The Conformist (28 page)

So, Marcello couldn’t help thinking, the woman disturbed him to the point that he was rendered deaf by his distraction. This discovery pleased him and for a moment he felt a strange desire to talk to Giulia about it, as if it didn’t concern her at all, as if she were some uninvolved person in whom he could confide freely.

But he said, “I was distracted … his wife? Then he must not have been married for long.”

“Why?”

“Because when I knew him he was single.”

“But didn’t you and Quadri write to each other?”

“No, he was my professor, then he went to live in France, and today I’ll be seeing him for the first time since then.”

“Funny, I thought you were friends.”

A long silence followed. Then the door Marcello had patiently been staring at opened, and someone appeared on the threshold whom he did not immediately recognize as Quadri. Then, shifting his eyes from the man’s face to his shoulder, he recognized the hump that raised it almost to his ear, and understood that Quadri had simply shaved his beard. Now he rediscovered the bizarre, almost hexagonal shape of the face, its one-dimensional quality, as if it were a flat, painted mask topped with a black wig. He recognized the fixed and brilliant eyes, rimmed in red; the triangular nose shaped like a door knocker; the shapeless mouth, a kind of circle of living red flesh. The only new thing was his chin, formerly hidden by his beard. It was small and crooked, receding deeply beneath his lower lip; it was significantly ugly, perhaps denoting an aspect of the man’s character.

Instead of the banker’s suit Quadri had been wearing the first and last time Marcello had seen him, he was now wearing (with a hunchback’s preference for light shades) a sporty outfit in dove-gray. Under his jacket he wore a red-and-green checked shirt, like an American cowboy, and a flashy tie.

Coming toward Marcello, he said in a tone at once cordial and completely indifferent, “Clerici, right? But of course, I remember you well … especially since you were the last student to come visit me before I left Italy. I’m delighted to see you again, Clerici.”

Even his voice, thought Marcello, had stayed the same: at once deeply sweet and casual, affectionate and distracted. Meanwhile, he was introducing Giulia to Quadri, who, with a perhaps ostentatious gallantry, bent down to kiss the hand she was extending toward him.

When they had resumed their seats, Marcello said in embarrassment, “I’m on my honeymoon in Paris, and so I thought I’d come see you … you were my professor … but maybe I’ve disturbed you.”

“No, no, dear boy,” answered Quadri with his usual honeyed sweetness, “on the contrary, I’m very pleased. You did very well to remember me … and anyone from Italy, if only because they speak to me in the beautiful Italian language, is welcome here.” He took up a box of cigarettes from the table, looked inside, and seeing that there was only one left, offered it to Giulia with a sigh. “Go ahead, signora. I don’t smoke and neither does my wife, so we always forget that other people love it … So, do you like Paris? I don’t imagine it’s the first time you’ve been here.”

So, thought Marcello, Quadri wanted to make conventional conversation. He answered for Giulia, “No, it’s the first time for both of us.”

“In that case,” said Quadri quickly, “I envy you. I always envy anyone coming to this beautiful city for the first time … and on your honeymoon, besides, and in this season when Paris is most lovely.” He sighed again and asked Giulia politely, “And what impression has Paris made on you, signora?”

“On me?” asked Giulia, looking not at Quadri but at her husband. “Actually, I haven’t had time to see it yet … we only arrived yesterday.”

“You’ll see, signora, it’s a very beautiful city, truly truly beautiful,” said Quadri in a generic tone, as if he were thinking of something else. “And the longer one lives here the more one is conquered by this beauty. But signora, don’t just look at the monuments, which are wonderful, of course, but not in any way superior to those in Italian cities … Walk around, have your husband accompany you through the different quarters of Paris … life in this city has a really surprising variety of aspects.”

“We haven’t seen much yet,” said Giulia, who seemed unaware of the conventional and almost ironic character of Quadri’s conversation. She turned to her husband, caressed his hand briefly with her own, and said, “But we will walk all around, won’t we, Marcello?”

“Sure,” said Marcello.

