by Umberto Saba
Signora Celestina sat down once again and waited for her son to speak. Anticipating something serious, her heart, too, was pounding. She had borne so much unhappiness in her life that she no longer felt strong enough to bear anything new. With her mind a thousand miles from the truth, “Tell me,” she said, almost ordering her son to speak.
But Ernesto was silent, not yet able—as we know—to find the right words. He was still lying on his bed, now with his hands around his head. His mother became more and more alarmed.
“You haven’t,” she said, whispering and looking around her as if she feared being overheard, though there was no one in the room, or in the adjacent rooms, “you haven’t stolen money from Signor Wilder?” She knew her son to be honest, but he was also a spendthrift. And the newspapers were full of almost unbelievable crimes committed by boys Ernesto’s age, maybe even younger, who until then had seemed to be angelic. Of all the “crimes” that poor people might commit, stealing upset her most deeply.
“No, Mama,” Ernesto replied, “I didn’t steal anything.”
“So what did you do? For God’s sake tell me. Don’t kill me in little pieces.”
Now that theft had been eliminated (she knew that Ernesto wouldn’t lie to her), she felt sure things were not as bad as she’d feared. She thought (and perhaps was not so far off the mark) of pranks, boyish tomfoolery, whose consequences he had exaggerated. She knew he was not only a spendthrift but an exaggerator.
“Son,” she said, unwittingly making his confession all the more difficult, “you can’t have done anything so shameful, anything that you can’t tell your mother without blushing. And I’m here, listening to you.”
In that time, Ernesto had found the words.
“Do you remember the man who came here one day when I was sick?” he asked. “He wanted the accounts in my jacket pocket that I’d forgotten were there? Signor Wilder sent him.”
“That laborer?” Signora Celestina asked. “The one you wanted me to give the wine to? He didn’t seem like a bad person. I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t understand yet. Maybe you won’t even understand afterward. But I have to tell you anyway. Remember,” he went on, lowering his voice, “what Uncle Giovanni said to me one Sunday at lunch before giving me the money? It was when the awful scandal about that deputy broke out, and it was in all the papers—not so very long ago. He told me when a man has done such things, there’s nothing left for him to do but get a gun and shoot himself. Well, Mama, Mommy dear, the man and I, we did those things.”
Though for different reasons, Signora Celestina remembered the exact words her brother had spoken at the end of that meal, whose table held a magnificent poached sea bass, a gift of their guest, for which she had spent the entire morning carefully whisking copious amounts of mayonnaise sauce. She also remembered that her son had become agitated—so agitated, in fact, “because, he’s so very modest,” she’d thought, that she’d been annoyed with her brother for having said such things at the table. “He probably did it,” she thought, “to try to teach him something,” but to her, to whom Ernesto was, or so she thought, a model of innocence, it seemed totally unnecessary. And at any rate, she only had a vague idea of the meaning of “those things,” which, like dialect, she considered something that appertained exclusively to the bottom layers of society, to the lower classes. She couldn’t comprehend that a deputy, an important person, would stain his reputation like that. It must have been part of a plot created by his enemies. That man was a gentleman, and Ernesto, too, though poor and dependent on his aunt, was a gentleman.
“Don’t ask me anything,” Ernesto implored his mother, when from between his fingers, now shielding his face, he saw the perturbation in his mother’s eyes that his confession had caused. He was afraid he had mortally wounded her, feared seeing her tumble from the chair, dead because of him. If he hadn’t been so upset himself, he would have seen that instead, his words had almost evoked a sense of relief in his mother. Her son’s agitation had led her to expect something worse.
“Now you know,” Ernesto went on, “why I can’t go back to work for Signor Wilder. I mustn’t see that man again.”
Signora Celestina only grasped the physical aspect of the matter, which more than anything else was incomprehensible to her. Its significance, its psychological significance, escaped her entirely. If it hadn’t, she would have understood that her failed marriage, the complete absence of a father, and her own excessive severity had all figured into it. And of course, that’s without factoring in Ernesto’s age and his particular “appeal,” both of which may have had their origins in just those absences.
