So it had been performed! It was successful! If it was still playing… Who knows how many nights? Very successful…
He imagined that this time Silvia must have been in charge. In his mind’s eye he saw the stage during the rehearsal. He imagined the impression it must have made on Silvia, who had never done this before, and he saw himself there with her, her guide with the actors; she uncertain, lost. He, on the other hand, experienced, sure of himself. And he displayed all his certainty, his command over everything, and he encouraged her not to despair at the actors’ laziness and indifference, at cuts made in the script, at the director’s angry outbursts. It sure wasn’t easy to work with those temperaments! You had to go along with them and be patient even if they didn’t seem to know their parts up to the last moment.
Suddenly his face darkened. Perhaps she had been assisted, escorted to those rehearsals by someone, perhaps by Baldani, or Luna, or Betti. … Who was her lover now? And with this thought it suddenly became much easier to imagine her staging that play, attending the rehearsals, fighting with the actors. But yes, certainly, much easier now that she, thanks to him, had made such a name for herself and all doors were open to her and all the actors hung on her words with admiration and smiles. Much easier for her!
“It’s the accounts, however, that matter! The accounts! The accounts!” he exclaimed to himself. “Admiration, smiles … What are they worth! A woman … and after all, now … without a husband … But who’s taking care of the accounts? Will she do it? With all her fine experience! He’ll look after them, her lover… . They’ll eat her alive! Yes, yes, just see if you can get another villino now like that one! Just wait….”
He opened a Turin newspaper and saw that the Carmi-Revelli Company was giving its final performances at the Alfieri Theater.
He stood there for a bit with that paper open before him, wondering whether or not to go. The desire to know about the play, to talk about it, to hear it talked about was urging him to go. The thought of facing all those actors and their questions was holding him back. How would they receive him? At one time they had made fun of him, but he held the rope then, and after letting them show off for a while like so many ponies frolicking around him, he could give the rope a tug and hook them up, tamed, to the triumphant cart. But now . ..
He kept walking, absorbed in the memories that were now all he had, and after a long time, unconsciously led by those memories, he found himself at the Alfieri Theater.
Maybe there was a rehearsal going on now. He stopped hesitantly at the entrance and pretended to be reading a poster about the play to be given that evening, the title, the list of characters. Finally, getting up his nerve, as though he were an inexperienced writer, he respectfully asked a guard who didn’t know him if Signora Carmi was in the theater.
“Not yet,” the man answered.
Giustino continued to stand in front of the poster without daring to ask anything else. In the past he would have entered like the lord of the theater, without even deigning to glance at that watchdog!
“And Revelli?” he asked after a bit.
“He came in just now.”
“It’s a rehearsal, isn’t it?”
“A rehearsal, a rehearsal.”
He knew that Revelli was very strict about outsiders at the rehearsals. If he gave that man a calling card to take to Revelli, he certainly would let him in. But then he would be exposed to everyone’s indiscreet and insolent curiosity. He didn’t want that. Better to stay there like a beggar waiting for Signora Carmi, who couldn’t be much later, if the others had already come.
In fact, Signora Carmi arrived shortly in a carriage. She wasn’t expecting to see him by the door and at his greeting she bowed slightly and went on without recognizing him.
“Signora …” Giustino called after her, transfixed.
Signora Carmi turned, blinking her myopic eyes, and suddenly her face lengthened into an oooh of surprise.
“You, Boggiolo? Why are you here? Why?”
“Well…” Giustino said, barely opening his arms.
“I heard, I heard,” continued Signora Carmi with compassionate concern. “My poor friend! What an awful thing to do! Believe me, I never would have expected it. I don’t mean I wouldn’t have expected it from her. Ah, I know something about that woman’s ingratitude! But awful for you, dear. Come along, come with me. I’m late!”
Giustino hesitated, then said in a trembling voice, his eyes glassy with tears: “Please, Signora, I don’t want … I don’t want them to see me.”
“You’re right,” Signora Carmi realized. “Wait. Let’s go this way.”
