyped, but rather the sentiment that dictated it. Before singing, Carla always ran her hand over her face, and behind that hand there was a moment of thought, enough to immerse her in the little playlet she had to construct. A play that was not always puerile. The ironic mentor of

  Rosina te xe nata in un casoto

  threatened, but not too seriously. The singer seemed to suggest she knew this was an everyday story. Carla thought differently, but in the end she achieved the same result.