This time he came over to her as soon as he saw her, with a handshake that immediately reestablished their spiritual intimacy, and he stood by her side, behind the crocheted curtain, with his right hand in the front opening of his waistcoat, talking to her constantly about himself, his tastes, his preferences, the few things he warmly admired, his ambitions, which reached the sky.
Every now and again, whenever he thought the girl was bowing her weary head beneath all this relentless egoism, he would drop her a compliment, as a coachman cracks the whip going uphill. However, the young girl bowed her head in emotional turmoil, her heart wide open to the confidences that avidly sought her sympathy. While, swept along by his own enthusiasm, stirred by his own rhetoric, he let himself get carried away, began to unburden himself, going so far as to mention his little problems: a father who opposed him in his aspirations, in the natural bent of his genius … In two years at university he had learned nothing. All he had done was to write verses on the desks in the Faculty of Civil Law.
‘A real parricide!’ Carolina remarked with a smile.
For the first time he blessed her with a look of ineffable tenderness.
‘Carolina! Carolina!’ her brother called. And he said quietly in her ear, ‘Can’t you see, everyone’s looking at you; you’re with him all the time. Who is he?’
And indeed, glimpses of ill-dissembled smiles were to be seen here and there, behind fans and among the groups of young girls. But Carolina proudly introduced him to her brother.
‘Signor Angelo Monaco, distinguished poet, and author of Love and Death.’
‘I know that you too are a distinguished man of letters!’ said Monaco, regally proffering his hand.
The novelist ‘requested the honour’ of reading the manuscript of his novel in the schoolmaster’s house, ‘in order to get an informed and honest opinion’. One evening after school, they sat him at the little table with the embroidered tablecloth, with two lighted candles in front of him, like a conjuror; Don Peppino with his head in his hands, completely intent on the prospect of organizing a reading of his own verses, which he felt flourishing once more inside him, envious of this occasion; his sister already emotionally affected by the solemnity of their preparations, the closed door, the children’s seats all lined up in a row, as though for a large invisible audience.
The manuscript was substantial, about half a ream of handmade paper, enclosed in a moroccan leather folder with the title in gold on the cover, and tied with ribbons of the Italian Nationalists’ colours. The author read with conviction, reinforcing every word with gestures, with the expression of his voice, and with occasional glances that sought admiration on the face of an extremely pallid Carolina, and the impenetrable face, behind the palms of his hands, of her brother. He was enlivened by his own words, like a Barbary horse by the rattle of clappers attached to its tail; without a moment’s weariness, almost without needing to turn the page. The pages swiftly succeeded one another, with a rustling like that of dry autumn leaves, in the deep silence of the night. All noises from the street had ceased, one by one. The moon appeared in the window, high in the sky.
There was a point at which the despairing hero of the novel forced his way through a bevy of liveried servants keeping him at bay in an antechamber, in order to die by his own hand in the boudoir of his beloved, just returned from the ball, still swathed in lace and ribbons. He assailed her with fiery words, wanting to offer this implacable goddess the sacrifice of his blood, his senses, his infinite love, there at the foot of that very altar, on the Persian rug before that unsullied bed. And in the triumphant glance which punctuated this, the author saw with cruel joy that she who listened was softly weeping, with her hand before her eyes.
He took that hand, and held it to his lips for a long time, making the most of his triumph.
‘Forgive me,’ he then murmured.
She gently shook her head, and replied in a faint voice, ‘No! I’m so happy!’
The moon at the window quietly kissed the wall opposite. At the sudden silence, the schoolmaster roused himself.
