by Italo Svevo
“Is Emilio at home?” he asked, full of the purpose for which he had come.
“Come in, Signor Stefano,” said Amalia joyfully. “Emilio!” she cried, “here is Signor Stefano.” Then she administered a slight rebuke to Balli. “It is such a long time since we had the pleasure of seeing you. I was afraid you had forgotten us like everyone else.”
Stefano burst out laughing. “It is not I who have given up Emilio. It is he who never comes to see me now.”
While she led him towards the dining-room door, she smiled at him and whispered: “Yes, yes, I understand.” She felt as if they had already talked about Angiolina.
Their small apartment consisted only of three rooms, which did not open directly on to the passage, but had to be reached by this one door. So that if Emilio had a visitor in his room his sister was kept a prisoner in hers, which was the last room of the three. She would not have dreamt of appearing without introduction, for she was even shyer with men than Emilio was with women. But from the first day on which Balli set foot in the house she had made him an exception to the rule. After constantly hearing him spoken of as rather a bear, she had seen him for the first time on the occasion of her father’s death. She had at once made friends with him, and was astonished by his gentleness. He had proved the most exquisite of comforters. He had known just when to keep silence and when to speak. By putting in a discreet word here and there he had succeeded in stemming and even in reasoning about the girl’s violent and uncontrollable grief; sometimes he had helped her to analyze her feelings, and to find the words which should give a saner outlet to her sorrow. She had become accustomed to him and could weep freely in his presence; and he used to come very often, taking a certain pleasure in the role of comforter which he so well understood. When that incentive to his visits was over he had retired from the scene. Family life was not at all what he was suited for; he only loved a beauty which was shameless, and the sisterly affection offered him by that plain girl could not but bore him. This was indeed the first time that she had ever reproached him for his desertion, for she thought it quite natural that he should find it more amusing to spend his time elsewhere.
The small dining-room contained only one piece of furniture which bore witness to the fact that the family had once been well-to-do, a magnificent table of dark inlaid wood. The remaining furniture was a rather shabby sofa, four chairs somewhat similar but not identical in shape, a large armchair and an old cupboard. The poverty-stricken impression which the room made on one was increased by the extreme care obviously lavished on the few articles of furniture it contained.
On entering the room Balli was reminded of the consoling function which he had once so faithfully fulfilled there; he felt as if he were returning to a place in which he had suffered himself, though his sufferings had been sweet. He remembered with satisfaction his own kindness of heart and felt he had made a mistake in avoiding for so long a place which gave him more than ever the sensation of being a superior person.
Emilio welcomed him with studied politeness, just because he was anxious to hide the resentment he was secretly nursing; he did not want Balli to see how much he had been wounded; he intended, it is true, to upbraid him severely for his conduct, but hoped at the same time to keep his own wound hidden. He treated him almost as if he had been an enemy. “What good wind blows you here?”
“I was passing this way and I thought I should like to call on your sister whom I have not seen for a long time. I think she is looking much better,” said Balli, observing Amalia’s pink cheeks and dancing gray eyes.
Emilio looked at her but noticed nothing. His resentment knew no bounds when he thought he perceived that Stefano was absolutely oblivious of the events of the previous evening, and could continue to behave before him as if nothing had happened. He said sarcastically: “You enjoyed yourself thoroughly last night, and a good deal at my expense.”
Balli was startled by his friend’s tone. The fact that he could say such a thing in Amalia’s presence, where such words were quite out of place, brought home to him how deeply he was offended. He had really done nothing to offend Emilio; at least, his intentions had been such as rather to deserve a hymn of gratitude. The better to arm himself against such an attack, he lost on the spot all consciousness of his own misdeeds and felt himself pure from every stain.
“We will talk about that later on,” he said, out of regard for Amalia. She, however, at once left the room, though Balli, who was in no hurry for an explanation with Emilio, did his best to detain her.
“I don’t understand what you can reproach me with.”
“Oh no, nothing at all,” replied Emilio, who, in face of a frontal attack, could think of nothing better than an ironical reply.
Balli, now that he had recovered the conviction of his own innocence, consented to be more explicit. He said that he had behaved exactly as he had proposed to behave when he offered to give Emilio an object-lesson. He supposed that if he had begun to bleat love-lyrics too, the cure would have worked all right. No, Giolona had got to be treated exactly as he had treated her, and he hoped that in time Emilio would come to imitate him. He did not believe, he could not possibly believe, that a woman of her sort should be taken seriously, and he proceeded to describe her in exactly the same terms as Emilio had used several days ago in talking of her. He had found her so exactly like the picture which had then been drawn of her that it had been easy for him to see through her completely, at once.
But Emilio was by no means impressed when he heard his own words repeated in this way. He replied that this was his way of making love, and he was incapable of behaving in any other way, for tenderness seemed to him an essential factor in his enjoyment. This did not at all mean that he wanted to take the woman too seriously. For instance, he had not promised to marry her, had he?