They entered the nearly dark theater, crossed the hallway of the first row of boxes. Signora Carmi opened the little door of the last box and said to Boggiolo in a whisper:
“Wait for me here. I’m going to the stage and I’ll be right back.”
Giustino crouched down at the back in the dark, his shoulders against the wall adjacent to the stage in order not to be seen by the actors whose voices echoed in the empty theater.
“Oh, Signora, oh, Signora,“ Grimi intoned in his usual baritone, overriding the prompter’s irritating voice. “Does she seem too lovely to you?”
“But no, not lovely, my dear sir,“ little Signora Grassi smiled, her tiny voice tender.
And Revelli shouted: “More drawn out! More drawn out! But nooo, but not at all lovely, friend–“
“The second but’s not there!”
“Just put it in, for heaven’s sake! It sounds more natural!”
Giustino listened to those familiar voices that unconsciously changed as they gave life to the characters of the scene, he looked at the vast resonant emptiness of the dark theater, and he breathed in that particular mixture of dampness, dust, and stagnant human breath. He could feel his anguish growing, as if his throat were seized by the vivid memory of a life that could no longer be his, which he could never be part of again, except like this, hidden, almost furtive, or pitied just as he was a few moments ago. Signora Carmi had recognized, and everyone would certainly have recognized along with her, that he didn’t deserve to be treated that way. The pity of others, though it made him feel his misery more deeply and bitterly, was also a precious reminder of what he had been.
He waited some time for Signora Carmi to rehearse a long scene with Revelli. When it was finished, she returned to find him weeping, sitting with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He wept silently, but with an abundance of hot tears and restrained sobs.
“Now, now,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, I understand, poor friend, but come on now! This isn’t like you, dear Boggiolo! I know, devoting everything, body and soul, to that woman; and now …”
“It’s the ruin, don’t you see?” Giustino burst out, stifling his tears. “The ruin, the ruin of all I built, Signora, stone by stone. Built by me, by me alone! When everything was in place and it was time to enjoy what I had made, a blast of traitorous wind blew over it, a blast of insanity, believe me, of insanity with that old man, with that cowardly old lunatic, who, maybe out of revenge, offered to destroy another life as his had been destroyed. Everything collapsed, everything!”
“Quiet, yes, quiet, calm down!” Signora Carmi urged him with words and gestures.
“Let me get it off my chest, for heaven’s sake! I haven’t talked or cried for nine months! They’ve destroyed me, my dear lady! I’m not anything now! I put everything into that work that only I could do, only I. I say that with pride, my dear lady. I alone because I paid no attention to all the foolishness, to all the whims, to all the strange ideas these literary types get in their heads. I never let it get to me and I let them laugh, if they wanted to. You laughed at me, too, didn’t you? Everyone laughed at me. What did I care? I had something to build! And I did it! And now … now do you understand?”
While Boggiolo talked and wept in the dark box, choked by anguish, he was following the rehearsal taking place there on the stage. Signora Ca
rmi suddenly noticed, with a shiver, the strange contemporaneity of those two dramas–one real, here, of a man consumed with tears, with his back against the wall facing the stage, where the voices of the other fictional drama sounded false. The direct comparison wearied and nauseated her, as if the play was a pointless, impudent, disrespectful game. She was tempted to lean out of the box and motion for the actors to stop and come here. Here to see, to witness this other real drama. Instead, she went over to Boggiolo again and with kind words and pats on his back, begged him to calm down.
“Yes, yes, thank you, Signora … I’m calm, I’m calm,” Giustino said, swallowing his tears and drying his eyes. “Excuse me, Signora. I really needed this. Excuse me. Now I’m calm. Tell me something about this play … this new play, If Not This Way. It’s going well, isn’t it? How’s it doing?”
“Ah, don’t talk to me about it!” Signora Carmi protested. “It’s the same business, darling, the same ugly business she did to you! Don’t talk to me about it. Let’s drop it.”
