Zeno's Conscience Part 12

"You see?" I said, joking, to Augusta, "I even contribute to their happiness. If they asked me also to make up the nuptial bed, I would do it with the same untroubled brow!"

Later we went to see the bridal pair, who had just returned from a formal visit. They had occupied the most secluded corner of the living room, and I suppose that until we arrived they had been cuddling. The bride hadn't even changed her afternoon dress and was very pretty, flushed as she was by the heat.

I believe that the couple, to hide any sign of the kisses they had exchanged, wanted to persuade us that they had been discussing science. It was nonsense, perhaps even improper! Did they want to exclude us from their intimacy, or did they believe their kisses could cause someone pain? In any case, this didn't spoil my good humor. Guido told me Ada wouldn't believe him when he said that certain wasps could, with their sting, paralyze other insects even stronger than they, then preserve them, paralyzed, alive and fresh, as nourishment for their offspring. I thought I recalled that something so monstrous did exist in nature, but at this point I was unwilling to give Guido any satisfaction.

"You think I'm a wasp, so you're aiming at me?" I said to him, laughing.

We left the couple so they could devote themselves to happier things. I, however, was beginning to find the afternoon quite long, and I wanted to go home and await the dinner hour in my study.

In the vestibule we found Dr. Paoli, coming out of my father-in-law's bedroom. He was a young doctor who, nevertheless, had already been able to acquire a good clientele. He was very blond and ruddy and white, like an overgrown boy. His powerful physique, however, was so dominated by his eyes that his whole person seemed serious and imposing. His eyegla.s.ses made him appear bigger, and his gaze clung to things like a caress. Now that I know very well both him and Dr. S.-the psychoa.n.a.lysis man-it seems to me that the latter's eyes are more deliberately inquiring, whereas in Dr. Paoli they indicate his tireless curiosity. Paoli sees his patient precisely, but also the patient's wife and the chair on which he is sitting. G.o.d only knows which of the two men treats his patients better! During my father-in-law's sickness, I often went to Paoli to persuade him not to tell the family that the threatened catastrophe was imminent, and I remember one day, looking at me longer than I liked, he said to me, smiling: "Why, you udore your wife!"

He was a good observer, because I did indeed at that moment adore my wife, who was suffering so much because of her father's illness and whom I was betraying daily.

He told us Giovanni was even better than the day before. Now he had no other reservations because the season was very favorable, and he believed the bridal couple could set off on their journey without concern. "Naturally," he added cautiously, "there could be unpredictable complications." His prognosis came true, because unpredictable complications followed.

As he was taking his leave, he remembered that we knew a man named Copier, to whose bedside he had been called that very day for a consultation. He found that the man had been seized with a kidney paralysis. He told us the paralysis had been heralded by a horrible toothache. Here his prognosis was grave but, as usual, attenuated by a doubt.

"His life could even be prolonged, if he survives to see the sun tomorrow morning."

Augusta, in her compa.s.sion, had tears in her eyes and begged me to hurry at once to our poor friend. After some hesitation, I obeyed her wish, and gladly, because my spirit was suddenly filled with Carla. How hard he had been on our poor girl! And now, with Copier gone, she was left there, alone, on that landing, not compromising in the least, because cut off now from any communication with my world. I had to hasten to her and erase the impression my harsh att.i.tude must have made that morning.

But, prudently, I went first to Copler. I had, after all, to be able to tell Augusta I had seen him.

I already knew the modest but comfortable and decent little apartment where Copier lived in Corsia Stadion. An old pensioner let him have three of the five rooms. I was received by this landlord, a heavy man, short of breath, with red eyes, who paced restlessly up and down a short, dark corridor. He told me the regular doctor had only just left, after having verified that Copier was in the throes of death. The old man spoke in a low voice, always gasping, as if he were afraid to disturb the peace of the dying man. I lowered my voice as well. It is a form of respect, this way we men feel, though it is not exactly certain whether the dying would not prefer to be accompanied along the last stretch of their path by bright, strong voices that would remind them of life.

