Was it there? Yes, it really was. The drama of a sterile wife. Ersilia Groa, a rich provincial, not beautiful, with a deep, passionate heart, but rigid and hard in aspect and manner, married for six years to Leonardo Arciani, a writer with no desire–after the wedding–either to write or to care about publishing books after he had aroused great public interest and expectation with one of his novels. Those years of marriage have gone by in apparent tranquillity. Ersilia doesn’t know how to offer that treasure of affection she locks in her heart; perhaps she fears it might have no value to her husband. He asks little of her and she gives him little. She would give him everything if he desired it. So there is a void beneath that apparent tranquillity. Only a child could fill it, but now after six years she despairs of having one. One day a letter arrives for her husband. Leonardo has no secrets from her: they read this letter together. It’s from his cousin, Elena Orgera, who was once engaged to him: her husband has died; she is left poor and without any income, with a son she wants to put in an orphanage. She asks for his help. Leonardo is indignant, but Ersilia persuades him to send her help. Soon after that he suddenly goes back to work. Ersilia had never seen her husband work. Completely ignorant of literature, she doesn’t understand her husband’s sudden new enthusiasm. She watches him waste away day after day, afraid he will become ill. If only he would not tire himself out so. But he tells her that his inspiration has revived and that she couldn’t understand what it is. Thus he manages to fool her for nearly a year. When Ersilia finally discovers her husband’s infidelity, he already has had a baby girl with Elena Orgera. Double betrayal: and Ersilia doesn’t know if her heart bleeds more for the husband that woman took from her or for the child she was able to give him. Conscience certainly has a curious sense of shame: Leonardo Arciani breaks his wife’s heart, steals her love, her peace, but he has scruples about money. Of course! But not scruples about his wife’s money. As a gentleman he doesn’t like having a love nest outside his house. But the rare and uncertain earnings of his stressful work aren’t enough to provide for the needs that soon begin to fill that nest with thorns. As soon as she discovers the betrayal, Ersilia seals herself up hermetically without letting either scorn or sorrow leak out on her husband: she only expects him to continue living at home in order not to cause a scandal, but completely separate from her. She never favors him with a look or a word. Leonardo, oppressed by an unbearable weight, profoundly admires the dignified, austere behavior of his wife, who perhaps understands that, above and beyond all her rights, there is a more imperious duty now for him: his duty toward his child. Yes, in fact, Ersilia understands this duty: she understands it because she knows what she lacks; she understands it so well that if he, worn out now and discouraged, should return to her, abandoning the child with his lover, she would be horrified. He has proof of her tacit, sublime compassion in her silence, in her peace, in the many modestly concealed considerations he finds at home. And his admiration gradually becomes gratitude; and from gratitude, love. He no longer goes into that nest of thorns now except to see his daughter. And Ersilia knows it. What is she waiting for? She herself doesn’t know; and in the meanwhile the love she feels growing in him is nurtured in secret. Her father appears to break up this state of affairs. Guglielmo Groa is a big country merchant, rough, uncultured, but full of sharp good sense.
