As a Man Grows Older

by Italo Svevo

  Giulia had meanwhile come to the door and stood looking intently around her; but as she was in the light and Balli in shadow she did not notice him. Balli stood motionless, he had no particular reason any longer for wishing to hide himself. Giulia went in again and soon came out accompanied by Angiolina and the umbrella-maker, who no longer dared hold his mistress’s hand. They set off at a rapid pace, in the direction of Caffé Chiozza. They were running away! As far as the Chiozza, Balli’s task was easy enough, for Emilio would have to come that way; but when they turned off to the right, towards the station, he found himself in a very awkward position. In his impatience he lost his temper.

  “If Emilio does not arrive in time I shall give Michele notice.”

  His excellent sight enabled him to keep them under observation from a long way off. “Oh, the cad!” he muttered angrily, seeing the umbrella-maker again seize Angiolina’s hand when he felt himself to be at a safe distance. Soon afterwards he lost them from sight under the shadow of some old houses with projecting roofs; and by the time Emilio came there was no hope of catching them up. Balli’s annoyance at this made him receive his friend with the words: “What a pity to have missed such a salutary spectacle!” Then he began humming “Si, vendetta tiemenda vendetta,” and possibly in the hope that they might have stopped to wait for them, he began dragging Emilio with him towards the station.

  Emilio had realized that it was something to do with Angiolina, but as he walked beside Balli he continued to put questions to him which purposely did not betray that he had an inkling of the real truth. It was slowly dawning upon him, and the lump he felt in his throat came, he knew, from the horrible blow his vanity had received. First of all he must free himself from that. He stood still in the middle of the road and refused to move. He would not go a step further, he said, unless Balli told him exactly what it was all about. Let him say everything quite openly; there was no need for all this mystery. It concerned Angiolina, he supposed. “Nothing you can have to tell me about her comes up to what I know already,” he laughed. “So stop all this play-acting.”

  He felt pleased with himself, especially when he perceived that he had at once obtained what he wanted from Balli. The latter immediately became serious and told him how he had met Angiolina and had caught her in flagrante. “If they had been in bed together it could not have been plainer. That man was there for Angiolina, not for Giulia, and Angiolina was there for him. You should have seen the way she squeezed his hand, and the way she looked at him! No, it was not Volpini, my dear.” He broke off to look at Emilio and see whether his perfectly calm demeanor was due to the fact that he believed the man she had betrayed him with to be Volpini.

  Emilio continued to listen, pretending to be surprised by this news. “Are you quite sure of it?” he asked conscientiously. As a matter of fact he knew that Volpini was not in Trieste just then, so he had not even given him a thought.

  “Oh, rather! I know Volpini and I know the other one quite well too. It is the umbrella-maker at Barriera Vecchia. You know, the one who sells those common colored umbrellas.” Then followed a detailed description of the umbrella-maker lit up by the yellow gaslight and by Angiolina’s eyes. “Bald, and as dark as you make them! He is a freak of nature, for he stays black whatever light you see him in.” Balli finished up his story by saying: “As there is no need for me to pity you I reserve all my sympathy for that poor Giulia. The umbrella-maker hasn’t got someone like me for a friend, with whom to saddle the heavier part of his baggage when he is out on the spree. She was very badly treated, poor thing. She was obliged to content herself with a little glass of rosolis, while Angiolina was giving herself great airs over some chocolate and lots of cakes.”

  Emilio appeared to be very interested in all his friend’s witty observations. Nor did it need any particular effort for him to simulate indifference; his expression had become, as it were, crystallized by his initial effort and he felt as if he could almost have fallen asleep with that stereotyped, calm smile still on his face. His simulation was so intense that it penetrated far beneath the skin. He sought in vain in himself for any other reaction, and found nothing but an immense weariness. Nothing! Perhaps it was that he was bored with himself, with Balli and Angiolina. And he thought: “I shall be much better when I am alone.”

  Balli said, “Now let us go to bed. You know now where you will find Angiolina tomorrow. You can say a few words of farewell to her, and then it will be all over between you, as between me and Margherita.”

  The suggestion was a good one; only perhaps it would have been better not to express it. “Yes, that is what I will do,” said Emilio. He added quite sincerely: “Only perhaps not tomorrow.” He felt as if he should like to sleep very late the next day.

  “Ah, now you are really worthy of being my friend,” said Balli with profound admiration. “You have won again in a single evening all the respect you had lost by the follies you have committed during all these past months. Will you come a little way home with me?”

  “Only a little way,” said Emilio yawning. “It is very late, and I was just going to bed when I was called by Michele.” He evidently regretted having been suddenly disturbed like that.

  He did not really come to himself even when he was alone. What else was there for him to do that evening? He set off towards home, intending to go to bed.

  But when he reached the Chiozza, he stood still and looked towards the station, towards that part of the town where Angiolina was making love with the umbrella-maker. And yet, he thought, uttering the words aloud, it would be a good thing if she were to pass this way so that I could tell her at once that everything is over between us. For then everything would really be over and I could go to bed and sleep peacefully. She will have to come this way!

