Innocence

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ Maddalena asked.

  ‘He is beginning his doctoral research, or perhaps concluding it. Possibly he won’t be staying here so very long.’

  ‘Well, that makes seven,’ said Maddalena, ‘and you haven’t asked any of the Americans.’

  ‘They see me every day,’ said Pulci.

  Maddalena pointed out that there were only two women, and that except for Burton, or Murray, all the guests would be from the family, which might make him feel awkward. Pulci said that in that case he would ask Mimi Limentani.

  ‘What made you think of her? I shouldn’t have thought you saw her from one year’s end to another.’

  ‘She has been attending my lectures, the public course, and she came up to speak to me afterwards. When she went away I asked the secretary who she was, and I was told that she was a good woman, a kind woman who did kind things.’

  Maddalena couldn’t deny this, although she believed that the Professor was speaking at random and that his mind was already with his students in the seminar room overlooking the green expanse of the Giardino dei Semplici. Otherwise he could scarcely have thought that kindness was a qualification for a dinner guest.

  17

  On the evening of the dinner party, in the middle of that very wet April, there had been no rain for twenty-four hours, and the air glittered.

  The Villa Hodgkiss had been built on an acute slope on the east side of Bellosguardo, off the via S. Maria Marignolle. Although it had been commissioned to represent all that was new and uncompromising in post-war Italian reconstruction, the house still had a largish terrace tiled with glazed terracotta and looking out northwards towards Florence over one of the most stupendous and banal views on earth. ‘Like a postcard!’ cried Mimi Limentani, with great satisfaction. Young Burton, who had arrived punctually, nicely dressed and on the make, stood uneasily beside her. The river gleamed, the Duomo’s pale stripes were clearly distinct, the cypresses marched up the Arcetri hill.

  ‘Imagine having that outside your front window,’ she said. ‘Imagine having that to look at every time you want to empty the ashtrays.’

  Burton looked at her with dismay.

  ‘You must have seen it so often.’

  ‘Every day, but it’s not too much.’

  ‘Don’t go on about the view, Mimi,’ Maddalena called from inside the salon into the bright evening air. ‘Signor Murray is an art historian.’

  They were not alone on the terrace. A small boy and an even smaller girl were playing there. They had none of the furious imagination which would have made English children, confined in the same area, a menace. The girl in her pinafore, the boy in his school overall, circulated slowly on their miniature tricycles, counting the red and black squares of the tiles.

  ‘How many are there?’ asked Burton in Italian.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty-six.’

  ‘How many are there usually?’ He smiled, to show that a smile was expected.

  The little girl looked at him patiently.

  ‘There are always the same number.’

  ‘Angels!’ Mimi exclaimed. ‘Where do these angels come from?’

  Burton hoped he was not going to be put upon. He had the touchiness of those who are learning to put the great masters in their places. Once inside things went better. He was presented by Maddalena, this time under his right name, to a handsome, rather dangerous or defiant looking doctor and to the dottoressa, who seemed to be the Count’s daughter although she looked too young for that, but then the Ridolfi aunt herself looked as old as the hills. Somebody, it seemed, was still to come, but as time passed the Professor showed no anxiety. Nobody looked at their watches, perhaps they had none. The cook appeared, with her husband in a white jacket, offering Camparis. It turned out that the boy and girl on the terrace were the cook’s children, and she now took them away, carrying the two tricycles under her arms. ‘How nice to see someone from London,’ Chiara said to Burton. Her voice was so gentle, and yet so enthusiastic, that it made her remark sound sensible.

  ‘Do you know London well, Contessina?’

  ‘I don’t know it at all. I know Carlisle Gardens,’ she added.

  Burton turned slightly towards Dr Rossi.

  ‘Isn’t that near Harrods?’

  ‘How should I know?’ said Salvatore. ‘I’ve never been out of Italy.’

  He spoke Italian, and so, now, did Burton. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —’

  ‘Why should you think I have been to London?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about it at all. I suppose most people have to go at one time or another.’

  Burton felt the unfairness of being confronted by a man who was apparently even more ready to take offence than he was himself. But the doctor’s black glance changed to a smile, as difficult to resist as all the others in the room. ‘When I’m not on duty I don’t always think before I speak,’ said Salvatore. ‘It’s a fault, you must overlook it.’

  There was a telephone call, which the Ridolfi aunt took; Cesare would come within half an hour. There seemed no chance of anything stronger to drink, everything must be faced on a Campari. The Count approached Burton and asked him whether he thought the English concept of fair play had been extinguished by the war. ‘My point is this, that if the concept was exported, in one of its forms, to provide the basis of the American constitution, now that the Anglo-Saxon element is no longer the most important one in the United States it should be replaced by something else — let us say the Italian attitude, which I take to be unadulterated fatalism.’

  ‘I can’t quite picture it, sir,’ said Burton. ‘If a government was fatalistic I suppose it wouldn’t make any provision for the future.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said the Count. ‘Every situation would be regarded as a probable disaster.’

  Maddalena slightly separated them. ‘There aren’t enough women in this room,’ she remarked. ‘But even if there were, the men would find a way to talk to each other.’

