“Yes!”
Little by little the memory of Guido’s violin came back to me, and then
how they would have turned me out of their drawing-room if I had not
clung to Augusta; and then again the drawing-room in the Malfentis’
house where one couple made love at a Louis Quatorze table, while the
other couple watched them from another table. And I suddenly remembered
Carla; for she had seen Ada too. I heard her voice again quite
distinctly, telling me I belonged to my wife--meaning Ada. The tears
rose to my eyes and I repeated:
“Yes. A great deal! A great deal!”
Ada actually sobbed as she said: “I am so very, very sorry.” She pulled
herself together and said:
“But now you love Augusta!”
A sob interrupted her for an instant, and I trembled, not knowing
whether she had stopped short to see if I should confess or deny my
love. Fortunately she did not give me time to speak, but continued:
“Now we are really able to feel to each other like brother and sister.
I need you; I have got to be a mother to that great child of mine, I
have got to protect him. Will you help me in my difficult task?”
Her emotion made her almost lean against me, as in my dream. But I
forced myself to concentrate on what she was saying. She was asking me
to love her like a brother; the bond of love which I thought bound me
to her was thus transformed into a fresh right claimed by her from me.
I promised at once to help Guido, to help her, to do everything she
wanted. If I had been calmer I should have told her how unequal I felt
myself to the task she had allotted me, but this would have destroyed
the never-to-be-forgotten emotion of that moment. And I was so moved
that I was incapable of feeling my insufficiency. At that moment I
could not believe in anyone’s insufficiency. Even Guido’s only needed a
light breath of enthusiasm to blow it away.
Ada accompanied me to the landing and stood leaning on the banister to
watch me go down. That was what Carla used to do, but it was curious
that Ada, who loved Guido, should do it too, and I felt so grateful to
her that before I went down the second flight I looked up and waved to
her again. Lovers always did that, but clearly friends might do so too.
I went away with a light heart. She had come with me to the top of the
stairs, but no farther. There was no room for doubt. Our position was
now this: I had loved her and now I loved Augusta, but my former love
gave her a claim on my devotion. She went on loving “that man of hers,”
but reserved for me a strong sisterly affection, not only because I
had married her sister, but to make up to me for everything she had
made me suffer, which now constituted a secret bond between us. This
relationship of ours was very sweet, and of a fragrance rare in this
life. Ought not such sweetness to have brought me health? And in fact
I did walk that day without difficulty or pain; I felt magnanimous and
strong, and was conscious of a new sense of security in my heart. I
forgot that I had ever been unfaithful to my wife (and that in a very
discreditable manner), or, if I remembered it, I resolved never to do
anything of the sort again; and I really felt myself to be what Ada
said I was, the best man of the family.
When this heroic mood slowly faded away I should have liked to revive
it, but Ada had meanwhile left for Bologna, and I could not succeed
in squeezing a fresh stimulus out of what she had said to me. I would
do what I could for Guido, but a resolution like that could neither
increase the air in my lungs nor the flow of blood in my veins. I
still entertained a very tender feeling for Ada in my heart, which was
renewed each time she sent me an affectionate message in her letters to
Augusta. I heartily reciprocated her affection and watched the course
of her treatment with eager solicitude. Perhaps even yet she might
recover all her former health and beauty!
The day after my conversation with Ada Guido came to the office and
began discussing the entries he wanted to make. He said:
“Let us put half our debit and credit account down under Ada’s name.”
So that had been all the time what he wanted to do, and it was really
quite useless. If I had still been his mere unreflecting agent, as I
had been up to a few days ago, I should have made those entries without
thinking any more about it. But now I felt it my duty to tell him
everything. I thought it would stimulate him to work if he knew that he
could not so easily cancel the losses he had incurred.
I explained to him that, so far as I knew, Ada had given him the
money to put down to her credit on her own account, and that it would
not be at all the same thing if we put half his losses down in the
opposite column. Further, that part of his losses which he intended
to bear himself ought to go down to his account. But then the whole
of his losses ought to go down to his account as well, and instead of
cancelling them that would only make them more evident. I had thought
about the matter so much that I had no difficulty in explaining it to
him. I concluded:
“Supposing we found ourselves in the position Olivi foretold--which God
forbid--a practised eye would at once discover from the books exactly
what your losses were.”
