“I think of going on studying too when I am married.”
She laughed heartily, but I saw I was wasting my time; this sort of
nonsense was not the way to win a wife and peace of mind. One must take
it seriously. It ought to be easy in Alberta’s case, for her reception
was very different from Ada’s.
I was quite in earnest. I felt I ought to tell my future wife
everything. I said to her in a tone full of feeling:
“I have just made the same proposal to Ada as I now make to you. She
refused me with scorn. You can imagine what a state I am in.”
These words, which were accompanied by a gesture of profound
depression, were really a kind of final declaration of love to Ada. I
was getting too serious, and added in a lighter tone:
“But I think if you would consent to marry me I should be perfectly
happy, and forget everything and everyone for you.”
She became very serious and said:
“Don’t be offended, Zeno, for I should hate to hurt your feelings.
I respect you very much. I think you’re a very nice fellow, and you
understand lots of things without having learnt them, whereas my
professors only know what they have learnt. But I don’t want to get
married. I may change my mind, but at the moment I have only one
ambition: to become a writer. You see how I trust you. I have never
told anyone else and I hope you won’t give me away. On my side I
promise I won’t ever tell anyone of your proposal.”
“You can tell anyone you choose,” I interrupted angrily. I felt again
that I was in danger of being banished from that house, and I hastened
to put up my defence. There was only one way of taking down Alberta’s
pride in having refused me, and directly I saw it I adopted it. I said:
“I shall now propose to Augusta and tell everyone I married her because
both her sisters refused me!”
I laughed with extravagant good humour as I reflected on the
strangeness of my proceeding. The wit on which I prided myself so much
was manifesting itself in deeds instead of words!
I looked round to try and find Augusta. She had gone out into the
passage with a tray on which was a glass half full of a soothing drink
for Anna. I ran after her, calling her by her name, and she leaned
against a wall and waited for me. I stood facing her, and said without
a moment’s hesitation:
“Listen to me, Augusta! Would you like us to get married?” It was a
very rough-and-ready proposal. I was proposing to marry her, and yet I
never asked what she thought about it, nor did it ever occur to me that
anyone would have the right to ask me for an explanation. I was only
doing what they all seemed to expect of me!
The eyes she lifted to me were wide with astonishment. This seemed to
make her squint more than ever. Her soft, pale face first grew paler,
then suddenly became red all over. She clutched at the glass to steady
it on the tray. In a voice I could hardly hear, she said:
“You are joking, it is unkind of you.”
I was afraid she was going to cry, and the odd idea came to me that I
might comfort her by telling her my own troubles.
“I am not joking,” I said, gravely and sadly. “First I proposed to
Ada who refused me angrily; then I asked Alberta to marry me, and she
refused me too, with fine speeches. I don’t bear either of them any ill
will. But I am very, very unhappy.”
She grew calmer as she saw my grief, and looked tenderly at me. She was
evidently thinking hard. Her look was like a caress, but gave me no
pleasure.
“So you want me to understand and always to remember that you don’t
love me?” she asked.
What did she mean by that sibylline saying? Was it the prelude to
consent?
Did she mean she would remember during all the years she would have to
live with me? I felt like someone who has put himself in a dangerous
position on purpose to kill himself, and then has to strain every nerve
in order to save his own life. Wouldn’t it have been better if Augusta
had refused me too, and I had been able to return safe and sound to my
study, which after all I had not found intolerable even on that awful
day? I said:
“It is true that I only love Ada, and now I am asking you to marry me.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that it was because I could not
bear the thought of never meeting Ada again that I was willing even to
become her brother-in-law. But it would have seemed too fantastic. And
Ada might easily think that I was making fun of her again. So I only
said:
“I can’t face living alone any longer.”
She remained leaning against the wall. Perhaps she felt she needed some
support, but she seemed calmer and managed to hold the tray in one
hand. Was I saved, and must I therefore leave the house for ever? Or
might I stay there on condition that I got married? I went on talking,
in my impatience to hear her reply, which was long in coming:
“I am quite a good fellow, and I think I should be easy enough to live
with, even if it wasn’t very romantic.”
This was a phrase I had been preparing for Ada during the long days
before, in the hope of persuading her to say yes, even if she did not
love me very much.
Augusta sighed gently and still remained silent. Her silence might mean
a refusal, the most delicate imaginable; I was on the point of going to
fetch my hat while my head was still my own to put it on.
But Augusta had at last made up her mind, and with a dignity I have
never forgotten she stood erect, no longer needing the wall to support
her. So that she was now quite close, facing me in the narrow passage.
She said:
“You need a woman, Zeno, to live with you and look after you. I will be
that woman.”
She put out her plump hand, which I almost instinctively kissed.
Clearly there was no possibility of doing anything else. I don’t mind
confessing that at that moment a feeling of immense satisfaction
pervaded me. I had no longer any decision to make. Everything was
decided for me. At last I had obtained certainty.
And so I became engaged. We at once received endless congratulations.
