One of the figures was Giuseppe, a youth of about my own age with
rather a hoarse voice, and the other was a brother of mine, a year
younger than me, who died some years ago. Giuseppe must have been given
quite a lot of money by his father, and treated us to some of those
cigarettes. But I am positive that he gave my brother more than me, and
that I was therefore obliged to try and get hold of some for myself.
And that was how I came to steal. In the summer my father used to leave
his waistcoat on a chair in the lobby, and in the pocket there was
always some change to be found; I took out the coin I needed for buying
one of those precious little boxes, and smoked the ten cigarettes it
contained one after the other, lest I might be betrayed if I carried
about with me such a compromising booty.
All this was lying dormant in my mind and so close at hand. It had
never come to life before, because it is only now that I realise its
possible significance. So now I have traced my bad habit back to the
very beginning and (who knows?) I may be cured already. I will light
one last cigarette, just to try, and probably I shall throw it away in
disgust.
Now I remember that my father surprised me one day whilst holding his
waistcoat in my hand. With a brazenness which I should never have now
and which horrifies me even so long after (perhaps this feeling of
disgust is going to be very important in my cure), I told him that I
had suddenly felt a great curiosity to count the buttons. My father
laughed at my mathematical or sartorial bent and never noticed that I
had my fingers in his waistcoat pocket. To my credit be it said, his
laughing at me like that for being so innocent when I knew I was guilty
was quite enough to prevent me ever stealing again. At least, I did
steal afterwards, but without realising it. My father used to leave
half-smoked Virginia cigars lying about on the edge of a table or of a
chest of drawers. I thought it was his way of getting rid of them and I
really believed that our old servant Catina used to throw them away. I
began smoking them in secret. The very fact of hiding them sent a kind
of shudder through me, for I knew how sick they would make me. Then I
would smoke them till cold drops of perspiration stood on my forehead
and I felt horribly bad inside. No one could say that as a child I
lacked determination.
I remember perfectly how my father cured me of that habit too. I had
come back one summer’s day from a school excursion, tired and very
hot. My mother helped me to undress and then made me lie down in a
dressing-gown and try and go to sleep on the sofa where she was sitting
sewing. I was very nearly asleep, but my eyes were still full of
sunlight and I couldn’t quite get off. The delicious sensation one has
at that age, when one is able to rest after being very tired, is so
real to me even now that I almost feel as if I were still lying there
close to her dear body.
I remember the large airy room where we children used to play and
which now, in these days when space is so precious, is divided in two.
My brother plays no part in the scene, which surprises me because he
must have been on that excursion too and would surely have been resting
with me. Was he asleep, perhaps, at the other end of the great sofa?
I picture the place, but it seems to be empty. All I see is myself
resting there so happily, my mother, and then my father whose words
still echo in my ears. He had come in without noticing I was there, for
he called out aloud:
“Maria!”
My mother made a soft hushing sound and pointed to me, lying as she
thought drowned in sleep, but in reality wide awake, and merely afloat
upon the ocean of sleep. I was so pleased at my father having to treat
me with such consideration that I kept perfectly still.
My father began complaining in a low voice:
“I really think I must be going mad. I am almost sure I left half a
cigar lying on that chest half an hour ago, and now I can’t find it. I
must be ill. I can’t remember anything.”
Only my mother’s fear of waking me prevented her from laughing. She
answered in the same low voice:
“But no one has been into this room since luncheon.”
My father muttered:
“I know that. And that is just why I think I am going mad.”
He turned on his heel and went out.
I half opened my eyes and looked at my mother. She had settled down
again to her work, and she still had a smile on her face. She would
surely not have smiled like that at my father’s fears if she believed
he was really going mad. Her smile made such a deep impression on me
that I immediately recognised it when I saw it one day long afterwards
on my wife’s lips.
Later on, lack of money was no obstacle to my satisfying my craving,
but any prohibition sufficed to excite it.
I smoked continually, hidden in all sorts of secret places. I
particularly remember one half-hour spent in a dark cellar, because I
was so terribly unwell afterwards. I was with two other boys, but the
only thing I remember about them is the childish clothes they wore: two
pairs of short knickers which I see standing up quite solidly as if
the limbs which once filled them had not been dissolved by time. We had
a great many cigarettes and we wanted to see who could smoke most in
the shortest time. I won, and stoically hid the physical distress this
strange experiment caused me. Afterwards we went out into the sunshine
again. I had to shut my eyes or I should have fainted on the spot. By
degrees I recovered and boasted of my victory. Then one of the boys
said:
“I don’t care about losing. I only smoke so long as I enjoy it.”
I remember his sensible words, but have quite forgotten the boy’s face,
though it was probably turned towards me while he spoke them.
