Her Husband (21 page)

That difficult play she had started and couldn’t finish weighed on them like a curse. Up to this time the anxiety of their indecision had been entangled in discussions about its characters and scenes. Now, his suggestion that they put that play aside and write another one together–a play based on a vision that he had had many years ago of the Roman countryside, near Ostia, among the Sabine people, who come there to spend the winter in miserable huts–clearly signified the end of the indecision. And still more clearly she found him ready to put an end to all delay and face their new noble and industrious life when he invited her the next day, the very day her husband was to arrive, to go with him to see those places near Ostia. Those foreboding places toward the sea, where a solitary tower looms, Tor Bovacciana, beside the river crossed by a cable along which passes a service boat for ferrying some silent fisherman or hunter . . .

“Tomorrow?” she asked, her manner and voice expressing total acquiescence.

“Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow. When will he arrive?”

She knew at once who “he” was and responded: “At nine.”

“Fine. I’ll be here at nine-thirty. You don’t need to say anything. I’ll do the talking. We’ll leave right after that.”

No more was said. He rushed off; she was left shaking under the dark mystery of her new destiny.

The tower . . . the river crossed by a cable . . . the boat carrying the rare passerby through those menacing places . . .

Had she dreamed it?

Was that the haven, then? At Ostia . . . She didn’t have to say anything. . . . Tomorrow!

She would leave everything here. Yes, everything, everything. She would write him. She wouldn’t have to tell any lies. For this more than anything she was grateful to Gueli. Even when she left tomorrow she wouldn’t have to lie. In that play, with that play he suggested, she would enter a noble new life, with art and in art. It was the way. It wasn’t a means or a pretext for deceit. It was the way to get out, without lying and without shame, away from that hateful house no longer hers.

“Hurry, hurry, quickly, quickly: you won’t get there on time!”

From the gate Giustino shouted this last recommendation to the two driving off in a carriage, expecting that Silvia at least, if not Gueli, would turn to wave at him. She didn’t.

Exasperated by his wife’s persistently haughty attitude, Giustino shrugged and went up to his room to wait for Èmere to tell him when his bath was ready.

“What a woman!” he was thinking. “To make that disgusted face even at such a kind invitation. The cathedral at Orvieto: wonderful! Old art… a subject for study.”

To tell the truth, he really wasn’t so very glad, because on that very day, in fact almost the moment he had come back from Paris, Gueli had come to invite his wife on that artistic excursion. But if Gueli hadn’t known he was arriving that morning! Gueli had been out of sorts because he had to go to Milan the next day and wouldn’t have much time to show Silvia all the marvelous art there–in the cathedral at Orvieto.

Beautiful, beautiful was the Orvieto cathedral: or so he had heard… But of course it wouldn’t have made a big impression on him, since he’d just come from Paris, but… old art, a subject for study . . .

How irritating that disgusted face. All the more because, confound it, Gueli had been kind enough to keep her company these past few days, and he had encouraged her so charmingly not to worry about her
husband’s arrival just then. No doubt he had had a good time in Paris and so wouldn’t mind if his wife had some recreation for a few hours, until evening. . ..

Giustino himself had even said: “I’ll be happy for you to go!”

Giustino tapped his forehead with a finger, made a face, and crooned: “I don’t waaant to. … I don’t waaant to. . . .”

Èmere came to announce that his bath was ready.

“Good. I’m ready, too!”

In a short time he was delightfully stretched out in the white enamel tub, the water taking on a soft bluish tint. Thinking back over the sensational whirl of Parisian splendors in the clean quiet of his bright bathroom, he felt lucky. He felt this really was the reward of the victor.

Delightful also there in that warm bath was the sensation of tiredness reminding him how hard he had worked to earn that triumph.

Ah, that Parisian victory, that Parisian victory had been the crowning glory of all his work! Now he could say he was thoroughly satisfied, even happy.

All told, it was also a good thing that Silvia had gone on that trip. Considering how tired he was, and in the excitement of his arrival, he might have ruined the effect of all that he wanted to tell her.

