Zeno's Conscience Part 18

Augusta wouldn't agree that the soul of the suicidal little seamstress was all that innocent, but after some faint protest, she renewed her efforts to make me pay that visit. She said I shouldn't be afraid of any embarra.s.sment. She had spoken to Guido, who had conversed with her with absolute tranquillity, as if he had performed the most common of acts.

I left the house without giving Augusta the satisfaction of appearing convinced by her arguments. After a slight hesitation I set off firmly to satisfy my wife. Though the distance was short, my pace allowed an attenuation of my judgment of Guido. I remembered the direction indicated for me by the light that a few days earlier had illuminated my spirit. Guido was a boy, a boy to whom I had promised my indulgence. If he didn't manage to kill himself first, sooner or later he, too, would reach maturity.

The maid showed me into a little room that must have been Ada's study. It was a gloomy day and the cramped s.p.a.ce was dark, its one window covered by a heavy curtain. On the wall were portraits of the parents of Ada and of Guido. I remained there only a short time, because the maid returned for me and led me to Guido and Ada in their bedroom. This was vast and bright even on that day, thanks to the two broad windows and the pale wallpaper and furniture. Guido was lying in his bed, his head bandaged, and Ada was seated beside him.

Guido received me without any embarra.s.sment, indeed with the keenest grat.i.tude. He appeared drowsy, but to greet me and then to give me instructions, he managed to recover himself and seem completely awake. Then he sank back on the pillow and closed his eyes. Did he remember he was to simulate the great effect of the morphine? In any case he inspired pity rather than anger, and I felt I was being very good.

I didn't look immediately at Ada: I was afraid of the Basedow countenance. When I did look at her, I was pleasantly surprised because I was expecting worse. Her eyes were really exceptionally enlarged, but the facial swellings that had replaced her cheeks were gone, and she seemed more beautiful to me. She was wearing a loose red gown, b.u.t.toned up to her chin, in which her poor little body was lost. There was about her something very chaste and, because of those eyes, something very stern. I couldn't entirely clarify my feeling, but I truly thought that before me was a woman who resembled that Ada I had loved.

At a certain moment Guido widened his eyes, took from beneath the pillow a check, on which I immediately saw Ada's signature, and gave it to me, asking me to cash it and deposit the sum in an account I was to open in Ada's name.

"In the name of Ada Malfenti or Ada Speier?" he jokingly asked Ada.

She shrugged and said: "You and Zeno will know which is better."

"I'll tell you later how you must make the other entries," Guido added, with a curtness that I found offensive.

I was on the point of interrupting the languor to which he then promptly succ.u.mbed, and tell him that if he wanted any more entries he could make them himself.

Meanwhile a great cup of black coffee had been brought, which Ada held out to him. He lifted his arms from under the covers and raised the cup to his mouth with both hands. Now, his nose in the cup, he really seemed a child.

When I took my leave, he a.s.sured me that the next day he would be in the office.

I had already said good-bye to Ada, and so I was considerably surprised when she joined me at the front door. She was out of breath.

"Please, Zeno! Come in here for a moment. There's something I have to tell you."

I followed her into the sitting room where I had been a little earlier, from which I now heard one of the twins crying.

We remained standing, face to face. She was still gasping, and for this reason, and no other, for a moment I thought she had shown me into this dark room to ask of me the love I had offered her.

In the darkness her great eyes were terrifying. Filled with anguish, I was wondering what I should do. Wouldn't it have been my duty to take her into my arms and thus spare her the necessity of asking anything of me? What a cyclone of resolutions in the s.p.a.ce of an instant! One of the most difficult things in life is guessing what a woman wants. Listening to her words is no use, because a whole speech can be erased by one look, nor can that look guide us when we are with her, at her invitation, in a convenient, dark little room.

Unable to read her, I tried to read myself. What was my desire? Did I want to kiss those eyes and that skeletal body? I couldn't give a firm answer because just a moment earlier I had seen her in the stern chast.i.ty of that soft robe, desirable as the girl I had loved.

Her anxiety was now accompanied by tears, thus prolonging the time in which I was unsure what she wanted or what I desired. Finally, in a broken voice, she told me once again of her love for Guido, hence I had neither duties nor rights toward her.

She stammered: "Augusta told me you would like to leave Guido and not occupy yourself with his affairs. I must beg you to keep on helping him. I don't think he's capable of doing it on his own."

