Zeno's Conscience

  Augusta hadn’t had the courage to advise her to give it to him, but she assured me she had done her best to make Ada reconsider her view of her husband’s fidelity. Ada had replied in a way that suggested she knew far more on this score than we thought. And, with me, Augusta reasoned in these terms: “For a husband, a wife should be able to make any sacrifice.” But did that axiom apply also to Guido?

  In the days that followed, Guido’s demeanor became truly extraordinary. He appeared in the office from time to time, but never stayed for more than half an hour. He would rush off like someone who’s forgotten his handkerchief at home. I later learned that he went to confront Ada with new arguments, which seemed to him decisive, sure to make her do as he wished. He really looked like a man who has wept too much or shouted too much or who has actually fought, and even in our presence he was unable to control the emotion that choked him and brought tears to his eyes. I asked him what was wrong. He answered with a sad but friendly smile, to show he didn’t hold anything against me. Then he collected himself so he could talk to me without becoming too agitated. Finally he said a few words. Ada was making him suffer with her jealousy.

  He then told me that they quarreled over their personal matters, whereas I knew that there was also that question of debit and credit between them.

  But apparently this had no importance. He told me so himself, and Ada said the same to Augusta, speaking of nothing but her jealousy. Also the violence of those arguments, which left such profound traces on Guido’s face, suggested that they were all telling the truth.

  On the contrary, it turned out that husband and wife talked of nothing but the money question. Though she let herself be driven by her passionate sufferings, Ada, out of pride, had never mentioned them, and Guido, perhaps through awareness of his guilt and although he sensed that womanly rage persisted in Ada, continued to discuss business affairs as if the rest didn’t exist. He more and more desperately pursued that money, while she, who wasn’t the least bit interested in financial matters, protested against Guido’s proposal with a single argument: the money had to be kept for the children. And when he found other arguments—his peace, the benefits the children themselves would derive from his work, the security of being in compliance with the law—she dismissed them with a sharp “No!” This exasperated Guido and—as happens with children—also his desire. But both, when they spoke about it to others, believed they were truthful in asserting they were suffering for love and jealousy.

  It was a kind of misunderstanding that prevented me from acting at the right time to end the unfortunate debate about money. I could prove to Guido that it effectively lacked importance. As an accountant I am a bit slow, and I don’t understand things until I have entered them in the books, in black and white, but it seems to me I quickly understood that the investment Guido demanded of Ada would not have changed things much. What, in fact, was the use of making her deposit a sum in cash? The loss, in that case, did not appear any smaller, unless Ada agreed actually to add her money to the balance sheet, and Guido was not asking this of her. The law would surely not be mollified by finding that after having lost so much, we wanted to risk even more, attracting new capital into the firm.

  One morning Guido didn’t show up in the office, which surprised us because we knew he hadn’t left to go hunting the previous evening. At lunch I learned from a distressed and agitated Augusta that, the night before, Guido had attempted to take his own life. Now he was out of danger. I must confess that the news, which to Augusta seemed tragic, made me angry.

  He had resorted to that drastic measure to overcome his wife’s resistance! I learned, also immediately, that he had done so with every precaution, and before taking the morphine, he had made sure he was seen holding the unstoppered bottle in his hand. Thus, at the first signs of drowsiness, Ada called the doctor, and Guido was quickly out of danger. Ada had spent a horrible night because the doctor felt it was proper to express some uncertainty about the effect of the poisoning, and then her distress was prolonged by Guido, who, when he came to, perhaps not yet fully conscious, covered her with reproaches, calling her his enemy, his persecutor, an obstacle to the healthy work he was trying to undertake.

  Ada immediately granted him the loan he was asking, but then, finally, with the intention of defending herself, she spoke openly and uttered all the reproaches she had repressed for so long. Thus they came to an understanding because he—so Augusta thought—had managed to dispel all Ada’s doubts about his fidelity. He was vehement, and when she spoke to him of Carmen, he cried: “Are you jealous of her? All right, if you want, I’ll discharge her this very day.”

