A Life

by Italo Svevo

  “It’s all because of that Gralli business,” said Signora Lanucci, in a voice suffocated by supressed tears. “You can understand a girl being unable to put up in cold blood with such treatment, with no reason, for it’s sure she gave him none, poor girl. She loved him.”

  “I offered to go and break that little man’s head, but they forbade me,” yelled Gustavo. He wanted to show that he was not passive at his sister’s disaster.

  “Oh,” said Signora Lanucci, “no extremes! He still might not desert her, and as long as there’s been no violence things might still work out.”

  She explained to Alfonso that, although she had not liked Gralli at first, she was now supporting Lucia’s hopes because the girl’s gloom showed she was in love.

  After that, on the old man’s suggestion, they did not talk of it again, but they did not talk of anything else either.

  Lanucci was first to go to bed, and while he was walking slowly off, leaning on his wife’s arm, he complained of various aches and pains, but she would not listen and urged him impatiently to move forward when he obviously wanted to stop and catch his breath.

  Exhausted first by the journey and then by work and the day’s agitations, it was a joy for Alfonso to stretch out in bed. He hurriedly put out the light and flung himself on his side with a deep sigh of satisfaction, looking like a man exhausted after pleasure.

  Then Gustavo came in after politely asking permission.

  “You’ve already put the light out, have you? Are you very tired?”

  “Yes, very.”

  Slowly and with an effort Alfonso told him how ill he had been and how his illness had left him very weak. He thought that Gustavo must soon leave and was on the point of dozing off. Instead Gustavo from very close, talked on and on without asking for any reply. Alfonso understood all that was being said, but in his weariness the facts told him came as no surprise. He did not even feel stirred at the thought of his own relationship with Annetta which Gustavo’s words recalled.

  “Oh! Just a few words!” said Gustavo in a low voice. He declared that he did not in the least approve of Lucia’s great sorrow for a man who did not deserve it. “There’s something else at the heart of this,” he said lowering his voice threateningly. “It’s not natural for Lucia to get in such a state about a swine like that leaving her.” He declared that he was talking to Alfonso like a brother. What he supposed was that Lucia had been over-trusting and given herself to Mario Gralli. “I’ll kill him, if I go to prison for it,” he repeated in a louder voice, “I’ll kill him if he’s abused our confidence like that.”

  Alfonso understood, but his one desire was for Gustavo to leave him as soon as possible. He was still reasoning, however, and felt it a duty to protest in Lucia’s name.

  “Lucia’s a decent girl and you’re wrong,” he said without raising his head from the pillow.

  “Decent?” shouted Gustavo. “She’s a girl, so she’s weak.”

  From the living-room came a cry and the sound of noisy weeping. Alfonso heard Signora Lanucci’s voice first low, obviously trying to calm Lucia, then louder; she was calling Gustavo. The latter hurried out and closed the door behind him. Then Alfonso heard an excited discussion, one voice trying to talk the other down while both were accompanied by Lucia’s weak and continuous sobs. Suddenly these ceased, and Lucia spoke in a clear voice, accentuating each syllable, word by word; she was swearing or promising. All that did not succeed in shaking Alfonso out of his torpor; he felt so weak and indifferent that all this seemed like the symptoms of a new attack of fever. Another time he thought that the door of his room was opened and that Gustavo called him in a low voice, apparently only to make sure that he was asleep.

  He did not reply, incapable of coming to.

  Alfonso rose refreshed from sleep. He now knew quite well that the night before he had been present at a real scene, but he had not grasped its details enough to understand how important he should consider the doubts so hurriedly told to him by Gustavo. Certainly Lucia’s voice had not sounded like one at fault, and Alfonso found that enough for him to believe in her complete innocence. As soon as Alfonso woke up, his own worries seized him again, and he could not turn his whole mind to studying facts that did not concern him directly.

  In the living-room he only found Gustavo, sipping at his coffee.

  “Excuse me for not listening to you last night,” he said frankly, “I was so tired that I fell asleep as you were talking and never understood a thing even before falling asleep. What did you want to tell me?”

  Gustavo looked up from his saucer and glanced at him suspiciously.

  “All the better,” he said to him. “I was a bit drunk and don’t know what I told you.”

  That he was drunk was not true, but Alfonso did not try to think out why he was being told a lie. Perhaps, and this was the kindest interpretation, Gustavo was lying to excuse himself for having said and thought things that were untrue.

  XVIII

  IN THE BANK, walking down the passage towards his room, Alfonso felt the same acute sensation of uneasiness as the day before. He met no one whom he did not want to meet, but was glad when he reached his little office. It was uncomfortable to be in a place where he might suddenly find himself face to face with Maller.

  Alchieri greeted him in his usual brusque joking manner. He told him that he had read through the file and been amazed at the great numbers of letters of his in it.

  “Take care not to work too hard or you’ll harm others!”

  This observation pleased Alfonso. If Alchieri had noticed the great amount of work he had done, Maller would realize it all the more, since every letter came to him to sign.

  Towards ten o’clock Alchieri prepared to go off to Jassy’s funeral. He bemoaned the five francs he had been made to pay out.

