We were waiting for Doro, facing one another across a small table. Clelia went back to telling me about her girlhood and laughed a great deal about the ingenuousness of that life—in the closed atmosphere of elderly men who wanted to make her a countess and bounced her around between three houses: a shop, a palazzo, and a villa. What pleased her was the triangle of streets that linked them together through all that mass of city. Her uncle's palazzo was an ancient building with frescoes and brocades, full of glass cases like a museum. From the road its big leaded windows seemed to jut out over the sea. As a child, she said, it had been a nightmare to enter that immense hallway and spend her afternoons in the gloomy darkness of the small rooms. Beyond the roof was the sea, the air, the busy street. She had to wait until her mother had finished whispering with the old lady, and endlessly, martyred by boredom, she used to raise her eyes to the dark pictures where mustaches glimmered, cardinals' hats, pale cheeks of ageless, doll-like women.
"You see how silly I am," Clelia said. "When the palazzo was almost in our hands, I couldn't stand it. Now that we're poor and transplanted, I would give anything to see it again."
Before Doro appeared on the balcony, Clelia told me that her mother didn't want her to stay at the shop where Papa was because it wasn't nice for a little girl like her to hear arguments behind the counter and learn so many awful words. But the shop was full of things and had shining showcases—the same that filled the palazzo—and here people came and went; little Clelia was glad to see her father happy. She was always asking him why they did not sell the pictures and lamps at the palazzo so as not to go always deeper into trouble. "I had an anxious childhood," she told me, smiling. "I would wake up at night in a panic at the thought that Papa might become poor."
"Why were you so afraid?"
Clelia said that in those years she was a little bundle of apprehensions. Her first inklings of love had come to her in front of a picture of St. Sebastian, the martyr, a naked youth lurid with blood and peeling paint, arrows stuck in his stomach. The sad, amorous eyes of that saint made her ashamed to look at him. This scene came to represent love.
"Why am I telling you this?" she said.
Doro soon appeared on the balcony, intent on drying his neck with a towel. He nodded to me and went in again. I asked Clelia if she had changed her ideas about love.
"Naturally," she said.
7
When I got back at night, I used to stand at my window smoking. One supposes that smoking promotes meditation, whereas the truth is that it disperses one's thoughts like so much fog; at best, one fantasticates in a manner quite different from thinking. Real discoveries or inspirations, on the other hand, arrive unexpectedly; at the table, swimming, talking of something entirely different. Doro was aware of my habit of dropping off for a moment in the middle of a conversation to chase an unexpected idea with my eyes. He did the same thing himself; in the old days we had taken many walks together, each of us silently ruminating. But now his silences, like mine, seemed distracted, estranged; in a word, unusual. I had been only a short while by the sea and it seemed a hundred years. And nothing had happened even so. But tonight when I went home I had the idea that the whole past day—the banal summer day—required of me goodness knows what effort of mind before I could make sense of it.
The day after Mara's accident, when I saw friend Guido with his cursed automobile, I divined more things in the few seconds it took me to cross the road and shake his hand than during an entire evening of pipe smoking. That is to say, I realized that Clelia's confidences were an unconscious defense against Guido's vulgarity, a man otherwise very courteous and well-bred. Guido was sitting there, bronzed and glowing, holding out his hand and showing his teeth in a smile. Guido was rich and bovine. Clelia was reacting against him but without showing it; therefore, she took him seriously and began to resemble him. Who knows what inspiration would have turned up next if Guido had not started laughing and obliged me to talk. I climbed into the car and he took me to the cafe where everybody would be gathered.
While they were discussing Mara, I went on exploring my thoughts and asked myself if Doro understood Clelia's complaints as I did and why it didn't seem to bother him that Clelia kept no secrets even from me. Meanwhile, the two of them arrived, and after the first greetings Guido told Clelia that when he was crossing Genoa he had been thinking of her. Clelia looked at him archly, in fun, but it was enough to make me suspect that sometime before she had told Guido the same girlhood secrets—and I felt put out.
