Now the conversation had to start over from the beginning.
“It seems to me that your Italian is sort of … sketchy, that’s it,” Signor Ippolito said in a friendly manner. “Scusi, part … par-to-ri-re …“
“Oh, sì, partorire, benissimo,“ Crowell affirmed.
“May God be praised!” exclaimed Roncella. “Now, my niece .. .”
“A great work? A play?”
“No, sir. A child. A flesh and blood child. Ugh, how difficult it is for you to understand certain things! I’m trying to be polite. The play is about to be born. The rehearsals started yesterday at the theater. Maybe the two will be born at the same time, play and child. Two parts … that is, parts, plural of part … and parts in the sense of … of … parturitions. Understand?”
Mr. Crowell became very serious, sat up straight, turned pale, and said: “Molto interessante.”
And taking another notebook from his pocket, Mr. Crowell hurriedly wrote: Mrs. Roncella two accouchements.
“But believe me, this is nothing.” Ippolito Onorio Roncella continued, relieved and happy, “There’s something else! Do you think my niece Silvia deserves so much attention? I don’t say she doesn’t. She might be a great writer. But there’s someone much greater in this house than she, and one who deserves to be taken much more seriously by the international press.”
“Really? Here? In this house?” Mr. Crowell asked, his eyes open wide.
“Yes, sir,” answered Signor Roncella. “Not me, of course! Her husband, Silvia’s husband.”
“Mister Boggiolo?”
“If you want to call him Boggiolo, go ahead, but I’ve told you his name is Boggiolo. Immeasurably greater. Look, Silvia herself, my niece, realizes that she would be nothing, or very little, without him.”
“Molto interessante,“ Mr. Crowell repeated with the same air as before, but turning a little paler.
Ippolito Onorio Roncella: “Yes, sir. If you wanted me to, I could talk about him until tomorrow morning. And you would thank me.”
“Well, yes, many thanks, Signore,” Mr. Crowell said, rising and bowing several times.
“No, I was saying,” Signor Ippolito continued, “–sit down, for heaven’s sake! You would thank me, as I was saying, because your … what do you call it? interview, yes, interview … your interview would turn out much more … more … tasty, shall we say, than if you just write about Silvia’s play. I can’t give you much help because literature is not my business, and I’ve never read a line of my niece’s work. Out of principle, you know? And to keep a certain healthy balance in the family. My nephew reads a good deal! And he reads only her work. … By the way, is it true that writers are paid by the word in America?”
Mr. Crowell hastened to assent, and he added that every word of the best-known writers was usually paid as much as one lira, even two, and as much as two lire and fifty centesimi, in American currency.
“Gesù! Gesù!” exclaimed Signor Ippolito. “Suppose I write oh!,’ for example. I get two lire and fifty? Now the Americans must never write quasi or già: they must always write quasi quasi or già già… . Now I understand why that poor boy … Ah, it must be agony for him to count all the words his wife scrawls for him and think how much they would earn in America. That’s why he keeps saying Italy is a country of ragamuffins and illiterates…. My dear sir, words are much cheaper here in Italy. In fact, you could say that words are the only thing that is cheap. That’s why we don’t do much but talk.”
Who knows where Signor Ippolito might have taken this discussion that morning if Giustino Boggiolo hadn’t suddenly turned up to save the innocent victim from his clutches.
Giustino couldn’t breathe: face burning and stinging with perspiration, he turned a ferocious eye on the uncle and then, in broken English, asked Mr. Crowell to excuse his tardiness and begged him please to postpone the interview until that evening, because now he was in a great hurry. He had to go to the station to get his mother, then go to the Valle Theater for the play rehearsal, then …
“But I was just helping out!” Signor Ippolito said to him.
“You could at least do me the kindness of not interfering in this business,” Giustino couldn’t keep from saying. “Pardon me, but it seems you do it on purpose.”
He turned again to the American and asked him to wait a moment. He wanted to see how his wife was and then they could leave together.
