The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (31 page)

“Oh yes, often,” I said, sighing desperately. “Worse luck for me.”

Then, in minute detail, I told him the story of our relationship, right from the beginning, without holding back about the incident in her room last May, the incident I felt had definitely and irrevocably put things wrong, I said. I described the way I’d kissed her, or at least the way I’d tried to kiss her so many times, not just that one time in her bedroom, and the various ways she’d reacted, when she was most fed up with me and when a bit less so.

I poured it all out, and was so much absorbed, so lost in these bitter reminiscences that I never noticed his sudden complete silence.

We had been standing outside my own front door for nearly half an hour, now. Suddenly I saw him start.

“Hell,” he muttered, checking the time. “It’s a quarter-past two. I’ve just got to be off, if not how’ll I wake up in the morning?”

He leap on to his bike.

“So long,” he said, “. . . and bear up, now.”

His face looked odd, I noticed, greyish. Had he been bored, fed up, with my confessions?

I stood watching him as he shot away. It was the first time he had dumped me there like that, without waiting for me to go into the house.

Although it was so late, my father had still not put out the light. Since the racial campaign had started in all the newspapers in the summer of ’37, he had been suffering from a serious form of insomnia, that was at its worst in summer, with the hot weather. Whole nights he spent without a wink of sleep, reading a bit, wandering about the house a bit, listening a bit in the dining-room to broadcasts in Italian from foreign stations, and chatting to my mother in her bedroom. If I came in after one o’clock I found it hard to get down the long passage along which our bedrooms were strung in a row (first his, then my mother’s, then Ernesto’s, Fanny’s, and finally, right at the end, mine) without his noticing. I might creep past on tiptoe, without my shoes, even: but my father’s sharp ears caught the minutest squeaks and rustles.

“Is that you?”

As I might have guessed, I could not escape being checked on, even that night. As a rule his “Is that you?” only had the effect ofhurrying me: without answering, pretending not to have heard, I would go straight on. But not that night. Although I could well imagine, and not without annoyance, the kind of questions I would have to answer, the same for years now-“Why so late?”, “D’you know what the time is?”, “Where have you been?”-I stopped, pushed the door half open and poked my head round it.

“What d’you think you’re doing over there?” my father said at once from his bed, peering over the top of his spectacles. “Come along, come along in a min ute.”

He was not lying down but sitting in his nightshirt, his back and head leant against the carved white-wood bedhead, covered only up to the base of his stomach by just a sheet. It struck me how everything in him and around him was white: his silvery hair, his pale, emaciated face, his white nightshirt, the pillow propping him up, the sheet, the book lying open on his belly; and how this whiteness (a hospital whiteness, I thought) went well with the surprising, remarkable serenity, the expression of goodness, filled with wisdom, that illumined his light eyes.

“What an hour!” he said smiling, glancing at his waterproof Rolex wrist watch, from which he was never parted, even in bed. “D’you know what the time is? Twenty-seven minutes past two.”

For the first time, perhaps, since, at eighteen, I was given the front-door key, the ritual expression failed to irritate me.

‘‘I’ve been wandering around,” I said quietly.

“With that friend of yours from Milan?”

“Yes.”

“What docs he do? Is he still a student?”

“Student indeed! He’s twenty-six. He’s got a job . .. as a chemist in the industrial zone, in a Montecatini factory making synthetic rubber.”

“Well, just think. And there was I thinking he was still at the university. Why don’t you ever ask him here to supper ?

“Well ... I thought I’d better not add to Mother’s work, you know.”

“Oh nonsense! There’s nothing to it. Lay an extra place, that’s all. Bring him along, do. And . . . where did you have supper? At Giovanni’s?”

“Yes.”

“Did you cat well? Tell me what.”

I settled down quite happily, not without surprise at my own pleasantness, to name various dishes: those I and those Malnate had chosen. I had sat down, meantime.

“Good,” said my father at the end of it, pleased.