She was asking me to continue doing what I already did. It was little, very little, and I tried to offer more: "Since you ask me, I'll go on helping Guido. Indeed, I'll do my best to help him more effectively than I've done so far."

Another exaggeration! I realized as much at the very moment I blundered into it, but I couldn't give it up. I wanted to a.s.sure Ada (or perhaps lie to her), saying that she was important to me. She didn't want my love but rather my support, and I spoke to her in a way that could lead her to believe I was ready to give her both.

Ada immediately seized my hand. I shuddered. When a woman gives you her hand, she is offering a great deal! I have always felt that. When I was granted a hand, I felt I was grasping an entire woman. I sensed her stature, and in the obvious comparison between mine and hers, I felt as if I were performing an act that resembled an embrace. Without doubt, it was an intimate contact.

She added: "I have to go back to Bologna immediately, to the sanatorium, and it would be a great rea.s.surance to know you were with him."

"I'll stay with him!" I answered with a resigned look. Ada was to believe that my look of resignation signified the sacrifice I was agreeing to make for her. Instead, I was resigning myself to returning to a common, a very common, life, for she had no thought of following me into that exceptional life I had dreamed of.

I made an effort to come down to earth completely, and I immediately discovered in my mind a far-from-simple problem of accounting. I had to deposit the amount of that check in my pocket in Ada's account. This was clear, and yet it was not at all clear how such an entry could affect the balance sheet. I said nothing, suspecting that perhaps Ada had no idea what in this world a daybook was, which contained accounts of various nature.

But I was reluctant to leave that room without having said more. So it was that instead of mentioning accounts, I uttered a sentence, dropped nonchalantly at that moment, simply to be saying something to Ada, but then I felt it was of great importance for me, for Ada, for Guido, but most of all for myself, whom I was compromising yet again. That sentence was so important that for long years I remembered how, with a careless gesture, I moved my lips to say it in that dark little room in the presence of the four portraits of the parents of Ada and Guido, married to each other also on the wall.

I said: "In the end, you married a man even more peculiar than I am, Ada!"

How a word can traverse time! It becomes an event in itself, connecting with other events! My words became an event, a tragic event, because they were addressed to Ada! In my thoughts I would never afterwards be able to evoke so vividly the house where Ada had chosen between me and Guido, on that sunny street where, after days of waiting, I had contrived to meet her and walk beside her and wear myself out trying to win her laughter, which I foolishly hailed as a promise! And I remembered, too, that then I was already made inferior by the clumsiness of my leg muscles, while Guido moved even more freely than Ada herself and wasn't marked by any inferiority, unless we were to consider that strange stick he was in the habit of carrying.

She said in a low voice, "It's true!"

Then she smiled affectionately. "But I'm happy for Augusta that you're so much better than I believed you." Then, with a sigh: "So happy, that it makes me a little less sad that Guido isn't what I expected."

I remained silent, still dubious. It seemed to me what she, had said was that I had become the man she had expected Guido to become. Was this love, then?

And she went on: "You're the best man in our family, our mainstay, our hope." She took my hand again and I squeezed hers, perhaps too hard. But she withdrew it again so quickly that any doubt was dispelled. Perhaps to soften her gesture, she sent me another caress. "And because I know the man you are, I'm so sorry for having made you suffer. Did you really suffer that much?"

At once I thrust my eye into the darkness of my past to find that suffering again, and I murmured: "Yes!"

Little by little I recalled Guido's violin, and then how they would have cast me out of that living room if I hadn't clung to Augusta, and again that Malfenti living room, where, around the Louis XIV table, we wooed while at the other little table they were watching. Suddenly I recalled also Carla, who told me I belonged to my wife, namely Ada.

I repeated, as the tears came into my eyes: "Yes, very, very much!"

She summoned her strength and said: "But now you love Augusta!"

A sob interrupted her for an instant, and I started, not knowing whether she had paused to hear if I would affirm or deny that love. Luckily for me, she didn't give me time to answer, but went on: "Now, between the two of us there exists, and there must exist, a fraternal love. I need you. For that boy in there, I must now be also a mother, I must protect him. Will you help me with this difficult task?"

