Zeno's Conscience

  I am sorry to have to speak so ill of my lamented friend, but I must be truthful, also to understand myself better. I remember how much intelligence he employed to clutter our little office with daydreams that prevented us from pursuing any healthy activity. At a given point, to initiate the commission business, we sent out a thousand circulars in the mail. Guido expressed this thought: “Think of all the stamps we would save if, before mailing out these circulars, we knew how many of them would reach people who would take them into consideration!”

  The sentence in itself meant little, but he was too pleased with it and he began to fling the sealed circulars into the air, thinking to mail only the ones that landed with the address facing up. The experiment recalled something similar I had done in the past, but still it seemed to me I had never carried it this far. Naturally I didn’t collect or send out the circulars he eliminated, because I couldn’t be sure his idea hadn’t been a really genuine inspiration, guiding him in that selection, and I shouldn’t waste stamps he had to pay for.

  My good fortune kept me from being ruined by Guido, but the same good fortune also prevented me from playing too active a role in his affairs. I say this openly because others in Trieste think it was a different story: during the time I spent with him, I never acted on any sudden inspiration, of the sort connected with the dried fruit. Never did I force him into a transaction, nor did I ever talk him out of one. I was the admonisher! I urged him to be active, to be canny. But I would never have dared throw his money on the green table.

  At his side I turned quite inert. I tried to set him on the straight and narrow path, and perhaps I failed out of excess inertia. For the rest, when two people are together, it is not up to them to decide which must be Don Quixote and which Sancho Panza. He conducted the transaction and I, like a good Sancho, followed him very slowly in my ledgers, after having examined and criticized it, as I saw my duty.

  The commission business was a complete fiasco, but it did us no harm. The only person who sent us some merchandise was a paper manufacturer in Vienna, and a part of those items of stationery were sold by Luciano, who gradually came to learn how much commission was due us and then made Guido turn almost all of it over to him. Guido finally agreed because those sums were trifling, and because the first venture, thus concluded, should bring us luck. This first venture left us with a quantity of stationery in the little storeroom, which we had to pay for and keep. There would have been enough to fill, for many years, the office needs of a firm much more thriving than ours.

  For a couple of months this sunny office in the center of the city was a pleasant refuge for us. Very little work was done there (I believe we concluded two deals in all, involving empty packing cases for which the supply and the demand coincided on the same day, bringing us a slight profit) and we chattered a lot, amiably, also with that innocent Luciano, who, when we spoke of business, grew agitated, as do other boys his age when the talk is of women.

  At that time it was easy for me to amuse myself innocently with the innocents, because I hadn’t yet lost Carla. And from that period I remember entire days with pleasure. In the evening, at home, I had many things to tell Augusta, and I could tell her all the events of the office, without exception, and without having to add anything to falsify them.

  I wasn’t the least worried when Augusta occasionally cried out with concern: “But when are the two of you going to start earning some money?”

  Money? We hadn’t even thought of that yet. We knew that first you had to take time, look around, study the merchandise, the market, and also our hinterland. A business firm wasn’t something you could just improvise. And even Augusta was reassured by my explanations.

  Then a very noisy guest was introduced into our office: a hunting dog, a few months old, frisky and curious. Guido loved him very much and organized a regular provision of milk and meat for him. When I had nothing to do or to think about, I also was pleased to see him bounding about the office in those four or five canine attitudes that we can interpret and which endear a dog to us. But I didn’t feel he was in the right place, with us, noisy and dirty as he was! For me that dog’s presence in our office was the first sign Guido gave of being unfit to run a business. It proved a complete lack of seriousness. I tried to explain to him that the dog couldn’t benefit our business, but I didn’t have the courage to insist, and with some sort of answer he silenced me.

  Therefore it seemed to me that I had to devote myself to the training of this colleague, and I took great pleasure in giving him an occasional kick when Guido wasn’t in. The dog whimpered and at first would come back to me, believing I had struck him by mistake. But a second kick always made things clearer than the first, and then he would hide in a corner, and until Guido arrived in the office there was peace. I later repented having raged against an innocent creature, but it was too late. I showered kindness on the dog, but he no longer trusted me, and in Guido’s presence he clearly indicated his dislike.