My success was something like Guido’s on the violin, as far as the
applause was concerned. Giovanni kissed me and was most affectionate.
He said he had looked upon me as a son ever since he began to give me
advice about my business.
My future mother-in-law also held out her cheek for me to kiss, which I
did as lightly as I could. I should not have escaped that kiss even if
I had married Ada.
“You see I guessed everything,” she said, with an incredible assurance
which only went unpunished because I did not choose to protest.
Then she embraced Augusta, and the warmth of her affection was betrayed
by a sob, even in the midst of her joyful outpourings. I could not
endure Signora Malfenti, but somehow her tears seemed to surround my
engagement, for that one evening at least, with a halo of sympathy and
importance.
Alberta was radiant, and shook me warmly by the hand:
“I will be a good sister to you,” she said.
And Ada said:
“Bravo, Zeno!” then in a lower voice she added: “I want to tell you
this: you may think you have been too hasty, but no one has ever acted
more sensibly than you have this evening.”
Guido expressed great surprise.
“I realised for the first time this morning,” he said, “that you were
after one or other of the sisters, but I could not discover which.”
They couldn’t be very intimate then, if Ada had not said anything to
him about my proposal. Had I really been in too much of a hurry?
Soon after, however, Ada said to me:
“I want you to love me as a sister. Let us forget all that has
happened; I shall never say a word to Guido.”
It was after all very nice to have given such pleasure to a whole
family; and if I was not as happy as I ought to have been, it was only
because I was so tired. I felt terribly sleepy, which was a proof that
I had acted with a certain amount of foresight. I was going to have a
good night at last.
At supper Augusta and I received all our congratulations in silence.
She felt she must apologise for not taking part in the general
conversation and said:
“I can’t talk. You must remember that till half an hour ago I had no
idea what was going to happen to me.”
She always spoke the exact truth. She did not know whether to laugh or
cry, and looked at me. I tried to make my answering look into a caress,
but I don’t know if I succeeded.
Later the same evening, while we were still at supper, my feelings were
wounded again; this time by Guido.
It appears that shortly before I had arrived to take part in the
spiritualistic séance, Guido had told them what I had said that morning
about not being absent-minded. They at once produced so many proofs
of my having lied that in revenge, or perhaps to show that he could
draw, he did two caricatures of me. The first showed me with my nose
in the air, leaning on an umbrella stuck in the ground. In the second
the umbrella was broken and the handle was sticking into my back. The
two caricatures attained their object of making people laugh by the
simple fact that the figure which was supposed to represent me, and
was not really in the least like me except that he was very bald, was
identical in both sketches, and might therefore be supposed to be so
absent-minded that he had not even changed his position though an
umbrella had run through his back.
Everyone laughed a great deal, too much I thought. I was extremely
pained by this very successful attempt to pour ridicule on me. It was
on this occasion that I was conscious for the first time of a stinging
pain in my right forearm and hip, an intense burning sensation, a
turmoil of the nerves, as if they had been seized by a kind of cramp. I
held my hip in alarm and clutched at the same time at my right arm with
my left hand. Augusta said:
“What’s the matter?”
I said the bruise was hurting me which I had got when I fell, as I was
leaving the café.
I at once made an energetic effort to get rid of the pain. I thought
it would probably be cured if I could think of a way to avenge myself
for the insult. I asked for a piece of paper and a pencil, and tried
to draw someone being crushed by a table falling on the top of him. By
his side was a stick which had fallen from his hand at the moment of
the accident. No one recognised the walking-stick, so that my vengeance
fell very flat. In order that they might realise for whom it was
intended, and how he had got into that position, I wrote underneath it:
“Guido Speier fighting with the table.” As a matter of fact nothing was
visible of the man under the table but his legs, which might possibly
have been like Guido’s if I had not intentionally made them bandy,
and if the spirit of vengeance had not intervened to make my already
childish drawing worse still.
The severe pain I was suffering made me work very rapidly. Never before
had my whole being longed so desperately to wound someone, and if I
could have exchanged the pencil, which I was incapable of using, for a
sabre, perhaps my cure would have been complete.
Guido laughed heartily at my drawing, then remarked quietly:
“The table doesn’t seem to have done me much harm.”
It was quite true it had not hurt him at all, and it was the injustice
of this which stung me so much.
Ada took Guido’s two drawings, saying she wanted to keep them. I looked
at her reproachfully and she was obliged to avoid my eyes. I had the
right to reproach her for making me suffer so much.
Augusta came to my rescue by saying she wanted me to put the date of
our engagement on my drawing, for she was going to keep it too. I felt
the warm blood course through my veins at this token of her affection,
of which I now first recognised all the importance. But it did not
put a stop to my pain, and I could not help thinking that such a mark
of affection given me by Ada would have produced a flow of blood
sufficient to purify my nerves from all their long accumulation of
poison.
