There was a sudden movement among some dahlias in pots, and who should emerge, peering at them through her thick lashes, but Caisotti’s secretary. She was wearing a lightweight suit. “Oh, you’re here,” she said. “I was looking for Signor Caisotti.”
“Certainly we’re here,” Quinto said, for some reason suddenly furious. “This is still our property; the contract hasn’t yet been signed.”
Shrug. “I don’t know about that. He said he’d be here, with a gentleman –” She broke off and covered her mouth with a letter she was carrying, as though she were embarrassed at having said too much. She stood there stiffly in her close-fitting jacket.
“That’s it, he’s not yet bought the site and he’s already selling apartments, even though they’re not built yet,” Quinto said, turning to the other two, denouncing the man and at the same time forced to admire him.
Travaglia and Ampelio weren’t listening. They had turned toward the girl. The engineer stood with his head inclined to one side, his eyes half shut, laughing in his tired way. Ampelio, one finger in the pocket of his jacket, his coat still draped sideways across his shoulder, his eyes hidden behind his thick glasses, looked like someone from the nineteenth century. “Ah, mail,” he said, reaching toward the letter that the girl was holding. She quickly hid it behind her back, as though they were playing a game. “It’s not for you, it’s for Signor Caisotti.” “Is it so urgent?” Shrug. “How should I know?” “Do you or don’t you know,” Travaglia broke in, “that Caisotti’s measurements are all to his advantage?” “Oh. . . . Well, where the land slopes it measures less.” “Oh, so you know that, do you?” Shrug.
Travaglia laughed. “Does Caisotti tell you every morning what you’ve got to say or only what you’re not to say?”
The girl blinked and tossed her hair over her shoulders. “How do you mean? Caisotti never tells me anything.”
“Fine sort of secretary you must be.”
The discussion was becoming playful. They were walking up and down together, the girl between them. She had picked a flower and was holding it between her lips. Ampelio brought out a pack of cigarettes, offering them to the girl first. “No, thank you, I don’t smoke,” she bleated, the flower still in her mouth.
“A girl with no vices, eh?” Travaglia said teasingly.
“So what?”
There was a rustling sound from the terrace above and Signora Anfossi looked over the hedge. She was wearing a big straw hat and garden gloves, and carried a large pair of scissors, with which she cut some roses. Travaglia noticed her first; he took off his hat.
“Hello, boys, who is this with you? Oh, Signor Travaglia, it’s nice to see you. Have you come to take a look at the site? Do please put your hat on. What do you think about this great project of ours?”
Travaglia replaced his hat carefully. “We’ll try to do a good job, Signora, you can count on that.”
“And who is the charming young lady? Wait a moment, I think we’ve met,” the Signora went on, sliding her sunglasses down to the tip of her nose. “Yes, it’s Lina.’
Quinto, for some reason, said dryly, “No, no, mother, you don’t know her.”
“But I do,” she insisted. “She came here the other day to get the draft of the contract. Her name’s Lina; she’s the contractor’s secretary – our partner’s, I should say.”
The girl had drawn back a little when Signora Anfossi appeared, and was looking the other way. Now she stepped toward the hedge. “Yes, it’s me, Lina. Nice to see you.”
Quinto and Ampelio were both irritated and wanted to put a stop to the proceedings. Ampelio made a start by asking Travaglia about the slope of the ground. “There must be some way of allowing for it, surely?”
But Travaglia continued his conversation with the Signora. “I see you’re doing a little gardening,” he remarked.
“I’m trying to save what can be saved.”
They all went about their business, the Signora to her roses, Travaglia and the two brothers to measure a corner of the site again, while the girl, Lina, stood a little way off, by herself. Travaglia’s mind was not on the job; he was bubbling into laughter again.
“You poor jerks!”
“Why?”
“Because of what you’re doing to your mother, making her call Caisotti your ‘partner.’ Your mother’s partner.”