  Ada hadn’t replied, and she believed she had thus accepted his offer and he had committed himself.

  I was amazed that Guido had been able to act like this while half asleep, and I came to believe he hadn’t swallowed even the small dose of morphine that he claimed. I thought one of the effects of clouding the brain through drowsiness was to weaken the most hardened spirit, prompting the most ingenuous confessions. Hadn’t I only recently experienced something of the sort? This increased my outrage and my scorn for Guido.

  Augusta wept, telling me the condition in which she had found Ada. No! Ada was no longer beautiful, with those eyes that seemed widened in terror.

  My wife and I then had a long argument about whether or not I should immediately visit Guido and Ada, or whether it wasn’t better to feign ignorance and wait to see him next in the office. To me, that visit seemed an intolerable nuisance. Seeing him, how could I refrain from expressing my feelings? I would say: “It’s an action unworthy of a man! I’ve no desire to kill myself, but there’s no doubt that if I did decide to, I would succeed immediately!”

  This is truly how I felt, and I wanted to say as much to Augusta. But I thought I was doing Guido too much honor in comparing him with myself.

  “You don’t have to be a chemist to know how to destroy this organism of ours, which is all too sensitive. Almost every week in our city, isn’t there some seamstress who swallows a solution of phosphorus prepared secretly in her humble room, and then that rudimentary poison, despite every care, carries her off, her face still distorted by the physical pain and by the moral suffering of her innocent little soul?”

  Augusta wouldn’t agree that the soul of the suicidal little seamstress was all that innocent, but after some faint protest, she renewed her efforts to make me pay that visit. She said I shouldn’t be afraid of any embarrassment. She had spoken to Guido, who had conversed with her with absolute tranquillity, as if he had performed the most common of acts.

  I left the house without giving Augusta the satisfaction of appearing convinced by her arguments. After a slight hesitation I set off firmly to satisfy my wife. Though the distance was short, my pace allowed an attenuation of my judgment of Guido. I remembered the direction indicated for me by the light that a few days earlier had illuminated my spirit. Guido was a boy, a boy to whom I had promised my indulgence. If he didn’t manage to kill himself first, sooner or later he, too, would reach maturity.

  The maid showed me into a little room that must have been Ada’s study. It was a gloomy day and the cramped space was dark, its one window covered by a heavy curtain. On the wall were portraits of the parents of Ada and of Guido. I remained there only a short time, because the maid returned for me and led me to Guido and Ada in their bedroom. This was vast and bright even on that day, thanks to the two broad windows and the pale wallpaper and furniture. Guido was lying in his bed, his head bandaged, and Ada was seated beside him.

  Guido received me without any embarrassment, indeed with the keenest gratitude. He appeared drowsy, but to greet me and then to give me instructions, he managed to recover himself and seem completely awake. Then he sank back on the pillow and closed his eyes. Did he remember he was to simulate the great effect of the morphine? In any case he inspired pity rather than anger, and I felt I was being very good.

  I didn’t look immediately at Ada: I was afraid o
f the Basedow countenance. When I did look at her, I was pleasantly surprised because I was expecting worse. Her eyes were really exceptionally enlarged, but the facial swellings that had replaced her cheeks were gone, and she seemed more beautiful to me. She was wearing a loose red gown, buttoned up to her chin, in which her poor little body was lost. There was about her something very chaste and, because of those eyes, something very stern. I couldn’t entirely clarify my feeling, but I truly thought that before me was a woman who resembled that Ada I had loved.

  At a certain moment Guido widened his eyes, took from beneath the pillow a check, on which I immediately saw Ada’s signature, and gave it to me, asking me to cash it and deposit the sum in an account I was to open in Ada’s name.

  “In the name of Ada Malfenti or Ada Speier?” he jokingly asked Ada.

  She shrugged and said: “You and Zeno will know which is better.”