After dinner Guido arrived at the villa; he was in high spirits and had brought Ginetta with him in the car. While Doro and Guido were talking about their work, I listened to Clelia and Ginetta. I remembered what Doro had said as we went down the mountain, that the characteristic thing for someone who marries is to live with more than one woman. But was Ginetta a woman? Her frowning smile and some of her busybody opinions made her seem more like a sexless adolescent. Still less could I imagine how Clelia was supposed to have resembled her as a girl. There was a certain tomboyishness in Ginetta, restrained most of the time, that every so often seemed to shake loose her whole body. She was certainly not given to confessing herself with friends;
still, to look at her talking, one had the sense that there was nothing there to hide. Those gray eyes were as clear and candid as the air itself.
They were discussing some scandal or other—I don't remember what—but I recall that Ginetta was defending the people involved and appealed to Doro, interrupting all the time, while Clelia very gently reminded her that it wasn't a question of morals but rather of taste.
"But they will get married," Ginetta said.
That was no solution, Clelia put in,- marriage is a choice, not a remedy, a choice that should be made calmly.
"Damn it, it will be a choice," Guido interrupted, "after all the experiments they've made."
Ginetta didn't smile,- she repeated that if the purpose of marriage was to have a family, all the better to make up one's mind right away.
"But the purpose isn't just to have a family," Doro said. "It's to prepare a background for a family."
"Better a child without a background than a background without children," Ginetta said. Then she blushed and caught my glance. Clelia got up to serve the drinks.
Then we played cards. It was late when Guido finally drove us home. After dropping Ginetta in front of the garage, we walked back to the hotel. I would have liked to walk alone, but having said little all evening and played cards with aggressive indifference, Guido wanted to keep me company. I brought up Mara again, but Guido didn't seem interested. Mara was in good hands and in no danger. When we reached the hotel, he kept on walking.
We arrived at the end of my little alley in silence. I made as if to stop. Guido went on a few steps, then turned and remarked casually: "Let them wait. Come as far as the station with me."
I asked him who would be waiting for me, and Guido replied indifferently that, what the devil, I must have company of some sort. "Nobody," I replied. "I'm a bachelor and alone."
Then Guido muttered something, which started us walking again.
Who would be waiting for me, I asked again. Perhaps that boy of the beach?
"No, no, professor, I meant some relationship ... some affair."
"Why? Have you seen me in company?"
"No, I don't say that. But, after all, one needs some relief."
"I'm here to rest," I said. "My relief is being alone."
"I see," Guido said absent-mindedly.
We were on the little square, before the cafe, when I spoke. "And you have a friend?"
Guido looked up. "That I have," he said belligerently. "That I have. We're not all saints. And she costs me a pile."
"Engineer," I exclaimed, "you manage to keep her well hidden."
Guido gave a self-satisfied smirk. "That's why it costs me a pile. Two accounts, two establishments, two tables. Believe me, a mistress is more expensive than a wife."
"Get ma
rried," I said.
Guido showed his gold teeth. "It would always be a double expense. You don't know women. A girl is modest enough while she's still hoping. She has everything to gain. But the fool who marries is at her mercy."
"And you marry the lady."
"We're fooling. Leave those things to old men."
I dropped him in front of his hotel, promising to meet his woman the next day. He shook my hand enthusiastically. Entering my place, I thought of Berti and looked around, but he wasn't there.
The next morning I was busy writing until the sun was well up, then I wandered the streets chewing over the last evening's conversations. Now, in the noise and brilliance of the day, they seemed off-color and inconsistent. I aimed for the beach, where everybody was gathered by now.
But I met Guido at the entrance to the bathhouses, this time in a maroon wrapper. He drew me aside and steered me without a word toward that certain umbrella. When we were there, Guido broke into a boyish smile and exclaimed: "Nina darling, how did you sleep? Allow me..." and he told her my name. I touched the fingers of that skinny hand, but between the glare and obstruction of the umbrella, I saw chiefly two long, blackened legs and the complicated sandals in which they ended. She got up to sit in the deck chair and looked me over with eyes as hard, as fleshless as the voice she directed at Guido.
