Zeno's Conscience

  When this heroism eventually faded, I would have liked to rekindle it, but meanwhile Ada had left for Bologna, and my every effort to draw a new stimulus from what she had said to me proved vain. Yes! I would do what little I could for Guido, but such a resolution didn’t increase either the air in my lungs or the blood in my veins. For Ada in my heart there remained a great new sweetness, renewed every time she, in her letters to Augusta, recalled me with some affectionate word. I returned her affection with all my heart, and followed her treatment with the most sincere best wishes. If only she could succeed in recovering all her health and all her beauty!

  The next day Guido came to the office and immediately started pondering the entries he wanted to make. He suggested: “Let’s shift half the debit-and-credit account into Ada’s.”

  This was precisely what he had wanted, and it did no good at all. If I had been the indifferent executor of his wishes as I had been until a few days before, without blinking I would have made those entries, and without another thought. But instead I felt it my duty to tell him everything; I thought it would stimulate him to work if I informed him it was not so easy to erase the loss we had incurred.

  I explained to him that, as far as I knew, Ada had given him that money to be deposited to her credit in her account, and that would not happen if we cashed the check and slipped into her account, from another direction, half of our losses.

  Further, that part of the loss that he wanted to assume himself had indeed to be entered in his personal account, where it belonged, and where, in fact, the entire debit really belonged. And none of this meant annulling the losses, but rather confirming them. I had given it so much thought that it was easy for me to explain everything to him, and I concluded: “Supposing that we happened to be—God forbid!—in the situation foreseen by Olivi, the loss would still be obvious from our hooks, the moment they were examined by a knowledgeable expert.”

  He looked at me, stunned. He knew enough of accounting to understand me, and yet he couldn’t grasp it because his desire prevented him from coming to terms with the evidence. Then I added, to make him see everything clearly: “You see there was no point in Ada’s making that payment?”

  When he finally understood, he turned quite pale and began nervously gnawing his fingernails. He remained in a daze, but wanted to master himself, and with his comical commanding-officer manner, he still ordered that all those entries be made, adding: “To exempt you from all responsibility, I am prepared to write them in the book myself and even to sign my name!”

  I understood! He wanted to go on dreaming at a stage where there is no more room for dreams. Not with double entry!

  I remembered what I had promised myself, up on the hill of Via Belvedere, and later to Ada in the dark little sitting room of her house, and I spoke generously: “I will make the entries you want at once: I don’t need your signature to protect me. I am here to help you, not to stand in your way!”

  He clasped my hand affectionately. “Life is hard,” he said. “And it’s a great comfort to have a friend like you at my side.”

  Moved, we looked into each other’s eyes. His were glistening. To evade the emotion that was threatening me as well, I laughed and said, “Life isn’t hard, but it’s very original.”

  And he also laughed with all his heart.

  Then he remained with me to see how I would deal with that debit-and-credit account. All was done in a few minutes. That account vanished into nothingness, dragging the account of Ada after it. However, we recorded a credit to her in a little notebook, so that in case all other documentation were to vanish in some cataclysm, her loan would be documented, along with the fact that we were to pay her interest. The other half of the debit-and-credit account went to increase the debits, already considerable, in Guido’s account.

  By nature, accounts are a breed of animal much inclined to irony. Making those entries I thought: “One account—the one listed as profit-and-loss—had been assassinated, the other—Ada’s - had died a natural death because there was no way of keeping it alive, whereas we didn’t know how to kill off Guido’s: a dubious debtor’s, it remained an open grave, ready for our firm.”

  We continued to talk of bookkeeping for a long time, in that office. Guido racked his brain to find another way that might better protect him against possible snares (as he called them) of the law. I believe he also consulted some accountant, because one day he came into the office and proposed that he and I destroy the old books after making some new ones in which we would enter an invented sale to someone or other, some bogus figure; and the sale would then appear to have repaid the amount lent by Ada. It was painful to have to disillusion him, because he had rushed into the office, animated by such hope! He proposed a fraud that truly revolted me. Until now we had done nothing more than juggle some realities, threatening harm only to those who had implicitly agreed. Now, on the contrary, he wanted to invent actual transactions. I could also see that in this way, and only in this way, it was possible to eliminate every trace of the loss incurred, but at what cost! It was necessary also to invent the name of the buyer, or to gain the consent of the person we wanted to portray as such. I had nothing against seeing the books destroyed, though I had written them with such care, but it was annoying to make new ones. I raised some objections, and they finally convinced Guido. Such documents cannot be easily counterfeited. One would have to be able to falsify the documents proving the existence and the ownership of the merchandise.

  He gave up his plan, but the next day he turned up in the office with another one, which also involved the destruction of the old books. Tired of seeing all other work stalled by these arguments, I protested, “You’re thinking so much about it, anyone would believe you really want to prepare for bankruptcy! Otherwise why would such a small reduction of your capital matter? So far, no one has the right to look into your books. The important thing now is to work, to work and stop thinking about such foolishness.”

  He confessed to me that this thought had become an obsession with him. How could it have been otherwise? With a bit of bad luck he could incur that penal sanction and end up in jail!

