Zeno's Conscience Part 11

I said to her: "I came to see if this book"-and I nodded to the Garcia, still lying on the table where we had left it-"could provide us with some other useful ideas."

I sat in the place I had occupied the day before, and I immediately opened the book. Carla tried at first to smile at me, but seeing that I didn't respond to her courtesy, she sat down beside me with a certain solicitous obedience, to read. She was hesitant; she didn't understand. I looked at her and saw on her face an expression spreading that could denote scorn and stubbornness. I imagined this was the way she usually received Copier's reproaches. Only she was not yet sure that my reproaches were exactly those Copier addressed to her because-as she told me later-she remembered that the previous day I had kissed her, and so she believed herself forever protected against my wrath. Therefore she was still ready to convert that scorn into a friendly smile. I must say here, because later I won't have the time, that her confidence, the notion that she had definitively tamed me with that one kiss she had granted me, displeased me enormously; a woman who thinks like that is very dangerous.

But at that moment my mood was exactly the same as Copier's, charged with reproof and ill-feeling. I began reading aloud the very part that we had already read the day before, which I myself had demolished, pedantically and without other comment, emphasizing some words that seemed the most significant.

With a slightly tremulous voice, Carla interrupted me: "I believe we've already read this!"

So I was finally obliged to say words of my own. One's own words can also provide a bit of health. Mine were not only milder than my thoughts and my behavior, but they actually restored me to the life of society.

"You see, Signorina," and I immediately accompanied the coy t.i.tle with a smile that could also have been a lover's, "I would like to review this material before continuing. Perhaps yesterday we judged it a bit hastily, and a friend of mine just now warned me that to understand everything Garcia says, he must be studied thoroughly."

I felt finally also the need to show some consideration for the poor old lady, who certainly in the course of her life, however unfortunate she had been, had never found herself in a similar situation. I addressed to her a smile that cost me more than the one I had bestowed on Carla.

"It's not very amusing," I said to her, "but even someone not interested in singing can profit by listening to it."

I continued stubbornly reading. Carla surely felt better, and something that resembled a smile played on her fleshy lips.

The old woman, on the contrary, still seemed a poor captured animal, and she stayed in that room only because her shyness prevented her from finding an excuse to leave. And as for me, nothing in the world could have made me betray my desire to throw her out. It would have been a grave and compromising action.

Carla was more determined: with great respect she begged me to interrupt that reading for a moment and, turning to her mother, told her that she could go and that they would continue their work on that sheet in the afternoon.

The Signora came over to me, undecided whether or not to give me her hand. I clasped it with real fondness and said: "I realize this reading is not at all amusing."

It seemed as if I wanted to regret her leaving us. The Signora went out after placing on a chair the sheet that until then she had held on her lap. Then Carla followed her for a moment onto the landing to say something, while I yearned to have her beside me finally. She came back in, closed the door behind her, and returning to her chair, she again had a rigidity around the mouth that recalled the face of a stubborn child.

She said: "Every day at this hour I study. It would happen that today I had to work on that urgent task!"

"But can't you see that I don't care a thing about your singing?" I shouted, and I a.s.sailed her with a violent embrace that drove me to kiss her first on the mouth, then at once on the same spot where I had kissed her the day before.

Strange! She burst into floods of tears and pulled away from me. She said, sobbing, that she had suffered too much, seeing me come in like that. She wept with that self-compa.s.sion usual in those who see their suffering sympathized with. The tears are produced not by grief, but by their own story. One weeps when one protests against injustice. It was, in fact, unjust to impose studying on that beautiful girl who could be kissed.

All in all, things went worse than I had imagined. I had to explain myself, and to be brief, I didn't allow myself the time required for invention, and I told the exact truth. I told her of my impatience to see her and to kiss her. I had decided to come to her early; I had even pa.s.sed the night with that determination. Naturally I was unable to say what I had imagined happening when I came to her, but that was of scant importance. It was true that when I was determined to come and tell her I meant to abandon her forever, I had felt the same painful impatience as when I was rus.h.i.+ng to her to take her into my arms. Then I told her about the events of the morning, and how my wife had made me go out with her and had taken me to my father-in-law's, where I was forced to listen to their discussion of business matters that didn't affect me. Finally, with great effort, I manage to free myself and hurry all the long way here-and what do I find? ... The room all cluttered with that sheet!

