Her Husband (5 page)

2
SCHOOL FOR GREATNESS

The furniture in the small study was–if not shoddy, certainly very nondescript, bought haphazardly on the installment plan. Yet the room was furnished with a brand new rug and two new curtains at the door that gave the impression no one was in there.

But he was there, Ippolito Onorio Roncella: there, still as the curtains, as that little table in front of the ugly divan, still as the two squat bookcases and the three overstuffed chairs. With sleepy eyes he looked at these objects and thought that he, too, might just as well be made of wood. Really. And just as worm-infested. He sat at the small desk with his back to the single square little window that was rather unnecessarily covered by a thin curtain, since it overlooked the courtyard from which little light entered anyway.

At a certain point it seemed like the whole study shook. Nothing to be concerned about. Ippolito Onorio Roncella had moved.

In order not to disturb his full, very beautiful gray and curly beard that he washed, combed, sprayed with cologne in the grooming he gave it each morning, patting it with his curved palm, he had flipped the ribbon on his military
bersagliere’s
hat (which he never removed) onto his chest with a movement of his head and began to slowly stroke it. Just like a baby stroking his mother’s breast, so he, smoking, needed to stroke something, and not wanting to touch his beard, stroked the ribbon on his
bersagliere’s
hat instead.

In the quiet gray morning gloom, in the grave silence that was like time’s grim shadow, Ippolito Onorio Roncella felt the life of everything near and far almost suspended in the stillness of dismal, somber, and resigned anticipation. And it seemed to him that this silence, a shadow of time, crossed the boundaries of the present and slowly sank into the past, into the history of Rome, into the remote history of men who had worked and struggled so hard, always with the hope of achieving something, and what was the result? It was this: to be able to consider as he did–when all was said and done–that this quiet stroking of the ribbon of his
bersagliere’s
hat was equal to any other endeavor highly esteemed by humanity.

“
What are you doing?”
The damned old parrot from the silence of the courtyard screeched the question from time to time in a hoarse voice and grating tone: the parrot of Signora Ely Faciolli, who lived next door.

“What are you doing?” that wise old signora would ask the stupid bird hourly.

“
What are you doing?”
the parrot would reply each time. Then, on its own, it seemed to repeat the question all day long to the inhabitants of the apartment building.

Each one responded in his own way, with a snort, depending on the kind or difficulty of his own activity. Everyone with little courtesy. Most impolite of all was Ippolito Onorio Roncella, who had nothing more to do after three years of enforced retirement because–without the slightest intention to offend (he could swear to it)–he had told off his superior.

For more than fifty years he had worked with his head. Fine head, his. Full of thoughts, one more delightful than the other. Now that was all over. Now he devoted himself exclusively to nature’s three kingdoms, represented by his hair and beard (vegetable), by his teeth (mineral), and by all the other parts of his old carcass (animal). The latter and the mineral kingdoms were somewhat ravaged by age; however, the vegetable kingdom still gave him great satisfaction. For that reason he, who had always done everything with care and wanted it to
appear so, would point to his beard and gravely reply, “Gardening,” when anyone asked him–like that parrot: “Signor Ippolito, what are you doing?”

He knew he had a bitter inner enemy: a rebellious rascal who couldn’t keep from spitting the truth in everyone’s face as a wild watermelon squirts its purgative juice. Not to offend, of course, but to put things in order.

“
You’re an ass. I’ve got your number. Don’t speak about it again
.”

“
This is stupid. I’ve got your number. Don’t speak about it again
.”

That enemy inside him loved things to be dispatched in short order. A put-down and that was that. Thank goodness that for some time he had managed to lull it to sleep a little with poison, smoking that long-stemmed pipe from morning to night while stroking the ribbon on his
bersagliere’s
hat. From time to time, however, terrible coughing fits warned him that his enemy was rebelling against the poisoning. Then Signor Ippolito, choking, purple in the face, eyes popping, would pound his fists, kick his feet, twist and turn, struggling madly to conquer, to tame, the rebel. In vain the doctor told him that his psyche had nothing to do with it, but that the cough came from his poisoned bronchi, and that he should quit smoking or not smoke so much if he didn’t want to get something worse.

