“But I didn’t take your advice!” I was not content with my good luck. I
wanted to take credit for it. I told him I was going to sell my shares
next day, and assuming an air of great importance I tried to make him
believe that I had received information which I had forgotten to hand
on to him, and which had induced me not to follow his advice!
He looked extremely offended and turned away as he answered:
“Anyone with a head like yours has no right to go into business. And
when you have played a caddish trick like that on anyone, the least you
can do is not to confess it. You have much to learn, young man.”
I hated to see him angry. It was much more amusing to have him score
off me. I told him exactly what had happened.
“You see it is precisely someone with a head like mine who ought to go
into business.”
His good humour returned immediately, and he laughed with me.
“It is not really a profit but a compensation, in your case,” he said.
“That head of yours has already cost you so much that it is only fair
you should recover some of your losses.”
I don’t know why I have spent so much time describing my quarrels
with him, for there were very few of them. I was so fond of him that
I always wanted to be with him, in spite of the fact that he had the
habit of shouting in order to think more clearly. My tympanum managed
to withstand his vociferation; if he had shouted less his immoral
theories would have been more offensive, and if he had had a better
education his force would not have seemed so impressive. Though I
was so different from him I think he returned my affection. I should
feel more certain of it, though, if he had lived longer. He went on
lecturing me after my marriage, and he interspersed his instructions
with outbursts of violence and sudden insults which I accepted mildly
and was sure that I deserved.
I married his daughter. Mother Nature guided me mysteriously, and you
will see with what violence she imposed her commands. Sometimes I study
my children’s faces, and try to find, beside the small chin--a sign of
weakness--and the dreamy eyes which I bequeathed to them, some traces
of the brute force of the man I chose to be their grandfather.
I wept at my father-in-law’s grave, though his final farewell to me
had not been too affectionate. On his death-bed he told me he admired
my damn good luck which enabled me to go about just as I liked, while
he was crucified on his bed. I asked him in surprise what I could have
done to make him want me to be ill. And this is what he replied:
“If I could get rid of my illness by giving it to you, you may be sure
that I would do so at once, and twice over! I have got none of your
humanitarian bees in my bonnet!”
There was nothing offensive in what he said; he only wanted to repeat
the other occasion when he had landed me with worthless goods. The
loss of my second father was a terrible one for me, caveman, ignorant,
fierce fighter though he was, for these very qualities showed up the
better my own weakness, culture and timidity. Yes, it is true I am
timid! I should never have realised it but for studying Giovanni so
closely. How much better I might have known myself to-day if I had been
able to have him always by me!
I soon perceived that at his desk in the Tergesteo, where he took
pleasure in revealing himself exactly as he was, and even rather worse,
Giovanni made certain reservations. He never spoke about his home
life, except when absolutely obliged, and then very quietly, in a much
lower voice than usual. He had a great respect for his home and felt,
no doubt, that not everyone who sat with him at that table was worthy
to hear anything about it. All that I could discover was that he had
four daughters, whose names all began with the same initial, the letter
A; he said that this was so convenient because anything stamped with
that initial could pass from one to the other without any alteration
being necessary. Their names, which I immediately committed to memory,
were Ada, Augusta, Alberta and Anna. I was also told that they were
all good-looking. That initial seemed to me more significant than it
really was. I dreamt about those four girls linked together so closely
by their names. I almost felt they were a bunch of flowers. But that
initial meant something else too. My name is Zeno, and I felt as if I
were about to choose a wife from a far country.
It was perhaps only chance that the first time I called at the
Malfentis I had just ended an old love affair with a woman who
deserved, I think, rather better treatment. But if it was chance it was
a curious one. I decided to break with her on quite frivolous grounds.
The poor girl thought that making me jealous was a good way of getting
me to propose to her. But the fact that I suspected her was enough
to make me break with her altogether. She was not to know that I was
obsessed at that moment with the idea of marriage, and that I could not
make up my mind to marry her just because she would not have seemed
enough of a novelty. The suspicion she had tried to arouse in me by
artificial means was a proof of the superiority of matrimony, which
does not admit of such suspicions. When I realised that my suspicions
were groundless it occurred to me that she was too extravagant. To-day,
after twenty-four years of honest matrimony, I am no longer of that
opinion. It was fortunate for her that I broke with her, for a few
months later she married someone who was very well off. She married
before I did, and almost immediately after my wedding I met her in
my own house, for her husband was a friend of my father-in-law. We
met frequently, but for some years--in fact during our youth--we were
rather cold to each other and never made any allusion whatever to the
past. The other day, however, she suddenly said, with a youthful blush
on her face which was framed by grey hair:
“Why did you give me up?”