Ernesto

by Umberto Saba

  “He’s sounding just like the other one,” was Ernesto’s reaction. “That one talked about drowning yourself. This one wants me to shoot myself.” But (at his age) Ernesto preferred living and had no intention of shooting himself for such a little thing. Even the famous politician didn’t shoot himself. He fell victim to vengeance by the Austrian faction in the city (there were many of them, decent folks—they even had their own newspaper), who were content to simply go back and forth (it was easy in those days) between continents. But his uncle’s words, and even more, the fierce look he gave him (almost as if he knew or suspected everything), remained stamped in the boy’s mind and were, perhaps, the final cause for the inevitable but sudden break with the man. He was more and more afraid of his uncle. And when he shrugged his shoulders at his mother’s mention of him, it was in large part to free himself of that fear.

  “You’re going, Mama?” Ernesto asked again.

  Signora Celestina interpreted her son’s concern to mean that he wanted to resolve his problems with Signor Wilder. “I’ll do what I can,” she said, sighing deeply as she left the room to get dressed, “but don’t expect too much. It depends on that letter. . . . Listen, be careful not to wake Auntie. And in the meantime . . . thank you very much!” And having delivered this “Parthian shot,” she did exactly what he then most wanted her to do. She left the room and, shortly after that, the house. He heard her close the door quietly so as not to wake her sleeping sister. Only then did he remember that he had forgotten to mention the most important thing—the half month’s pay that Signor Wilder had promised to give her, his honored mother. Still he knew him to be scrupulous as regards money matters. His greatest uncertainty was whether his mother would give him the third that was his due. He had the feeling that aspect would not go well.

  He was turned down by his aunt, who on being awakened from sleep to hear herself being asked for money by a boy she thought was at work, refused him decisively. (“If you’re sick, you should be in bed and not go to concerts,” she told him, and promptly fell asleep again.) So Ernesto threw himself onto his well-known brass bed (as the old lady had advised him to do), though not to recover from an illness which he didn’t have and which wasn’t curable with bed rest. He wanted to think about his situation. “Damn my impatience. If I’d only waited till she’d wakened on her own,” he thought. “She’d definitely have given me the money. One or two ‘please, Auntie’s’ and I’d be going to hear Ondříček tonight. Instead,” and here, just like his mother, he sighed deeply and thought, “my whole life is in ruins.

  “All of it,” he went on talking to himself in dialect, “and it’s my mother’s fault. She’s the one who took me out of school and sent me to that damned Wilder, who can go to hell.” Then he began thinking about school, but not about his high-school years, which he dreaded thinking about (because of a teacher he felt had unjustly persecuted him with poor grades), but about the Imperial Royal Academy of Commerce (and Nautical Science) in which his mother enrolled him when he had completed high school, and which he attended for only the first semester of the first year. No one in those days—neither students nor teachers—took the Academy of Commerce seriously. Under the Franz Joseph reign it was the only sphere of public life (except for parliament, torn apart by national hatreds) that quite openly refused to function properly. After having worked hard at his previous school, Ernesto had a wonderful time there. It’s where he filled in the details of the sketchy education begun by his dirty-minded cousin. And as for learning anything, classes always ended up somewhat riotously. (“Somewhat” is really a euphemism here. What with showing off penises and other wonderful sights, classrooms were zoos.) As before, in elementary school, he was at the top of his class in every subject except German, which was always difficult for him. But his mother didn’t like the way he was studying, or, rather, not studying. “Ernesto, have you finished your homework already?” she’d ask him every day and some days more than once. “Absolutely, Mama,” he’d answer from his brass bed, where lying on his stomach he was reading a book he’d either borrowed from his cousin or bought with the uncle’s weekly allowance. If she persisted, he would get up promptly, though irritably, and show her his homework notebooks, which despite their outward appearance were ever-more disgraceful. But his mother wasn’t convinced. Even the good reports she would get from his teachers (stunned, though perhaps grateful at the same time, to be taken so seriously for once) didn’t convince her. A school where her son was enjoying himself was decidedly not what she had in mind for him. Perhaps, too, she needed not to feel so completely dependent on her sister (at least as regards Ernesto, who was now a grown boy). She decided (without saying anything to him) that the moment he was eligible for employment, even before he completed his courses at the academy, she would try to find him a job, and that on the very day she did, she’d immediately take him out of school. So it was that one morning, having accompanied his mother, who had a letter of recommendation from a childhood friend (Signora Sarina, or “Sarina de la Pasta,” as she was known in Trieste, where she sold pasta near the market), the young boy found himself in the office of a Signor Wilder, who was then looking for an apprentice. Ernesto made a good impression on him immediately (one of honesty) and he was hired on the spot. For a trial period, of course, and without pay for the first six months. He was fifteen years old then, and to his mother, of course, “as innocent as a lamb.”