  From my study of law, I knew that Olivi had explained very precisely the duties of a businessman who kept such books, but to free Guido and also myself from this obsession, I advised him to consult some lawyer friend.

  He replied that he already had done so, or, rather, he hadn’t gone to a lawyer for that specific purpose, because he didn’t want to confide his secret even to a lawyer, but he had encouraged a lawyer friend of his to chat while they were out hunting together. Therefore he knew that Olivi had not been mistaken, nor had he exaggerated—unfortunately!

  Seeing the inanity of it, he stopped discovering ways to lalsify his accounts, but that didn’t restore his peace of mind. Every time he came into the office he turned grim, looking at bis great ledgers. He confessed to me, one day, that on entering our room he felt he was in the anteroom of the prison and wanted to run off.

  One day he asked me: “Does Augusta know everything about our books?”

  I blushed because I seemed to sense a reproach in the question. But obviously if Ada knew about the books, Augusta could also know. I didn’t think of this immediately, but, on the contrary, I felt I deserved his reproach. So I murmured: “She must have learned from Ada, or perhaps from Alberta, who heard it from Ada!”

  I could see all the little streams that could flow to Augusta. With those words I didn’t feel I was denying the fact that she had learned everything from the prime source, namely me, but I was asserting that it would have been pointless for me to remain silent. Too bad! If, on the contrary, I had confessed at once that I had no secrets from Augusta, I would have felt so loyal and honest! A simple act like that, or rather the dissimulation of an act it would have been better to confess and pronounce innocent, is enough to strain the most sincere friendship.

  I will record here, though it has no importance for Guido or for my story, how a few days afterwards
that talkative agent with whom we had dealt in the copper-sulfate affair stopped me on the street, looked up at me, compelled by his short stature, which he exaggerated by bending his knees slightly, and said ironically: “They say you two have done some good business, like the sulfate deal!”

  Then, seeing me blanch, he shook my hand and added: “Personally, I wish you lots of good deals. I hope you have no doubt about that!”

  And he left me. I suppose that our affairs had been reported to him by his daughter, who was a classmate of little Anna at the Liceo. I didn’t mention this slight indiscretion to Guido. My main job was to defend him against useless troubles.

  I was amazed that Guido made no decision about Carmen, because I knew he had formally promised his wife to discharge her. I thought Ada would come home in a few months, as she had the first time. But, without passing through Trieste, she went to stay in a villa on Lago Maggiore, where Guido took the children a short time later.

  When he returned from that journey—and I don’t know if he remembered his promise on his own, or whether Ada had reminded him of it—he asked me if it wouldn’t be possible to employ Carmen in my office, that is to say Olivi’s. I knew that all positions in that office were already filled, but because Guido asked me with such insistence, I agreed to go and talk about it with my manager. By a lucky chance, one of Olivi’s employees was leaving just then, but his wages were lower than what Carmen had been paid during these last months, with great prodigality, by Guido, who, in my opinion, thus had his women paid from the general expenses account. Old Olivi asked me about Carmen’s abilities, and though I gave her the most glowing recommendation, he offered to hire her on the same terms as the clerk who had quit. I reported this to Guido, who scratched his head, upset and embarrassed.

  “How can she be given a lower salary than what she’s now earning? Couldn’t Olivi be persuaded to give her at least what she already makes?”

  I knew that was impossible, and besides, it wasn’t Olivi’s way to consider himself married to his staff, as we did. If he were to realize Carmen was worth one crown less than the salary he’d given her, he would subtract it mercilessly. And in (he end things remained like this: Olivi didn’t receive and never asked for a firm reply, and Carmen continued to roll her lovely eyes in our office.

  Between me and Ada there was a secret, and it remained important precisely because it continued to be a secret. She wrote constantly to Augusta, but never told her about having had an explanation with me, or even that she had recommended Guido to my care. Nor did I speak of it. One day Augusta showed me a letter of Ada’s that concerned me. First she asked for news of me, and finally she appealed to my kindness, asking me to tell her something about the progress of Guido’s affairs. I was uneasy when I heard that she was addressing me, and I was reassured when I saw that as usual she addressed herself to me only to learn more about Guido. Once again there was no call for me to presume anything.

  With Augusta’s assent and without saying anything to Guido, I wrote to Ada. I sat at my desk with the intention of writing her a genuine business letter, and I informed her that I was quite pleased by the way Guido now ran the business, with attention and cleverness.

  This was true, or at least I was pleased with him that day, as he had managed to earn a bit of money selling some goods he had stored in the city for several months. It was also true that he seemed more assiduous, but he still went hunting and fishing every week. I gladly exaggerated my praises because it seemed to me this would speed Ada’s recovery.

  I reread the letter, and it didn’t satisfy me. Something was missing. Ada had turned to me, and surely she wanted also my own news. Therefore I was being discourteous in not giving her any. And little by little—I remember it as if it were happening to me now—I felt embarrassed at that desk, as if I were again facing Ada, in that dark little sitting room. Was I to squeeeze the little hand being offered me?