In her great emotion, she was almost leaning on me, as in my dream. But I strictly followed her words. She asked a fraternal affection of me; the loving pledge that I had thought bound me to her was thus transformed into another right she could claim, therefore I immediately promised to help Guido, to help her, to do whatever she wanted. If I had been calmer, I should have spoken to her of my inadequacy for the task she was a.s.signing me, but I would have destroyed all the unforgettable emotion of that moment. In any case, I was so moved that I had no sense of my inadequacy. At that moment I thought that no inadequacies existed for anyone. Even Guido's could be dispelled with a few words that would instil in him the necessary enthusiasm.

Ada accompanied me to the landing and remained there, leaning on the banister, watching me go down. Just as Carla had always done, but it was strange that Ada did it, she who loved Guido, and I was so grateful to her for it that, before moving to the second flight of steps, I also raised my head once to see her and wave to her. This was how people in love behaved, but obviously it was appropriate also in a question of fraternal love.

Thus I went off happy. She had accompanied me out onto that landing, but no farther. There were no longer any doubts. We would remain like this: I had loved her and now I loved Augusta, but my former love gave her the right to my devotion. She continued, then, to love that boy of hers, but for me she retained a great fraternal affection, and not only because I had married her sister, but also to compensate me for the sufferings she had caused me, which const.i.tuted a secret bond between us. All this was quite sweet, a sweetness rare in life. Couldn't such sweetness give me true health? In fact, I walked that day without clumsiness and without pains, I felt magnanimous and strong and, in my heart, a feeling of confidence that was new to me. I forgot I had betrayed my wife and also in the foulest way, or rather I determined never to do it again, which amounted to the same thing, and I felt I was truly as Ada saw me, the best man in the family.

When this heroism eventually faded, I would have liked to rekindle it, but meanwhile Ada had left for Bologna, and my every effort to draw a new stimulus from what she had said to me proved vain. Yes! I would do what little I could for Guido, but such a resolution didn't increase either the air in my lungs or the blood in my veins. For Ada in my heart there remained a great new sweetness, renewed every time she, in her letters to Augusta, recalled me with some affectionate word. I returned her affection with all my heart, and followed her treatment with the most sincere best wishes. If only she could succeed in recovering all her health and all her beauty!

The next day Guido came to the office and immediately started pondering the entries he wanted to make. He suggested: "Let's s.h.i.+ft half the debit-and-credit account into Ada's."

This was precisely what he had wanted, and it did no good at all. If I had been the indifferent executor of his wishes as I had been until a few days before, without blinking I would have made those entries, and without another thought. But instead I felt it my duty to tell him everything; I thought it would stimulate him to work if I informed him it was not so easy to erase the loss we had incurred.

I explained to him that, as far as I knew, Ada had given him that money to be deposited to her credit in her account, and that would not happen if we cashed the check and slipped into her account, from another direction, half of our losses.

Further, that part of the loss that he wanted to a.s.sume himself had indeed to be entered in his personal account, where it belonged, and where, in fact, the entire debit really belonged. And none of this meant annulling the losses, but rather confirming them. I had given it so much thought that it was easy for me to explain everything to him, and I concluded: "Supposing that we happened to be-G.o.d forbid!-in the situation foreseen by Olivi, the loss would still be obvious from our hooks, the moment they were examined by a knowledgeable expert."

He looked at me, stunned. He knew enough of accounting to understand me, and yet he couldn't grasp it because his desire prevented him from coming to terms with the evidence. Then I added, to make him see everything clearly: "You see there was no point in Ada's making that payment?"

When he finally understood, he turned quite pale and began nervously gnawing his fingernails. He remained in a daze, but wanted to master himself, and with his comical commanding-officer manner, he still ordered that all those entries be made, adding: "To exempt you from all responsibility, I am prepared to write them in the book myself and even to sign my name!"

I understood! He wanted to go on dreaming at a stage where there is no more room for dreams. Not with double entry!

I remembered what I had promised myself, up on the hill of Via Belvedere, and later to Ada in the dark little sitting room of her house, and I spoke generously: "I will make the entries you want at once: I don't need your signature to protect me. I am here to help you, not to stand in your way!"

He clasped my hand affectionately. "Life is hard," he said. "And it's a great comfort to have a friend like you at my side."

Moved, we looked into each other's eyes. His were glistening. To evade the emotion that was threatening me as well, I laughed and said, "Life isn't hard, but it's very original."