The old man told me the patient was being tended by a nun. Filled with awe, I stopped for some while at the door of that room where poor Copier, with his death-rattle, its rhythm so precise, was measuring out his final hours. His noisy respiration was composed of two sounds: the one produced by the air he inhaled seemed hesitant; the other, born from the exhaled air, seemed precipitous. A haste to die? A pause followed the two sounds, and I thought that when the pause was lengthened, then the new life would begin.

The old man wanted me to go into the room, but I wouldn't. I had had my fill of dying men who glared at me with an expression of reproach.

I didn't wait for that pause to lengthen, and I hurried to Carla. I knocked at the door of her study, which was locked, but n.o.body answered. Losing patience, I started kicking the door, and then, behind me, the door of the living room opened. The voice of Carla's mother asked: "Who is it?"

Then the timorous old woman looked out, and when, in the yellow light that came from her kitchen, she recognized me, I realized that her face was covered by an intense flush heightened by the transparent whiteness of her hair. Carla wasn't in, and she offered to go fetch the key to the study to admit me to that room, which she considered the only one worthy of receiving me. But I told her not to take the trouble, I entered the kitchen and sat down unceremoniously on a wooden chair. Under a pot on the stove, a modest little mound of charcoal was glowing. I told her not to neglect supper on my account. She rea.s.sured me. She was preparing some beans, which can never be overdone. The humble food being cooked in the house, whose cost I would now have to sustain by myself, moved me and allayed the irritation I felt at not having found my mistress ready.

The Signora remained standing despite my repeated invitations to her to sit down. Brusquely I told her I had come bearing some very bad news for Signorina Carla: Copier was dying.

The old woman's arms dropped to her sides, and she immediately felt the need to sit.

"Oh, my goodness!" she murmured. "What will we do?"

Then she remembered that what lay ahead of Copier was worse than what was in store for her, and she added a lament: "Poor gentleman! Always so kind!"

Her face was already bathed in tears. Obviously she didn't know that if the poor man hadn't died at the right moment, she would have been thrown out of that house. This thought also rea.s.sured me. How surrounded I was by the utmost discretion!

I wanted to rea.s.sure her, and I told her that what Copier had done for them till now, I would continue doing. She protested that it 'wasn't for herself that she was crying, since she knew the two of them were surrounded by such good people, but for the fate of their great benefactor.

She wanted to know what illness he was dying of. Telling her how the catastrophe had been announced, I remembered that discussion I had had with Copier some time before on the utility of pain. So the nerves of his teeth had been agitated and had begun calling for help because, a meter away from them, his kidneys had ceased functioning. I was so indifferent to the fate of my friend, whose death-rattle I had heard only a short while before, that I was beginning to play with his ideas. If he had still been present to hear me, I would have told him that, after this, we could understand how, in the imaginary sick man, the nerves could legitimately ache for a sickness that had burst out at a distance of some kilometers.

Between the old woman and me there was very little left to talk about, and I agreed to go and wait for Carla in her study.

I picked up the Garcia and tried to read a few pages. But the art of singing had little effect on me.

The old woman joined me again. She was uneasy because she didn't see Carla arriving. She told me that the girl had gone to buy some dishes that they urgently needed.

My patience was just about exhausted. Angrily I asked her: "Did you break some dishes? Couldn't you be more careful?"

And so I rid myself of the old woman, who went off, muttering: "Only two ... yes, I broke them ..."

This procured me a moment of hilarity because I knew that all the crockery in the house had been destroyed, and not by the old woman, but by Carla herself. Later I learned that Carla was anything but gentle with her mother, who therefore was deathly afraid of talking too much about her daughter's business with her protectors. It seems that once, naively, she had told Copier how Carla was irritated by the voice lessons. Copier became enraged with Carla, who then took it out on her mother.

And so, when my delightful mistress finally came to me, I loved her violently and angrily. Enchanted, she stammered: "And I was doubting your love! The whole day I was tormented by a wish to kill myself for having succ.u.mbed to a man who immediately afterwards treated me so badly!"

I explained to her that I was often gripped by severe headaches. I found myself in a state that, if I hadn't bravely resisted, would have had me racing back to Augusta, so I spoke again of those pains, and thus I could control myself. I continued, constructing myself. Meanwhile, we mourned poor Copier together, really together!