We exchanged a few compliments. I asked how she had enjoyed her swim. She said she only went in toward evening, when the water had warmed. She honored my joke with a few barks of laughter and held my hand a good while when I said goodbye, asking me to come back. Guido stayed with her.
I reached the rocks and saw Berti sitting back, chatting with a sixteen-year-old friend of Ginetta's. Doro, stretched on the sand between them, left them alone. By this time Clelia was in the water.
8
One morning Doro took me by the arm and explained why he was tired of painting. We were slowly leaving the village on the road that climbed above the sea.
"If I could be a boy again," he told me, "I'd do nothing but paint. I'd leave home and slam the door behind me. It would be something definite."
This show of feeling pleased me. I told him in that case he wouldn't have married Clelia. Doro said laughing that that was the only thing he hadn't been mistaken about. Yes. Clelia was a true vocation. Still, he said, it wasn't those stupid paintings he did to pass the time that made him furious; it was his having lost the enthusiasm and will to discuss things with me.
"What things?"
He paused and looked at me rather haughtily and said that if this was how I was going to take it he would complain no more. Because I was also getting old and obviously it happened that way to everybody.
"It could be," I said, "but if you have lost the desire to talk, I don't come into it."
I didn't warm to this line of speculation. The fuss was ridiculous, but I kept silent and Doro dropped my arm. I looked down at the sea beneath us and an idea occurred to me: Could his quarrels with Clelia have consisted of nonsense like this?
But here was Doro talking again in the same careless tone as before. I saw that my annoyance had made no impression. I answered in the same vein, but my rancor grew into a quite genuine anger.
"You still haven't told me why you quarreled with Clelia," I finally said.
But Doro eluded me again. At first he didn't understand what I was getting at, then he looked at me quizzically and said: "Are you still thinking about that? You are stubborn. It happens every day between married people."
The same day I told Clelia, after she had been complaining about a boring novel, that in such cases the fault lies with the reader. Clelia raised her eyes and smiled. "It always happens," she said. "One comes here for a rest and ends up being impertinent."
"Everybody?"
"Guido, too. But Guido has the excuse that his mistress torments him. You, no."
I shrugged my shoulders and looked foolish. When I told her I had met the aforesaid lady, Clelia blushed with pleasure and almost clapping her hands begged me: "Tell me, tell me, what's she like?"
I knew only that Guido had half a mind to get rid of her—palm her off on me, for instance. I said this in a quiet way that Clelia seemed to like; she was pleased. "He complains that she costs too much," I added. "Why doesn't he marry her?"
"That's all we need!" Clelia said. "But that woman is a fool. Look at the intelligence she shows in letting herself be shut up in a cupboard like a Christmas present."
"So far I've only seen her legs. Who is she? A ballerina?"
"A cashier," said Clelia. "A witch whom everyone in Genoa knew before Guido fell into her clutches."
"She's a clever one, is she?"
"It doesn't take much with Guido." Clelia smiled.
"I think she's putting on this submissive act the better to snare him," I said. "It's a good sign when a woman lets herself be kept in a closet. It must mean she already considers herself at home."
"If you like to think it a good sign," Clelia said sulkily.
"But surely he can't do better than marry her?"
"No, no," Clelia bridled. "I wouldn't receive her in my house."
"Would you rather that a brute like him should marry a Clelia or a Ginetta?" I eyed her to see how she would react to the word, but she let it pass.
"It's iniquitous," Clelia said, "that a girl should be defenseless before you men. I congratulate those women who take you for a ride."
