In Ada, too, goiter was absent, according to what Augusta told me, but she had all the other symptoms of the disease. Poor Ada! She used to seem to me the picture of health and equilibrium, so that for a long time I thought she had chosen her husband in the same cold spirit with which her father chose his merchandise, and now she had been seized by a sickness that drew her into quite another regime: psychological perversion! But, along with her, I also fell ill, a slight but prolonged sickness. For too long I thought of Basedow. I already believe that at any point of the universe where you are settled, you end up being infected. You have to keep moving. Life has poisons, but also some other poisons that serve as antidotes. Only by running can you elude the former and take advantage of the latter.
My sickness was a ruling passion, a dream, and also a fear. It must have originated from a process of reasoning; by the term perversion we mean a deviation from health, that kind of health that accompanied us for a stretch of our life. Now I knew what Ada’s health had been. Mightn’t her perversion lead her to love me, whom—when she was healthy—she had rejected?
I don’t know how this terror (or this hope) was born in my brain!
Was it perhaps because Ada’s sweet, broken voice seemed a voice of love when she addressed me? Poor Ada had become really ugly, and I was unable to desire her any longer. But I kept reviewing our shared past, and it seemed to me that if she were overcome suddenly by love for me, I would find myself in a nasty situation somewhat reminiscent of Guido’s position with the English friend and the sixty tons of copper sulfate. The same situation exactly! A few years ago I had declared my love to her, and I hadn’t issued any notice of revocation beyond the act of marrying her sister. In that transaction she was not protected by the law, but by chivalry. It seemed to me I had committed myself to her so firmly that if now many many years later, she were to come to me, complete with a fine goiter, thanks to Basedow, I would have had to honor my signature.
I remember, however, that this prospect made my thoughts of Ada more affectionate. Previously, when I had learned of Ada’s sufferings caused by Guido, I surely had not felt pleasure, but I still had turned my thoughts with some satisfaction to my own home, which Ada had refused to enter and where there was no suffering whatsoever. Now things had changed: the Ada who had scornfully repulsed me no longer existed, unless my medical books were mistaken.
Ada’s illness was serious. Dr. Paoli, a few days later, advised removing her from the family and sending her to a sanatorium in Bologna. I learned this from Guido, but Augusta then told me that even at a time like this, poor Ada was not being spared serious distress. Guido had had the nerve to suggest bringing in Carmen to run the household during his wife’s absence. Ada lacked the courage to say openly what she thought of such a proposal, but she declared that she would not move from the house unless she was allowed to entrust its management to Aunt Maria, and Guido immediately fell in with this idea. However, he continued to cherish the notion of having Carmen at his disposal in the place vacated by Ada. One day he said to Carmen that if she hadn’t been so busy in the office, he would gladly have entrusted the management of his household to her. Luciano and I exchanged a glance, and surely each of us discovered a sly expression on the face of the other. Carmen blushed, and murmured that she wouldn’t have been able to accept.
“Of course,” Guido said, enraged, “because of that stupid concern about what people think, it’s impossible to do something really helpful!”
But he, too, soon fell silent and, surprisingly, he truncated his sermon on that interesting topic.
The whole family went to the station to see Ada off. Augusta had asked me to bring some flowers for her sister.
I arrived a bit late with a fine bunch of orchids, which I handed to Augusta. Ada was observing us, and when Augusta passed the flowers to her, she said: “I thank you both with all my heart!”
She meant she was receiving the flowers also from me, but I felt this as a show of sisterly affection, sweet and also a bit cold. Basedow certainly had nothing to do with it.
Poor Ada looked like a young bride, those enormous eyes enlarged with happiness. Her disease seemed to simulate every emotion.
Guido was leaving with her, to accompany her to Bologna and then return after a few days. We waited on the platform for the train to leave. Ada remained at the window of her compartment and went on waving her handkerchief as long as she could see us.
Then we took the weeping Signora Malfenti home. At the moment of our separation, my mother-in-law, after kissing Augusta, kissed me, too.