He gazed at me in astonishment. He knew enough about book-keeping to
understand me, and if he could not do so it was because his wishes
prevented him from accepting the evidence. Then I added, so that there
should be no fear of his misunderstanding:
“Don’t you see that there was no point in Ada making this payment?”
When at last he understood he grew very pale and began to bite his
nails nervously. He stood there wrapt in thought, but made an effort to
control himself, and with his comic, magisterial air insisted that all
the entries must be made as he had prescribed, adding:
“In order to relieve you of all responsibility I am ready to make the
entries myself and sign them with my own name.”
I saw quite clearly that he wanted to go on dreaming, but there is no
room for dreams in double entries!
I remembered all I had undertaken on the heights of Via Belvedere, then
I remembered Ada in her dark little boudoir, and I said magnanimously:
“I will make the entries you wish. I don’t think they need the
authorisation of your signature. I am here to help you, not to put
obstacles in your way.”
He shook me warmly by the hand.
“Life is difficult,” he said, “and it is a great comfort to me to have
a friend like you near me.”
We looked feelingly into each other’s eyes. His were shining.
To avoid giving way to a like emotion, I said smiling:
“Life is not difficult, but very original.”
He laughed heartily at this sally.
Then he stood over me to see how I proposed to settle that profit and
loss account. It was all done in a few minutes. The account ceased
to exist, but not without dragging Ada’s account with it into the
abyss. We credited her nevertheless with the amount in a small separate
notebook, in case a sudden catastrophe should destroy all other
evidence of the loan, and as proof that we had paid her the interest.
The remainder of the profit and loss account went to swell Guido’s
already very considerable debit account.
Accountants are by nature a race of animals much inclined to irony.
While making those entries I thought to myself:
“One account, that known as profit and loss account, died a violent
death; the other--Ada’s--died a natural death, because it was
impossible to keep it alive. Only Guido’s we could not succeed in
killing; its eternal debit is an open grave which sooner or later will
swallow up all our undertaking.”
Book-keeping remained a subject for discussion in the office for
a long time. Guido racked his brain to discover another method of
protecting himself against the wiles of the law, as it pleased him to
call them. I think he must have consulted an accountant too, for one
day he came into the office and proposed destroying all the old books,
and opening new ones in which we were to put down a sham sale in some
name or other--Ada’s money figuring as payment of the same. It was
painful to have to undeceive him, for he had hurried to the office
full of such lively hopes. But the fraud he now proposed to perpetrate
was quite revolting to me. Hitherto we had only played at shifting
real transactions about from one column to another; only somebody
who had implicitly given his consent to the procedure could possibly
suffer from it. But now he was proposing actually to invent business
transactions which had really never existed. I too saw that it was
the only possible way of covering up every trace of our losses. But
what a price to pay for it! We should be obliged to invent the name
of a buyer, or to ask somebody’s permission to write him down as such
in our books. I had no objection to seeing the old books destroyed,
though I had written them with so much care, but it would be a nuisance
to have to make new ones. I made various legal objections which in
the end convinced Guido. It was not so easy to forge a whole business
transaction; we should have to forge as well all the documents proving
the existence of the wares in question and of our right of possession.
He gave up that plan, but the following day he arrived in the office
with a fresh one, which also involved destroying all the old books. I
was tired of seeing all the work of the office help up by discussions
of this sort, and protested:
“To see all the time you spend thinking about it, one would suppose you
were actually proposing to become bankrupt! Otherwise what difference
can such a small reduction of your income make to you? No one has been
justified hitherto in asking to see our books. What we have got to do
is to work, and not waste our time in thinking about such follies.”
He admitted that the thought had become a positive obsession with him.
How could he help it? He only needed a short run of ill-luck to plunge
straight into an encounter with the criminal law and finish up in gaol!
I knew from my study of law that Olivi’s statement of what is incumbent
on a business man who shows a balance-sheet like Guido’s could not be
improved on, but I advised him, in order to escape from his obsession,
to consult a solicitor friend of his own.
He replied that he had already done so, or rather that he had not been
to him for that express purpose, because he did not wish to confide
his secret to a solicitor, but that he had contrived to turn the
conversation on to the subject whilst out shooting with his friend. So
that he knew, alas, that there had been no mistake and no exaggeration
in what Olivi had said!