“You’re mad. We’ve never called him our partner. She was the one who used the word just now, heaven knows why. Partner, my ass! Anyway, what has that go to do with it? What’s more, this is our affair and we’ll finish it ourselves.”
“You poor, poor jerks!”
They were going on like this, out of temper with each other, measuring the ground and exchanging sarcastic remarks, when they heard a mumble of voices behind them. They turned around and there was Caisotti, standing beside Lina. He said something to her in an undertone, the slack lines of his face stretched tight with anger, but the girl stood up for herself. He had snatched the letter out of her hand; apparently it enraged him, for he read it several times, spelling it out to himself, syllable by syllable. He put away the letter, stuck his hands in his pockets, and walked on, taking no notice of the rest of them. Apart from the impression of brutality and obstinacy, Quinto was conscious again of something weak and defenseless in this solitary man who made an enemy of everyone. He was striding up and down, his face contorted with anger, his eyes wrinkled. Quinto had never seen him quite so badly dressed. He was wearing a shrunken jacket buttoned over a checked woolen shirt, shapeless yellow pants, and a pair of old shoes spotted with cement. He really looked like a bricklayer now; he needed only the cocked hat made out of newspaper.
With Caisotti, Quinto noticed, the girl dropped her usual air of reserve and looked almost brazen, ready to argue the toss with him. She walked a few steps behind, a little frightened but still aggressive, as though there was a rage against him deep inside her which she’d never let out.
Caisotti continued to walk up and down, looking tense and irritated. Then he turned to the Anfossis and nodded toward them as though they were meeting by chance in the street. “We’re here to measure this bit of the site where the ground slopes,” Quinto said, then at once regretted that he had spoken, for he caught in his voice a suggestion of apology for their being there at all, although the land still belonged to them. To correct this impression, he turned on Caisotti aggressively. “We’re here because your measurements won’t do, you see, they’re all wrong!”
Caisotti peered forward as though he were looking at Quinto on the horizon. His eyelids were red, his eyes watery, his lips moist like someone in a towering rage, or like a child liable to burst into tears at any moment. “What’s this new trouble you’re trying to make?” Clearly he could hardly wait to start working off his temper. “You go and do your job and leave me to do mine,” he shouted.
“Just a moment, Caisotti.” Travaglia stepped forward with the air of someone just then arriving on the scene. “You’re a contractor, that’s your job, I’m an engineer, that’s mine. Right? Well, then . . .” And he began explaining the whole thing to him. Caisotti listened to him, but he kept his eyes on the ground and shook his head, as though to say, Yes, all this is fine, I could get on with you, you know your job, but these two are impossible, you never know what they’ll want next, and anyway it’s clear they’ve got it in for me.
“No, no, Caisotti, just listen to me.” Travaglia smiled blandly, sleepily, in the manner of someone who understands this sort of situation and knows there’s no good getting worked up about it. “But what am I going to do? Just tell me what I’m expected to do!” Caisotti opened his arms wide and his cadences became more plaintive than usual, one long, unending whine, and even Travaglia’s vowels grew broader and broader, as though to say, Take it easy, we’ll find a way. As they spoke, they both seemed to be trying to lull one another to sleep. Quinto felt excluded from this softly voweled game; he felt expressly singled out as a person who simply didn’t count, and not only hi
m but his whole family – as though being property owners and having dictated the terms of the deal, as Quinto was convinced he had done, had no importance whatever. He didn’t know whose tone irritated him more, Caisotti’s or Travaglia’s. This was exactly the occasion when Ampelio should have intervened in that disconcerting way he had; Quinto turned around, but he wasn’t there. He was a little way off, at the bottom of the garden where it was greenest. Quinto saw his back, a dark shadow against the sun; Lina was facing him, with that willful little air of hers, twisting a lock of hair around one finger. They were speaking in undertones, and every so often he took a step forward and she stepped back. At a certain point, still with his back to the others, Ampelio said loudly, as though he had been listening to everything the contractor said:
“All right, Caisotti, if that’s the way you want it. We’re still prepared to drop the whole thing. The contract hasn’t been signed yet.”