“Villain,” she shouted, lashing out against the man. “Villain, murderer, worse than your. . . . Abusing a boy like that! I’ll find him and tell him a thing or two. One look at me and if he knows what’s good for him, he’ll be so ashamed he’ll jump right into the ocean.”
“No,” Ernesto said. “It’s not all his fault. Swear to me that you won’t ever go looking for him or talk to him, or I’ll get in trouble, too. Because you don’t understand, Mama. It’s all over now. But if I go back to Signor Wilder’s. . . . He said that he loves me, and he won’t leave me alone. He even used to buy me pastries.”
“You want me to let him get away with it—after what he did to my son, to a nice respectable boy?”
“I’m not nice and respectable, and I’m not a boy anymore,” Ernesto said, in spite of himself, “or at least not as far as the law is concerned. And if I hadn’t wanted—”
“You’re not going to tell me that you asked him?”
“No, Mama, I didn’t ask him, but I didn’t turn him down either. I met him halfway. Look, that’s why you mustn’t tell anyone, least of all Uncle Giovanni.” (A thought far worse than any other had occurred to him, that his mother might tell the whole story to his uncle, who was his guardian as well, and even worse in Ernesto’s opinion, half mad. Ernesto’s father, an irredentist, had been banned for subversive activities by the Austrian Empire, which, having lost Venice, considered Trieste “its fairest jewel.” Austrian law required that every minor child who was fatherless, whether because of death or for any other reason, must have at least a pro forma guardian.) “Swear to me,” he went on, “that you won’t say anything to Uncle. Swear it to me, Mommy . . . if you don’t—” And he burst into tears.
And this time (by some miracle) Signora Celestina understood that her son had more need of consolation than of reprimands. Of course she found the facts repugnant and, as we noted, almost incomprehensible. But she didn’t consider them, as Ernesto had feared, a matter of life and death. To protect her son’s reputation, she accepted that they remain secret, and that no one, not even the air, would know or suspect anything.
“What about him, that man?” she asked. “Can you be sure he won’t say anything?”
“I’m sure.” Ernesto forced the lie.
“And you can’t tell anyone either, not even, God forbid, your cousin. You know the kind of boy he is.” (She was afraid that her son was not only an exaggerator but a bit of a chatterbox.) “Did he hurt you very much?” she asked in a whisper.
“Oh Mama,” Ernesto pleaded, hiding his head deeper between his hands. (At the moment his dirty-minded cousin seemed a model of virtue to him.)
“My boy, my poor boy.” Signora Celestina was suddenly overcome with tenderness. And this time, following her heart, she sent morality off to the devil (that is, to its true father) along with her ineffective preachings, and bent over to kiss her son’s forehead.
“You have to swear to me,” she said, “that you won’t do that again. It’s so ugly, so indecent” (here Ernesto suddenly remembered the style of the school compositions that had earned him the hostility of one of his high-school teachers), “it isn’t worthy of a boy like you. Only street kids—the kind that sell lemons on every corner in Rena Vecchia do things like that, not my Pimpo.” (In her rare expansive moments, Signora Celestina called her son by the n
ame he’d given his blackbird.)
With his mother’s kiss and the sense that he would be forgiven, Ernesto felt himself reborn. It was one of the few kisses she had ever given him. (The poor woman wanted so much to be, and even more to be seen as, a “Spartan mother.”)
“Don’t think about it any more, my darling,” she said, lapsing suddenly, and without realizing it, into the dialect of her youth, which also was a rare occurrence. “What happened to you is pretty bad, but if no one ever knows about it, then it’s not important. You’re not a little girl, thank goodness.”
“I’m not a girl,” Ernesto exclaimed. “I was with a woman once, too.” And here he began sobbing just as he had when he was ten years old and had read Amicis’s Cuore for the first time. He was crying his heart out.
