Now who did Gueli see looking down from the Palatine ruins in their long flapping white togas to greet all these ephemeral literati banqueting in the glassed-in hall of the Castello di Costantino? Gueli who felt fate’s cruel mockery of Rome, mitered by the popes with tiara and cross, crowned with a Piedmontese crown by the diverse peoples of Italy.
Perhaps he saw many senators there advising Romualdo Borghi, their venerable colleague, not to let himself be too overcome by temptation, and to eat only meat for the sake of his country’s literature, since he had been diabetic for many years. And next … next all of Rome’s poets and prose writers: the playwrights, lyricists, historians, writers of epics and short stories. All of them? Not all. Not Virgil, in fact, or Tacitus; Plautus and Catullus and Horace, yes; Lucretius, no. Propertius, yes. And certainly the one who more than all the others made signs of wanting to participate in that banquet, not because he supposed it worth his while, but to make fun of it, as he had already done with a famous supper in Cuma.1
Maurizio Gueli wiped his lips with his napkin to conceal a smile. Oh, if only he could stand up and say to that table: “Ladies and gentlemen, please make way for Petronius Arbiter who wants to come in.”
Silvia Roncella, in the meanwhile, in order not to feel the embarrassment of so many eyes fixed on her, had turned her gaze and thoughts to the green fields in the distance, to the blades of grass growing there, to the leaves shining there, and to the birds for whom the happy season was beginning, to the lizards dozing in the first warmth of the sun, to the black rows of ants that she had stopped to watch so many times, absorbed. That humble, tenuous, transient life, without a shadow of ambition, always had the power to move her by its vulnerability. It takes so little for a bird to die. A farmhand passes and tramples those blades of grass with his hobnailed boots, tramples a multitude of ants. To pick out one ant from the many and follow it for a bit, becoming one with such a small creature amid the coming and going of the others. To pick out one blade of grass from many and tremble with it at every slight breeze. Then to look away, and afterward to search again for that blade of grass, that small ant among the many: to be unable to find either one again, losing a part of one’s soul there with them, forever.
A sudden silence interrupted Silvia Roncella’s daydream. Beside her, Romualdo Borghi had stood up. She looked at her husband who made a sign for her to rise immediately. She stood, perturbed, with her eyes lowered. But what was happening over there, in the corner where her husband was sitting?
Giustino Boggiolo also wanted to get to his feet, and Dora Barmis ineffectively tugged at the tails of his evening coat. “Get down! Stay seated! What do you have to do with this? Sit down.”
Nothing doing! Stiffly upright, Giustino Boggiolo in tails wanted to be toasted also by Borghi, as the husband. And there was no way to make him sit down.
“Kind ladies, my dear gentlemen!” Borghi began, chin on chest, brow contracted, eyes closed.
(“Silence! He’s talking to himself,” Casimiro whispered.)
“It is a beautiful and memorable occasion for us to be able to welcome this fine young woman on the threshold of a new life, already on her way to glory.“
“Very good,” exclaimed two or three.
Eyes shining, Giustino Boggiolo looked around and noticed with pleasure that three of the journalists were taking notes. Then he looked at Raceni to ask him if he had given Borghi the title of Silvia’s play written on the paper he handed him before sitting at the table. But Raceni was absorbed in listening to the toast and didn’t turn around. Giustino Boggiolo began to fret inwardly.
“What will Rome say,” Borghi went on, raising his head and trying to open his eyes, “what will Rome say, the immortal soul of Rome, to the soul of this young woman? It seems, oh, ladies and gentlemen, that the greatness of Rome loves the severe majesty of History more than the imaginative caprices of art. In the “First Decade of Livy,” oh, ladies and gentlemen, is Rome’s epic. Its tragedy is in the “Annals of Tacitus.” (Good! Bravo! Bravissimo!)
Giustino Boggiolo bowed, with his eyes fixed on Raceni, who still had not turned. Signora Barmis tugged at his tails.
“History is Rome’s voice, and this voice overwhelms any individual voice… .”
