Zeno's Conscience

  “I’m on Rosina’s side, because otherwise the song wouldn’t be worth singing,” she said.

  Sometimes Carla might unconsciously rekindle my love for Augusta, and my remorse. In fact, this occurred every time she ventured an offensive movement against the position so firmly occupied by my wife. Carla still harbored the desire to have me all to herself for a whole night; she confessed to me that since we had never slept side by side, it seemed to her we were not close. Wishing to acquire the habit of being sweeter to her, I didn’t squarely refuse to content her, but almost always I thought it wouldn’t be possible to do such a thing unless I was resigned to finding Augusta in the morning at a window, where she had waited for me the whole night. And anyway, wouldn’t this be an added betrayal of my wife? At times, namely when I was rushing to Carla, filled with desire, I felt inclined to grant her wish, but immediately afterwards I saw how impossible and unsuitable it was. But in this way for a long time neither the prospect of the thing nor its achievement could be eliminated. Apparently we agreed: sooner or later we would spend a whole night together. Meanwhile it had become possible because I had induced the Gerco women to evict those tenants who separated their house into two parts, and Carla finally had her own bedroom.

  Now it happened that shortly after Guido’s wedding, my father-in-law was seized by the attack that was to kill him, and I unwisely told Carla that my wife had to spend a night at her father’s bedside to allow my mother-in-law some rest. Carla insisted I spend with her that same night, so painful for my wife. I lacked the courage to rebel against this whim, and I resigned myself to it with a heavy heart.

  I prepared for that sacrifice. I didn’t go to Carla in the morning, and so I hurried to her in the evening with total desire, telling myself also that it was childish to believe I was betraying Augusta more gravely because I was doing it at a moment when she was suffering for other reasons. Therefore I managed even to become impatient when poor Augusta detained me, showing me how I should arrange the things I might need for supper, for the night, and also for my coffee the next morning.

  Carla received me in the studio. A little later her mother, who was also her servant, served us a delicious little supper, to which I added the pastries I had brought with me. The old woman then returned to clear away and, to tell the truth, I would have liked to go to bed at once, but it was really still too early, and Carla persuaded me to wait and to hear her sing. She went through her entire repertoire, and that was surely the best part of those hours, because the eagerness with which I awaited my mistress served to increase the pleasure Carla’s little songs had always given me.

  “An audience would smother you with flowers and applause,” I told her at a certain moment, forgetting that it would be impossible to put an entire audience in the state I was in.

  Finally we lay down in the same bed in a little room, completely bare. It looked like a passage cut off by a partition. I still wasn’t sleepy, and I was desperate at the thought that if I had been, I wouldn’t have been able to sleep with so little air at my disposal.

  Carla was called by her mother’s shy voice. To answer, she went to the door and opened it a crack. I heard her angrily ask the old woman what she wanted. Shyly, the mother spoke some words whose meaning I couldn’t grasp, and then Carla yelled before slamming the door in her mother’s face: “Leave me alone! I told you before: tonight I’m sleeping in here!”

  Thus I learned that Carla, tormented at night by fear, continued to sleep in her old bedroom with her mother, where she had a separate bed, while the one in which we were to sleep together remained empty. It was certainly out of fear that she had led me to behave so shamefully to Augusta. With a sly gaiety, which I didn’t share, she confessed she felt safer with me than with her mother. I began to think a bit about this bed in such proximity to the solitary studio. I had never seen it before. I was jealous! A little later I was scornful also of the attitude Carla had assumed toward that poor mother of hers. She was made a bit differently from Augusta, who had renounced my company in order to help her parents. I am especially sensitive to lack of respect toward parents, I who bore my poor father’s caprices with such resignation.