“Forgive me!” she said, laughing through her tears, “I did it without thinking. But if you’ll allow me, I’ll give you yet another kiss.”
Little Anna, now twelve, also wanted to kiss me. Alberta, who was about to abandon the nation’s theater to become engaged, and who as a rule was a bit reserved with me, that day warmly gave me her hand. They all loved me because my wife was bursting with health, and in this way they demonstrated their dislike of Guido, whose wife was ill.
But just then I risked becoming a less good husband. I caused my wife a great sorrow, through no fault of mine, because of a dream I innocently told her.
Here is the dream: There were the three of us, Augusta, Ada, and I, leaning out of a window, specifically the smallest window there was among our three houses—mine, my mother-in-law’s and Ada’s. We were, in short, at the window of my mother-in-law’s kitchen, which overlooks a small yard, though in the dream it was right on the Corso. There was so little space on the sill that Ada, who was in the middle, holding our arms, was sticking close to me. I looked at her and I saw that her eye had again become cold and sharp and the lines of her face very pure all the way to the nape, which I saw was covered by her delicate curls, those curls that I had seen so often when Ada turned her back on me. Despite this coldness (as her health seemed to me), she remained pressed against me as I had believed she was that evening of my engagement around the speaking table. Jokingly, I said to Augusta (surely making an effort to pay attention also to her): “You see how she is cured? Where’s Basedow now?” “Can’t you see?” asked Augusta, the only one of us who managed to look into the street. With an effort we leaned out also and we could see a great crowd advancing, with threats and shouts. “But where is Basedow?” I asked once more. Then I saw him. It was he who was advancing, followed by that crowd: an old beggar wrapped in a huge cloak, tattered but of stiff brocade, his great head covered by disheveled white locks flying in the air, his eyes protruding from their sockets, anxiously looking forward with a gaze I had observed in fleeing animals, of fear and of menace. And the crowd was shouting: “Kill the disease-spreader!”
Then there was an interval of empty night. And then, immediately, Ada and I were alone on the steepest stair of our three houses, the one that leads to the attic of my villa. Ada was perched on some higher steps, but turned toward me, as I was about to climb up, though she seemed to want to come down. I was embracing her legs and she was bending toward me, whether out of weakness or the desire to be closer to me I don’t know. For an instant she seemed to me disfigured by her sickness, but then, looking at her breathlessly, I could see her as she had appeared to me at the window, beautiful and healthy. She was saying to me in her solid voice: “Go ahead, I’ll follow you at once!” I promptly turned to precede her, running, but not fast enough not to notice that the door of my attic was very slowly opening and Basedow’s head, with its white mane and that face, half-afraid, half-menacing, emerged. I saw also his unsteady legs and the poor, wretched body that the cloak was unable to hide. I managed to run off, but I don’t know whether it was to precede Ada or to escape her.
Now it seems that, gasping, I awoke in the night, and in my dozing state I told all or part of the dream to Augusta, before resuming my sleep, calmer and deeper. I believe that, in my semiconsciousness, I blindly followed my old desire to confess my misdeeds.
In the morning, on Augusta’s face, there was the waxen pallor of major occasions. I remem
bered the dream perfectly, but not exactly how much of it I had reported to her. With an expression of pained resignation, she said: “You are unhappy because she’s ill and has gone away, and so you dream about her.”
I defended myself, laughing and teasing. It wasn’t Ada who was important to me, but Basedow, and I told her of my studies and also of the applications I had envisaged. But I don’t know if I succeeded in convincing her. When you are caught dreaming, it’s hard to defend yourself. It’s quite a different thing from returning to your wife, wide awake, immediately after having betrayed her. For that matter, in these jealousies of Augusta’s, I had nothing to lose because she loved Ada so much, and for that reason her jealousy cast no shadow; as far as I was concerned, she treated me with even more affectionate respect and was all the more grateful to me for my slightest show of affection.