For that matter, Carla wasn't indifferent to the horrible end of her benefactor. As she spoke, she went pale: "I know what I'm like," she said. "For a long time I'll be afraid to be alone. Even when he was alive, he frightened me so!"

And, for the first time, shyly, she suggested I spend the whole night with her. I wasn't even thinking about it, and I couldn't have prolonged my stay in that room even for another half hour. But, always careful not to reveal to the poor girl my soul, of which I was the first to complain, I raised some objections, saying such a thing was impossible because in this house there was also her mother. With genuine disdain she pursed her lips. "We would bring the bed in here; Mamma wouldn't dare spy on me."

Then I told her about the wedding dinner awaiting me at home, but then I also felt obliged to tell her I would never be able to spend the night with her. Observing the vow to be kind that I had just made, I succeeded in controlling my every tone, so I sounded affectionate, but it seemed to me that any other concession I might grant her, or even lead her to hope for, would be the equivalent of a renewed betrayal of Augusta, which I didn't want to commit.

At that moment I sensed what my strongest bonds to Carla were: my affectionate intentions and then the lies I told about my relations with Augusta, which gradually, as time went on, would have to be revised or rather expunged. Therefore I began the process that very evening, naturally with all due prudence because it was still too easy to recall the fruit that my falsehood had borne. I told her that I strongly felt my obligations toward my wife, who was such an admirable woman that she surely deserved to be loved better, and I would never want her to learn how I betrayed her.

Carla embraced me.

"This is how I love you: kind and sweet, the way I imagined you the first time. I will never try to do any harm to that poor thing."

I didn't like to hear Augusta called a poor thing, but I was grateful to poor Carla for her meekness. It was good that she didn't hate my wife. I wanted to show her my grat.i.tude, and I looked around for a sign of affection. In the end I found it. I gave her, too, a laundry: I permitted her not to recall the singing teacher.

Carla had a burst of affection, which rather annoyed me, but I bravely endured it. Then she told me that she would never give up singing. She sang all day long, but in her own way. In fact, she wanted me to hear a song of hers immediately. But I would have none of it and, like a coward, I ran off. So I think that she contemplated suicide also that night, but I didn't give her time to tell me.

I went back to Copier, because I had to take Augusta the latest news of the sick man, to make her believe I had spent all that time with him. Copier had died about two hours previously, almost immediately after I left him. Accompanied by the old pensioner, who had continued pacing up and down the little corridor, I entered the mortuary chamber. The corpse, already dressed, lay on the bed's bare mattress. He held a crucifix in his hands. In a low voice the pensioner told me that all the formalities had been taken care of, and that a niece of the departed would come and stay through the night by the corpse.

I could go away then, knowing my poor friend was being given those few attentions he might need, but I remained for a moment to look at him. I would have liked to feel a sincere tear spring from my eyes, in mourning for the poor man who had struggled hard against his disease until he tried to come to an agreement with it. "It's so sad!" I said. The disease for which so many medicines existed had brutally killed him. It seemed a mockery. But my tears were absent. Copier's emaciated face had never seemed to me so strong as it did in the rigidity of death. It seemed fas.h.i.+oned by a chisel in a colored marble, and no one could foresee the imminent putrefaction looming over it. It was still a real life that his face displayed: it disapproved of me haughtily perhaps, or perhaps also of Carla, who didn't want to sing. For a moment I started, when it seemed that the corpse's death-rattle was recommencing. I immediately regained my critical calm as I realized that what had seemed a rattle to me was only the pensioner's gasping, exacerbated by his emotion.

He then saw me to the door and begged me to recommend him if I found anyone who might need these lodgings: "As you have seen, even in a situation like this, I was able to do my duty, and even more, much more!"

For the first time he raised his voice in which there echoed a resentment, no doubt directed at poor Copier, who had left the rooms vacant without proper advance notice. I rushed off, promising everything he wanted.

At my father-in-law's, I found the party had gone to the table at that moment. They asked me for news, and, rather than mar the gaiety of that feast, I said Copier was still alive and so there was still some hope.

It seemed to me the gathering was quite sad. Perhaps I formed this impression when I saw my father-in-law condemned to clear broth and a gla.s.s of milk, while around him the others were heaping their plates with the choicest foods. He had nothing but free time, and he spent it watching the mouths of the others. Seeing how Signor Francesco devoted himself actively to the antipasto, he murmured: "And to think, he's two years older than me!"