  “How strange!” Guido said. “A good thing I know you, because otherwise I wouldn’t trust you. Dogs as a rule never get their dislikes wrong.”

  To dissipate Guido’s suspicions, I was almost prepared to tell him how I had managed to win the dog’s dislike.

  I soon had a skirmish with Guido over a question that really shouldn’t have mattered that much to me. Having grown so passionately concerned with accounting, he took it into his bead to enter his household expenses under our general expenses. After consulting Olivi, I opposed this plan and defended the interests of old Cada Vez. It was, in fact, impossible to enter under that heading everything that Guido spent, and also Ada, and later the expenses of the twins, when they were born. These were expenses chargeable to Guido personally and not to the firm. To compensate for this, I then suggested writing to Buenos Aires, to fix a salary for Guido. His father refused to grant one, pointing out that Guido already enjoyed seventy-five percent of the profits, whereas his father received only what was left. This reply seemed fair to me, but Guido started writing long letters to his father to argue the question from a higher point of view, as he put it. Buenos Aires was very far away, and so the correspondence lasted as long as our firm lasted. But I won my point! The general expenses account remained pure and was not infected by Guido’s personal expenditures, and so the entire capital was polluted by the failure of the firm, all of it, without deductions.

  The fifth person admitted to our office (counting Argo as a person) was Carmen. I witnessed her hiring. I came to the office after having been at Carla’s and I was feeling very serene, that 8:00 a.m. serenity of Prince Taillerand.* In the dim corridor I saw a young lady, and Luciano told me she wanted to speak with Guido in person. I had something to do and I asked her to wait outside there. Guido came into our room a little later, obviously not having seen the young lady, and Luciano entered and gave me the calling card she had supplied.

  Guido read it, then said “No!” sharply, taking off his jacket because of the heat. But a moment later he had second thoughts. “I must speak with her, out of respect for the person who has recommended her.”

  He had her shown in, and I looked at her only when I saw that Guido, with one leap, had flung himself at his jacket, put it on, and was addressing the girl with the beautiful, dark, blushing face and the sparkling eyes.

  Now, I am sure I have seen girls just as beautiful as Carmen, but not with a beauty so aggressive—so apparent at first glance, I mean. As a rule women create themselves first according to their own desire, whereas this girl had no need of a similar preliminary phase. Looking at her, I smiled and I also laughed. She was like an industrialist running about the world asserting the excellence of his products. She had come to apply for a job, but I would have liked to interrupt the interview, to ask, “What sort of job? In a boudoir?”

  I saw that her face was not made up, but its colors were so precise, so cerulean was its purity and so like that of ripe fruit its ruddiness, that artifice was simulated to perfection. Her great dark eyes re
fracted such a quantity of light that their every movement assumed great importance.

  Guido had asked her to take a seat, and she was modesdy looking at the tip of her umbrella or, more probably, at her little patent-leather boots. When he spoke to her, she quickly raised her eyes and turned them on his face; they were so radiant that my poor employer was absolutely bowled over. She was dressed modestly, but that was of no help to her because all modesty, on her body, was annihilated. Only the little boots were a luxury, and recalled a bit the very white paper that Velazquez set under the feet of his models. Velazquez, too, to set Carmen apart from her surroundings, would have placed her on black enamel.

  In my serenity I began listening with curiosity. Guido asked her if she knew shorthand. She confessed she hadn’t the slightest knowledge of it, adding, however, that she had considerable experience in taking dictation. Strange! That tall, slender, and so harmonious figure emitted a hoarse voice. I couldn’t conceal my surprise.

  “Do you have a cold?” I asked her.

  “No!” she answered. “Why do you ask?” And she was so surprised that the glance with which she enveloped me was all the more intense. She was unaware that she had such a jarring voice, and I had to suppose that her little ear, too, was less perfect than it looked.