Carla burst out laughing because she realized that there was nothing of Copier in me. On her lovely face that laughter seemed a rainbow, and I kissed her again. She didn't respond to my caresses, but she accepted them meekly, an att.i.tude I adore perhaps because I love the weaker s.e.x in direct proportion to its weakness. For the first time she told me she had learned from Copier that I loved my wife very much.

"Therefore," she added, and I saw the shadow of a serious purpose pa.s.s over her face, "between the two of us there can be a sincere friends.h.i.+p and nothing more."

I had little faith in that very wise determination, because the same mouth that uttered it could not even then evade my kisses.

Carla spoke at length. Obviously she wanted to arouse my compa.s.sion. I remember everything she said to me, which I believed only when she vanished from my life. As long as I had her close, I constantly feared her as a woman who would sooner or later take advantage of her power over me to ruin me and my family. I didn't believe her when she a.s.sured me that she asked nothing beyond security for her own life and her mother's. Now I know for certain that she never intended to obtain from me more than she needed, and when I think of her I blush with shame at having understood and loved her so inadequately. She, poor child, had nothing from me. I would have given her everything, because I am one of those people who pay their debts. But I always waited for her to ask something of me.

She told me of the desperate condition in which she had found herself at her father's death. For months and months she and the old lady had been forced to work day and night on embroidery commissioned from them by a merchant. Ingenuously she believed that help had to come from divine providence, and in fact at times she would remain for hours at the window, looking down at the street, from whence that help should arrive. Instead, Copier came. Now she said she was content with her condition, but she and her mother spent uneasy nights because the help given them was quite precarious. What if, one day, it should turn out that she had neither the voice nor the talent to be a singer? Copier would abandon them. Further, he spoke of having her perform in a theater in a few months' time. And what if that proved a total fiasco?

Continuing this effort to stir my compa.s.sion, she told me that the financial misfortune of her family had also shattered her dream of love: her fiance had abandoned her.

I was still a long way from compa.s.sion. I said to her: "I suppose that fiance kissed you a lot? Like me?"

She laughed because I was preventing her from speaking. Thus I saw before me a man pointing out the way to me.

The hour at which I should have been home for lunch was long past. I would have liked to leave. Enough for that day. I was quite far from the remorse that had kept me awake during the night, and the uneasiness that had drawn me to Carla had totally disappeared. But I was not calm. It is, perhaps, my fate never to be. I felt no remorse because Carla had promised me all the kisses I wanted in the name of a friends.h.i.+p that couldn't offend Augusta. I thought I was discovering the cause of the discontent that as usual was sending vague pains through my organism. Carla saw me in a false light! Carla might despise me, seeing me so desirous of her kisses when I loved Augusta! That same Carla who made a show of respecting me so much because she had such need of me!

I decided to win her esteem, and I spoke words that should pain me like the memory of a cowardly crime, like a betrayal committed in complete freedom, without necessity and without benefit.

I was almost at the door, and with the look of someone who is serene and is reluctantly confessing, I said to Carla: "Copier has told you how fond I am of my wife. It's true, I have the greatest respect for my wife."

Then I told her, in complete detail, the story of my marriage, of how I had fallen in love with Augusta's older sister, who would have nothing to do with me because she was in love with someone else, and how I had then tried to marry another of her sisters, who also rejected me, and how finally I came to marry Augusta.

Carla immediately believed the accuracy of this story. Then I learned that Copier had heard some of it at my house and had repeated to her various details not entirely, but almost, true, which I had now rectified and confirmed.

"Is your wife beautiful?" she asked, pensive.

"It's a matter of taste," I said.

There was some prohibiting core still active inside me. I had said I respected my wife, but I hadn't yet said I didn't love her. I had said neither that she attracted me nor that she couldn't attract me. At that moment I felt I was being quite sincere; now I know that with those words I 'was betraying both women and all love, theirs and mine.

