by André Aciman
“It annoys me to speak of it,” began Nino without looking at me, “but you have no idea how much what’s happening distresses me. My uncle Mauro is pessimistic, there’s no point in concealing it from you: on the other hand that’s to be expected—he has always hoped things would go from bad to the worst possible. Myself, I don’t believe it. Despite appearances, I don’t believe that Italy will go down the same road as Germany with these policies against your people. You’ll see that it will all burst like a soap bubble in the end.”
I should have been grateful that he brought up the subject. In the end, what else could he have said? And yet I wasn’t. While he was speaking, I barely managed to mask the annoyance his words provoked in me, and the tone especially, the disappointed tone of his voice. “It will all burst like a soap bubble in the end.” Could you be any clumsier, more insensitive, more obtusely goyische than that? I asked him why, in contrast to his uncle, he was optimistic.
“Oh, we Italians are too buffoonish for that,” he replied, without showing he was aware of my irony. “We may imitate the Germans in some things, even the goose-step, but not the tragic sense they have of life. We’re just too old, too skeptical and worn out.”
Only at this point must he have figured out, from my silence, how inopportune what he had just said was, how inevitably ambiguous. Immediately the expression on his face changed.
“And just as well, don’t you think?” he exclaimed with forced joviality. “For all its faults, long live our millennia of Latin wisdom!”
He was sure—he went on—that among us Italians anti-Semitism would never be able to take on a serious, political form, and so take root. The conviction that there was some neat separation between the Jewish “element” and that of the “so-called Aryan” could not be practically feasible in our country—you had only to think of Ferrara, a city that, “as regards its social profile,” one could consider more or less typical. The “Israelites” in Ferrara, all or nearly all, belonged to the city’s bourgeoisie, of which they even constituted in a certain sense the center, the backbone. The very fact that the majority of them had been Fascists, and not a few of them, as I well knew, among its first adherents, showed their unquestionable solidarity and identity with the whole society. Could one imagine anyone more Jewish and at the same time more Ferrarese than the lawyer Geremia Tabet, just to name one figure that sprang to mind among the small circle of people (with Carlo Aretusi, Vezio Sturla, Osvaldo Bellistracci, the Councillor Bolognesi and two or three others) who in 1919 had founded the first local section of the Veterans’ Fascist Movement? And who could be more “one of us” than old Dr. Corcos, Elia Corcos, the famous clinician—so much so that, strictly speaking, his personage could have been perfectly included in the municipal coat of arms? And my father? And the lawyer Lattes, Bruno’s father? No, no: just going through the telephone directory, where the Jewish names inevitably appeared accompanied by their professional and academic titles, doctors, lawyers, engineers, owners of big and small commercial companies, and so on, you’d immediately see the impossibility of putting into effect here in Ferrara a racial policy with any chance of success. That kind of policy could “operate” only if there were more cases like that of the Finzi-Contini family, with their most atypical impulse to segregate themselves and live in a grand, aristocratic house. (Although he himself knew Alberto Finzi-Contini very well, he had never succeeded in getting himself invited to play tennis at their house, on their magnificent private court!) But in Ferrara the Finzi-Continis were exactly that: an exception. And then, weren’t even they following a resurgent “historical imperative,” in acquiring the big house in Corso Ercole I, and all their lands, as well as in their way of living apart, just like certain ancient Ferrarese aristocratic families now extinct?
He said all this, and more that I can’t recall. While he was speaking, I did not even look at him. The sky above the piazza was full of light. I had to squint to follow the flight of the doves that crossed it from time to time.
Suddenly he touched my hand.
“I need some advice,” he said. “The advice of a friend.”
“Willingly.”
“Will you be absolutely straight with me?”
“Of course.”
Then I had to know—he began, lowering his voice—that a couple of days ago he had been approached by “that snake” Gino Cariani, who, without much preamble, had proposed to him that he take on the role of “Cultural Attaché.” So far he had neither accepted nor refused the post. He had asked only for a little time to reflect on it. Now, however, he had to make a decision. That very morning, at the cafe, just before I had arrived, Cariani had brought up the topic again.
“What should I do?” he asked after a pause.
I pursed my lips, perplexed. But he had already begun another speech.
“I belong to a ‘clan’ with traditions of which you’re well aware,” he said. “And yet you can be sure that when my father comes to hear that I’ve declined Cariani’s proposal, he’ll put his head in his hands, that’s what he’ll do. And do you think my uncle Mauro will behave any differently? All that’s needed is for my father to ask him to send for me, and he’d be only too happy to oblige, if with no other intention than to free himself from any charge of bias. I can already see his face at the moment he blithely asks me to revoke the decision. I can just hear what he’ll say. Pressing me not to behave like a baby, to think again about it, because in life . . .”
He laughed, with distaste.
“Look,” he added: “I have so little faith in human nature, and in the character of us Italians in particular, that I don’t even feel sure about myself. We live in a country, my dear fellow, where the culture of Rome, in its old proper sense, has only remained with us in the form of a raised-arm salute. Which makes even me ask: à quoi bon? At the end of the day, if I were to refuse—”
“You’d be making a big mistake,” I interrupted calmly.