But at that time I didn’t know whether I liked or hated the taste of
cigarettes and the condition produced by nicotine. When I discovered
that I really hated it all, it was much worse. That was when I was
about twenty. For several weeks I suffered from a violent sore throat
accompanied by fever. The doctor ordered me to stay in bed and to give
up smoking entirely. I remember being struck by that word _entirely_
which the fever made more vivid. I saw a great void, and no means of
resisting the fearful oppression which emptiness always produces.
When the doctor had left, my father, who was smoking a cigar, stayed on
a little while to keep me company (my mother had already been dead some
years). As he was going away he passed his hand gently over my feverish
brow and said:
“No more smoking, mind!”
I was in a state of fearful agitation. I thought: “As it’s so bad for
me I won’t smoke any more, but I must first have just one last smoke.”
I lit a cigarette and at once all my excitement died down, though
the fever seemed to get worse, and with every puff at the cigarette
my tonsils burned as if a firebrand had touched them. I smoked my
cigarette solemnly to the end as if I were fulfilling a vow. And though
it caused me agony I smoked many more during that illness. My father
would come and go, always with a cigar in his mouth, and say from time
to time:
“Bravo! A few days more of no smoking and you will be cured!”
It only needed that phrase to make me long for him to get out of the
room instantly so that I might begin smoking again at once. I would
pretend to be asleep in order to get rid of him quicker.
This illness was the direct cause of my second trouble: the trouble
I took trying to rid myself of the first. My days became filled with
cigarettes and resolutions to give up smoking, and, to make a clean
sweep of it, that is more or less what they are still. The dance of the
last cigarette which began when I was twenty has not reached its last
figure yet. My resolutions are less drastic and, as I grow older, I
become more indulgent to my weaknesses. When one is old one can afford
to smile at life and all it contains. I may as well say that for some
time past I have been smoking a great many cigarettes and have given up
calling them the last.
I find the following entry on the front page of a dictionary,
beautifully written and adorned with a good many flourishes:
2 February, 1886. To-day I finish my law studies and take up
chemistry. Last cigarette!!
That was a very important last cigarette. I remember by what hopes
it was attended. I was irritated by Canon Law, which seemed to me so
remote from life, and I fled to science in the hope of finding life
itself, though imprisoned in a retort. That last cigarette was the
emblem of my desire for activity (even manual) and for calm, clear,
sober thought.
But when I could no longer accept all the endless combinations of
carbonic acid gas I went back to Law. That was a mistake, alas, and
that too had to be celebrated by a last cigarette. I have come across
the date on the cover of a book. That was an important one too, and
I applied myself, with the utmost ardour, to the intricate problems
of “mine” and “thine,” and shook off for ever the series of carbon
combinations. I had proved myself unsuited to chemistry because of my
lack of manual skill. How was it possible for me to have any when I
went on smoking like a Turk?
While I sit here analysing myself a sudden doubt assails me: did I
really love cigarettes so much because I was able to throw all the
responsibility for my own incompetence on them? Who knows whether, if
I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect
man I imagined? Perhaps it was this very doubt which bound me to my
vice, because life is so much pleasanter if one is able to believe
in one’s own latent greatness. I only put this forward as a possible
explanation of my youthful weakness, but without any very great
conviction.
Now that I am old and no one expects anything of me, I continue to pass
from cigarette to resolution and back again. What is the point of such
resolutions to-day? Perhaps I am like that aged dyspeptic in Goldoni,
who wanted to die healthy after having been ill all his life!
Once when I was a student I changed my lodgings, and had to have the
walls of my room repapered at my own expense, because I had covered
them with dates. Probably I left that room just because it had become
the tomb of my good resolutions, and I felt it impossible to form any
fresh ones there.
I am sure a cigarette has a more poignant flavour when it is the last.
The others have their own special taste too, peculiar to them, but it
is less poignant. The last has an aroma all its own, bestowed by a
sense of victory over oneself and the sure hope of health and strength
in the immediate future. The others are important too, as an assertion
of one’s own freedom, and when one lights them one still has a vision
of that future of health and beauty, though it has moved a little
farther off.
The dates on my walls displayed every variety of colour and I had
painted some of them in oils. The latest resolution, renewed in the
most ingenuous good faith, found appropriate expression in the violence
of its colours which aimed at making those of the preceding one pale
before it. I had a partiality for certain dates because their figures
went well together. I remember one of last century which seemed as
if it must be the final monument to my vice: “Ninth day of the ninth
month, in the year 1899.” Surely a most significant date! The new
century furnished me with other dates equally harmonious, though in a
different way. “First day of the first month in the year 1901.” Even
to-day I feel that if only that date could repeat itself I should be
able to begin a new life.