One afternoon I had a visit from Guido at my house. He put his face in the door with an apologetic laugh and said he didn't want to disturb my reading. I made him come in, embarrassed myself because of my little iron bedstead, and offered him a seat by the window. He fanned himself with his hat and finally asked me to make his apologies to Doro and Clelia for not being able to go and fetch them in the car. He had an engagement.
We passed some very uncomplimentary remarks about Guido on the beach that evening. The most spiteful were the girls, who had been counting on a ride. Berti, established now and circulating among us, seemed the only one who didn't care. I heard him saying to Ginetta that after all you came to the seaside to swim and not to go around looking at tourist attractions.
"Well, now," I said to him, sitting down nearby on the sand, "you're not thinking any more about readings?"
"Certainly I am," he replied.
"Even with these girls around?"
He gave me a black look. "I?" he said. Sitting there against the rock, he seemed really annoyed. Yet, not long before, he had been standing up to them all in the most condescending, detached manner.
"You're not going to tell me that you dislike us too. After all, you came here to see us."
Berti smiled. Ginetta passed in front of us, fixing her bathing cap before going in. From where I was sitting, as I watched her loping along in the act of covering one ear, she seemed very tall, more than a woman. Berti looked down at his knees and muttered: "They bother me. Who can understand them—girls?"
Doro loomed over us, about to throw himself on the sand. "This is the student," I told him. I introduced them. They knelt up and shook hands.
Then Doro began chatting with me inconsequentially, in one of those brusque, bizarre moods we used to have as students. It was clear that Berti was out of it. One part of me was listening to Doro, the other keeping an eye on my young friend.
Suddenly Berti asked point-blank: "Engineer, will you be staying here long?"
Doro looked through us and didn't answer. Berti waited, blushing right through his tan. After a long pause, I said that I was leaving at the end of August. But Doro remained implacably silent. All three of us looked out to sea, where Ginetta was just going in and Clelia unexpectedly emerging. We watched her approach and I couldn't decide whether to smile. She made a grimace; her foot had slipped on the shingle.
"Come now, the sea is yours," she called out to us, waving, and made for the umbrella. Doro got up. "How about a short walk?" he said. I got up, hardly noticing Berti, who was still gazing at the horizon with a
stoic air.
Later, fresh and rested, we were gathered around the umbrella, Clelia smoking a cigarette, I my pipe.
"Who knows where Berti has gone?" I said. Doro didn't move. Stretched between us, he looked up at the sky. "You are real friends," Clelia said. "You're inseparable."
"I make a screen for his loves," I said. "There's a woman who otherwise would be jealous."
Clelia loved this kind of talk and I had to relate the whole business, including our conversation in the trattoria. Doro said nothing; he went on staring into space.
9
The next time I saw Berti he was sitting moodily in the trattoria. He had obviously entered for lack of something better to do. He told me he wanted to visit me in the afternoon so that we could read something together.
"Don't you like girls any more?" I asked.
"Which ones? I hate them," he answered.
"You don't mean to say it's the engineer's company you're after?"
He asked me if Doro were really my friend. I said yes, he was, he and his wife were the dearest friends I had.
"His wife?"
He didn't realize that Clelia was Doro's wife. His eyes gleamed.
"Really?" he repeated and lowered his eyes with that impassive and irritated air that was his way of being serious. "What did you think?" I murmured. "That she was a ballerina?"
Berti crumpled the tablecloth and heard me out. Then he raised two bright, ingenuous eyes, his boy eyes, and asked once more if he could come up to my room that afternoon.
"Nobody will break in on us?" he asked, evidently thinking of Clelia.
"What's this?" I asked. "You hate women and blush just thinking about them?"
Berti made some idiotic reply and we fell silent. Finally we got up. He was taciturn along the street, but he answered with increasing animation, like a person talking at random to ease his mind of some great thought. I stopped a moment under the olive tree to speak to the landlady. He waited for me at the foot of the stairs, eyeing and caressing the smooth stone which formed the balustrade,- a half-tender, half-disdainful smile on his lips. "Come up," I said, rejoining him.
The Beach Page 5