Angelo Monaco took to frequenting the schoolmaster’s house, attracted by the sympathy he found there, flattered by that fervid admiration, that deep and timid love for which his vanity expressed gratitude by sometimes feigning a reciprocation of that same sentiment. Carolina waited, happy, full of new vitality amid her usual modest pursuits; overtaken by sudden quickenings of her heartbeat, by inexplicable emotion, over nothing, on account of a few ordinary things that had previously not meant anything special to her; rejoicing in a look, a smile, a word, a handshake, from him; all atremble at the time of day when he usually appeared; overwhelmed with inexplicable tenderness at the sight of moonlight on the window, when the moon was full, and at the sound of the bell ringing for the angelus, of the barrel organ passing, of her brother’s voice uttering his name; perturbed by an unaccustomed sense of embarrassment and by a new warmth towards him. He too seemed different to her. For some time he had been treating her with affectionate and almost sorrowful gentleness, with discreet and compassionate reticence. Finally, one day, just as he was about to leave with the children, with his hat on his head and a nosegay in his hand, he drew her aside, behind the red curtain.
‘You know, Carolina … He’s going to be married … No! listen! Be brave! Be brave! Look, I’ve got the children with me … Forgive me for upsetting you … I had to tell you … I’m your brother, your Peppino …’
She staggered out into the big room, as if she were suffocating, and after a moment stammered, ‘How do you know? Who told you?’
‘Masino, that little boy, the bar-keeper’s son. Today, we happened to run into him. The boy saw me greet him and told me that he was going to marry his sister.’
‘Go, go,’ said the poor girl, pushing him away with trembling hands, ‘the children are waiting.’
That was all. She never said another word, no complaint ever passed her lips. The last time he saw her, Angelo found her so afflicted, so wrapped up in her sorrow, that he guessed the reason. Moved by the tone of his own voice, he said goodbye to her at the courtyard door, gazing up that patch of sky with a genuine tear in his eyes. The next day he wrote her an impassioned letter, full of love and despair in every line, the first letter in which he ever spoke to her of love, to tell her that his was doomed and must be sacrificed on the altar of filial obedience. ‘Be happy! Be happy! Near or far, in life and death!’ It was the only love letter she ever received, and she kept it jealously among the dried flowers he had given her, and the faded ribbons she was wearing the day they first met.
Then, wearied, she focused her youthful hopes on her brother; rebuilding for him the castles in the air that had been the setting for the ardent dreams of her cloistered life; reliving, in a different guise, the same fervid fantasies she had retained from all that fanciful reading that had consumed her youth behind the school partition wall, like the geranium, which had died, after ten years’ languishing in the sunless courtyard. Once it was a rose that she came upon in the penholder on the desk, which shed its petals without her daring to touch it, and left her feeling miserable as the petals fell into the dust. Another time a perfumed note, glimpsed on the tablemat on the desk, and which mysteriously vanished almost at once, kept her puzzled, and vexed, for a month, while it remained, with its faint scent, locked in the drawer, until her eyes happened to light on it among the waste paper thrown out in the courtyard – the same gilt crown at the top of the scented page, the same elegant hand in which a mother apologized for some shortcoming or other of her son.
One day at last the fairytale seemed about to come true, when a splendid blonde woman turned up in an elegant carriage to collect her pale little boy, filling the whole school with the rustle of her gown, the scent of her handkerchief, the melodious sound of her bright and cheerful voice, like a ray of sunshine that dazzled both master and pupils. For many days afterwards, the poor old maid, hidden behind the partition curtain, awaited the beautiful
seductress, with pounding heart, agitated to the core, and as though ravished by a delicious secret, a strange disquiet, in which a new tenderness for her brother mingled with a vague sense of jealousy, contentment, and a secret pride.
There were bashful silences, circumspect reticence, mutual feelings of embarrassment, over a hint, a word, a distant allusion dropped in the course of conversation, while they sat at the table, on either side of the folded-back tablemat, as they daily rehearsed the same empty and meaningless exchanges as on the previous day, repeating in low voices, with a certain shamefaced timidity, the same boring phrases that epitomized their colourless and monotonous existence.
He bowed his head, flushing, as though taken by surprise; and with a shrug of his shoulders he would swear she was mistaken, while inwardly rejoicing, with a little smile of vanity quivering on his lips. Sometimes, in a sudden burst of grateful affection, he would place his right hand on her head, with that same discreet little smile that seemed to say, ‘Don’t worry, silly!’
