The Beach
By Cesare Pavese
English translation of La Spiaggia, 1941, by R.W. Flint
Contents
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1
For some time my friend Doro and I had agreed that I would be his guest. I was very fond of Doro, and when he married and went to Genoa to live, I was half sick over it. When I wrote to refuse his invitation to the wedding, I got a dry and rather haughty note replying that if his money wasn't good for establishing himself in a city that pleased his wife, he didn't know what it was good for. Then, one fine day as I was passing through Genoa I stopped at his house and we made peace. I liked his wife very much, a tomboy type who graciously asked me to call her Clelia and left us alone as much as she should, and when she showed up again in the evening to go out with us, she had become a charming woman whose hand I would have kissed had I been anyone else but myself.
I happened to be in Genoa several times that year and always went to see them. They were rarely alone, and Doro with his free and easy manner seemed entirely at home in his wife's world. Or perhaps I should say that his wife's world had seen their own man in Doro and he had played along, careless and in love. Once in a while he and Clelia would take the train and go off somewhere, a kind of intermittent honeymoon. This went on for about a year. But they had the tact not to say much about it. I, who knew Doro, appreciated this silence, but I was envious too. Doro is one of those people who stop talking when they are happy, and to find him always contented and absorbed in Clelia made me realize how much he was enjoying his new life. It was rather Clelia who told me one day, after she had begun to feel easier with me, when Doro had left us alone: "Oh, yes, he is happy"—with a furtive but irrepressible smile.
They had a small villa on the Genoese Riviera, where they often went on their expeditions. This was the villa where I was supposed to be their guest, but during that first summer my work took me elsewhere, and then I must add that I felt a little embarrassed at the idea of intruding on their privacy. On the other hand, to keep on seeing them as usual, always among their Genoese friends, passing breathlessly from one conversation to another, to have to keep up with them on these hectic evenings was scarcely worth the trouble,- going all that way just to get a glimpse of him or exchange a few words with her. My trips became fewer and I began to write letters—formal notes with a little gossip added now and then, to serve as best they could in place of my old companionship with Doro. Sometimes it was Clelia who answered—a quick, open handwriting, cheerful bits of news intelligently chosen from a mass of varied thoughts and events that belonged to another life and another world. But I had the impression that it was in fact Doro in his indifference who left the responsibility to Clelia, which irritated me, so that without even any special pangs of jealousy I neglected them even more. In the space of a year I may have written perhaps three more times, and one winter I had a surprise visit from Doro, who for a whole day didn't leave me alone for one hour, talking about his affairs—he came for this—but also of our good old times together. He seemed more expansive on this occasion, logically enough, considering our long separation. He renewed his invitation to spend my holidays with them at their villa. I told him I would accept on the condition that I live by myself at a hotel and see them only when we were all in the mood for it. "Fine," Doro said, laughing. "Do what you like. We don't want to eat you." Then for almost another year I had no news, and when midsummer came, I happened to be free and without any special plans. So I wrote to see if they wanted to have me. A telegram shot back from Doro: "Stay where you are. Am coming to you."
2
When he was there in front of me, looking so sunburned and summery that I almost didn't recognize him, my anxiety changed to annoyance.
"This is no way to behave," I told him. He laughed.
"Have you quarreled with Clelia?"
"What do you mean? I have things to do," he said. "Keep me company."
We walked all that morning, discussing even politics. Doro talked strangely. Several times I asked him to keep his voice down: he was behaving aggressively and sardonically, in a way I hadn't seen in him for a long time. I tried to steer the conversation back to his own affairs, hoping to hear something about Clelia, but he immediately began laughing and said: "Hands off. I think we'll let that pass." Then we walked a little more in silence, until I started to feel hungry and asked if he would let me treat him.
"We might as well sit down," he said. "Have you something to do?"
"I was supposed to be going to see you."
"In that case, you can keep me company"
He sat down first. The whites of his eyes as he talked were as restless as a dog's. Now that I saw him closely, I realized he seemed sardonic chiefly because of the contrast between his face and his teeth. But he didn't leave me time to mention it, saying suddenly: "How long it's been."
I wanted to know what he was getting at. I was annoyed. So I lit my pipe to let him see I had plenty of time. Doro pulled out his gold-tipped cigarettes, lit one and blew the smoke in my face. I kept quiet, waiting.
But it was not until it began to get dark that he let himself go. At noon we had lunch in a trattoria, both of us dripping with sweat. Then we continued our walk, and he kept entering various shops to let me know he had errands to take care of. Toward evening we took the old road toward the hill that we had walked together so often in the past, ending up in a little room halfway between a restaurant and a brothel that had seemed the ne plus ultra of vice when we were students. We strolled under a fresh summer moon that revived us a little from the day's sultriness.
"Are those relatives of yours still living up here?" I asked Doro.
"Yes, but I'm still not going to look them up. I want to be alone."
From Doro this was a compliment. I decided to make peace with him.
"Forgive me," I said quietly. "Can I come to the sea?"
"Whenever you like. But first keep me company. I want to escape to the old places."