“He’ll lose his job, he’ll lose his job, as true as God’s word,” Signor Ippolito repeated, happily rubbing his hands together as soon as Giustino left the room. “He lost his head and now he’ll lose his job.”
Mr. Crowell smiled at him.
At the office Giustino really had quarreled with his boss, who hadn’t wanted to excuse his absence that morning, since he had received permission not to return to the office in the afternoon several days in a row so he could attend rehearsals.
“Too much,” his boss had told him, “too much, my dear Roncello!”
“Roncello?” Giustino had exclaimed.
He was unaware that all his colleagues called him that almost automatically now.
“Boggiolo, of course … excuse me, Boggiolo,” the head of the office had immediately corrected himself. “I addressed you by the name of your distinguished wife. Anyway, it seems natural.”
“Why?”
“Don’t take it badly, but let me talk to you like a father. It seems you do everything, Boggiolo, for … yes, you put your wife’s interests first. You could be a good employee, diligent, intelligent … but must I say it? You do too … too much for your wife.”
“My wife is Silvia Roncella,” Giustino murmured.
And the boss: “So? My wife is Donna Rosolina Caruso! That’s not a good reason for my not doing my duty here. This morning you can go. But think over what I’ve told you.”
Leaving Mr. Crowell at the foot of the stairs, Giustino Boggiolo, very annoyed by all the small and vulgar vexations on the eve of the great battle, almost ran to the station. But even so he held a book open before his eyes–his English grammar.
Once he had climbed up the hill past the church of Santa Susanna, he put the book under his arm, looked at his watch, took a lira from his vest pocket and put it in a wallet he kept in the back pocket of his trousers. Then he took out a notebook and wrote in pencil: Carriage to station … L. 1,00.
He had earned it. In five minutes he would reach the station in time for the train from Turin. True, he was a little overheated and out of breath, but … a lira is a lira.
If anyone were silly enough to accuse him of stinginess, he would let him leaf through his notebook, where there was clear proof not only of his splendid intentions, but also of his generosity of feeling and nobility of thought, of the breadth of his vision, as well as his (deplorable) inclination to spend.
In fact, he jotted down in that notebook all the money he would have spent if he were not so judicious. Those figures represented daily inner struggles with himself, painful cavils, endless indecisions, and the most astute calculations of opportunities: public subscriptions, benefits for local and national calamities in which, with the most ingenious subterfuges and without casting a bad light on himself, he had not participated. Elegant little hats for his wife for thirty-five, forty lire each that he had not bought. Theater tickets for twenty lire for extraordinary performances that he had not attended. And then … how many daily expenses were written there as proof of his good intentions! Hadn’t he seen, for example, on his way to and from the office a poor blind man who truly inspired his pity? He, before anyone else passing by, would be moved to pity. He would stop at a distance to consider the unfortunate man’s poverty and say to himself: “Who wouldn’t give him two soldini?”
Often he would actually take them out of the wallet in his waistcoat and be just about to go over and give them to him when first one thought and then another, and then so many distressing thoughts all together, made him raise his eyebrows, take a deep breath, lower his hand, and sl
owly put the coins in the wallet in his trouser pocket. Then, with a sigh, he would write in his notebook: Alms, o lire, 10 centesimi. Because a kind heart is one thing, money another. A kind heart is tyrannical, money more so. Then, too, it is more painful not to give than to give when one cannot afford it.
Yes, yes, his family was beginning to grow, alas, and who bore the burden of it? Well, then, rather than having satisfaction on that day, he had had a kindly desire, a generous intention. As an honorable gentleman he could not allow himself to give in to the impulse to aid human misery.
2
For more than four years he hadn’t seen his mother, that is, since they had transferred him to Taranto. How many things had happened in those four years, and how changed he felt now that the imminent arrival of his mother reminded him of his former life with her, of the humble and saintly affection rigorously maintained, of the simple life he had been torn from, because of so many unforeseen events!
