“I knew him, but I could not remember who he was. We talked about
politics. It _was_ Bertini; it was his bleating voice, and no one else
could have talked such nonsense.”
“His voice too!” exclaimed Ada, still laughing, and looking at me
anxiously to hear the end.
“Yes, it could only have been Bertini,” I said, feigning terror with
all the art of the consummate actor the world has lost in me. “He
pressed my hand when he said good-bye, and went away with the same
swinging gait. I followed him a certain distance, racking my brain to
think who it could be. It was only when I had lost him from sight that
I realised I had been talking to Bertini; Bertini who had been dead a
whole year!”
Soon after, she stopped at the door of her house. She shook hands with
Guido and said she was expecting him that evening. Then she nodded to
me and said that if I was not afraid of being bored she hoped I would
come too for some table-turning.
I did not thank her. I made no reply. I wanted to look into the
invitation more closely before accepting. It had sounded to me like an
act of enforced politeness. Well, perhaps the holiday was going to end
for me with this meeting. But I did not want to seem rude, and thought
I would leave it open whether or not I accepted the invitation. I asked
after Giovanni, saying I wanted to speak to him. She replied that I
should find him at his office where he had been obliged to go for some
important business.
Guido and I stood for a few seconds looking after the elegant figure
disappearing through the porch. I don’t know what Guido’s thoughts were
at the moment. As for me I felt extremely unhappy. Why had she not
invited me before inviting Guido?
We walked back together almost to the point where we had met Ada.
Guido was polite and easy in his manner, a thing which I most envied
in other people; he spoke again of the story I had invented, which he
evidently took seriously. The only true part of the story however was
this: there was in Trieste, even after Bertini’s death, someone who
talked a great deal of nonsense, appeared to walk on the tips of his
toes, and had an odd way of talking. I had only recently got to know
him, and he had for the moment reminded me of Bertini. I was quite
content that Guido should rack his brains over my invention. I had made
up my mind that there was no point in my hating him, since he was no
more than an important business connexion as far as the Malfentis were
concerned; but I loathed his ultra-elegance and his walking-stick. In
fact, I found him so unsympathetic that I was dying to get rid of him.
I listened to his final remarks:
“The person you talked to might easily have been much younger than
Bertini, have walked like a grenadier, and had a manly voice, the
only resemblance between them being that they both talked nonsense.
Yet this would have been quite sufficient to fix your thoughts on
Bertini. But to admit that, one would have to assume that you are very
absent-minded.”