A Life

by Italo Svevo

  She looked after an old relative with whom she lived, but had so little to do in the house that she lived like a lady, better than any other girl in the village. Alfonso had danced with her at a fiesta and chosen her from all the others because he thought her pretty and also because she was more cultured and her clothes seemed superior. Then a friendship had developed between them; they exchanged a few words daily, she at the window and he on the road. Some evenings they would chat just beyond the houses and out of the village, but even in the complete darkness he had not risked kissing her hand. He had paid her exaggerated compliments on her beauty, but not even told her he loved her. Rosina was not the culmination of his ideal and at the time he had not given up the chance of reaching it. So he had never intended the matter to go further, while it was said in the village, so Signora Carolina had written to Alfonso a number of times, that Rosina had been very downcast at his departure.

  He went closer, surprised she had not recognized him at once though she had seen him.

  “Signorina, don’t you recognize me?”

  “Oh, Signor Alfonso!” said Rosina with calm surprise, and she gave him a slight hesitant bow, either because she really had not recognized him or had decided not to.

  “Won’t you even give me your hand?”

  “Here.”

  But she did not give it him yet. Before leaning out of the window she looked right and left to make sure no one saw her.

  “How’s Signora Carolina?” she asked, withdrawing her hand which she had left, limp, for only a second in Alfonso’s.

  “Bad! Very bad!” said Alfonso, oddly moved by those black eyes and the smooth hair over her temples and ears. What she lacked in dress sense and speech gave her a haughtiness which made so much more desirable the friendly smile with which she had been lavish at other times.

  “Are you still staying here?”

  “No!” replied Alfonso. “Only as long as mother can’t move because of her illness; then we’re settling in town.”

  “I’m engaged,” she said with simplicity.

  As she had not been asked for this information, it was obvious she was giving it to warn him that she cared very little about his leaving the village.

  He almost forgot to ask her who the happy bridegroom was.

  “Gianni.”

  Gianni was the son of Creglingi the grocer; a good-looking young man who looked after his father’s land, as the latter could not leave the shop where he made his money. Rosina was making a good match, certainly better than if she had married Alfonso.

  “Congratulations!” said Alfonso, rather too late for them to seem sincere.

  “Remember me to Signora Carolina!” exclaimed Rosina and suddenly withdrew.

  He soon saw the reasons for her flight. From a turn of the street had appeared Mascotti the notary, accompanied by Faldelli, owner of one of the two taverns in the place. He was an old man with dirty clothes hanging from skinny limbs. He must have been cold because his hands were plunged into his jacket sleeves.

  They greeted him, and he went up to them. Faldelli raised an arm, drew his hand out of the sleeve and shook Alfonso’s in a strong short grip; then he put his hand back into his sleeve. He was not polite, and when Mascotti asked Alfonso after his mother, he drew aside and looked around.

  Mascotti’s courteous question made Alfonso think that now was the chance to reproach him for taking so little care of Signora Carolina.

  He began very seriously to describe his bad night and the fright he’d had; then, in a very bitter, angry tone, spoke of the behaviour of Giuseppina to whom his mother’s life had been entrusted.

  Mascotti must have realized that it was he himself Alfonso wanted to get at. He said airily but firmly:

  “Oh we’re all a bit lazy. Giuseppina must have been taking it easy now you’re here, as there’s no need for four people round a sick bed!”

  It was not how he had defended himself the day before, and this surprised Alfonso. Now he saw him resolute and obviously prepared, for he had understood and rejected the attack at once. He no longer denied that little care had been taken of Signora Carolina but treated the whole matter as of little importance. He was her executor, but could it be proved that this made it his duty to look after Signora Carolina’s health? Alfonso feared that if he said some harsh words to him, such as those he had thought up during the night in his anger at Giuseppina, Mascotti might give a sharp answer. But he was silent.

  The notary now told him that Faldelli had saved some capital and intended to buy land. This communication seemed to be a preliminary to others which could be more important for Alfonso. Faldelli interrupted to bid goodbye. He said to Mascotti as he shook his hand, “There’s no hurry, you know, Notary!”

  He hurried off towards his tavern, which faced Creglingi’s shop in the triangular piazza.

  “Are you taking a stroll to see your childhood haunts?” said Mascotti good-humouredly. “I’ll come with you as long as you don’t run.”

  It was a teasing allusion to the moment when Alfonso had lost his head at the news of his mother’s state.

  Every house on the main street had remained unaltered, with colours unchanged because they could not fade more, the same shop-signs, some windows always shut, others always open. To Alfonso the village seemed as old as some object in a museum which is only touched for repairs necessary to keep it as it was. The inhabitants’ activity was all outside the village, in the fields.

  Only one house had been changed, with a floor added, and the new building could be distinguished from the old by the blackened lime covering the latter. It was now inhabited by Silini the baker, but the house was still called Carli’s, after the family who had owned it before.