  Carla couldn’t be aware of my jealousy or of my scorn. I repressed the manifestations of jealousy, remembering how I had no right to be jealous, as I spent a good part of my days wishing that someone would relieve me of my mistress. Nor was there any purpose in displaying my scorn to the poor girl when I was already entertaining once more the wish to abandon her for good, though my scorn was now increased for the same reasons that a bit earlier would have provoked my jealousy. What I needed was to get away as soon as possible from that little room, containing no more than a cubic meter of air, which was also very hot.

  I don’t even remember clearly the excuse I invented to get away immediately. Breathless, I started getting dressed. I mentioned a key I had forgotten to give my wife, making it impossible for her to reenter our house, if she had to. I displayed the key, which was simply the one I always kept in my pocket, now offered as tangible evidence of the truth of my assertions. Carla didn’t even try to stop me; she dressed and accompanied me downstairs, to light my way. In the darkness of the steps, she seemed to be studying me with an inquisitorial glance, which upset me. Was she beginning to understand me? It wasn’t all that easy, seeing that I knew too well how to simulate. To thank her for allowing me to go, I continued applying my lips now and then to her cheeks, and I simulated being pervaded still by the same enthusiasm that had brought me to her. I then had no cause to doubt the success of my simulation. Shortly before, inspired by love, Carla had told me that the ugly name of Zeno, foisted on me by my parents, was certainly not what my appearance would lead anyone to imagine. She wanted me to be called Dario, and there, in the darkness, she said good-bye to me, calling me by that name. Then she noticed that the weather was threatening, and she offered to go and fetch me an umbrella. But I absolutely couldn’t bear any more of her, and I ran off, still grasping that key, in whose authenticity I myself was beginning to believe.

  The profound darkness of the night was broken every so often by dazzling flashes. The muttering thunder seemed very distant. The air was still calm and stifling as it had been in Carla’s little room. Even the rare drops that fell were tepid. The sky, obviously, held a threat and I began running. In Corsia Stadion I was lucky to come upon a doorway still open and lighted, where I found refuge just in time! A moment later the cloudburst hit the street. The downpour was marked by a furious wind that seemed to bring with it also the thunder that, all of a sudden, was very very close. I started! It would have been truly compromising if I were killed by lightning, at this hour, in Corsia Stadion! Thank heaven my wife also knew that a man of eccentric tastes could run this far at night, and so there is always an excuse for everything.

  I had to remain in that doorway for over an hour. It seemed constantly that the weather wanted to let up, but it would then promptly resume its fury in another form. Now it was hailing.

  To keep me company, the building’s concierge had come out, and I had to give him a few coins so he would postpone closing the great door. Then into the doorway came a gentleman dressed in white and dripping water. He was old, thin, bony. I never saw him again, but I cannot forget him thanks to the light in his black eyes and the energy that emanated from his whole person. He was cursing at having suffered such a soaking.

  I have always enjoyed talking with people I don’t know. With them I feel healthy and secure. It’s actually restful. I have to be careful not to limp, and I’m safe.

  When the weather finally let up, I went at once not to my house, but to my father-in-law’s. At that moment I felt I had to report in at once and boast of being present.

  My father-in-law had fallen asleep, and Augusta, assisted by a nun, could join me. She said I had done the right thing in coming, and she threw herself, weeping, into my arms. She had witnessed her father’s horrible suffering.

  She noticed how wet I was. Sh
e settled me in an easy chair and covered me with some blankets. Then she could stay with me for a while. I was very tired, and even in the short time she could spend at my side, I had to fight off sleep. I felt very innocent because, to begin with, I hadn’t betrayed her by staying away from our conjugal domicile for a whole night. This innocence was so beautiful that I was tempted to enhance it. I began by uttering some words resembling a confession. I told her I felt weak and guilty, and, as she then looked at me, asking an explanation, I immediately drew my head back into my shell and, plunging into philosophy, I told her that I felt a sense of guilt at my every thought, my every breath.

  “That’s how monks and nuns think, too,” Augusta said. “Who knows? Maybe we’re punished like that for sins we’re ignorant of!”

