A Life (19 page)

“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 dressed, 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.

He was in fact a great chatterbox and admired by all except Alfonso who, though realizing the man’s ignorance, was impressed by his skill with words. Until late into the night he heard from his room the confabulations of the Lanuccis and the old woman declaring that she liked the manufacturer very much. But Rorli did not appear again. Perhaps he had guessed what was in the
air and, when invited by Gustavo, excused himself, promised to come, and did not. But Gustavo had achieved a triumph of which he boasted for a long time.

Alfonso, to look as if he was doing his part, one day brought Miceni with the excuse of showing him his room. Used to greater ease and elegance, Miceni could not conceal his laughter before those bare walls, that enormous iron bed, and the little bedside table with a short leg.

Signora Lanucci made him sit down in the living-room and introduced him to her daughter, whom he greeted seated, with a slight nod of the head but in a friendly manner, used as he was to dealing with seamstresses.

But he paid her compliments and chatted away about things women like. He even admired Lucia’s dress and compared it to one he had seen worn by Signora Cancari, one of the richest ladies in town. He was a lady-killer for whom every woman was desirable and the inspiring of desire always a pleasure.

“Shall I suggest he stays on to supper?” Signora Lanucci asked Alfonso in an anguished voice, seeing that the party was going on too long.

“Do invite him! He won’t accept.”

Signora Lanucci embarrassedly invited him, warning him at once that the supper was modest, but that as there was enough to eat for five there would be enough for six.

Miceni refused with thanks and, realizing that the family was about to sit down to table, said goodbye. He went off accompanied by Alfonso, who was impatient to know what impression Lucia had made on him. It was flattering, for he had been anything but indifferent.

On the dark wooden stairs that led up to the first floor Miceni leaned confidentially on Alfonso’s arm and asked: “Have you had her?”

Alfonso protested indignantly.

“Now don’t get angry. If you’ve never really tried, that’s the only reason you haven’t succeeded, which you must admit makes you even sillier than I thought you. A girl of that class, put close to a young man who’s of better class, sooner or later throws herself at him, unless he shows he rejects her.”

It was impossible to be angry, and Alfonso ashamedly excused himself.

“She doesn’t attract me!”

“Really?” asked Miceni in surprise. “Then I can only deplore that your taste is not better developed.”

On his return the good comments about Miceni wasted by the Lanucci family made a painful impression on Alfonso. Lucia too let it be understood that she had quite taken to him. Alfonso looked at her to see whether she was really so desirable as she had seemed to Miceni. Certainly she was not utterly ugly. Lounging on an armchair made her waist look trim, and her puffed starched skirt improved her thinness.

One evening in April Alfonso left Annetta’s house at ten o’clock and met a breath of winter, a wind sharp as an arrow, which had risen only in the last hour or so. It whistled round the deserted streets of the old town and became frenzied where they narrowed. It fractured unfixed tiles, tore from roofs everything that was not firmly held or did not belong there. Cold as Alfonso was he took with him through the wind the happiness of a kiss stolen from Annetta.

He found the Lanucci family still at supper with a new guest, one Mario Gralli, overseer at a printers. This was a dark young man with small eyes but a hard proud look which showed him to be quick-witted and tenacious. He was introduced with the usual phrases, and Alfonso, ill-pleased at having to make the
acquaintance
of the whole neighbourhood, treated him coldly. Gralli got up to greet Alfonso, who was rather surprised to find him shorter than he had expected. He was dressed with care though in cheap materials; the usual yellowish neckband fitted his neck closely, and his cravat, though threadbare, was not soiled and was knotted with a certain care.

He spoke little and evidently unwillingly. He would throw a monosyllable in reply here and there, contenting himself by
staring
in the face of whomever spoke to him with a fixed but vague look. It was not Alfonso’s sort of embarrassment, of one who wanted to speak but did not know how, but calculated indifference. He went off shortly after Alfonso’s arrival, perhaps bothered by a new face when he had just begun to feel at home with the others.
On his getting up, Alfonso thought he saw him drop Lucia’s hand, which he had been holding under the tablecloth. Had he got so far so soon?