  “It’s all my mother’s fault,” Ernesto was repeating to himself. Suddenly he was stricken with nostalgia for his school years, with envy of his old schoolmates, who it now seemed to him had better lives and were more fortunate than he; the boys who had finished lower school, and who had gone on to upper school and would soon have to be facing the dreadful final exams, as well as those still having fun in their last year at the Academy of Commerce. To dispel his nostalgia he took a book from the small bedside table, and as he’d done during his time at the academy, drew a caricature of his old Italian teacher on the flyleaf. “What an ass the man was,” he repeated to himself as he drew. More an ass than the beast that belonged to the old gardener with the white beard (like patriarchs in school readers have), that used to pull a vegetable cart to a store near his house every morning and wake the whole place with its braying. Anyway, his features were so distinctive and so easily caricatured that thanks to his former students in the Nautical Sciences section they even turned up on house walls at the Cape of Good Hope. Ernesto’s caricature was as good as (if not better than) the others. But this time sketching didn’t relieve his depression, in fact it increased it. He tore the page from the book before it was even done, ripped it into shreds, and flung them far from him, as he’d done with the label of the extra-fine flour and with the rod with which the man had planned to punish him. Later, when she got home, Signora Celestina would groan as she picked them up.

  Now hoping that she would bring the money owed him, he could barely wait for her to get back. At least then he would get to the concert and enjoy himself a bit. But even if he did enjoy the evening, would he go back to school? “I could study privately for a while, then take an exam and get into the eighth level.” (He wasn’t thinking of a business career anymore, or even of returning to the fun academy. Sad omen. He’d been stricken with the need for austerity!) But what about the difficulties of his plan? How would he get the money to pay a tutor? His mother would raise objections. His aunt would have to pay for everything—and she was stingy. Maybe it would be wiser to think of his last three years, first at the academy and then at the office, as lost time and use his last school certificate to get into the fifth level. The certificate must be someplace in the house, but where? And how great would that be! Him, at seventeen, sitting with fourteen- or fifteen-year-old kids. They’d assume he was one of the perpetual repeaters, like those he used to sneer at when he was in school. “I’d stick out like sore thumb. They’d pick on me the minute they saw me,” he thought. And then again, did he have the right to go back to school, to sit on
one of those benches after all that had happened to him? And at this—the reader must concede—somewhat idiotic thought, he leaped from the bed as though suddenly pricked by a needle. Or better, bitten by a snake.