Realising what an inane occupation it was, he ceased exercising his
ingenuity on fresh schemes for falsifying the accounts, but did not
thereby recover his peace of mind. Whenever he came to the office
he stood with lowering brow, gazing at his account book. One day he
confessed to me that as he came into our room he suddenly thought he
was standing in the entrance of the prison, and wanted to run away.
One day he said:
“Does Augusta know all about our balance-sheet?”
I blushed because I thought the question implied a reproach. But it was
clear that if Ada knew about it Augusta might do so too. This did not
occur to me at once; instead I thought that I deserved any reproach he
might address to me. I murmured however:
“She may have heard of it from Ada or perhaps from Alberta, to whom Ada
may have said something about it.”
I thought I had taken into account all the possible ways by which
Augusta might have heard about it, without however denying that she
had had it direct from the fountain head; that is to say, from me. I
anyway implied that it would have been useless for me to keep silence.
It would have been much better, and I should have felt much more loyal
and upright, if I had said straight out that I had no secrets from
Augusta. The simple fact of pretending not to have done some perfectly
innocent thing which it would have been much better to own up to, is
quite enough to endanger a really genuine friendship.
I will set down here, though it has no bearing on Guido nor on my
story, that a few days later that cackling broker, with whom we had had
some dealings over the sulphate of copper, stopped me in the street and
gazing up at me--a procedure to which his insignificant stature obliged
him--said ironically:
“They tell me you have been doing some big business lately, like your
sulphate of copper deal!”
When he saw me turn pale he shook me by the hand and added:
“For my part I wish you every success. I hope you don’t doubt my word!”
Thereupon he left me. He had probably had news of us from his little
daughter who was in the same class as Anna at school. I did not mention
the encounter to Guido. My chief duty was to save him from unnecessary
worries.
I was surprised that Guido took no steps to get rid of Carmen, for I
knew he had definitely promised his wife to do so. I expected Ada to
return home after several months’ absence, as she had done last time.
But instead of returning to Trieste she went to stay in a villa on Lake
Maggiore where, shortly afterwards, Guido joined her with the children.
On his return, either because he remembered his promise or because Ada
had reminded him of it, he asked me if I did not think it would be
possible to employ Carmen in my office--that is to say, in Olivi’s.
I knew there was no post vacant in that office, but as Guido was
so insistent I consented to go and talk to my chief about it. By a
fortunate chance one of Olivi’s staff was leaving just then, but his
salary was lower than Guido had been giving Carmen during the last few
months; for, as far as I could see, it was his custom to charge his
donations to his women friends to the general expenses account. Old
Olivi asked me about Carmen’s qualifications and offered to take her
on the same terms as the employee who was leaving, though I gave her
a brilliant testimonial. I told Guido, who scratched his head in his
embarrassment and annoyance.
“What does he mean by offering her a lower salary than what she has
been receiving? Couldn’t you persuade Olivi to give her the same for
the present?”
I knew it was out of the question and, moreover, that Olivi was not
in the habit, like us, of regarding a woman employee as his wife! If
he had thought that Carmen deserved a krone less wages than he had
offered her he would have cut them down pitilessly. The end of it was
that Olivi did not get her, and did not even ask for a definite answer;
while Carmen continued to roll her lovely eyes in our office.
Between Ada and me there was a secret, which remained important just
because it was a secret. She wrote regularly to Augusta, but never told
her of the explanations she had had with me, nor that she had confided
Guido to my care. I said nothing about it either. One day Augusta
showed me a letter from Ada which concerned me. She began by asking for
news of me, and ended by appealing to my goodness of heart, and begging
me to tell her something of how Guido’s affairs were going. My heart
beat at the thought of her appealing to me, but grew calm again when I
saw that she had, as usual, only applied to me for news of Guido. Once
more I had no excuse for taking any liberties.
I said nothing about it to Guido, but agreed with Augusta that I had
better write to Ada. I sat down, fully intending to write to her only
about business, and said that I was very pleased at the way Guido was
conducting his business now; he was so industrious and alert.
This was true, or at least I was satisfied with him on that particular
day, because he had succeeded in making some money by the sale of goods
which he had had stored in the town for some months past. It was true
that he did seem rather more industrious, though he still went out
fishing and shooting every week. I rather exaggerated my praise of him
because I hoped it might hasten Ada’s recovery. I re-read the letter,
but was not satisfied with it. Something was lacking. Ada had addressed
herself to me, and certainly wanted to have news of me as well, so that
I should be lacking in courtesy if I failed to give her any. And by
degrees--I remember it as distinctly as if it had just happened--I felt
as embarrassed, sitting at that table, as if I had been face to face
again with Ada in her dark little boudoir. Ought I to press the hand
she had held out to me?