A few days later Guido returned from Bologna with the best of news. The director of the sanatorium guaranteed a definitive cure provided that, on her return, Ada found great serenity at home. Guido reported simply and fairly shamelessly the doctor’s prognosis, not realizing that in the Malfenti family that verdict merely confirmed many suspicions regarding him.
And I said to Augusta: “Now I’m threatened with more kisses from your mother.”
It seemed that Guido didn’t feel quite comfortable in the house under Aunt Maria’s management. Sometimes he paced up and down the office, murmuring: “Two babies… three wet nurses… no wife.”
He also remained absent from the office more often because he released his ill humor in a rage against the poor animal victims of his hunting and fishing. But when, toward the end of the year, we received from Bologna the news that Ada was considered cured and was preparing to come home, he didn’t seem all that happy to me. Had he become used to Aunt Maria, or did he see so little of her that it was easy and pleasant for him to tolerate her? With me, naturally, he showed no sign of his ill humor except perhaps in expressing the suspicion that Ada was in too much of a hurry to leave the sanatorium before she was assured there would be no relapse. In fact, a short time later, even before the end of that winter, when she had to return to Bologna, he said to me triumphantly: “What did I tell you?”
I don’t, however, believe that there was any other joy in that triumph beyond his always keen pleasure in having successfully predicted something. He wasn’t wishing Ada any ill, but he would have been glad to keep her in Bologna for a long time.
When Ada returned, Augusta was confined to bed for the birth of my little Alfio, and on that occasion she was truly moving. She insisted I go to the station with flowers and I was to tell Ada that she wanted to see her that same day. And if Ada couldn’t come to her directly from the station, she begged me to return home at once so I could describe Ada to her and report whether Ada’s beauty, of which the family was so proud, had been completely restored to her.
At the station there was Guido, me, and only Alberta, because Signora Malfenti spent most of every day with Augusta. On the platform, Guido tried to convince us of his immense joy over Ada’s arrival, but Alberta, listening to him, made a great show of inattention in order—as she later told me—not to have to reply to him. As for me, simulation with Guido by now cost me little effort. I was accustomed to pretending not to notice his indulgence toward Carmen and I had never dared refer to his wrongs toward his wife. It was therefore not hard for me to assume an attitude of attention as if I were admiring his joy at the return of his beloved wife.
On the stroke of noon, when the train entered the station, he ran ahead of us to reach his wife as she stepped down. He took her in his arms and kissed her affectionately. Seeing him from behind, as he bent in order to be able to kiss his wife, who was shorter than he, I thought: What a good actor!
Then he took Ada’s hand and led her toward us. “Here she is, restored to our devotion!”
Then he revealed himself for what he was, namely false, a simulator, because if he had taken a closer look at the poor woman’s face, he would have realized that, instead of our devotion, she was being delivered to our indifference. Ada’s face was badly put together, because it had recovered the cheeks, but they were misplaced, as if the flesh, returning, had forgotten where it belonged and had settled too low. They looked therefore like swellings rather than cheeks. And her eyes were back in their sockets, but no one had been able to undo the damage done by their absence. Some precise and important lines had been shifted or destroyed. When we bade our good-byes outside the station, in the dazzling winter sun, I saw that all the color of that face was no longer what I had so loved. It had faded, and on the fleshy parts it was flushed, splotchy. Apparently health no longer belonged to that face, and they had succeeded only in putting a pretense of it there.
I immediately told Augusta that Ada was beautiful just as she had been as a girl, and Augusta was overjoyed. Then, after seeing Ada, to my surprise she confirmed several times my pitiful lies as if they had been obvious truths.
She said: “She’s as beautiful as she was as a girl, and as my daughter will be!”
Obviously a sister’s eye is not very sharp.
For a long time I didn’t see Ada again. She had too many children, and so did we. Still, Ada and Augusta managed to meet several times each week, but always at hours when I was away from the house.