  In his thoughts Alfonso easily took away from this house all that had been added and saw it smaller again, dark and sad, a house of misfortune in which every member of the family except one had died within a few days of each other; two boys with whom Alfonso had played, a child of three and her father, who had been a close friend of old Nitti, neat and always dressed in such a clean white smock that it never showed the flour scattered over it. Alfonso remembered all the details of that disaster, which had left an indelible trace on his youth. The fact of all those strong and healthy people being created and destroyed uselessly had given him his first religious doubts.

  One evening old Nitti had come home later than usual and told him that Guido Carli, the younger of the sons, had caught typhus so seriously that the doctor thought he would not pull through. The day before, Alfonso had spoken to the boy who was now dying. The Nittis then lived opposite the Carlis, and often during the night Alfonso went to the window to look at the dark brown house in which only one room was lit, the one in which a struggle was taking place with death.

  A few days later the boy died, and while Alfonso was wondering how to show his sympathy to his surviving friend, to console him for his brother’s loss and console himself, he was told that the latter too and his sister and father had been struck by the same terrible disease. Every day a coffin left the house; the first held the girl’s body, the second the father’s, while the building remained mute and indifferent as if merely some merchandise had gone.

  Only when there was no bedside at which to watch did a window finally open behind the coffin of the last son, and there, held back by two men whom he had never seen, appeared the mother shouting that she wanted to jump out of the window so that she could join her family. She was still a young woman. She asked them to leave her and seemed amazed that they should hold her back. Alfonso too hated the violence of those two men who were preventing her from dying.

  The house was put up for sale, but no one wanted to buy it after such disasters had happened there, and eventually it was sold for very little to the Silinis who had just come to settle in the village. Even Signora Carolina would not hear of buying it, though the Nittis would have done a very much better deal by buying that house instead of the larger one so far out of the village.

&nb
sp; Certainly the notary too, as he passed in front of it, thought of the contract for that building, because, ingenuously making Alfonso think of the similarity between the two business deals, he said to him: “Faldelli tells me he’d be willing to buy your house.”

  Alfonso started. “It’s not for sale!” he said shortly.

  “What d’you want to do with it, then?”

  The notary’s tactlessness made Alfonso realize how much more the man had been influenced by his long sojourn among peasants than by his university studies.

  “What about my mother?”

  The notary had been on another train of thought and was obviously surprised that Signora Carolina should still be considered as alive. With good grace he resigned himself to this fiction.

  “Your mother told me she intended to live with you!”

  “I’ll think it over!” said Alfonso sadly. The night spent by his mother had destroyed all his hopes, and Mascotti’s words had made him turn his thoughts to the conclusions to be drawn from that state of things. In fact what would he do with the house when alone?

  “Is old Signora Doritti still alive?”

  This local character, hardworking, formerly always labouring in the fields or at home where she did everything rather than call in help from outside—so that it was said in the village that she even sat on eggs with broody hens to hatch chicks quicker—used to live, Alfonso remembered, in a little coloured house, greenish round the windows, dirty grey on walls crumbled here and there. It was said that the hut had not fallen down only because it could not decide which side should go first, but its foundations were solid though rather out of line with the other houses.

  On the ground floor of that house, Doritti, the old woman’s husband, had for many years kept a grocer’s shop and was said to have made a heap of money. Then Creglingi had arrived and, with his better-stocked shop in the centre of the village, had taken away Doritti’s customers. Doritti could not believe at first that he could be allowed to be ruined in that way; beside himself with rage he quarrelled with half the village, with Creglingi and with the customers whom he surprised in the act of betraying him, that is in making purchases in his rival’s shop, beside which he would often stand in order to catch them. Then he calmed down. He waited without impatience for the two or three customers he still had to consume the last provisions in his shop, then shut the doors and took down the sign. The two old folk had lived on for another few years together without talking to a soul, because the wrong done made them hate all the inhabitants of the village. The old man died without seeing a doctor, and from then on his widow only left the house on Sundays to go to Mass, dressed in black silk covered with twirls of black embroidery which made the material look very heavy. As this was a weekday, she was sure to be behind a window knitting or weaving. She was an old soul just like her home, small, bent, but vigorous.

  Alfonso had forgotten these two old creatures and on remembering them was surprised as at something new.

  “They must have led happy lives though.”

  On leaving the village in that direction there was another mile or so of patchy green, then a stone hillock marking the stretch of stones.

  The cemetery was behind the village on a small hill, all fresh bright green interspersed now and again with white stones. There at least the dead slept very close to the living, and death seemed less of a separation.

  Mascotti wanted to come with him to see how his mother was, then stopped at the door of the house.

  “It’s too depressing,” he asserted. When Alfonso came out to tell him that his mother was worse, he said “Poor boy” seeing him so overwhelmed. But in spite of his emotion he rushed off to warm himself up and on reaching the main road skipped along it like a young man.

