by Umberto Saba
We, who know so much about Ernesto (perhaps even too much), have unfortunately forgotten the precise content, the wording of that letter, which like so many other things in this world just got lost. (What a pity! Who knows if it turned up today—that is, in 1953—whether some collector of ephemera or autographs might be disposed to pay a good price for it.) We can only say that it was addressed to “Most Honored Signor Wilder,” yet later in the body of the letter that same “Most Honored Signor” was accused of profiteering from the long legs of the writer, who concluded by calling him a money-grubber (the term, underlined at first then crossed out, but not so well that a recipient who wanted to couldn’t read it, and Signor Wilder had wanted to, and did read it). It was signed with a cold and formal “Sincerely yours,” the closing he used in his correspondence with businesses and individuals on Signor Wilder’s behalf.
The new boy, who had heard the reproaches the boss had directed toward Signor Ernesto for his excessive use of the trams, now strained his neck to see what his own boss was writing with such a furrowed brow. All he could see was the recipient’s name. It didn’t take much, even for a boy as lacking in imagination as Stefano, to figure out that what Ernesto was writing, without pause and as though inspired, was a letter of resignation or one that could lead to dismissal. Having finished and signed the letter, Ernesto had the apprentice get him an envelope (the envelopes, as it happened, had remained on that side of the desk), then he wrote the boss’s first and last names on it in block letters. Finally, taking advantage of a moment when the latter was busy looking for something in his half-open safe, he entered the office on tiptoe and left it in full view on his desk. He couldn’t afford to make the slightest sound otherwise Signor Wilder, who only opened and closed the safe when alone and after taking many precautions (although it contained nothing more than his account books: an accurate set for himself and a less accurate set for the tax office), was sure to spin around and assault the intruder. After a few minutes during which Signor Wilder noticed, opened, and read Ernesto’s provocative letter (that is, swallowed the bait), the old and new assistants reacted differently to the sounds emerging from the boss’s office: mutilated words of fury, and a variety of sputtered insults, including a verfluchter Kerl, who, lucky for him, was not nearby. Finally the door to Signor Wilder’s office opened, and in the doorway between his office and that of his employees (always apprentices or partial apprentices) a figure resembling a man appeared—somewhat squat, with its face inflamed (now looking like Ernesto’s caricature). It was also an extremely hot summer day—one better spent among blue ocean waves, or under shade trees in the country, than enclosed in an office. Tempers in that climate, propitious for the outbreak of revolutions, were on edge.
“You crazy, nasty kid,” Signor Wilder blurted loudly and without preamble. Then half in Italian (his Italian) and half in German, he berated Ernesto bitterly for his attitude not merely for that day but from his first day of work, “Collumvating” (he meant culminating) “in this arrogant letter. Is that what you write,” he asked, “to an employer, to someone who has been so concerned about you for your honored mother’s sake—who has shown so much” (no, he suddenly realized, too much) “Geduld” (patience)? If he were sick and if he could no longer walk at his age, he would get himself treated until he felt well again. (“In a minute,” Ernesto was almost amused, “he’s going to tell me to take the Ischirogeno, maybe even cod-liver oil.”) His firm, Signor Wilder went on, “was neither a Krankenhaus” (hospital) “nor an institution for the reform of nasty, unmannerly brats. Look at your colleague here, Herr Stefano,” he added, “and take an example from him.” (Upon hearing the triangular-faced apprentice named as someone from whom to take an example, Ernesto, who as we noted had been entertained by Signor Wilder’s outburst, now scowled. However, the other boy, upon hearing a compliment from as powerful a person as Signor Wilder appeared to him, particularly at that moment, concealed much of the enormous pleasure he was feeling, and promptly lowered his gray eyes to the letter book, whose index, heretofore neglected by Ernesto, he was updating.) “Look,” Signor Wilder went on ruthlessly, “this fine boy, so much younger than you” (he was a year younger) “and who not only has better handwriting than you” (a serious accusation for a copy clerk—a “handwriter” as the man called it—at a time when typewriters, still clumsy and expensive items, were not in general use in Europe), “but he’s learned more in the few weeks he’s been with me” (he’d been with Ernesto, not him) “than stupid, arrogant you learned in two years.” (It wasn’t true. No way was Ernesto arrogant. And despite his being disorganized, he contributed more than Stefano would after years at the firm, and who, after all, had learned the little he knew from Ernesto, including how to deal with the letter book.) “Me, profiteering off the legs of my boys, me, a money-grubber! Me . . . me . . . me who—” (And here he suddenly stopped, either because he was choking with anger or because, for whatever reason, he didn’t want to complete the sentence he’d formed in his head.) “Let it be clearly understood, you can now consider yourself fired!” (And here he paused again, as though waiting—hoping?