He stared at me with a flicker of diffidence in his eyes.
“You mean that?”
“Of course I do. I don’t see why you shouldn’t aspire to have a career in the Party, or through the Party. If I were in your shoes . . . I mean, if I were studying Law like you . . . I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment.”
I had taken care not to let anything of what I felt show through. The expression on Nino’s face cleared. He lit a cigarette. My objectivity, my disinterestedness, had evidently impressed him.
He thanked me for the advice, releasing into the air a first, dense mouthful of smoke. He’d allow, he said, a few more days to pass before he followed it. He wanted to have a clear view both of himself and how things were. Fascism was without doubt in a state of crisis. But was this a question of something wrong in the system, or with the system? It’s good to get on in life. But how? Was it possible to change things from within, or else . . . ?
He finished with a vague wave of his hand.
In the next few days—he began again—he would come round to my house to see me. I was a literary figure . . . a poet . . . he smiled, trying once more to assume the half-protective, half-affectionate tone, the tone of the politician, that he often used with me. At any rate he would greatly appreciate the chance to go over the whole question with me. We must make an effort to phone, see each other, keep in contact with one another . . . above all to react!
I sighed audibly.
“By the way,” he asked out of the blue, furrowing his brow, “when is it you have to do your first exam in Bologna? Oh, no! We’ll have to renew our railway-travel cards . . .”
15.
I SAW Fadigati again.
It was on the streets and at night: a humid, misty night about halfway through the following November. Coming out of the brothel on Via Bomporto with my clothes impregnated with the usual scent, I lingered there, in front of the doorway, undecided as to whether I should go home or follow the impulse to take to the city walls in search of some clean air.
The surrounding silence
was perfect. From inside the brothel at my back filtered the weary conversation of three voices, two of them male and one female. They were talking about soccer. The two men were complaining that SPAL, which in the years after the First World War had been a great team, one of the best in northern Italy—in 1923 it had failed by a hair’s breadth to win the First Division Championship: they had just needed to draw their last away match at Pro Vercelli—had now ended up in Serie C, and each year was struggling even to stay there. Ah, the years of the centerfield player Condrelli, of the two Banfi brothers, Beppe and Ilario, of the great Baùsi, that, yes, that was the great era! The woman only occasionally interrupted. For instance, she said, “That’s rubbish, you Ferraresi like sex too much.” Or “The trouble with you Ferraresi is not so much ball control, as talking and watching rather than playing!” The other two let her speak, but just went on unfazed with the same argument. They must have been old customers, of about forty-five, fifty: veteran smokers. The prostitute was obviously not from Ferrara, but from the Veneto, probably in the vicinity of Friuli.
Lurching over the sharp cobbles of the alleyway, slow, heavy footsteps could be heard approaching.
“What on earth do you want? Are you hungry, is that it?”
It was Fadigati. A while before he finally made me out in the thick fog I had recognized him by his voice.
“You’re just a stupid thing, and filthy too! I’ve nothing to give you, and you know it!”
Who was he speaking to? And why that tone of complaint, drenched in mannered tenderness?
At last he appeared. Haloed by the yellow light of the single street lamp, his plump form loomed out of the vapors. He advanced slowly, inclined slightly to one side and still declaiming. I saw he was leaning on a cane.
He stopped about a yard away.
“So, then, are you going to leave me in peace, or aren’t you?”
He stared the creature in the eyes, raising his finger in a threatening gesture. And the creature, a medium-sized mongrel bitch, white with brown spots, made her reply from below, desperately wagging her tail, eyeing him with a watery, fearful gaze, while dragging herself over the cobbles toward the doctor’s shoes. In a moment she would have rolled on her back with her belly and legs in the air, completely at his mercy.
“Good evening.”
He detached his eyes from the dog’s and looked at me.
“How are things?” he said, placing me. “Are you well?”
We shook hands. We were standing facing each other in front of the nail-studded exit of the brothel. Good Lord, how he had aged! His sagging cheeks, obscured by a shaggy, grey beard, made him seem in his sixties. From his reddened, rheumy eyelids, you could tell that he was tired, that he had not been sleeping. And yet the gaze from behind his glasses was still lively and brisk . . .
“Did you know you’ve grown thinner?” he said. “But it suits you, it makes you look more of a man. You know, sometimes in life just a few months make all the difference. A few months count for more, at times, than entire years.”
The nail-studded door opened, and four or five young men came out: types that might have been from the suburbs, if not from the country. They remained there in a circle to light their cigarettes. One approached the wall beside the entrance to urinate. All of them, including him, kept insistently peering at us.
Passing between the open legs of the young man standing at the wall, a small snaking rivulet flowed rapidly in descent toward the center of the alley. The dog was attracted by it. Cautiously she approached it to sniff.
“It would be better if we went,” Fadigati whispered with a light tremor in his voice.
We moved away in silence, while at our backs the alley echoed with laughter and obscene taunts. For a moment I was afraid that the little gang would come up behind us. But luckily there was Via Ripagrande, where the fog seemed even thicker. We just needed to cross the street, step up onto the opposite sidewalk, and I was sure that we would have disappeared from sight, covering our tracks behind us.