  Signora Carolina was definitely poorly, and Alfonso chided himself for having left her alone for a whole hour.

  Feeling relief after taking the medicine given by Alfonso, she had naturally attributed her improvement to it and taken another spoonful half-an-hour later according to the prescription. But she was gripped by a feeling very different from that which she had had in the night but no less agonizing. This was utter exhaustion, the feeling that every one of her organs was rejecting life. Her forehead was pouring with sweat as during a heart-attack, but her eyes, instead of looking dull, were shining and dilated with anguish. She could give Alfonso no explanations, but his words of sympathy made her cry.

  “That diabolical medicine!” he muttered, forgetting the benefits it had brought her.

  It was a very bad day, as it had been a bad night. She never declared herself any better because towards evening she was again overcome by breathlessness which lasted almost the whole night.

  From then on there were no improvements, not even slight ones. The worse the sick woman became the more she clung to life, and it was always easy to persuade her to take the medicine which, according to the doctor, was her only chance of life. Her suffering was constant, either from her illness or from its remedy. Another sign of her increased affection for life was her polite attitude to Doctor Frontini. Her state was such that it had broken down all her resistance, and she forgot all her antipathies. She had been told that salvation could come from Doctor Frontini, and she believed it.

  So the doctor came more often and stayed for hours, chatting to Alfonso, usually about other things than Signora Carolina’s illness. He had been unable to display his knowledge with her and tried to show it by talking of other subjects. Alfonso was glad to see him stay for long periods in the sick woman’s room; if during that time Signora Carolina felt worse, even though Frontini could scarcely help her at all, it was better that he was there.

  Mascotti often came but stopped at the door, called out some words of encouragement, but did not come in. The sick woman noticed his repugnance to entering and asked Alfonso:

  “Do I stink such a lot that he avoids me so?”

  The atmosphere in that room was becoming heavier and heavier, and even Alfonso felt relieved to go out into the open for half-an-hour. The room could no longer be ventilated; in the last few days there had been a snowfall, and the temperature had dropped so low that the window-panes were covered with a streaky film of ice. Even when she felt her breath failing, the sick woman no longer asked for the window to be opened as before; when she had hoped for relief in fresh air, she had been nearly killed by the biting cold.

  It was a strange life he led in that room, busy all day either convincing the sick woman that her sickness was not serious or trying to alleviate it. One day was so like another that he could not tell how long he had been in the country. How far away seemed the time of his love-making to Annetta!

  One day Marco the postman brought him two letters. One, according to Marco who, on his long rounds, amused himself studying the handwriting on envelopes, must be from a woman. On receiving it Alfonso had an unpleasant sensation—not everyone considered that enough time had passed for persons and events to be forgotten.

  The other was from a man, in the familiar writing of Sanneo, but signed by Cellani. This turned out to be a letter from the Maller bank. In the cold and measured style used by the bank in business communications with its clients, it informed him that the managers had learnt of the seriousness of his mother’s illness from the telegram sent to him signed Mascotti, and so they were spontaneously extending the leave granted him from a fortnight to a month. The bureaucratic style of this, signed by Cellani with the stamp he used for notes to cashiers, did not surprise Alfonso. He was grateful for the month’s leave and at once read out the letter to Signora Carolina, who, being in a moment of desperation, muttered dully, “A month’s enough!”

  The other letter was from Francesca.

  What I foresaw has already happened or is about to. I am not sure exactly what point negotiations have reached between father and daughter, but these are going on daily, and the proof of their being already quite advanced is that Annetta says nothing to me. I suppose that secretly she already agrees with h
er father, but as she was still genuinely yours until a few days ago, maybe she is ashamed of having entirely forgotten you so soon.

  Immediately after your departure she had a long talk to Signor Maller; according to Santo, who was listening at the keyhole, he shouted a lot, so much that Annetta cried for the first time in her life I think. Then, finding she did not talk to me, I looked at her with an air of reproof which cost me a great effort, as does everything that I do to help you. Annetta told me that she still loved you, but would have a great struggle with her father to get his consent to your union. So she asked me to write and tell you to find some excuse to stay in the country longer.

  I warn you, Alfonso, her not wanting to write directly is a bad sign. I agreed to do what she asked but did not write, hoping to find you’d arrive unannounced today when your leave is up; I know how you must be counting the days. But you have not come! You’re piling mistake upon mistake until you ruin yourself. I am writing to you with a last warning. By leaving at once you may still be in time, for nothing is lost yet. Annetta is hesitating, struggling between her wish to please her father, who is ranting away, and her love for you, because she has loved you. Now I can guarantee nothing, and on your arrival you might be told she’s engaged to Macario. I don’t know if this letter of mine will achieve the aim for which it was written. I’ve done far more than my duty to you. If you hesitate to leave in spite of this warning, it’ll be quite useless for you to reply or write to Annetta. I expect no words or excuses from you. They would be quite useless. Only your presence here can save you, save us.