Later, after his bath, he would have some refreshment and take a nap. Then, rested, in the evening he would make a complete report to his wife and Gueli of the “great things” in Paris. It would have been nice to have some journalists present so they could report it to the public in the form of an interview. But tomorrow, just wait! He’d find one, he’d find a hundred, very happy to oblige him.

He woke up toward eight in the evening and for the first time thought about the gifts he had brought his wife from Paris: a wonderful dressing gown, all frilly with lace; a very elegant traveling bag of the latest fashion; three combs and a hair clip of clear, very fine tortoise shell; and then a silver set for her desk, very artfully decorated. He wanted to get them out of his suitcase so his wife’s eyes would fill with surprise and pleasure the minute she walked in: the combs and the bag on the dressing table, the gown on the bed. He had Èmere help carry
the pieces of the other gift to the desk. After putting them down, he remained in the study to see what his wife had done in his absence.

What? What? Nothing! Could it be possible? The play … oh, no! Still at the end of the second act… On the top sheet of paper the title had been struck out and next to it, between parentheses,
The Hawk
was written, followed by a question mark.

What did this mean? How could that be! Nothing at all? Not even a line after so many days! Was it possible?

He rummaged through the desk drawers: nothing!

From the play manuscript a small piece of paper fell out. He picked it up. Some words were scribbled here and there in a tiny handwriting:
fleeting lucidity
… then, underneath:
cold impediments to loving
… then further down:
in such prosperity lies abound
. .. and then:
Many steady ideas staggering like a drunk
. . . and finally:
bells, drops of water lining the balcony railing . . . crazy trees and crazy thoughts . . . white curtains of the parish house, ragged dress over shabby shoe . .
.

Hum! Giustino made a long face. He turned the paper over. Nothing. There was nothing else.

This was all his wife had written in nearly twenty days! It wasn’t worth a thing, then, not even Gueli’s advice…. What did those broken phrases mean?

He rested his hands on his cheeks for a while. His eyes returned to the second phrase:
impediments to loving
. . .

“But why?” he said out loud, shrugging his shoulders.

He began to pace the study, his face still in his hands. Why and what impediments, now that everything, thanks to him, was smooth and easy? The road was open and what a road! A wide, unobstructed road for running from triumph to triumph!

“Impediments to loving… Cold impediments to loving…
Cold
and to
loving
. .. Hum! What impediments? Why?”

And with his hands behind his back now, he continued to pace. Suddenly he stopped, deeply absorbed, started walking, stopped again, repeating at every pause now, pulling a long face:

“
Crazy trees and crazy thoughts
. . .”

He had expected the play to be finished, and he had counted on working it into the conversation the next day when he talked to the journalists about the triumph in Paris!

Èmere came in to bring him the evening newspapers.

“How come?” Giustino asked him. “Is it already so late?”

“It’s after ten,” Èmere answered.

“Really? How come?” Giustino repeated, having slept so late he lost all track of time. “What are they doing? They were supposed to be here at nine-thirty at the latest. The train arrives at eight-fifty.”

Èmere stood stock-still, waiting for his employer to finish his comments, and then he said: “Giovanna wants to know if we should wait for the signora.”

“Of course we should wait!” Giustino answered irritably. “And we’ll wait for Signor Gueli, who will also have supper with us. Maybe there was some delay. If… if… but no! If they had missed the train they’d have sent a telegram. It’s already ten?”

“After,” Èmere repeated in his stiff and impassive manner.

At the sight of him, Giustino felt his irritation growing. He checked the newspaper to see if by chance there was some change in the train schedule.

“Arrivals . . . arrivals . . . arrivals . . . Here it is: from Chiusi, eight-fifty.”

“Yes, sir,” said Èmere. “The train has already arrived.”

“How do you know that, imbecile?”

“I know because the gentleman next door who goes back and forth to Chiusi arrived forty-five minutes ago.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, sir. In fact, when I heard the carriage I thought it was the signora, and I went to open the gate. Instead, I saw the gentleman next door who’d come from Chiusi. If the signora had gone to Chiusi. . .”

“She went to Orvieto!” shouted Giustino. “But it’s the same line. It means they missed the train!”