Then he was told that Mario Gralli was the first real suitor for Lucia’s hand. For some time he had been a close friend of Gustavo’s, to whom he would give jobs of distributing
newspapers
, which Gustavo liked because of the five or six hours he spent in the printers, only one or two of which were work. Having so many hours for talking and nothing else to talk about, Gustavo spoke of his plans for his sister’s future and of the wish in the family to see her married as soon as possible. One day Lucia was invited by her brother to the printers to look at the machinery. She was dressed well as always, and Gralli seemed taken at once. He took her to see every machine. As they passed the workmen rose respectfully to their feet; what Mario liked most about Lucia so far was her appearance, while she liked to see him surrounded with such respect. So it was that the two found each other.

Gralli earned well and, as the girl was pleased, her parents could find no objection. Anyway, they had not been asked, because Gralli had declared to Gustavo that he could not formulate his request officially so soon, not within a year. He never in fact talked directly to the parents at all, but always through Gustavo. He got him to explain to them that his position was not yet secure enough because he had obtained it as a result of the sudden death of a superior, and he did not know if it would be confirmed. Gustavo added on his own the observation that it did not seem decent to insist on Mario making his request at once.

All this was described to Alfonso by Signora Lanucci. That same evening, with a jolly air, she told him how pleased they were with the match as she had always loved literature and a printer seemed to her very close to it. She went up to him again in the morning, as he was about to leave. At first, with the same air as the night before, and like a person with really happy news she said:

“It means some light for us at last.”

Suddenly she changed. She spoke of the great care needed about such a matter and, once she began complaining, went on to say that she did not like having to trust herself to Gustavo’s solutions and judgement. Eventually she began to sob desperately,
declaring that she never thought she would have to hand over her daughter to someone she did not know. She had spent a bad night, and her pale features were discomposed; tumbled white hair increased her suffering air.

Alfonso tried to calm her by saying that Gralli had made an excellent impression on him.

Still weeping, she assured him that she liked Lucia’s future
husband
too, and added that she knew she was wrong to cry, as crying was a bad omen. But she was suffering too much and must confess the hopes she had nurtured in him since his entering their home; she could tell him now because her confidence could not
possibly
be taken for an attempt. Her sincerity surprised Alfonso. But she lied, Alfonso suspected, when she went on to say that Lucia had known nothing of her hopes. With touching sincerity she explained the reasons why she had hoped to see him fall in love with Lucia.

“I knew you. I’d have felt sure that even if things went badly with you both, you yourself would always have found patience enough to treat your wife gently. And when there are two, I
figured
, one is never really unhappy!”

Alfonso was not embarrassed about his attitude. More than once he had felt a desire, a very platonic desire, to make this poor old woman happy, and now he thought it right to pretend that he was sorry to be no longer able to do what he would not have done anyway.

“A lovely dream, yes, indeed!” said Alfonso, “but it could never have been realized as my position is even more wretched and uncertain than Gralli’s. I’m penniless.”

When he was alone, he thought of Signora Lanucci’s sorrow. Amid her misfortunes the poor woman had pinned all her hopes on her daughter’s future, and this had made her meeker and happier. Now her hopes were dying. Her daughter was to have the same destiny as herself. She would be surrounded by a
poverty
-stricken family in no way better off than the one she was leaving.

“Signorina,” said Alfonso seriously to Lucia that evening, “I want to be the first to congratulate you, and do so at once.”

Lucia thanked him ceremoniously.

“There’s nothing to congratulate me on yet, as Mario hasn’t made his request officially”—she was already calling him by his Christian name—“but from you I can accept
congratulations
beforehand.”

In the evening Alfonso fell asleep unusually early, after enduring for two hours the mortal boredom of the Lanuccis and of Gralli’s company. It pained him to see the future husband so lacking in wit or ideas; but he realized that the mother suffered this too, and he realized that Lucia did not notice and liked her future husband as he was, dignifiedly silent.