  ‘That is not at all true,’ said Giancarlo. ‘If I had the opportunity I would talk to women all day. As it happens, just a moment ago Pulci and I were discussing camomile tea and the way it should be made.’

  Burton, seeing at last his chance to make some impression on the Professor, asked him who had designed the villa.

  ‘I don’t know who it was,’ said Pulci, ‘I must ask them at the Hodgkiss.’

  ‘Of course he had to meet the challenge of a steep site,’ Burton pursued. ‘But that’s true of any hill town.’

  Mimi asked him whether he wouldn’t like to come out on the terrace again, now that the lights were coming on. Maddalena thought that they should start dinner. Giancarlo detached the young Burton and quietly asked him for his help. ‘If I might take your arm for a moment.’ This was not, though it might have been, one of his affectations of old age. The Villa Hodgkiss was an exercise in split levels, or perhaps into how many levels a villa could be split. The areas of the living-room, some of them almost isolated and too small to accommodate more than a coffee-table, were connected by flights of polished stairs, and two of these flights apparently led nowhere at all, or rather to glass doors which were never opened. The Count treated all this as though it was a preliminary course in skiing, mildly availing himself of Burton’s help. Gently the guests descended, the three women on their high heels negotiating the steps like dancers. The dining area only came into view at the bottom, after a sharp turn. In its centre was placed, in fact fixed, a round table of pale green marble, with the shapes of twelve plates, twelve knives, twelve forks, let into the surface in darker green mosaic. On an evening such as this when only eight guests were dining, none of the real plates, knives or forks quite covered their green stone images. The Institute, presumably, had not liked to argue on this point with their architect, who had reserved the right to design all the furniture, much of it immovable. And there was no place at all indicated for the spoons, which looked like intruders.

  From long pra
ctice, one might say centuries of practice, these Florentines became convivial. Because Cesare was late, because the son-in-law was felt a little as a dangerous quantity, because the English visitor still looked aggrieved, they all exerted themselves to make things go, to pacify time and to flatter the long mild evening into hours without regret. English sentences turned into Italian and back again halfway through, so that Salvatore could have no feeling of disadvantage. Every topic was treated affectionately, but, as it were, on sufferance, so that if anyone should find it tedious even for a moment, it could be ushered politely out to wait for its next turn. The Count said nothing further about the English sense of fair play, but told one or two personal reminiscences. He was speaking of a philosophy which had been talked about for a short while in his youth, lorianismo, the doctrine that the further people lived above sea-level the stricter their morality became. Of course, such ideas could really only have been proved by experimentation. He told them about a woman he had known in Navarre, and another in Toluca, at 3000 metres, and another, he said, in Scotland. Mimi, who seemed to go everywhere, had never been to Scotland. ‘You must come with me,’ said Professor Pulci, with sudden gallantry. ‘It will do you good, you will never be ill again. In Scotland no-one is allowed to eat anything after six o’clock, that’s why the health benefits.’ Chiara asked Burton whether this was true, then saw that he was confused, not liking to contradict the Professor at this stage, and said that she herself had only been there once and felt she didn’t know any country properly, not even her own. She asked Burton whether he’d ever been to Painstake, in Norfolk. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think there’s anything there, is there?’ He meant that there were no pictures or collectable objects of any importance. The noble turnips, the cabbages, the thousands of acres, the woods where Barney had suffered, went for nothing, Chiara could see. But his nervousness was disappearing, and he smiled back at her without guile. Maddalena was speaking now of the old couturier Parenti, who was said to be very ill. He was being nursed at home, and had sent a message asking whether it would be possible to see her. Several years ago, he wrote, he had had a difference of opinion with the Contessa. ‘He wants to die forgiving and forgiven!’ cried Mimi, her eyes full of tears.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Maddalena. ‘He wants the pleasure of a last disagreement.’

  By ill-chance, the ill-chance of being too much welcomed and too much reassured, Burton, hearing the conversation glide by, mentioned that by the end of the week he would be homeless. His pensione needed his room for another booking. ‘They’re making out that they need my room,’ he repeated. His intention of being asked to stay at the Villa Hodgkiss was quite clear, and lay there as though designed to trip someone up. Professor Pulci perhaps did not notice it. Giancarlo and he, like old lovers, were smiling together over an unfinished anecdote. Certainly, he didn’t take up the suggestion. Burton made things worse by adding, ‘Of course, I should be out all day.’ Chiara could not let this pass and said in distress, ‘Well, but you mustn’t worry about that. There are so many places where you could go. We could put you up’ (what a strange phrase that was, she left it in English because there was no Italian equivalent) ‘we could put you up, you must stay with us.’

  ‘No,’ said Salvatore, ‘no-one can stay with us.’

  Chiara gave a troubled smile. The doctor, without explanation, shouted ‘No-one.’ Perhaps he was not quite sane. Burton thought now that he remembered something about one of the family being strange in some way. Providentially there were sounds outside, the sounds of arrival at a luxury villa — the electric alarm rang from the outer gate, a buzzer answered from the kitchen, the Alsatian barked, the cook’s children called out in treble voices and Cesare came in. Everyone rose or half-rose from the table except Salvatore and Chiara. Burton took the opportunity to say ‘Please don’t think. I’m very sorry if. I’m sure I’ll be able.’ But Rossi and his wife were still talking, bent towards each other across the table, and Chiara was crying out.