“If you would like, sir, I’ll go next door to ask . . .”

“You’ll ask what?”

“If the gentleman really came from Chiusi.”

“Yes, yes, go, and tell Giovanna to wait.”

“They missed the train . . . they missed the train . . . they missed the train . . .” he began to chant, with angry gestures. “Orvieto! . . . The trip to Orvieto! . . . The cathedral in Orvieto! . . . This very day, the cathedral in Orvieto! Why that? If they get it into their heads! . . . Certain sudden, irresistible needs!… Certain ideas!… Then they get mad if they hear from that man . . . what’s his name? that they’re all a bunch of nuts! The Orvieto cathedral. . . If she’d done any work I’d understand the need for diversion! She didn’t do anything, confound it!
Crazy trees and crazy thoughts
. . . That’s it, she said it herself. . . .”

Èmere returned to say that the gentleman in the house next door had indeed come from Chiusi.

“Oh, all right!” Giustino yelled at him. “Put something on the table just for me! They could have at least sent a telegram, it seems to me.”

At the table, the sight of the two settings for his wife and Gueli, to whom he had promised himself the pleasure of recounting the “great things” of Paris, increased his spite, and he told Èmere to remove them.

Perhaps Èmere was standing there looking at him as he always had, but to Giustino it seemed like he was looking at him differently that evening, and this was another annoyance, so he sent him to the kitchen.

“I’ll call you when I need you.”

The sight of a husband whose wife by some unforeseen circumstance was sleeping away from home in the company of another man must be very amusing for one who has no wife, especially if this husband arrived home that very day after twenty days of absence and had brought his wife so many beautiful gifts. A nice gift in return!

Giustino would never have dreamed that the austere, the more than mature Gueli would take advantage of a situation like that…. Hardly imaginable! And then, Silvia was restraint and honesty personified! But a telegram, by heaven–they could have, should have sent a telegram. No, they really should have sent a telegram.

This missing telegram grew progressively more serious in Giustino’s eyes, because he grew progressively more congested with all the
irritation he was feeling: for that trip smack-dab on the very day of his arrival, for all those “great things” of Paris that had stuck in his throat and kept him from eating, for the gifts that his wife hadn’t seen, and for the consideration he had every right to expect after twenty days of absence, confound it! Not even to send a telegram . . .

Suddenly the silence in the house seemed sinister, perhaps because he kept waiting for the telegraph messenger’s ring. He got up from the table, looked again at the train schedule in the newspaper to see what time next day his wife might return, and saw nothing before one in the afternoon. There was another train in the morning, but too early for a lady. In the meantime it was possible that if the telegram didn’t arrive during the night, it might arrive in time in the morning. He went upstairs to read the newspaper in bed and wait for sleep that would be late coming for many reasons.

He looked into his wife’s empty bedroom. How disappointing! Waiting on the bed was the beautiful lace dressing gown. In the reflection from the electric-lamp shade, the white of the lace was tinted a very soft pale pink. It made Giustino feel upset and anxious, and he turned to look at the dressing table to see the combs and the bag hanging on one of the mirror braces. He noticed a certain disorder on top of the dressing table, probably because of Silvia’s hurry to fix her hair and get ready in the morning after Gueli’s importunate invitation. He was thinking that it must be sad for his wife, by now accustomed to sleeping in a nice room like this, to have to spend the night in some miserable little hotel in Orvieto.

He woke up late the next morning, and the first thing he did was ask Èmere if a telegram had arrived. It had not.

An accident? An accident? No, of course not! Gueli and Silvia Roncella weren’t two ordinary travelers. If something had happened to them he would have been informed at once. And, in addition, if something had come up, Gueli or someone else would have telegraphed him so he wouldn’t be kept in painful suspense by the silence. He thought
of telegraphing him at Orvieto, but where to send it? No, nothing to do. Better just to wait patiently until the train arrived. While waiting he could spend the time putting his accounts straight, the income and outgo for so many days. A big job!

For about three hours he was immersed in the small details of his accounts, forgetting his worries about his wife, when Èmere came to announce that there was a lady downstairs wanting to speak to him.