I wrote on, but was then obliged to re-write my letter because I had
used some compromising expressions; I was longing to see her again, I
wrote, and I hoped she would soon have recovered all her former health
and beauty. But this seemed to suggest that I wanted to hold for life
a woman who had only offered me her hand. My duty was only to press
her hand, to hold it long and tenderly in my own, so that she might
understand that I meant a great deal more than I could ever say.
I won’t repeat here all the phrases I passed in review, trying to find
something which might take the place of that long, tender, eloquent
handshake--but only the phrases I actually wrote. I said a good deal
about my approaching old age. I could not stand still a moment without
growing old. Each time the blood circulated in my veins something crept
into my flesh and bones which betokened old age. Every morning when I
woke the world took on a greyer hue; I only did not notice it because
everything was of the same dull hue. There was not one touch of the
colouring of the day before; otherwise I should have detected it and my
regret would have driven me to despair.
I remember very well the complete satisfaction with which I posted
that letter. There was nothing compromising in the words themselves,
but if Ada were feeling like me she would understand perfectly that
affectionate handshake. It did not require much penetration to guess
that my long disquisition on old age meant no more than that I feared
love could no longer catch me up in my rapid flight through time. I
seemed to be crying out to love: “Come to me, come!” But I am not at
all sure that I really wanted this love and, if I feel any doubt about
it, it is simply because I know that I really did write something of
the sort.
I made a copy of the letter for Augusta, leaving out my disquisition
on old age. She would not have understood it, but it is better to be
on the safe side. I might have blushed to feel her eye on me, whilst
I was holding her sister’s hand in mine. Yes! I was still capable of
blushing. And I really did blush when I received a note of thanks from
Ada which made no mention at all of my discourse on old age. I felt
that she had compromised herself much more by this than I had ever
done. She had not withdrawn her hand from my pressure. She had left it
lying passively in mine, and for a woman to remain passive is a form of
giving consent.
A few days after I had written the letter I discovered that Guido had
been gambling on the Bourse. I learnt it through an indiscretion of the
broker Nilini.
I had known him for years, for we had been at school together; he had
been obliged to leave suddenly to go into his uncle’s office. We had
met again occasionally, and the difference in our fortunes had given
me a certain ascendancy over him. He would be the first to salute, and
he made various attempts to get into closer touch with me. This seemed
to me quite natural, and I was the more surprised that at a certain
moment--I don’t remember exactly when--he took up a very haughty
attitude towards me. He no longer took any notice of me when I met him,
and made hardly any response to my greeting. I was a little worried
by this, for I am very thin-skinned and easily hurt. But what could I
do about it? Perhaps he had discovered I was in Guido’s office, and
despised me because he thought I held a subordinate position in it or,
what is equally probable, his uncle being now dead and he on his own as
a stock-broker, he had become rather pleased with himself. In narrow
circles like ours this sort of thing often happens. Without there being
any open enmity, two people suddenly begin to look at each other with
dislike and contempt.
So I was surprised to see him come into the office one day when I was
alone there, and ask for Guido. He took off his hat and held out his
hand. Then he immediately sank into one of our great arm-chairs. I
watched him with interest. It was years since I had been at such close
quarters with him, and the dislike he had shown me made me observe him
with the closest attention.
He was about forty at that time, very ugly and almost entirely bald,
except for an oasis of thick black hair at the back of his neck and
another on his temples; he had a thick nose and a yellow, hairy face.
He was short and thin, and had to stretch up so much when he talked
to me that I used to feel a sympathetic pain in my own neck, the only
feeling of sympathy he aroused in me. On that particular occasion he
seemed to be trying to restrain himself from laughing, and his face
was contracted by a sarcastic or contemptuous smile which I could not
regard as personally offensive, seeing that he had greeted me in such a
friendly way. I discovered later that nature, in a whimsical mood, had
stamped that expression on his face. His jaws did not close properly,
and on one side of his mouth there always remained a gap which
compelled him to wear habitually an ironical expression. It was perhaps
in order to adapt his character to a mask which he only succeeded in
casting off when he yawned, that he took such apparent pleasure in
teasing people. He was no fool, and there was often a poisoned head to
his arrows, though he preferred to shoot them at the absent.