Oh, now Raceni was turning, nodding his head in approval. Giustino Boggiolo made a sign to him with his eyes starting out of his head from the intense effort to attract his attention.
“But, on the other hand, oh, ladies and gentlemen, “Julius Caesar”? “Coriolanus”? “Antony and Cleopatra”? The great Roman plays of Shakespeare …”
“That piece of paper I gave you.” Giustino Boggiolo’s fingers spoke, opening and closing in a frenzy, since Raceni still did not understand and was looking at him as though dumbfounded.
Applause broke out and Giustino Boggiolo bowed mechanically.
“Excuse me, are you Shakespeare?” Dora Barmis asked him under her breath.
“Me? No. What does Shakespeare have to do with it?”
“We don’t know, either,” Casimiro Luna said to him. “But sit down, sit down. Heaven only knows how long this magnificent toast will go on!”
“… for all the vicissitudes, oh, ladies and gentlemen, of an infinite evolution! (Good! Bravo! Benissimo!) Now the turmoil of the new life needs a new voice, a voice that …”
Finally! Raceni understood; he searched his vest pockets. Yes, here it is, the piece of paper. “This?” “Yes, yes.” “But, why now? To whom?” “To Borghi!” “How?” “You forgot. Too late now.” But never mind, Boggiolo should relax; he would give the title to the journalists … afterward, yes afterward …
All this discourse took place in a flurry of gestures from one end of the table to the other.
A new burst of applause. Borghi turned to touch his glass to Silvia Roncella’s. The toast was over, to the great relief of everyone. The dinner guests rose, each with a glass in hand and hurried over to the guest of honor.
“I’ll toast with you… . It’s the same thing!” Dora Barmis said to Giustino Boggiolo.
“Sì, Signora, thank you!” he replied, giddy with irritation. “Good heavens, everything’s ruined!”
“Did I do something?” asked Signora Barmis.
“No, Signora. Raceni… I gave him the title of the thing … the play and … and … and nothing. He stuck it in his pocket and forgot all about it! You just don’t do these things! The senator, so kind … Uh, excuse me, Signora, the journalists over there are calling me… . Thank you, Raceni! The play’s title? You are Signor Mola, aren’t you? Yes, of the Capitale, I know. Thank you, a great pleasure … Her husband, yes, sir. In four acts, the play. The title? The New Colony. You’re Centanni? A great pleasure. Her husband, yes, sir. The New Colony, certainly, in four acts … It’s already been translated into French, you know? Desroches translated it, yes, sir. You are Federici? A great pleasure. Her husband, yes, sir. In fact, look, if you would be kind enough to add that …”
“Boggiolo! Boggiolo!” Raceni came running.
“What is it?”
“Come … Your wife is feeling a little under the weather again. Better to leave, you know!”
“Ah,” Boggiolo said sadly to the journalists, raising his eyebrows and throwing his arms wide. In this way he let it be known what kind of illness his little wife had and off he went.
“You’re a scoundrel!” Dora Barmis said to him shortly afterward, frowning, and giving his arms a squeeze. “She needs quiet, understand? Quiet! Now go! Go! But don’t forget to come see me soon. Then I’ll give you a good scolding, you rascal!”
And she threatened him with her hand while he, bowing and smiling at everyone, red, confused, happy, left the terrace with his wife and Raceni.
1 A reference to Trimalchius’s banquet in Petronius’s Satyricon.
A reference to Trimalchius’s banquet in Petronius’s Satyricon.
2 SCHOOL FOR GREATNESS
1
The furniture in the small study was–if not sho
ddy, certainly very nondescript, bought haphazardly on the installment plan. Yet the room was furnished with a brand new rug and two new curtains at the door that gave the impression no one was in there.
But he was there, Ippolito Onorio Roncella: there, still as the curtains, as that little table in front of the ugly divan, still as the two squat bookcases and the three overstuffed chairs. With sleepy eyes he looked at these objects and thought that he, too, might just as well be made of wood. Really. And just as worm-infested. He sat at the small desk with his back to the single square little window that was rather unnecessarily covered by a thin curtain, since it overlooked the courtyard from which little light entered anyway.
