The Novel of Ferrara

by André Aciman

  “Are you two still seeing him?” I got round to asking one day, throwing off the question in the most unconcerned tone I could muster.

  “Oh yes . . . I think he comes round every so often to visit his Alberto . . .” she answered calmly. “They shut themselves up in his room, take tea, smoke their pipes (even Alberto started puffing away at one a short while back), and talk and talk, happy as sandboys, doing nothing but talk.”

  She was too intelligent, too sensitive not to have guessed what I was hiding under my indifference: and that being, all of a sudden, a sharp, and symptomatic, desire to see her again. Yet she behaved as though she had understood nothing, without signaling even indirectly the chance that, sooner or later, I too might be invited round.

  • 2 •

  THAT NIGHT I spent in turmoil. Fitfully, I slept, I woke up, I slept again, and every time I slept I kept on dreaming of Micòl.

  I dreamed, for example, of finding myself, just like that very first day I set foot in the garden, watching her play tennis with Alberto. Even in the dream I never took my eyes off her for a second. I kept on telling myself how wonderful she was, flushed and covered with sweat, with that frown of almost fierce concentration that divided her forehead, all tensed up as she was with the effort to beat her smiling, slightly bored and sluggish older brother. Yet then I felt oppressed by an uneasiness, an embittered feeling, an almost unbearable ache. I asked myself in desperation—what was left of that young girl from ten years ago in the twenty-two-year-old Micòl, in her shorts and cotton T-shirt, this Micòl who had such an athletic, modern, free and easy air (above all free!) that she made you think she’d done nothing else for the last few years than swan around in the Meccas of international tennis—London, Paris, the Côte d’Azur, Forest Hills? But yes, I answered myself, the weightless blond hair, with streaks verging on white, the blue, almost Scandinavian irises, the honey-colored skin, and on her breastbone, every now and then leaping out from her T-shirt collar, the little gold disc of the Shaddai§ —they’re still there from the child she was. But what else?

  Then we were closed inside the carriage, in that stale, grey penumbra: with Perotti sitting in the box-seat up front, looming, motionless, mute. I reasoned with myself that if Perotti was up there, with his back stubbornly turned toward us, he was obviously doing this so as not to have to see what was—or what might be—going on inside the carriage, no doubt out of a servile discretion. Yet he was nevertheless aware of everything, of course he was, the sinister old bumpkin! His wife, the wan Vittorina, prying through the partly ajar double doors of the coach-house—every now and then I could make out the woman’s little reptile head, lustrous with plastered-down, crow-black hair, as she peeped round the edge of the door—his wife stood as a sentry there, fixing him with her fretful, discontented eye, and making stealthy gestures and coded expressions at him.

  Next we were in her room, Micòl and I, but not even then were we alone, but rather “plagued”—as she herself had whispered to me—by the habitual third party, which this time was Jor, crouched in the center of the room like a gigantic granite idol, who stared at us with his two frosty eyes, one black, the other blue. The room was long and narrow, full like the coach-house of things to eat: grapefruits, oranges, mandarins and above all làttimi, ranged in a row like books on the boards of vast black shelves, severe and ecclesiastic, reaching up to the ceiling. Only the làttimi were not at all the glass objects that Micòl had told me about, but, just as I’d supposed, cheeses—little round driplets of off-white cheeses shaped like bottles. Laughing, Micòl insisted that I try one of them, one of her cheeses. At this she stood on tiptoe, and was about to touch with the stretched-out index finger of her right hand one of those which had been set on the topmost shelf—those were the best ones, she explained to me, the freshest. But not at all, I wasn’t going to have one—I felt anxious not only because of the dog’s presence but also because I realized that outside, while we were arguing, the lake tide was rapidly rising. If I were to delay any further, the high water would have locked me in, would have stopped me being able to leave her room unnoticed. For it was secretly and by night that I had come into Micòl’s bedroom. Secretly hidden from Alberto, Professor Ermanno, Signora Olga, grandma Regina, her uncles Giulio and Federico, and the earnest Signorina Blumenfeld. And Jor, who was the only one to know, the sole witness of the thing that was between us, couldn’t tell anyone about it.