He talked a great deal and rather fancifully, especially when
discussing the Bourse. He spoke of the Bourse as if it were an
individual, and would describe it as a terrible being, breathing out
threats; or as sleepy and inert, with a face susceptible to tears or
laughter. He saw it dancing up the steps of a rising value or tearing
down again at breakneck speed; he saw it caressing one stock and
throttling another, or again, giving people lessons in industry and
temperance. Only crafty and capable people could hope to do business
with such a being. There was plenty of money lying scattered about on
the floor of the Bourse, but it was not so easy to stoop down and pick
it up.
I offered him a cigarette and kept him waiting while I dealt with some
correspondence. He grew tired of waiting after a while, and said he
could not stay any longer. He had only come to tell Guido that some
shares which bore the strange name of Rio Tinto, and which he had
advised Guido to buy the day before, had already gone up about ten per
cent. in value. He laughed heartily.
“While we sit talking here the closing prices will have done the rest.
If Signor Speier wanted to buy those shares now, I don’t know what he
might not have to pay for them. I saw at once in which direction they
were going.”
He went on boasting of the insight which his long familiarity with the
Bourse had given him. He broke off to ask me:
“At which school do you think one learns most: the University or the
Bourse?”
His lower jaw fell a little more and emphasised his expression of
sarcasm.
“The Bourse of course!” I replied emphatically.
This won me an affectionate handshake when he at last took his leave.
So Guido was gambling on the Bourse! If I had been more on the spot I
might have guessed it before, for when I had shown him an exact list of
the quite considerable profits our last undertakings had brought in, he
had read it through smiling, but with a touch of scorn. He thought we
had had to work too hard to win that small amount of money. Yet, with
about a dozen such transactions we should have covered our losses of
the year before! What ought I to do now, I who only a few days before
had been singing his praises?
Guido came into the office soon after, and I told him exactly what
Nilini had said. He stood listening so intently that he did not even
notice I had found out about his gambling; then he rushed away again.
I told Augusta about it that evening, and she thought it advisable to
leave Ada in peace, but to warn Signora Malfenti of the danger Guido
was running. She begged me to do what I could to prevent him committing
any further follies.
I thought carefully over what I ought to say to him. Here was an
opportunity of putting my good resolutions into practice, and
redeeming the promise I had made to Ada. I knew how I ought to approach
Guido in order to ensure his listening to me. I ought to explain to him
that it is always very foolish to gamble on the Bourse, but especially
for a business man with a balance-sheet like Guido’s behind him.
Next day I began brilliantly.
“So you have started gambling on the Bourse? Do you want to end in
prison?” I said severely. I was prepared for a scene, and was holding
in reserve the threat that since he was acting in such a way as to
compromise the firm I proposed to leave his office on the spot.
But Guido disarmed me at once. He had kept the secret so far, but now
with engaging boyish frankness he went into every detail of what he had
been doing. He was dealing in mineral shares of some country or other,
and had already made enough almost to cover our last year’s losses. The
danger was over now, and he could tell me all about it. If he were so
unlucky as to lose what he had gained he would simply give up gambling.
If however fortune continued to favour him, he would at once put all
his books in order, for they still continued to cause him considerable
anxiety.
I saw there was nothing to be angry about; that on the contrary one
ought to feel rather pleased with him. As for the book-keeping, I told
him he could set his mind at rest about that, because directly one
had money in hand it was the easiest thing in the world to settle the
most tiresome account. Directly Ada’s account had been restored to its
proper place in our books, and that bottomless pit which was Guido’s
account had to some extent been filled up, our book-keeping would be
able to put a smiling face on things.
Then I proposed that we should begin to carry out the reforms at once,
and put down his speculations on the account. Fortunately he refused
to do this, otherwise I should have become a gambler’s accountant and
should thus have taken on a still greater responsibility. As it was,
things took their course as if I had never existed. He rejected my
proposition for reasons which seemed to me good. He said it was a bad
omen to pay one’s debts too quickly, and it is indeed a widespread
superstition at all gaming-tables that other people’s money brings one
good fortune. I don’t really believe this, but when I play I omit no
precaution.