That quiet, solitary life amid the snows and green meadows singing with water, among the chestnut trees of his Cargiore watched over by the perennial rumbling of the Sangone River. Those affections, those thoughts he would soon embrace again in his mother, but with an uneasy conscience.
When he married Silvia he had hidden from his mother the fact that she was a writer. Instead, he had written lengthy letters about her qualities that his mother could better accept. All true, however. But that was exactly why the uneasiness he now felt was all the more prickly, because it was he who had encouraged his wife to neglect those good qualities, and if Silvia’s book was now making the leap to the stage, it was he who had pushed it. His mother would realize it when she saw Silvia, forlorn and in need only of maternal care, unmindful of anything not directly concerned with her pitiful condition. He, instead, would be at the theater with the actors, busily involved with the concerns of opening night.
It’s true he was no longer a boy. By now he should be able to manage his own affairs. Besides, he saw nothing wrong in what he was doing. But because he had always been a good son, obedient and submissive to his good mamma’s way of thinking and feeling, he was troubled by the thought of her disapproval, of doing anything to displease her. It bothered him even more to think that the saintly little old woman, traveling such a distance to be a loving help to her daughter-in-law, would in no way show her disapproval or express the slightest criticism.
Many people were also waiting for the Turin train, already late. To divert himself from these troublesome thoughts, he walked up and down the platform, forcing himself to read the English grammar, but at every train whistle he turned or stopped.
The arrival of the train was finally announced. The considerable crowd watched as it entered the station puffing noisily. The first windows opened. People ran in various states of anxiety from one carriage to the other.
“There she is!” Giustino said, growing cheerful, and he threw himself into the crowd in order to get to one of the last second-class carriages, from which appeared the bewildered head of a pale old woman dressed in black. “Mamma! Mamma!”
She turned, raised a hand, and smiled at him with her black, intense eyes whose vivacity contrasted with the paleness of a face already withered by the years.
The joy of seeing her son again was a refuge for little Signora Velia from the confusion that had oppressed her during the long journey, and from the many new impressions colliding tumultuously in her tired mind, closed and limited by the endless years of the same routine in her sheltered, monotonous life.
As though dazed, she responded to her son in monosyllables. Among so many people and such confusion, he seemed different to her; even the sound of his voice, his expression, his whole appearance seemed changed. And Giustino had the same impression of his mother. They both felt as if something between them had loosened, separated: the natural intimacy that had once kept them from seeing each other as they saw each other now, no longer one being, but two, not different, but separate. And hadn’t he in fact been nurtured far from her–his mother was thinking–by a life she knew nothing about? And didn’t he now have another woman at his side whom she didn’t know and who surely had to be dearer to him than she was? But when his mother was finally alone with him in the carriage and saw that the luggage and bundle she had brought with her were safe, she felt relieved and comforted.
“How is your wife?” she then asked, revealing in the tone of her voice and expression that she was in awe of her.
“She’s anxious to see you,” Giustino replied. “She suffers a lot… .”
“Oh, poor thing …” Signora Velia sighed, closing her eyes. “I’m afraid there is little … little I can do … because maybe for her … I won’t be …”
“What do you mean!” Giustino interrupted. “Get those notions out of your head, Mamma! You’ll see how good she is.”
“I’m sure she is, I know she is,” Signora Velia said quickly. “I’m talking about myself… .”
“Because you imagine that someone who writes,” added Giustino, “naturally has to be pretentious? Vain? Not at all! You’ll see. In fact, she is too … too modest … That’s what is driving me crazy! And then, in her condition … Come on, Mammina, she’s just like you, you know? No different.”
The old woman nodded her head in assent. Those words wounded her heart. She was the mother, and another woman, now, for her son was like her, no different. But she agreed. She agreed with a nod of her head.
“I do everything!” continued Giustino. “I make the deals. Besides in Rome, oh, my dear Mamma … it’s impossible! Everything’s twice the price … you can’t even imagine! And if I didn’t help out in every possible way … She works at home. I make her work pay outside.”
