“I knew yesterday. But I wasn’t sure whether Carla’s plans held good
for to-day or not.”
I went away after having said good-bye as graciously as I could. I
ground my teeth, but in secret. It took me some time to pluck up
sufficient courage to be angry in public. I went to the Giardino
Pubblico and walked about for half an hour, to give myself time to
think things over. They had become so clear as to baffle me altogether.
Suddenly, piteously, I found myself forced to keep a resolution like
that. I felt ill, really ill. I limped along, trying in vain to contend
with my bodily distress. I sometimes have attacks like this; I can
breathe perfectly well, but I count each breath I draw, because each
requires a special effort of the will. I have the feeling that if I
were not careful I should die of suffocation.
At that hour I ought to have gone to the office, or better still to
Guido’s. But I had not the strength of mind to leave that spot. What
should I do if I did? How different to-day was from yesterday. If only
I had known the address of that wretched singing-master who by dint of
singing at my expense had carried off my mistress!
I ended at last by going back to the old woman. I might be able to
think of some message which would induce Carla to see me again. The
problem was how to get hold of her, and that as quickly as possible.
The rest, I felt, would not present any great difficulty.
I found the old woman sitting by one of the windows of the kitchen,
busy darning a stocking. She took off her spectacles and eyed me
curiously and half timidly. I hesitated a moment and then said:
“You know that Carla has decided to marry Lali?”
I felt as if I were telling myself the news for the first time. It is
true that Carla had told me twice, but the day before I had not paid
much attention to her. Her words had struck my ear, and so clearly
that I recalled them perfectly; but they had slipped off again without
penetrating my mind. Now, for the first time, they reached my vitals
and I writhed with pain.
The old woman looked at me, and she too seemed to hesitate. She was
obviously afraid of committing some indiscretion with which she would
be reproached afterwards. Then she burst out in great delight:
“Has Carla told you that? Then it must be true. I think she is quite
right! What do you think about it?”
She laughed with joy, the horrid old witch; and I had always imagined
she knew all about my liaison with Carla. I longed to hit her, but
contented myself with saying that I should have preferred to wait
till the singing-master had attained a better position. For my part I
thought they were being too hasty.
In her joy the old woman became quite talkative for the first time. She
did not agree with me. If one married young one must make a career for
oneself afterwards. Why must one always make it first? Carla needed so
little. And the training of her voice would cost less too, as it was
her singing-master she was going to marry.
These words, which might be interpreted as a reproof to my avarice,
gave me an idea which struck me at the time as magnificent, and
relieved my mind for the moment. The money which I still always
carried in an envelope in my breast-pocket must have reached by now a
considerable sum. I took it out and handed it to the old woman, asking
her to give it to Carla for me. Perhaps I felt the need of making my
mistress some proper return, but my chief desire was to see her and
possess her again. Carla would surely see me again in either case,
whether she wanted to return the money or whether she found it more
convenient to keep it; then she would feel that she must say thank you
for it. I breathed again: it was not the end of everything!
I told her mother that the envelope contained the remains of the money
collected among his friends by Copler, which he had entrusted to me.
Then, with my spirits quite restored, I asked her to tell Carla that I
should always be a good friend to her and that she was to come to me in
case she ever needed help. This enabled me to give her my address: I
gave Guido’s office.
I went away with a much lighter step than I had come. But that day I
had a violent quarrel with Augusta. It was all about nothing. I said
the soup was too salt, while she maintained it was not. I suddenly
got into a violent rage because I thought she was laughing at me,
and pulled the cloth towards me with a jerk, so that everything was
scattered on the floor. The baby, who was in the nurse’s arms, began
to howl; which humiliated me very much because I thought it was trying
to reproach me too. Augusta grew pale as only she knew how, took the
baby in her arms and left the room. I thought this was really going too
far; was I to be left to eat my food alone like a dog? But she returned
almost at once without the baby, put the cloth to rights and sat down
again in front of her plate. She took up some soup in her spoon as if
she were going to begin eating again.
I was inwardly swearing, but I had come to look upon myself as a
plaything in the hands of the uncontrolled forces of nature. Nature
found no difficulty in accumulating them, and less still in unchaining
them on the world. My curses were directed against Carla who pretended
to be acting entirely in the interests of my wife. It was all her fault
that I had behaved like this!
Augusta has her own method of dealing with me when I am in this
condition, a method from which she has never departed. She does not
argue, or weep or protest. When I began humbly apologising, she only
wanted to explain one thing: she had not laughed, she had only smiled,
as she had done so many times before when I had seemed to like it.
I was properly ashamed of myself. I begged Augusta to have the baby
brought back, and took it in my arms and played with it for a long
time. Then I made it sit on my head, and dried my eyes--wet with the
tears Augusta had not shed--with its little frock which hung down over
my face. I played with the baby because I knew that without having to
make any more excuses for my conduct I was really making it up with
Augusta; and sure enough her cheeks had already resumed their normal
colour.
The day, after all, ended well, the afternoon being very much like the
preceding one. It was almost as good as if I had found Carla in her
usual place that morning. I felt the same sort of stimulus. I kept on
telling Augusta how sorry I was, because I wanted to induce her to put
on her motherly smile again when I said or did anything ridiculous. I
could not have borne it if she had felt constrained to adopt a certain
attitude towards me, or if my conduct had obliged her to repress a
single one of those tender smiles of hers, which seemed to me the
kindest and most final judgment that anyone could pass on me.
