Her Husband (4 page)

But stopped by Signora Barmis, who wanted to know–
honestly
, please–what he thought of Roncella, he didn’t leave.

“A great deal, my friend! I’ve never read a line.”

“That’s a mistake,” said Donna Francesca Lampugnani, smiling. “I assure you, Luna, that’s a mistake.”

“M .. . me neither,” Litti added. “But... it seems to me that all this su . . . sudden fame … At least from what I’ve heard . . .”

“Yes,” said Betti, tugging at his cuffs with a certain courtly nonchalance. “She is a bit lacking in form, that’s the thing.”

“Terribly ignorant!” Raimondo Jacono burst out.

“Well,” Casimiro Luna then said, “perhaps that’s why I love her.”

Carlino Sanna, the Lombard novelist passing through Rome, put a smile on his grim, goatish face, letting the monocle fall from his eye. He passed a hand through his thick grizzly hair and said softly: “But, really, to give her a banquet? Doesn’t it seem to you … doesn’t it seem just a bit too much?”

“A banquet … Dear me, what’s so bad about it?” asked Donna Francesca Lampugnani.

“We are promoting her glory!” Jacono snorted again.

“Ah!” All spoke in unison.

An inspired Jacono went on: “Excuse me, excuse me, it will be in all the newspapers.”

“So?” Dora Barmis said, opening her arms and shrugging.

From that spark of chitchat the conversation caught fire. Everyone
began to talk about Signora Roncella, as though they only now remembered why they were there. No one admitted being an unqualified admirer. Here and there someone recognized… yes, some good qualities, such as an unusually clear, strange penetration of life through a too close, perhaps myopic, attention to detail . . . and some kind of new and distinctive spirit in the poetic descriptions, and an unusual narrative quality. But it seemed to everyone that too much had been made of
House of Dwarves
. Admittedly a good novel . . . perhaps. Affirmation of an unusual talent, without a doubt, but not the masterpiece of humor it had been proclaimed. Anyway, it was strange that a young woman could write it who up to now had lived almost totally without worldly experience down there in Taranto. There was imagination and also thought: little literature, but life, life.

“Has she been married long?”

“For one or two years, they say.”

Suddenly all the discussions were interrupted. On the terrace were the Honorable Senator Romualdo Borghi, Minister of Public Instruction, director of
Vita Italiana
, and Maurizio Gueli, the famous writer, the Maestro. For ten years neither friends’ entreaties nor editors’ lucrative offers had been able to make him break his silence.

Everyone moved aside to let them pass. The two did not go well together: Borghi was short, stocky, long haired, with a gossipy old servant’s flat, leathery face; Gueli was tall, vigorous, with a still youthful air despite his white hair that contrasted strongly with the high color of his austere, masculine face.

With the presence of Gueli and Borghi, the banquet now assumed great importance.

Not a few were surprised that the Maestro had come to personally affirm his esteem of Roncella, which he had already declared to some. He was known to be very affable and friendly to young people, but his presence at the banquet seemed overly generous, and many suffered from envy, realizing that this would almost officially consecrate Silvia Roncella today. Others felt more cheerful. Gueli’s appearance validated their presence also.

But why hadn’t Raceni come yet? It was really shameful! Keeping
everyone waiting like that; and Gueli and Borghi mixed with the others, without anyone to receive them. . . .

“Here they are! Here they are!” Lampini, who had gone down to check, ran in to announce.

“Raceni’s here?”

“Yes, with Signora Roncella and her husband. Here they are!”

Everyone turned with lively curiosity toward the terrace entrance.