“A lady? Who?”

“She wanted to see Signora Roncella. I told her the signora was not here.”

“But who is she?” Giustino shouted. “Signora … Signora … Signora . . . Has she ever been here before?”

“No, sir, never.”

“A foreigner?”

“No, sir, I don’t think so.”

“Who can it be?” Giustino asked himself. “I’m coming.”

He went down to the living room and stood in the doorway as though paralyzed at the sight of Livia Frezzi, who, with her face horribly deformed, pinched here and there with rapid nervous tics, attacked him with teeth clenched, lips snarling, green eyes fixed and bloodshot.

“She hasn’t come back? They haven’t come back yet?”

At the sight of her leaping at him, bristling with demonic fury, Giustino felt fear, compassion, and contempt at the same time.

“So, you know too?” he began. “Last evening . . . last evening no doubt… they missed the .. . the train . .. but. .. but… perhaps any minute . . .”

Signora Frezzi came at him again, almost on the attack: “Then you know? You allowed them to go off together? You!”

“What… my dear lady … but why?” he equivocated, moving backward. “You . . . wait a minute . . . I’m sorry . . . but. . .”

“You?” Signora Frezzi insisted.

Then Giustino, joining his hands in an imploring gesture, almost as though to scoop up and offer reason to that poor woman: “But how does this hurt us? Please believe that my wife . . .”

Livia Frezzi didn’t let him finish: she clapped her clawlike hands to her contorted, squeezed face, to let the gall-soaked insult and contempt escape through her clamped teeth. She erupted: “Imbecile!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes!” Giustino lost his temper. “You insult me in my house! Insult me and my wife with your sordid suspicions!”

“But if you had seen them,” she went on, her face in his, her lips twisted into a horrible sneer. “Together, arm in arm, in the ruins at Ostia . . . Like this!” As she grabbed for his arm, Giustino took a step back.

“Ostia? What do you mean, Ostia! You’re mistaken! Who told you that? How could they if they went to Orvieto!”

“To Orvieto, is it?” Signora Frezzi sneered again. “Is that what they told you?”

“Yes, indeed, Signora! Signor Gueli!” Giustino asserted firmly. “An artistic excursion, a visit to the cathedral at Orvieto. Old art… something to . . .”

“Imbecile! Imbecile! Imbecile!” Signora Frezzi exploded again. “And so you were in cahoots with him?”

A very pale Giustino raised his hand and, holding himself back with difficulty he trembled: “You can thank God you’re a woman, otherwise . . .”

Wilder than ever, Signora Frezzi gave him no slack, interrupting him with: “You, you’re the one who can thank God I didn’t find her here! But I know where to find him, and you’ll be hearing from me!”

With this threat she ran off, and Giustino stood looking around him, shaking and stunned, working his ten fingers in the air as though unsure what to do with them.

“She’s crazy . . . crazy … crazy . ..” he whispered. “Capable of violence . . .”

What should he do? Run after her? A scandal in the street. . . But in the meantime?

He felt he was being pulled along by her fury, and he leaned forward as though about to throw himself into the race. Immediately he straightened up, checked by the thought that he didn’t have the time or the means of confirming anything in the bewildering confusion, the
perplexity amid so many conflicting uncertainties. He could only rave: “Ostia . . . Ostia? . . . They would be back by now. Arm in arm . . . among the ruins … She’s crazy…. Someone saw them. . . . Who could have seen them?… And they went to tell her?… Someone who knows she’s jealous, just for the fun of it. . . . And in the meantime?. . . She’s capable of going to the station and doing who knows what. . . .”

He looked at his watch, without realizing that Signora Frezzi had no reason to go to the station at that hour if she thought Gueli and Silvia had gone to Ostia and not to Orvieto; and he called Èmere to bring down his hat and cane. It was twelve-thirty. He had just enough time to get there for the one-o’clock train.

“To the station, hurry!” he shouted, getting into the first carriage he saw near Margherita Bridge.