Inventory time was approaching, and I had a great deal to do. Indeed, it was the period of my life when I worked most. On some days I stayed at my desk for as much as ten hours. Guido offered to call in an accountant to help me, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I had assumed an obligation, and I had to maintain it. I meant to compensate Guido for that month of grim absence, and I was happy also to show Carmen my diligence, which could only have been inspired by my fondness for Guido.
But as I went ahead ordering the accounts, I began to discover the heavy losses we had incurred in that first year of activity. Concerned, I said something about it privately to Guido, but he was preparing to go hunting and wouldn’t stay to hear me out.
“You’ll see: it won’t be as bad as it looks. And anyway the year isn’t over yet.”
Then I confided in Augusta. At first all she could see in this matter was the damage I might suffer. That’s how women are made, but Augusta was extraordinary, even for a woman, when she lamented her own harm. Wouldn’t I—she asked me—also be held somewhat responsible finally for the losses suffered by Guido? She wanted to consult a lawyer at once. Meanwhile it was necessary to make a break with Guido and stop going to that office.
It wasn’t easy for me to convince her that I couldn’t be held responsible for anything, since I was no more than an employee of Guido’s. She insisted that one who doesn’t have a fixed salary cannot be considered an employee, but something similar to a co-owner. When she was thoroughly convinced, she naturally remained of her opinion because then she discovered I would lose nothing if I were to cease going to that office, where I would surely in the end win myself a bad reputation in the business world. Good heavens! My business reputation! I, too, agreed that it was important to save it, and though she may have been wrong in her arguments, in conclusion I should do as she wished. She allowed me to complete the ordering of the accounts, since I had begun it, but afterwards I would have to find a way of returning to my little study, where no money was earned, but none was lost, either.
I then learned something curious about myself. I was unable to abandon that activity of mine, even though I had decided to. I was amazed! To understand things properly, you have to work through images. I remembered then that once in England a sentence to forced labor was administered by suspending the condemned convict over a wheel turned by water, thus forcing the victim to move his legs at a certain rhythm to avoid their being crushed. When you are working, you always have the sensation of a similar constriction. It’s true that when you don’t work the position is the same, and I believe it correct to assert that I and Olivi were always equally dangling; only I was hung in such a way that I didn’t have to move m
y legs. Our position therefore produced a different result, but now I know for certain that it deserved neither blame nor praise. In short, chance determines whether you’re attached to a moving wheel or to one that is motionless. Freeing yourself is inevitably difficult.
For various days, after the accounts were closed, I continued going to the office, though I had resolved not to go there again. I left my house, uncertain. Uncertain, I headed in a direction that was almost always that of the office, and as I proceeded, that direction became clearer until I found myself seated in my usual chair opposite Guido. Luckily at a given moment I was asked not to leave my place, and I immediately agreed, since in the meantime I had realized I was nailed there.
For the fifteenth of January my books were closed. An out-and-out disaster! We closed with a loss of half our capital. Guido was reluctant to show it to young Olivi, fearing some indiscretion on his part, but I insisted, hoping that he, with his great experience, would find some error capable of changing the whole position. There could be some amount shifted from credit, when it belonged to debit, and with a rectification we would arrive at an important difference. Smiling, Olivi promised Guido the maximum discretion, and he then worked with me for a whole day. Unfortunately he found no mistake. I must say that, from this review carried out by the two of us together, I learned much, and now I would be able to face and handle balance sheets far more intimidating than that one.
“And what will you do now?” the bespectacled young man asked before leaving. I already knew what he would suggest. My father, who often had talked about business with me in my infancy, had already taught me. According to the laws of finance, given the loss of half of the capital, we should liquidate the firm and perhaps revive it immediately on a new basis. I allowed him to repeat this advice.
He added: “It’s a formality.” Then, smiling, he said: “But failure to do this can be very costly!”
That evening Guido also started looking over the accounts, which he still wasn’t able to grasp. He did it without any method, checking this or that sum at random. I wanted to stop that useless work, and I transmitted Olivi’s advice to go immediately into liquidation, but only as a formality.