But there is no lack of dates in the calendar, and with a little
imagination each of them might be adapted to a good resolution. I
remember the following, for instance, because it seemed to me to
contain an undeniable categorical imperative: “Third day of the sixth
month, in the year 1912, at 24 o’clock.” It sounds as if each number
doubled the one before.
The year 1913 gave me a moment’s pause. The thirteenth month, which
ought to have matched the year, was missing. But of course such exact
mathematical correspondence is hardly necessary to set off a last
cigarette. Some dates which I have put down in books or on the backs of
favourite pictures arrest one’s attention by their very inconsequence.
For example, the third day of the second month of the year 1905 at six
o’clock! It has its own rhythm, if you come to think of it, for each
figure in turn contradicts the one that went before. Many events too,
in fact all from the death of Pius IX to the birth of my son, I thought
deserved to be celebrated by the customary iron resolution. All my
family marvel at my memory for anniversaries, grave or gay, and they
attribute it to my nice sympathetic nature!
In order to make it seem a little less foolish I tried to give a
philosophic content to the malady of “the last cigarette.” You strike
a noble attitude, and say: “Never again!” But what becomes of the
attitude if you keep your word? You can only preserve it if you keep
on renewing your resolution. And then Time, for me, is not that
unimaginable thing which never stops. For me, but only for me, it comes
again.
Ill-health is a conviction, and I was born with that conviction. I
should not remember much about the illness I had when I was twenty if
I had not described it to a doctor at the time. It is curious how much
easier it is to remember what one has put into words, than feelings
which never vibrated on the air.
I went to that doctor because I had been told that he cured nervous
diseases by electricity. I thought I might derive from electricity the
strength necessary to give up smoking.
The doctor was a stout man and his asthmatic breathing accompanied
the clicking of the electrical machine which he set in motion at my
very first visit. This was rather a disappointment, for I thought the
doctor would make an examination of me and discover what poison it was
which was polluting my blood. But he only said that my constitution was
sound, and that since I complained of bad digestion and sleeplessness
he supposed my stomach lacked acids and that the peristaltic action was
weak; he repeated that word so many times that I have never forgotten
it. He prescribed me an acid which ruined my inside, for I have
suffered ever since from over-acidity.
When I saw that he would never discover the nicotine in my blood
himself, I thought I would help him, and suggested that my ill-health
was probably due to that. He shrugged his great shoulders wearily:
“Peristaltic action--acid. It has nothing to do with nicotine!”
He gave me seventy electric treatments, and I should be having them
still if I had not decided I had had enough. I did not hasten to my
appointments so much because I expected miraculous results, as because
I hoped to persuade the doctor to order me to give up smoking. Things
might have turned out very differently if I had had a command like that
with which to fortify my resolutions.
This is the description I gave the doctor of my illness:
“I am incapable of studying, and on the few occasions when I go to
bed early I lie awake till the first bells begin to ring. And that is
why I continue to waver between law and chemistry, because both those
sciences oblige one to begin work at a stated time, whereas I never
know at what time I shall be able to get up.”
“Electricity cures every form of insomnia,” pronounced Æsculapius, his
eyes fixed as usual on his quadrant instead of on his patient.
I began talking to him about psycho-analysis as if I expected him to
understand it; for I was one of the first, though timidly, to dabble in
it.
I told him of my troubles with women. I was not satisfied with one or
even with many; I desired them all! My excitement as I walked along the
streets was intense; whenever I passed a woman, I wanted to possess
her. I stared at them insolently, because I wanted to feel as brutal as
possible. I undressed them in imagination down to their shoes. I held
them in my arms and only let them go when I was sure that I knew every
part of them.
I might have spared my breath. All my sincerity was wasted. The doctor
snorted:
“I hope the electrical treatment won’t cure you of that disease. A fine
state of things that would be! I would never touch a high frequency
again if I thought that it was going to have that effect.”
He told me what he thought to be a very spicy anecdote. Someone who was
suffering from my complaint went to a famous doctor hoping to be cured;
but the doctor having treated him with complete success was obliged to
leave the town, otherwise the patient would have torn him limb from
limb.
“My excitement is not normal,” I yelled. “It comes from the poison
burning in my veins!”
The doctor muttered sympathetically:
“No one is ever satisfied with his lot.”
And it was in order to convince him that I did what he had neglected to
do, and studied all the symptoms of my disease in detail.
My absent-mindedness! That was another obstacle to my studies. When I
was at Graz preparing for my first examination I carefully made a note
of all the texts I should need up to the very last exam. The result was
that a few days before my examination I discovered I had been studying
things which I should only need several years later. So I was obliged
to put off taking it. It is true that I had not studied anything very
closely, but that was the fault of a girl who lived over the way, and
who flirted outrageously with me, though it went no further.