For a while I reproached myself for having accepted all Guido’s
statements without protest. But when I saw that Signora Malfenti took
the same view, and told me of the large sums her husband had made by
gambling on the Bourse, and when I found that even Ada looked upon
gambling just as if it were any other kind of business, I realised
that no one could possibly blame me for anything that might happen on
that score. My protests would never have sufficed to stop Guido on the
downward slope, unless they had been supported by all the other members
of his family.
And so it came about that Guido continued gambling, and all his family
with him. I was of their train too in the sense that I entered on a
rather curious relationship with Nilini. I could not really endure
him, because I knew him to be ignorant and conceited, but apparently I
was so successful in hiding my real feelings (which I did for Guido’s
sake because he hoped for good tips from him), that he came to look
on me as a devoted friend. I don’t deny that it was partly my desire
to avoid the uneasy sensation his dislike had produced in me, which
made me nicer to him; a sensation which was increased by the sarcastic
expression on his ugly face. But I did not carry my friendliness
further than to shake hands with him and greet him when he came in or
went out. He, on the other hand, was extremely friendly to me, and I
could not help accepting his proffered courtesies gratefully; perhaps
that is after all the greatest proof of politeness one can give in
this world. He procured contraband cigarettes for me and only made
me pay what they cost him, which was next to nothing. If he had been
more sympathetic to me I might have been persuaded to use him as my
intermediary for gambling on the Bourse, which I never did because I
could not face having to see him often.
I saw him too much as it was! He spent hours at our office in spite
of the obvious fact that he was not in love with Carmen. He actually
came to keep me company. He had apparently taken it into his head to
instruct me about politics, into which he had some insight owing to
his activities on the Bourse. He represented the Great Powers to me
as shaking each other cordially by the hand one day and boxing each
other’s ears the next. I don’t know if he foretold what was coming,
for I disliked him so much that I could never listen patiently to
him. I kept a silly, fixed smile on my face all the time, which he
misunderstood, and interpreted as a smile of admiration; but that was
not my fault.
I only know that he repeated the same things every day. It was easy
to see that he was not whole-heartedly Italian, from the fact that
he thought Trieste had better remain Austrian. He adored Germany,
and above all the German trains which arrived with such marvellous
punctuality. He was in his way a Socialist, and would have liked it to
be illegal for any single individual to possess more than a hundred
thousand kronen. I did not smile one day when, in conversation with
Guido, he acknowledged that he possessed exactly one hundred thousand
kronen, and not a penny more. I did not smile, nor even ask him whether
he would have modified his theory supposing he had made a great deal of
money. Ours was a very curious relationship. I could not bear to laugh
either with him or at him.
When he had fired off one of his theories he would raise himself in
his arm-chair so that his eyes were gazing at the ceiling, while that
strange gap between his two jaws was aimed straight at me. I am sure
he could see with that gap! If ever I tried to take advantage of the
position he had got into in order to think of something else, he would
call me to attention by saying suddenly:
“Are you listening to what I am saying?”
After that effusion of Guido’s which I found so sympathetic it was a
long time before he talked to me again about his affairs. Nilini said
something to me about them first, but he also had become more reserved
on the subject. I heard from Ada that Guido was still making money.
When she returned to Trieste I noticed that her looks had gone off
again very much. She had not exactly got fatter, but her face had
become puffy. Her cheeks, which had filled out, seemed to have grown in
the wrong place again, and made her face look almost square. Her eyes
were bursting out of their sockets. I was very much surprised, because
Guido and several other people who had been to see her said that she
was getting stronger and handsomer every day. But health in a woman is
surely above all her beauty.
Ada had other surprises in store for me. She greeted me affectionately,
but only in exactly the same way as she had greeted Augusta. There
was clearly no secret between us any longer, and she had evidently
forgotten that she had ever wept at the thought of having caused me to
suffer. So much the better! She would have forgotten too that she had
any claim on me! I was her good brother-in-law, and she loved me solely
because of the terms of perfect affection I was on with my wife, which
always aroused the admiration of the Malfenti household.
One day I made a discovery which surprised me extremely. Ada still
believed herself to be beautiful! Away there on the lake they had been
paying court to her and she was evidently proud of her successes. She
probably exaggerated them, for it seemed rather excessive to pretend
that she had been obliged to leave her summer retreat in order to
escape the persecutions of a lover. There may have been a grain of
truth in it, I admit; for she probably did not appear so ugly to anyone
who had not known her before. But there was not much in it, surely,
with those eyes and that complexion, and a face that shape! She seemed,
of course, uglier to us because we remembered what she had been and
could realise what ravages her disease had made.