And he also laughed with all his heart.

Then he remained with me to see how I would deal with that debit-and-credit account. All was done in a few minutes. That account vanished into nothingness, dragging the account of Ada after it. However, we recorded a credit to her in a little notebook, so that in case all other doc.u.mentation were to vanish in some cataclysm, her loan would be doc.u.mented, along with the fact that we were to pay her interest. The other half of the debit-and-credit account went to increase the debits, already considerable, in Guido's account.

By nature, accounts are a breed of animal much inclined to irony. Making those entries I thought: "One account-the one listed as profit-and-loss-had been a.s.sa.s.sinated, the other-Ada's - had died a natural death because there was no way of keeping it alive, whereas we didn't know how to kill off Guido's: a dubious debtor's, it remained an open grave, ready for our firm."

We continued to talk of bookkeeping for a long time, in that office. Guido racked his brain to find another way that might better protect him against possible snares (as he called them) of the law. I believe he also consulted some accountant, because one day he came into the office and proposed that he and I destroy the old books after making some new ones in which we would enter an invented sale to someone or other, some bogus figure; and the sale would then appear to have repaid the amount lent by Ada. It was painful to have to disillusion him, because he had rushed into the office, animated by such hope! He proposed a fraud that truly revolted me. Until now we had done nothing more than juggle some realities, threatening harm only to those who had implicitly agreed. Now, on the contrary, he wanted to invent actual transactions. I could also see that in this way, and only in this way, it was possible to eliminate every trace of the loss incurred, but at what cost! It was necessary also to invent the name of the buyer, or to gain the consent of the person we wanted to portray as such. I had nothing against seeing the books destroyed, though I had written them with such care, but it was annoying to make new ones. I raised some objections, and they finally convinced Guido. Such doc.u.ments cannot be easily counterfeited. One would have to be able to falsify the doc.u.ments proving the existence and the owners.h.i.+p of the merchandise.

He gave up his plan, but the next day he turned up in the office with another one, which also involved the destruction of the old books. Tired of seeing all other work stalled by these arguments, I protested, "You're thinking so much about it, anyone would believe you really want to prepare for bankruptcy! Otherwise why would such a small reduction of your capital matter? So far, no one has the right to look into your books. The important thing now is to work, to work and stop thinking about such foolishness."

He confessed to me that this thought had become an obsession with him. How could it have been otherwise? With a bit of bad luck he could incur that penal sanction and end up in jail!

From my study of law, I knew that Olivi had explained very precisely the duties of a businessman who kept such books, but to free Guido and also myself from this obsession, I advised him to consult some lawyer friend.

He replied that he already had done so, or, rather, he hadn't gone to a lawyer for that specific purpose, because he didn't want to confide his secret even to a lawyer, but he had encouraged a lawyer friend of his to chat while they were out hunting together. Therefore he knew that Olivi had not been mistaken, nor had he exaggerated-unfortunately!

Seeing the inanity of it, he stopped discovering ways to lalsify his accounts, but that didn't restore his peace of mind. Every time he came into the office he turned grim, looking at bis great ledgers. He confessed to me, one day, that on entering our room he felt he was in the anteroom of the prison and wanted to run off.

One day he asked me: "Does Augusta know everything about our books?"

I blushed because I seemed to sense a reproach in the question. But obviously if Ada knew about the books, Augusta could also know. I didn't think of this immediately, but, on the contrary, I felt I deserved his reproach. So I murmured: "She must have learned from Ada, or perhaps from Alberta, who heard it from Ada!"

I could see all the little streams that could flow to Augusta. With those words I didn't feel I was denying the fact that she had learned everything from the prime source, namely me, but I was a.s.serting that it would have been pointless for me to remain silent. Too bad! If, on the contrary, I had confessed at once that I had no secrets from Augusta, I would have felt so loyal and honest! A simple act like that, or rather the dissimulation of an act it would have been better to confess and p.r.o.nounce innocent, is enough to strain the most sincere friends.h.i.+p.

I will record here, though it has no importance for Guido or for my story, how a few days afterwards that talkative agent with whom we had dealt in the copper-sulfate affair stopped me on the street, looked up at me, compelled by his short stature, which he exaggerated by bending his knees slightly, and said ironically: "They say you two have done some good business, like the sulfate deal!"