If she appeared at the window I had no eyes for my books. What a fool,
to waste one’s time over such things! I remember her small, pale face
at the window, its oval framed in gay auburn curls. I used to sit and
gaze at her and dream of crushing her whiteness and ruddy gold on my
pillow.
Æsculapius murmured:
“Nevertheless flirting has something to be said for it. At my age you
won’t want to flirt any more.”
To-day I am convinced he knew nothing whatever about flirting. I
have reached fifty-seven and I can guarantee that if I don’t give up
smoking, and if psycho-analysis does not cure me, my dying eyes will be
lifted in desire to the nurse by my death-bed, supposing she does not
happen to be my wife, and that my wife allows me to have a pretty one!
I was as frank as if I were making my confession. I was not in love
with women as a whole, but only with parts of them. I was always
attracted by small feet, especially if well shod, by a slender and
well-rounded neck, and by very small breasts. I was proceeding to
enumerate all the other parts of the female anatomy when the doctor
interrupted with:
“All those parts make up the woman as a whole.”
Then I said something which seemed to me of great importance:
“Sane, normal love embraces the whole woman with every quality of mind
and character.”
Up to that time I had never experienced such a love, and when I did,
even that did not restore me to health, but it is worth recording that
I detected symptoms of disease in what the specialist regarded as
healthy, and that my diagnosis turned out to be right.
I found more understanding of my complaint in a friend of mine who was
not a doctor. It is true he could not cure me, but he struck a new note
in my life which still echoes there.
My friend was a rich man who employed his leisure in reading and
writing. He talked much better than he wrote, so that few suspected
how profoundly learned he really was. He was a great fat man, and
when I knew him he was very energetically undergoing treatment for
getting thin. In a very short time his success was such that people
made a point of walking beside him in the street, in order to enjoy the
contrast between their own robustness and his emaciation. I envied him
his strength of will, and so long as his cure lasted I was always going
to see him. He invited me to feel how his stomach was getting smaller
day by day, and out of pure envy I said to him one day, maliciously
hoping to weaken his purpose:
“But what will you do with all that loose skin when your cure is
finished?”
He replied with the utmost calm, which gave quite a comic expression to
his emaciated face:
“In two days’ time I shall begin my massage treatment.”
He had arranged every detail of his cure beforehand, and one felt sure
he would keep to it with the utmost regularity.
It gave me a great feeling of confidence, and I described my malady to
him. I remember the description quite well. I explained to him that
giving up three meals a day seemed to me nothing compared with the
task of making a fresh resolution every moment not to smoke another
cigarette. If you use up all your energy in making resolutions you have
no time for anything else, for it takes a Julius Cæsar to be able to do
two things at once. It is true there is no need for me to do any work
so long as my agent Olivi is alive, but didn’t he think it a disgrace
for somebody like me to spend his whole time dreaming, or strumming on
the violin for which I have really no aptitude?
My fat friend, now so much reduced, was silent for a while. He was
a man of method and first he had to think it all out. Then with a
magisterial air, very becoming to one with his reasoning powers, he
explained that I was really suffering from my resolutions much more
than from the cigarettes. I ought to try and cure myself without making
any resolutions. According to him my personality in the course of years
had become divided in two, one of which gave orders while the other was
only a slave which, directly the supervision was relaxed, disobeyed its
master’s orders out of sheer love of liberty. So that what I ought to
do was to give it absolute freedom and at the same time look my vice in
the face as if it was something new and I were meeting it for the first
time. I must not fight it, I must first forget it and treat it with
complete indifference, turning my back on it as if it were not worthy
to keep me company. Simple, wasn’t it?
In fact it did seem to me quite a simple matter. And it is true that
having with much difficulty banished every resolution from my mind
I managed to refrain from smoking for several hours. But when my
mouth was cleansed from the taste of smoke it had an innocent feeling
like that of a new-born baby, and I felt a longing for a cigarette.
Directly I had smoked it I felt remorse and again began making the very
resolution I had tried to suppress. The way was longer, but the end
was the same.
That wretch Olivi suggested one day that we should have a bet together
in order to strengthen my resolution.
I think that Olivi must always have looked exactly the same as he does
now. I always see him like this--rather bent, but solidly built; and
to me he has always looked just as old as he does to-day, when he is
eighty. He has always worked for me, and he still does; but I don’t
really like him, for I always think he has prevented my doing the work
he does himself.
We made a bet: the first who smoked was to pay and then we should both
be released from all obligation. In this way my agent who was appointed
to see that I did not waste my father’s fortune was doing his best to
diminish my mother’s over which I had complete control!