  Guido asked her if she knew English, French, or German. He left the choice to her, as we didn’t yet know which language we would need. Carmen replied that she knew a little German, very little, however.

  Guido never came to a decision without reasoning. “We don’t need German, because I speak it very well myself.”

  The young lady was awaiting the deciding word, which, it seemed to me, had already been spoken; but to hasten it, she said that in seeking a new job she also sought a chance to learn, and therefore she would be satisfied with very modest wages.

  One of the first effects of female beauty on a man is to strip him of avarice. Guido shrugged, to signify that he didn’t concern himself with such trifles; he named a salary, which she gratefully accepted, and he urged her very seriously to study shorthand. He made this recommendation only for my benefit, as he had previously compromised himself with me, declaring that the first employee he hired would be a perfect stenographer.

  That same evening I told my wife about my new colleague. She was terribly upset. Though I said nothing, she immediately imagined Guido had hired this girl intending to make her his mistress. While admitting that Guido had behaved rather like a suitor, I argued with her and insisted he would recover from this infatuation, which would have no consequences. The girl, all in all, seemed respectable.

  A few days later—whether by chance or not, I don’t know—we received a visit at the office from Ada. Guido hadn’t come in yet, so she tarried with me for a moment, to ask me when he would arrive. Then, hesitantly, she stepped into the next room, where, at that moment, Carmen and Luciano were alone. Carmen was practicing at the typewriter, completely absorbed in picking out the individual letters. She raised her lovely eyes to look at Ada, who was staring at her. How different the two women were! They resembled each other slightly, but Carmen seemed an intensified Ada. I thought that truly the latter, though dressed more richly, was made to be a wife or mother, while the other, though at that moment she wore a modest smock to avoid soiling her dress at the machine, was cast as mistress. I don’t know if, in this world, there are learned men who could tell why Ada’s beautiful eye collected less light than Carmen’s and so was genuinely an organ for looking at things and people and not for dazzling them. Therefore Carmen easily tolerated its scornful but curious glance: did it contain also a touch of envy, or am I adding that myself?

  This was the last time I saw Ada still beautiful, just as she had been when she rejected me. Her disastrous pregnancy followed, with the twins, who required a surgeon’s intervention to come into the world. Immediately afterwards she was stricken by the disease that robbed her of all her beauty. This is why I remember that visit so well. I remember it also because at that moment all my compassion went out to her and to her meek and modest beauty, defeated by the very different beauty of the other woman. I certainly didn’t love Carmen and I knew nothing of her beyond the magnificent eyes, the splendid coloring, the hoarse voice, and finally the circumstances—of which she was innocent—surrounding her employment here. I was truly fond of Ada at that moment, and it is a very strange thing to feel fondness for a woman one once ardently desired, did not possess, and who now matters not at all. All things considered, in this fashion you arrive at the same state you would be in if she had succumbed to your desires, and it is surprising to realize once again how certain things for which we live have really scant importance.

  I wanted to curtail her pain, and I led her into the other room. Guido, entering a moment later, turned deep red at the sight of his wife. Ada gave him a highly plausible reason for her being there, but immediately afterwards, as she was leaving, she asked: “You’ve hired a new secretary for the office?”

  “Yes!” Guido said, and to conceal his confusion he could lind nothing better than to change the subject, asking if anybody had come looking for him. Then, after my negative answer, he made another grimace of displeasure, as if he had hoped for an important visit, whereas I knew that we were expecting no one at all, and only then did he say to Ada, with an indifferent expression, which he finally managed to assume: “We needed a stenographer!”

  I was highly amused to hear that in his confusion, he used the masculine noun.

  The arrival of Carmen brought much life into our office. I’m not speaking of the vivacity that came from her eyes, from her charming form, and from the color in her face; I am actually speaking of business. In the presence of that young woman, Guido felt impelled to work. First of all, he wanted to prove to me and to everyone else that the new employee was necessary, and every day he invented new tasks in which he also took part. Further, for a long time, his activity was a means of courting the girl more efficiently. He achieved an unheard-of efficiency. He had to teach her the form of the business letter, which he would dictate, and he would correct the spelling of very many words. He always did this delicately. No reward on the girl’s part would have been excessive.