Frankly, I wasn't yet at ease; therefore something was still wanting. I remembered the envelope of my good resolution, and I handed it to Carla. She opened it and gave it back to me, saying that only a few days before, Copier had brought their monthly allowance and for the moment she had no need of money. My uneasiness increased thanks to an idea I had conceived long ago, that truly dangerous women never accept small sums. She became aware of my discomfort, and with delightful naivete, which I appreciate only now as I write, she asked me for a few crowns with which she could buy some crockery that the two women had been deprived of after a disaster in the kitchen.

Then something happened that left an indelible mark in my memory. At the moment of leaving, I kissed her, but this time with complete intensity, she returned my kiss. My poison had worked. She said, in all innocence: "I'm fond of you because you are so good and not even wealth could spoil you."

Then she added, slyly: "Now I know I must never keep you waiting but, beyond that danger, there's nothing else to fear from you."

On the landing she asked again: "Can I send the singing teacher to the devil, along with Copier?"

Rapidly descending the stairs, I said to her: "We'll see!"

So something still remained unresolved in our relations; all the rest had been clearly defined.

It caused me such discomfort that when I came out into the open air, undecided, I turned in the direction opposite my home. I would almost have wanted to go back at once to Carla and explain something else to her: my love for Augusta. It could be done because I hadn't yet said to Carla that I loved her. Only, as conclusion to that true story I had told her, I had forgotten to say that now I truly loved Augusta. Carla, then, had deduced that I didn't love Augusta at all, and therefore she had returned my kiss so ardently, underlining it with her own declaration of love. It seemed to me that if this episode hadn't occurred, I could have borne more easily Augusta's trusting gaze. And to think that, a short time before, I had been happy to learn that Carla knew of my love for my wife and thus, through Carla's decision, the adventure I had sought was being offered me in the form of a friends.h.i.+p spiced with kisses.

At the Public Garden I sat on a bench, and with my cane I absently traced that day's date in the gravel. Then I laughed bitterly: I knew that date would not mark the end of my infidelities! On the contrary, they were just beginning on that day. Where was I to find the strength not to return to that desirable woman who was expecting me? Further, I had already a.s.sumed some obligations, obligations of honor. I had received kisses and I had not been allowed to return their value except in the form of a few dishes! It was an unpaid invoice that now bound me to Carla.

Lunch was sad. Augusta sought no explanation for my tardiness, and I offered her none. I was afraid of giving myself away, especially because, during the brief walk between the Public Garden and home, I had toyed with the idea of telling her everything, and the story of my infidelity might therefore be written on my honest face. That would have been the only way of saving myself. Telling her everything, I would have placed myself under her protection and under her surveillance. It would have been such a decisive act that then, in good faith, I could have marked that day's date as a start toward honesty and health.

We talked of many indifferent things. I tried to be light-hearted, but I couldn't even attempt to be affectionate. She was short of breath; surely she was waiting for an explanation that didn't come.

Then she left the room, to continue her great task of storing the winter clothing in special wardrobes. I glimpsed her often in the afternoon, intent on her work, there at the end of the long corridor, a.s.sisted by the maid. Her great suffering didn't interrupt her healthy activity.

Restless, I pa.s.sed often from my bedroom to the bath. I would have liked to call Augusta and tell her at least that I loved her, because for her-poor simple thing!-this would have been enough. But instead I continued meditating and smoking.

I naturally went through various phases. There was even a moment when that access of virtue was curtailed by a lively impatience for the next day to come, so I could rush to Carla. It may be that this desire also was inspired by some good resolve. After all, the great difficulty was to be able to commit myself, alone as I was, to something and be bound by my duty. The confession that would have won me my wife's collaboration was unthinkable; so there remained Carla, on whose lips I could have sworn my vow, with a last kiss! Who was Carla? Not even blackmail was the greatest danger I risked with her! The next day she would be my mistress: Who could say what would then ensue? I knew her only through what that imbecile Copier had told me; and on the basis of such information, a more clever man than I, Olivi for example, wouldn't agree even to stipulate a contract.