“My dear sir,” Signor Ippolito had replied, “consider my scales! On one side all the weight of old age. On the other I have only my pipe. If I take that away there’s nothing to balance the scales. What’s left? What can I do if I don’t smoke?”

And so he continued to smoke.

Dismissed from a job unworthy of him at the local school office for that explicit and impartial judgment he made of his boss, he hadn’t returned to his home town Taranto, where, after his brother’s death, he had no living relatives. Instead, he had stayed on in Rome with his small pension to help his niece, Silvia Roncella, who had come to Rome about three months ago with her husband. But he already regretted it. And how!

He especially couldn’t stand that new nephew of his, Giustino Boggiolo.
For many reasons, but most of all because he was oppressive. Like sultry weather. What is sultriness? Low-lying stagnation, a dull light. Well, then. His new nephew toiled slowly when it came to making light, the most vexing light in the biosphere: he talked too much, he explained the most obvious and most mundane things, as if only he could see them and that without his illumination others wouldn’t be able to see them. What a strain, how exhausting to hear him talk! Signor Ippolito at first would huff and puff softly two and three times in order not to offend him. Finally, when he couldn’t take it anymore, he would snort loudly and even clap his hands to extinguish all that useless light and make the air fresh and breathable.

As for Silvia, he knew that from the time she was a child she had this little vice of scribbling; and that she had published four or five books and maybe more, but he really never expected that she would come to literary Rome already famous. And just the day before some other crazy scribblers like her had even given her a banquet. Nevertheless, Silvia was not basically bad. No. In fact, the poor thing didn’t seem at all like someone sick in the head. She had, she really had a kind of talent, that little woman. And in many ways the two of them were alike. Naturally! The same blood … the same Roncella way of thinking.

Signor Ippolito closed his eyes and nodded his head, very slowly, so as to not disturb his beard.

He had made a special study of that infernal machine, a kind of filtered pump that put the brain in communication with the heart and drew ideas from feelings, or, as he said, drew out the concentrated extract, the sublimated corrosive of logical deductions.

Famous pumpers and filterers, the Roncella family. All of them, from time immemorial!

But no one up to now, to tell the truth, had thought of setting himself up in the poison business professionally like that girl now seemed to want to do, that blessed child, Silvia.

Signor Ippolito couldn’t stand women who wore glasses, walked like soldiers, were employed as postal workers, telegraph and telephone
workers, or who aspired to electoral offices. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Next they’ll want to be senators and even army officers.

He would have liked Giustino to keep his wife from writing, or if he couldn’t stop her (because Silvia really didn’t seem the type to let herself be imposed on by her husband), at least not encourage her, for heaven’s sake! Encourage her? More than encourage her. He was by her side from morning to night, prodding her, urging her, stimulating that damned obsession in every way. Instead of asking her if she had straightened up the house, had supervised the maid’s cleaning or cooking, or even if she had had a nice walk at the Villa Borghese, he would ask her if and what she had written during the day while he was at the office, how many pages, how many lines, how many words. . . . Really! Because he even counted the words that his wife had scrawled, as if he had to send them off by telegraph. And look there: he had bought a secondhand typewriter, and every evening after dinner until midnight or one o’clock, he played on that little piano in order to have ready, retyped, the
material
–as he called it–to send to the newspapers, magazines, editors, translators with whom he was in active correspondence. And there was the shelf with cubbyholes for scripts, copies of letters…. Bookkeeper to the nth degree, impeccable! Because the poison was beginning to sell. Ah, yes indeed! Even outside Italy … It’s only right! Don’t they sell tobacco? And what are words? Smoke. And what is smoke? Nicotine. Poison.

Signor Ippolito couldn’t take much more of this family life. He had been very patient for three months, but he could already see the day was not far off when he wouldn’t be able to stand it anymore and would tell off that young man. Not to offend him, of course, but to get things straight, as was his way. Speak his mind and that would be the end of it. Then maybe he would go live by himself.