That bet proved excessively damaging to me. I was no longer alternately
master and slave, but only a slave, and to Olivi, whom I hated. I
immediately began to smoke. Then I thought I would cheat him by going
on smoking in secret. But in that case why have made a bet at all? So I
set about hunting for a date which should match the date of the bet, in
order to smoke one last cigarette to which I should somehow feel that
Olivi had given his consent. But I continued to rebel, and smoked so
much that I got into a state of acute mental agony. In order to shake
off the burden I went to Olivi and confessed.
The old man smiled as he pocketed his money, then immediately drew from
his pocket a huge cigar which he lit and smoked with immense enjoyment.
It never occurred to me for an instant that he might possibly have been
cheating too. Evidently I am made quite differently from other people.
My son was just three years old when my wife had a bright idea. She
advised me to cure myself by going for a while into a sanatorium. I at
once agreed, first because I wanted my son when he grew old enough to
form judgments of his own, to find me calm and balanced, and secondly
because Olivi was ailing and spoke of leaving; in which case I might be
obliged to take his post at a moment’s notice, and felt quite unequal
to such an exertion with all that nicotine in my body.
We thought first of going to Switzerland, the traditional home of
sanatoriums, till we heard of a Doctor Muli, who had opened a place of
the sort in Trieste itself. I got my wife to go and see him, and he
offered to put a small suite at my disposal, with a special attendant
to supervise me, and several others to assist her. My wife smiled as
she described it to me and occasionally burst out laughing. She was so
amused at the idea of my being shut up, and I laughed quite as heartily
myself. It was the first time she had ever joined in my efforts to
cure myself. Up till then she had refused to take my disease seriously
and only said that smoking was one way of living, and not such a bad
one either. I think that after our marriage she was relieved to find I
never regretted my liberty; I was much too occupied in regretting other
things.
We went to the sanatorium the very day on which Olivi had told me he
could on no account stay on after the following month. We packed some
fresh linen in a trunk and went off that evening to Dr. Muli’s. He let
us in himself. In those days Dr. Muli was a good-looking young man. It
was midsummer, and he looked the picture of elegance dressed in white
from top to toe, with his small nervous figure and sunburnt face which
set off his piercing black eyes. He at once roused my admiration, and
evidently the feeling was mutual.
I guessed the cause of _his_ admiration and felt slightly embarrassed.
I said:
“I suppose you don’t believe I need a cure and can’t understand why I
take it so seriously.”
With an almost imperceptible smile which I found rather insulting, the
doctor replied:
“But why not? It may very well be that cigarettes do you personally
more harm than we doctors generally admit. I only can’t understand why,
instead of giving up smoking suddenly altogether, you did not make up
your mind to cut down the number of your cigarettes. There is no harm
in smoking, but of course it is bad for one to smoke to excess.”
I must confess that in my anxiety to give up smoking altogether the
possibility of smoking less had never occurred to me. I said with
decision:
“In any case, now that I am here let me try your cure.”
“Try?” The doctor smiled condescendingly. “Once you have submitted
to it the cure is bound to succeed. It will be impossible for you to
escape unless you use physical force on poor Giovanna. The formalities
which would have to be gone through before you were free would last so
long that in the interval you would quite have forgotten your vice.”
We had arrived at the suite of rooms destined to me, which could only
be reached by going up to the second floor and then coming down to the
ground floor.
“Do you see? That door, which is locked, is the only means of
communication with the rest of the ground floor, where the exit is.
Even Giovanna hasn’t got the key to it. If she wants to get out she
is obliged to go up to the second floor, and she keeps the key of
that door we came through on the small landing. Besides, there is
always someone in charge on the second floor. Not so bad, is it, for a
maternity home, which is what this was meant for?”
And he laughed, perhaps at the idea of shutting me up with babies.
He called Giovanna and introduced her to me. She was a little woman of
uncertain age, which one might put somewhere between forty and sixty.
She had small, very bright eyes and her hair was quite grey. The doctor
said to her:
“This is the gentleman whom you have got to be prepared to box with.”
She looked me up and down, blushed and said in a shrill voice:
“I shall do my duty, but I am certainly not going to fight with you. If
you threaten me I shall call the male attendant who is very strong, and
if he doesn’t come at once I shall just let you go wherever you like.
I’m not going to risk being killed by you.”
I heard afterwards that the doctor had promised her a considerable
bonus for looking after me, and this had made her thoroughly nervous.
But at the moment her words made me very angry. A nice position I had
put myself in of my own accord.
“Go to blazes!” I shouted. “Who’s going to touch you, I should like to
know?” Then, turning to the doctor, I said: “Please see that I am not
annoyed by this woman! I have brought some books with me and I wish to
be left in peace.”
The doctor said a few soothing words to Giovanna. She tried to excuse
herself by a fresh attack upon me.
“I have my children to live for, two sweet little girls.”
“I shouldn’t stoop to kill you,” I replied, in a tone hardly calculated
to reassure the poor woman.