But he arrived a few minutes after the train came in from Chiusi. The last passengers were still getting off. He looked them over. They weren’t there! He ran to the exit, looking here and there at everyone who was leaving. He didn’t see them! Was it possible they hadn’t arrived even on that train? Perhaps they had already gone out and were in a carriage. But then wouldn’t he have run into them as he entered the station?

“I could have missed them!”

And he jumped into another carriage to rush back home. By the time he got there he was almost sure that Èmere would tell him no one had arrived.

There was no doubt in his mind that something serious must have happened. He was struck by the strangeness of that trip (which now seemed fishy), undertaken just at the moment of his arrival, followed by the long, unexplainable silence when they didn’t return, and that crazy woman’s outrageous suspicion. He wanted to stop that outrageous suspicion before it filled the emptiness and silence and even took possession of him, and he tried to ward off the enormity of the trick those two had played on him. It was incompatible with his conscience as an exemplary husband, and inconsistent with Gueli’s reputation for austerity, and the honesty, the glum and stubborn honesty of Silvia. He had always put himself out wholeheartedly for his wife, to the extent
of obtaining all those triumphs and a comfortable life for her. Strange, yes: she had been strange lately, after the success of her play, but only because of that glum and stubborn honesty of hers. Loving simplicity and dreading the limelight, she didn’t know how to adapt to the pomp and splendor of fame. No, no, stop it! How could he doubt her honesty and the loyalty of Gueli, who was already an old man, and for so many years tied to that woman, her slave?

A sudden thought… One of Gueli’s servants might have sent a telegram to him at Orvieto to alert him of Signora Frezzi’s sudden return from Monteporzio, and now he didn’t dare return to Rome? And, for goodness sake, he had to keep Silvia with him there, because of his fear of returning? And Silvia was accommodating him without realizing the harm to her dignity? Not at all! It wasn’t possible! They knew the longer they delayed their return, the greater would be the suspicions and fury of that crazy woman. . . . Except that Gueli, conquered by fear, persecuted by suspicion, and now out of Signora Frezzi’s clutches, should not have included Silvia. . . .

That infernal silence was worse than anything!

Should he go to Orvieto? And what if they weren’t there anymore? What if they had never gone there? Now he was beginning to doubt it…. Maybe they went someplace else…. It suddenly occurred to him that Gueli had said something about having to go to Milan. And what if he had taken Silvia there with him? How could he? Without telling anyone? If they had in all honesty felt like visiting some other place, they would have found a way to let him know. No, no . . . Where did they go?

Ah, the doorbell! He jumped at the ring and, not waiting for Èmere, he ran to the gate himself. The mailman with a letter from Silvia! Ah, at last… But what? A local postmark on the envelope. She was writing him from Rome?

“Never mind!” he shouted when Èmere came rushing out, indicating that he had taken the letter himself. And he tore open the envelope right there in the yard, by the gate.

The letter–very short, about twenty lines at the most–was without a provenance, date, or greeting. Reading the first words, as though transfixed,
he twice tried to take a breath. His face turned white, his eyes grew glazed, he passed a hand over them, and then rubbed his hands together, crumpling the letter.