A very pale Silvia Roncella appeared on Raceni’s arm, her face troubled by inner agitation. Among the guests who moved aside to let them pass, there immediately spread a flurry of whispered comments: “That one?” “Short!” “No, not too . . .” “Badly dressed.” “Beautiful eyes!” “God, what a hat!” “Poor thing, she’s uncomfortable!” “Skinny!” “She’s not saying a word.” “Why not? She’s pretty when she smiles.” “Very shy.” “But look at her eyes: she’s not bashful!” “Pretty enough, isn’t she?” “It seems impossible!” “If she were well dressed . . . hair done . . .” “You can’t really say she’s beautiful.” “She’s so awkward!” “She doesn’t seem …” “What compliments from Borghi!” “Get an umbrella! All that spit.” “What’s Gueli saying to her?” “But her husband, ladies and gentlemen! Look at her husband!” “Where is he? Where is he?” “There, next to Gueli . . . look at him! Look at him!”

In evening dress. Giustino Boggiolo had come in white tie and tails. Shining, almost like enameled porcelain; gold-rimmed eyeglasses; fan-shaped beard; and a well-trimmed, brown mustache. Close-cropped dark hair.

What was he doing there, between Borghi and Gueli, Lampugnani and Luna? Attilio Raceni drew him away and then called to Signora Barmis.

“Here, I’m turning him over to you, Dora. Giustino Boggiolo, her husband. Dora Barmis. I’m going to see what’s going on in the kitchen. Meanwhile, please take your places.”

And Attilio Raceni, with satisfaction in his beautiful dark and languid troubadour eyes, smoothing his raven hair, made his way through the crowd that wanted to know the reason for the delay.

“She felt a little ill. But it’s nothing, it passed. Be seated, everyone, be seated! Take your places.”

“You’re a Knight of the Republic, aren’t you?” asked Dora Barmis as she offered her arm to Giustino Boggiolo.

“Yes, actually …”

“Officially?”

“No, not yet. I don’t really care about it, you see? It’s useful at the office.”

“You are the luckiest man on earth!” Signora Barmis exclaimed impulsively, squeezing his arm.

Giustino Boggiolo turned red, smiled: “Me?”

“You, you, you! I envy you! I’d like to be a man and be you, understand? To have your wife! How delightful she is! How pretty! Don’t you just gobble her up with kisses? Tell me, don’t you just gobble her up with kisses? And she must be very, very nice, isn’t she?”

“Yes … really …” stammered Giustino Boggiolo again, bewildered, dazed, confused.

“And you must do everything to make her happy. A sacred obligation. You’ll be in hot water with me if you don’t make her happy! Look at me! Why did you come in tails?”

“But … I thought . . .”

“Hush! It’s out of place. Don’t do it again! Luna! Luna!” Signora Barmis called out.

Casimiro Luna hurried over.

“This is Cavalier Giustino Boggiolo, her husband.”

“Ah, very good,” replied Luna, bowing slightly. “Congratulations.”

“Very glad to meet you, thank you. I’ve wanted so much to meet you,” Boggiolo hastened to say. “Excuse me, you . . .”

“Give me your arm!” Doris Barmis shouted. “Don’t run away. You’re my responsibility.”

“Yes, Signora, thank you,” replied Boggiolo, smiling; then turning back to Luna he continued: “You write for the
Corriere di Milano
, don’t you? I know the
Corriere
pays well. . ..”

“Ah,” said Luna. “So-so . . . fairly well. . .”

“Yes, so I’ve heard,” insisted Boggiolo. “I asked you because the
Corriere
has asked Silvia for a novel. But we may not accept because, really, in Italy … in Italy it’s not profitable, that’s all. But in France … and in
Germany, too, you know? The magazine
Grundbau
gave me two thousand five hundred marks for
House of Dwarves
.“

“Good for you!” exclaimed Luna.

“Yes, sir, in advance, and you know? Paying her, in addition to the translator,” added Giustino Boggiolo. “I don’t know how much. . . . Schweizer-Sidler … good, good … she translates well. I’ve heard that in Italy the theater is more profitable. Because, you know? at first I didn’t understand a thing about literature. Now, little by little, a certain amount of experience . . . You have to keep your eyes open, especially when making contracts. To Silvia, for example . . .”