The play could begin here, with the arrival of her father. Ersilia, who has not spoken a word to her husband in three years, goes to find him at the daily newspaper where he works as arts editor, to warn him that her father, from whom she has hidden everything, is suspicious and will come that very morning looking for an explanation. She wants him to put on an act in order to save her father from this unhappiness. It’s an excuse. She is really afraid that her father, in an effort to reach an impossible solution, might forever break that tacit rapprochement that she has worked so hard to establish between her and her husband, which for her is the cause of indescribable secret pain as well as indescribable secret sweetness. Ersilia doesn’t find her husband in the editorial office and leaves him a note, promising she’ll soon return to help him with the pretense when her father, who has gone to attend a morning session of the Chamber, comes there to talk to him. Leonardo finds his wife’s note and learns from the receptionist that another woman had just been looking for him. She is Signora Orgera, whom he has not seen in a week while feeling the suspicious eyes of his father-in-law spying on him. In fact, soon afterward she returns at that particularly inopportune moment, and Leonardo unsuccessfully tries to explain why he hasn’t come and lets her read his wife’s note as proof. She ridicules Ersilia’s sacrificing herself to save her husband trouble and suffering, while she … yes, she represents the need, the rawness, of a no longer tenable reality: suppliers who want to be paid, landlords who threaten eviction. Better to end it! Everything is already over between them. He loves his wife, that sublime silent woman: well, then, go back to her, that’s enough! Leonardo tells her that if the answer were so simple, he would have gone long ago, but unfortunately that can’t be the solution, tied as they are to one another. He asks her to please leave, promising he’ll visit her as soon as he can. To add to Leonardo’s miseries, his father-in-law, bored with the parliamentary proceedings, chooses this moment to turn up. Guglielmo Groa doesn’t know he is confronting another father in his son-in-law, who, like him, must protect his daughter. He believes his son-in-law has gone down a wrong path and can be steered back with a little tact and cash, and he offers to help and invites his confidence. Leonardo is tired of lying and confesses his guilt but says he has already been punished enough and refuses as unnecessary his father-in-law’s help, as well as his preaching. Groa believes the punishment Leonardo speaks of is the work he is condemned to, and he rebukes him harshly. When Ersilia arrives, too late, her husband and father are about to come to blows. At Ersilia’s appearance, Leonardo, overexcited and trembling, hurriedly gathers up papers from his desk and takes off. Groa is about to leap on him, roaring: “Well, now, you don’t want to be reasonable?” But Ersilia stops him with the cry: “He has a daughter, Papa, he has a daughter! How can he be reasonable?”
The first act could end with this cry. At the beginning of the second act, a scene between the father and daughter. Both have been waiting in vain for Leonardo to come home that evening. Ersilia then reveals to her father all she has suffered and how she was deceived, how and why she silently adjusted to that pain. She almost defends her husband because, when he had to choose between her and his daughter, he ran to his daughter. Home is where the children are! Her father becomes indignant; he rages; he wants to leave at once, and when Leonardo turns up to get his books and papers, he asks him to stay; he himself will go away at once. Leonardo is confused, not knowing how to interpret his father-in-law’s sudden invitation to stay. Ersilia comes in to say she has nothing to do with that invitation and he can leave if he wants. Then Leonardo cries and tells his wife about his torment and regret and his admiration and gratitude for her. Ersilia asks why he is suffering when he is with his daughter, and Leonardo answers that that woman wants to take her from him because he doesn’t earn enough and she doesn’t want to see him anymore in that upset condition. “Oh, yes?” shouts Ersilia. “She would like that? Well, then …” Her plan takes shape. She understands that she can have her husband back only this way, that is, on the condition that he can have his daughter with him. She keeps quiet about it, and when he begs her forgiveness, she assents, but at the same time pulls free of his grasp and makes him leave. “No, no,” she says to him. “You can’t stay here now! Two houses, no. With me here and your daughter there, no! Go, go! I know what you want. Go!” And she makes him leave, and as he goes out she breaks into tears of joy.