All of Augusta's beautiful, healthy activity throughout my house was wasted. The drastic marriage cure I had undertaken in my desperate search for health had failed. I remained sicker than ever and married as well, harming myself and others.

Later, when I was in fact the lover of Carla, returning in my mind to that sad afternoon I was unable to understand why, before making any further commitment, I hadn't stopped myself with a manly decision. I had wept so over my infidelity before committing it, that it should conceivably have been easy to avoid it. But hindsight can always be ridiculed and so can foresight, because they are of no use. In those anguished hours, in big letters in my dictionary at the letter C (Carla) that day's date was written, with the words "last infidelity." But the first genuine infidelity, which committed me to subsequent infidelities, followed only the next day.

At a late hour, knowing nothing better to do, I took a bath. I felt my body was defiled and I wanted to wash it. But when I was in the water I thought: "To be clean, I would have to dissolve completely in this water." Then I dressed, so devoid of willpower that I didn't even dry myself properly. The day vanished, and I remained at the window looking at the new green leaves on the trees in my garden. I suddenly started s.h.i.+vering, and with a certain satisfaction I thought I had a fever. It was not death I desired, but sickness, a sickness that would serve me as a pretext to do what I "wanted, or that would prevent me from doing it.

After having hesitated for such a long time; Augusta came looking for me. Seeing how sweet she was, without any bitterness, I felt my s.h.i.+vering increase until my teeth began to chatter. Frightened, she made me go to bed. My teeth were still chattering from the cold, but I already knew I didn't have a fever, and I prevented her from calling the doctor. I asked her to turn off the light, to sit beside me, and not to speak. I don't know how long we remained there: I regained the necessary warmth and also some confidence. My mind, however, was still so befuddled that when she again spoke of calling the doctor, I told her I knew the reason for my ill health, and I would tell her later what it was. I was returning to my resolution to confess. No other way remained open for me to rid myself of all this oppression.

So we stayed there somewhat longer, mute. Later I realized that Augusta had risen from her chair and was beside me. I was afraid that perhaps she had guessed everything. She took my hand, stroked it, then lightly placed her hand on my head, to see if it was feverish, and finally she said to me: "You should have expected it. Why this painful surprise?"

I was amazed at these strange words and, at the same time, at hearing them through a stifled sob. It was obvious she wasn't referring to my adventure. How could I have foreseen something like this? With a certain asperity I asked her: "What do you mean? What should I have foreseen?"

Confused, she murmured: "The arrival of Guido's father for Ada's wedding..."

Finally I understood: she believed I was suffering at the imminence of Ada's marriage. It seemed to me she was wronging me: I was not guilty of such a crime. I felt as pure and innocent as a newborn babe, and freed immediately from all oppression. I leaped out of bed.

"You think I'm suffering because of Ada's marriage? You're crazy! Ever since I've been married I haven't given her another thought. I didn't even remember that Senor Cada Vez had arrived here today!"

I kissed her and embraced her with total desire, and my tone was so obviously sincere that she was ashamed of her suspicion.

Her ingenuous face, too, was freed of every cloud and we quickly went to supper, both hungry. At that same table where we had suffered so much, we now sat like two good companions on a holiday.

She reminded me that I had promised to tell her the reason for my indisposition. I feigned sickness, that sickness that supposedly ent.i.tled me to do, blamelessly, anything I liked. I told her that, earlier, in the company of the two old gentlemen that morning, I had felt profoundly dejected. Then I had gone to collect the gla.s.ses that the oculist had prescribed for me. Perhaps that sign of age had depressed me still further. And I had walked through the streets of the city for hours and hours. I also told her something of the fantasies that had made me suffer so, and as I recall, they contained even a hint of confession. I don't know in what connection with the imaginary illness, I talked also about our blood, which flowed round and round, kept us erect, capable of thought and action and therefore of guilt and remorse. She didn't understand that this was all about Carla, but to me it seemed as if I had told her everything.