In the evening we talked again about Guido. He had apparently entirely
made his peace with Ada. Augusta wondered how her sister could be such
a saint. This time it was my turn to laugh, for she had evidently
forgotten how very charitable she was herself. I said to her:
“Supposing I were to do the same thing in our house, wouldn’t you
forgive me?”
She hesitated a moment and then exclaimed:
“We have our child, but Ada has no children to bind her to that man.”
She did not like Guido; I sometimes think that she continued to bear
him a grudge for having made me suffer.
A few months later Ada presented Guido with twins, and Guido could
never understand why I congratulated him so warmly. According to
Augusta’s theory, now that he had children he could amuse himself as
much as he liked with the maids without danger to himself.
Next morning when I went to the office and found on my desk an envelope
in Carla’s handwriting, I breathed again. So nothing was at an end, and
I was still to be provided with all the elements essential to my life.
In a few brief words Carla gave me an appointment for eleven o’clock in
the Giardino Pubblico, by the entrance opposite her house. We were not
to meet in her room, it is true, but somewhere very near to it.
I could not control my impatience, and arrived at the rendezvous a
quarter of an hour too soon. If Carla had failed to appear at the
appointed place I decided I would go straight to her house, which would
have been much more convenient.
It was another of those delicious spring days, fresh and soft and
luminous. When I left the noisy Corsa Stadion and went into the garden,
the silence seemed almost rural, hardly broken by the faint rustling of
leaves in the mild breeze.
As I walked quickly towards the other gate of the garden, I saw Carla
coming to meet me. She had my envelope in her hand, and advanced
towards me without a smile of greeting, and with a stern, fixed
expression on her pale face. She had on a simple dress of rather
loosely woven linen with a blue stripe in it, which suited her very
well. She seemed to be part of the garden. Afterwards, during the times
which I felt I hated her most, I accused her in my own mind having put
on that dress so as to make herself more desirable at the very moment
she meant to refuse herself to me. But she was really clothed in the
first fine day of spring. Besides, one must remember that the personal
adornment of my mistress had played a very small part in our long but
hurried liaison. I had always gone straight to her studio, and modest
women when they are at home always dress very simply.
She gave me her hand, which I pressed, saying:
“Thank you for coming!”
How much better it would have been if I had remained as unexacting as
that during the whole interview!
Carla seemed to me to be very agitated, and when she spoke a nervous
tremor passed through her, and her lips trembled. Sometimes when she
was singing that movement of the lips prevented her from producing the
tone she wanted. She said:
“I wish I could please you by accepting this money from you, but I
can’t, I simply can’t. Please take it back again.”
When I saw that she was almost in tears I did what she wanted at once,
and took the envelope from her. Long after I had left her I found it
still in my hand.
“Do you really want to have nothing more to do with me?”
I asked her this, quite forgetting that she had already answered me the
day before. But was it likely that she would continue to withstand me,
when I desired her so much?
“Zeno,” she replied in a softer tone, “didn’t we promise never to see
each other again? It is because of that promise that I have taken
certain vows which you had already taken before you met me. They are
as sacred as yours, and I hope by now your wife knows that you belong
entirely to her.”
She was evidently still troubled by the thought of Ada’s beauty. If I
could have been sure that this was the real reason she had given me up
I might have been able to avert it. I might have told her that Ada was
not my wife and have shown her the cast in Augusta’s eye and her spoilt
figure. But the vows she said she had taken were more important still,
and I was obliged to discuss them with her.
I tried to talk calmly to her, though my lips were trembling too--but
with desire. I said she did not seem to know how much she meant to me,
and that she had not the right to dispose of herself like that. The
scientific proof of what I wanted to say passed through my mind--to
wit, Darwin’s famous experiment on an Arab mare--but thank God I don’t
think I mentioned it. But I am sure I talked about animals and their
physical fidelity, babbling on incoherently. I abandoned the more
difficult arguments which were beyond us both at that moment, and said:
“What vows can you have taken? And how can they be of any importance
compared to a love like ours, which has bound us for over a year?”
I seized her roughly by the hand, for I felt the need of some violent
movement to take the place of the words I could not utter.
She snatched her hand away from me as resolutely as if it were the
first time I had dared to take hold of it.
“But,” she said as solemnly as if she were taking an oath, “I have
taken the most sacred of all vows, and with a man who did exactly the
same to me.”
There was no longer any room for doubt. The blood which suddenly
coloured her cheeks was driven there by anger against the man who had
never taken any vows towards her. And she proceeded to make her meaning
still clearer:
“Yesterday we went for a walk together, with my mother, and we walked
through the streets arm in arm.”
She was running away from me, that was clear; farther and farther away.
I began running madly after her, making hasty leaps like a dog who has
had tasty bits of meat taken away from him. I seized her hand again and
cried:
“Very well, we will walk hand in hand from one end of the town to
the other. In that unusual position we will go right down the Corsa
Stadion, along the Volti di Chiozza, and on and on down the Corso to
Sant’ Andrea; and we will come back to our room quite a different way,
so that the whole city may have a chance of looking at us.”
For the first time I was proposing really to give up Augusta! And I was
glad I was going to get free, for it was she who was really robbing me
of Carla.
She again released herself from my grasp and said coldly:
“That is about the same route we took yesterday.”