“You should, above all, get to know the French people,” Quadri went on in the same tone. “They’re a very likeable people … intelligent, liberated … and though it contradicts in part the usual image of the French, good, too. Their intelligence, so sensitive and subtle, becomes a form of goodness … Do you know anyone in Paris?”

“No, we don’t know anyone,” answered Marcello, “and I’m afraid, besides, that that won’t be possible. We’ll barely be here a week.”

“That’s a shame, a real shame. You can never appreciate the true worth of a country if you don’t get to know the inhabitants.…”

“Paris is the city of nightlife, isn’t it?” asked Giulia, who seemed perfectly at ease in this conversation right out of a tourist manual. “We haven’t seen any yet, but we’d like to go … There are a lot of dance halls and nightspots, aren’t there?”

“Oh, yes, the
tabarins
, the
boites
, ‘the boxes,’ as they call them here,” said the professor with a distracted air. “Montmartre, Montparnasse … to tell the truth, we’ve never frequented them much. Sometimes when an Italian friend passes this way, we take advantage of his ignorance of the subject to learn about it ourselves. They’re always the same old things, though … although they’re brought off with the grace and elegance native to this city. You see, signora, the French people is a serious people, a very serious people … with strong family attachments. Maybe it will surprise you to know that the great majority of Parisians have never set foot in the
boites
. Family is important here, even more so than in Italy. And they’re often good Catholics, more so than in Italy, with a less formal, more substantial faith … So it’s not surprising that they leave the
boites
to us foreigners. Yet it’s an excellent source of income for them … Paris owes a good part of its prosperity to the
boites
and to its nightlife in general.”

“That’s funny,” said Giulia. “I always thought the French partied a lot at night.” She blushed and added, “I was told that the
tabarins
stay open all night and are always packed … like us once, during Carnival.”

“Yes,” said the professor absently, “but it’s mostly foreigners who go there.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Giulia. “I’d still really like to see at least one, if only to be able to say I was there.”

The door opened and Quadri’s wife came in, supporting in both hands a tray with coffeepot and cups.

“Excuse me,” she said gaily, shutting the door with one foot, “but French maids aren’t like Italian ones. This was my maid’s day off, so she left right after breakfast … we’ll have to do everything ourselves.”

She was truly happy, thought Marcello, in a wholly unexpected way; and there was much grace in her gaiety and in the gestures of her large, light, confident body.

“Lina,” said the professor, perplexed, “Signora Clerici would like to see a
boite
. Which one should we recommend to her?”

“Oh, there are so many to choose from,” she said happily as she poured coffee into their cups, supporting her entire weight on one leg, the other extended behind her as if to show off her large foot in its flat shoe, “there’s one for every taste and every purse.” She handed Giulia her cup and added carelessly, “But we could take them to a
boite
ourselves, Edmondo … It would be a good opportunity for you, you could distract yourself for a while.”

Her husband passed a hand over his chin as if he wished to stroke his beard and answered, “Sure, all right, why not?”

“You know what we’ll do?” she continued, serving coffee to Marcello and her husband. “Since we have to eat out anyway, we can have supper together in a little restaurant on the right bank called Le Coq au Vin. It’s inexpensive but the food is good … and then after dinner we can go see a really bizarre nightspot. But Signora Clerici musn’t be scandalized.”

Giulia laughed, cheered by Lina’s gaiety. “I’m not that easily shocked.”

“It’s a
boite
called La Cravate Noire, The Black Tie,” she explained, sitting down on the couch next to Giulia. “It’s a place where the clientele is a little peculiar,” she added, looking at Giulia and smiling.

“Meaning what?”

“Women with special tastes … you’ll see. The owner and waitresses all dress in tuxedos with black ties … you’ll see, they’re so funny.”

“Oh, now I understand,” said Giulia, a little confused. “But can men go there, too?”

This question made the woman laugh. “Of course! It’s a public place, a little dance hall. It’s run by a woman with particular tastes, very intelligent actually, but anyone who wants to can go there. It’s not a convent.” She laughed in small bursts, looking at Giulia, and then added vivaciously, “But if you don’t like it, we can go somplace else … less original, though.”

“No,” said Giulia, “let’s go there. Now I’m curious about it.”