At a certain point it seemed like the whole study shook. Nothing to be concerned about. Ippolito Onorio Roncella had moved.
In order not to disturb his full, very beautiful gray and curly beard that he washed, combed, sprayed with cologne in the grooming he gave it each morning, patting it with his curved palm, he had flipped the ribbon on his military bersagliere’s hat (which he never removed) onto his chest with a movement of his head and began to slowly stroke it. Just like a baby stroking his mother’s breast, so he, smoking, needed to stroke something, and not wanting to touch his beard, stroked the ribbon on his bersagliere’s hat instead.
In the quiet gray morning gloom, in the grave silence that was like time’s grim shadow, Ippolito Onorio Roncella felt the life of everything near and far almost suspended in the stillness of dismal, somber, and resigned anticipation. And it seemed to him that this silence, a shadow of time, crossed the boundaries of the present and slowly sank into the past, into the history of Rome, into the remote history of men who had worked and struggled so hard, always with the hope of achieving something, and what was the result? It was this: to be able to consider as he did–when all was said and done–that this quiet stroking of the ribbon of his bersagliere’s hat was equal to any other endeavor highly esteemed by humanity.
“What are you doing?” The damned old parrot from the silence of the courtyard screeched the question from time to time in a hoarse voice and grating tone: the parrot of Signora Ely Faciolli, who lived next door.
“What are you doing?” that wise old signora would ask the stupid bird hourly.
“What are you doing?” the parrot would reply each time. Then, on its own, it seemed to repeat the question all day long to the inhabitants of the apartment building.
Each one responded in his own way, with a snort, depending on the kind or difficulty of his own activity. Everyone with little courtesy. Most impolite of all was Ippolito Onorio Roncella, who had nothing more to do after three years of enforced retirement because–without the slightest intention to offend (he could swear to it)–he had told off his superior.
For more than fifty years he had worked with his head. Fine head, his. Full of thoughts, one more delightful than the other. Now that was all over. Now he devoted himself exclusively to nature’s three kingdoms, represented by his hair and beard (vegetable), by his teeth (mineral), and by all the other parts of his old carcass (animal). The latter and the mineral kingdoms were somewhat ravaged by age; however, the vegetable kingdom still gave him great satisfaction. For that reason he, who had always done everything with care and wanted it to appear so, would point to his beard and gravely reply, “Gardening,” when anyone asked him–like that parrot: “Signor Ippolito, what are you doing?”
He knew he had a bitter inner enemy: a rebellious rascal who couldn’t keep from spitting the truth in everyone’s face as a wild watermelon squirts its purgative juice. Not to offend, of course, but to put things in order.
“You’re an ass. I’ve got your number. Don’t speak about it again.”
“This is stupid. I’ve got your number. Don’t speak about it again.”
That enemy inside him loved things to be dispatched in short order. A put-down and that was that. Thank goodness that for some time he had managed to lull it to sleep a little with poison, smoking that long-stemmed pipe from morning to night while stroking the ribbon on his bersagliere’s hat. From time to time, however, terrible coughing fits warned him that his enemy was rebelling against the poisoning. Then Signor Ippolito, choking, purple in the face, eyes popping, would pound his fists, kick his feet, twist and turn, struggling madly to conquer, to tame, the rebel. In vain the doctor told him that his psyche had nothing to do with it, but that the cough came from his poisoned bronchi, and that he should quit smoking or not smoke so much if he didn’t want to get something worse.
“My dear sir,” Signor Ippolito had replied, “consider my scales! On one side all the weight of old age. On the other I have only my pipe. If I take that away there’s nothing to balance the scales. What’s left? What can I do if I don’t smoke?”
And so he continued to smoke.
Dismissed from a job unworthy of him at the local school office for that explicit and impartial judgment he made of his boss, he hadn’t returned to his home town Taranto, where, after his brother’s death, he had no living relatives. Instead, he had stayed on in Rome with his small pension to help his niece, Silvia Roncella, who had come to Rome about three months ago with her husband. But he already regretted it. And how!