The doctor sent her away on pretence of fetching something from the
floor above, and to pacify me he proposed replacing her by someone
else, adding:
“She is not a bad sort, and if I tell her to behave more tactfully I
don’t think she will give you any cause for complaint.”
As I did not want to seem to attach so much importance to the person
who would have to look after me, I said at once that I would put up
with her. I was in an excited state and felt the need of controlling
myself, so I took out my last cigarette but one and began smoking it
greedily. I explained to the doctor that I had only brought two and
that I was going to stop smoking on the stroke of midnight.
My wife said good-bye and went away at the same time as the doctor. She
smiled and said:
“Be strong and carry it through.”
I suddenly felt that her smile, which I loved so much, was mocking
me. Immediately a new suspicion awoke in my mind, which was to be
responsible for the swift failure of an undertaking on which I had
entered with such serious purpose. I felt suddenly unwell, but it was
only when I was left alone that I realised the nature of my disorder.
I was frantically, madly jealous of the young doctor. He was handsome,
he was free! His colleagues called him “The Venus de Medici.” What
was there to prevent my wife falling in love with him? As he went out
after her I saw him looking at her elegantly shod feet. It was the
first time I had been jealous since we were married. How miserable I
felt! No doubt my abject state as a captive had something to do with
it. I fought against the idea. That smile was just my wife’s usual
smile and not one of mockery because she had succeeded in getting
rid of me. Yet it was she who suggested my being shut up, though she
attached no importance to my vice. But surely she had only done it to
humour me. Surely I had not forgotten that one did not so very readily
fall in love with my wife? It is true the doctor eyed her feet, but
of course he had only been planning what shoes he should buy for his
mistress. Suddenly I discovered I had smoked my last cigarette; and it
was not yet midnight but eleven o’clock, an impossible hour for a last
cigarette.
I opened a book. I read it without understanding a word. I saw visions.
The page I was looking at suddenly turned into a photograph of Dr.
Muli in the full glory of his beauty and elegance. I could bear it no
longer! I called Giovanna. Perhaps if I talked a little I should feel
calmer.
She appeared, and at once eyed me suspiciously. She cried in her shrill
voice: “Don’t imagine that you will be able to make me neglect my duty.”
For the moment I invented some lies to set her mind at rest. I said I
had never dreamt of such a thing, but that I was tired of reading and
should prefer to have a chat with her. I made her sit down facing me. I
was completely put off by her elderly appearance, contrasting strangely
with her eyes which were still young and restless like those of a timid
animal. I felt very sorry for myself, having to put up with such a
companion! It is true that even when I am at liberty I am not very good
at choosing the companions who would be most congenial to me. On the
contrary it is generally they who choose me, as in the case of my wife.
I begged Giovanna to entertain me a little, and when she said she
couldn’t think of anything that would interest me I asked her to tell
me about her family, adding that almost everyone living had at least
one.
She readily obeyed and told me that she had been obliged to put her two
little girls into a home.
Her story entertained me and I could not help laughing at the thought
of how easily she had dismissed the result of her two pregnancies. But
she was of a very argumentative disposition, and when she wanted to
prove to me that it was impossible for her to do otherwise, seeing how
badly she was paid, and that it was very unfair of the doctor to say
that two kronen a day were quite enough for her, since the home looked
after her children, I soon began to have enough. But it was impossible
to stop her.
“What about all the extras?” she shouted. “They only give them food
and clothing, but there are heaps of other things they need.” And out
she came with a whole list of things she was obliged to get for her
children, which I have forgotten now, for I tried to concentrate on
other things so as to escape from her piercing voice. But my ears were
already too full of it, and I felt as if I deserved some recompense.
“Don’t you think I might have just one cigarette? I would willingly pay
you ten kronen for it, but you will have to wait till to-morrow for I
haven’t got a penny here.”
Giovanna was terribly shocked at my suggestion. She literally screamed,
and said she should call the attendant at once. In fact she got up and
went to the door.
To pacify her I had at once to withdraw my suggestion, and more with a
view to keeping myself in countenance than because I really wanted it,
I said casually:
“I suppose one can at least get something to drink in this prison?”
To my surprise Giovanna replied at once in quite a natural
conversational voice:
“Yes, of course! The doctor gave me this bottle of brandy before he
went away. Look! it is still unopened. It was quite a fresh bottle.”
I was in such a state that my only hope seemed to lie in getting drunk.
So this was the result of having trusted my wife so implicitly.
At that moment it seemed to me that the vice of smoking was really not
worth all the trouble I was taking about it. I had not been smoking
for the last half-hour and I had already forgotten all about it, so
occupied was I in thinking of my wife and Dr. Muli. So I was already
completely cured, but I had made a hopeless fool of myself.