Then, when Signor Francesco arrived at his third gla.s.s oi white wine, Giovanni grumbled in a low voice: "That makes three! I hope it turns to gall!"

The augury wouldn't have bothered me if I, too, had not eaten and drunk at that table, and if I hadn't known that the same metamorphosis would be wished for the wine that pa.s.sed my lips. Therefore I started eating and drinking covertly. I exploited every moment when my father-in-law stuck his big nose into the cup of milk, or replied to some remark addressed to him, to swallow some great morsels or to gulp down huge gla.s.ses of wine. Alberta, simply out of a desire to make people laugh, warned Augusta that I was drinking too much. My wife, jokingly, wagged a threatening forefinger at me. This in itself wasn't bad, but it was bad because now it was no longer worth the trouble to eat in secret. Giovanni, who until then had almost forgotten about me, peered over his eyegla.s.ses at me with a look of genuine hatred.

He said: "I've never overindulged in drinking or eating. Anyone who does isn't a real man, he's a-" and he repeated several times the last word, which was by no means a compliment.

Thanks to the effect of the wine, that offensive word, hailed by general laughter, kindled in my soul a truly unreasonable desire for revenge. I attacked my father-in-law at his weakest point: his sickness. I shouted that it wasn't the drinker or eater who wasn't a real man, it was the man who feebly obeyed the doctor's orders. I, in his case, would have been independent, quite different. At my daughter's wedding-out of love, if for no other reason-I wouldn't have allowed anyone to prevent me from eating and drinking.

Enraged, Giovanni said: "I'd like to see you in my shoes!"

"Isn't it enough to see me in my own? Have I given up smoking, by any chance?"

It was the first time I managed to boast of my weakness, and I immediately lit a cigarette to ill.u.s.trate my words. They all laughed and told Signor Francesco how my life was full of last cigarettes. But that one wasn't the last, and I felt strong and mettlesome. However, I immediately lost the others' support when I poured some wine for Giovanni, into his large water gla.s.s. They were afraid Giovanni would drink and shouted to stop him, until Signora Malfenti managed to seize that gla.s.s and move it out of the way.

"You really would like to kill me?" Giovanni asked mildly, looking at me with curiosity. "Wine turns you nasty!" He hadn't made the slightest move toward the wine I had offered him.

I felt really downcast and defeated. I would almost have flung myself at my father-in-law's feet to beg his forgiveness. But that, too, seemed a gesture prompted by the wine, and I rejected it. In begging his forgiveness, I would have confessed my guilt, whereas the banquet was continuing and would still last long enough to afford me the opportunity to make amends for this first joke, which had come off so badly. In this world there's time for everything. Not all drunks succ.u.mb immediately to wine's every prompting. When I have drunk too much, I a.n.a.lyze my retching as when I am sober and probably with the same result. I went on observing myself, to understand how I had conceived that evil idea of harming my father-in-law. And I realized I was tired, mortally tired. If they knew the sort of day I'd been through, they would forgive me. I had possessed and violently abandoned a woman two separate times, and I had twice returned to my wife, only to betray her twice. It was my luck that, at this point, into my memory there intruded that corpse over which I had tried in vain to weep, and the thought of the two women vanished; otherwise I would have ended up talking about Carla. Didn't I always have a yearning to confess, even when I hadn't been made more magnanimous by the effect of wine? In the end I spoke about Copier. I wanted them all to know that I had lost my great friend that day. They would forgive my behavior.

I cried out that Copier was dead, really dead, and that I had kept silent about it till then, rather than sadden them. And lo and behold! Finally I felt tears come to my eyes, and I had to look away to conceal them.

The others all laughed because they didn't believe me, so then I became stubborn, wine's most obvious effect. I described the dead man: "He looked as if he'd been sculpted by Michelangelo: so hard, in the most enduring marble."

There was a general silence, interrupted by Guido, who cried: "And now you no longer feel obliged not to sadden us?"

The observation was fair. I had failed to keep a vow that I remembered! Was there no way to make amends? I fell to laughing uproariously.