However, in her instinctive moral rectitude, the old maid felt, with growing aversion, a distressing anxiety about whatever was surely dubious or perilous in this clandestine romance. Then she went rushing off to throw herself at the feet of her confessor, in the new religious fervour in which she had found refuge after experiencing the greatest sorrow of her youth, a broken heart and the abandonment of every worldly illusion. And she asked forgiveness for the sweet offence she had not committed, and did penance for the imaginary sin that had entered her home. And still inspired with that same fervour, she found the courage to exhort her brother, with veiled allusions, discreet insinuations, an effusion of timid and almost maternal tenderness, to return to the straight and narrow.
‘Peppino!’ she said at last. ‘You must do something for my sake. You must make up your mind to take a wife.’
He raised his head, surprised at first, and then flattered by this suggestion that made him feel twenty years younger, protesting with the ingenuous enthusiasm of his earliest youth that ‘matrimony was the tomb of love’, only seeking further persuasion.
‘Mark my words, Peppino! If you leave it too late, you’ll be sorry!’
He continued to shake his head, inwardly flattered to be able for the first time to refuse, without noticing the sorrowful expression in the poor old maid’s voice.
‘No, why should I tie myself down? Don’t worry. I’m too fond of my freedom!’
She felt a strange sense of sympathy, commiseration, and enmity towards the pale and thin little boy that the blonde lady came to fetch, and whom she supposed to be an innocent accomplice to their affair. Hidden behind the curtain, she kept a close watch on him from afar, as if, in his clear childish features, he brought to school a reflection of his mother’s alluring charms, worrying if the youngster was sometimes absent, spinning an entire family saga out of the least of the unwitting boy’s actions. She would call him over, when she could do so privately, caress him, question him, offer him some trifling little gift, at once attracted and repelled by his childish winsomeness.
One day the little boy, looking very happy, said to her, ‘After the holidays, I’m not coming back to school any more.’
Stammering, she asked him why.
‘Mama says that I’m a big boy now. I’m going to college.’
So that romance too came to an end. She felt almost a great relief, but at the same time a misgiving, a bitter disappointment, sensing that even her last hopes, which she had invested in her brother, were now dashed.
The illness that had been lurking within her for years finally confined her to bed. Thereafter, the poor schoolmaster never had any time to himself; always busy, even in those brief moments of freedom the school allowed him, sweeping, lighting the fire, making the beds, running to the doctor and the chemist, with his whiskers undyed, his shoes muddy, his face ever more wrinkled. His neighbours, feeling sorry for him, would take it in turns to come and lend a hand: Donna Mena, the haberdasher’s widow, in all her gold jewellery, as if she were going to a wedding; and Agatina, the carpenter’s daughter, with her quick hands, and invariable good humour, who filled the poor cheerless house with her youthful gaiety. And the old bachelor was thrown into complete turmoil by having these women about the house; as if restored to youth, tempted, even in the midst of his troubles, by subtle twinges in his heart and blood, which then tormented him in the hours of darkness, like pricks of remorse.
‘Better, better. She’s been sleeping.’
The poor fellow, overjoyed on receiving this good news at the threshold, seized her hand, and kissed it.
‘Oh, Donna Mena! Thank goodness!’
She signalled to him to keep quiet, and led him on tiptoe to see the patient, who lay asleep with a sweet expression on her face, on which the shadows of death were already encroaching. And as if the sweetness of that moment of reprieve had transmitted itself to him, exhausted by the anxiety he had been dragging round, along with children, from one side of town to the other, he collapsed into the chair behind the curtain, without letting go of Donna Mena’s hand, who gently withdrew it. The room was already dark, with a mysterious, sad sense of intimacy.
Suddenly his sister, waking up, called out to him, almost as if she sensed he was there; and for the first time, as he lit the lamp, he felt embarrassed in front of her, standing beside another woman.