“I just wanted to know the end result….” Giustino insisted timidly, humiliated by his own suffering.
“Silvia Roncella, my dear friend, is ingratitude personified!” Signora Carmi pronounced. “Who made her a success? Say it, Boggiolo! Didn’t I, I alone, believe in the power of her talent and her work while everyone else laughed or doubted it? Well, then: she thought of everyone but me for the new play! Listen, I’m telling you this because I know what happened to you, too. I told the others–oh, thank heavens I keep my dignity–I told the others that I didn’t want to do it. And I don’t even act in The New Colony anymore. Thank goodness people come to the theater for me, to hear me, whatever I do: I don’t need her! I mention it only because no one likes ingratitude, and you will understand.”
Giustino remained silent for some time, shaking his head. Then he said: “Everyone, you know? She treated all the friends who helped me the same. I remember Signora Barmis, too… . Well, then, this new play … how is it going?”
“Oh!” Signora Carmi said. “It seems … nothing out of the ordinary … It’s what is called a critical success. Some scenes here and there seem good … the last scene of the last act, especially. Yes, that one has saved the work. Haven’t you read the papers?”
“No, Signora. For nine months I’ve been shut up in the house. This is the first time I’ve come down to Turin. I’m staying up there above Giaveno, in my little village, with my mother and my son. …”
“Ah, you’ve kept your son with you?”
“Certainly! With me … He’s always been there, really, with my mother.”
“Bravo, bravo,” Signora Carmi approved. “And so you haven’t had any more news?”
“No, nothing at all. By chance I learned a new play was being performed. I bought the newspapers today, and I saw that it was being performed in Rome… .”
“Also in Milan,” Signora Carmi said.
“Ah, it’s playing in Milan, too?”
“Yes, yes, with the same success.”
“At the Manzoni Theater?”
“Yes, at the Manzoni. And soon… wait, in three days the Fresi Company will come from Milan to put it on here, in this theater. Roncella is in Milan now and will be here for the opening.”
At this news Giustino jumped to his feet, breathless. “You know that for certain?”
“Yes, that’s how I understood it. What? Has it… has it upset you? I understand… .”
Signora Carmi also stood up and looked at him compassionately.
“She’ll come?”
“That’s what they say! And I believe it. After all the stir created around her, her presence can help a lot, as the play isn’t all that good. And then the public doesn’t know her yet, and wants to know her.”
“Yes, yes,” Giustino said eagerly. “It’s natural… this is like the first work for her… . Maybe they even insisted she come… . The Fresi Company will be here in three days?”
“Yes, in three days. The poster is in the lobby. Didn’t you see it?”
Giustino couldn’t stay still any longer. He thanked Signora Carmi for her warm welcome and went away feeling suffocated in the heavy darkness of the theater, agitated as he was by the tremendous news she had given him.
Silvia in Turin! They might call her out, there, in the theater, and he could see her again!
He felt weak in the knees as he went outside. Feeling a sort of vertigo, he put his hand to his face. The blood had all run to his head and his heart was pounding. He would see her again! Ah, who knows what she was like now, after the storm she had lived through! Who knows how she had changed! Perhaps nothing of the Silvia he had known existed any longer!
But no: maybe she wouldn’t come, knowing that he could come to Turin from Cargiore, and … And if she came just for this? To make up with him? Oh, God, oh, God . .. How could he forgive her after such a scandal? How could he begin living with her again? No, no … He had no status anymore. He would be covered with shame, and everyone would think he got back with her just to live off her again, shamefully. No, no! Now it was no longer possible…. She would understand that. But hadn’t he left her everything? That showed he wasn’t a contemptible exploiter. He had given everyone proof that he wasn’t capable of living with shame, with money that still was largely his, fruit of his work, his blood, and he had left it! Who could blame him?
This proud protest he dwelled on with growing satisfaction was the excuse with which, hemming and hawing, his conscience harbored the secret hope that Silvia might come to Turin to get him back.
