It was true! If I had seen that decree, printed inconspicuously in the five newspapers I read every day, I wouldn’t have fallen into the trap. I should have understood that decree immediately, and seen its consequences. This was no easy matter, because the decree reduced a certain tariff and thus reduced the cost of the merchandise involved.
The following day my father-in-law retracted his confession. On his lips the deal regained the character it had had before that supper. “Wine’s a liar,” he said seraphically, and it was tacitly understood that the decree in question had been published two days after the conclusion of our affair. He never again uttered the suggestion that, seeing that decree, I could have misunderstood it. I was flattered, but he didn’t spare me out of kindness, but rather because he believed that everyone, reading the newspapers, has his own business interests in mind. I, on the contrary, when I read a paper, feel transformed into public opinion, and seeing the reduction of a tariff, I think of Cobden* and free trade. The thought is so important that it leaves no room for me to recall my wares.
Once, however, I happened to win his admiration for myself, for me as I truly am, and, indeed, precisely for my worst qualities. For some time he and I had held some shares in a sugar refinery, which we were expecting to produce miracles. Instead, the stock went down, slightly but steadily, and Giovanni, who was not a man to swim against the stream, sold off his shares and persuaded me I should unload mine. In perfect agreement, I meant to instruct my broker to sell, and meanwhile I jotted a reminder in a notebook that, in those days, I had resumed keeping. But, as everyone knows, during the day you never look into your pocket, and so, for several
* Richard Cobden (1804-65), English manufacturer and politician, firm believer in free trade.
evenings, on going to bed, I was surprised to find that memorandum, too late for me to act on it. Once I cried out in dismay, and to avoid giving my wife too many explanations, I told her I had bitten my tongue. Another time, amazed at my own negligence, I really bit my hands. “Watch out for your feet now!” my wife said, laughing. Then there were no further wounds because I became hardened. I looked, dazed, at that notebook, too slim to make its pressure felt during the day, and so I gave it no further thought until the next evening.
One day a sudden downpour forced me to seek shelter in the Tergesteo. There, by chance, I found my broker, who told me that in the past week the value of those shares had almost doubled.
“And now I’ll sell!” I exclaimed in triumph.
I rushed to my father-in-law, who already knew about the increased value of that stock. He regretted having sold his shares and, if a bit less so, also regretted persuading me to sell mine.
“Don’t take it too hard!” he said, laughing. “This is the first time you’ve lost anything by taking my advice.”
The other matter had been the result not of his advice but of a mere suggestion from him, and in his opinion this was quite different.
I began laughing heartily.
“But I didn’t act on that advice!” My luck wasn’t enough for me, however: I tried to make it look like merit on my part. I told him the stock would not be sold until the next day, and, assuming a self-important manner, I tried to make him believe I had received some news I had forgotten to pass on to him, and it had led me to ignore his words.
Grim and offended, he spoke without looking me in the face. “A man with a mind like yours shouldn’t go into business. And when he behaves so wickedly, he doesn’t confess it. You still have a lot to learn, young fellow.”
I disliked irritating him. It was much more amusing when he was doing me harm. I told him sincerely how matters had gone.
“As you see, a man with a mind like mine should absolutely go into business.”
Mollified at once, he laughed with me. “What you earn from such a deal isn’t a profit: it’s a reward. That mind of yours has already cost you so much that it’s only fair for it to reimburse you for a part of your losses!”
I don’t know why I dwell here on our quarrels, which were so few. I was truly fond of him, and indeed I sought out his company despite his habit of yelling in order to think more clearly. My eardrums were able to bear his shouts. If he had shouted less loudly, those immoral theories of his would have been more offensive and, if he had been more gently brought up, his strength would have been less significant. And despite the fact that I was so different from him, I believe he reciprocated my affection with equal fondness. I would be more certain of this if he hadn’t died so soon. He continued assiduously giving me lessons after my marriage and he often seasoned them with shouts and insults, which I accepted, convinced that I deserved them.
I married his daughter. Mysterious Mother Nature led me and it will be seen with what imperative violence. Now I sometimes study the faces of my children to see if, along with my narrow chin, which I have passed on to them, they possess at least some feature of the brute strength of the grandfather I chose for them.
I wept at my father-in-law’s grave, even though his last farewell to me hadn’t been too affectionate. On his deathbed he told me he admired my shameless luck, which allowed me to move freely while he was crucified on that bed. Amazed, I asked him what I had done to him to make him wish me ill. And he answered me with these very words: “If I could pass my illness on to you and thus rid myself of it, I would give it to you immediately, even doubled! I have none of those humanitarian fancies of yours!”
There was nothing offensive in this: he would have liked to repeat that other transaction in which he had succeeded in loading off on me some worthless goods. But here, too, there was an affectionate pat on the head, because I wasn’t sorry to hear my weakness described as the humanitarian fancies he attributed to me.