After supper I put on the eyegla.s.ses and pretended for a long time to read my paper, but those gla.s.ses blurred my vision. I felt a surge of emotion, the happiness of an alcoholic.

I said I couldn't understand what I was reading. I continued acting the sick man.

I spent an almost sleepless night. I was awaiting Carla's embrace with complete, immense desire. I desired her specifically, the girl with the thick, crooked braids and the voice so musical when the note wasn't forced on her. She had been rendered desirable also by everything I had already suffered for her. I was accompanied all night by an ironclad resolution. I would be sincere with Carla before making her mine, and I would tell her the whole truth about my relations with Augusta. In my solitude I started laughing: it was very original to set out on the conquest of one woman with a declaration of love for another on your lips. Perhaps Carla would revert to her pa.s.sivity! And then what? For the moment no action of hers could have lessened the value of her submission, which I felt I could count on.

The following morning, as I dressed, I murmured the words I would say to her. Before becoming mine, Carla had to know that Augusta, with her character and also with her health (I could have spent many words to explain what I meant by health, and they would have contributed to Carla's education), had been able to win my respect, and also my love.

Taking my coffee, I was so absorbed in preparing an elaborate speech that Augusta received no sign of affection from me beyond a light kiss before I left. But I was all hers! I was going to Carla in order to rekindle my pa.s.sion for Augusta.

As soon as I entered the room serving as Carla's studio, I felt such relief at finding her alone and ready that I immediately drew her to me and pa.s.sionately embraced her. I was frightened by the energy with which she repelled me. Downright violence! She would have none of this, and I remained agape in the middle of the room, painfully disappointed.

But Carla, promptly recovering, murmured: "Can't you see that the door's been left open and somebody's coming down the stairs?"

I a.s.sumed the mien of a formal visitor until the intruder had pa.s.sed. Then we closed the door. She paled, seeing me also turn the key. Thus all was clear. A little later, in my arms, she murmured in a choked voice: "You want this? You really want it?"

She had called me tu, and this was decisive. I then answered promptly: "I want nothing else!"

I had forgotten that I would have liked to clarify something first.

Immediately afterwards I would have liked to begin talking about my relations.h.i.+p with Augusta, having neglected to do so before. But it was difficult just then. Talking with Carla about something else at that moment would have seemed like diminis.h.i.+ng the importance of her devotion. Even the most deaf of men knows that such a thing cannot be done, though all men know there is no comparison between the importance of that devotion before it happens and immediately afterwards. It would have been a great insult for a woman, opening her arms to a man for the first time, to hear him say to her: "First of all I must clarify those words I said to you yesterday..." Yesterday?! Anything that happened the day before must seem unworthy of being mentioned, and if a gentleman happens not to sense this, then so much the worse for him, and he must behave in such a way that n.o.body realizes it.

Certainly I was the gentleman who didn't feel that, because in my pretense I erred as sincerity would not have been capable of erring. I asked her: "How did you come to give yourself to me? How did I merit such a thing?"

Did I want to show my grat.i.tude, or to reproach her? Probably it was only an attempt to embark on the explanations.

A bit amazed, she looked up, to see my expression: "I had the impression that you took me," and she smiled affectionately, to prove that she was not reproaching me in any way.

I remembered how women insist on being told you have taken them. Then, she herself realized she had made a mistake-things are taken, but people come to an agreement-and she murmured: "I was waiting for you! You were the knight who was to come and set me free. Of course it's a pity you're married, but since you don't love your wife, at least I know my happiness isn't destroying the happiness of anyone else."

I was seized by the pain in my side, so intense that I had to stop embracing her. Then I hadn't exaggerated the importance of my ill-considered words? Was it precisely my falsehood that had led Carla to become mine? So now, if I were to think of describing my love for Augusta, Carla would be ent.i.tled to reproach me actually for deceit! Rectifications and explanations were no longer possible. But later on there would be an opportunity for explanation and clarification. Waiting for it established a new bond between me and Carla.

There, at Carla's side, my pa.s.sion for Augusta was reborn completely. Now I would have had only one desire: to rush to my true wife, only to see her intent on her task, like an industrious ant, storing away our things in an atmosphere of camphor and naphthalene.