But what if she was coming because she had to, as contracted with the Fresi Company? And maybe … who knows?… she wasn’t alone. Maybe someone would be with her, to assist her on that tiresome journey… .
No, no. He couldn’t, he mustn’t do anything. But he had to return to Turin in a few days to attend, in hiding, the opening of the play, to see her again from a distance one last time… .
3
Hidden! From a distance!
On that sweet May evening a river of people were flowing into the theater, bright with festive lights. Carriages thundered up to crowd around the doors in the confusion of lights and the hum of the excited crowd.
Hidden, from a distance, he watched that spectacle. Wasn’t that still his work, which had taken shape and now ran by itself, no longer concerned with him?
Yes, it was his work, the work that had absorbed, drained all his life to the point of leaving him like this, empty, spent. And it was up to him to see it through there, in that river of anxious people that he could not even go near or mingle with. Expelled, repelled, he himself who had moved that stream of people the first time, who first had put it together and guided it on that memorable evening at the Valle Theater in Rome!
Now he had to wait like this, hidden, from a distance, while that river invaded and filled the whole theater where he would be the last to plunge furtively and shamefully.
Tormented by this exile, so near and yet so infinitely far from his own life, which lived here, outside of himself, in front of him, and left him an inert spectator of his own present unhappiness, of his nothingness, Giustino had a surge of pride and thought that–yes–his work would keep going on by itself. But how? Certainly not as if he were still the one directing it, overseeing it, controlling it, supporting it in every way! He would have liked to see firsthand how it took shape without him! What preparation could the play’s first night have had? Last night’s newspapers and that morning’s had barely mentioned it. Now if he had been there! Yes, people were still flowing in. But why were they? Because of the memory of The New Colony, of the success he made of it, and to see, to know the playwright, that timid, morose, inexperienced young woman from Taranto that he, by his effort, had made famous. He who stood there abandoned, hidden in the dark, while she stood in the light of glory, surrounded by admiration.
She certainly had to be backstage now. Who knows what she was like! What was she saying? Could she possibly think he
wouldn’t come from Cargiore, so near, to attend the performance? Oh, God, oh, God … He trembled when he remembered his thoughts at learning she would be coming to Turin, that she might be coming just to get back with him, that she would be waiting, after the first applause, for him to erupt furiously upon the stage and passionately embrace her in front of all the astonished actors, and then, and then… Oh, God–he couldn’t stop shaking. There, in his mind’s eye, the curtain was opening, and both of them, he and she, hand in hand, were bowing, reconciled and happy before the delirious audience.
Madness! Madness! But, on the other hand, didn’t it go beyond the bounds of discretion for her to come to Turin, before his very eyes?
He was frantic to know, to see…. But how could he, from the back of that center box he had managed to get the day before? He had just now come into the box, hurriedly taking the steps two at a time. To keep from being seen he stayed far back. Above his head the gallery was making a racket; from below, from the orchestra seats came the din and ferment of grand evenings. The theater must be full and splendid.
Still breathless–more from emotion than from exertion–he looked at the curtain and wished his eyes could bore through it. Ah, what he would have paid to hear the sound of her voice again! He didn’t think he could remember it any longer. How did she speak? How was she dressed? What was she saying?
He jumped at the prolonged ringing of the bell that was answering the growing din in the gallery. And now the curtain was rising!
In the sudden silence, he instinctively leaned forward, looking at the scene that simulated a newsroom. He knew the first and second act of the play, and he knew she hadn’t been happy with them. Maybe she had rewritten them, or perhaps, if the play had a moderate success, she left them just as they were, forced to put the work on stage because of financial difficulties.
The first scene, between Ersilia Arciani and the editor of the newspaper, Cesare D’Albis, was the same. But Signora Fresi did not play the part of Ersilia with the severity that Silvia had given her character. Perhaps she herself, Silvia, had softened that severity to make the character less hard and more sympathetic. But evidently it wasn’t enough. From the first lines a chill of disappointment spread over the theater.
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