One evening we invited her and Guido to spend the evening with us.
It was a pleasant family gathering, a kind of sequel to our twofold
engagement. But the lustre was gone from Ada’s hair.
When they got up to go, I was left a moment alone with Ada, helping
her into her coat. I at once had the sense of a slight change in our
relationship. We were left alone and perhaps we should be able to
say something to one another which the presence of the others made
impossible. Whilst I helped her on with her coat I was thinking it
over, and finally made up my mind what it was I wanted to say:
“You know that he has taken to gambling,” I said gravely. I sometimes
wonder whether I did not hope by these words to evoke the memory of
our last meeting which I could not allow to be so lightly forgotten.
“Yes,” she said smiling, “and he is quite right. He is doing very well
now, from all they tell me.”
I smiled with her, whole-heartedly. I felt relieved of all
responsibility. As she left me, she murmured:
“Is that Carmen still in the office?”
She was gone before I had time to answer. Our past no longer existed
between us. But there was still her jealousy, as lively as at our last
meeting.
When I look back over it, I feel as if I ought to have realised some
time before I was actually told, that Guido had begun losing on the
Bourse. The triumphant air disappeared from his face and it wore again
that look of anxiety which had appeared on it at the time of the
balance-sheet.
“Why do you worry about it?” I asked him innocently, “when you have
already got all you need in your pocket for covering those false
entries. You need never go to prison with all that money about you.” At
that moment, as I discovered later, he had not a penny in his pocket.
I believed so firmly in the fortune he was supposed to have made that I
paid no attention to all the indications which ought to have put me on
the right track.
One evening in August he carried me off fishing with him again. It
was very unlikely that we should succeed in catching anything, with
a dazzling moon like that. But he insisted on going, for he said we
should find it a little cooler out at sea. And that was in fact all we
found. After one attempt we did not even bait our hooks again, but let
our lines hang down from the boat, while Luciano rowed it out to sea.
The moon’s rays must have penetrated to the bottom of the sea, lighting
up all the wiles of the fisherman for the fishes big and small, so that
they only nibbled at the bait but never let the hook come near them.
Our bait only gave them a little extra meal.
Guido was lying in the stern of the boat; I was in the bows. After a
while he murmured:
“How melancholy all this light is!”
He probably said so because the light prevented him from sleeping,
and I agreed, just to please him, and also because I did not want to
disturb the solemn peace of that scene by any stupid argument. But
Luciano protested, saying that he loved the bright light. As Guido did
not answer I tried to reduce him to silence by saying that the light
was certainly sad because it lit up this sad world and also because it
prevented us fishing. Luciano laughed and said no more.
We were all silent for some time. I yawned in the moon’s face several
times. I regretted having let myself be persuaded to come out in the
boat.
Suddenly Guido said:
“You’re a chemist. You will be able to tell me which is the most
efficacious--pure veronal, or veronal and sodium.”
I did not even know there was such a thing as veronal and sodium. A
chemist cannot be expected to know the whole world off by heart. I know
enough of chemistry to be able to look up anything in my books and
even to discuss--as you will see in this case--things of which I know
nothing.
Veronal and sodium? But everyone knows that compounds of sodium are
the most easily assimilated of any. I remembered, and was able to
reproduce more or less accurately, a hymn in praise of sodium which had
been sung by one of my professors at the only one of his lectures I
ever attended. Sodium was the vehicle on which all the other elements
rode when they wanted to move more rapidly. The professor had shown
how chlorate of sodium passed from body to body till it sank, by law
of gravity, into the deepest hole in the world, namely the bottom of
the sea. I don’t know if I succeeded in reproducing exactly what the
professor had said, but at that moment, with the spectacle of that
immense quantity of chlorate of sodium in my mind’s eye, I spoke of
sodium with infinite respect.
After a moment’s hesitation, Guido said again:
“If one wanted to die, ought one to take veronal and sodium?”
“Yes,” I replied.
Then, remembering that there are cases where one may want to simulate
a suicide, and not at once realising that I was reminding Guido of an
unpleasant episode in his own life, I added:
“And if one doesn’t want to die, one must take pure veronal.”