This second confession, which Ernesto perhaps thought might wash away the first one, wounded his mother’s jealous soul even more. Like the man, although (at least in part) for different reasons, she was afraid of her son being with women—prostitutes because of disease, others for different reasons.
“And I thought you were still as innocent as a dove,” she said.
From the brass bed came the groan of a stabbed man.
“Enough now,” said Signora Celestina, rising from her chair. “What happened, happened. I’ll talk to Signor Wilder. I’ll tell him you’re sick, or find some other excuse, without having to lie too much. You won’t see Signor Wilder or . . . the other one again.”
“Really, Mama, you forgive me?” asked Ernesto. He would have liked a second kiss, but didn’t dare to ask.
“I’ve already done that,” his mother answered. “Now get up and take a little walk. You don’t want to sit around and get depressed.”
Ernesto sat up in bed. His hazel eyes, washed by tears, glowed with a light of childish goodness.
“Mama,” he said, “I’d like so much to go to a concert tonight. Ondříček is playing. You know, that violinist I heard who I enjoyed so much last year. I told you about him. Remember?”
“You’re still stuck on the violin.” Signora Celestina’s reply was that of a fond mother telling her sports-loving son “You’re ball crazy,” when football threatened to distract him from study or other work.
“That’s true, but that’s not why. . . . If Signor Wilder had given you the half month’s salary he owes me, I might have asked you. . . .”
Now his mother understood the reason for the question that sounded so out of place the moment she entered the house. She understood and perhaps, if she hadn’t been so troubled at the moment, she might have smiled. Instead she sighed and extracting a handkerchief (a colored one) from a pocket of her long dress, untied its knotted ends.
“How much is a ticket?” she asked.
“Two florins, Mommy,” Ernesto replied, barely able to believe what he was hearing and seeing. (He had added in the cost of a seat. He didn’t like listening while standing. Strictly speaking it wasn’t a lie.)
His mother gave him the two florins, and Ernesto put them in his pocket. At that moment he would have given up anything (except that concert) to spare his mother the most minute displeasure. He didn’t know, no one did, that so as not to have to rely completely on her sister for support, the poor woman was running a small business of her own, some sort of go-between dealings. Ernesto had never asked where that little bit of extra money, most of which his mother spent on him, came from. As we know, children are selfish.
“Mama,” he said, in a strange-sounding voice and with that childish light, which upon the return of serenity and the certainty of being able to go to the concert that night was glowing even brighter in his eyes, “may I ask you a question?” (Ernesto had an irresistible need to ask questions, and of asking permission before posing them. His “may I” was well known.)
“What question?”
“You don’t have to answer, Mommy, if you don’t want to.”
“Ask,” Signora Celestina replied nervously.
“Was my father,” Ernesto went on timidly, “really so bad?”
“Don’t talk to me about him,” she answered as though touched on an open wound. “A murderer, that’s what he was. That’s what he was to me. That’s all you need to know.”
“But what did he do to you?”
Signora Celestina answered her son’s perhaps indiscreet question indirectly.
“When you were very little,” she said, “and were living with your nursemaid, I spent every night desperately ill and alone in this room. See that clock over there?” (And she pointed to an old clock with small alabaster columns still telling time in Ernesto’s room—the room with the sloping ceiling.) “I would hear it every night. I’d have to hear it, and every one of its ticks sounded like it was saying ‘alone, alone,’ over and over again, always ‘alone.’ That’s how I spent my nights because of your father. Terribly sick. With no one to help me. Your aunt then. . . . You were in the country with the nursemaid you loved.”
“Oh Mama,” Ernest exclaimed and rushed to embrace her. But his mother withdrew, almost repelled him. One kiss was all well and good. But two. . . .
“Get dressed now,” she said, “or you’ll be late for the concert. And when you get home don’t ring the bell, knock quietly. I’ll be waiting up, so I’ll hear you. Just be careful not to wake Auntie. That’s all I ask.”