“May I come in?” just then a soft little woman’s voice asked. Signor Ippolito recognized it immediately as belonging to old Signora Faciolli (or the “Lombard,” as he called her), owner of the parrot and the apartment house.

“Come in, come in,” he muttered without moving.

This was the same old lady who had accompanied Silvia to the banquet the day before. Every morning from eight to nine she came to give Giustino Boggiolo English lessons.

Free of charge these lessons, naturally. Just as Signora Ely Faciolli, the landlady, always granted free use of her own parlor if her dear tenant Boggiolo needed to receive some literary figure.

The old signora was worm-eaten, too. Not so much by the solitary worm of literature as by the termite of history and the moth of erudition. She was attentive to Giustino Boggiolo, making a continual and insistent fuss after Giustino allowed her a glimpse of the mirage of an editor in the distance, and perhaps even a translator (German, of course) for her voluminous unpublished work:
On the Last Lombard Dynasty and on the Origins of the Popes’ Temporal Power
(with unpublished documents), in which she clearly demonstrated how the unfortunate family of the last Lombard kings had not completely died out after Desiderius’s imprisonment or with Adelchi’s exile to Constantinople, but instead how the family had returned to Italy, hiding behind a false name in a corner of this classical land (Italy) to save it from the ire of the Carolingians, and there continued to live on for a very long time.

Signora Ely’s mother had been English, as could still be seen by the blond color of the curly wig her daughter wore over her forehead. She had never married because she had been too sharply critical as a young woman, paying too much attention to the slightly crooked nose of this suitor, or to the fat fingers of that one. Regretting, too late, such fastidiousness, she was now all honey around men. But she wasn’t dangerous. Yes, she wore that little wig over her forehead and built up her eyelashes with mascara a little, but only in order not to frighten the mirror too much and to induce a small smile of compassion. That was enough.

“Good morning, Signor Ippolito,” she said, entering with many bows and squeezing a smile from her eyes and little mouth. She need not
have bothered since Roncella had solemnly lowered his eyes to avoid looking at her.

“Good morning to you, Signora,” he replied. “I’ll keep my hat on as usual and not get up. All right? Make yourself at home. . . .”

“Certainly, thank you . . . don’t get up, for heaven’s sake!” Signora Ely hastened to say, holding out her hands full of newspapers. “Is Signor Boggiolo still in bed? I came in a hurry because I read here . . . Oh, if you only knew how many many nice things the newspapers say about yesterday’s banquet, Signor Ippolito! They report Senator Borghi’s magnificent toast! They announce Signora Silvia’s play with the greatest anticipation! Signor Giustino will be so happy!”

“It’s raining, isn’t it?”

“What did you say?”

“It’s not raining? I thought it was raining,” Signor Ippolito grumbled, turning toward the window.

Signora Ely was accustomed to Signor Ippolito’s habit of giving brusque turns to the conversation. Nevertheless it left her a bit bewildered this time. Then she understood and rallied quickly: “No, no. But perhaps it will. It’s cloudy. So beautiful yesterday, and today. Oh, yesterday, yesterday, a day that will never be … A day . . . What did you say?”

“Gifts,” shouted Signor Ippolito. “Gifts, I say, from Our Eternal Father, my dear Signora, freely given for men’s happiness. How are the English lessons going?”

“Ah, very well, indeed!” the old woman exclaimed. “Signor Boggiolo shows an aptitude for learning languages, an aptitude that never before . . . He’s already mastered French fairly well and he’ll speak English well in four or five months (oh, even sooner!). Then we’ll begin German.”

“German, too?”

“Oh, yes … he has to! It’s so useful, you know?”

“For the Lombards?”

“You’re always joking about my Lombards, you naughty man!” said Signora Ely, gracefully threatening him with a finger. “It will help him
read the contracts, to know who to trust with the translations, and also to keep abreast of literary trends, to read the articles and criticism in the newspapers . ..”

“But Adelchi, Adelchi,” bellowed Signor Ippolito. “How’s this business with Adelchi going? Is it really true?”

“True? But there’s a tombstone, didn’t I tell you? I discovered it in the little church of San Eustachio at Catino near Farfa by a fortunate coincidence, around seven months ago while I was on vacation. Believe me, Signor Ippolito, King Adelchi did not die in Calabria as Gregorovius says.”