He especially couldn’t stand that new nephew of his, Giustino Boggiolo. For many reasons, but most of all because he was oppressive. Like sultry weather. What is sultriness? Lowlying stagnation, a dull light. Well, then. His new nephew toiled slowly when it came to making light, the most vexing light in the biosphere: he talked too much, he explained the most obvious and most mundane things, as if only he could see them and that without his illumination others wouldn’t be able to see them. What a strain, how exhausting to hear him talk! Signor Ippolito at first would huff and puff softly two and three times in order not to offend him. Finally, when he couldn’t take it anymore, he would snort loudly and even clap his hands to extinguish all that useless light and make the air fresh and breathable.
As for Silvia, he knew that from the time she was a child she had this little vice of scribbling; and that she had published four or five books and maybe more, but he really never expected that she would come to literary Rome already famous. And just the day before some other crazy scribblers like her had even given her a banquet. Nevertheless, Silvia was not basically bad. No. In fact, the poor thing didn’t seem at all like someone sick in the head. She had, she really had a kind of talent, that little woman. And in many ways the two of them were alike. Naturally! The same blood … the same Roncella way of thinking.
Signor Ippolito closed his eyes and nodded his head, very slowly, so as to not disturb his beard.
He had made a special study of that infernal machine, a kind of filtered pump that put the brain in communication with the heart and drew ideas from feelings, or, as he said, drew out the concentrated extract, the sublimated corrosive of logical deductions.
Famous pumpers and filterers, the Roncella family. All of them, from time immemorial!
But no one up to now, to tell the truth, had thought of setting himself up in the poison business professionally like that girl now seemed to want to do, that blessed child, Silvia.
Signor Ippolito couldn’t stand women who wore glasses, walked like soldiers, were employed as postal workers, telegraph and telephone workers, or who aspired to electoral offices. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Next they’ll want to be senators and even army officers.
He would have liked Giustino to keep his wife from writing, or if he couldn’t stop her (because Silvia really didn’t seem the type to let herself be imposed on by her husband), at least not encourage her, for heaven’s sake! Encourage her? More than encourage her. He was by her side from morning to night, prodding her, urging her, stimulating that damned obsession in every way. Instead of asking her if she had straightened up the house, had supervised the maid’s cleaning or cooking, or even if she had had a nice walk at the Villa Borghese, he would ask her if and what she had written during the day while he was at the office,
how many pages, how many lines, how many words… . Really! Because he even counted the words that his wife had scrawled, as if he had to send them off by telegraph. And look there: he had bought a secondhand typewriter, and every evening after dinner until midnight or one o’clock, he played on that little piano in order to have ready, retyped, the material–as he called it–to send to the newspapers, magazines, editors, translators with whom he was in active correspondence. And there was the shelf with cubbyholes for scripts, copies of letters…. Bookkeeper to the nth degree, impeccable! Because the poison was beginning to sell. Ah, yes indeed! Even outside Italy … It’s only right! Don’t they sell tobacco? And what are words? Smoke. And what is smoke? Nicotine. Poison.
Signor Ippolito couldn’t take much more of this family life. He had been very patient for three months, but he could already see the day was not far off when he wouldn’t be able to stand it anymore and would tell off that young man. Not to offend him, of course, but to get things straight, as was his way. Speak his mind and that would be the end of it. Then maybe he would go live by himself.
“May I come in?” just then a soft little woman’s voice asked. Signor Ippolito recognized it immediately as belonging to old Signora Faciolli (or the “Lombard,” as he called her), owner of the parrot and the apartment house.
“Come in, come in,” he muttered without moving.
2
This was the same old lady who had accompanied Silvia to the banquet the day before. Every morning from eight to nine she came to give Giustino Boggiolo English lessons.
Free of charge these lessons, naturally. Just as Signora Ely Faciolli, the landlady, always granted free use of her own parlor if her dear tenant Boggiolo needed to receive some literary figure.
Her Husband Page 4