“Drop the whole thing, what do you mean?” cried Caisotti, his voice angry and bitter again, but in the middle of this outburst he changed tactics and forced a laugh. A Caisotti laugh, not pretty to look at, a clenched, gap-toothed kind of laugh. He was looking at the others to see if they agreed that Ampelio had said something absurd. “Drop the deal, you say. Then what are we all doing here?” He laughed again. “We’re here to make a deal, right? A friendly deal, that’s what we all want, right?”
The Signora looked over the hedge again. “Drop the deal, you say? Oh, dear, my poor plants, pull them up, put them back again, pull them up. . . .”
Caisotti was waving his arms now, laughing; he was at his most expansive. “No, no, Signora, we’re all friends here; we’re going to do things in a friendly way. Don’t you worry, we’ll do a good job, you’ll have nothing to complain about. And while the workmen are here, are there any little improvements you’d like made in the garden?”
“No, no, on no account workmen in the garden.”
“Then we’ll have no workmen in the garden! We’ll have a path here; they can pass in front.”
“That wall that’ll be facing us – perhaps if it had a few creepers on it . . .”
“What’s that, creepers, eh! Fine, we’ll have some lovely plants, just whatever you want. You’ll see, we’ll get on fine.”
As he stood there gesturing clumsily, he knocked down one of the dahlias. “And he didn’t even say he was sorry,” Signora Anfossi remarked afterward.
11
Oddly, when it came time to sign the contract, Caisotti didn’t make a fuss about the points where trouble was expected. He picked on quite trivial points where it was easy to meet his objections. Quinto was positively disappointed. It was a tricky, involved contract, prickly as a thornbush; Canal and the notary had really outdone themselves. Everything was there: the construction contract, the date for final payment of the total sum, as well as date and amounts of the regular installments; the dates when the completed apartments were to be handed over; and the whole thing was tied to a “reversion clause,” which meant that if the contractor failed to meet any of his obligations (as specified in the contract), the property reverted to the owners, together with any buildings constructed on it in the meantime, in whatever state they were then in.
“If he signs this,” Canal said to Quinto, “you’re safe – he won’t be able to touch you.”
Caisotti had signed, he had let them have their way as though the business of a contract was a mere formality. He came to the notary’s by himself, without a lawyer or anyone – “an economy measure,” they said, or else, “because every time he hires a lawyer he ends up quarreling with him.” The meeting was attended by the three Anfossis, the Signora and her sons, as well as by their lawyer and their notary. As Caisotti came into the office (the atmosphere of the place in itself was presumably calculated to intimidate him) and saw all those educated people writing away, he looked around like a trapped animal who instinctively tries to escape but knows it’s no longer any use. Daniel in the lion’s den, Quinto said to himself, always ready to see the man in a favorable light. But this image of Caisotti as victim gave him no satisfaction; he needed to see him as some wild, savage beast, a lion, for example, and his own party as a den full of Daniels surrounding the man – relentless, virtuous Daniels goading him like jailers with forked contractual clauses.
Caisotti took a chair near the notary’s desk, while the others sat or stood around; he listened attentively as the contract was read, his mouth half open, every now and then silently repeating a phrase to himself. Quinto found himself wondering if the truth of the matter was that the man was simply stupid. But in fact he was concentrating in order not to miss anything, and every so often he would raise one of his big hands and say, “Stop,” and the notary would go back and read the passage again, enunciating very deliberately. At times it looked as if Caisotti was on the point of rejecting the whole thing, as if he thought this was all a trap. Quinto half expected him to jump to his feet and say, You’re crazy! and slam the door behind him. But no, he waited for the notary to finish, and then nodded to indicate his approval. When he did raise an objection, it was in some part of the contract where no one had expected trouble; he was particularly concerned with the technical details and there was some business about gravel which led to endless argument, all the more so since Ampelio seemed to think it was a matter of principle and refused to budge an inch, even though Canal advised him to let it go.
