A Life

by Italo Svevo

  This was enough to silence Lanucci—mortified, with bloodless lips and glasses askew (being ill-made they hung over to the right when he forgot to adjust them)—after a long pause he said gently:

  “I wasn’t saying that to you but to this layabout here. Is it right he should live off us when even Lucia earns her own living?”

  Signora Lanucci was touched at once, and Alfonso thought she must be regretting her harsh remarks. But seeing that the old man would still not be quiet, she grew angry again and called imperiously: “Enough, enough!” with a glance towards Alfonso, whose silence she interpreted as ominous. But he was actually silent because, understanding the reasons for these quarrels, he felt touched himself. Taking the old man’s part he told Signora Lanucci that her husband should be allowed to defend himself. Assured by this that the sight of their disputes aroused no anger or contempt in Alfonso, she became gentler, as she would have been from the very first had she not been more preoccupied with diminishing the bad impression on Alfonso than with attacking her husband.

  “Enough now!” she repeated. “You, Gustavo, will, I hope, deign to find yourself another job, so all arguments and quarrels between you and your father will end. Maybe what is a misfortune for us today can become luck for us tomorrow. You may be the person who makes us a bit richer and so a bit nicer.”

  She shook her husband’s hand, and the tears came to her eyes.

  At the beginning of the dispute, Lucia, shouting, had ostentatiously stopped her ears with her hands, and hers was the only behaviour which disgusted Alfonso. Had he shown this disgust Signora Lanucci would have got no pleasure from his indulgence about the other matter, for her fear of disgusting him was due to not having abandoned all her hopes in him for Lucia. She felt that if a young man like Alfonso entered her family, he would reform it; and, what was more, however much Lucia denied it, she presumed the girl was, must be, in love with him. But Lucia had different tastes. And she could not see in Alfonso the virtues which her mother found in him.

  Of course the old woman was not blind, and her hopes had been diminishing for a long time, but they were still alive. She had only spoken of them with her daughter when Alfonso began to give her lessons, and her mother’s explanations had been enough to make Lucia put up with the fiend of a teacher whom they had imposed on her. That showed her intelligence, as did her losing all hope long before her mother. Struck by some act of indifference by Alfonso, Signora Lanucci would sometimes declare to her husband that she had lost hope, but even then these were outbursts of anger rather than of disappointment. It would have been so wonderful, and, according to common sense, it was something that not only could happen but should happen; for when two young people, both friendly, are thrown continuously together, they inevitably fall in love sooner or later. And so the Signora Lanucci’s hopes continued to live on, only communicated to her husband in low tones and in bed, before they closed their eyes in sleep to dream about them.

  She was the first in the Lanucci family to discover that Alfonso was in love with Annetta. She did not know Annetta at all, and had even been ignorant of her existence before she became interested in her because of Alfonso’s passion; but she had discovered this love almost at the same time as Alfonso himself. She noticed his restlessness, his variable moods and drew conclusions which happened to be right: one that his agitation was due to love, the other that this love was inspired by Annetta Maller. Her hopes were not dashed by this discovery because she rightly thought that Alfonso’s passion would bring him many sorrows from which he might take refuge in the ever-open arms of Lucia. When Alfonso was still spending a good part of his time with them, she had amused herself making sly hints in order to learn more, and Alfonso had reacted so openly that on indications thus drawn from him she was even able to follow the phases through which the affair passed, the usual ups and downs of love, all strung together by her as: “Hot … cold … quarrel … peace … he loves her!”

  He loved her, yes, he certainly loved her! She had read it on Alfonso’s brow that evening when he returned beaming from a visit to the Mallers, after three days of despair following the Fumigi incident. During those three days she had high hopes; later she was on the verge of despair because Annetta’s kiss was almost visible on Alfonso’s lips; it had changed his features.

  But the morning after, on seeing him sad at breakfast, she at once hoped she had been deceived. She sat down next to him and with an air of affectionate sympathy asked him the reason for his ill-humour and for the sorrows troubling him, to judge from his expression. He replied sadly that he was not well, but when Signora Lanucci, piqued, warned him that ladies of high society were not to be trusted because they enjoyed flattery and flirting but eventually dropped men without a thought, he replied that he had no idea to whom she was alluding because no one was flattering him at all. But he gave a sure, happy smile as one who knows his own mind, and on leaving him she was convinced of having judged correctly the night before. Annetta had told him she loved him, and perhaps she did. Before drawing her conclusions she wanted to wait and hear the opinion of old Maller, whose opposition could restore Alfonso to Lucia. She passed on her observations to her husband with a long preamble intended to prove to him, and at the same time to herself, that Maller would never consent to the marriage of his daughter with a petty clerk.

  Lanucci, on the other hand, was delighted to hear of Alfonso’s love affair. It was long since he had shared his wife’s hopes and was now delighted at the idea of a friend of his becoming Maller’s son-in-law. He would become the protégé of a highly placed personage, a protection which would be enough to make his business affairs prosper. So while Signora Lanucci treated Alfonso more coldly, he began to show him deference, and when his wife examined Alfonso’s words to try and reinforce her hopes, he would enquire what point Alfonso had reached, in the hopes of hearing the good news he was expecting.