  I also dreamed that we spoke openly together, at last without any dissimulation, with our cards on the table.

  As usual we quarreled a bit, Micòl arguing that the thing between us had begun from the first day, that is, from when she and I, still utterly surprised to meet again and recognize each other, had made off to see the park, and I, for my part, claiming instead that in my opinion, the thing had begun a good while earlier, on the telephone, from the moment she had announced that she’d become “ugly,” “a spinster with a red nose.” Obviously I hadn’t believed her. All the same she couldn’t even have a glimmer, I added with a catch in my throat, of how much those words of hers had tormented me. In the days that followed, before I saw her again, I had gone over them again and again, and couldn’t rid myself of the unease they caused.

  “Well, perhaps it’s true,” at this point Micòl seemed to agree, placing her hand on mine. “If the idea that I’d become ugly and red-nosed caused you such distress, then I give in—it means that you’re right. But now, what’s to be done? That excuse of playing tennis isn’t going to wash anymore, and here at home, besides, with the risk of being stranded by the high water (d’you see how it’s like Venice?)—it’s neither right nor proper that I should let you come in.”

  “Why should you need to?” I parried. “You could go out yourself, after all.”

  “Me, go out?” she exclaimed, widening her eyes. “Just think for a moment, dear boy. Where would I go out to?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure,” I stuttered in reply. “To Montarone, for example, or Piazza d’Armi near the Aqueduct, or, if you’re unhappy to be seen with me, the Via Borso side of Piazza della Certosa. Everyone who’s going out together has always gone there—I don’t know about your parents, but mine, in their time, did. And to go out a bit together, honestly, what was the harm in that? It’s not like we’re making love! It’s just the first rung, on the brink of the abyss. But from there to the bottom of the abyss, there’s still a long way to go!”

  I was on the point of suggesting that if, as it seemed, not even Piazza della Certosa suited her, we could always meet up in Bologna, having taken two separate trains. But I kept quiet, drained of courage, even in dreams. And besides, shaking her head and smiling, she immediately declared that it was useless, impossible, “verboten.” She would never have gone with me, outside her home and the garden. And what was all this about?—she winked at me, amused. After she’d let herself be dragged around all the usual “open air” resorts beloved of “the Eros of our wild native town,” was I perhaps hoping to take her to Bologna now? Perhaps to some “grand hotel” there, one of those favored by her grandma Josette, like the Brun or the Baglioni, where we’d have to show at the reception—had I thought of that?—our fine documents complete with racial provenance.

  The next evening, as soon as I’d returned from a quick, unexpected trip to Bologna, to the university, I tried to telephone.

  Alberto answered.

  “How are things?” he crooned ironically, showing this once that he’d recognized my voice. “It’s ages since we saw each other. How are you? What are you up to?”

  Disconcerted, with my heart racing, I began to blather away. I bundled up a whole bunch of things: news about my graduation thesis that loomed above me like an unscalable wall, and comments on the weather, which after the last bad fortnight seemed to be offering some hope of improvement—but it wasn’t worth trusting: the sharp air made it quite clear we were now in the middle of winter, and we might as well forget those fine days of October. Most of all, I dwelled on my brief tr
ip to Bologna.

  In the morning, I told him, I had passed by Via Zamboni, where, after having sorted out various things in the secretary’s office, I’d been able to check out in the library a certain number of entries from the Panzacchi bibliography which I was preparing. Later, around one o’clock, I’d gone to eat at the Pappagallo—certainly not the so-called “pastasciutta” restaurant at the foot of the Asinelli which, besides being extremely dear, as far as its cooking went seemed distinctly inferior to its reputation, but rather to the other Pappagallo “in brodo,” in a little side street off Via Galliera, which, as its name suggests, was famous for its vegetable soups and boiled meats, as well as for its very modest prices. Then in the afternoon I’d seen some friends, gone round the bookshops of the city center, drunk tea at Zanarini’s, the one in Piazza Galvani, at the end of the Pavaglione. It had been a reasonably good trip—I ended up saying—“almost as good as it was when I used to attend regularly.”