At his grave, as at all the others where I have wept, I grieved also for the part of myself that was buried there. What a loss it was for me, to be robbed of that second father, that common, ignorant, fierce fighter who underlined my weakness, my culture, my timidity. It’s the truth: I’m timid! I would never have found this out if I hadn’t studied Giovanni. God only knows how much better I would have come to know myself if he had continued living at my side!
Soon I realized that at the Tergesteo table, where he liked to reveal himself as he was and even a bit worse, Giovanni respected a self-imposed reservation: he never spoke of his home, or else he did so only when forced to, decorously and in a voice somewhat softer than usual. He nurtured a great respect for his family, and perhaps not everyone among those seated at that table seemed to him worthy of knowing anything about it. There I learned only that all four of his daughters had names beginning with A, a highly practical course, in his view, because in this way all the things on which that initial was embroidered could pass from one to the other without having to undergo any alteration. They were called (and I immediately learned those names by heart): Ada, Augusta, Alberta, and Anna. At that table, too, it was said that all four were beautiful. That initial made a much deeper impression on me than it should have. I dreamed of those four girls linked so firmly by their names. It was as if they were a bundle, to be delivered all together. The initial also said something else: my name is Zeno and I therefore had the Sensation I was about to take a wife very far from my own country.
It was perhaps accidental that before presenting myself at the Malfentis’, I had severed a fairly long-standing tie with a woman who might perhaps have deserved better treatment. But this accident provokes some thought. My decision to make this break was inspired by quite a frivolous motive. The poor girl had thought that a good way to bind me more tightly to herself was to make me jealous. On the contrary, the mere suspicion was enough to make me abandon her definitively. She couldn’t have known at the time how possessed I was by the idea of marriage, and that I believed it impossible to enter that state with her simply because then the novelty would not have seemed great enough to me. The suspicion she deliberately inspired in me demonstrated the superiority of marriage, in which state such suspicio
ns must not arise. When that suspicion, whose lack of substance I soon perceived, then vanished, I recalled that she spent money too freely. Today, after twenty-four years of honest matrimony, I am no longer of that opinion.
For her it proved a genuine stroke of luck because a few months later she married a very well-off man and achieved the desired change before I did. As soon as I was married, I met her in my home because her husband was a friend of my father-in-law. We ran into each other often, but for many years, all the time we were young, the greatest reserve reigned between us, and there was never any allusion to the past. The other day she asked me point-blank, her face crowned with gray hair youthfully hennaed: “Why did you drop me?”
I was sincere because I didn’t have time to invent a lie: “I don’t know anymore, but there are many, many other things in my life that I also don’t know.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and I was already bowing in response to the implied compliment. “In your old age you seem to me a very amusing man.” I straightened up, with some effort. There was no need to thank her.
One day I learned that the Malfenti family had returned to the city after a fairly extended pleasure trip followed by their summer stay in the country. Before I could take steps toward being introduced into that household, Giovanni was ahead of me.
He showed me a letter from an intimate friend of his, asking for news of me. This man had been a classmate of mine and I had been very fond of him as long as I believed him destined to become a great chemist. Now, on the contrary, he mattered absolutely nothing to me because he had become a dealer in fertilizers, and now I hardly knew him. Giovanni invited me to the Malfenti house because I was a friend of that friend of his, and—obviously—I made no objection.
I remember that first visit as if it had taken place yesterday. It was a gloomy, cold autumn afternoon, and I even remember the relief I felt in ridding myself of my overcoat in the warmth of that house. I was actually about to reach my goal. Even now I remain bewildered by such blindness, which at the time seemed to me clairvoyance. I was pursuing health, legitimacy. True, that initial A embraced four girls, but three of them were to be eliminated at once, and as for the fourth, she, too, would be subjected to stern examination. Yes, I would be the sternest of judges. But meanwhile I would have been at a loss to name the qualities I would require of her and the characteristics I would loathe.
The vast and elegant drawing room was furnished in two different styles, some pieces were Louis XIV and others Venetian rich in gold-leaf impressed even on the leather. The furniture divided the room into two areas, as was then the fashion. There I found only Augusta, reading at a window. She gave me her hand, she knew my name, and even informed me that I was expected, as her Papà had announced my visit. Then she ran off to call her mother.
Of the four girls with the same initial, one was eliminated then and there as far as I was concerned. How could anyone have called her beautiful? The first thing you noticed about her was a squint so pronounced that if someone tried to recall her after not having seen her for a while, that defect would personify her totally. Her hair, moreover, was not abundant or blond, but a dull color, without luster; and her figure, while not graceless, was still a bit heavy for her age. During the few moments I remained alone I thought: “What if the other three look like this one!…”
A little later, the group of eligible girls was reduced to two. For another of them, entering with her mother, was only eight years old. She was a cute child with long, shining ringlets falling over her shoulders! Her plump, sweet face made her seem a little angel (as long as she kept silent), pensive in the way that Raphael’s angels are pensive.
