by Italo Svevo
This fresh delay even of a few minutes made him suffer again. “Was Angiolina very late in coming home last night?” he asked, with a vague idea of making a few inquiries.
“She was at a café with Volpini till about midnight,” the old woman answered all in one breath, and her nasal voice made all the words sound as if they were glued together.
“But Volpini surely went away yesterday?” said Emilio, surprised to find mother and daughter in agreement.
“He ought to have gone, but he lost his train and he must be just starting now.”
He did not want to let the old woman see that he did not believe her, and remained silent. Everything was perfectly clear, and there was no possibility of deceiving him or making him doubt the facts. Balli had foreseen the lie they would be certain to invent.
He found no difficulty in greeting Angiolina in front of her mother with the placid face of a contented lover. It even gave him genuine satisfaction. He had caught her at last and this time he was not going to yield to his usual impulse to clear things up at once. He would let her speak first. He would let her run through her whole repertory of lies so that he could show her up in all her baseness.
When they were left alone she placed herself in front of the looking-glass arranging her curls and, without ever turning round to look at him, told him all about the evening before in the café and how Balli had spied on them. She was laughing merrily all the time, and looked so fresh and rosy that Emilio was almost more indignant at that than at her lies.
She told him that Volpini’s unexpected return had annoyed her very much. According to her she had received him with the following remark:
“Aren’t you tired yet of worrying me like this?”
She went on talking, apparently in the hope of giving him pleasure. He, on the contrary, was thinking that of the two it was not Volpini who cut the most ridiculous figure. She had to take more trouble when it came to deceiving him, all kinds of ingenious devices and deceptions of which he probably only suspected a very small part. The other had fallen obligingly into the first trap they laid for him; it did not take much to deceive Volpini. If, as seemed likely, Angiolina’s intrigues were almost as amusing to her mother as to her, it was probably he whom they laughed at most, while they felt Volpini was still somewhat to be feared.
He was seized by one of those intense fits of anger which sometimes made him tremble and turn pale.
But she went on talking and talking, almost as if it had been her aim to stupefy him and as if she were now giving him time to recover himself.
Why be so miserable? Why revolt against the laws of nature? Angiolina was a lost woman even in her mother’s womb. This complicity between her and her mother was what revolted him most.
It was useless to punish her: she did not even deserve it; she was only the victim of a universal law. The naturalist who somewhere lay hidden in him revived, but he could not at once give up his desire for vengeance.
Angiolina must at last have become conscious that his demeanor was odd. She turned to him and said with a reproachful air: “You haven’t given me a kiss yet.”
“I shall never kiss you again,” he replied quietly, his eyes fixed on those red lips which he was renouncing forever. He could think of nothing else to say, and stood up. It had not even entered his head that he could go away at once, for that short sentence could surely not be all, it was not at all a sufficient recompense for suffering such as his. But he wished to make her think that he was going to leave her for ever with those words. It would indeed have been a very dignified way of putting an end to that vile connection.
She at once guessed everything, and thinking that he did not want to give her time to defend herself she added in an expressionless voice: “It was wrong of me to tell you that man was Volpini. He wasn’t! It was Giulia who begged me to say so. It was for her that he was there with us. She has several times come with us and it was only fair that I should go with her just for once. It seems funny, but he is head over heels in love with her; even more than you are with me.”
She stopped short. She saw by the look on his face that he did not for a moment believe her, and it was mortifying to her vanity to have told him two such patent lies. She rested both her hands on the back of the nearest chair and was evidently exerting a great muscular effort to keep hold of it. Her face was entirely devoid of all expression, and she kept on staring obstinately at a gray stain on the wall. That must be what she looked like when she was suffering.
Then he experienced a strange pleasure in showing her that he knew absolutely everything, and that in his eyes she was utterly ruined. A short while before a few words would have been almost enough to satisfy him, but now Angiolina’s sad embarrassment made him talkative. He was conscious of experiencing an enormous sensation of pleasure. On the sentimental side it was the first time that Angiolina had given him complete satisfaction. Standing there in silence she was the perfect embodiment of a false but loving mistress convicted of infidelity.
Soon afterwards, however, there was a moment when the conversation threatened to become almost comic. In order to wound her, he enumerated the things she had taken at the café at the expense of the umbrella-maker. “Giulia had quite a small glass of a transparent liqueur, you had a cup of chocolate with any amount of cakes.”
Thereupon she, alas! began to defend herself energetically, and her face flushed with what was no doubt intended to resemble offended virtue. At last she had been accused of something of which she was innocent, and Emilio saw that Balli must have been mistaken on that point.
“Chocolate! I who simply can’t endure it! The idea of my drinking chocolate! I took a tiny glass of something, I really don’t remember what, and I didn’t even drink it.” She put so much energy into this assertion that she could not possibly have put more if she had been trying to prove her own perfect innocence. But there was present in the tone of her voice a certain note of vexation, almost as if she deplored not having eaten more, since her abstinence had not sufficed to save her in Emilio’s eyes. It really was to him that she had made that sacrifice.