  “I’ll tell you later how you must make the other entries,” Guido added, with a curtness that I found offensive.

  I was on the point of interrupting the languor to which he then promptly succumbed, and tell him that if he wanted any more entries he could make them himself.

  Meanwhile a great cup of black coffee had been brought, which Ada held out to him. He lifted his arms from under the covers and raised the cup to his mouth with both hands. Now, his nose in the cup, he really seemed a child.

  When I took my leave, he assured me that the next day he would be in the office.

  I had already said good-bye to Ada, and so I was considerably surprised when she joined me at the front door. She was out of breath.

  “Please, Zeno! Come in here for a moment. There’s something I have to tell you.”

  I followed her into the sitting room where I had been a little earlier, from which I now heard one of the twins crying.

  We remained standing, face to face. She was still gasping, and for this reason, and no other, for a moment I thought she had shown me into this dark room to ask of me the love I had offered her.

  In the darkness her great eyes were terrifying. Filled with anguish, I was wondering what I should do. Wouldn’t it have been my duty to take her into my arms and thus spare her the necessity of asking anything of me? What a cyclone of resolutions in the space of an instant! One of the most difficult things in life is guessing what a woman wants. Listening to her words is no use, because a whole speech can be erased by one look, nor can that look guide us when we are with her, at her invitation, in a convenient, dark little room.

  Unable to read her, I tried to read myself. What was my desire? Did I want to kiss those eyes and that skeletal body? I couldn’t give a firm answer because just a moment earlier I had seen her in the stern chastity of that soft robe, desirable as the girl I had loved.

  Her anxiety was now accompanied by tears, thus prolonging the time in which I was unsure what she wanted or what I desired. Finally, in a broken voice, she told me once again of her love for Guido, hence I had neither duties nor rights toward her.

  She stammered: “Augusta told me you would like to leave Guido and not occupy yourself with his affairs. I must beg you to keep on helping him. I don’t think he’s capable of doing it on his own.”

  She was asking me to continue doing what I already did. It was little, very little, and I tried to offer more: “Since you ask me, I’ll go on helping Guido. Indeed, I’ll do my best to help him more effectively than I’ve done so far.”

  Another exaggeration! I realized as much at the very moment I blundered into it, but I couldn’t give it up. I wanted to assure Ada (or perhaps lie to her), saying that she was important to me. She didn’t want my love but rather my support, and I spoke to her in a way that could lead her to believe I was ready to give her both.

  Ada immediately seized my hand. I shuddered. When a woman gives you her hand, she is offering a great deal! I have always felt that. When I was granted a hand, I felt I was grasping an entire woman. I sensed her stature, and in the obvious comparison between mine and hers, I felt as if I were performing an act that resembled an embrace. Without doubt, it was an intimate contact.

  She added: “I have to go back to Bologna immediately, to the sanatorium, and it would be a great reassurance to know you were with him.”

  “I’ll stay with him!” I answered with a resigned look. Ada was to believe that my look of resignation signified the sacrifice I was agreeing to make for her. Instead, I was resigning myself to returning to a common, a very common, life, for she had no thought of following me into that exceptional life I had dreamed of.

  I made an effort to come down to earth completely, and I immediately discovered in my mind a far-from-simple problem of accounting. I had to deposit the amount of that check in my pocket in Ada’s account. This was clear, and yet it was not at all clear how such an entry could affect the balance sheet. I said nothing, suspecting that perhaps Ada had no idea what in this world a daybook was, which contained accounts of various nature.

  But I was reluctant to leave that room without having said more. So it was that instead of mentioning accounts, I uttered a sentence, dropped nonchalantly at that moment, simply to be saying something to Ada, but then I felt it was of great importance for me, for Ada, for Guido, but most of all for myself, whom I was compromising yet again. That sentence was so important that for long years I remembered how, with a careless gesture, I moved my lips to say it in that dark little room in the presence of the four portraits of the parents of Ada and Guido, married to each other also on the wall.