  Lucia became more friendly with Alfonso too, while before, offended by his complete indifference, she had treated him with affected contempt. Never pretty, she had recently become more attractive; now that this period of growth was over, her mouth seemed smaller and so her features more regular; she had good hands and small feet always elegantly shod. A lady-killer or two on the Corso had paid her compliments, which made her resent Alfonso’s indifference more strongly. When she was told, as her mother could not keep quiet about it even with her, that Alfonso was in love, she became gentler with him because this love seemed to excuse his behaviour to her.

  Gustavo was more frank. He went straight to Alfonso and asked him, if he were to become Maller’s son-in-law, to get him a job as commissionaire at the bank where he guessed life was very snug. Gustavo was the only one of the Lanucci family whom Alfonso quite liked. Above all he preferred his frankness to the falsity of the others, to their allusions which were always self-interested in some way. He liked Gustavo as a character. For a long time young Lanucci had ceased struggling against his own laziness and, to spare himself remorse, elevated it to a theory. This had made him so serene that talking to him, and seeing him always calm and content with no doubts, Alfonso found peace too. In his long periods of idleness Gustavo had used his imagination a great deal, and need of money had sparked in him some original and comic ideas. His good humour was unalterable and withstood both the shouting of his ‘dear parents’ (he never omitted the adjective) and the rebukes of his various bosses to whom he always attributed strange and unfortunate characteristics. “They don’t know how to live!” he would say, really surprised at finding them angered by the mixing-up of papers entrusted to him or by some impertinence of his:

  “Such men die young” or “There’s someone I’d never marry.”

  Macario was away for the whole month of March, and Alfonso took his morning walks with Gustavo, who was an early riser, the only good habit in which they had succeeded in training him. They took short trips to a hill about half-an-hour’s walk from the town. On reaching it Alfonso would seek shade and sit down, while Gust
avo stretched out in the sun like a cat, and in accordance with some theories of his own on hygiene, opened his mouth to let in the light and the warmth. He was silent for hours, as was Alfonso for completely different reasons. He would keep his eyes shut and fall asleep or drop off into a kind of Nirvana in which he understood nothing, although still stuttering words without sense. When Gustavo had money, however little, he did not leave the town, for he preferred sleeping in some café or watching others playing billiards for days on end. He did not play himself as he did not like to get agitated, and he rarely got drunk, as a night’s toping made him feel unwell for a long time after. His friends were sober and hard-working, workmen from the various factories through which he had passed. They had a great liking for him, because he was a good sort and even more because he had never competed with any of them.

  In his idleness the good idea occurred to him of taking on a voluntary job, which seemed at first neither difficult nor onerous —of finding his sister a husband. He said that marriage was necessary at Lucia’s age, and it was certain that if no one bothered to help her, she would never find a husband at all. He asked his parents for permission to look around the homes of the young men he knew. His father at once gave him permission, for Lucia’s marriage would mean to him the elimination of a mouth to feed at home. Her mother on the other hand was opposed but could provide no objections as she did not dare tell him of her hopes in Alfonso. She chewed her nails with impatience and spoke with contempt of Gustavo’s workmen friends.

  “You don’t want her to go to a workman?” asked the old man in surprise. “Who to, then? Are you waiting for a prince?”

  It was many years since father and son had got on so well; they united together against the poor woman who, while defending herself as best she could, cursed Alfonso in her heart for not having yet fallen in love with the only girl of his class he had been close to. Eventually she put up a good suggestion. Instead of Gustavo’s friends, workmen and worse, why not draw to the house Alfonso’s friends, who were bank clerks and book-keepers!

  “Those too!” said the old man approvingly. “But let’s have both so we’re more certain of reaching our goal.”

  He formally charged Gustavo to bring his friends, the richer the better, to the house.

  Meanwhile, Signora Lanucci had occasion to bring up the subject with Alfonso and retained some hope from their discussion. If the poor wretch, as she called him, had betrayed doubt, disapproval or the slightest hesitation, she would have found a way of saving Lucia from Gustavo’s friends.

  Alfonso had got into the habit of withdrawing to his room after lunch in order not to have to listen to the Lanuccis’ empty chatter during the half-hour that he had before going to the office. One day Signora Lanucci followed him there. On seeing her Alfonso, who had already sat down at his desk, got up, and they stood facing each other between desk and bed.

  More affectionate than she had been to him for a long time, she said that as they were now used to considering him as a son, she was asking him a favour, one of those favours one only asks of intimate friends.

  “Yes, tell me!” Alfonso encouraged her kindly.

  “I can’t just blurt it out but have to explain various things.”

  She liked talking and, while Alfonso made an effort to listen, began telling him the story of her family, which, she asserted, should have quite a different position from the one it occupied. It was impoverished due to errors by her father, a disaster which she exaggerated by describing their former state as higher than it had really been.