He made a violent effort to obliterate that false note, which bade fair to spoil his last farewell.
“Enough, enough,” he said contemptuously. “I have only one thing more to say to you. I loved you very much and that alone ought to have given me the right to be treated differently. When a girl allows a young man to tell her he loves her she belongs to him and is not free to do as she likes.” This phrase was rather feeble, but it expressed exactly what he wanted to say, which is a great deal to expect of a lover’s reproach. He had in fact no other claim to plead save the fact that he had told her he loved her.
Feeling that speech would betray him in a situation like the present, because of his tendency to analyze everything, he immediately had recourse to what he knew to be a more forcible argument: abandoning her. A little earlier, when he was reveling in Angiolina’s distress, he had thought that he might stay with her till much later. He had hoped that the scene would develop very differently. Now he felt a danger hanging over him. He had himself alluded to his own lack of rights, and it was only too likely that she, when she ran short of arguments, might accept his own suggestion and ask him: “What have you done for me, that you dare exact of me that I should conform to your wishes?” He decided to fly from this danger: “I will wish you good-bye,” he said gravely. “When I have recovered my peace of mind it will be possible for us to meet again. But it will be better that we should not see each other for a long time to come.”
He went away, but not without having admired her one last time as she stood there all pale, her eyes wide open, half from fear and half, perhaps, from doubt as to whether she should tell him another lie and try to make him stop with her. He left the house with such intensity of purpose that his impetus carried him far on his way. But as he walked on with the same air of unalterable resolution he bitterly lamented not being able to go on watching her in her grief. The cry of agony which
had burst from her when she saw him going away still rang in his ears, and he went on listening to it so that he might imprint it still better on his mind. He felt he must always preserve it. It was the most precious gift she had ever made him.
Ridicule could not touch him anymore, at least not in regard to Angiolina. Whatever her life was to be in future, it would be many years before she could forget the man who had loved her not simply as an object of his lust, but with his whole soul, so that the first wrong she had done him had wounded him so much that he had renounced her altogether. Who knows whether such a memory as that might not suffice to save her? The anguish in Angiolina’s voice had entirely banished from his mind any scientific conclusion he had been intending to draw from the case.
Oh no! he felt it impossible to go and shut up his agitation in an office. He returned home, intending to go straight to bed. In the quiet of his own room, with his body at rest, he would be able to prolong his enjoyment of the scene with Angiolina, as if it were still actually going on. The excitement of mind he felt that day would probably have led him to confide in his sister, but he remembered the discovery he had made the previous night and decided to say nothing to her, feeling her a long way removed from him and entirely occupied with her own desires. The time would certainly come when he would again surround his sister with every care, but he felt that he wanted first to devote a few days to himself and to his own passion. To shut himself up indoors and expose himself to Amalia’s questions seemed to him intolerable; he altered his plan. He told his sister he was not very well, but that he was going out because he thought the open air would do him good.
She did not in the least believe him when he said he was unwell. Hitherto she had always guessed aright the phase through which Emilio’s love-affair was passing at the moment; today for the first time she made a mistake and believed that he was staying away from the office in order to spend the whole day with Angiolina, because his face wore a look of satisfaction, which she had not seen on it for a long time. She asked no questions: she had often tried to get him to confide in her and the only grudge she bore him now was that he had always refused.
When Emilio found himself out in the road again, alone, with Angiolina’s cry of anguish still in his ears, it was all he could do not to return to her on the spot. What could he possibly do idle all day by himself in his present state of agitation, which was in fact only a state of acute desire, of impatient expectation of something unforeseen which might come to him any moment, a hope of something new such as he had never had from Angiolina before?
He could not possibly go to look for Balli, and he hoped very much that he would not meet him. He was afraid of him; in fact this fear was the only painful sensation of which he was conscious.
He said to himself that his fear sprang from the knowledge that he could not have imitated Balli’s calm when he had been obliged to leave Margherita.
He turned his steps towards the Corso. It was possible that Angiolina might take that route on the way to her work at the Deluigis. He had not had the time to ask her where she was going, but he was certain she would not be staying at home. If he met her he would bow to her distantly but politely. Had he not told her that when he had recovered from his indignation he should be glad to be friends with her again? Oh, how he longed for that moment to come quickly, quickly, so that he might be with her again. He looked round him so as to be sure of seeing her in good time supposing he were to meet her.
“Hullo, Brentani! How are you? So you are still alive, though one never sees you now.” It was Sorniani, prosperous as ever, though with the same yellow complexion. His face was always unhealthy-looking, and his eyes were by contrast unusually lively, whether from vivacity or restlessness it would have been hard to say.
When Brentani turned towards him, Sorniani stared at him with some surprise. “Aren’t you well? You are looking so odd.”
It was not the first time that Sorniani had told him he looked ill; no doubt he projected something of his own jaundiced complexion on to the faces of those he was talking to.