“Wretched women,” said the professor generically. He got up. “Dear Clerici, I want to tell you what a pleasure it’s been to see you and how much I look forward to dining with you and your wife this evening … We’ll talk … Do you still have the same ideas and feelings you had then?”

Marcello answered calmly, “I don’t keep up with politics.”

“All the better, all the better.” The professor took Marcello’s hand and, pressing it between both his own, added, “Then we can hope, perhaps, to win you over,” in a sweet, yearning, heartfelt tone, like a priest speaking to an atheist. He brought the hand to his breast right over his heart, and Marcello could see, to his amazement, that his large, round, protruberant eyes were shining with tears that made them appear to be beseeching him. Then, as if to conceal his emotion, Quadri hurried away to say good-bye to Giulia and then left the room, saying, “My wife will work out the details for tonight with you.”

The door closed and Marcello, somewhat embarrassed, sat down in an armchair facing the couch both women were sitting on. Now that Quadri had left, his wife’s hostility seemed very evident to him. She pretended to ignore his presence, speaking only to Giulia.

“Have you already seen the fashion stores, the seamstresses, the milliners? Rue de la Paix, Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Avenue de Matignon?”

“Not really,” said Giulia, with the air of someone hearing those names for the first time, “actually, no.”

“Would you like to see those streets, go into some of the shops, visit some high-fashion houses? I assure you, it’s very interesting,” continued Signora Quadri with an insistent, insinuating, enveloping, protective cordiality.

“Ah, yes, certainly.” Giulia looked at her husband and then added, “I’d like to buy something, too … a hat, maybe.”

“Do you want me to take you?” proposed the woman, reaching the obligatory conclusion of all those questions. “I know some of the high-fashion places really well … and I could also give you some advice.”

“That would be nice,” said Giulia, grateful but insecure.

“Shall we go today, this afternoon, in an hour? You’ll allow me, won’t you, to carry off your wife for an hour or so?”

These last words were directed toward Marcello, but in a very different tone of voice than the one she had used with Giulia: brisk, almost contemptuous.

Marcello started and said, “Of course, if Giulia wants to.”

He intuited that his wife would have preferred to escape Signora Quadri’s protective guardianship, based on the interrogative glance she turned toward him; and he was aware of responding in his turn with a look that ordered her to accept it instead. But right afterward he wondered: Am I doing this because I like the woman and want to see her again, or am I doing it because I’m on a mission and it’s not convenient to cross her? Suddenly it felt agonizing to him not to know if he was doing things because he wanted to do them or because they suited his plans.

Meanwhile, Giulia was objecting, “Really, I was thinking of going back to the hotel for a minute.…”

But the other woman didn’t let her finish. “Do you want to freshen up a little before you go out? Touch up your face? You don’t have to go all the way back to the hotel … if you want, you can lie down and take a nap on my bed. I know how tiring it is when you travel, walking around all day without a moment’s rest, especially for us women … Come on, come with me, dear.”

Before Giulia even had time to breathe, she had already pulled her up from the couch; and now she was pushing her gently but firmly toward the door. When they were on the threshold she said in a bittersweet tone, almost as if to reassure her, “Your husband will wait here … don’t worry, you won’t lose him.” Then, putting an arm around Giulia’s waist, she drew her into the hallway and closed the door.

Left alone, Marcello rose to his feet swiftly and took a few steps around the room. It was clear to him that the woman nurtured some unshakable aversion for him and he wanted to know the reason for it. But at this point his emotions became confused: on the one hand, this hostility on the part of a person he wished would love him, instead, grieved him; on the other, the thought that she might know the truth about who he was worried him, since in that case the mission would be not only difficult but dangerous. But what made him suffer the most, perhaps, was feeling how these two different anxieties were mixed up in his mind, so that he was no longer capable of distinguishing one from the other — that of the lover who sees himself rejected from that of the secret agent who fears he will be discovered. And of course, as he understood with a revival of his old melancholy, even if he managed to disarm the woman’s hostility, he would be constrained one more time to put the relationship that might follow at the disposal of the mission. Just as when he had proposed to the minister that he combine his honeymoon trip with his political duty. As always.