Quinto was bored, and since everyone was concentrating on the discussion, he went over to the window and looked out at the street, bright in the spring sunlight, and tried to work up some feeling for the place and for the deal, which was going ahead nicely; but he felt as if the whole affair was now really over and that this adventure in real estate was merely a matter of administration, of long, boring discussions. It no longer interested him or excited him and his only hope was that from now on Ampelio would stand by him.
The ground was easy now and everything seemed to be going smoothly; it was at this point that Caisotti succeeded in deferring the date on which one of the payments was due, or rather two of the three payments, and also in lowering the total by two hundred thousand lire.
They had not yet reached the point of signing the contract when Ampelio looked at his watch and said that he had to go if he was to catch his train.
Quinto had had no idea he intended to leave. “What do you mean? The thing hasn’t been signed yet. . . .” Suddenly he felt furiously angry with his brother. “Why do you have to go now?”
“I have to go, that’s all there is to it. Who’s got to be in the laboratory tomorrow, you or me?” Ampelio’s voice was insulting.
Quinto felt thoroughly fed up at the idea of having to stay and look after everything himself; he had got it into his head that Ampelio was going to handle the matter, which would leave him free to regard it with a certain detachment. He had hoped that from now on it was going to be like this. They began to argue in a rapid undertone, in front of Caisotti and the notary. “You never said you’d have to go. Leaving me here like this . . .” “It’s practically finished. Mother has power of attorney; she can sign and then everything is settled.” “No, there’s still lots to do. We haven’t agreed on anything. . . .”
“But if Ampelio has got to be at the laboratory tomorrow . . . ?” Signora Anfossi broke in.
There’s more money to be made this way than in all his laboratories put together, Quinto was on the point of saying, as though he were playing the part of an elderly businessman who doesn’t want his sons to go to college. But he checked himself, and what he in fact said was, “Yes, but we ought to reach some agreement, so that when one of us is away the other is here.”
“If you have to leave too, don’t worry,” Caisotti said suddenly. “Go ahead. At this stage, if necessary, the Signora and I can settle the rest of what there is to settle.”
Quinto remembered something that Canal had said – greatly to their annoyance, at the time – and which Travaglia had repeated in almost th
e same words: “I tell you what’ll happen. You start this wretched business going and that’s the last that’ll be seen of you. You’ll leave your mother to pull the chestnuts out of the fire.”
“As a matter of fact,” the notary said, “it would be convenient if one of you did stay. There are still some papers to see to.”
“I’m staying, of course I’m staying,” Quinto said quickly. “I’ve no intention of going.” He was furious because he had really wanted to stay, though admittedly he had had half an idea of going to Milan. Bensi and Cerveteri had called a meeting to set the editorial policy of their new review, and though he didn’t really want to go, since he disapproved of their position, he would have quite liked to be there, just by accident as it were. One way and another, he was furious.
Ampelio had left. Everything was dealt with rapidly – the signatures, the promissory notes, and all the rest. As Quinto and Caisotti walked down the stairs, chatting about the time when building would start, Caisotti said, “Everything depends now on getting the green light from City Hall. We’ll have to put up the proposal to the technical office, wait till they hold a general meeting, and then if everything goes well –”
“But . . . how long will that take?” Quinto suddenly felt alarmed. “I thought everything was settled.”
Caisotti snorted. “With those bureaucrats? Not on your life! They can hold us up for months. And if there’s something they don’t like, oh, that means headaches, I can tell you!”
“But the work?”
“The work doesn’t start till we get the green light, that’s for sure.”
Quinto stopped on the stairs. “Look here, Caisotti, you’ve just signed a contract committing you to handing over the finished apartments to us by December thirty-first.”
“Take it easy!” Caisotti took a step forward. Quinto had not seen this expression before, a look of sullen fury quite different from the occasion when he had lost his temper in their garden. “Take it easy! The contract says I hand over in eight months. And eight months means eight months after I get the authorization. Right?”
Difficult Loves Page 22