Emilio was glad to be told he looked ill; it gave him an excuse for complaining of something other than his own unfortunate love-affair, since he was unable to talk about that. “I seem to have something wrong with my stomach,” he said dismally. “It isn’t that which bothers me so much, but that I feel so dreadfully low-spirited in consequence.” He remembered having heard it said that stomach-ache produced depression. Then he proceeded to dilate on his low spirits, for he found it easier to analyze aloud.
“It is very curious. I should never have believed it was possible for a bodily disorder to become unconsciously transformed into a moral sensation without one being conscious of it. What depresses me is that I feel completely indifferent about everything. I believe that if all the houses in the Corso were suddenly to begin dancing, I should not even look at them. And if they threatened to fall on me and crush me I should take no steps to prevent it.” He stopped suddenly on seeing a young woman approach who bore a slight resemblance to Angiolina. “It is a lovely day today, isn’t it? I imagine that the sky is blue, and that the air is warm and sunny. I can grasp it with my mind but I cannot feel it. To me everything looks and feels gray.”
“I have never been as ill as all that,” said Sorniani, in a tone of satisfaction which it was impossible for him to disguise, “and now I believe I am completely cured.” He went on to talk of various drugs from which he expected marvels.
Emilio suddenly felt a great longing to escape from this tiresome fellow, who could not even listen to what was said to him. He put out his hand without a word and made as though he were about to leave him. Sorniani took his hand but did not let it go at once. He asked instead:
“How is your love-affair getting on?”
Emilio pretended not to understand. “Which love-affair?”
“Why, that blonde, Angiolina.”
“Ah, yes,” said Emilio casually. “I broke with her long ago.”
“I’m very glad to hear that,” cried Sorniani with great warmth, and coming still nearer. “She wasn’t the sort of woman for a young man like you, especially if you’re so delicate. She sent poor Merighi quite off his head, and since then half the town have amused themselves with her.”
The expression wounded Brentani. If that horrid little yellow man had not hit the mark in alluding to Angiolina’s amorous propensities he would have paid no attention to his chatter, but now everything suddenly wore an air of startling veracity. He protested, however, saying that judging by the little he knew of her he should say she was quite a serious young woman, and he succeeded in spurring on Sorniani to tell his tale. Looking more bilious than ever—his stomach too, no doubt, had something to do with it—he proceeded to pour his supply of gossip into the ears of the rash young man who had provoked him.
Serious? Angiolina? Why, even before Merighi came upon the scene she must already have begun to make experiments with the other sex. When she was quite a child you would see her trotting about the streets of the Old Town always with some boys at her heels—she preferred them without moustaches—long after she ought to have been at home. Merighi fortunately saw how things were going, and carried her off to the New Town which remained in future the scene of her activities. She let herself be seen about everywhere, always on the arm of one of the richest young men of the place, and always with the same trustful, confiding air of a newly married bride. He ran through the list of names which Brentani knew already, from Giustini to Leardi, all of whose photographs he had seen displayed to so much advantage on the wall of Angiolina’s bedroom.
There was not a new name amongst them. It seemed unlikely that Sorniani should invent with such accuracy. An agonizing doubt drove the color to Emilio’s cheeks; surely in the end Sorniani would name himself among Angiolina’s lovers. He continued to listen to him with great anxiety, while he kept his right fist clenched ready to knock him down if he heard the dreaded name.
But Sorniani broke off wit
h the question: “Are you feeling unwell?”
“No,” said Emilio, “I am quite all right.” He stopped, wondering whether it was worthwhile to let him go on chattering any more.
“But I am sure you are not feeling well. You have changed color two or three times.”
Emilio opened his clenched hands. This was not a case for blows. “I assure you I am quite well.” Hit Sorniani? That would be a fine vengeance! He had better begin by hitting himself. Oh, how he loved her! He confessed it to himself, with a degree of anguish which he had never known before. In a fit of cowardice he said to himself that he would go back to her, and at once. That morning he had gone full of resolution to avenge himself. He had upbraided her and then left her. What an intelligent thing to do! He had only punished himself. They had all possessed her except himself. So he was the only one of them all who was really ridiculous. He remembered that in a few days time Volpini would be coming to enjoy her in anticipation of his marriage, as they had agreed; and he himself must just choose that moment to get angry about things which he had always suspected. What would Angiolina do after having given herself to the tailor? It was only too obvious that having given herself to him in order to betray him more easily, she would betray him with others, seeing that Emilio had just that moment deserted her. She was lost to him. He saw her whole future spread out before his eyes exactly as if it were all happening a few steps away from him on the Corso. He saw her leaving Volpini’s arms in disgust and flying at once in search of a refuge from such an infamous embrace. She would certainly be faithless to him then, and this time the right would be on her side.
But it was not only the fact that he had never possessed her which tormented him. Up to that moment he had found comfort in the cry of anguish which he had caused her to utter. But what could a cry like that signify in the life of a woman who had experienced far greater delight as well as far greater pain in the arms of others? No, it was impossible for him to go back on what he had done. He had only to conjure up what Balli would say about it, to reject any temptation of that sort.