We walked on at a slow pace side by side toward Montagnone. Midnight had sounded a good while before, and there was no one to be seen on the streets. Row after row of blind, closed shutters, bolted doors and, at intervals, the almost underwater light of the street lamps.
It had got so late that perhaps we two, Fadigati and I, were the only people left wandering around the city at that hour. He spoke to me with a sad, subdued air. He narrated all his misfortunes. They had dismissed him from the hospital with some perfunctory excuse. Even at the clinic in Via Gorgadello, entire afternoons could pass without the visit of a single patient. For him, it was true, there was no one in the world he had to look after . . . provide for; he had no immediate hardships as far as his finances were concerned . . . but was it possible to keep on living like this, in the most utter solitude, surrounded by general hostility? The time wasn’t far off, at all events, when he would have to sack the nurse, make do with a smaller surgery, begin to sell off his pictures. Then perhaps it was best that he should leave at once, try to find work elsewhere.
“Why don’t you do that?”
“Of course, you’re right,” he sighed. “But at my age . . . And then, even if I had the strength and courage to take such a step, do you think it would really make any difference?”
Having arrived close to Montagnone, we heard from behind us the sound of a light trotting. We turned round. It was the same mongrel as before, who had caught up with us, panting.
She stopped, happy to have tracked us down by scent in that sea of fog. And laying back her long, tender ears, whimpering and festively wagging her tail, she was already once more performing, mainly in honor of Fadigati, her pathetic little displays of devotion.
“Is it yours?” I asked.
“Not likely. I found her this evening near the aqueduct. I stroked her and, Lord knows why, she took it to heart! From then on I haven’t been able to shake her off.”
I noticed her udders were fat and pendulous, swollen with milk.
“She has some little ones, see?”
“It’s true!” exclaimed Fadigati. “You’re absolutely right!”
And then, turning to the dog:
“You wretch! Where have you left your babies? Aren’t you ashamed to go out on the town at this hour? Unnatural mother!”
Once more, the dog flattened herself with her belly on the ground a few inches from Fadigati’s feet. “Beat me, kill me if you want!” she seemed to be saying. “It’s only right, and besides I like it!”
The doctor knelt to stroke her head. In a fit of genuine passion, the creature kept on licking his hands. She tried to reach his face with the sudden upward ambush of a kiss.
“Calm down, will you? Calm down . . .” Fadigati kept repeating.
Still followed or led by the mongrel, we resumed our stroll. By this stage we had drawn near to my house. When she was in front, the dog stopped at every crossing as though fearful of losing us again.
“Will you look at her!” said Fadigati, pointing. “Perhaps one ought to be like that, able to accept one’s own nature. But on the other hand how does one accomplish that? Isn’t the price too high? There’s a great deal of the animal in all men, and yet can we give in to it? Admit to being an animal, and only an animal?”
I broke into loud laughter.
“Oh, no,” I said. “It would be like asking: can an Italian, an Italian citizen, admit to being a Jew, and only a Jew?”
He gave me a humiliated look.
“I understand what you’re saying,” he replied after a while. “In these times, believe me, I’ve many times thought about you, and your family. But, allow me to tell you that if I were in your—”
“What should I do?” I interrupted him heatedly. “Accept that I am what I am? Or would it be better to mold myself into what others want me to be?”
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” he replied quietly. “My dear friend, if being what you are is what makes you so much more human—you wouldn’
t be here keeping me company otherwise!—why reject it, why rebel against it? My situation is different, the exact opposite of yours. After all that happened last summer I can’t bear myself any longer. I can’t, I shouldn’t go on. Would you believe that I can’t even bear to shave in front of the mirror. I could at least dress in a different fashion! All the same, could you imagine me without this hat . . . this overcoat . . . these glasses, this uniform of respectability? And yet, dressed up like this, I feel so ridiculous, grotesque, absurd! Eh, no, ‘inde redire negant’**** couldn’t be more apt. There’s nothing to be done for me, don’t you see?”
I kept silent. I thought of Deliliers and Fadigati, one the executioner, the other the victim. The victim as usual forgave and gave his consent to the executioner. But not me: Fadigati was wrong about me. To hatred I could never respond in any other way than with hatred.
As soon as we had reached the entrance to my house, I took the keys from my pocket and opened the door. The mongrel stuck her head in through the crack as if she wanted to enter.
“Out!” I shouted. “Away with you!”
The creature whined with fear, quickly taking refuge between the legs of her protector.
“Goodnight,” I said. “It’s late, and I really must go.”
He returned my handshake with great effusiveness.
“Goodnight . . . Keep well . . . And all best wishes to your family,” he repeated several times.
I crossed the threshold. And since, smiling and holding up his arm in salutation, he still had not made his mind up to go away—and seated on the sidewalk even the dog was looking up at me with an interrogative air—I began to shut the double-door.
“Will you phone me?” I asked lightly, before completely closing it.
“Who knows?” he said, smiling somewhat mysteriously through the last gap. “Time will tell.”††††