But I remained with my duty, which was very grievous because of an episode that disturbed me greatly at first, for it seemed another threat from the sphinx with whom I was dealing. Carla told me that, immediately after I had left the previous day, the singing teacher had come and she had simply shown him the door.

I couldn't repress a gesture of vexation. It amounted to informing Copier of our liaison!

"What will Copier say to that?" I cried.

She began laughing and took refuge, on her own initiative this time, in my arms. "Didn't we decide to get rid of him, too?"

She was pretty, but she could no longer conquer me. I promptly found also a suitable att.i.tude for myself, the pedagogue's, because it allowed me to release the bitterness I felt deep in my heart against the woman who prevented me from speaking of my wife as I would have liked. "We have to work in this world," I said to her, because, as she should already know, it is a wicked world, where only the fittest survive. And what if I were to die now? What would become of her? I had suggested the prospect of my abandonment in a way at which she absolutely could not take offense, and in fact she was moved. Then, with the obvious intention of demoralizing her, I told her that, with my wife, I had only to express a wish and I saw it fulfilled.

"Very well!" she said, resigned. "We'll send word to the maestro to come back!" Then she tried to communicate to me her dislike of that teacher. Every day she had to tolerate the presence of that disagreeable old man who made her repeat a thousand times the same exercises that were of no use at all, absolutely none. She didn't recall having had a pleasant day except during the times when the maestro fell ill. She had even hoped he would die, but she had been unlucky.

She became downright violent in her despair. She repeated, expanding it, her complaint of ill luck: she was a poor helpless creature, past hope. When she recalled that she had loved me immediately because it seemed to her that my actions, my words, my eyes offered the promise of a less harsh life, less rigorous, less boring, she wanted to cry.

Thus I became immediately acquainted with her sobs, and they annoyed me; they were so violent that they shook her weak organism, invading it. I felt I was undergoing at once an abrupt attack on my wallet and on my life. I asked her: "Do you think my wife does nothing in this world? Now, while the two of us are talking, her lungs are being polluted by camphor and naphthalene."

Carla sobbed. "Possessions, a household, clothes... lucky woman!"

Irritated, I thought she wanted me to rush out and buy her all those things, only to provide her with an occupation she preferred. I displayed no anger, thank G.o.d, and obeyed the voice of duty, which shouted: Caress the girl who has abandoned herself to you! I caressed her. I ran my hand lightly over her hair. As a result the sobs ceased, and her tears flowed copiously and freely, like rain after a thunderstorm.

"You are my first lover," she went on to say, "and I hope you will go on loving me."

That information, that I was her first lover, a designation implying a possible second one, did not move me greatly. It was a declaration that came late because for a good half hour that subject had been left behind. Still, it was a new threat. A woman believes herself ent.i.tled to everything with her first lover. Softly I murmured in her ear: "You're my first lover, too ... since my marriage."

The sweetness in my voice disguised the attempt to make the two of us even.

A little later I left her, because under no circ.u.mstances did I want to arrive late for lunch. Before leaving, I again took out the envelope that I called "of good intentions" because an excellent intention had created it. I felt the need to pay, in order to feel freer. Carla again gently refused that money, and I then became very angry, but I was able to restrain myself from revealing that anger only by shouting very sweet words. I said that I had achieved the summit of my desires in possessing her, and that now I wanted to have the sense of possessing her even further by supporting her completely. Therefore she should take care not to make me angry because I then suffered too much. Wanting to rush off, I summarized in a few words my notion, which became-shouted like this-very curt.

"Are you my mistress? Then your maintenance is my duty. "

Frightened, she stopped resisting and accepted the envelope, while she looked at me anxiously reckoning what might be the truth, my outcry of hate or the words of love with which she was granted everything she had desired. She was a bit rea.s.sured when, before leaving, I touched her brow with my lips. On the stairs I had the suspicion that now, with the money at her disposal, having heard me a.s.sume responsibility for her future, she would show Copier the door as well if he were to come to her that afternoon. I would have liked to climb back up those stars and exhort her not to compromise me by such an action. But there was no time and I had to run off.