  “Just imagine,” I added at this point, inventing the whole thing—who knows what devil had suddenly prompted me to tell a story of this kind, “before going to the station I even had time to have a quick look around the Via dell’Oca.”

  “The Via dell’Oca?” Alberto asked, suddenly becoming animated, although at the same time a bit reserved.

  That was all I needed to be spurred on by the same sour impulse which sometimes made my father appear, set beside the Finzi-Continis, far more boorish and “assimilated” than he actually was.

  “What?” I exclaimed. “You mean to say that you didn’t know that in Bologna’s Via dell’Oca there’s one of the most famous brothels in all Italy!”

  He coughed.

  “No. I didn’t know it,” he replied.

  He then mentioned, in a different tone of voice, that in a few days’ time he too would have to leave for Milan, where he’d be staying for at least a week. June wasn’t after all as far away as it seemed, and he still hadn’t found nor, to tell the truth, had he even sought out, a professor who would let him cobble together “any old bits for a thesis.”

  After which, once again changing the subject, he asked if by chance, not long ago, I’d passed by along the Mura degli Angeli on my bicycle. He’d been out in the garden to see what damage the rain had done to the tennis court. But partly because of the distance and partly because of the already fading light, he hadn’t been able to determine whether or not it was me, the guy who was up there, stock still, not having got off the saddle, and leaning a hand against a tree trunk to look. Oh, so it was me, then? He went on, after I’d admitted, not without some hesitation, having taken the Mura route back home from the station: that was because, I explained, of the inner disgust I always felt coming across certain “ugly mugs” that would be gathered in front of the Caffè della Borsa, in Corso Roma, or strung out along the Corso Giovecca.—Ah, so it was me, he repeated. He was sure it had been! Anyway, if it was me, why on earth hadn’t I answered his shouts and whistles? Hadn’t I heard them?

  I hadn’t, I once again lied. In fact, I said, I hadn’t even been aware that he’d been in the garden. At this stage we really had nothing more to say to each other, nothing at all to bridge the sudden gulf of silence that had opened between us.

  “But you . . . weren’t you wanting to speak to Micòl?” he said at last, as though remembering.

  “That’s right,” I replied. “Would you mind putting her on?”

  He would gladly do so, he told me, if it wasn’t for the fact that (and it was truly odd “the little angel” hadn’t even let me know) Micòl had left early in the afternoon for Venice, she too meaning to break the back of her thesis. She had come down for lunch all dressed up for the journey, with her bags and everything packed, to announce her intention to her “astonished little family.” She had said how bored she was of being weighed down with this task hanging over her. Instead of taking her degree in June, she was aiming for February: which at Venice, with the Marciana and the Querini-Stampalia libraries at hand, she could easily manage, whereas at Ferrara, for a host of reasons, her thesis on Dickinson would never press on at anything like the required speed. This is what the girl said. But who knows whether she would be able to hold out against Venice’s spirit-dampening atmosphere, and against a house, the uncles’ house, which she didn’t care for. It would be easy to imagine her back at base in a week or two with nothing to show for it. He’d think he was dreaming if ever Micòl managed to keep herself away from Ferrara uninterruptedly for twenty days . . .

  “Oh, well!” he concluded. “But what would you say (only, this week’s impossible, and so is next week, but the one after, yes, I really think that would work), what would you say to the idea of us all taking a roadtrip as far as Venice? It would be fun just to land on her unannounced—let’s say, you, me and Giampi Malnate!”

  “It’s an idea,” I said. “Why not? We can talk about it later.”

  “In the meantime,” he went on, with an effort in which I sensed a desire to compensate me for what he’d revealed to me, “in the meantime, sorry—that’s if you’ve nothing better on—why not come round here, let’s say tomorrow, around five in the afternoon? Malnate should be there too. We’ll have some tea . . . listen to some records . . . have a chat . . . I’m not sure how you, as a literary man, will feel about spending time with an engineer (as I’ll be) and an industrial chemist. But if you’d do us the honor, compliments aside, do come—it would be a pleasure for us.”