"Fooled you! He's alive and getting better."

They all looked at me, trying to get their bearings.

"He's better," I added seriously. "He recognized me and he even smiled at me."

They all believed me, but there was general indignation. Giovanni a.s.serted that if he weren't afraid of hurting himself in making such an effort, he would have thrown a plate at my head. In fact, it was unforgivable of me to trouble the party with an invented piece of news like that. If it had been true, there would have been no blame. Wouldn't it then be better for me to tell them the truth again? Copier was dead, and as soon as I was alone, I would find my tears ready to mourn him, spontaneous and abundant. I sought the words, but Signora Malfenti, with her grande dame gravity, interrupted me: "Let's leave that poor sick man alone for the present. We'll think about him tomorrow!"

I obeyed at once, even with my thoughts, which broke away from the dead man definitively: Good-bye! Wait for me! I'll come back to you the moment this is over!

It was the time for toasts. Giovanni had obtained the doctor's permission to sip a gla.s.s of champagne at this moment. Gravely he superintended the pouring of his wine, and he refused to raise the gla.s.s to his lips until it was br.i.m.m.i.n.g. After having expressed serious, straightforward wishes for Ada and Guido, he drained it slowly to the last drop. Glowering at me, he said he had dedicated that final sip to my health. To ward off this augury, which I knew was not benevolent, under the table I crossed my fingers, on both hands.

My recollection of the rest of the evening is a bit muddled. I know that a little later, prompted by Augusta, everyone around that table said all sorts of good things about me, holding me up as a model husband. I was forgiven everything, and even my father-in-law grew more mellow. He added, however, that he hoped Ada's husband would prove good like me, but at the same time also a better businessman and, especially, one who ... and he groped for the word. He couldn't find it, and no one among us tried to supply it, not even Signor Francesco, who, having seen me for the first time that very morning, could know me only slightly. For my part I didn't take offense. How the spirit is soothed by the knowledge that one has done great wrongs and must make up for them! I accepted all the insolences in a grateful spirit, provided that they were accompanied by affection, which I didn't deserve. And in my mind, confused by weariness and wine, serene on every score, I cherished the picture of myself as the good husband, who never becomes less good for being adulterous. It was important to be good, very, very good, and nothing else mattered. With my hand I blew a kiss to Augusta, who received it with a grateful smile.

Then there were some at the table who wanted to take advantage of my drunkenness for a good laugh, and I was forced to propose a toast. I finally agreed because at that moment it seemed to me it would be a fine thing to be enabled to express thus in public my good intentions. Not that I had any self-doubt at that moment, because I felt myself to be exactly as described, but I would become even better were I to a.s.sert a resolution in front of so many people who, in a certain sense, would be underwriting it. And so it was that in the toast I spoke only of myself and of Augusta. For the second time in those days I related the story of my marriage. I had falsified it for Carla, keeping silent about my being in love with my wife; here I falsified it differently because I didn't mention the two people so important in the story of my marriage, namely Ada and Alberta. I told of my hesitation, for which I could never console myself, as it had robbed me of so much time for happiness. Then, out of gallantry, I attributed some hesitations also to Augusta. But she denied them, laughing merrily.

With some difficulty I recovered the thread of my speech. I narrated how at last we had gone on our honeymoon and how we had made love in all the museums of Italy. I was so totally immersed, up to my neck, in falsehood that I also added this lying detail that served no purpose. And yet they say that in wine there is truth.

Augusta interrupted me a second time to set things straight, and told how she had had to avoid museums because of the danger that the masterpieces were risking from me. She didn't realize that in this way she was revealing the falsity of more than just that detail! If there had been an observer at the table, he would quickly have discovered the nature of that love I was portraying in a setting where it could not have taken place.

I resumed the long, drab speech, telling of the arrival at our house and how both ot us had begun perfecting it, adding this or that, even including a laundry.

Still laughing, Augusta interrupted me again: "This party isn't in our honor; it's in honor of Ada and Guido! Talk about them!"

All agreed noisily. I also laughed, realizing that thanks to me we had achieved a genuine, noisy jollity that is the norm on such occasions. But I could find nothing more to say. I felt as if I had talked for hours. I swallowed several more gla.s.ses of wine, one after the other.