I drew the cork and poured out a small glass of the yellow liquid.
Giovanna stood watching me with her mouth wide open, but I did not
venture to offer her any.
“Can I have some more when I have finished this?”
Giovanna politely assured me that I could have as much as I liked
and that the housekeeper had orders to get up at midnight even, if I
expressed a wish for anything.
Meanness has never been a fault of mine and I had soon filled
Giovanna’s glass to the brim. She emptied it almost before she had
finished thanking me, and her eyes were already fixed eagerly on the
bottle. So it was really she who put into my head the idea of making
her drunk. It was none too easy!
I can’t remember exactly what it was she said, in the pure Triestian
dialect, after swallowing several more glasses, but I had quite the
feeling that I was sitting by someone to whom I could have listened
with considerable pleasure had I not been occupied with quite other
thoughts.
First of all she confided to me that this was just the kind of work she
really enjoyed. She thought everyone ought to have the right to pass
an hour or two every day in a comfortable arm-chair, with a bottle of
really good brandy in front of them.
I tried to converse a little too. I asked her if that was how her work
had been arranged while her husband was alive.
She burst out laughing. In her husband’s lifetime she had had kisses
and blows alternately and, compared with all she had had to do for him,
what she did now was child’s play, even before I had arrived with my
cure.
Then Giovanna grew thoughtful and asked me if I thought the dead could
see what the living were doing. Yes, I thought so. But then she wanted
to know whether, when people were dead, they would discover everything
that had happened while they were alive.
For a moment this question actually succeeded in distracting me from my
own troubles. It was pronounced in a very soft voice as if Giovanna had
purposely lowered it so that the dead should not hear it.
“Were you unfaithful to your husband, then?” I asked.
She begged me not to talk so loud and then confessed that she had been
unfaithful, but only during the first few months of their marriage.
Then she had got used to blows and had loved her husband.
To keep the conversation going, I said: “Did you have your first child
then by the other man?”
Still in low voice she said yes, she thought so, on account of certain
resemblances. She regretted very much having betrayed her husband.
She laughed as she said this, because for some reason one always does
laugh at it, however much one may mind. But she had only minded since
his death, for it was of no importance before that, as he knew nothing
about it.
Moved by a certain brotherly sympathy, I tried to diminish her grief by
saying that I thought the dead probably did know everything, but that
there were certain things they would not bother their heads about.
“It is only the living who care!” I cried, banging my fist on the table.
I bruised my hand, and there is nothing like physical pain for awaking
new ideas. It suddenly occurred to me that while I was torturing myself
with the thought that my wife was taking advantage of my being shut up
to betray me with the doctor, he might possibly be in the house all the
time, in which case I could set my mind at rest. I asked Giovanna to go
and see, telling her I had something urgent to say to the doctor and
promising her another bottle as a reward. She protested that she didn’t
care to drink so much, but at once agreed to go, and I could hear her
staggering up the wooden staircase which led to the second floor where
our _clausura_ ended. She slipped as she was coming down again, making
a great deal of noise, and screaming.
“Curse you!” I muttered fervently. If only she had broken her neck my
position would have been simplified a good deal.
However, she came back wreathed in smiles, for she had reached a stage
when bodily pain makes very little impression. She said she had spoken
to the attendant who was just going to bed, but that she could always
call for him in case I gave any trouble. She shook her finger at me
threateningly as she said this, but with a sly smile. Then she added
more dryly that the doctor had not returned since he went away with my
wife. Quite a long time! In fact the attendant had been hoping he would
come back because there was a patient he wanted him to see. But he had
given up all hope of his coming now.
I watched her carefully to see whether the smile on her face was an
habitual one or whether it was quite new and occasioned by the fact
that she knew the doctor was with my wife instead of with me, his
patient, as he ought to have been. I was in such a rage that my brain
positively reeled. I must confess that even at such a moment two
personalities seemed to be at war within me; the more reasonable of
which said: “Idiot! Why should you imagine your wife is unfaithful to
you just now? There is no need for her to shut you up. She gets plenty
of other opportunities.” The other, the one which insists on smoking,
called me an idiot too, but in quite a different sense: “Don’t you see
how easy it becomes with her husband away? And with the doctor too, who
is paid by you!”
Giovanna, who went on drinking steadily, said: “I forgot to shut the
door on to the second floor. But I don’t want to have to go up those
two flights again. There is always someone about up there, and you
would cut a fine figure if you made any attempt to escape.”
“Rather!” said I, with the very small degree of hypocrisy now necessary
to take in the poor little woman. I swallowed some more brandy myself,
and said that now I was allowed so much drink I didn’t care two straws
about the cigarettes. She believed me at once and then I said it was
not really I who wanted to give up smoking. It was my wife who insisted
on it. I ought to tell her, I added, that after I had smoked about
ten cigarettes I became a perfect terror. No woman would be safe who
happened to meet me at such a moment.