  Remorse is the erroneous view of a distant event; one remembers the act and forgets the feelings that evoked it, the feverish feelings that made it inevitable. Visualizing the event in memory, it can easily seem monstrous. That’s how Ernesto was remembering, or, rather, not remembering (because he was seeing things in a false light), his relationship with the man. Now everything—words, acts—assumed a different coloration from what they’d had in the real flow of life. He even began thinking that he was obligated to part honestly from the man, that he had to tell him that he willingly quit working for Signor Wilder so as not to leave him feeling as though he’d been betrayed. In those last days, from the time that their relationship began feeling oppressive and became intolerable for him, Ernesto had also begun to fear him a little. We’ve already noted that the man and Uncle Giovanni were the two people in the whole world whom he feared. And we add that the one he feared most right now was the man. What if to avenge what he might consider an unjustified betrayal, he talked about it, gave details, and laughed at him? But who could he tell? Maybe Cesco, with whom he was very friendly and who, even worse, had a habit of getting drunk. Drunks don’t know how to keep their mouths shut, they tell everything about themselves and everyone else. The man didn’t drink, or at least very little—he had only one thing on his mind. But did Ernesto know him really well? From the conversations that they’d had (really mostly monologues) he had seemed a decent person, a little fixated on certain things, but incapable of willingly doing evil. Nevertheless (and it goes without saying that there wasn’t even a shade of snobbery in Ernesto’s comparison) he was from such a different class—had such a different background from his own. What if one day they met in the street by accident, and the man stopped him, even berated him publicly? The poor boy was never more a boy than at that moment, even more mistaken now than a few days earlier when he misinterpreted the young women’s laughter. The man, who for his own good reasons was more afraid of Ernesto than Ernesto of him, not only never confided in anyone (his attitude towards a boy who had given him pleasure, and who had not done it for money, was for the most part, if one may use such a term, chivalrous) but the few times he met him in the street, he pretended not to see him. The first time he was escorting Cesco, who was too drunk to stay on his feet. The others took place many years later, and at ever longer intervals. Ernesto, himself much changed by then, barely recognized him—wasn’t even sure whether it was he or someone else. He was bent, with his hands crossed behind his back. He looked old—an impoverished old man, as if he were (though he wasn’t) a beggar. Their eyes met each time, and turned away immediately. There was never any sign of recognition between them. Everything was over. Truly over. Right then Ernesto managed to put it all out of his mind and think ahead lightheartedly to the concert, which he knew he would get to one way or another.

  “Did he give you the money, Mama?” was the first thing he asked when his mother arrived home. Dressed in black (as she usually was when she went out), breathing heavily from the effort of climbing the stairs (they lived on the fifth floor of an old building on the out-skirts of Città Vecchia), Signora Celestina didn’t say a word to him. At the very least, the question seemed inappropriate to her. She was expecting a completely different one. She thought he would be curious to know the outcome of her conversation with Signor Wilder—more than curious, anxious. But though her face remained as serious and severe as her way of dressing, it didn’t foretell anything too terrible.

  As anxious as Ernesto was to know whether he would get to the concert that night, he let the poor woman sit down and catch her breath. Then he asked another question.

  “What did Signor Wilder say?”

  “Signor Wilder is an angel. You don’t deserve his kindness. I read the letter you wrote him. In fact, he was kind enough to offer to read it to me himself.”

  This is not what Ernesto wanted to hear. He knew the letter by heart. All the same, he asked her what she thought of it.

  To tell the truth, before seeing the letter itself Signora Celestina (who had been told of its contents) had been expecting a more violent tone and more offensive language. Nevertheless, she expressed displeasure. (One of her axioms was there’s no such thing as showing too much displeasure to a child.) “I think,” she said, “exactly what Signor Wilder rightly thinks about it. It’s an impertinent letter written by a nasty boy. Listening to him reading it, I no longer recognized my son.”

  “Why didn’t he give me money for the tram?” asked Ernesto. “I’d like to see him walk around town all day in this heat.”

  “Signor Wilder is still a young man, but of course not as young as you. And besides he says he didn’t refuse you any money. It’s just that he thought the expenses too high for a boy as healthy, thank goodness, as you are.” (And here Signora Celestina surreptitiously made a sign to protect her son from any imaginary threats to his health.) “He also said that you insisted on going out yourself, and never let the new boy go instead of you.”

  “Did you see the kid?” Ernesto was immediately curious. “What do you think?”

  Signora Celestina had a jealous heart (at least as regards her son). She didn’t care for the new apprentice at all. She’d sized him up in a moment for what he was—a born hypocrite. But she wasn’t about to set up any problems for Ernesto. She felt that she had pretty much arranged things and that Ernesto would have to get along with him for a few hours a day. She evaded the question.

  “Signor Wilder wants me to make this proposal to you,” she went on. “It wasn’t easy for me to get it out of him” (this wasn’t the truth—it had been spontaneously offered by the “profiteer” off Ernesto’s legs, however, his mother thought she would enhance the proposal and herself with that little lie) “but Signor Wilder is really a good soul. My friend” (Signora Sarina) “knew what she was doing when she chose him. She couldn’t have picked a better person for a boy like you.”