  I said: “In the end, you married a man even more peculiar than I am, Ada!”

  How a word can traverse time! It becomes an event in itself, connecting with other events! My words became an event, a tragic event, because they were addressed to Ada! In my thoughts I would never afterwards be able to evoke so vividly the house where Ada had chosen between me and Guido, on that sunny street where, after days of waiting, I had contrived to meet her and walk beside her and wear myself out trying to win her laughter, which I foolishly hailed as a promise! And I remembered, too, that then I was already made inferior by the clumsiness of my leg muscles, while Guido moved even more freely than Ada herself and wasn’t marked by any inferiority, unless we were to consider that strange stick he was in the habit of carrying.

  She said in a low voice, “It’s true!”

  Then she smiled affectionately. “But I’m happy for Augusta that you’re so much better than I believed you.” Then, with a sigh: “So happy, that it makes me a little less sad that Guido isn’t what I expected.”

  I remained silent, still dubious. It seemed to me what she, had said was that I had become the man she had expected Guido to become. Was this love, then?

  And she went on: “You’re the best man in our family, our mainstay, our hope.” She took my hand again and I squeezed hers, perhaps too hard. But she withdrew it again so quickly that any doubt was dispelled. Perhaps to soften her gesture, she sent me another caress. “And because I know the man you are, I’m so sorry for having made you suffer. Did you really suffer that much?”

  At once I thrust my eye into the darkness of my past to find that suffering again, and I murmured: “Yes!”

  Little by little I recalled Guido’s violin, and then how they would have cast me out of that living room if I hadn’t clung to Augusta, and again that Malfenti living room, where, around the Louis XIV table, we wooed while at the other little table they were watching. Suddenly I recalled also Carla, who told me I belonged to my wife, namely Ada.

  I repeated, as the tears came into my eyes: “Yes, very, very much!”

  She summoned her strength and said: “But now you love Augusta!”

  A sob interrupted her for an instant, and I started, not knowing whether she had paused to hear if I would affirm or deny that love. Luckily for me, she didn’t give me time to answer, but went on: “Now, between the two of us there exists, and there must exist, a fraternal love. I need you. For that boy in there, I must now be also a mother, I m
ust protect him. Will you help me with this difficult task?”

  In her great emotion, she was almost leaning on me, as in my dream. But I strictly followed her words. She asked a fraternal affection of me; the loving pledge that I had thought bound me to her was thus transformed into another right she could claim, therefore I immediately promised to help Guido, to help her, to do whatever she wanted. If I had been calmer, I should have spoken to her of my inadequacy for the task she was assigning me, but I would have destroyed all the unforgettable emotion of that moment. In any case, I was so moved that I had no sense of my inadequacy. At that moment I thought that no inadequacies existed for anyone. Even Guido’s could be dispelled with a few words that would instil in him the necessary enthusiasm.

  Ada accompanied me to the landing and remained there, leaning on the banister, watching me go down. Just as Carla had always done, but it was strange that Ada did it, she who loved Guido, and I was so grateful to her for it that, before moving to the second flight of steps, I also raised my head once to see her and wave to her. This was how people in love behaved, but obviously it was appropriate also in a question of fraternal love.

  Thus I went off happy. She had accompanied me out onto that landing, but no farther. There were no longer any doubts. We would remain like this: I had loved her and now I loved Augusta, but my former love gave her the right to my devotion. She continued, then, to love that boy of hers, but for me she retained a great fraternal affection, and not only because I had married her sister, but also to compensate me for the sufferings she had caused me, which constituted a secret bond between us. All this was quite sweet, a sweetness rare in life. Couldn’t such sweetness give me true health? In fact, I walked that day without clumsiness and without pains, I felt magnanimous and strong and, in my heart, a feeling of confidence that was new to me. I forgot I had betrayed my wife and also in the foulest way, or rather I determined never to do it again, which amounted to the same thing, and I felt I was truly as Ada saw me, the best man in the family.