  “At least I’m able to attend the funeral and get out of the office for an hour.”

  Off he went as if to a celebration.

  Alfonso did not want to go, because Maller would be sure to be there. He was saved from embarrassment by Sanneo, who asked him to stay on at the bank as everyone else in the correspondence department wanted to pay Jassy their last respects since they had been closely connected with him. Someone had to stay in the department because although Signor Maller would probably go to the funeral too, he had not said so and might, if he stayed at the bank, need a letter or information.

  Alfonso gave such a start that Sanneo noticed it.

  “Oh he won’t ask you much!” he said to soothe him. “At the worst you’ll have to do some moving around the bank after a bit of paper.” So he ran the same risks by staying as by going to the funeral.

  But how lovely it would be if he were always left so quiet. Usually, although his room was out of the way, from the passage and other offices came sounds which were often indistinct but always bothersome because continuous; but that day he could only hear the step or voice of one person or other, repeated and at long intervals. The courtyard which the window of his room overlooked was always silent.

  His solitude did not last long. There was a knock at the door and he got up in alarm and called: “Come in!”

  It was a woman, a seamstress by the look of her; she had a black veil on her fair hair, and her dress, though worn, was decent and worn carefully and with good taste. She looked at him, waiting to be recognized.

  “Don’t you know me?” and she stood hesitatingly by the door, maybe already regretting having come there. “Signor White introduced us.”

  “Ah! Signora White!” he cried in surprise, offering her a chair. Now he remembered the fair pale face which he had seen bent over a loom in White’s home. He tried to get out of his embarrassment. “Do excuse me for not recognizing you, but I’ve not seen you in a veil before; it makes you look quite different.”

  She gave a smile which was forced and understated at the same time; her mind was not ready to cope with him. She said that she was coming to him because he might know something about his friend W
hite. She spoke in dialect.

  “Don’t you write to him?” asked Alfonso in great surprise.

  He had remembered that on White’s departure his mistress had remained. A fine figure, this French woman. Tall, straight, firm; feminine lines on a sturdy body.

  “The last letter I received was from Marseilles,” she said flushing.

  Her blush confirmed that this phrase was a confession; it explained why White had no scruples in breaking off their relationship from one day to the next; it made their connection seem very superficial.

  He pretended not to understand.

  “Perhaps he’s not reached his destination!”

  He knew quite well that White could have gone round the world in that time.

  “Oh! I know he’s arrived because I heard it from another source, his brother in London. D’you know where he is now?”

  By his urge to show sympathy Alfonso betrayed how much he’d understood. “I’m sorry I don’t,” he burst out, “for if I did, I’d tell you in spite of my friendship with him.”

  He was taking her side so definitely because he sensed some similarity between this woman’s grief and Lucia’s. White, with all his gentlemanly airs, was behaving worse than Gralli.

  The woman’s blue eyes filled with tears which did not well over; they vanished again without staining her cheeks. She had no air of making confidences but spoke as if Alfonso had already been told everything.

  “He thought he was fulfilling all his obligations to me by pensioning me off.” She raised her head proudly, “I hoped in a few months to earn enough to do without his help.”

  Alchieri entered singing, pleased with his outing. Finding a woman there he was confused and excused himself.

  The conversation so well under way was over.

  Alfonso stopped her at the door a minute to advise her to ask Maller, who should know where White was. The woman’s beauty and pride increased his wish to help her.

  She replied that she had already been to Maller, who had declared he knew nothing.

  “They’re in league,” she added contemptuously. Then, maybe humiliated at having aroused the pity that Alfonso showed, she added, “Anyway, I don’t really know why I’m trying to get his address. I’d only use it to send him insults, useless because he must already know what I’d say if I could.”

  Alfonso would have remained moved by this odd visitor if, on the departure of Signora White, as he kept calling her, she had not bid him a frosty goodbye, barely polite and enough to show how little she cared about any sympathy from him.

  Sanneo called Alfonso to thank him and ask him if anything had happened during his absence.

  On returning to his desk he met Signor Maller for the first time. He could have avoided him, since Maller, just back from the funeral, was walking ahead of him towards his room, but Alfonso thought he had been seen and did not want to give him the impression of fearing this meeting. He hastened past Maller and gave him a bow; he was not sure, but thought Maller bowed his head in return. Before moving into the little passage to the left he turned round and saw Maller’s back just entering his office. The managing director’s face was deep red, and Alfonso was uncertain whether that redness was produced by the flurry of the sudden meeting or whether that was its usual colour which Alfonso had forgotten.

  This meeting put him in a state of agitation the whole day long, an agitation which resulted in an increased output of work. His activity now was in direct ratio to his disquiet about relations with Maller. At midday he did not dare leave the office at once in case he should again see Signor Maller, who was in the habit of going to the Stock Exchange at that hour.

  Ballina kept him back with his chatter. Alchieri had told Alfonso that Ballina’s good humour had sadly deteriorated of late. The ex-officer had not grasped the exact nature of this change but realized that it was a change for the worse. Ballina was still happy and laughed a lot, but more at other people’s expense and with a touch of spite. His position had not worsened and no misfortune had struck him, but he declared himself tired of struggling against poverty.