We talked about this as we ate. One of the owner's daughters served us, a pale, disheveled girl, maybe the same one who had lured us up so often in the past. But I noticed that Doro paid no attention to her or to her younger sisters, who appeared from time to time to serve couples in the corners. Doro drank; this he did, and with gusto, egging me on to drink, growing enthusiastic as he talked about his hills.
He had been thinking about them for some time, he told me; it had been—how long?—three years since he had seen them,- he needed a vacation. I listened and his talk got under my skin. Many years before he married, the two of us on foot and with knapsacks had made a tour of the region, carefree and ready for anything, around the farms, below hillside villas, along streams, sleeping sometimes in haylofts. And the talks we had had—I blushed to remember, they seemed hardly believable. We were at the age when a friend's conversation seems like oneself talking, when one shares a life in common the way I still think, bachelor though I am, some married couples are able to live.
"But why don't you make the trip with Clelia?" I asked innocently.
"Clelia can't, she doesn't want to," Doro stammered, putting down his glass. "I want to do it with you." He said this emphatically, furrowing his brow and laughing as he used to during our wilder discussions.
"In other words, we are boys again," I muttered; but perhaps Doro didn't hear.
One thing I couldn't get straight that evening was whether Clelia was aware of this escapade. From something in Doro's manner I had the idea that she wasn't. But how to get back to a subject my friend had dropped so conclusively? That night I made him sleep on my sofa—
he didn't sleep very well—and I wondered why the devil, just to suggest a project as innocent as a trip, he had waited until evening. It bothered me to think that perhaps I was merely a screen for a quarrel between him and Clelia. I have said already that I had always been jealous of Doro.
This time we took an early-morning train and arrived while it was still cool. Deep in a landscape so vast that the trees seemed tiny, Doro's hills rose up; dark, wooded hills that stretched long morning shadows over their yellow lower slopes dotted with farmhouses. Doro—I made up my mind to watch him closely—was taking things very calmly now. I had been able to make him concede that the trip would last no more than three days,-1 had even persuaded him not to bring his suitcase.
We walked down, looking around us, and while Doro, who knew everybody, entered the station hotel, I stayed in the empty square—so empty I glanced at the clock hoping it might already be noon. But it wasn't yet nine, so I carefully examined the cool cobblestones and the low houses with their green shutters and balconies bright with wisteria and geraniums. The villa where Doro used to live stood outside the village on a spur of a valley open to the plain. We had spent a night there during our famous expedition, in an ancient room with flowered panels over the doors, leaving our beds unmade in the morning and giving ourselves no more trouble than to close the gate. I had not had time to explore the surrounding park. Doro had been born in that house,- his people had lived there the year round and died there. Doro sold it when he married. I was curious to see his face in front of that gate.
But when we left the hotel to walk, Doro took a completely different route. We crossed the tracks and went down the bed of the stream. He was obviously looking for a shady place the way one looks for a cafe in the city. "I thought we would be going to the villa," I muttered. "Isn't that why we came?"
Doro stopped and looked me up and down. "What's got into your head? That I'm returning to my origins? The important things I have in my blood and nobody is going to take them away. I'm here to drink a little of my wine and sing a little—with anybody. I'm going to have a good time, and that's all."
I wanted to say: "It's not true," but kept quiet. I kicked a stone and pulled out my pipe. "You know I can't sing," I muttered between my teeth. Doro shrugged.
The morning and afternoon we spent in peaceful exploration, climbing and descending the hill. Doro seemed to like paths that led nowhere in particular, that petered out by a sultry riverbank, against a hedge, or beside a locked gate. Toward evening when a low sun reddened the fine dust of the plain and the acacias began to shiver in the breeze, we went up a stretch of the main road that crossed the valley. I could feel myself reviving and Doro also became more talkative. He told about a certain peasant notorious in his day for driving his sisters out of the house—he had several— and then making the rounds of the farms where they used to take refuge, working himself into a lather and demanding a supper of reconciliation. "I wonder if he's still alive/7 Doro said. He lived in a farmhouse down below which one could see, a small dry man who spoke little and was feared by everyone. Still, he had a point; he didn't want to marry because he said he would hate to have to drive his wife away too. One of his sisters actually escaped altogether, to the general satisfaction of the countryside.
"What was he? A representative man?" I asked.
"No, a man born for something quite different, a misfit, one of those people who learn to be sly because they don't care much for their lives."
"Everybody should be sly, at that rate."
"Exactly."
"Did he marry?"
"No, he did not. He hung on to one sister, the strongest, who bore him sons and worked the vineyard. And they did well. Perhaps they are still doing well."
Doro spoke sarcastically, and as he spoke swept the hill with his eyes.
"Did you ever tell Clelia this story?"
Doro didn't answer; he seemed distracted.
"Clelia is the kind to enjoy it," I went on, "especially since it isn't your sister."
But I only got a smile in reply. Doro, when he liked, smiled like a young boy. He stopped, putting his hand on my shoulder. "Did I ever tell you that one year I brought Clelia up here?" he said. Then I stopped, too. I said nothing and waited.