  ‘What do you mean? I’d live with you anywhere! I’d sleep with you on straw in a cowhouse!’

  Cesare came down the split levels without any apology, as he had made one already on the telephone. He said good evening to everyone present and sat down. ‘It’s good of you to invite me, Professor,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been here before, I’ve often wondered what it was like inside. How can you bear this table?’

  ‘I cannot,’ said the Professor. ‘I shall advise the Hodgkiss to send artisans to chip it away.’

  The soup came in again for Cesare with a flourish, he had created a diversion, but not enough it seemed, and Chiara, oblivious of time and place, was crying out:

  ‘Everyone knows how generous you are!’

  ‘Why have you been talking about me?’ asked Salvatore loudly. ‘Why do you need to discuss me? Who said I was generous?’

  ‘Everyone knows it. I’m only saying what everyone knows. At the S. Agostino if anyone gets into any kind of trouble they go to you. When the nuns come round with the collecting box they’re told to try Dr Rossi.’

  ‘They’re lying about me.’ Salvatore could be seen wildly searching his memory for some evidence of meanness. ‘Who have I helped? When have I ever helped a living soul?’

  ‘People want to come to us, they want to see you.’

  ‘Tell them I’m not an exhibition. There are other things to see in Florence. Or tell them that if they want to come to us there will be a charge, a small charge to see the unpleasant Dr Rossi.’

  Both of them got to their feet, acting, surprisingly, in complete harmony, and both pushing their plates which slid hissing over the marble towards each other. Then they both walked up the steps. It was like a sudden accident, an irreversible spilling of grease, ink, or blood when the surface which only moments ago was so clear, so serviceable, now stares back, ruined. Giancarlo turned to the professor, who, as host, had risen once again, this time dislodging his pale green dinner napkin and half disappearing under the table to retrieve it. ‘My dear Pulci, it must have seemed very important to them to say these things.’

  ‘They’re so young!’ Mimi cried.

  ‘How young is Rossi?’ asked Cesare, beginning on his soup.

  ‘They’ll come back,’ said the professor. ‘They’ll finish the discussion outside the house, then they’ll come back.’

  This was not so, and a car was heard driving away. The Count looked round him and saw that the young guest from England, who had looked so disheartened, wasn’t so any more. Probably, and indeed understandably, he was composing the whole incident into an amusing story to be told later, so that for him the evening would not have been wasted.

  The guard dog barked again, the buzzer sounded. Chiara had come back, having refused to go with her husband in the car. Now she had no money for her bus-fare down to Porto Romano. It was the bus-fare she wanted, not a lift, not a taxi. She stood at the top level, with a certain dignity, as though she had made it impossible for herself to come any further. With the exception of Cesare, who still had his soup to think about, everyone searched for small change, no-one had any. In the end a book of bus tickets had to be borrowed from the cook.

  18

  True to their own system of misunderstanding, Chiara and Salvatore said nothing about the dinner party. Chiara, when she arrived back, remembered that she hadn’t a latchkey or the special second key, recommended by the agent, which had to be turned once to the left and twice to the right. But the door of the flat had been left so that it opened at a push. Salvatore was lying stiff as a block of wood in the wooden bed. As she took her things off she saw and tasted the noisome darkness into which they were heading of their own free will, and she also saw that quarrelling becomes much easier with practice, easier every time. Professor Pulci, who had always shown her so much patience, would scarcely have believed that she would grow up into what she was now. Salvatore turned over and put his arms round her and she felt as though her mind had been crushed and now the blood was
running back into it, blood from wood. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said. But as soon as she was alone she conducted an interrogation with herself. She couldn’t believe that she was supposed to be ashamed of the two rooms, the shower and the cucinetta. She usually met her friends somewhere in the centre because the flat was far out, but it had been her intention to ask everyone in turn, everyone who didn’t live in Florence, to come and visit them. She had made a list, if she could remember where she’d put it. It was more difficult to keep tidy in a small place than a large one, but Salvatore had never minded about that. Usually when he came back from the hospital he would put everything into its right place, the clothes in particular, but quietly, without comment, as though it was something he expected to do. It wasn’t possible that he could lose control of himself because of a chance invitation to via Emilio Münz, 261.

  Chiara, as it happened, was right. After he had said ‘No’ the first time, Salvatore had been redeemable, but between that and ‘no-one can stay with us’ he had been maddened and totally overcome by an enormity which struck him as he looked round the dinner-table, that was that the whole company, the whole boiling of them, had jumped to the conclusion that he, as a man from Mazzata, was jealous of this Murray, or Burton, apparently some student of Pulci’s, because without a word to him Chiara had begged him to stay with them in their home. The Englishman himself had believed it, first stammering idiotically in his High School Italian, then smiling to himself like a sated lizard. Immediately Salvatore decided to allow them to indulge themselves. I am a guest in this house, he thought, on no account let me spoil the entertainment. ‘No,’ he repeated. ‘No-one can stay with us.’