“And then”, lie went on, after a pause,
“duv’ela
mm
ch a si
’nda a jar dann, tutt du ?
¹
“I bet”-and he raised his hand, as if to stop me denying it-“I bet you’ve been after the girls.”

We had never discussed things of the kind together. A fierce modesty, a violent, irrational need for freedom and independence, had always made me scotch his timid efforts to get on to such subjects even before he made them. But not that night. I looked at him, so white, so frail, so old, and realized, almost physically, that the old childish rancour which had always kept us apart was melting as if by magic, and now had no reason and made no sense.

“Of course,” I nodded. “You’ve guessed it exactly.”

“You went to a brothel, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Quite right,” he said approvingly. “At your age, at yours above all, they’re the best solution from every point of view, including health. But how d’you manage about money? Is the
sabadin.a
f Mother gives you enough? If not, let me know, and I’ll do my best to help.”

“Thanks.”

“Where did you go? To Maria Ludargnani’s? She was already well set up in my day.”

“No, to a place in via delle Volte.”

“The only thing I’d recommend to you,” he said, suddenly assuming the tone of the medical profession he had exercised only as a young man, since later, after my grandfather’s death, he had spent his whole time running the estate at Masi Torello and two properties he owned in via Vignatagliata, “the only thing I’d recommend you to do is never neglect the necessary prophylactic measures. It’s a bore, I know, and something you’d gladly do without. But it’s all too easy to get a nasty dose of blenorrheia, otherwise the clap, or worse. Now if you ever notice anything wrong when you wake up in the morning, will you come to the bathroom
at once
and get me to look at it? If anything happens, I’ll tell you how to treat it.”

“I see. Don’ t worry. ”

I could see he was looking round for the best way of questioning me further. Now that I’d got my degree -I imagined he wanted to ask me-had I any ideas, any plans for the future? But instead he wandered off into politics. Before I came home-he said-between one and two o’clock, he’d managed to get several foreign radio stations: Monteceneri, Paris, London, and Bero-miinster. Now, on the basis of this latest news, he was sure the international situation was going quickly downhill. Yes, alas: it was a real
afar negro.*
* “A dirty business” in the dialect of Ferrara Jews. The Anglo-French diplomatic mission to Moscow seemed on the point of leaving (completely unsuccessful, needless to say!). Would they really go off from Moscow like that? He was afraid they would: after which there’d be nothing to do but all recommend ourselves to God.

“What d’you think?” he exclaimed. “Stalin’s not the man for moral scruples. I’m certain he wouldn’t hesitate a minute to come to an agreement with Hitler, if it suited him.”

“An agreement between Germany and the U.S.S.R.?” I said, smiling faintly. “No, I don’t think so : I don’t think it’s possible.”

“Let’s wait and sec,” he said, and smiled too. “And let’s hope the good Lord listens to you!”

At this point, there was a complaint from the next room. My mother had woken up.

“What did you say, Ghigo?” she asked. “Is Hitler dead ?”

“No such luck,” sighed my father. “Go to sleep, my love, don’ t worry, now.”

“What’s the time?”

“Nearly three.”

“Send that boy to bed!”

Mother said a few more incomprehensible words, and was silent.

My father stared into my eyes for a long time. Then, very softly, almost murmuring, he said:

“Forgive me for talking about this. But you’ll understand that’ . . . Both your mother and I have known since last year that you’re in love with Micol Finzi-Contini. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And how are things between you now? Still going badly?”

“They couldn’t be worse,” I murmured, suddenly realizing quite clearly that this was the literal truth, that in fact our relationship couldn’t be worse, and that, in spite of what Malnate thought, I would never manage to climb up the slope at the bottom of which I had been gasping pointlessly for months.

My father gave a sigh.

“I know, it’s all very sad . . . . But after all, it’s very much better this way.”

Head hanging, I said nothing.

“Very much better,” he went on, raising his voice a little. “What would you have liked to do? Become eng
^a
g
^ed
?”

Micol too, that evening in her room, had asked me the same question. She had said: “What would you have wanted? Us to
get engaged,
is that it?” I hadn’t breathed, I had nothing to answer. As now-I reflected -I had nothing to answer my father either.