“Hurry, hurry, sit down!” Dora Barmis interrupted him hastily. “Everyone is taking his place! Will you sit next to us, Luna?”

“Of course!” he said.

“Please, may I,” pleaded Giustino Boggiolo. “There’s Signor Lifjeld over there, who’s translating
House of Dwarves
into Swedish. Please … I need to have a word with him.”

And so, leaving Signora Barmis’s arm, he went over to the blondish, gaunt, scrawny statue whose macabre appearance disconcerted everyone.

“Hurry!” Signora Barmis hissed after him.

Silvia Roncella had already taken her place between Maurizio Gueli and Senator Romualdo Borghi. Attilio Raceni had given a lot of thought to the seating arrangement, so that when he saw Casimiro Luna sitting in a corner by Signora Barmis, who had left the seat next to herself empty for Boggiolo, he ran over to advise him that that was not his seat, confound it! Come on, come on, next to Marchesa Lampugnani.

“No, thank you, Raceni,” Luna said to him. “Please let me sit here. We have her husband with us.”

As if she had understood, Silvia Roncella turned to look for Giustino. That long searching look around the table and then around the hall itself seemed a painful effort, interrupted at a certain point by the sight of someone dear to her to whom she gave a sad, sweet smile. It was an elderly woman who had come in the carriage with her, to whom
no one paid any attention, hidden away in a corner, since Raceni had forgotten about introducing her, at least to those near her at the table, as he had promised. The elderly woman, who wore a blond wig low on her forehead and whose face was heavily powdered, made a short energetic gesture with her hand to Signora Roncella, as if to say: “Chin up!” Silvia Roncella smiled sadly, barely nodding her head. Then she turned to Gueli, who had said something to her.

Giustino Boggiolo, coming back into the glassed-in hall with the Swede, went up to Raceni, who had taken Luna’s place next to Lampugnani, and quietly told him that the very learned Lifjeld, professor of psychology at the University of Upsala, had nowhere to sit. Raceni gave him his place at once, introducing him to Lampugnani on one side and Donna Maria Bornè-Laturzi on the other. This was the result of the loss of the first guest list: the table was set for thirty, and there were thirty-five guests! Never mind. He, Raceni, would make the best of it and sit in some corner.

“Listen,” Giustino Boggiolo added very softly, pulling Raceni by the sleeve and furtively handing him a small scrap of rolled-up paper. “Here is the title of Silvia’s play. It would be nice if Senator Borghi would mention it when he makes the toast. What do you say? You can take care of it.”

The waiters came in at a fast clip with the first course. It was very late and the prospect of food provoked a religious silence in everyone.

Maurizio Gueli noticed it, turned to look at the Palatine ruins, and smiled. Then he bent toward Silvia Roncella and said quietly: “Look, Signora Silvia. You’ll see that at a certain point the ancient Romans will come out to watch us, with satisfaction.”

Do they really come out?

Certainly none of the guests would notice. The reality of the banquet, a not very well cooked reality, to tell the truth, and not abundant or varied, the reality of the present with its secret rivalries that flower on the lips of the various guests in false smiles and poisonous compliments,
with badly concealed jealousies that pull here and there in subdued backbiting, with the unsatisfied ambitions and fatuous illusions and aspirations that find no way to reveal themselves, this reality held all those restless souls captive by the effort that the pretense and defense cost each one. Like snails that, unable or unwilling to withdraw into their shells, wrap themselves in their slime and from that unproductive iridescent foam stretch out their prudent tentacles, they fried the others in their gossip, maliciously raising hints of cuckoldry from time to time.

Who among all these people could think about the ruins of the Palatine and imagine the souls of the ancient Romans gazing with satisfaction upon that modern symposium? Only Maurizio Gueli. In one of his better-known books,
Favole di Roma
, Gueli had collected and fused (discovering the most hidden analogies) the lives and most representative figures of the three Romes. His profound and characteristic philosophical humor was more accessible in this book than in some of his others. In
Favole di Roma
the harsh and pitiless criticism–desperately skeptical and yet clear and flowering with all the grace of his style–was most successfully joined to his bizarre creative fantasy. Had he not in this book called Cicero to defend before the Senate (a Senate no longer only Roman) the prefect of a Sicilian province, a prevaricator, a very amusing clerical prefect of our times?

