Idiots First (8 page)

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Authors: Bernard Malamud

BOOK: Idiots First
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She seemed to remember the man from the same day last year. He was standing at a nearby grave, occasionally turning to look around, while Etta, a rosary in her hand, prayed for the repose of the soul of her husband Armando. Sometimes she prayed he would move over and let her lie down with him so that her heart might be eased. It was the second of November, All Soul's Day in the cimitero Campo Verano, in Rome, and it had begun to drizzle after she had laid down the bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums on the grave Armando wouldn't have had if it weren't for a generous uncle, a doctor in Perugia. Without this uncle Etta had no idea where Armando would be
buried, certainly in a much less attractive grave, though she would have resisted his often expressed desire to be cremated.
Etta worked for meager wages in a draper's shop and Armando had left no insurance. The bright large yellow flowers, glowing in November gloom on the faded grass, moved her and tears gushed forth. Although she felt uncomfortably feverish when she cried like that, Etta was glad she had, because crying seemed to be the only thing that relieved her. She was thirty, dressed in full mourning. Her figure was slim, her moist brown eyes red-rimmed and darkly ringed, the skin pale and her features grown thin. Since the accidental death of Armando, a few months more than a year ago, she came almost daily during the long Roman afternoon rest time to pray at his grave. She was devoted to his memory, ravaged within. Etta went to confession twice a week and took communion every Sunday. She lit candles for Armando at La Madonna Addolorata, and had a mass offered once a month, more often when she had a little extra money. Whenever she returned to the cold inexpensive flat she still lived in and could not give up because it had once also been his, Etta thought of Armando, recalling him as he had looked ten years ago, not as when he had died. Invariably she felt an oppressive pang and ate very little.
It was raining quietly when she finished her rosary. Etta dropped the beads into her purse and opened a black umbrella. The man from the other grave, wearing a darkish green hat and a tight black overcoat, had stopped a few feet behind her, cupping his small hands over a cigarette as he lit it. Seeing her turn from the grave he touched his hat.
He was a short man with dark eyes and a barely visible mustache. He had meaty ears but was handsome.
“Your husband?” he asked respectfully, letting the smoke flow out as he spoke, holding his cigarette cupped in his palm to keep it from getting wet.
She was momentarily nervous, undecided whether to do anything more than nod, then go her way, but the thought that he too was bereaved restrained her.
She said it was.
He nodded in the direction of the grave where he had stood. “My wife. One day while I was on my job she was hurrying to meet a lover and was killed in a minute by a taxi in the Piazza Bologna.” He spoke without bitterness, without apparent emotion, but his eyes were restless.
She noticed that he had put up his coat collar and was getting wet. Hesitantly she offered to share her umbrella with him on the way to the bus stop.
“Cesare Montaldo,” he murmured, gravely accepting the umbrella and holding it high enough for both of them.
“Etta Oliva.” She was, in her high heels, almost a head taller than he.
They walked slowly along an avenue of damp cypresses to the gates of the cemetery, Etta keeping from him that she had been so stricken by his story she could not get out even a sympathetic comment.
“Mourning is a hard business,” Cesare said. “If people knew there'd be less death.”
She sighed with a slight smile.
Across the street from the bus stop was a “bar” with tables under a drawn awning. Cesare suggested coffee or perhaps an ice.
She thanked him and was about to refuse but his sad serious expression changed her mind and she went with him across the street. He guided her gently by the elbow, the other hand firmly holding the umbrella over them. She said she felt cold and they went inside.
He ordered an espresso but Etta settled for a piece of pastry which she politely picked at with her fork. Between puffs of a cigarette he talked about himself. His voice was low and he spoke well. He was a free-lance journalist, he said. Formerly he had worked in a government office but the work was boring so he had quit in disgust although he was in line for the directorship. “I would have directed the boredom.” Now he was toying with the idea of going to America. He had a brother in Boston who wanted him to visit for several months and then decide whether he would emigrate permanently. The brother thought they could arrange that Cesare might come in through Canada. He had considered the idea but could not bring himself to break his ties with this kind of life for that. He seemed also to think that he would find it hard not to be able to go to his dead wife's grave when he was moved to do so. “You know how it is,” he said, “with somebody you have once loved.”
Etta felt for her handkerchief in her purse and touched her eyes with it.
“And you?” he asked sympathetically.
To her surprise she began to tell him her story. Though she had often related it to priests, she never had to anyone else, not even a friend. But she was telling it to a stranger because he seemed to be a man who would understand. And if later she regretted telling him, what difference would it make once he was gone?
She confessed she had prayed for her husband's death, and Cesare put down his coffee cup and sat with his butt between his lips, not puffing as she talked.
Armando, Etta said, had fallen in love with a cousin who had come during the summer from Perugia for a job in Rome. Her father had suggested that she live with them, and Armando and Etta, after talking it over, decided to let her stay for a while. They would save her rent to buy a second-hand television set so they could watch “Lascia o Raddoppia,” the quiz program that everyone in Rome watched on Thursday nights, and that way save themselves the embarrassment of waiting for invitations and having to accept them from neighbors they didn't like. The cousin came, Laura Ansaldo, a big-boned pretty girl of eighteen with thick brown hair and large eyes. She slept on the sofa in the living room, was easy to get along with, and made herself helpful in the kitchen before and after supper. Etta had liked her until she noticed that Armando had gone mad over the girl. She then tried to get rid of Laura but Armando threatened he would leave if she bothered her. One day Etta had come home from work and found them naked in the marriage bed, engaged in the act. She had screamed and wept. She called Laura a stinking whore and swore she would kill her if she didn't leave the house that minute. Armando was contrite. He promised he would send the girl back to Perugia, and the next day in the Stazione Termini, had put her on the train. But the separation from her was more than he could bear. He grew nervous and miserable. Armando confessed himself one Saturday night, and for the first time in ten years, took communion, but instead of calming down he desired the girl more strongly. After a