  “When I think ten years ago what I thought I’d be at thirty-five and then consider what I actually am, it puts me into a cold sweat,” he told Alfonso, who asked after his health.

  A short time before, a new clerk called Brovicci had entered the correspondence department; he was very young and knew nothing but was so well recommended that he had been put on the payroll at once and with a higher salary than Alfonso’s. He dressed carelessly, often even dirtily, and made heavy weather of the copying work to which Sanneo had relegated him. He was not liked by his colleagues, and Ballina had a particular loathing for him.

  “He has a hundred or two hundred thousand francs of his own and comes here to take the bread from the mouths of us poor.”

  Alfonso did not believe him.

  “Yes,” said Ballina, “it’s difficult to believe, and one never would if one didn’t know that the more money people have the sillier they become.”

  Then, forgetting Brovicci, he had a return of his old rancourless good humour and asserted that he himself was sillier with his money at the beginning of the month, as soon as he got his pay, than he was at the end; by the last days of each month he was spending only on bare necessities.

  Alfonso’s work at the bank was now satisfying to him because there was a great deal of it, and he concentrated on it intensely, with the constant stimulus of perhaps meeting with Maller or a brusque nod from Cellani. In the evening Alfonso would leave the bank exhausted, calm and satisfied with the work completed, and think of it with pleasure even outside the office. Surprised at himself, he would sometimes wonder if he had not been wrong about his own qualities and whether such a life was not exactly the most suitable to his constitution. The old habit of daydreaming remained as megalomaniac as ever, but it evoked quite different fantasies. Now in his daydreams he would attribute to himself extraordinary diligence which simply had to be highly praised by Sanneo and by his bosses; and he imagined this diligence of his saving the bank from ruin.

  As a result of this activity, and for other reasons too, Alfonso felt easier in his job. If it was not quite up to his daydreams, Sanneo did praise him, which was a lot compared to the way his superior usually treated his clerks so as not to spoil them by praise. His consideration for Alfonso was quite unusual. Sanneo gave young Giacomo orders to serve him and run errands for him round the bank for any papers or files that he needed. Alfonso was very grateful because he hated those long searches, work of which no trace remained and about which the management could therefore know nothing at all.

  Without the irritation of these useless searches his life grew calmer than ever. During the day he spoke little and always with the same people. In the street he felt ill at ease and hurried along to reach his office or home.

  He was, he thought, very close to the ideal state he dreamed of in his reading, the state of renunciation and quiet. He no longer even felt agitation to work up energy for more renunciation. No one ever offered him anything: by his last renunciation he had saved himself, he thought, from the depths to which he might have been dragged by an urge for enjoyment.

  He did not want things to be different. Apart from fears for the future and regret at the hatred of which he knew himself to be the object, he was content, balanced in mind as an old man. Certainly, as he was well aware, his peace was the result of the strange events of the last months, which had thrown over him, as it were, a leaden cloak preventing any deviation whatsoever; all his mind was on those events, either admiring the greatness of his own sacrifice or wondering how to avoid the dangers still threatening him. He was anyway calmer than in those discontented years he had spent at the bank before, years of restless and ambitious living in accordance with the blind sensations of the moment. Now he had forgotten his dreams of grandeur and riches and could muse for hours without a woman’s face appearing once among his ghosts.

  He dreamt of this peace increasing even more, of him
remaining as he was and forgetting Annetta entirely and being forgotten by her and the others. He dreamt too of lessening Maller’s hatred and being greeted by him once again as he had been that night in his office when called in and encouraged so kindly. What about Macario? Did Macario know how many reasons he had to hate him?

  An improvement of his position in the bank was not among his dreams. The income from his little capital, together with his salary, should suffice, and he expected nothing from his chiefs except to be left quiet in his place.

  Around him in the bank went on battles whose savagery made him realize better the superiority of his own position above such struggles, petty as they were savage. In the lowest grades they were battles among the messenger boys for jobs near the management, which extended as far up as a battle then going on for the post of founder and manager of a branch about to be set up by the Maller Bank in Venice.

  For this post in Venice were battling two old men, Doctor Ciappi and Rultini, both persons with whom Alfonso had had little or nothing to do till then.

  Doctor Ciappi had only been employed at the Maller Bank for a short time. He had done all the necessary legal studies, but being of a poor family and lacking sponsors he had not succeeded in acquiring enough clients to make a living and after long years of useless efforts had accepted a post offered him by Maller as manager of the legal department and lawyer to the bank. It was a post which did not give him the income he could hope for as manager of the branch in Venice.

  Rultini had also entered Mallers when already old. He had been given the post of receiver more from deference for his white hairs than for his ability; but what was worse, as all knew, was that he felt himself not up to his job, due to his slowness and lack of practice in stock exchange dealings. That was the chief reason why he was competing for the post of manager in Venice; for, as the new branch was to be entirely dependent on the main office, the post was a responsible but not difficult one.