A Life (33 page)

She went on talking. She told him that a few days after his
departure
Annetta had composed herself and probably had begun to influence her father against Francesca. She had realized this by a change in Maller’s behaviour and had then written to Alfonso that letter which he had at once realized to be a call for help.

“My chief consolation in my misery is knowing you’re miserable too.”

With these words she left him, and he did not try to stop her. It would have been useless to ask her anything apart from what was on her mind. Anyway, would she have had time to explain the Mallers’ intentions towards him and what they expected his behaviour to be? She had not come with any intention of
bringing
him comfort or calm; she had carried out with glee a mission from Annetta, hoping to hurt him, and added on her own what she thought would make it hurt more.

Yet this exchange did give him some tranquillity. Of all Francesca’s words only the first ones made an impression, Annetta’s message. She sent to ask him to forget her. Then she wanted him to keep quiet, that was all. This was enough for him to decide to adopt the bearing which from the start had seemed to him most natural and which could in some way make his
position
easier. He would bother neither about Annetta nor about Macario; at least the bitterness caused by Miceni’s words would vanish.

He returned to town, feeling an intense desire to reflect more deeply. He had an unpleasant sensation of not having understood the situation completely even now, and every new word he heard seemed to him to be changing it utterly.

He wasn’t so badly off in his little job—he thought of that day spent at work—and would stay in it. If Annetta was asking for his silence, surely Maller himself would want no more and would be careful to take no step which might reveal to others why he hated his own employee.

He would keep calm amid this hatred, do his duty at the bank, and not expect any lessening of hatred to come from his work but from his demeanour. He would behave in such a way that it would eventually be thought he had forgotten everything. That was more than he had been asked.

He had never really loved her; now he hated her for the disquiet she was causing. If he was asked just to forget her, he would
certainly
do that.

In the street he ran into Gustavo, who greeted him.

“At last. I thought I’d never see you again! We’ve had no end of trouble since you left. Has mother told you? And have you seen father?”

Alfonso looked at him closely to see what impression those
misfortunes
had produced in him. He looked the same as usual, filthy, a cigarette in his mouth, hat tilted rakishly over the right eye. Only when he asked if his mother had told Alfonso of Gralli’s desertion did he show a gleam of anger.

In the Lanuccis’ living-room there was utter gloom. A
yellowish
tablecloth, a few squalid napkins and all those pale
anaemic
faces around the table made it the picture of disconsolate misery.

“Dammit,” muttered Gustavo, “with all these long faces one can’t digest even the little one eats.” Then turning to Alfonso: “I’d be the same as usual if it weren’t for them …”

Alfonso from his corner tried to support his attempt to shake the two women out of their gloom.

“Yes, indeed,” he said, “I can’t understand either why they’re so mute.”

Signora Lanucci, who was lifting a piece of broiled meat to her mouth, put it back on her plate; food revolted her. Lucia raised her eyes, swivelled them to force a smile and give Gustavo the lie, but the smile did not appear; she burst into tears, hid her face in her napkin and unable to control herself slowly left the room, sobbing violently to avoid everyone’s eyes. Old Lanucci shouted uselessly after her not to move from table while they were at supper because he would not tolerate it. Now that he could not move he particularly disliked confusion; for, exaggerating a cure prescribed by the doctor, he had his legs bound in heavy blankets under the table.

“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.

I
N 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 White. 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.

The four old men of the bank, Rultini, Ciappi, Jassy and Marlucci had been close friends, linked by their ages, which cut them off from the youths invading the bank; but the friendship best known and admired had been between Rultini and Ciappi. Rultini, a first-class linguist, helped Ciappi when the legal office had to draft letters requiring great purity or clarity of style, and on settlement days Ciappi was often with Rultini to help him through the terrible
complications
of the day. But at the funeral of Jassy, the oldest of the four, for the first time the two white heads were seen apart. The Doctor (as Ciappi was called from respect) glanced secretly towards Rultini, waiting for the other to approach him; but the Professor (Rultini was somewhat ironically called Professor, due to his
linguistic
studies) was looking elsewhere, hard and stubborn. From then on they did not exchange another word, which aroused general surprise because the matter of the Venice post had already lasted a long time, and at the beginning the two old men had pretended to be even closer friends than usual.