Guido’s exhaustive inquiries about veronal ought to have opened my
eyes. But I at once became so interested myself in the possible uses of
sodium that I did not notice anything odd. In the course of the next
few days I was able to demonstrate to Guido by various new experiments
that sodium really possessed the qualities I had attributed to it. You
added sodium to mercury in order to facilitate the amalgamation of
two bodies, this amalgamation being no other than a close embrace or
union of bodies. Sodium, I showed, was the assimilating medium between
gold and mercury. But Guido had already lost all interest in sodium,
probably because his prospects on the Bourse were better at the moment.
Ada came three times to the office in the course of a single week. It
was only after her second visit that it occurred to me she might have
something to say to me.
The first time she came, she ran into Nilini who had planted himself
there in order to continue my political education. She waited a whole
hour, expecting him to go; but she made the mistake of entering into
conversation with him, so that he thought it his duty to stay on. After
I had introduced them to each other I breathed a sigh of relief to see
the gap between Nilini’s jaws no longer turned towards me. I took no
part in their conversation.
Nilini was quite witty, and astonished Ada by saying that there was
just as much malicious gossip to be heard at the Tergesteo as in a
fashionable drawing-room. With this difference, according to him, that
they were better informed at the Bourse than elsewhere, on this as
everything else. Ada thought he was being unfair to women, and said she
had never heard any malicious gossip and did not know what he meant
by it. At this point I intervened, and said that during all the years
I had known her I had never heard a single unkind word come from her
lips about anyone. I smiled as I said this, for I really intended it
as a reproach. She did not talk against other people, for the simple
reason that she took no interest whatever in anyone else’s affairs.
When she was well she had only thought about her own affairs, and when
she became ill the very small corner she had kept for other things was
entirely filled by her jealousy. She was an out and out egoist, but
she accepted my words gratefully, as if they were really a tribute.
Nilini pretended not to believe either her or me. He said he had known
me for many years and thought me a very naïve character. This amused
both Ada and me. But I was very much irritated when, for the first
time before a third party, he announced that I was one of his dearest
friends and that therefore he must know me thoroughly. I did not dare
to protest, but I felt my modesty as much offended by his impudent
assertion as a girl who has been accused in public of having given
herself to a man.
I was so naïve, declared Nilini, that Ada might easily, with a woman’s
well-known subtlety, have been as malicious as she liked in my
presence without my being aware of it. I thought Ada was amused by his
compliments, which seemed to me in very doubtful taste, but afterwards
discovered that she had let him run on in the hope that he would
exhaust his stock of eloquence and go away. She would have had to wait
a long time for that!
The second time Ada came she found me with Guido. It was then that I
noticed an expression of impatience on her face, and realised that it
was really to me she wanted to talk. Till she returned the third time
I indulged in my usual dreams. At bottom, it was not love she asked of
me, but she too often wanted to be alone with me. It is difficult for
men to know exactly what it is that women do want, for they often do
not know themselves.
Her words excited no new feeling in me. Directly she had an opportunity
of speaking to me her voice became strangled with emotion, but not
because it was I to whom she was talking. She wanted to know why Carmen
had not been sent away. I told her all I knew about it, including the
effort we had made to find her a post in Olivi’s office.
She at once grew calmer, for what I was saying corresponded exactly to
what Guido had told her. I heard later that her fits of jealousy came
on at regular intervals. They began without any apparent reason, and a
reassuring word would be sufficient to dispel them again.
She asked me two more questions: Was it really so difficult to find a
post for an employee like Carmen, and was her family obliged to depend
entirely on her earnings?
I explained to her that it was in fact very difficult in Trieste just
then to find jobs for women in offices. As for her second question, I
was unable to answer it as I knew no other member of Carmen’s family.
“And Guido knows the whole family,” she muttered angrily, while the
tears again streamed down her cheeks.
When she was going, she shook hands with me and thanked me. Smiling
through her tears she said she knew she could count on me. Her
smile gave me pleasure, because it was certainly not addressed to a
brother-in-law, but to someone who was bound to her by secret ties. I
tried to prove that I deserved such a smile and murmured:
“It is not so much Carmen I am afraid of for Guido, it is his
speculations on the Bourse.”
She shrugged her shoulders:
“Oh, you need not worry about that. I talked to Mamma about it. Papa
used to speculate there too, and made heaps and heaps of money.”