—that the discharged youth would ask his pardon or give some sign of repentance.) Seeing that the culprit was silent, he went on, ever-more furiously. “Tomorrow, no, not tomorrow, today make sure your poor honorable mother, for whom I have nothing but the greatest compassion, comes to see me. I will give her the half month’s pay that strictly speaking you don’t deserve (because you brought it on yourself) and although it will upset me to distress such a wohlgeborene Frau” (well-bred woman), “I’ll read her the letter that only a miserable brat like you could write to me. Give the petty cash to Stefano.” (Signor Wilder didn’t overlook minute details even under the most dire circumstances. But as we noted earlier—even that didn’t keep him from having his own Waterloo. And it was a Waterloo the poor man certainly didn’t deserve.) “In the meantime, do me the pleasure of collecting all your stuff” (he meant the volumes of the Biblioteca Economica Sonzogno and all the other papers he’d found in Ernesto’s desk, instead of the accounts he’d been so anxiously seeking when the boy had been sick at home) “and get out of here immediately. Immediately. Do you hear me? I’ve been told that you study the violin” (and here he smirked, for which Ernesto—the boy who didn’t hate anyone—could have strangled him). “To succeed in music, my dear sir, one has to have a zensitive zoul.” (Ernesto didn’t lack a sensitive soul—just a sensitive ear.) “And you don’t have that! Oh, no. No zensitive zoul. Or at least not for your boss. Otherwise, you couldn’t have written me such a letter.” And he waved the letter like a banner under Ernesto’s nose. Speaking of that “impertinent” letter he seemed almost to be crying, but it’s not clear whether from indignation or something else. “You’re an anarchist. That’s what you are. And I don’t want any anarchists around me.” (Signor Wilder had occasionally seen Ernesto reading The Worker, and apart from the fact that he didn’t like his employees to read on office time, even if they weren’t busy doing anything else, he hated Socialists even more than Ernesto’s uncle did. So he—and not only he—happily interchanged anarchists with their mortal enemies. Possibly, as regards Ernesto, his assessment on this issue was close to the truth. Without his—Ernesto’s—being aware of it because of his youth and, more important, his personality, he was more of an anarchist than a Socialist.) “So get out of here, and don’t forget to have your poor honorable mother come here as soon as she can.”
Having spoken these last words to someone he would never see again (except in passing at some concert without exchanging greetings), he returned to his office, which seemed as joyless as his home. (Married for many years, Wilder had no children.) His tirade hadn’t brought him the satisfaction he had anticipated. For the most part the verfluchte Kerl didn’t seem at all contrite—not for the letter nor for anything else. Ernesto gathered his things (it took about five minutes), gave Stefano the rest of the petty cash and the keys to the warehouse, which the generally meticulous
Signor Wilder had forgotten to mention, and walked out of the office in which he had spent two years of his young life without a word to anyone, not even to the apprentice who would automatically replace him. The latter—there’s no one, no matter how spiritless, who doesn’t at some time have a generous urge—thought for a moment of running after him to shake his hand, after all, they were both young boys. But his next thought was of Signor Wilder, so much more powerful than the poor boy he’d fired—and then he thought of the impression the act might have on the boss if he saw it. So, lacking the courage to perform the kind deed, he gave it up, and remained securely at his job until that fatal August of 1914.
“Mama, Signor Wilder threw me out today,” Ernesto blurted in dialect as soon as his mother, astonished to see him home at that time, opened the door. Though eager to give her his great news, he didn’t display even a fraction of the anguish with which he’d told her how Bernardo had (treacherously) given him his first shave. So of course, she didn’t understand. She thought that for some reason, perhaps because business was slow, Signor Wilder had given him the day off.
“What did you say?” she asked in Italian, still unconcerned. (Signora Celestina was truly a wohlgeborene Frau—a well-born woman from a distinguished family—and though she sometimes spoke in dialect, she disparaged it as vulgar, something she relegated to the lower classes.)
“Signor Wilder fired me,” Ernesto responded.
“Fired you?” his mother exclaimed. “What happened?”
Ernesto recounted the recountable: about the tram, and the letter he’d sent because of it, etc., etc. His mother listened in shock. She didn’t cry as Ernesto feared she would. She didn’t even faint. She crumpled, as though thoroughly distraught, into a chair.
“Mama—” Ernesto wanted to explain, but his mother stopped him.
“I’m a doomed woman, a doomed mother,” she said. “First your father, now you.”
“Don’t you think I was right?” Ernesto began. “Why let that awful man take advantage of me? He hasn’t raised my salary in six months. And in all this hot weather he wouldn’t let me have money for the tram. You should have heard him! It won’t take me any time to get another job like that,” said Ernesto, who in all his long life would never hold a job again.
“And in the meantime?” Signora Celestina said. “How are we going to hide it from your aunt? You know very well she’s supporting us.”