Then, seeing me blanch, he shook my hand and added: "Personally, I wish you lots of good deals. I hope you have no doubt about that!"

And he left me. I suppose that our affairs had been reported to him by his daughter, who was a cla.s.smate of little Anna at the Liceo. I didn't mention this slight indiscretion to Guido. My main job was to defend him against useless troubles.

I was amazed that Guido made no decision about Carmen, because I knew he had formally promised his wife to discharge her. I thought Ada would come home in a few months, as she had the first time. But, without pa.s.sing through Trieste, she went to stay in a villa on Lago Maggiore, where Guido took the children a short time later.

When he returned from that journey-and I don't know if he remembered his promise on his own, or whether Ada had reminded him of it-he asked me if it wouldn't be possible to employ Carmen in my office, that is to say Olivi's. I knew that all positions in that office were already filled, but because Guido asked me with such insistence, I agreed to go and talk about it with my manager. By a lucky chance, one of Olivi's employees was leaving just then, but his wages were lower than what Carmen had been paid during these last months, with great prodigality, by Guido, who, in my opinion, thus had his women paid from the general expenses account. Old Olivi asked me about Carmen's abilities, and though I gave her the most glowing recommendation, he offered to hire her on the same terms as the clerk who had quit. I reported this to Guido, who scratched his head, upset and embarra.s.sed.

"How can she be given a lower salary than what she's now earning? Couldn't Olivi be persuaded to give her at least what she already makes?"

I knew that was impossible, and besides, it wasn't Olivi's way to consider himself married to his staff, as we did. If he were to realize Carmen was worth one crown less than the salary he'd given her, he would subtract it mercilessly. And in (he end things remained like this: Olivi didn't receive and never asked for a firm reply, and Carmen continued to roll her lovely eyes in our office.

Between me and Ada there was a secret, and it remained important precisely because it continued to be a secret. She wrote constantly to Augusta, but never told her about having had an explanation with me, or even that she had recommended Guido to my care. Nor did I speak of it. One day Augusta showed me a letter of Ada's that concerned me. First she asked for news of me, and finally she appealed to my kindness, asking me to tell her something about the progress of Guido's affairs. I was uneasy when I heard that she was addressing me, and I was rea.s.sured when I saw that as usual she addressed herself to me only to learn more about Guido. Once again there was no call for me to presume anything.

With Augusta's a.s.sent and without saying anything to Guido, I wrote to Ada. I sat at my desk with the intention of writing her a genuine business letter, and I informed her that I was quite pleased by the way Guido now ran the business, with attention and cleverness.

This was true, or at least I was pleased with him that day, as he had managed to earn a bit of money selling some goods he had stored in the city for several months. It was also true that he seemed more a.s.siduous, but he still went hunting and fis.h.i.+ng every week. I gladly exaggerated my praises because it seemed to me this would speed Ada's recovery.

I reread the letter, and it didn't satisfy me. Something was missing. Ada had turned to me, and surely she wanted also my own news. Therefore I was being discourteous in not giving her any. And little by little-I remember it as if it were happening to me now-I felt embarra.s.sed at that desk, as if I were again facing Ada, in that dark little sitting room. Was I to squeeeze the little hand being offered me?

I wrote, but then I had to rewrite the letter because I had allowed certain words, downright compromising, to escape me: I was yearning to see her again, and I hoped she was regaining all her health and all her beauty. This was like clasping the waist of the woman who had offered me only her hand. My duty was merely to shake that hand, to press it gently and at length, to signify that I understood everything, all that should never, ever, be said.

I won't repeat all the vocabulary I had to review in order to find something to replace that long and sweet and meaningful handshake, but only those sentences that I then wrote. I spoke at length of my incipient old age. I couldn't sit still a moment without growing older. At every course of my blood, something was added to my bones and my veins that meant old age. Every morning, when I woke, the world appeared grayer and I didn't notice because everything remained in the same palette; and in that day there wasn't a brushstroke of the color of the day before, otherwise I would have noticed it and regret would have driven me to despair.

I remember very well mailing the letter with complete satisfaction. I had in no way compromised myself by those words, but it also seemed certain to me that if Ada's thoughts were identical to mine, she would understand that loving handshake. It took little insight to grasp the fact that the long discourse on old age signified only my fear that, finding myself speeding through time, I would no longer be overtaken by love. I seemed to be shouting to love: "Come, come!" Instead, I'm not sure I wanted that love, and if any doubt exists, it stems only from the fact that I know what I wrote was more or less in those terms.