week he told Etta that he was going to get his cousin and bring her back to Rome.
“If you bring that whore here,” Etta shouted, “I'll pray to Christ that you drop dead before you get back.”
“In that case,” Armando said, “start praying.”
When he left the house she fell on her knees and prayed with all her heart for his death.
That night Armando went with a friend to get Laura. The friend had a truck and was going to Assisi. On the way back he would pick them up in Perugia and drive to Rome. They started out when it was still twilight but it soon grew dark. Armando drove for a while, then felt sleepy and crawled into the back of the truck. The Perugian hills were foggy after a hot September day and the truck hit a rock in the road a hard bump. Armando, in deep sleep, rolled out of the open tailgate of the truck, hitting the road with head and shoulders, then rolling down the hill. He was dead before he stopped rolling. When she heard of this Etta fainted away and it was two days before she could speak. After that she had prayed for her own death and often did.
Etta turned her back to the other tables, though they were empty, and wept openly and quietly.
After a while Cesare squashed his butt. “Calma, Signora. If God had wanted your husband to live he would still be living. Prayers have little relevance to the situation. To my way of thinking the whole thing was no more than a coincidence. It's best not to go too far with religion or it becomes troublesome.”
“A prayer is a prayer,” she said. “I suffer for mine.”
Cesare pursed his lips. “But who can judge these things?
They're much more complicated than most of us know. In the case of my wife I didn't pray for her death but I confess I might have wished it. Am I in a better position than you?”
“My prayer was a sin. You don't have that on your mind. It's worse than what you just might have thought.”
“That's only a technical thing, Signora.”
“If Armando had lived,” she said after a minute, “he would have been twenty-nine next month. I am a year older. But my life is useless now. I wait to join him.”
He shook his head, seemed moved, and ordered an espresso for her.
Though Etta had stopped crying, for the first time in months she felt substantially disburdened.
Cesare put her on the bus; as they were crossing the street he suggested they might meet now and then since they had so much in common.
“I live like a nun,” she said.
He lifted his hat. “Coraggio,” and she smiled at him for his kindness.
When she returned home that night the anguish of life without Armando recommenced. She remembered him as he had been when he was courting her and felt uneasy for having talked about him to Cesare. And she vowed for herself continued prayers, rosaries, her own penitence to win him further indulgences in Purgatory.
Etta saw Cesare on a Sunday afternoon a week later. He had written her name in his little book and was able to locate her apartment in a house on the via Nomentana through the help of a friend in the electric company.
When he knocked on her door she was surprised to see him, turned rather pale, though he hung back doubtfully. But she invited him in and he entered apologetically. He said he had found out by accident where she lived and she asked for no details. Cesare had brought a small bunch of violets which she embarrassedly accepted and put in water.
“You're looking better, Signora,” he said.
“My mourning for Armando goes on,” she answered with a sad smile.
“Moderazione,” he counseled, flicking his meaty ear with his pinky. “You're still a young woman, and at that not bad looking. You ought to acknowledge it to yourself. There are certain advantages to self belief.”
Etta made coffee and Cesare insisted on going out for a half dozen pastries.
He said as they were eating that he was considering emigrating if nothing better turned up soon. After a pause he said he had decided he had given more than his share to the dead. “I've been faithful to her memory but I have to think of myself once in a while. There comes a time when one has to return to life. It's only natural. Where there's life there's life.”
She lowered her eyes and sipped her coffee.
Cesare set down his cup and got up. He put on his coat and thanked her. As he was buttoning his overcoat he said he would drop by again when he was in the neighborhood. He had a journalist friend who lived close by.
“Don't forget I'm still in mourning,” Etta said.
He looked up at her respectfully. “Who can forget that, Signora? Who would want to so long as you mourn?”
She then felt uneasy.
“You know my story.” She spoke as though she were explaining again.
“I know,” he said, “that we were both betrayed. They died and we suffer. My wife ate flowers and I belch.”
“They suffer too. If Armando must suffer, I don't want it to be about me. I want him to feel that I'm still married to him.” Her eyes were wet again.
“He's dead, Signora. The marriage is over,” Cesare said. “There's no marriage without his presence unless you expect the Holy Ghost.” He spoke dryly, adding quietly, “Your needs are different from a dead man's, you're a healthy woman. Let's face the facts.”
“Not spiritually,” she said quickly.
“Spiritually and physically, there's no love in death.” She blushed and spoke in excitement. “There's love for the dead. Let him feel that I'm paying for my sin at the same time he is for his. To help him into heaven I keep myself pure. Let him feel that.”
Cesare nodded and left, but Etta, after he had gone, continued to be troubled. She felt uneasy, could not define her mood, and stayed longer than usual at Armando's grave when she went the next day. She promised herself not to see Cesare again. In the next weeks she became a little miserly.
The journalist returned one evening almost a month later and Etta stood at the door in a way that indicated he would not be asked in. She had seen herself doing this if he appeared. But Cesare, with his hat in his hand, suggested a short stroll. The suggestion seemed so modest that she agreed. They walked down the via Nomentana, Etta wearing her highest heels, Cesare unselfconsciously talking. He wore small patent leather shoes and smoked as they strolled.

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