As a Man Grows Older

by Italo Svevo

  “Why do you keep on making eyes?” he asked, forcing a smile to his lips.

  She laughed and replied unblushingly: “Me? My eyes were given me to look about with!” So she was conscious all the while of what she was doing with her eyes; she was only deceiving herself in calling it “looking about.”

  Soon after they passed a small employee named Guistini, a handsome young man whom Emilio knew by sight. Angiolina’s eye at once became animated and Emilio turned round to see who the lucky mortal was who had just passed. He, too, had stood still and was looking after them. “He has stopped to look at me, hasn’t he?” she asked, with a gay smile.

  “Why does it give you any pleasure?” he inquired sadly. She obviously could not understand what he meant. Then she cunningly tried to make him believe that she did it on purpose to make him jealous, and finally, to pacify him, shamelessly, before all the world, she puckered her lips into what was evidently intended to be a kiss. No, she was incapable of deceit. The woman he loved, named Ange, was his own invention, he had created her by an effort of his own will: Angiolina had had no part in this creation, she had even, by the resistance she offered, prevented its completion. The dream vanished in the light of day.

  “There is too much light,” he murmured, dazzled by it. “Let us walk in the shade.”

  She looked at him curiously, seeing his face so painfully contorted. “Does the sun hurt your eyes? Fancy that! But I remember hearing it said that there are some people who cannot bear it.” It was she who was wrong to love the sun.

  At the moment of parting, he said: “Supposing Volpini were to hear about us walking together all through the town?”

  “Who would be likely to tell him?” she answered with the utmost composure. “I should say you were a brother or a cousin of the Deluigis. He doesn’t know anybody in Trieste, so it is easy to make him believe whatever one wants.”

  When he had left her, he felt the need of analyzing his own impressions once more, and walked on alone without noticing where he was going. A sudden flash of energy quickened and intensified his thoughts. He set himself a problem which he solved immediately. The best thing he could do would be to leave her at once and never see her again. He could no longer deceive himself as to the nature of his own feelings. The pain he had just experienced, the shame he had felt on her account and on his own, revealed it to him only too clearly.

  He sought out Stefano Balli, intending to make him a promise which he would be obliged to keep, so that there could be no question of going back on his resolution. But the very sight of his friend was enough to make him abandon it. Why could not he be like Stefano and just amuse himself with women? It came over him only too vividly what his life would be like without love. On one side would be Balli always trying to lead him on, on the other Amalia, with her perpetual gloom; and that would be all. He felt no less energy than he had felt only a short while ago; but now he wanted to live, to live and enjoy even if he had to suffer for it. He would display his energy in the way he treated Angiolina, not by a cowardly flight from her.

  The sculptor welcomed him with a coarse oath. “Are you still alive? I warn you that if you have come to ask a favor of me, as I rather gather from your contrite face, it is labor lost, and you will simply be wasting your breath. Rotter!”

  He went on shouting comic threats into his ear, but Emilio no longer felt any doubt about the line he must take. His friend, by implying that he needed his help, had incidentally given him a good piece of advice. No one, after all, could be so useful to him as Balli in this emergency. “Please listen to me,” he said. “I want to ask your advice.”

  The other burst out laughing. “Of course, it’s about Angiolina, isn’t it? I refuse to hear anything about her. She has already come between us, and there let her stay; I won’t be plagued by her anymore.”

  Even if Balli had been twice as savage, he would still not have been able to rid himself of Emilio, once he had resolved to ask his advice. For in that, Emilio felt, lay his salvation. Stefano, who knew so well all about it, could tell him what kind of life he must live in order to enjoy without suffering. In a single instant he fell from the height of his first manly resolve into the utmost dejection: to a consciousness of his own weakness and a state of perfect resignation. He was crying out for aid! He would have liked at least to keep up the appearance of someone who is asking advice merely because it would interest him to hear another person’s opinion. But the mechanical result of Balli’s shouting was to make Emilio assume a tone of entreaty. He felt an extraordinary desire to be treated tenderly.

  Stefano took pity on him. He seized him roughly by the arm and dragged him along with him to the Piazza della Legna where he had his studio. “Now, tell me all about it. If there is anything I can do to help you, you know I will do it.”

  Emilio was touched by his sympathy and made a full confession. Yes, now he saw it all clearly. It had become a very serious matter for him, and he described his love, his longing to see her and talk to her, his jealousy, his doubts, the torment he suffered continually, and his entire forgetfulness of everything which was not in some way related to her or to the state of his own feelings. He went on to speak of Angiolina as he now saw her in consequence of her behavior in the street, of the photographs she had hanging on the wall in her bedroom and her sacrifice of herself to the tailor; he told also of the pact they had made. He smiled from time to time while he told his story. He had evoked her image before his mind; he saw her gay and ingenuously perverse and he smiled back at her without resentment. Poor child! She was so proud of her photographs that she must always have them hanging up on the wall; she enjoyed so much being admired as she walked along the street that she even wanted him to see how many men made eyes at her. While he went on talking he felt there was really nothing in all this for anyone to take offense at; he had stated that he only looked upon her as a plaything. It is true that he omitted certain of his observations and experiences from the tale he told Balli, but any that did not find a place there had for the moment ceased to exist. He looked timidly at Balli from time to time, expecting to see him burst out laughing, and it was only his sense of logic which forced him to proceed. He had said he wanted to ask advice, and ask it he must. The sound of his own words continued to echo in his ears, and he tried to draw a conclusion from them as if they had been someone else’s words. Very calmly, almost as if he wanted to make Balli forget the warmth with which he had spoken hitherto, he inquired: “Don’t you think I ought to give up my connection with her, as I don’t seem able to take up a right line about it?” Again he hid a smile. It would certainly have been comic if Balli had advised him in good faith to give up seeing Angiolina.