My mother-in-law… Ah! I feel a certain reluctance in speaking of her too freely. For many years I have been fond of her because she is my mother, but here I am telling an old story in which she does not appear as my friend, and even in this notebook, which she will never see, I have no intention of referring to her in terms less than respectful. For that matter, her intervention was so brief that I could even have forgotten it: a little push just at the right moment, no harder than necessary to make me lose my fragile balance. Perhaps I would have lost it even without her action, and anyway, ·who knows if she actually desired what then happened? She is so perfectly behaved that, unlike her husband, she will never, ever drink too much and consequently reveal things concerning me. And as nothing of the sort will ever happen to her, I am thus telling a story I don’t know properly; that is, I don’t know if it was because of her shrewdness or my own stupidity that of her four daughters, I married the one I didn’t want.
What I can say is that at the time of my first visit my future mother-in-law was still a beautiful woman. She was also elegant in her way of dressing, with subtle luxury. Everything about her was understated and harmonious.
Thus my in-laws afforded an example of harmony between husband and wife such as I dreamed of. They had been very happy together: he always bellowing and she smiling a smile that signified agreement and sympathy at the same time. She loved her big, heavy man, and he must have won and retained her devotion with his successful transactions. Not self-interest but genuine admiration bound her to him, an admiration I shared and hence could easily understand. All that vivacity, which he infused into such confined space, a cage that held nothing but a single product and two enemies (the two contracting parties), where new combinations, new relations were constantly being discovered, wondrously animated their life. He told her about all his deals, and she was so well brought up that she never gave him advice because she would have feared misleading him. He felt a need for this mute support, and at times he rushed home to deliver a monologue, convinced he was going there to seek his wife’s advice.
It came as no surprise when I learned he was unfaithful to her, and that she knew it and bore him no grudge. I had been married a year when one day Giovanni, very upset, told me he had misplaced a very important letter and he wanted to take another look at some papers he had given me, in the hope of finding it among them. Then, a few days later, in high spirits, he told me he had found it in his wallet. “Was it from a woman?” I asked him, and he nodded affirmatively, boasting of his good luck. Then, to defend myself, one day when they were accusing me of having lost some papers, I said to my wife and my mother-in-law that I didn’t have Papa’s luck, whose papers always found their way back into his wallet. My mother-in-law fell to laughing so heartily that I hadn’t the slightest doubt it had been she who replaced that letter. We all love in our own way, and in my opinion, theirs was by no means the most stupid.
Signora Malfenti received me with great kindness. She apologized for having to keep little Anna with her, but there was always that quarter-hour when the child couldn’t be left with others. The little girl looked at me, studying me with grave eyes. When Augusta came back and sat on a little sofa opposite the one where the Signora and I were seated, the child went and lay in her sister’s lap, ‘whence she observed me the whole time with a fixed gaze that amused me until I learned what thoughts were circulating in that little head.
The conversation was not immediately entertaining. The Signora, like all well-bred people, was fairly boring on first acquaintance. She asked me too many questions about the friend who we pretended had introduced me into that house and whose first name I couldn’t even remember.
Finally Ada and Alberta came in. I breathed again: they were both beautiful, and brought into that drawing room the light that had been wanting till then. Both were dark and tall and slender, but they were quite different from each other. The choice I had to make was not difficult. Alberta was then no more than seventeen. Though dark, she had her mother’s rosy, transparent skin, which enhanced the childishness of her appearance. Ada, on the contrary, was already a woman, with serious eyes, a face whose whiteness seemed all the more snowy, thanks to a faint blue cast, and a head of rich, curly hair, gracefully yet severely coiffed.
It is hard to retrace the tender origins of a feeling that was later
to become so violent, but I am sure I did not feel the so-called coup de foudre for Ada. Instead of that lightning bolt, I felt a prompt conviction that this woman was the one I needed, the one who would lead me actually to moral and physical health through holy monogamy. When I think back, I am surprised that the lightning bolt was lacking and there was this conviction in its place. It is a known fact that we men do not seek in a wife the characteristics we adore and despise in a mistress. So apparently I didn’t see at once all the grace and all the beauty of Ada; instead I stood there, admiring other qualities I attributed to her, seriousness and also energy, the same qualities, somewhat tempered, that I loved in her father. Since I later believed (as I believe still) that I wasn’t mistaken and that Ada did possess those qualities as a girl, I can consider myself a good observer but also a blind observer. That first time, I looked at Ada with only one desire: to fall in love with her, for that was necessary if I was to marry her. I prepared to do this with the same energy I always devote to my hygienic practices. I cannot say when I succeeded, perhaps within the relatively brief time of that first visit.
Giovanni must have spoken to his daughters a great deal about me. They knew, among other things, that in the course of my studies I had transferred from law to chemistry, only to return—unfortunately!—to the former. I tried to explain: it was certain that when you confine yourself to one department, the greater area of knowledge remains blanketed by ignorance.