“Why not?” I said, though, and looked at him.

He shook his head.

“D’you think I don’t understand?” he said. “I like the girl too. I’ve always liked her, since she was a child . . . when she used to come downstairs in the synagogue to take the
beraca
from her father. Pretty, in fact beautiful (even too beautiful, perhaps!), intelligent, full of spirit. . . . But to get engaged!” he said slowly, opening his eyes wide. “Getting engaged, my boy, means getting married later; and these days, without a secure profession, apart from everything else, tell me how ... I suppose you wouldn’t have expected me to help you support a family (I couldn’t have, anyway, I mean not to the extent you’d need), still less have hoped that she would. She’ll have a magnificent dowry of course,” he went on, “there’s no doubt about that. But I don’t think you . . . ”

“Oh, forget the dowry,” I said. “If we loved each other, how’ d the dowry come into it?”

“You’ re right, ” my father agreed. “You’ re perfectiy right. When I got engaged to your mother in 1911 I didn’t bother about these things either. But times were different in those days. You could look calmly into the future. And although the future didn’t turn out quite as easy and cheerful as the pair of us had thought it would (we got married in 1915, as you know, the war’d already begun, and I volunteered straight afterwards), society was different in those days, it guaranteed . . . besides, I’d studied medicine, whereas you . . .”

“Whereas I?”

“Well, you know, instead of medicine, you wanted to take literature, and you know that when it was time to decide I didn’t stand in your way at all. This was what you really wanted, and both of us did our duty: you choosing the way you felt you must choose, and I not stopping you. But now? Even supposing you’d wanted a university career ...”

I shook my head.

“Worse,” he went on, “worse! It’s quite true that nothing, even now, can stop you studying on your own . . . preparing yourself for the difficult, risky job of being a writer, a militant critic like Edoardo Scar-foglio, Vincenzo Morello, or Ugo Ojetti ... or else, why not? a novelist, or” -he smiled-“a poet. But, for this very reason: how could you, at your age, barely twenty-three, and with everything still ahead of you, how could you think of taking a wife, and starting a family?”

He spoke ofmy literary future-I said to myself-as ifit were a beautiful, enticing dream, but not to be translated into anything real or concrete. He spoke of it as if he and I were already dead and now, from a point outside space and time, were discussing life together, and everything that might have happened or not happened in the course of our respective lives. Would Hitler and Stalin get together?— wondered, meantime. Yes, very likely Hitler and Stalin would get together.

“But, apart from that,” my father went on, “and apart from a whole heap of other considerations: will you let me tell you frankly . . . give you a piece of friendly advice?”

“Go ahead.”

“I realize that when someone, especially at your age, loses his head over a girl, he doesn’t stop and work things out . . . and I realize too that your character’s rather special . . . and don’t think that two years ago, when that poor wretch Dr. Fadigati ...”

Since Fadigati died, we had never mentioned him at home. How on earth did Fadigati come into it now? I looked at him questioningly.

“Yes, let me finish!” he said. “Your temperament (I’ve a feeling you get it from your grandmother Fanny), your temperament . . . you’re too sensitive, that’s it, and so you’re not satisfied . . . you always go off looking for . . . ”

He stopped, and waved a hand at ideal worlds, peopled by daydreams.

“Forgive me for saying this, anyhow,” he went on, “but even as a family the Finzi-Continis aren’t suitable . . . they aren’t for us, you know ... if you married a girl like that I’m sure it would end badly, sooner or later. ... Yes, yes,” he insisted, perhaps fearing some movement or word of protest from me, “you know very well what I’ve always thought of them. They’re different . . . they don’t even seem like
judim. .
. . Oh yes, I know: maybe that’sjust why you liked Micol so much . . . because she was above us ... socially. But mark my words, it’s better this way. The proverb says: ‘wife and oxen from your own village.’ And, in spite of appearances, that girl isn’t from your own village. Not in the least, she isn’t.”