  She spoke other words suited to accompany her tears, which continued to flow. It seemed to me she hadn’t clearly understood the difference that lay between my thinking and that of those religious, but I didn’t want to argue, and at the monotonous sound of the wind, which had risen again, and with the serenity given me also by my impulse toward confession, I sank into a long, restorative sleep.

  When it came to the singing teacher, all was resolved in a few hours. I had long since chosen one, and to tell the truth, I had settled on his name first of all because he was the cheapest maestro in Trieste. In order not to compromise me, it was Carla herself who went to talk with him. I never saw him, but I must say that I now know a great deal about him and he is one of the people I most respect in this world. He must be a healthy simpleton, a rare thing for an artist who lived by his art, as did this Vittorio Lali. An enviable man, in other words, because he was talented and also healthy.

  Meanwhile I sensed at once that Carla’s voice had softened, becoming more flexible and secure. We had been afraid the maestro would impose some strain on her, as the man chosen by Copier had done. Perhaps this one adapted himself to Carla’s wishes, but the fact is that he stuck to the genre she preferred. Only many months later did she realize that she had progressed from it slightly, becoming more refined. She no longer sang the little Triestine songs and then not even the Neapolitan one, but had moved on to old Italian songs and to Mozart and Schubert. I remember in particular a lullaby attributed to Mozart, and on days when I feel best the sadness of life and regret the unripe girl who was mine and whom I didn’t love, the lullaby echoes in my ear like a reproach. Then I see Carla again, costumed as a mother who produces from her bosom the sweetest sounds to coax her baby to sleep. And yet she, who had been an unforgettable lover, couldn’t be a good mother, any more than she had been a good daughter. But obviously the ability to sing like a mother is a talent that surpasses all others.

  From Carla I learned her teacher’s history. He had studied for a few years at the Conservatory in Vienna and had then come to Trieste, where he had the good fortune to work for our leading composer, who had gone blind. He wrote down the man’s compositions at his dictation, but he also enjoyed the composer’s trust, which the blind must grant totally. Thus he knew the man’s intentions, his most mature convictions as well as his dreams, which remained always youthful. Soon the youth had absorbed into his spirit all music, including the music Carla needed. His appearance was also described to me: young, blond, fairly sturdy, carelessly dressed, a soft shirt not always freshly laundered, a cravat that must have been black, loose, and full, a slouch hat with exaggerated brim. A man of few words—according to what Carla told me, and I must believe her because a few months later he became talkative with her—as she informed me immediately—and completely intent on the task he had undertaken.

  Soon my day suffered some complications. In the morning I brought to Carla’s not only love but also a bitter jealousy, which became much less bitter in the course of the day. It seemed impossible to me that this youth did not take advantage of this fine, easy prey. Carla seemed amazed that I could think such a thing, but I was just as amazed to see her amazement. Had she forgotten how things had gone between me and her?

  One day I came to her in a jealous rage and, frightened, she declared herself ready to discharge the maestro immediately. I don’t believe her fright was produced only by the fear of seeing herself deprived of my support, because at that time I received from her demonstrations of affection beyond any possible doubt, which at times made me blissful, whereas, when I found myself in a different mood, they annoyed me, seeming acts hostile toward Augusta, in which, no matter how much it cost me, I was constrained to concur. Her offer embarrassed me. Whether I was in the moment of love or the moment of repentance, I was unwilling to accept a sacrifice from her. There had to be some communication between my two humors, and I didn’t want to reduce my already scant freedom to pass from one to the other. Therefore I couldn’t accept such a proposal, which instead made me all the more cautious, so that even when I was exasperated by jealousy, I could conceal it. My love became more wrathful, and in the end, when I desired her and even when I didn’t desire her in the least, Carla seemed to me an inferior being. So she was unfaithful to me? I cared nothing about her. When I didn’t hate her, I forgot her existence. I belonged to the atmosphere of health and honesty, the realm of Augusta, to whom I returned immediately in body and soul the moment Carla left me free.