Stefano laughed heartily. Emilio had undergone an extraordinary change during the last few hours. It was only a few days ago—surely he must remember?—that he had been so overwhelmed by his own state of mind as to call on all and sundry for their assistance. “I have nothing against your amusing yourself, but you don’t look to me as if you were amusing yourself very much.”
Emilio did indeed look very tired. His life had never been a very gay one, but since his father’s death he had enjoyed complete peace of mind, and he was suffering physically from the change of regime.
Amalia, unobtrusive as a shadow, was wanting to pass through the room without being noticed, but Emilio made her stay, hoping to silence Stefano. The two men, however, could not at once give up the subject of their conversation, and Balli jokingly said that he should call on her to act as judge in a matter of which she could not have any experience. A dispute had arisen, he said, between them, old friends though they were. The only course open to them was to get Amalia to decide the issue with her eyes shut, relying on the divine providence, which had evidently been invented for just such a case as theirs, to guide her aright.
But there could be no question of a blind decision, for Amalia had already grasped what it was all about. She gave Balli a look of gratitude in which there was an intensity of expression such as one would have thought impossible in those small gray eyes. She had at last found an ally, and the bitterness of spirit which had so long oppressed her was lifted, and its place taken by a feeling of great hopefulness. She said simply: “I know quite well what it is all about. You are so right; you should see how absent-minded and sad he always is; his eagerness to get away from this house in which he leaves me so much alone, is written all over his face.” There was a tone in her voice which sounded more like a cry for help than a justification of Balli.
Emilio listened to her anxiously, afraid every moment that her complaint would degenerate, as it generally did, into tears and sobs. But now that she was actually telling Balli of her great sorrow she remained calm and smiling.
Balli, who only looked on Amalia as an ally in his quarrel with Emilio, accompanied her words with deprecatory gestures towards
his friend. But Amalia’s words no longer matched the gestures. Laughing merrily she went on to relate that some days ago she had been out walking with Emilio and had noticed that he became uneasy whenever he saw in the distance women of a certain height and coloring; very tall they had to be and very fair. “Was I right?” and she laughed with satisfaction when Balli nodded. “Really as tall and fair as that?” There was nothing for Emilio to be offended at in her gentle mockery. She had gone over to him and stood leaning against him, her white hand resting affectionately on his head.
Balli confirmed what she had said. “As tall as one of the King of Prussia’s guards and so fair that you might say she is almost colorless.”
Emilio laughed, but he had not forgotten his jealousy.
“It would be all right if I could be sure she does not please you.”
“Just imagine, he is jealous of me, who am his best friend,” shouted Balli indignantly.
“I quite understand it,” said Amalia gently, almost as if she were begging Balli to be indulgent to his friend.
“You ought not to say that!” protested Stefano. “How can you say that you understand anything so monstrous?”
She did not reply, but remained of the same opinion as before, and wore the confident air of someone who is sure of what he is saying. She believed herself to have been thinking intensely, and to have thereby divined intuitively the state of mind of her unfortunate brother; but she had really only divined it in her own feelings. A rosy glow overspread her face. Certain tones of that conversation echoed in her heart like the sound of bells in the desert; they went on for a long time traversing huge empty spaces, searching them from end to end, unexpectedly measuring their emptiness, waking them suddenly to life and feeling, enriching them abundantly with joy and pain. She remained silent for a long while. She forgot they had been talking about her brother, she was thinking of herself. A strange, a miraculous thing had happened to her. She had talked of love before now, but how differently; with intolerance, as of something outside the pale. How seriously she had always taken the injunction which had been dinned into her ears since infancy! She had hated and despised all those who had not obeyed it, and had stifled the least tendency towards rebellion within herself. She had been deceived! It was Balli who stood for virtue and strength, Balli who spoke so serenely about love which for him had never been a sin. How many human beings he must have loved! With that sweet voice and those blue eyes of his he must always love everything in the world, all living beings, including herself.
Stefano stayed to dinner. Amalia had announced rather anxiously that there was very little to eat, so Balli was all the more surprised to discover that they fed extremely well in that house. For years past Amalia had spent a great part of her day in the kitchen, and she had made herself into a very good cook, able to cater for Emilio’s delicate palate.
Stefano was very glad to stay. He felt he had had rather the worst of it in the discussion with Emilio, and he was looking forward to getting his own back, confident that Amalia would always agree with him, excuse him and back him up, for he felt her to be entirely under his sway.
He and Amalia were extremely gay during the whole meal. He talked a great deal. He related his early youth with its surprising adventures. He was continually being forced by poverty to resort to more or less doubtful but always amusing expedients, and just as it seemed that there was nothing for it but to starve, help would always come. He told in great detail how he had once been saved from hunger by winning a reward offered for a lost dog.