I made a copy of that letter for Augusta, omitting the disquisition on old age. She wouldn't have understood it, but precaution never does any harm. I might have blushed, feeling her observation of me as I was shaking her sister's hand. Yes! I could still blush. And I blushed also when I received a note of thanks from Ada, in which she made absolutely no mention of my prattle about my old age. It seemed to me she was compromising herself far more with me than I had compromised myself with her. She was not withdrawing her hand from my pressure. She allowed it to lie, inert, in mine, and for a woman, inertia is a form of consent.

A few days after I had written that letter, I discovered that Guido had started playing the stock exchange. I learned this through an indiscretion of Nilini, the broker.

I had known him for many years because we had been together at the Liceo, but he had been obliged to leave abruptly, to take a position in an uncle's office. Later we ran into each other now and then, and I recall that the difference between our fates had given me a superior position in our relations. He used to greet me first and occasionally he tried to become closer to me. To me this seemed only natural, but what appeared less explicable was that, in a period I can't pin down, he became very haughty toward me. He no longer greeted me first, and barely returned my own greeting. I was a little concerned by this because I am very thin-skinned and easily bruised. But what could be done? Perhaps he had discovered I was in Guido's office, where it seemed to him I occupied a subaltern position, and therefore he despised me, or, with equal probability, I could suppose that, since his uncle had now died and left him an independent broker on the exchange, his pride had grown. In narrow environments, such att.i.tudes are frequent. Without any hostile action having taken place, one fine day two men regard each other with aversion and contempt.

I was surprised, therefore, to see him enter the office, where I was alone, and inquire about Guido. He had removed his hat and offered me his hand. Then, with great liberty, he slumped into one of our big chairs. I looked at him with interest. I hadn't seen him this closely for years, and now, with the aversion he was displaying toward me, he won my keenest attention.

He was then about forty, and was quite ugly thanks to an almost total baldness interrupted only by an oasis of thick, black hair on his nape and another at his temples, his face yellow and too heavy despite the big nose. He was short and thin and he held himself as erect as he could, so that when I spoke with him I felt a slight, sympathetic ache in my neck, the only sympathy I felt for him. That day he seemed to be restraining his laughter, and his face was contracted by an irony or by a contempt that couldn't wound me after he had greeted me so cordially. On the contrary, I later discovered that this irony had been printed on his face by a whim of Mother Nature. His little jaws did not close precisely, and between them, on one side of his mouth, a gap remained, where his stereotyped irony dwelt. Perhaps to conform to the mask from which he was unable to liberate himself except when he yawned, he enjoyed mocking his fellow man. He was far from being a fool, and he fired off some poisonous arrows, but preferably at those who were absent.

He chattered a great deal and was full of imagination, especially in dealing with matters of the Bourse. He talked about the Bourse as if it were a person, a female, whom he described as fearing a threat or sleeping soundly, and with a face that could laugh and also weep. He saw her climbing the steps of a rising stock, dancing ahead, or then rus.h.i.+ng down, with a risk of falling headlong; and yet he admired her as she caressed one stock, strangled another, or also how she taught people to control themselves or to take a plunge. For only people with sense could handle her. There was a lot of money strewn over the ground in the Bourse, but to bend down and gather it wasn't easy.

I invited him to wait, having offered him a cigarette, and I busied myself with some correspondence. After a little while he grew tired and said he couldn't stay any longer. For that matter he had come only to tell Guido that certain shares with the strange name of Rio Tinto, which he had advised Guido to buy the day before-yes, exactly twenty-four hours ago-had soared that day by about ten percent. He burst into hearty laughter.

"So while we're talking here, or while I'm waiting for him, the Bourse rumor-mill will have done the rest. If Signor Speier now wanted to buy those shares, heaven only knows what he would have to pay. I antic.i.p.ated the direction the Bourse was taking. "

He boasted of his eye for the Bourse due to his long intimacy. He interrupted himself to ask: "Who do you think is the better teacher, the University or the Bourse?"

His jaw dropped a little bit further, and the gap of irony was enlarged.

"Obviously, Bourse!" I said with conviction. This won me an affectionate handshake when he left.