  But Stefano soon gave proof of his superior intelligence by refusing to advise him at all. “You will understand that I can hardly advise you to be made differently from what you are,” he said affectionately. “I knew from the first that this was not the sort of adventure for you.” Emilio argued that since Balli could speak like that the feelings he had been so alarmed about by himself a short while before must be quite commonplace ones, and he found therein a fresh source of consolation.

  At that moment Balli’s servant Michele came in; he was an old soldier, well on in years. He stood to attention while saying something in a low voice to his master, and went out after taking off his hat with a sweeping gesture, while his body remained motionless.

  “Someone is waiting for me in the studio,” said Balli with a smile. “It is a woman, and it’s a pity you can’t be present at the interview. It would be very instructive for you.” Then an idea struck him. “Would you like us to make up a party of four one evening?” He thought he had found a way of helping his friend, and Emilio accepted with enthusiasm. Of course! The only way to be able to imitate Balli was actually to see how he set about it.

  Emilio had an appointment with Angiolina that evening at the Campo Marzio. During the day he had thought out certain reproaches he intended to make her. But she was coming t
o give herself wholly to him for one hour at least; at that moment there would be no passers-by to distract her attention from himself. Why should he diminish his happiness by quarreling with her? He thought he could imitate Balli better by the sweet enjoyment of her love than by the renunciation which in a moment of madness he had contemplated only that morning. The only trace of his former irritation was a kind of excitement which gave an added animation to his words and to the atmosphere of the evening, which during the first part at least was wholly delightful. They decided to spend the first of the two hours they would have together in going for a walk outside the town, and the second in walking back again. It was he who suggested this plan, for he wanted to calm his nerves by walking at her side. It took them about an hour to reach the Arsenal, an hour of perfect happiness in the limpid evening air, just freshened by the first touch of early autumn.

  She sat down on the low wall which ran along the road, while he remained standing and looking down at her. He saw her head stand out against the dark background, lit up on one side by a street lamp. He saw the Arsenal stretching along the shore, and the whole city, which at that hour seemed dead. “The city of labor!” he said, surprised at himself for having chosen that place in which to make love to her.

  The sea had disappeared from view; it was shut out by the peninsula facing them. There were a few houses scattered over the shore like men on a chess-board, and farther off was a ship in process of construction. The city of labor seemed even bigger than it really was. Away to the left some distant lamps seemed to carry it still farther than its actual extent. Those lamps, he remembered, belonged to a great factory situated on the opposite bank of the valley of Muggia. Yes, work was going on there too; it was right that it should appear to the eye as a continuation of the city they were in.

  She was looking too, and for a moment Emilio’s thoughts were far removed from thoughts of love. In the past he had indulged in socialistic ideas, of course without ever stirring a finger to realize them. How far away those ideas seemed from him now!

  He was stricken with remorse for having betrayed his early ideals and aspirations; for the moment the whole of his present life seemed to him to be a kind of apostasy.

  But these faint prickings of conscience soon vanished. She was asking him questions about certain objects, especially that great monster hanging in mid-air. And he explained to her the nature of a crane. When he had lived as a solitary student he had never succeeded in making his thoughts and words intelligible to those to whom he sought to address them, and he had vainly tried, several years ago, to come out of his lair and mix with the crowd. It was no use; he had been obliged to retire discomfited from the unequal contest. He had only seemed ridiculous. But how sweet he found it now to avoid all difficult words and ideas, and make himself understood. It was quite easy for him now to break up his thoughts into fragments while he talked, and release it from the difficult, prisoning word under which he had first conceived it; and how happy he was when he saw a ray of intelligence light up her blue eyes!

  But the music of that night was not without its discords. Some days ago he had heard a story which moved him deeply. A German astronomer had been living for about ten years in his observatory on one of the highest peaks of the Alps, among the eternal snows. The nearest village was about three thousand feet lower down, and his food was brought up daily by a girl who, when he went there first, was twelve years old. In ten years of going up and down those three thousand feet daily the girl had grown into a strong and beautiful woman, and the astronomer made her his wife. The marriage had been celebrated in the village a short while before, and for their honeymoon the couple had gone up to their home together. He thought of this story while lying in Angiolina’s arms; that was how he would have liked to possess her: three thousand feet away from any living person. And so, granted that it were possible for him, as for the astronomer, to go on devoting his life forever to the same end, he would have been able to bind himself to her for good and all, without any reservation. “And you?” he asked impatiently, seeing that she had not understood why he had told this anecdote, “would you like to stay up there alone with me?”