What?… Going away?… Just like that?… In order not to deceive him? And he looked fiercely at the placid little terra-cotta lion beside the gate, with his head lying on his front paws, sleeping. What was this? And hadn’t she deceived him with that old man?. . . Hadn’t she gone away with him?… And she was leaving him everything?… What did that mean–everything? What was everything anymore, what was he anymore, if she . . . But what? Why? Not an explanation! Nothing . . . She went away just like that, without saying why. . . . Because he had done so much, too much, for her? This was his reward? She threw everything in his face. As if he had worked only for himself and not for her, too! Could he stay there anymore without her? It was the ruin . . . the ruin of his whole life… his destruction. But why? She gave no details in that letter. She said nothing at all about Gueli. She said she didn’t want to deceive him and was definite only about wanting to break up their life together. And it came from Rome! So she was in Rome? Where? Not at Gueli’s. No, that was impossible–Signora Frezzi was there and had come to him that same morning. Perhaps Silvia wasn’t in Rome and had sent that letter to someone else to mail it. Who? Maybe Raceni… maybe Signora Ely Faciolli . . . She must have written to one or the other in Rome; otherwise he would know where it came from by the envelope. He had to go find her at any cost, make her talk, explain why she couldn’t live with him any longer, and make her listen to reason. She must have gone mad! Perhaps Gueli . . . No, he still couldn’t believe she’d leave him for Gueli! But maybe Gueli induced her to leave him, vexed as he was by Signora Frezzi, insane himself. … So everyone was crazy! How blind he had been to invite him into their home against her will. . . . Who knows what Gueli thought of him! That he persecuted his wife as Signora Frezzi persecuted him, perhaps? Yes, that must be what got this dreadful business started. . . . Why had he urged her to work, anyway? For her own sake, of course! To keep alive her fame that he had worked so hard to produce! Everything, everything for her! Hadn’t he even lost his job for her? When he lived only for
her, how could he see such a disaster coming? If anything, it was she, she, Silvia, who had taken advantage of him, had taken all his work, all his time, his entire soul, and now she was deserting him, tossing him away like a worthless rag. Out! Could he keep their home, the money made from her work? Impossible! Don’t even think about it! Now here he was, out in the street, with no status, no profession, like an empty sack. . . . No, no, for heaven’s sake! Before a scandal broke, he would find her! He would find her!

He rushed to the gate with the idea of running to Signora Ely Faciolli’s house, but he hadn’t even opened it before two reporters and then a third and a fourth appeared before him with faces flushed from their exertion and excitement.

“What happened?”

“Gueli. . .” one of them panted. “Gueli has been wounded–”

“And Silvia?” shouted Giustino.

“No, nothing!” answered another who had barely caught his breath. “Don’t worry, she wasn’t there!”

“Where is she? Where is she?” asked Giustino, burning to escape.

“She’s not in Rome! She’s not in Rome!” they yelled in chorus to keep him there.

“If she was with Gueli!” exclaimed Giustino, trembling convulsively. “And her letter . . . her letter’s from Rome!”

“A letter, ah . . . you got a letter from your wife?”

“Yes! Here it is…. About fifteen minutes ago … With a local postmark.”

“May I see it?” one of them asked tentatively.

But another was in a hurry to get things straight: “No! That’s impossible! Your wife’s in Ostia.”

“In Ostia? You’re sure?”

“Yes, yes, in Ostia. Ostia without a doubt.”

Giustino, trembling, covered his face with his hands: “Then it’s true! It’s true! It’s true!”

The four stood looking at him, moved with pity. One of them asked: “Did you think your wife was in Rome?”

“No, yesterday,” Giustino snapped, “with Gueli. They told me they were going to Orvieto. . . .”

“To Orvieto? No, how could they!”

“A pretext!”

“To put you on a false trail. . .”

“Look, if Gueli came back from Ostia . . .”

“Excuse me,” repeated the reporter, holding out his hand. “May I see the letter?”

Giustino pulled back his hand. “No, it’s nothing… she says that… never mind! But where, where was Gueli wounded?”

“Two very serious wounds!”

“In his stomach and right arm.”

Giustino shook his head: “No! I mean, where? At home? On the street?”

“At home, at home . . . Frezzi did it. . . . He was coming back from Ostia and … as soon as he walked in . . .”

“From Ostia? Then he could have mailed the letter.”

“Oh, yes . . . That’s likely. . . .”

Giustino covered his face with his hands again, groaning: “It’s over! It’s over! It’s over!”

Then he asked angrily: “Has Signora Frezzi been arrested?”

“Yes, immediately!”

“I knew she could do something crazy! She was here this morning!”

“Signora Frezzi?”

“Yes, here looking for my wife! And I didn’t run after her! Ah, my friends! My friends! My friends!” he went on without a break, holding out his arms to Dora Barmis, Raceni, Lampini, Centanni, Mola, Federici, who, as soon as they heard, had run to Gueli’s house. They still had on their faces the horror of the blood splattered in the rooms and on the stairs invaded by curiosity seekers, and the fever of the enormous scandal.