  Few of the transactions he fondly thought up bore any fruit. Once he worked at length on a transaction involving an article that proved to be illegal. At a certain point we found ourselves facing a man, his face distorted with pain, on whose toes we had unwittingly trod. This man wanted to know what our interest was in that article, and he presumed we had been engaged by powerful foreign competitors. At our first encounter he was beside himself, and I feared the worst. When he realized our naïveté, he laughed in our faces and assured us we’d never achieve anything. It turned out he was right, but before we could accept this verdict, much time had to pass, and many a letter had to be written by Carmen. We found that the article in question was beyond our reach because it was surrounded by entrenched forces. I said nothing about this transaction to Augusta, but she spoke of it to me because Guido had spoken of it to Ada, to show her how busy our stenographer was. But the deal that didn’t come off still remained important for Guido. He talked about it every day. He was convinced that in no other city of the world would such a thing have happened. Our commercial ambiance was deplorable, and any enterprising businessman was stifled here. And such was his fate also.

  In the mad, disordered sequence of transactions that passed through our hands in that period, there was one that really scorched them. We didn’t seek it out; it was the deal that took us by storm. We were pushed into it by a certain Tacich, a Dalmatian who had worked in Argentina with Guido’s father. He first came to see us only to ask for some commercial information that we were able to provide for him.

  Tacich was a very handsome young man, indeed too handsome. He was tall and strong, his face was olive-skinned, and the dark blue of his eyes harmonized charmingly with his long eyelashes and the short, thick, dark mustache with golden glints. In short, there was in him suc
h a harmonious study of color that to me he seemed the man born to match Carmen. He was of the same opinion, and he dropped in on us daily. The conversation in our office then lasted for hours every day, but it was never boring. The two men fought to win the woman, and like all animals in love, they showed off their finest qualities. Guido was a bit cramped by the fact that the Dalmatian also called on him at home and hence knew Ada, but by now nothing could harm him in Carmen’s eyes; I, who knew those eyes so well, realized this at once, whereas Tacich learned it only much later, and in order to have a pretext to see her frequently, he bought from us—or rather from the manufacturer - various carloads of soap for which he paid a slightly higher percentage. Then, again because of his love, he plunged us into that disastrous affair.

  His father had noticed that, regularly, at certain seasons, copper sulfate went up and at other times its price went down. He decided therefore to speculate, buying some sixty tons in England at the most favorable moment. We discussed this venture at length, and indeed we prepared for it, getting in touch with an English firm. Then his father cabled Tacich that the right moment seemed to have arrived, and he cited also the price at which he would be willing to close the transaction. Tacich, enamored as he was, rushed to us and delivered the deal, receiving as reward a beautiful, long, caressing look from Carmen. The poor Dalmatian accepted the look gratefully, unaware that it was a sign of her love for Guido.

  I remember Guido’s calm and confidence as he set about the business, which, in fact, seemed very easy because from England we could arrange direct shipment to our purchaser, without handling the goods ourselves. Guido calculated exactly the sum he wanted to earn and, with my help, established the maximum price that our English friend should pay. With the dictionary’s help, together we worked out the cable in English. Once it was sent, Guido rubbed his hands and started calculating how many crowns would pour into the cash box as a reward for that brief and easy effort. To maintain the favor of the gods, he found it proper to promise a little bonus for me and then, somewhat slyly, also for Carmen, who had contributed to the venture with her eyes. We both wanted to refuse, but he begged us at least to pretend to accept. Otherwise he was afraid we would all suffer bad luck, and I obeyed him at once to reassure him. I knew, with mathematical certainty, that he would be the recipient of only my warmest wishes, but I understood that he could be dubious about that. In this world, when we don’t wish one another ill, we all love one another, but our most vital desires accompany only the affairs to which we are personally committed.