“And … it pays?” his mother timidly asked, trying to shield the glare from her eyes.
“Because I’m the one who makes it pay!” answered Giustino. “My work, no doubt about it! It’s me .. . all my work … What she does … yes, nothing, it would be like nothing … because the thing … literature, understand? is something that . .. you can do or not do, according to the day. Today you get an idea, you know how to write, so you write it. What does it cost you? Nothing! Literature is nothing in itself. It produces nothing, it wouldn’t pay if it weren’t … if it weren’t … yes, if it weren’t for me, that’s all there is to it! I do everything. And if she’s known now all over Italy …”
“Bravo, bravo.” Signora Velia attempted to interrupt him. Then she ventured: “Is she known in our parts, too?”
“Even outside Italy!” exclaimed Giustino. “I have dealings with France! With France, Germany, Spain. Now I’m starting to deal with England! See? I’m studying English. But England is serious business! Take last year. How much? Eight thousand five hundred forty-five lire. Between the original and translations. More, with the translations.”
“So much!” exclaimed Signora Velia, falling back in amazement.
“That’s nothing!” Giustino laughed scornfully. “You make me laugh. If you knew how much they earn in America, in England! Five hundred lire, like nothing. But this year, who knows!”
Instead of toning things down, he now felt compelled to exaggerate out of irritation at what he pretended to himself was his mother’s lack of savvy, though it really came from his inner discomfort, his remorse.
His mother looked at him and immediately lowered her eyes.
Oh, my, how her poor son had become involved with his wife’s activity! What earnings he dreamed of! He hadn’t asked anything about their town, just barely asked about her health and if she’d had a good trip. She sighed and said, as though returning from a long distance: “Graziella sends her greetings, you know?”
“Good, good!” Giustino exclaimed. “Is my old nurse well?”
“She’s starting to lose her memory, like me,” was his mother’s reply. “But, you know, she’s dependable. Prever also sends his best.”
“Still crazy?” asked Giustino.
“As always,” the old woman said
with a smile.
“Does he still want to marry you?”
Signora Velia waved a hand, as if to brush away a fly. She smiled and repeated: “Crazy … crazy … Did you know we already have snow at Cargiore? Snow on Roccia Vrè and Rubinett!”
“If all goes well,” said Giustino, “after the baby comes, maybe Silvia will go to Cargiore and be with you for a few months.”
“Up there, with the snow?” his mother asked with concern.
“She’ll like it. She’s never seen snow,” exclaimed Giustino. “I may have to go away on business…. We’ll talk more about this later. You’ll see how soon you’ll get along with Silvia. Poor thing, she was raised without a mother.”
3
It happened as he had predicted.
From the first moment she saw her, Signora Velia read in Silvia’s sorrowful eyes the desire to be loved like a daughter, and Silvia read in the mother’s eyes the fear and pain of feeling that with nothing more than her simple affection, she wasn’t up to the task her son had assigned her. Immediately the mother hastened to satisfy that desire in Silvia and Silvia to remove that fear in the mother.
“I imagined you just as you are!” Silvia said with her eyes full of affectionate and tender reverence. “It’s strange! … I feel I’ve always known you.”
“There’s nothing here!” replied Signora Velia, tapping her forehead. “But in my heart, yes, daughter, as much as you want.”
“Hurrah for the simple things of life!” exclaimed Signor Ippolito, relieved finally to find a nice little old-fashioned woman. “Heart, heart, yes, well said, Signora! It takes heart and damn the head! You’re the mamma, perform a miracle! Take the bellows out of your son’s hands!”
“The bellows?” asked Signora Velia, puzzled, and looking at Giustino’s hands.
“Yes, Signora, the bellows,” replied Signor Ippolito. “A bellows he sticks in the ear of this poor girl, and blows and blows and blows till her head is this big!”
Her Husband Page 8