  She hesitated—she clearly hesitated. One part of the story, the mountain part, she had grasped at once. He only saw the love in it; she, on the other hand, at once felt the boredom and the cold. She looked at him, saw what answer he expected of her, and just to please him, replied without any enthusiasm: “Oh, it would be glorious!”

  But she had already hurt his feelings too much. He had always believed that if ever he should make up his mind to marry her she would accept with enthusiasm whatever conditions he might impose. But no! At such a height as that she would not have been happy, even with him, and dark though it was he could read in her face the amazement she felt at his daring to propose that she should go and spend her youth among the snow in that terribly lonely place; all that made up her beauty too, her hair, her complexion, her teeth, everything she so much enjoyed seeing people admire.

  Their roles were now reversed. He had proposed to marry her, though only as a figure of speech, it was true; and she had not accepted him; he was utterly dumbfounded. “Of course,” he said with bitter irony, “there would be no one up there to give you their photographs, and you would not find anyone standing still in the road to stare at you.”

  She felt the bitterness of his words, but she was not offended by his irony because she agreed with him and at once began discussing the question. It was so cold up there, she said, and she didn’t like the cold; in winter she always felt miserable even in the town. Besides, you can only live once on the earth, and up there you ran the risk of living a shorter time and of leading a less pleasant life, because you would never get her to believe that it could be very amusing to watch the clouds go by even if it was beneath your feet.

  She was right, no doubt, but how cold-hearted and stupid she was! He refused to continue the discussion, for how could he ever hope to convince her? He looked away, trying to find an argument. He might have avenged himself and quieted his nerves by saying something insulting. But he remained silent and irresolute, gazing out into the night, at the lights scattered over the peninsula opposite, at the tower which rose, a motionless, dim blue shadow above the trees at the entrance to the Arsenal, a shape which chance had fashioned and flung upon the air.

  “I don’t say I wouldn’t,” Angiolina added, in the hope of pacifying him. “It would be glorious, of course, but...” She stopped suddenly; she reflected that since he was so anxious for her to enthuse about that mountain which they would certainly neither of them ever see, it would be foolish not to humor him: “It would be absolutely lovely,” she repeated the phrase again and again in a crescendo of enthusiasm. But he went on gazing out into the night, without looking at her; he was more hurt than ever by her mock enthusiasm, which was so obviously unreal that it seemed as if she were just laughing at him, especially as she made no effort to draw him to her. “If you want a proof,” she said, “I will go away with you tomorrow, or now this very minute, and live alone with you forever.”

  His state of mind was now identical with that of the morning before, and in a flash he thought of Balli. “Balli, the sculptor, wants to make your acquaintance.”

  “Really?” she cried gaily. “I should like it so much too,” and she sounded ready to run off on the spot in search of Balli. “I have heard so much about him from a girl who was in love with him that I have wanted to know him for ever so long. Where can he have seen me to make him want to know me?”

  It was nothing new for her to show interest in other men before him, but it always gave him a painful sensation. “He didn’t even know of your existence,” he said sharply. “He only knows what I have told him about you.” He had hoped to offend her, but on the contrary she was very grateful to him for having talked about her. “But I wonder now what you have been saying to him about me,” she remarked with a comic note of diffidence in her voice. “I told him that you are a traitor,�
�� he said with a laugh. His words made them both burst out laughing, which at once put them into the best of humors with each other. She let him kiss her again and again, and full of tenderness whispered in his ear: “Je tem bocù.” “Traitor,” he repeated, but this time sadly. She laughed again noisily, but then she discovered something better. With an exquisite gesture which he could never afterwards forget, and in a sweet, imploring voice, richer than her ordinary voice, she put her mouth to his and in the midst of kissing him breathed into his lips the question: “It isn’t true, is it, that I am what you said I was?” So that the end of their evening was delicious too. One movement invented by Angiolina was enough to cancel all his doubts and all his pain.

  On the way back he remembered that Balli was going to bring a woman with him too, and he made haste to tell her. She did not seem to mind, but later she asked him with an air of indifference, which was certainly not put on, if Balli was very much in love with this woman. “I don’t think so,” he said in all sincerity, glad to notice that she seemed indifferent. “Balli has an odd way of being in love with women; he loves them very much and all equally, supposing they please him at all.”

  “He has had a great many, I suppose?” she inquired thoughtfully. And here he thought it his duty to lie, and replied, “I don’t think so.”

  The party of four was to meet the following evening at the Giardino Pubblico. Emilio and Angiolina were the first to arrive. It was not very pleasant waiting out in the open, for though it was not actually raining the ground was damp on account of the sirocco. Angiolina tried to conceal her impatience under an appearance of ill-humor, but she did not succeed in deceiving Emilio, who was seized with an intense desire to win back this woman whom he felt he had already lost. The result was that he bored her; he felt it himself and she took care to let him feel it even more. Pressing her arm tightly in his own he asked her: “Do you love me at least as much as you did last night?” “Yes,” she replied sharply, “but it isn’t the sort of thing one keeps on repeating every moment.”