“Died in a canteen?”

“At Catino! Irrefutable evidence. The tombstone says:
Loparius et judex Hubertus
.”

“Well, here’s Giustino!” Signor Ippolito interrupted, rubbing his hands together. “I recognize his footsteps.”

And very speedily he puffed out five or six large mouthfuls of smoke.

He knew his nephew couldn’t stand him to be there at the desk. Actually, he had his own room, the best in the apartment, where no one would disturb him. But he preferred to stay here and fill the little cubbyhole with smoke.

(“Olympus Cloudmaker!” he snickered to himself.)

Boggiolo did not smoke. Every morning when he appeared in the doorway he would close his eyes and wave away the smoke, blow and cough. Signor Ippolito would pretend not to notice. In fact, he would draw more smoke into his mouth, just as he was doing now, and let it waft thickly in the air without puffing.

However, that smoke was no more intolerable to Giustino Boggiolo than the way his uncle-in-law looked at him. That look seemed to him almost a sticky substance that impeded not only his actions but also his thoughts. And he had so much to do there in that room in the few hours his office left him free! In the meantime he’d have to have the English lesson in the dining room, as though he had no study.

However, that morning he had something to tell Signora Faciolli in secret and he couldn’t do it in the small dining room next to the bedroom
where Silvia stayed until late. Therefore he summoned his courage and, greeting his uncle with an uncustomary smile, asked him to have the goodness to leave him alone with Signora Ely for a moment.

Signor Ippolito frowned. “What’s that in your hand?” he asked.

“A piece of bread,” was Giustino’s reply. “Why? I use it to clean my tie.”

He took off his tie, the kind that’s already knotted, and showed how he rubbed the bread over it.

Signor Ippolito nodded approval. He got up and seemed about to say something else but stopped himself. Head back, he puffed smoke first one way and then the other, and, making the ribbon on his hat swing, he went out.

The first thing Giustino, puffing and blowing, did was to throw open the window, and he angrily tossed out the piece of bread.

“Have you seen the papers?” Signora Faciolli asked him immediately, taking little hopping steps, sprightly and happy as a little sparrow.

“Yes, Signora, I went out to get them,” answered Giustino sulkily. “You brought them, too? Thank you. I still have many more to buy. I must send a lot away. But did you see what a mishmash . . . what a muddle these journalists . . . ?”

“It seemed to me that . . .” ventured Signora Ely.

“No, Signora, I’m sorry!” interrupted Boggiolo. “When they don’t know something, they shouldn’t talk about it, or, if they want to say something they can first ask someone who knows something about it. As if I weren’t there! I was there, confound it, ready to give all the explanations, make all the clarifications…. Why pull things out of a hat? For example,
Lifield
here … no, where is it? In the
Tribuna
. . . has become a German editor! And then, look:
Delosche
. . . here,
Deloche
instead of Desroches. I’m sorry … I’m really sorry. I have to send the papers to him, too, in France, and . . .”

“How are you, and how is Signora Silvia?” asked Signora Faciolli, in an effort to play another tune.

It played worse than the previous one.

“Don’t ask!” blustered Giustino, turning his back and tossing the papers on the desk. “Bad night.”

“Perhaps the excitement . . .” she attempted an excuse.

“What do you mean, excitement!” Boggiolo reacted in irritation. “That woman . . . excited? The Heavenly Father couldn’t budge that blessed woman. So many people there for her, the cream of the crop, you understand? Gueli, Borghi… do you think that made her happy? Not at all! You saw how I had to drag her there, didn’t you? And I swear to goodness, Signora, that this banquet came along on its own. What I mean is that it was Raceni’s idea, and his alone. I had nothing whatever to do with it. Anyway, I think it turned out well.”

“Very well! Of course!” Signora Ely immediately agreed. “There’ll never be anything like it again!”

“Well, according to her she made a bad impression,” Giustino said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Who?” shouted Signora Faciolli, clapping her hands. “Signora Silvia? Oh, for heavens sake!”