"Here's to Ada!" I straightened up for a moment to see if she had crossed her fingers under the tablecloth.

"Here's to Guido!" And I added, after gulping down the wine: "With all my heart," forgetting that at the first gla.s.s I hadn't added a similar declaration.

"Here's to your firstborn!"

And I would have drunk a number of those gla.s.ses for all their children, if I had not finally been stopped. For those poor innocents I would have drunk all the wine remaining on that table.

Then everything turned even darker. I recall clearly only one thing: my chief concern was not to seem drunk. I held myself erect and spoke little. I distrusted myself, I felt the need to a.n.a.lyze every word before saying it. While the general talk continued, I had to renounce taking part in it because I wasn't given time to clarify my murky thinking. I wanted to broach a subject myself, and I said to my father-in-law: "Have you heard Exterieur has dropped two points?"

I had mentioned something that didn't trouble me in the least, something I had overheard at the Bourse; I wanted only to talk about business, serious matters that a drunk usually wouldn't recall. It seemed to me that for my father-in-law this was not a matter of such indifference, and he accused me of being a bird of ill omen. With him I could never get anything right.

Then I turned to my neighbor, Alberta. We talked about love. To her it was of interest in theory, and to me, for the moment, it was of no interest whatsoever in practice. Therefore it was the perfect subject to talk about. She asked me for some ideas, and I immediately discovered one that seemed to me obvious from my experience of that very day. A woman was an object whose value fluctuated far more than any stock on the market. Alberta misunderstood me and thought I meant to say something well-known to everyone: namely that a woman of a certain age had quite a different value from one of another age. I made myself clearer: a woman might have a high value at a certain hour of the morning, none at all at noon, and then in the afternoon be worth twice her morning value, only to end in the evening at an actually negative value. I explained the concept of negative value: a woman had that kind of value when a man was calculating how much he'd be willing to pay to send her very far away from himself.

Still the poor playwright didn't see the accuracy of my discovery, while I was sure of myself, recalling the s.h.i.+fts of value that, just today, Carla and Augusta had suffered. The wine then intervened when I chose to explain further, and I veered completely off course.

"You see," I said to her, "supposing that you now have the value of x and you allow me to press your little foot with mine, your value immediately increases by another x at least."

I accompanied immediately the words with the action.

Bright red, she withdrew her foot and, wis.h.i.+ng to seem witty, she said: "But this is practice, not theory. I'll put it to Augusta."

I have to confess that I, too, felt that little foot as something quite apart from arid theory, but I protested, crying out with the most innocent manner in the world: "It's pure theory, the purest! And it is wrong on your part to take it as anything else."

The fancies of wine are authentic events.

For a long time Alberta and I didn't forget that I had touched a part of her body, informing her that I did so to feel pleasure. Word had underlined action; and action, word. Until she married, she always had for me a smile and a blush; afterwards, on the contrary, blush and wrath. That's how women are. Every day that dawns brings them a new interpretation of the past. Their life cannot be very monotonous. For my part, on the contrary, the interpretation of that action of mine remained always the same: the theft of a small object of intense flavor; and it was Alberta's fault if, at a certain time, I tried to make her recall that action whereas later I would have paid any sum for it to be forgotten completely.

I recall, too, that before I left that house, something else happened, far more serious. I remained, for a moment, alone with Ada. Giovanni had long since gone to bed and the others were saying good night to Signor Francesco, whom Guido was escorting back to the hotel. I looked for a long time at Ada, all dressed in white lace, her arms and shoulders bare. For a long time I was dumb, although I felt the need to say something to her; but, having studied it, I suppressed any phrase that came to my lips. I remember I pondered also if it were permissible for me to say to her: How happy I am that you are marrying at last and that you are marrying my great friend Guido. Now finally all will be over between us.

I wanted to utter a lie because everyone knew that between us all had been over for several months, but it seemed to me that the lie was a lovely compliment, and it is certain that a woman, dressed like that, requires compliments and basks in them. After long reflection, however, I did nothing. I suppressed those words because in the sea of wine in which I was swimming, I found a plank that saved me. I thought that I would be wrong to risk Augusta's affection in order to please Ada, who didn't love me. But, in the doubt that troubled my mind for a few instants, and even afterwards, when I wrenched myself free of those words, I gave Ada such a look that she rose and left, after turning to observe me with fear, ready perhaps to start running.