  I wrote, but then I had to rewrite the letter because I had allowed certain words, downright compromising, to escape me: I was yearning to see her again, and I hoped she was regaining all her health and all her beauty. This was like clasping the waist of the woman who had offered me only her hand. My duty was merely to shake that hand, to press it gently and at length, to signify that I understood everything, all that should never, ever, be said.

  I won’t repeat all the vocabulary I had to review in order to find something to replace that long and sweet and meaningful handshake, but only those sentences that I then wrote. I spoke at length of my incipient old age. I couldn’t sit still a moment without growing older. At every course of my blood, something was added to my bones and my veins that meant old age. Every morning, when I woke, the world appeared grayer and I didn’t notice because everything remained in the same palette; and in that day there wasn’t a brushstroke of the color of the day before, otherwise I would have noticed it and regret would have driven me to despair.

  I remember very well mailing the letter with complete satisfaction. I had in no way compromised myself by those words, but it also seemed certain to me that if Ada’s thoughts were identical to mine, she would understand that loving handshake. It took little insight to grasp the fact that the long discourse on old age signified only my fear that, finding myself speeding through time, I would no longer be overtaken by love. I seemed to be shouting to love: “Come, come!” Instead, I’m not sure I wanted that love, and if any doubt exists, it stems only from the fact that I know what I wrote was more or less in those terms.

  I made a copy of that letter for Augusta, omitting the disquisition on old age. She wouldn’t have understood it, but precaution never does any harm. I might have blushed, feeling her observation of me as I was shaking her sister’s hand. Yes! I could still blush. And I blushed also when I received a note of thanks from Ada, in which she made absolutely no mention of my prattle about my old age. It seemed to me she was compromising herself far more with me than I had compromised myself with her. She was not withdrawing her hand from my pressure. She allowed it to lie, inert, in mine, and for a woman, inertia is a form of consent.

  A few days after I had written that letter, I discovered that Guido had started playing the stock exchange. I learned this through an indiscretion of Nilini, the broker.

  I had known him for many years because we had been together at the Liceo, but he had been obliged to leave abruptly, to take a position in an uncle’s office. Later we ran into each other now and then, and I recall that the difference between our fates had given me a superior position in our relations. He used to greet me first and occasionally he tried to become closer to me. To me this seemed only natural, but what appeared less explicable was that, in a period I can’t pin down, he became very haughty toward me. He no longer greeted me first, and barely returned my own greeting. I was a little concerned by this because I am very thin-skinned and easily bruised. But what could be done? Perhaps he had discovered I was in Guido’s office, where it seemed to him I occupied a subaltern position, and therefore he despised me, or, with equal probability, I could suppose that, since his uncle had now died and left him an independent broker on the exchange, his pride had grown. In narrow environments, such attitudes are frequent. Without any hostile action having taken place, one fine day two men regard each other with aversion and contempt.

  I was surprised, therefore, to see him enter the office, where I was alone, and inquire about Guido. He had removed his hat and offered me his hand. Then, with great liberty, he slumped into one of our big chairs. I looked at him with interest. I hadn’t seen him this closely for years, and now, with the aversion he was displaying toward me, he won my keenest attention.

  He was then about forty, and was quite ugly thanks to an almost total baldness interrupted only by an oasis of thick, black hair on his nape and another at his temples, his face yellow and too heavy despite the big nose. He was short and thin and he held himself as erect as he could, so that when I spoke with him I felt a slight, sympathetic ache in my neck, the only sy
mpathy I felt for him. That day he seemed to be restraining his laughter, and his face was contracted by an irony or by a contempt that couldn’t wound me after he had greeted me so cordially. On the contrary, I later discovered that this irony had been printed on his face by a whim of Mother Nature. His little jaws did not close precisely, and between them, on one side of his mouth, a gap remained, where his stereotyped irony dwelt. Perhaps to conform to the mask from which he was unable to liberate himself except when he yawned, he enjoyed mocking his fellow man. He was far from being a fool, and he fired off some poisonous arrows, but preferably at those who were absent.

  He chattered a great deal and was full of imagination, especially in dealing with matters of the Bourse. He talked about the Bourse as if it were a person, a female, whom he described as fearing a threat or sleeping soundly, and with a face that could laugh and also weep. He saw her climbing the steps of a rising stock, dancing ahead, or then rushing down, with a risk of falling headlong; and yet he admired her as she caressed one stock, strangled another, or also how she taught people to control themselves or to take a plunge. For only people with sense could handle her. There was a lot of money strewn over the ground in the Bourse, but to bend down and gather it wasn’t easy.

  I invited him to wait, having offered him a cigarette, and I busied myself with some correspondence. After a little while he grew tired and said he couldn’t stay any longer. For that matter he had come only to tell Guido that certain shares with the strange name of Rio Tinto, which he had advised Guido to buy the day before—yes, exactly twenty-four hours ago—had soared that day by about ten percent. He burst into hearty laughter.

  “So while we’re talking here, or while I’m waiting for him, the Bourse rumor-mill will have done the rest. If Signor Speier now wanted to buy those shares, heaven only knows what he would have to pay. I anticipated the direction the Bourse was taking. “