  We carried on for a while longer, Alberto ever more keen and excited about this idea of his, which he seemed to have thought up on the spot, to have me round to his house, and I drawn but at the same time put off. It was quite true, I remembered, that a little while before, I had spent almost a half-hour staring at the garden from the Mura, and, especially, at the house, which I could see, through the almost bare boughs of the trees, cut out against the evening sky with the fragile, shimmering air of a heraldic emblem. Two windows on the mezzanine floor, at the level of the terrace from which one went down into the park, were already lit up, and electric light also glowed farther up, from the solitary, topmost little window which barely opened beneath the apex of the peaked roof. For a long while, my eyeballs aching in their sockets, I stood there staring at the little light from that high window (a small, tremulous glow, suspended in the ever-darkening air like starlight); and only the distant whistles and Tyrolean yodeling of Alberto, awakening in me, as well as the fear of being recognized, the anxiety once more to hear Micòl’s voice on the phone without delay, had, at a certain point, been able to dislodge me from the spot.

  But now, on the other hand—I disconsolately asked myself—what did it matter to me to go round to their house, now, when I would no longer find Micòl there?

  Yet the news my mother gave me as I left the small telephone cupboard, which was that just before noon Micòl Finzi-Contini had asked for me (“She asked me to tell you that she had to leave for Venice, to say goodbye, and to say that she’ll write,” my mother added, looking elsewhere), was enough to make me quickly change my mind. From that moment the time that separated me from five o’clock of the next day began to move with extraordinary slowness.

  • 3 •

  IT WAS from then that I began, you could say on a daily basis, to visit Alberto’s personal flat—he called it a studio—and it was a studio in fact, with the bedroom and bathroom adjoining it. It was from there, behind the door of that famous “chamber,” passing in the corridor alongside, that Micòl would hear resound the indistinct voices of her brother and his friend Malnate, and where, during the course of the whole winter, apart from the maids arriving with a tea trolley, I never caught sight of any other family member. Oh, that winter of 1938–9! I remember the long and motionless months which seemed to be suspended above time itself, and my feelings of desperation—in February it snowed, Micòl postponed her return from Venice—and even now, at a distance of more than twenty years, the four walls of Alberto Finzi-Contini’s studio still represent for me a kind
of vice, a drug as necessary as it was unconscious each day I went there . . .

  It wasn’t as though I was at all desperate that first December evening in which I once more rode by bike across the Barchetto del Duca. Micòl had left. And yet I pedalled along the entrance drive, in the mist and darkness, as if in a short while I was expecting once more to see her and only her. I was excited, light-hearted, almost happy. I looked ahead, with the front light planing over those sites that belonged to a past which, though it seemed remote, was still recuperable, was not yet lost. There was the grove of rattan palms, there, farther on, on the right the hazy shape of Perotti’s farmhouse, from one first-floor window of which leaked a faint yellowish glow, and there still farther in the distance was the ghostly scaffolding of the Panfilio bridge, and there, finally, heralded a fraction before by the screak of tyres on gravel, was the enormous hulk of the magna domus, impervious as a solitary rock, utterly dark except for a vivid white light that streamed from a little door on the ground floor, apparently left open to welcome me.

  I got off the bike, stopping to examine the deserted threshold. Within, part blacked out by the left-side door which was shut, I could see the steep staircase covered by a red carpet—a fiery, bloody, scarlet red. At every step there was a brass stair rod, glowing and glinting as though it was gold.

  Having leaned the bike against the wall, I bent down to secure the padlock. I was still bent there, in the dark, next to the door from which, besides the light, the hearty warmth from a radiator gushed forth—in the darkness I didn’t seem able to close the lock, so I’d just thought of lighting a match—when the unmistakable voice of Professor Ermanno sounded from somewhere very near.

  “What are you up to? Are you locking it?” asked the Professor as he stood on the threshold. “Not a bad idea, that. One never knows. You can never be too careful.”