  Given Carla’s absolute sincerity, I know exactly the extent of the long period in which she was completely mine, and my recurrent jealousy then cannot be considered anything but a manifestation of a recondite sense of justice. I should certainly be punished as I deserved. First the maestro fell in love. I believe the first symptom of his love consisted of certain words Carla repeated to me with a triumphant air, believing they marked her first great artistic success for which she merited a word of praise from me. He apparently told her that, if she was unable to pay him, he would continue her lessons for nothing. I would have given her a slap, but then the moment came when I could claim to be able to rejoice in that real triumph of hers. She forgot the cramp that at first had seized my whole face, like someone who sinks his teeth into a lemon, and she accepted serenely my belated praise. He had told her everything about himself, which didn’t amount to much: music, poverty, and family. His sister had caused him many troubles, and he had managed to transmit to Carla a great dislike for that woman she didn’t know. That dislike seemed very compromising to me. They now sang together some of his songs, which seemed poor stuff to me, both when I loved Carla and when I felt her like a chain. It is quite possible they were good, even though I never heard any mention of them afterwards. Later he conducted some orchestras in the United States, and perhaps over there those songs are sung, too.

  But one fine day she told me he had asked her to become his wife and she had refused. Then I spent two really bad quarter-hours: the first when I felt so overwhelmed with wrath that I would have liked to wait for the maestro and throw him out with a sound kicking, and the second when I couldn’t find the way of reconciling the possibility of continuing my liaison with that marriage, which was, after all, a good and moral thing and a much more reliable simplification of my position than the career Carla imagined launching under my patronage.

  Why had this wretched maestro got so overheated, and in such a short time? Now, after a year’s association, everything between me and Carla was smoother, even my frown when I left her. My remorse by now was quite bearable, and though Carla was still right to call me rough in love, it seemed she had become used to it. That must have been fairly easy for her, because I was never again as brutal as I had been in the first days of our affair, and, having tolerated that first excess, she must have found what followed quite mild in comparison.

  Therefore, even when Carla no longer mattered so much to me, it was always easy for me to foresee that I would be displeased if I went to call on my mistress the next day and did not find her. Of course, it would then have been beautiful to be able to return to Augusta without the usual intermezzo at Carla’s, and for the moment I felt entirely capable of that; but first I would have liked to try it out. M
y intention at that moment must have been more or less the following: “Tomorrow I will ask her to accept the maestro’s proposal, but today I will prevent her.” And with great effort I continued behaving like a lover. Now, as I speak of it, having recorded all the phases of my adventure, it might seem I was trying to make someone else marry my mistress and yet keep her on as mine, which would have been the policy of a man more shrewd than I and more balanced, though just as corrupt. But it’s not true: she was to marry the maestro, but she was to reach that decision only the following day. And so it was not until then that this state of mine ended, which I stubbornly insist on calling innocence. It was no longer possible to adore Carla for a brief period of the day and then hate her for twenty-four consecutive hours, to rise every morning as ignorant as a newborn babe and to live through the day, so similar to the preceding ones, to be surprised by the adventures it brought, which I should have known by heart. This was no longer possible. Before me lay the prospect of losing my mistress forever if I weren’t able to master my desire to rid myself of her. I mastered it at once!

  And consequently, on that day, when she no longer mattered to me, I made Carla a jealous lover’s scene that, in its falsity and its fury, resembled the one that, overwhelmed by wine, I had made to Augusta that night in the carriage. Only now the wine was lacking, and in the end I was truly moved by the sound of my own words. I declared to her that I loved her, that I couldn’t go on without her, that I seemed to be demanding of her the sacrifice of her life, since I could offer her nothing that could equal what she was being offered by Lali.

  This was actually a new note in our relationship, which had had nevertheless many hours of great love. She listened to my words, basking in them; much later she set about convincing me I shouldn’t be so upset just because Lali was in love. She wasn’t giving it a thought!