The third act should take place in the nest of thorns, in Elena Orgera’s house. Leonardo has come to visit his daughter, but has forgotten to bring the present he promised her. The little girl, Dinuccia, has cried herself to sleep waiting for him. Leonardo says he will come back soo
n with the toy and goes away. The girl, now five years old, wakes up; she comes onstage and asks about her papa and wants her mother to tell her about the present he will bring: a farm with little trees, sheep, a dog, and shepherd. The doorbell rings. “Here he is!” her mother says. And the little girl runs to open the door. She soon returns in confusion with a veiled signora. It is Ersilia Arciani, who saw her husband leave the house and doesn’t realize he will be back shortly. Elena, however, suspects a plot between the two to nab the girl. She shouts, threatens to call for help, curses, becomes frantic. In vain Ersilia tries to calm her, to show her that her suspicion is unfounded, and that she neither wants nor is capable of violence; that she came to have a heart-to-heart talk, for the good of her child who, if adopted, would be free of the shadow of guilt and would become rich and happy. Therefore it was pointless for her to pretend he would abandon his child if she didn’t want to give her up. The little girl left the door open in her confusion at seeing a woman standing there instead of her father, and at that point Leonardo enters, stunned by the sight of his wife there, and finds himself in the midst of the quarrel between the two women. The child hears her father’s voice and knocks on the door of the bedroom where Elena had run as soon as Ersilia Arciani took off her veil. Now Elena furiously throws open the door, takes the little one in her arms, and screams at the two to get out immediately, get out! At this outburst, a shaken Leonardo turns to his wife and urges her to forget that inhuman attempt and leave. Ersilia goes away. By this time Elena, who has seen him chase his wife out, is overcome by confusion and dismay and would like Leonardo to run after his wife at once and stay with her forever. But Leonardo, at the end of his rope, yells “No!” and takes the little one on his lap, gives her the gift, and begins to set up in the box the farm, the little trees, the sheep, the shepherd, the dog, amid Dinuccia’s laughter, shouts of joy, and happy, childish questions. Hearing the child’s questions and the anguished father’s answers, Elena thinks over everything the woman had said about the future of her little girl, and in tears begins to ask Leonardo, absorbed in his daughter’s joy, some questions: “She talked about adoption… but is it possible?” Leonardo doesn’t answer but continues to talk to the child about the sheep and dog. After a few minutes Elena asks another question, or makes a bitter reflection about herself or Dinuccia, if ever she … Leonardo can’t take anymore. He jumps to his feet, snatches up his daughter, and shouts: “You’re giving her to me?”
“No! No! No!” Elena cries abruptly, tearing her from him and falling on her knees before the child: “It’s impossible, no! I can’t now. I can’t now! Get out! Get out! Maybe later … who knows! If I have the strength. For her sake! But now get out! Get out! Get out!”
Yes, this could be the play. She saw everything clearly, every detail in the construction of the scenes. But it irked her that it was at Baldani’s suggestion. And she didn’t feel the least bit drawn to it.
She had never worked like this, constructing her work by will. Instead, barely intuited, the work had always imposed its will on her, without her having to provoke her spirit to move. Each work had always moved of its own accord, because it wanted to, and all she had ever done was docilely obey and lovingly follow this will of life at its every spontaneous turn. Now that she wanted to do it, and had to get it to move, she didn’t know where to begin. She felt dry and empty, and in that aridity and emptiness she was miserable.
Every time she looked at Giustino (who didn’t dare ask how her work was going, pretending he knew she was back at it and doing everything possible to make her think he was certain of it, keeping out of her way, keeping Èmere quiet, keeping her free of household concerns) she became so exasperated that she would have blown her top if her nausea over his other vulgar ways hadn’t prevented it. She would have liked to tell him off:
“Stop it! Stop all this pretending! I’m not doing a thing and you know it! I can’t do it, and I don’t know how to do it. I’ve already told you! Èmere can whistle in his shirtsleeves while he works, overturn the chairs, and break all this famous Ducrot furniture: that would suit me fine, my dear boy! If I could, I would break up everything, everything, everything in this house and even tear down the walls!”
So many years ago in Taranto she had noticed something when her father had wanted to have her first short stories published. For a much less serious reason–that is, the thought of the praise she would receive for those stories–had blocked her from writing anything new, upsetting her so much that for nearly a year she couldn’t put pen to paper. Now she sensed the same confusion, the same anxiety, the same consternation, but a hundred times worse. Instead of spurring her on, the recent success had numbed her; instead of raising her spirits, it had crushed and prostrated her. And when she tried to work up some enthusiasm, she immediately felt that the warmth generated was artificial, and when she tried to get rid of that sense of discouragement and prostration, she felt herself grow stiff with the effort, shallow and ineffectual. As could be expected, that success had encouraged her to redouble her efforts. But now, so as not to overdo it, its opposite appears: the arid grind, the skeletal bareness and rigidity.
And so, like a skeleton, with that arid, forced exertion, the new play came out painfully stiff and lifeless.