It was a terrible bout; her first battle with death, which had its prey already in its clutches. The invalid, having regained consciousness, gazed at the light, the walls, her brother’s face with astonished eyes, in which it seemed the vision of arcane terrors still lingered, and she caressed him with her smile, the murmur of her voice, her trembling hand, in a resurgence of unutterable affection, which clung to him as though to life itself.
And when they were alone, she said to him with that peculiar tone of voice and expression in her eyes, ‘Not her! Not her, Peppino!’
Round about August, she seemed to be getting better. The sunshine reached her bed, from the door on to the courtyard, and in the evening all the sounds of the neighbourhood entered the room to keep them company, the chattering of women, the squeaking of pulleys in the wells nearby, someone singing the latest song, the tuning of the guitar with which the barber opposite killed time while waiting for a customer. The carpenter’s daughter called by, with a flower in her hair, and a cheerful smile imbued with youth, health and a taste of spring.
‘No, no, don’t leave yet! Look how happy my poor sister is, when you’re here!’
‘It’s getting late, sir. I’ve been here an hour.’
‘No, it’s not late. Your family know that you’re here. Why not say you have friends waiting outside?’
‘No, no.’
‘Or your lover, eh? This must be the time he usually goes by, with a cigar in his mouth …’
‘Oh … what on earth are you talking about, sir?’
‘Yes, yes, a pretty young girl like you … it’s only natural. Who wouldn’t fall in love at the sight of those eyes … and that smile … and that mischievous little face.’
‘What idea’s got into your head now?’
And one day, in the moonlit doorway, he even ventured to say to her, ‘Ah, if only I were the one!’
‘You, sir! What ever do you mean?’
He felt choked with emotion, while the girl, out of respect, dared not withdraw the hand that he had grasped. And a flood of disconnected phrases spilled out of him: ‘Love that levels all … poetry which is the perfume of the soul … the wealth of affection stored in timid hearts … the divine pleasure of seeking out the thoughts and face of one’s beloved by the light of the moon, at a prearranged time.’
With big wide-open eyes, the girl stared at him almost in fear, completely pale in the moonlight.
‘I shall never forget these moments you’ve granted me, Agata. Or that name! Never! Separated, far apart … but we shall remember … both of us …’
‘Let me go, let me go. Good night.’
&nb
sp; The invalid, propped up on a pile of pillows, chatted quietly with her brother, who sat at her bedside, with his hat still on his head and his cane between his legs. She seemed to have something important to say to him, judging by the sudden silences that choked the words in her mouth, by the lingering glances she rested on him, the flushes that briefly reddened the pallor of her drawn face. Finally, with her head bowed, she said to him, ‘Why don’t you think of settling down?’
‘No, no!’ he replied, shaking his head.
‘Yes, before it’s too late. You should think about it while you’re still young … Otherwise, how will you manage when you’re old … and on your own?’
Feeling himself on the verge of tears, her brother brought this discussion to an abrupt conclusion, by saying, ‘Now is not the time to talk about this!’
Nevertheless, she often returned to the same subject. ‘If you were to find yourself a pretty, well-educated young girl, from a good family, she’d be just right for you.’
And one evening when she was feeling worse, she started talking about it again, in an anxious prattle symptomatic of her condition.
‘No, let me have my say, now that I have a bit of strength. I can’t let you sacrifice yourself to keep me company … your entire youth … You could do with a good dowry. And if you were to leave the school, so much the better. We’ll all live together, under one roof. I only need a small room, as long as it’s very airy. I’d like one overlooking the garden. I’ve no use for the street any more. I’ve always wanted to see the sky from my bed … and the greenness of trees … if we had a window where the curtain is now, for example, a window that looked out on the countryside …’
Pouring rain could be heard in the courtyard, the kind of rain that heralds autumn, and the resonating sound of the milk pan, left outside, under the gutter. A cat, out in the storm, howled incessantly, in a voice that sounded human.
Sparrow (and other stories) Page 13