Ernesto showed his annoyance. From infancy he had heard this issue used like this—against himself, against his very existence. Aside from the fact that he wasn’t responsible for any of it, he knew that his aunt was rich, richer even than they had let him know as a measure of caution when he was a child, and then still as a young man. Moreover, his dirty-minded cousin had told him that his aunt was leaving all her money to him, Ernesto, and that she had already made her will, and that the will was in an attorney’s safe. However, Ernesto, who loved his aunt dearly, had no desire for her death. He recalled that when he didn’t do as well at school as his mother would have liked him to, that is, if he didn’t bring back a good report, his mother would threaten (with good intentions, of course—what won’t mothers do with good intentions!) that his aunt, tired of supporting a boy who couldn’t even be at the top of his class, would throw them both out of her house. Ernesto no longer believed that punitive fable (so different from those he read in A Thousand and One Nights). However, as a child, he had suffered because of it, suffered a great deal. As the time for reports approached—with that thought which he couldn’t will away fixed in his head—there were nights when the childish images his mother’s threat evoked kept him from falling asleep. (He would visualize the two of them homeless, wandering and begging vainly through the streets of Trieste.) Now, as we know, that no long worried him. However. . . .
“Auntie loves you, she couldn’t live without you,” Ernesto retorted. “If you weren’t around, who’d take care of her? How could she be alone at her age?” (His aunt was past seventy.) “Who’d look after her when she got sick? You’ll see, when she finds out how it happened, she’ll say I was right. Besides, she loves me, Mama,” he added, “maybe even more than you do.” In fact, his aunt adored him. She was just grudging about money—always afraid that when he was older he would ask for too much. Even now he’d sometimes ask for money, though rarely and for very little. However, he would have to plead before she’d give him anything. “On account of you,” she’d say, turning over the small amount he’d asked for, rarely more than one or two crowns, “I’ll die in the gutter.” Because he didn’t like to upset her, and because he didn’t want her to think he loved her only for her money, Ernesto withheld his entreaties as best he could. Anyway, he’d held back until just now. But just that evening there was a concert he wanted to attend. Seats cost two florins. Even if he wanted to use the money he’d saved for seeing Tanda again (by depriving himself, to a certain extent, of pastries), it wouldn’t be enough for a ticket. He wasn’t going to be able to get an advance from Signor Wilder, who though he always grumbled had never turned him down. And he specially wanted to go to this concert.
Signora Celestina was hurt by his comparison of her affections to the aunt’s. She loved her son a great deal (perhaps too much) but considered it her duty not to let him know it. It was another mistake, but the poor woman didn’t understand that. Moreover, she thought that Ernesto preferred his aunt precisely because the aunt was rich and she, his mother, was poor. Stricken by jealousy, she broke into tears.
“Don’t cry, Mama, you’ll see, everything’ll be all right.” Ernesto comforted her. “I’ll study German every day. I’ll try to make you happy in every way I can, Mama.” He wanted to say more, but he, too, felt close to tears. Too many things had happened in those last months. More, he thought, than in all the rest of his life. More, anyway, than to other boys his age who were still in school. And with this, he suddenly stopped.
“You got yourself fired, and before the first of the month!” said Signora Celestina. “What kind of a letter could you have written to Signor Wilder!”
“You’ll read it, Mama. Signor Wilder wants you to come see him at the office today. First he said tomorrow, then he changed his mind and said he wanted to see you today and have you read the letter. Are you going to do it?”
Ernesto was anxious for his mother to go and to leave immediately. First because he couldn’t stand to see her crying (nothing in the world made him feel so guilty), and second because he figured that while she was out, he’d ask his aunt for money for the concert. A virtuoso violinist, whom Ernesto had heard a year before, was performing in Philharmonic Hall, and he wanted to hear him again. Listening to a great violinist perform, the boy would identify with him and imagine that the public’s applause was for himself. It was this identification that thrilled him more than anything else. Notwithstanding his imperfect ear, and Signor Wilder’s taunts, he loved music, particularly chamber music. And that evening’s program, which included Bach’s great Chaconne for solo violin, was particularly enticing.
“I’ll go right now,” Signora Celestina answered, feeling somewhat reassured. She thought now that the problem was some kind of misunderstanding that her visit to Signor Wilder would clear up. “A mother,” she thought, “can do a lot.”
“Maybe the new employee turned the boss against you,” she observed to her son.
“He’s got nothing to do with it,” Ernesto answered (thinking, “If she only knew how much I wanted to be fired”).
“In the meantime,” Signora Celestina went on, “don’t say anything to Auntie. Wait for me to get back. If she asks you why you’re home, tell her you didn’t feel well and got the day off. That will work! But what about Uncle Giovanni?”
Ernesto shrugged his shoulders. After Bernardo had laughingly told Giovanni about the sneaky shave (for which the uncle offered to pay, and did indeed pay), he never again tried to lay a hand on the boy nor to convince him by way of slaps in the face that Socialists were no good. He seemed
now to consider him a man, and rarely spoke to him. After Sunday dinners (almost always fish, which, unlike Ernesto, the uncle was especially fond of) he would give him the usual florin. But he no longer talked politics to him. However, one day, using the example of a citywide scandal about a well-known public person—who seemed to have the same predilections as the man, and had exercised them over, or under, a young male retainer (“in both directions,” as his political opponents pointed out)—his uncle pointed a finger at him, and staring directly into his eyes said, “When a man has done such things, if he is a man, there is nothing for him to do but shoot himself.”