So Guido was playing the stock market! If I had been more alert I could already have guessed as much, because when I presented him an exact account of the not insignificant sums we had earned with our latest transactions, he looked at it with a smile, but also with some scorn. He considered we had had to work too hard to earn that money. And, mind you, with a few dozen of those transactions, we could have made up the loss we had incurred the previous year! What was I to do now, I who only a few days before had written his praises?

A little later Guido came into the office, and I faithfully reported Nilini's words to him. He listened with such anxiety that he didn't even realize I had thus learned of his gambling; then he ran out.

That evening I spoke of it with Augusta, who felt we should leave Ada in peace, but should instead warn Signora Malfenti of the risks Guido was taking. She also asked me to do my best to restrain him from committing such follies.

I spent a long time preparing the words I would say to him. Finally I carried out my resolution of active goodness, and I kept the promise I had made to Ada. I knew how to grasp Guido and induce him to obey me. Anyone who plays the market-I would explain to him-is being foolish, especially a businessman with a balance sheet like his behind him.

The next day I began very well: "So you're now playing the market?" I asked him sternly. I was prepared for a scene, and I was keeping in reserve a declaration that, because he was behaving in such a way as to jeopardize the firm, I would promptly abandon the office.

Guido was able to disarm me at once. He had kept the secret till now, but now, boyish and open, he told me every detail of those affairs of his. He was trading in mining stocks in some country or other, which had already produced a profit that was almost enough to cover the loss on our books. Now all risk was past, and he could tell me everything. If he were to run into bad luck and lose what he had gained, he would simply stop playing. If, on the other hand, luck continued to favor him, he would quickly put the accounts in order, as he still felt threatened by them.

I saw there was no use in being angry, and that, on the contrary, he should be congratulated. As for questions of bookkeeping, I told him he could now rest easy, because where cash was available it was very easy to adjust the most troublesome accounts. As soon as we had recorded Ada's account properly and had at least begun to fill what I called the abyss of our firm, namely Guido's own account, our books would be as clean as a whistle.

Then I suggested to him that we put the accounts in order at once and enter the Bourse operations into the firm's books. He didn't agree, luckily for me, otherwise I would have become the accountant of the gambler, and I would have incurred even greater responsibility. On the contrary, things still proceeded as if I didn't exist. He rejected my suggestion with reasons that seemed valid to me. It was a bad idea to pay debts so quickly, and there is a widespread superst.i.tion at all gaming tables that other people's money brings luck. I don't believe it, but when I gamble, I, too, never neglect any precaution.

For a while I reproached myself for having accepted Guido's communications without any protest. But then I saw Signora Malfenti behave in the same way, telling me how her husband had been capable of making good money on the market, and I even heard from Ada, who considered gambling just another form of business, so I understood that on this score no one could make any complaint against me. No protest of mine could arrest Guido on that precipitous slope unless I was supported by all the members of the family.

So it was that Guido continued gambling, and the whole family with him. I, too, was a party to it, and indeed I entered into a curious kind of friends.h.i.+p with Nilini. To be sure, I couldn't bear him because I found him ignorant and presumptuous, but out of regard for Guido, who expected good tips from him, I was apparently so good at concealing my feelings that in the end he believed he had a devoted friend in me. I won't deny that perhaps my politeness toward him was due also to the desire to avoid that illness his hostility had caused, largely because of that laughing irony on his ugly face. But I never showed him any courtesies other than that of giving him my hand and greeting him when he arrived and when he left. He, on the contrary, was extremely cordial, and I couldn't fail to receive his courtesy with grat.i.tude, which is truly the greatest kindness that one can display in this world. He procured contraband cigarettes and charged me only what they had cost him, namely very little. If I had found him more likable, he could have persuaded me to let him gamble for me; I never did, but only because, that way, I would have had to see him more often.

I saw him too much as it was! He spent hours in our office despite the fact-as it was easy to realize-that he was not in love with Carmen. He came specifically to keep me company. It seems he proposed to educate me in the field of politics, in which he was deeply versed thanks to the stock exchange. He introduced me to the Great Powers and explained how one day they shook hands and the next were knocking one another about. I don't know if he divined the future, because, in my dislike, I never listened to him. I maintained a foolish, printed smile. Our misunderstanding no doubt derived from an erroneous interpretation of my smile, which to him must have seemed admiring. It's not my fault.