I have never got rid of that pain. In my old age I suffer less from it
because I view its advent with more indulgence, and only say: “Oh, are
you there again, to remind me that I once was young?” But while I was
young it was a different matter; not that the pain was severe, though
it sometimes prevented my moving and would occasionally keep me awake
all night. It played a large part in my life, because I was always
trying to get cured. Why must I bear the brand of defeat throughout my
life, and become as it were a walking monument to Guido’s victory? It
was necessary to banish that pain from my body.
And so began my series of cures. But the irrational cause of the malady
was soon forgotten, and even I soon found it difficult to retrace. This
was natural, for I had great faith in the doctors who were treating
me, and sincerely believed them when they told me the pain was due
sometimes to imperfect metabolism, sometimes to defective circulation,
to tuberculosis and various infections shameful or otherwise. All my
treatments gave me temporary relief, so that each fresh diagnosis
seemed at the outset to justify itself. Sooner or later they would
break down, but they generally contained some element of truth, because
none of my bodily functions are ideally perfect.
Only once they went completely wrong. I had gone to a sort of
veterinary surgeon who insisted for a long time on treating my sciatic
nerve with blisters, till he was nonplussed one day by the pain darting
suddenly from my thigh to the back of my head, which could not be
connected with the sciatic nerve. Æsculapius was furious and showed me
the door, and I remember that I went off not in the least angry but
only interested to notice that the pain, though it had changed its
position, was exactly the same as before. It was just as violent and as
inaccessible as it had been in my hip. It is curious how every part of
our body may be susceptible to the same kind of pain.
All the other diagnoses have proved their right to lodge in my body,
and still continue to strive amongst themselves for mastery. There are
days when uric acid bears sway, others in which it is slain, or rather
cured by an inflammation of the veins. I have whole chests full of
medicines, and they are the only ones that I keep tidy myself. I love
my medicines, and know that even if I give one up I shall go back to it
sooner or later. And I don’t consider I have wasted my time. I might
have been dead long ago, who knows of what ghastly disease, if my pain
had not simulated each in turn so as to induce me to get cured before
it had time really to take hold on me.
But though I am unable to define its real nature I know when my pain
took shape for the first time. It was really on account of that drawing
which was so much better than mine. That was the last drop which made
the pitcher overflow! I am certain I had never felt the pain before.
I tried to explain its origin to a doctor, but I could not make him
understand. Who knows? Perhaps psycho-analysis will bring to light
all the changes that took place in my body during those days, and
especially during the few hours immediately following my engagement.
Few hours! They seemed more than a few. When the party broke up Augusta
said to me gaily:
“Till to-morrow then!”
This pleased me because it showed that I had attained my end, that
nothing was over, but would go on just the same to-morrow. She looked
into my eyes, and was cheered to find them respond warmly to her
invitation. I went down the stairs, which I no longer counted, saying
to myself:
“Who knows? Perhaps I do love her after all.”
This uncertainty has never left me during the whole of my life, and
to-day I am compelled to believe that true love is compatible with such
a doubt.
But even after I had left the house I was not allowed to go home and
enjoy the fruit of my evening’s activity in a long, restoring night’s
sleep. Guido thought he would like an ice, and asked me to go with him
to a café. He took my arm in a friendly way, and I responded with like
good will. He was a very important person to me, and I felt I could
refuse him nothing. My fatigue, which ought really to have driven me to
bed, made me more submissive than usual.
We went into the very same place where poor Tullio had infected me with
his disease, and sat down at a table a little apart from the others.
On the way there my pain, which I little thought was to be my life’s
companion, had been very bad, and I was glad to sit down, for this
seemed at first to relieve it.
I found Guido’s company almost intolerable. He inquired with great
curiosity into the story of my love for Augusta. Did he suspect I was
deceiving him? I told him brazenly that I had fallen in love with her
at first sight, on the occasion of my first visit to the Malfentis.
The pain I was suffering made me talkative, as if I were endeavouring
to shout it down. But I talked too much, and if Guido had really been
listening he would soon have discovered that I was not so much in love
with Augusta as all that. I spoke of the most conspicuous thing in her
body, namely her squint, which somehow made one expect that all her
other limbs would be slightly crooked too. Then I tried to explain why
I had not proposed sooner. Guido was perhaps surprised to see me turn
up at the last minute only in order to get engaged? I said emphatically:
“The Malfenti girls are used to a great deal of luxury, and I could not
make up my mind whether I ought to take on such a responsibility.”
I was vexed at having dragged Ada in too, but there was no help for it
now; it was so difficult to keep Augusta apart from Ada! I lowered my
voice so as to keep myself more under control and went on:
“I had to work things out first. I knew the money I had was not enough.
So I began thinking how I could increase my business.” I think I went
on to say that it took time to work it all out, and that was why I had
kept away from the Malfentis for five days. By dint of exercise my
tongue was beginning to arrive at a certain degree of sincerity. I was
almost in tears, and pressing my thigh with my hand I murmured:
“Five days is a long time.”
Guido said he was glad to discover I was so cautious.