  He stood leaning against a road shelter and the longer he waited the more passionately he hoped to see her that very night.

  He turned over in his mind what he wanted to say to her, so as to be ready when she came. Should he speak gently? Why not? “Farewell, Angiolina. I tried to save you and you have made a laughing-stock of me.” Mocked at by her, mocked at by Balli! He was suddenly full of impotent rage. This roused him from his lethargy, but it seemed to him that he suffered less from the agitation and fury that now possessed him than at the thought of his indifference of a few moments ago, a state of captivity within himself which had been forced on him by Balli. Soft words to Angiolina? No, no. Short and sharp and cold. “I knew all the time what you were like. I am not the least surprised. Ask Balli. Good-bye.”

  He started walking in order to calm himself, for the thought of those cold words seemed to burn him. They were not insulting enough! Words like that were only insulting to himself; he felt himself grow giddy. In a case like this one must kill, he thought, not talk. A great fear of himself helped to calm him. He would be just as ridiculous if he killed her, he said to himself, as if he had really thought of murdering her. He had not, of course; but once he had reassured himself about this, it amused him to picture himself avenged by Angiolina’s death. Such a vengeance as that would make him forget all the wrong she had done him. He would be able to weep for her sincerely afterwards, and he was so overcome by emotion at the thought that tears actually came into his eyes.

  It occurred to him that he ought to adopt the same system with Angiolina as he had with Balli. These two enemies of his ought to be treated in the same way. He should tell her that he was not giving her up because she had betrayed him—he expected that—but because she had chosen such a disgusting individual as his rival. He could not kiss her again where the umbrella-maker had kissed her. So long as it was a question of Balli, of Leardi, or even of Sorniani he had kept one eye shut, but the umbrella-maker! In the dark he practiced the scornful smile with which he would utter that word.

  Whatever words he pictured himself as addressing to her he was always seized by convulsive laughter. Was he going on talking to her like that all night? In that case it was necessary for him to see her a
t once. He remembered that Angiolina would probably be returning home along the Via Romagna. If he walked fast he should still be able to catch her up. He had hardly finished thinking this before he set off running, glad to be able to come to a decision which solved his doubts and numbed his thoughts. The rapid movement gave him some relief at first. Then he slowed down again as a new idea struck him. If they were going home that way, wouldn’t he be more sure of finding them if he went as far as Via Fabio Severo by way of the Giardino Pubblico, and then went all down the Via Romagna to meet them? He was not afraid of a long walk and would readily have set off on that immense detour; but at that moment he thought he saw Angiolina passing the Caffé Fabris accompanied by Giulia and a man who must be the umbrella-maker. Even at that distance he recognized the girl by those playful little bounds of hers he liked so much. He stopped running, for he had plenty of time now to catch them up. He could think over quietly, and without agitation, what he wanted to say to her, so as to be ready with it at once. Why must he adorn that adventure with so many strange details and fancies? It was quite an ordinary adventure and a few minutes hence it would be put an end to in the simplest way possible.

  When he reached the bottom of the hill in Via Romagna he could no longer see the three individuals he was looking for. They must have passed already. He walked faster, suddenly assailed by a doubt which tired him more than the actual ascent. Supposing it had not been Angiolina? How could he live through the night continually fighting against his own agitation, which as fast as he allayed it began again to torment him?

  Although they were now only a few steps away from him he persisted in thinking that those three people were the three he was looking for. A broad, powerfully built man was walking between two women, and was arm in arm with the one he had taken for Angiolina, who now that he saw her closer had nothing characteristic about her way of walking. He looked her full in the face with the calm, ironic expression which he had taken so much trouble to prepare. He was startled to see the unknown face of an old woman, all dried up and wrinkled.

  It was a painful awakening. Feeling that he could not at once leave that group to which he had clung with so much hope, it occurred to him to ask them if they had by chance seen Angiolina, and he was already thinking out how he could best describe her to them. He was ashamed to speak! At the first word he said they would at once guess everything. He went on walking at so rapid a pace that it soon developed into a run. He saw stretching out before him a long vista of white road, and remembered that when he had turned the corner he would see another and then another. Interminable! But he must set his doubts at rest, and for the moment the question was whether Angiolina was on that road or elsewhere.

  He again thought over the things he had planned to say to her that night or the following morning. Speaking with great dignity—the more his agitation increased the calmer he imagined himself to be—with great dignity he would tell her that if she had wanted to get rid of him she had only to say one word, one single word. There was no need to make a mock of him. “I should have withdrawn at once. There was no need to chase me from my post by an umbrella-maker.” He repeated this short sentence several times, altering a word here and there, and trying to perfect the tone of his voice, which became each time more bitingly ironical. He stopped when he perceived that by dint of trying to find the exact expression he was beginning to shout.