Now who did Gueli see looking down from the Palatine ruins in their long flapping white togas to greet all these ephemeral literati banqueting in the glassed-in hall of the Castello di Costantino? Gueli who felt fate’s cruel mockery of Rome, mitered by the popes with tiara and cross, crowned with a Piedmontese crown by the diverse peoples of Italy.

Perhaps he saw many senators there advising Romualdo Borghi, their venerable colleague, not to let himself be too overcome by temptation, and to eat only meat for the sake of his country’s literature, since he had been diabetic for many years. And next . . . next all of Rome’s poets and prose writers: the playwrights, lyricists, historians, writers of epics and short stories. All of them? Not all. Not Virgil, in fact, or
Tacitus; Plautus and Catullus and Horace, yes; Lucretius, no. Propertius, yes. And certainly the one who more than all the others made signs of wanting to participate in that banquet, not because he supposed it worth his while, but to make fun of it, as he had already done with a famous supper in Cuma.
¹

Maurizio Gueli wiped his lips with his napkin to conceal a smile. Oh, if only he could stand up and say to that table: “Ladies and gentlemen, please make way for Petronius Arbiter who wants to come in.”

Silvia Roncella, in the meanwhile, in order not to feel the embarrassment of so many eyes fixed on her, had turned her gaze and thoughts to the green fields in the distance, to the blades of grass growing there, to the leaves shining there, and to the birds for whom the happy season was beginning, to the lizards dozing in the first warmth of the sun, to the black rows of ants that she had stopped to watch so many times, absorbed. That humble, tenuous, transient life, without a shadow of ambition, always had the power to move her by its vulnerability. It takes so little for a bird to die. A farmhand passes and tramples those blades of grass with his hobnailed boots, tramples a multitude of ants. To pick out one ant from the many and follow it for a bit, becoming one with such a small creature amid the coming and going of the others. To pick out one blade of grass from many and tremble with it at every slight breeze. Then to look away, and afterward to search again for
that
blade of grass,
that
small ant among the many: to be unable to find either one again, losing a part of one’s soul there with them, forever.

A sudden silence interrupted Silvia Roncella’s daydream. Beside her, Romualdo Borghi had stood up. She looked at her husband who made a sign for her to rise immediately. She stood, perturbed, with her eyes lowered. But what was happening over there, in the corner where her husband was sitting?

Giustino Boggiolo also wanted to get to his feet, and Dora Barmis ineffectively tugged at the tails of his evening coat. “Get down! Stay seated! What do you have to do with this? Sit down.”

Nothing doing! Stiffly upright, Giustino Boggiolo in tails wanted to be toasted also by Borghi, as the husband. And there was no way to make him sit down.

“
Kind ladies, my dear gentlemen!”
Borghi began, chin on chest, brow contracted, eyes closed.

(“Silence! He’s talking to himself,” Casimiro whispered.)

“
It is a beautiful and memorable occasion for us to be able to welcome this fine young woman on the threshold of a new life, already on her way to glory
.“

“Very good,” exclaimed two or three.

Eyes shining, Giustino Boggiolo looked around and noticed with pleasure that three of the journalists were taking notes. Then he looked at Raceni to ask him if he had given Borghi the title of Silvia’s play written on the paper he handed him before sitting at the table. But Raceni was absorbed in listening to the toast and didn’t turn around. Giustino Boggiolo began to fret inwardly.