ALMOST A CONCLUSION
THIS, of course, is not the whole story of Ernesto’s youth. It’s just about how—for good reasons or ill—he gets himself fired by Signor Wilder, confesses to his mother, obtains her forgiveness, and then, with the money she gives him, goes to the Ondříček violin performance he was so anxious to hear.
What follows—a “fatal” encounter at that concert, which in its turn results in a second one, even more “fatal”—would provide material for at least another hundred pages. Add to those pages Ernesto’s breakthrough to his true calling, and you would, in fact, have the complete story of his adolescence. Unfortunately, the author is too old, too weary and embittered to summon the strength to write all that. However, one ought never despair about the future—at least so he tells himself. As an exceedingly optimistic activist once had the courage to declare in his presence, “There are no lost wars, just victories postponed.” With this thought the author leaves the door to hope open for his few friends—really few, three or four altogether (including the dangerous activist)—the only ones for whom this story was “risked.” They, who loved Ernesto, who understood his failings and his grace, can, if they’d like, hope that the author will someday find the inner strength (and outer circumstances) to continue and, perhaps, even conclude his story.
Trieste, August 31, 1953
FIFTH EPISODE
FRANZ ONDŘÍČEK (who was born in Prague 1859 and died suddenly at Milan’s railroad station in 1922) had qualities which distinguished him from other violinists who performed in Trieste in that era and which, according to some people, Ernesto among them, set him above the others. He didn’t play at Schiller House (the German colony’s hall) but rather at Philharmonic Hall, an Italian, indeed an irredentist site (which perhaps explains why Ondříček, a Bohemian irredentist, preferred it). He didn’t perform while standing with medals pinned to his chest. Nor did he play from memory. It was clear that like other violinists, he too knew the pieces he feigned reading. But in order to present himself in the manner he preferred, he played as though performing chamber music with the music open before him on a stand and a bespectacled young man at his side. Likely a favorite student, chosen to accompany him on all his trips just to turn pages, Ernesto decided. That year Ondříček had arrived in town quite late in the season, so much later that the audience was smaller than usual. (Generally the violinist, who came to Trieste almost every year, filled half the hall, two-thirds at the most. However, it’s important to note that the Philharmonic’s concert hall was far larger than Schiller’s.)
Ernesto, one of the first people to arrive and take his seat (in the third row, very close, but not
too), had a while to wait for the concert to begin. He was still agitated and touched by the scene with his mother and its unexpected happy outcome. “Dear Mama,” he thought, in part out of gratitude, in part to comfort himself, “isn’t as tough as she’d like people to think she is.” He was happy that he’d confessed to her, had received her forgiveness, and, along with the forgiveness, money for the ticket and the seat. He was even happier that he wouldn’t have to go back to Signor Wilder’s the next morning and every subsequent morning. His tears had had a healing effect, and he no longer worried about what he would do with the rest of his life. He searched faces in the hall to see if Signor Wilder, a frequent concertgoer, was also at the performance, but he wasn’t. Signor Wilder would have greatly enjoyed hearing Ondříček play, but for “deeply felt political reasons” never crossed the Philharmonic’s threshold.
What mattered most to Franz Ondříček, as to his rivals, was to evoke a response from the audience. But Ondříček’s programs were more serious than theirs, more in the classic vein, and Ernesto was convinced, rightly or wrongly, that he was one of the world’s greatest living musicians. As he listened that evening, trying not to miss a note of the renowned Bach Chaconne, which he’d heard praised as the consummate piece of chamber music, he had no inkling that Ondříček included it in his programs primarily because of the technical challenges it presented and because of the enthusiasm it generated in the public to hear a soloist perform both melody and accompaniment on the same instrument. The applause after the Chaconne was more clamorous than ever. And Ernesto in the third row (very close, but not too) applauded until his hands reddened. (You might have thought he was protesting something, rather than applauding someone.) It even seemed to him that Ondříček, noting his youthful enthusiasm this time, had turned a faint, appreciative smile toward him—a sort of farewell smile.