  “I don’t understand,” blurted Ernesto, who nevertheless was beginning to understand and to fear the worst. “You sound as if I have to go back to work tomorrow.”

  “Not tomorrow, not at all,” his mother replied. “When you’ve made a mistake, you have to take the consequences and be patient. Signor Wilder says he’ll give you a week off with pay, so you can rest and pull yourself together. Then he’ll likely take you back, but for half a day, at half pay. Mornings or afternoons, whichever you want. He’ll be waiting for you to come by tomorrow with the answer, and he’ll pay you what he owes you then. It’ll be fine with him if you take care of his Italian correspondence. He says you’re really good at that.”

  “Mama, you agreed to this?”

  “I told you that he’s expecting your answer tomorrow. And he gave me to understand that if you demonstrate, even without your saying anything, that you regret that stupid letter and can convince him of your goodwill, he’s ready to take you back for the whole day, like before. In the meantime he’ll pay you according to the time you work. You’ll get fifteen crowns a month instead of thirty.”

  Ernesto had thrown himself facedown on his brass bed as he had in that never-to-return summer during which, lying in that same position, on that same bed, he had read A Thousand and One Nights. He had been happy then. Now he was in despair. He was angry (unfairly so, he knew) with his mother. She could never have guessed his real motive for getting Signor Wilder to fire him. The proposal made everything he’d thought out and worked out so well useless. His world was shattering around him. Even if he went back to work only mornings (or only afternoons), he’d still be likely to run into the man. How could he tell his mother? How could he make her understand? And at that moment, like Faust when Marguerite, condemned to death, refuses to follow him out of prison and prefers to await the executioner, Ernesto asked himself—for the first time in his l
ife—“Why was I born?” (He had recently read the first part of the poem in yet another Sonzogno Economy edition, translated, of course, into straight prose; and as a sequel, he had seen a performance of Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, which, like Ischirogeno, was all the rage then.) And at same instant, suddenly inspired from on high or, perhaps, the depths, he perceived the only course left to him and decided to pursue it no matter the cost.

  “I’m not going back to Signor Wilder,” he told his mother.

  Signora Celestina, somewhat taken aback by the resolution in her son’s voice, assumed, however, that it was residual pique, offended pride, or something of that nature.

  “He won’t scold you for it,” she said, “he promised me. He even implied that if everything can be like before, he’ll increase your salary at the end of the year. He’d been considering it before the letter. He sounded like a father, not a boss,” she added, “certainly not like a boss who’s been unjustly insulted. No one else in your situation—”

  “I’m telling you again, I’m not setting foot in that place,” Ernesto interrupted, “even if he himself begs me and offers me a hundred crowns a month.”

  Signora Celestina erupted. “You’re a wretched son, an ingrate. Just like your father! You want to kill me with misery.” She didn’t cry. She just got up from the chair into which she had fallen breathlessly after climbing the stairs and walked toward the door.

  “Don’t go, Mama,” Ernesto’s voice was suddenly soft, almost imploring. “I have to tell you something that might make you very unhappy, but I have to do it. When you hear what it is you won’t go on saying I have to go back to Signor Wilder. Mama,” he began, then suddenly stopped. How do you talk about that? How do you tell your mother? A boy who had no trouble speaking his mind, he could be frank with the man, but with his mother! Almost instantly after having heard Signor Wilder’s proposal, he had decided to tell her everything. Perhaps because (apart from the problem at hand) he was still too young to keep carrying his dreadful secret alone. Perhaps he felt (as the man had feared he would) that he had to confide in someone. And who better than his mother? Yes, she was severe, and more often than not didn’t understand him, but still she was his mother. And then again, how else to escape going back to that office? If he didn’t give her the “real reason,” he could foresee worse scenes than those a confession would evoke, and still worse, such scenes could go on interminably. His heart was beating in his throat. He was feeling sorry, too, that in telling the story, he would be betraying the man a second time. But he could rely on his mother. She certainly wouldn’t tell anyone. The problem was finding a way to say it.