And so it had gone on. When he had finished his studies he migrated to Milan with the intention of accepting a post he had been offered as inspector in some commercial undertaking. It was too difficult to begin his career as a sculptor; he would have died of hunger before he even started. One day he was passing a palace in which were exhibited the works of an artist recently dead, and he went in to say a last farewell to sculpture. He met a friend there, and together they began mercilessly to criticize the works on exhibition. With a bitterness derived from his desperate position Balli declared that everything was mediocre, of no importance whatever. He was talking at the top of his voice, heated by argument; that criticism was to be his final artistic activity. When they reached the last room, which contained the work which the dead sculptor had left unfinished when the illness which was to prove fatal overtook him, Balli stood still in amazement at finding himself unable to continue his criticism on the same note as heretofore. The plaster cast of a woman’s head was there—a strong profile roughly sketched, but every line significant in the portrayal of an intense and tragic nature. Balli loudly proclaimed his admiration. He declared that the dead sculptor had remained an artist till his rough cast was finished, but at that point his academic training had always intervened to destroy all that was personal in his art, all his first impressions and feelings, so that only impersonal dogmas and old prejudices remained. “Yes, it is quite true!” said a little old man in glasses who was standing by him, with the point of his nose almost resting on the cast. Balli grew more and more eloquent in his admiration, and made a moving speech about the artist who had died in old age and would have carried his secret with him to the grave if death had not this one time prevented its concealment.
The old man stopped looking at the plaster cast and turned to consider the critic. It was a mere chance that Stefano introduced himself as a sculptor and not as a business man. The old man, who was a fabulously rich eccentric, gave him first an order for his own bust and then for a memorial sculpture, and finally left him a legacy. So that Balli had work for two years and enough money to support him for ten.
Amalia said: “How lovely it must be to know people who are as good and intelligent as that!”
At this Balli protested. He described the old man in terms of vivid dislike. He was a pretentious Maecenas who had never left him a moment’s peace, and had compelled him each day to accomplish a given amount of work. He was a true bourgeois, without any taste of his own, and had only been able to love a work of art when it was explained to him and its virtues demonstrated. Balli had been worn out every evening by so much work and conversation and he sometimes felt as if he had really landed in the business post from which chance seemed to have freed him. He went into mourning when the old man died, but to keep up his spirits while mourning he did not touch modeling clay for several months.
What a splendid destiny Balli’s seemed; he did not even need to feel gratitude for the benefits which rained on him from heaven. Riches and happiness were his by the decree of providence; why should he be surprised when they fell to him by lot? Why should he be grateful to the individual appointed by providence to distribute its gifts. Amalia listened spellbound to his recital, which confirmed her in the belief that there was a life very different from that which she had known. It was natural that she and her brother should find it so hard, equally natural that to Balli it should be like a triumphal pageant. She admired Balli’s happiness and loved the strength and serenity which were the two best gifts of fortune to him.
Brentani, on the contrary, was full of bitterness and envy as he sat listening. To him Balli seemed to be boasting of his good luck as if it had come to him by some virtue of his own. Emilio had never had anything delightful happen to him, nor even anything unexpected. His evil fortune had announced itself long before it actually came, and as it drew nearer it had taken more and more definite shape. When it actually arrived—poverty and the death of his parents—he was already prepared for it. So though he had suffered for a longer period he had suffered less acutely, and all the many minor misfortunes which had befallen him had never shaken him from the dull apathy which he attributed to a monotonous, colorless destiny. He had himself never inspired any strong emotion, be it love or hatred; the old man so unjustly loathed by Balli had never intervened in his life. The jealous feelings in his heart acquired such sway over him that he even envied the admiration which Amalia obviously felt for Balli. The dinner became very anima
ted because he also took part in the discussion, striving to divert Amalia’s attention to himself.
But he was unsuccessful. What could he possibly say that could worthily compete with Balli’s bizarre autobiography? There was nothing but his present passionate adventure and as he could not speak about that he was at once doomed to play the secondary part to which fate had condemned him. All Emilio’s efforts only served to produce some idea which might be used by Balli to adorn his tale. And Balli, without being conscious of it, felt the conflict that was going on, and embroidered his theme with increasing fantasy, invention and lively coloring. Never had Amalia been the object of so much attention. She listened enchanted to the sculptor’s confidences and she did not deceive herself in thinking that they were made on purpose to win her. She felt herself wholly his, but the poor girl’s humble mind harbored no hopes for the future. She was living solely in the present, rejoicing in the one hour in which she felt herself important and an object of desire.
They all went out together. Emilio would have preferred to go alone with Balli, but she reminded him of the fatal promise of the day before to take her with him. She was determined her happy day should not end so soon. Stefano supported her. He thought that Amalia’s company would do something to combat the influence of Angiolina on Emilio, quite forgetting that only a few minutes before he had himself been trying to come between brother and sister.
She was ready in the twinkling of an eye, but had found time nevertheless to arrange on her forehead the curls of her fine but curiously shaded hair, of which it would have been hard to name the actual color. The smile she gave Balli when, having drawn on her gloves, she invited him to start, was almost like a prayer that she might find favor in his sight.