  In order to avoid the thick mud in the middle of the road he crossed over to the gravel at the side, but he took a false step on the uneven surface and in trying to save himself from falling bruised his hands against the rough wall. The physical pain excited him, and stimulated his desire for vengeance. He felt himself more mocked at than ever, as if his fall had been a fresh blow struck at him by Angiolina. He again thought he saw her walking along some way in front of him. A reflection, a shadow, a movement, everything assumed the form and expression of the phantom he was pursuing. He began running to catch her up, no longer calmly ironical as when climbing the hill of Via Romagna, but with the firm intention of treating her brutally. Fortunately it was not she, and his tortured soul felt that all the violence to which he had been on the point of abandoning himself was now directed against himself; it took his breath away and deprived him of every possibility of calm, temperate thought. He bit one of his hands like a madman.

  He had reached the middle of the long road. Angiolina’s house stood huge and solitary, a great barracks with its white face lit up by the moon. It was shut up and wrapped in silence; it seemed deserted.

  He sat down on a low wall and forced himself to think out some arguments which should calm him. To see him in that state one might have thought he had learned that evening that he was betrayed by a woman whom he had till then believed faithful to him. He looked at his wounded hands: these wounds were not there before, he thought. She had never treated him like that before. Perhaps all the pain and agony he was suffering now were a prelude to his recovery. But he said to himself sorrowfully: If I had once possessed her I should not suffer so much. If he had desired her, actively desired her, she would have been his. Instead he had tried to put into the relationship an idealism which had ended by making it ridiculous even in his own eyes.

  He got up from the wall quieter but more depressed than when he had sat down. The whole fault was his. It was he who was an abnormal, unhealthy creature, not Angiolina. And this depressing conclusion accompanied him all the way home.

  After he had stopped once more to inspect a woman who had a figure like Angiolina, he had sufficient strength of mind to shut the door behind him. It was all over for that evening. The circumstance he had hoped for up to that moment could no longer happen to him there.

  He lit a candle and went with slow steps towards his room, so as to put off as long as possible the moment when he would be lying stretched out on his bed with nothing further to do, and no hope of being able to sleep.

  He seemed to hear someone talking in Amalia’s room. At first he thought it was an hallucination. There were no excited cries; it sounded like two people engaged in quiet conversation. He opened a crack of the door very cautiously and could no longer have any doubt about it. Amalia was talking to someone: “Yes, yes, that is exactly what I want too.” She had spoken the words in a calm clear voice.

  He seized his candle and hurried back. Amalia was alone. She was dreaming. She was lying on her back with one of her thin arms crossed behind her head, the other lying on the gray coverlet beside her. Her waxen hand looked charming on the gray. Directly the light fell on her face she became silent, and her breathing grew less quiet; she several times made an effort to get out of the position she was in, as if it were an uncomfortable one.

  He took the light back to his own room and began to undress. At last his thoughts had taken a new direction. Poor Amalia! Life could not be very happy for her either. Her dream which, as far as he could judge from her voice, had been a happy one, was only her natural reaction to the melancholy reality.

  Soon afterwards the same words, pronounced very distinctly and calmly, so that one could hear each syllable of them, reached him again from the next room. There was no apparent connection between the separate words, but there could be no doubt that she was talking to someone she loved very much. There was a great sweetness both in the sound and the sense, a great condescension. For the second time she was saying that the other person—the one she imagined she was talking to—had guessed her wishes: “Is that what we shall do? I could never have hoped it!” Then there was an interval, broken by indistinct sounds which showed that the dream was still going on, and again some words expressing the same idea. He stood there a long while listening. Just as he was going away again a complete sentence arrested him: “Everything can be allowed on a honeymoon.”

  Poor girl! She was dreaming of getting married. He felt ashamed of spying on his sister’s secrets like that, and closed the door. He would try and forget having heard those words. But his sister must surely suspect him of knowing something about t
hose dreams of hers.

  When he was in bed his thoughts did not turn again to Angiolina. For a long time he lay listening to the words which reached him from the other room, muffled and calm and gentle. He was so tired that his mind was incapable of holding any emotion, and he felt almost happy. Once his relation with Angiolina was broken off he would be able to devote himself wholly to his sister. He would live for duty alone.

  7

  HE WOKE a few hours later in full daylight, and was immediately aware of what had taken place the evening before. But he was not at once acutely conscious of his sufferings, and he flattered himself that what had so distressed him was the impossibility of taking an immediate vengeance on his betrayer, rather than the fact of his having been betrayed. In a very short time now she would experience his anger and find herself abandoned. Once he had given vent to his indignation, what was now the chief bond between them would be dissolved.

  He went out without saying a word to his sister. He would very soon be back again to cure her of the dreams he had spied upon unawares.

  A light wind was blowing and as he went along the Giardino Pubblico he was conscious of a certain fatigue in walking uphill against the wind, but it was a different kind of fatigue from the agonizing weariness of the night before. It was a lovely fresh morning and he was glad to be obliged to take some muscular exercise in the open air.

  He never gave a thought to what he was going to say to Angiolina. He was too sure of himself to need any preparation, too sure that he was at last going to strike her down and then abandon her.

  Angiolina’s mother came to open the door. She led him along to her daughter’s room, and as Angiolina was still dressing in the next room she offered as usual to keep him company.