Doro resumed: "I thought I told you. She asked me herself. We came in a car with friends. We were always driving around in those days."
He looked at me, and looked at the hills behind me. He began to walk again and I moved off, too.
"No, you didn't tell me," I said. "When was it?"
"Not long ago. A couple of years ago."
"And she asked you?"
Doro nodded.
"Still, you waited too long," I said. "You should have brought her here earlier. Why did you leave her at the sea this year?"
But Doro went on smiling in that way of his. He looked meaningfully at the steep slope of the highest hill and didn't answer. We climbed in silence as long as there was still light. From high up we stopped to look down on the plain, where we thought we could just make out in the dusty haze the dark crest of the forbidden villa.
When night came, cheerful faces began to appear at the inn. Billiards were played. Doro's contemporaries—some clerks and a bricklayer splashed all over with lime—recognized him and made much of him. Then an old gentleman showed up. He had a gold chain across his vest and said he was very happy to make my acquaintance. While Doro was playing billiards and horsing around, the old man had a coffee with grappa and, leaning confidentially across the table, started to tell me Doro's history. He told me about the villa, bought by a certain Matteo when it was only a hay barn, together with all the surrounding land. This Matteo was some mysterious ancestor, but then Doro's grandfather had started to sell off the grounds to build the house, and finally there was this big house with no grounds left; and he, my ancient friend, prophesied to his friend, Doro's father, that one fine day his sons would sell the house too and leave him in the cemetery like a tramp. He spoke a homely Italian, flavored with dialect; I don't know why I got the impression he was a notary. Then bottles appeared and Doro drank on his feet, leaning on his cue, winking here and there. Finally the only people left were the bricklayer—Ginio by name— the two of us, and a big lout in a red necktie whom Doro had not met before. We left the inn to stretch our legs, the moon showing us the way. Under the moon we all looked like the bricklayer; his coat of plaster made him seem dressed for a charade. Doro had begun talking his dialect. I could understand them but not reply easily, which made us all laugh. The moon drenched everything, even the great hills, in a transparent vapor that blotted out every memory of the day. The vapors of wine did the rest. I no longer bothered to wonder what Doro had in mind. I just walked beside him, surprised and happy that we should have recovered the secret of so many years before.
The bricklayer led us to his house. He told us to keep quiet so as not to wake the women and his father. He left us on the threshing floor in front of the big dark openings of the hayloft, in a streak of shadow from a haystack, and showed up again in a few minutes with two black bottles under his arm, laughing like an idiot. Taking the dog with us, we all lurched down the field behind the house and sat on the edge of a ditch. We had to drink from the bottle, something that bothered the young man with the necktie,- but Ginio said with a laugh: "All right, you s.o.b.'s... drink," and we all drank.
"Here we can sing," Ginio said, clearing his throat. He let go with a solo, his voice filling the valley. The dog couldn't contain himself any longer: other dogs answered from far and near, and ours also kept up his barking. Doro laughed in a large, happy voice, took another swig, and joined in Ginio's song. The two of them together soon silenced the dogs, which was at least enough to make me realize the song was melancholy, with much lingering on the lowest notes and words oddly gentle in that rough dialect. It may well be that the moon and the wine played their part in making them seem so. What I am sure of is the joy, the sudden happiness I felt as I stretched out my hand to touch Doro's sho
ulder. I felt a catch in my breath, and suddenly loved him because we had come back together after such a long time.
That other character—a certain Biagio, it turned out—every so often yowled a note, a phrase, and then dropped his head and picked up the conversation with me where he had left it. I explained to him that I was not from Genoa and that my work was paid by the state because of my university degree. Then he told me he wanted to get married but wanted to do it up brown, and to do it up brown one needed Doro's luck, who at Genoa had picked up both a wife and an agency. The word "agency" gives me the creeps,- I lost patience and said sharply: "But do you know Doro's wife?... If you don't, keep your mouth shut."
It's when I talk like that to people that I know I'm over thirty. I thought about this a while, that night, while Doro and the bricklayer started on their army stories. The bottle came around to me, after lime-stained Ginio had wiped the mouth with the palm of his hand, and I took a long pull, the better to relieve in wine the feelings I couldn't relieve in song.
"Yes, sir, excuse me," Ginio said as he took the bottle back, "but if you come back next year I'll be married and we'll crack one in my house."
"Do you always let your father order you around?" Doro said.
"It's not me who lets, it's he who orders."
"He's been ordering you around for thirty years now. Hasn't he broken his neck yet?"
"It would be easier for you to break his," said the type with the necktie, laughing nervously.
"And what does he say about Orsolina? Will he let you marry her?"
"I don't know yet," Ginio said, drawing back from the ditch and squirming on the ground like an eel. "If he doesn't, so much the better," he grumbled, two yards away. That little man as white as a baker, who did monkeyshines and used the familiar tu with Doro —I remember him every time I see the moon. Later I made Clelia laugh heartily when I described him. She laughed in that charming way of hers and said: "What a boy Doro is! He will never change."
The Beach Page 1