I fear that the doctor, who will read this ma.n.u.script of mine, may think that Carla, too, would have been an interesting subject for psychoa.n.a.lysis. It will seem to him that her submission, preceded by the dismissal of the voice teacher, was perhaps too quick. It seemed to me also that as a reward for her love she had expected too many concessions from me. It required many, many months for me to understand the poor girl better. Probably she had allowed herself to be possessed in order to be free of Copier's upsetting tutelage, and it must have been a very painful surprise for her to realize that she had given herself in vain because her heaviest burden, namely having to sing, would continue to oppress her. She was still in my arms when she learned that she would have to go on singing. Whence the rage and the grief that couldn't find the right words. For different reasons each of us thus uttered some very strange words. When she loved me, she regained all the naturalness that calculation had robbed her of. I was never natural with her.

Running away, I thought still: "If she knew how much I love my wife, she would behave differently." When she did come to know it, she behaved, in fact, differently.

In the open air I breathed freedom and didn't feel the sorrow of having compromised it. I had time until tomorrow, and I would perhaps find some refuge from the difficulties that were threatening me. Hurrying home, I even had the courage to blame it all on the social order, as if it had been responsible for my past behavior. It should have been capable, I felt, of allowing a man to make love now and then (not always), without his having to fear the consequences, even with women he doesn't love at all. There was no trace of remorse in me. Therefore I believe remorse is generated not by regret for a bad deed already committed, but by the recognition of one's own guilty propensity. The upper part of the body bends over to study and judge the other part and finds it deformed. The repulsion then felt is called remorse. Even in ancient tragedy the victim wasn't returned to life, and yet the remorse pa.s.sed. This meant that the deformity was cured, and that the tears of others had no further importance. Where could there be any room for remorse in me, when, with so much joy and so much affection, I was speeding to my legitimate wife? For a long time I had not felt so pure.

At lunch, making no effort at all, I was happy and affectionate with Augusta. That day there was not a false note between us. Nothing excessive: I was as I should be with the woman honestly and surely mine. At other times there were excessive shows of affection on my part, but only when there was a struggle going on in my spirit between the two women. Then, through excessive displays of affection, it was easier for me to keep Augusta from seeing that between the two of us there lay the shadow, momentarily fairly powerful, of another woman. I can also say that for this reason Augusta preferred me when I was not entirely and most sincerely hers.

I myself was somewhat amazed by my calm, and I attributed it to the fact that I had succeeded in making Carla accept that envelope of good intentions. Of course, I didn't believe that, with it, I had paid her off. But it seemed to me that I had begun to buy an indulgence. Unfortunately, for the entire duration of my affair with Carla, money remained my princ.i.p.al concern. At every opportunity I laid some aside in a well-hidden place in my library, to be ready to deal with any demands from the mistress of whom I was so afraid. Thus, when Carla abandoned me and left me holding that money, it served to pay for something quite different.

We were to spend the evening at my father-in-law's house, at a dinner to which only family members had been invited and which was meant to replace the traditional banquet, prelude to the wedding being celebrated two days later. Guido wanted to take advantage of Giovanni's improvement in order to be married, for he was afraid the condition wouldn't last.

I went with Augusta to my father-in-law's early in the afternoon. Along the way I reminded her that, the day before, she had suspected I was unhappy because of that wedding. She was ashamed of her suspicion and I went on at length about that innocence of mine. Hadn't I come home, without even remembering that the same evening there was the celebration preparatory to the wedding?

Although there were no other guests except us family members, the older Malfentis wanted the banquet to unfold in all solemnity. Augusta had been asked to come and supervise the dining room and the table. Alberta would have nothing to do with such matters. A short time before, she had been awarded a prize for a one-act play, and now she was eagerly girding herself to reform the nation's theater. So we bustled around that table, I and Augusta, a.s.sisted by a maid and by Luciano, a boy from Giovanni's office, who showed as much feeling for order in the household as he did for order in the office.

I helped carry some flowers to the table and arranged them neatly.