“
What will Rome say,”
Borghi went on, raising his head and trying to open his eyes, “
what will Rome say, the immortal soul of Rome, to the soul of this young woman? It seems, oh, ladies and gentlemen, that the greatness of Rome loves the severe majesty of History more than the imaginative caprices of art. In the
“First Decade of Livy,”
oh, ladies and gentlemen, is Rome’s epic. Its tragedy is in the
“Annals of Tacitus.” (Good! Bravo! Bravissimo!)

Giustino Boggiolo bowed, with his eyes fixed on Raceni, who still had not turned. Signora Barmis tugged at his tails.

“
History is Rome’s voice, and this voice overwhelms any individual voice
. . . .”

Oh, now Raceni was turning, nodding his head in approval. Giustino Boggiolo made a sign to him with his eyes starting out of his head from the intense effort to attract his attention.

“
But, on the other hand, oh, ladies and gentlemen
, “Julius Caesar"? “Coriolanus"? “Antony and Cleopatra"?
The great Roman plays of Shakespeare
…”

“That piece of paper I gave you.” Giustino Boggiolo’s fingers spoke,
opening and closing in a frenzy, since Raceni still did not understand and was looking at him as though dumbfounded.

Applause broke out and Giustino Boggiolo bowed mechanically.

“Excuse me, are you Shakespeare?” Dora Barmis asked him under her breath.

“Me? No. What does Shakespeare have to do with it?”

“We don’t know, either,” Casimiro Luna said to him. “But sit down, sit down. Heaven only knows how long this magnificent toast will go on!”

“...
for all the vicissitudes, oh, ladies and gentlemen, of an infinite evolution!
(Good! Bravo! Benissimo!)
Now the turmoil of the new life needs a new voice, a voice that . .
.”

Finally! Raceni understood; he searched his vest pockets. Yes, here it is, the piece of paper. “This?” “Yes, yes.” “But, why now? To whom?” “To Borghi!” “How?” “You forgot. Too late now.” But never mind, Boggiolo should relax; he would give the title to the journalists . . . afterward, yes afterward . . .

All this discourse took place in a flurry of gestures from one end of the table to the other.

A new burst of applause. Borghi turned to touch his glass to Silvia Roncella’s. The toast was over, to the great relief of everyone. The dinner guests rose, each with a glass in hand and hurried over to the guest of honor.

“I’ll toast with you. . . . It’s the same thing!” Dora Barmis said to Giustino Boggiolo.

“Sì, Signora, thank you!” he replied, giddy with irritation. “Good heavens, everything’s ruined!”

“Did I do something?” asked Signora Barmis.

“No, Signora. Raceni… I gave him the title of the thing … the play and . . . and . . . and nothing. He stuck it in his pocket and forgot all about it! You just don’t do these things! The senator, so kind . . . Uh, excuse me, Signora, the journalists over there are calling me. . . . Thank you, Raceni! The play’s title? You are Signor Mola, aren’t you? Yes, of the
Capitale
, I know. Thank you, a great pleasure … Her husband, yes,
sir. In four acts, the play. The title?
The New Colony
. You’re Centanni? A great pleasure. Her husband, yes, sir.
The New Colony
, certainly, in four acts … It’s already been translated into French, you know? Desroches translated it, yes, sir. You are Federici? A great pleasure. Her husband, yes, sir. In fact, look, if you would be kind enough to add that . . .”

“Boggiolo! Boggiolo!” Raceni came running.

“What is it?”

“Come … Your wife is feeling a little under the weather again. Better to leave, you know!”

“Ah,” Boggiolo said sadly to the journalists, raising his eyebrows and throwing his arms wide. In this way he let it be known what kind of illness his little wife had and off he went.

“You’re a scoundrel!” Dora Barmis said to him shortly afterward, frowning, and giving his arms a squeeze. “She needs quiet, understand? Quiet! Now go! Go! But don’t forget to come see me soon. Then I’ll give you a good scolding, you rascal!”

And she threatened him with her hand while he, bowing and smiling at everyone, red, confused, happy, left the terrace with his wife and Raceni.

1
A reference to Trimalchius’s banquet in Petronius’s
Satyricon
.