  “And therefore,” the speech had been prepared and its opening and peroration was clearly put: “we just cannot resign ourselves to this position, but if we agree to Lucia’s marrying a workman or some such”—her disdain seemed to help establish more right to superiority—“it would pin us down once and for all.” She went on with another ‘therefore’, while Alfonso had by now lost interest because he feared to find himself suddenly attacked with an offer of marriage. She guessed this from his embarrassed air, but though she realized that it was really fear and not hope, the proof did not seem sufficient. From the living-room came sounds of quarrelling between Gustavo and Lucia, and she took a step towards the door to separate the two litigants but stopped, not wanting to leave Alfonso with any suspicion that she was trying to get him by force. She asked him to bring home some young men, poor or not, but belonging to an intelligent class. So intent was she on observing Alfonso’s reaction that she did not even hear the sound of a slap which had certainly landed on Lucia’s cheek, for the latter showed herself its recipient by her sobbing and shouting.

  “So you want me to bring friends to the house, do you?” Alfonso asked gaily. “But why take such a long way round to ask for such a simple thing? Aren’t I, as you yourself say, like a member of the family, and oughtn’t I to do as much as I can to help each of you to achieve a little happiness? As soon as I can, I’ll bring as many friends here as you like.”

  He was not thinking of any of his friends in particular, but the offer had been made spontaneously, and Signora Lanucci, though pained by his promptness, had to thank him. She would willingly have excused him the task, but could not decently do so now. She tried at least to diminish his zeal:

  “There’s no hurry. We’ve all the time we need to do things calmly.”

  This also induced the old woman to consent to Gustavo’s plans too; in fact she was soon persuading herself that her son’s action would bring about Lucia’s marriage at once.

  “Now it’s up to you to do something,” she said to Gustavo, “and as soon as possible. That way we may still manage to make someone die of rage.” This ‘someone’ was Alfonso.

  Gustavo’s friends were pretty awful. First he brought along a hawker of second-hand books, rich though. Alfonso, not knowing that Gustavo had also been asked to do the same thing, did not realize this man to be a candidate for Lucia’s hand. He could never have guessed it. The candidate was about fifty, but looked even older as his skin was parchment-like from the sun and weather to which his job exposed him. His eyes poured tears and not knowing that he was making a fiancé’s visit, he had omitted to shave the white and yellowish hairs growing all over his cheeks.

  When he left, Signora Lanucci looked laughing at her husband and the latter smiled too. Gustavo felt offended and could not resist an urge to defend himself at once.

  “He’s full of money though,” he said. “One never knows women’s tastes, and it would be a fine bit of luck if Lucia took to him.”

  The second friend whom Gustavo introduced to the family was the owner of a butcher’s shop. He was well-to-do and younger than the other but no less dirty. He had been a widower for some time, and Gustavo thought he was looking for a wife. He was mistaken. The butcher drank too much of the wine on the Lanuccis’ table, then beaming to show gratitude to his new friends exclaimed: “Ah, it’s good here! If only one could always be with friends! Thank heavens, now that I’m a widower, I can allow myself that at last!”

  Signora Lanucci declared that she did not want to see him again and even asked for the visits of Gustavo’s friends to stop. The young man defended himself.

  “I can’t very well tell my friends to come home in order to make them marry my sister. I must choose those who seem most suitable for marriage. A widower like the butcher, for example. He’s already been married once!”

  It seemed to Alfonso that the men presented next had been invited by Gustavo more in order to make a show of having respectable friends than in the hope of seeing them fall in love with his sister. One of these was Signor Rorli, a rich macaroni manufacturer from Naples. Gustavo had long announced his visit and induced his mother to prepare a copious meal.

  Signor Rorli did not come the first evening he was expected and only appeared a week later after having twice more thrown the little family into confusion by warnings of his arrival. He was very young, very thin, with a little pale moustache which just showed up against his dark skin. He was well d
ressed, but over-richly, with rings on his fingers and a gold chain—which Gustavo said was worth three hundred francs or more—on his chest. He seemed to enjoy himself. He explained how his macaroni was made, and when asked to make old Lanucci a representative of his factory, refused, first telling him that they did not work through agents and then that they already had four, two good arguments which naturally destroyed all the old man’s hopes. He ate a lot, which gave Signora Lanucci a high opinion of his health, for she said that thin people who eat a lot are strongest. This appetite of his consumed most of the supper, and when Rorli asked her why she did not eat more, she answered with an air of great distinction: “I never eat at night.”

  He took no notice of anything else, as he took no notice of Lucia who was sitting next to him. He talked most with Alfonso, whom Signora Lanucci had introduced as an employee of the Maller bank and a man of letters. Grandeur aggrandizes the house it inhabits.

  Rorli now began chatting of literature, and of course of French novels. He was enthusiastic about Alexandre Dumas and Paul de Kock, whom Alfonso had forgotten ever admiring. Alfonso cut the worse figure of the two, for after declaring he knew these writers he had been unable to show he had read all their works, including some minor volumes which he heard named for the first time, while Rorli was able to describe the whole of their plots to Signora Lanucci, who was enjoying herself thoroughly.