Actually a glance of one's own can be remembered as well as a word, perhaps even better. It is more important than a word because in all the dictionary there is no word that can undress a woman. I know now that my glance then falsified the words I had conceived, simplifying them. To Ada's eyes, it had tried to penetrate her clothing and also her epidermis. And it had certainly meant: Would you like to come to bed with me at once?

Wine is a great danger, especially because it doesn't bring truth to the surface. Anything but the truth, indeed: it reveals especially the past and forgotten history of the individual rather than his present wish; it capriciously flings into the light also all the half-baked ideas with which in a more or less recent period one has toyed and then forgotten; it ignores the erasures and reads everything still legible in our heart. And we know there is no way of canceling anything there radically, as you can cancel a mistaken endors.e.m.e.nt on a promissory note. All our history is always readable there, and wine shouts it, overlooking whatever life has subsequently added.

To go home, Augusta and I took a cab. In the darkness it seemed to me that it was my duty to embrace and kiss my wife, because that was how I had behaved many times in similar circ.u.mstances, and I feared that if I were not to do it, she might think something had changed between us. Nothing had changed between us: the wine also shouted this! She had married Zeno Cosini, who, unchanged, was at her side. What did it matter if, that day, I had possessed other women, whose number the wine, to make me happy, was increasing, placing among them Ada or Alberta, I can't recall which?

I remember that, falling asleep, for a moment I saw again Copier's marmoreal face on his deathbed. He seemed to demand justice, namely the tears I had promised him. But he didn't receive them now, either, because sleep embraced me, annihilating me. First, however, I apologized to the ghost: Wait a little longer. I'll be with you at once!

I never was with him again, because I didn't even attend his funeral. We had so much to do in the house, and I also outside it, that there was no time for him. We talked about him on occasion, but only to laugh, recalling how my wine had killed him over and over, then resuscitated him. Indeed, he remained proverbial in the family, and when the newspapers, as often happens, announce, then retract someone's death, we say: "Like poor Copier."

The next morning I rose with a bit of a headache. I felt the pain in my side slightly, perhaps because, while the effect of the wine lasted, I hadn't felt it at all, and I had promptly lost the habit of it. But, basically, I wasn't sad. Augusta contributed to my serenity, saying that it would have been terrible if I hadn't come to that wedding supper, because, until I arrived, she had felt she was at a wake. So I had no remorse about my behavior. Then I sensed that one thing only had not been forgiven me: that look at Ada!

When we met in the afternoon, Ada gave me her hand with an anxiety that increased my own. Perhaps, however, on her conscience she had that escape of hers, which had been far from polite. But also my glance had been a nasty action. I remembered exactly the movement of my eye, and I understood how she couldn't forget that she had been pierced by it. I had to make amends, a.s.suming a carefully fraternal demeanor.

They say that when you suffer the effects of drinking too much, the best remedy is to drink some more. That morning, to restore my spirits, I went to Carla's. I went to her with the specific desire of living more intensely, which is what leads you back to alcohol, but, walking toward her, I would have desired her to inspire in me an intensity quite different from that of the day before. I was accompanied by intentions that were not very precise, but all honest. I knew I couldn't give her up immediately, but I could head toward that highly moral action little by little. Meanwhile I would go on talking to her about my wife. With no surprise, one fine day she would learn that I loved my wife. I had in my pocket another envelope with some money, ready for any development.

I arrived at Carla's, and a quarter of an hour later she reproached me with a word that, in its justice, echoed for a long time in my ear: "How crude you are, in love!" I am not aware of having been crude just then. I had begun talking to her about my wife, and the praises attributed to Augusta had sounded to Carla's ears like so many reproaches addressed to her.

Then it was Carla who hurt me. To pa.s.s the time, I had told her how I had grown annoyed at the banquet, especially because of a toast I had proposed, which had been totally out of place.

Carla remarked: "If you loved your wife, you wouldn't make unsuitable toasts at her father's table."

And she gave me a kiss to reward me for the scant love I felt for my wife.