Giovanna threw herself back in her chair and burst out laughing noisily.
“So it is your wife who prevents you smoking the necessary ten
cigarettes?”
“Yes, that’s it. At least she _used_ to prevent me.”
With all that brandy inside her poor Giovanna was by no means such a
fool. She was suddenly overcome by such a fit of laughing that she
almost fell off her chair. When she recovered her breath she sketched,
in broken words, a wonderful little picture suggested by my disease:
“Ten cigarettes ... half an hour ... set the alarum ... and then....”
I corrected her: “Ten cigarettes take me about an hour to smoke. It
takes about another hour to produce the full effect--sometimes a few
minutes more, sometimes less.”
Giovanna suddenly became quite serious and got up from her chair
without too great difficulty. She said she must go to bed as she had
rather a headache. I invited her to take the bottle with her, because I
had had quite enough. I hypocritically said that next day I should ask
them to order me in some good wine.
But it was of something else than wine she was thinking. As she left
the room with the bottle under her arm she gave me a look which made my
blood run cold.
She had left the door open and a few moments later a packet of
cigarettes fell in the middle of the floor. I at once picked it up. It
contained eleven cigarettes. To be on the safe side, poor Giovanna had
put in one extra. They were common Hungarian cigarettes; but the first
I smoked was delicious. I experienced a great sensation of relief. At
first I only thought what fun it was to have scored off that house
which might be good to shut babies up in, but not me. Then came the
thought that I had scored off my wife too and paid her back in her
own coin. Otherwise why should my jealousy have suddenly changed to a
quite harmless curiosity? I sat quietly in my chair smoking those vile
cigarettes.
After about half an hour I remembered that I must escape from the
house where Giovanna was waiting for her reward. I took off my shoes
and went out into the corridor. The door of Giovanna’s room was ajar
and, judging by her loud regular breathing, she must be asleep. I went
cautiously up the two flights of stairs to the second floor and, once
on the other side of that door of which Dr. Muli was so proud, I put
on my shoes. I went through to another landing and began slowly to go
downstairs, so as to arouse no suspicion.
When I had reached the first-floor landing, an elegant young woman
dressed as a nurse followed me and said politely:
“Are you looking for anyone?”
She was very pretty and I should not at all have minded finishing my
ten cigarettes in her company. I smiled at her rather aggressively, and
said:
“Is Dr. Muli not in?”
She looked extremely surprised and said: “He is never here at this
hour.”
“I wonder if you could tell me where I should be likely to find him.
Someone is ill in my house and wants to see him.”
She kindly gave me the doctor’s address, and I repeated it several
times to make her think I wanted to be sure of remembering it. I was in
no great hurry to be gone but she turned her back on me impatiently. I
was positively being thrown out of my prison.
In the hall the door was opened for me at once by a woman. I had no
money with me, so I muttered: “I’ll give you something another time.”
You never can tell what will happen in the future. Things often repeat
themselves with me: it was not at all impossible that I might pass that
way again.
It was a warm, clear night. I took off my hat to enjoy the free fresh
air. I marvelled at the stars as if I were seeing them for the first
time. I felt that next day, when I was well away from that sanatorium,
I should want to give up smoking. Meanwhile I got some more good
cigarettes in a café which was still open, because I really could not
end my career as a smoker with one of poor Giovanna’s cigarettes. The
waiter knew me and let me have them on tick.
When I got to my house I rang the bell furiously. The servant came to
the window first, and after a certain time my wife appeared. While I
waited I thought with perfect calm: it would seem that Dr. Muli really
is here. But directly she saw who it was, my wife made the empty street
ring with her laughter, so obviously sincere that it ought to have
banished all my doubts.
When I got in I cast an inquisitive and suspicious eye round the house.
I promised to tell my wife my adventures on the following day, though
she seemed to think she knew all about them already.
“Why don’t you go to bed?” she asked.
I replied, just as an excuse: “I believe you have taken advantage of my
absence to change the position of that chest of drawers.”
The fact is I often feel the furniture has been moved, and my wife very
often does move it, but at that moment I was hunting in every corner
to see if I could find a trace of the elegant little body of Dr. Muli.
My wife had some good news for me. On her way home from the sanatorium
she had run into Olivi’s son, who told her the old man was much better,
after taking some medicine prescribed by a new doctor.
As I fell asleep I thought what a good thing it was that I had left
the sanatorium, for now I could cure myself slowly at my leisure. My
son, sleeping peacefully next door, was certainly not likely to begin
either criticising me or imitating me for a very long time. There was
absolutely no hurry.