“But you’re wrong. It’s going beautifully!” Baldani told her when she read him the first act and part of the second, just to keep her husband quiet. “It’s the character of this stupendous creature of yours, of Ersilia Arciani. It’s her austere reserve that makes the play seem stiff to you. It’s going very well, believe me. Ersilia Arciani’s personality and ways have to control every aspect of a work like that. You’re on the right track. Keep it up.”
4
To make up for her lack of inspiration, Silvia felt she needed another guide and other advice.
Everyone had noticed the absence of Maurizio Gueli that inaugural evening. Many–and certainly not without malicious intent–had asked Giustino that evening: “And Gueli? Isn’t he coming?”
Giustino in reply: “Oh, is he in Rome? I heard he was at his villa in Monteporzio.”
Silvia was asked about Gueli, too, particularly by a few women feigning nonchalance. Silvia knew that out of jealously or envy, or, in any event, to wound her, the women and literati would sooner or later begin to speak ill of her. Besides, her own husband was the first to give them the excuse and material for malicious talk. She realized by now that with such a husband it would be nearly impossible to remain free of suspicion. Her own pride would eventually cause her to arouse suspicion, because she could no longer submit to the ridicule he heaped on her in front of everyone and keep pretending not to notice it. Somehow she had to show she felt either pain or spite (which perhaps might even make things worse because it would be too disheartening, and then everyone would take the opportunity to make her feel even worse). Or she had to show the same pleasure as the others, but then, even if she were partially saved from humiliation, she couldn’t expect to be free from their harshest criticism. Can a woman openly mock her husband with impunity? Anyway, she couldn’t do it intentionally or hypocritically. But she was afraid her own pride might make her do it against her will, by some unavoidable reaction. No, no. Really, there was no way she could go on being frank and honest under these conditions.
She was happy about Gueli’s absence that evening of the inauguration. Happy–not because it gave the backbiters less to talk about, everyone having already noticed Gueli’s interest in her, but because she didn’t want to see him after that letter he had sent her in Cargiore. She still wasn’t sure why. But the thought that Gueli’s interest, obvious even to her and for a reason that had angered her from the beginning, had given rise to the gossip wounded her more than any other suspicion about Betti or Luna or Baldani, or anyone else.
She would never deceive her husband with anyone. As much as her composure had been shattered by the tumult of so many new thoughts and feelings, and as angry as she was, her disrespect for her husband’s b
ehavior could never incite her to revenge. This she could still believe of herself: that no passion, no rebellious impulse, would ever overwhelm her to the point of being unfaithful. If tomorrow she could not continue living with her husband under these conditions; if, not defenseless, but almost goaded and pushed into it, with her heart not only void of affection for him but disgusted and drowning in nausea and sorrow; if she felt overcome by some desperate passion, she would not deceive him, ever. She would tell her husband and preserve her loyalty at whatever cost.
Unfortunately nothing in that house had the power to hold her with the murmur of old memories. The house had almost nothing to do with her and would be easy to leave. Everything around her constantly aroused images of a false, artificial, vacuous, fatuous life to which, unpersuaded by any affectionate feelings, she had not become accustomed, and which the absolute necessity of her work made odious. She was not even allowed the satisfaction of having her hard work at least serve to please someone else, if not her, who would be grateful. But on top of that, it was she who had to be grateful to her husband, who treated her as a farmer treats his ox that pulls the plow, as the driver treats the horse that pulls the wagon, both taking credit for the good plowing and the nice trip and then wanting to be thanked for the hay and stall.
Now she could take no notice of or worry about the more or less sincere interest that Baldani, Luna, and even Betti showed her–all those long-haired, ultramodish young writers and journalists; however, she was afraid of the interest shown by Gueli, who like herself was wrapped in a misery that was tragic and ridiculous at the same time, that took his breath away (so he had written). She was afraid of Gueli because more than the others he could read what was in her heart, and because in this woeful time, offended by Baldani’s cold and arrogant conceit, she felt such acute and urgent need for his presence and advice.
Her Husband Page 18