“Yes! But she laughs when she says it.” Boggiolo continued, “She says it means nothing to her. Now do we socialize with the others or not? I do what I can . . . but she has to help. I’m not the writer; she is. When something works, why shouldn’t we do all we can to see that it works as well as possible?”

“Certainly!” Signora Ely agreed once more, completely convinced.

“That’s what I say,” Giustino continued. “Yes, Silvia may have talent. She may know how to write, but believe me there are things she doesn’t understand. And I’m not talking about inexperience, mind you. Two books tossed away like that before she married me, without a contract. Incredible! As soon as I can I’ll do everything possible to reclaim them–I’ll do everything in my power for her books. I don’t have so many illusions now. Yes, the novel is selling, but we aren’t in England or even France. Now she’s written a play. She let herself be talked into it and wrote it right away, I have to say, in two months. I’m no expert…. Senator Borghi read it and says that . . . yes, he couldn’t predict the outcome, because it’s something … I don’t know how he put it … classical,
it seems to me. . . . Yes, classical and new. Now I say, if we hit it big, if we do well in the theater, you understand, my dear Signora, it could make our fortune.”

“Oh, certainly! Oh, certainly!” exclaimed Signora Ely.

“But we have to be ready,” he added angrily, clasping his hands together. “There’s anticipation, curiosity…. After this banquet. I could see they liked her.”

“Very much!” seconded Faciolli.

“Look,” Giustino continued. “Marchesa Lampugnani has invited her to her home. I’ve heard she is one of the important ladies. That other one has also invited her, the one who has a much sought-after salon…. What’s her name? Signora Bornè-Laturzi. Silvia has to go, doesn’t she? To be seen. Many journalists and drama critics go there. She needs to see them, talk to them, let them know her, appreciate her. Well, you can imagine how much trouble it will be to convince her!”

“Maybe it’s because,” Signora Ely risked, feeling uncomfortable, “maybe it’s because of her . . . condition?”

“Not at all!” Giustino Boggiolo disagreed at once. “For two or three months more it won’t show. She’ll be very presentable! I told her I’d have a beautiful dress made. … In fact, that is exactly what I wanted to ask you, Signora Ely: if you know a good dressmaker who wouldn’t be too pretentious, too frivolous. That is, because .. . wait, excuse me, and then if you would help me pick out this dress and … and also persuade, yes, persuade Silvia that, for heaven’s sake, she should listen to reason and do what she needs to do! The play will open toward the middle of October.”

“Oh, so late?”

“It’s late, I agree. But I really don’t mind this delay, you know? The ground isn’t well enough prepared yet, I know so few people, and then the timing won’t be right in a few weeks. The real problem is Silvia, and Silvia is still so difficult. We have around six months ahead of us to prepare and put all these things right and other things, too. Now, I’d like to make a little plan. There’s no need of it for me, but for Silvia. It gets my goat, believe me, that she should be the biggest obstacle. It’s
not that she rebels against my suggestions, but she won’t make any effort to play her part, to make the kind of impression she should, in other words, to overcome her own character. . . .”

“Bashful . . . yes!”

“What did you say?”

“She’s too bashful, I said.”

“Bashful? That’s what it’s called? I didn’t know. She lacks know-how. Bashful, yes, the word sounds right. She just needs a little basic, everyday instruction. I’ve noticed that … I don’t know … there’s something like an … an understanding among so many that … I don’t know … they pick something out of the air … just say a name … the name … wait, what is it?… of that English poet who lived on Piazza di Spagna, who died young . . .”

“Keats! Keats!” Signora Ely shouted.

“Keezi, yes . . . that one! As soon as they say
Keezi
. . . they’ve said it all, they understand each other. Or if they say … I don’t know . . . the name of a foreign artist . . . There are four or five names they all know, and they don’t even need to talk … a smile … a look . . . and they make a great impression, a great impression! You are so well educated, Signora Ely, could you do me this favor? Help me to help Silvia a little.”

And why not? Signora Ely happily promises she will do everything she can, and the best she can. She knows a dressmaker, and as for the dress–a nice black dress, a shiny material, all right?–it has to be made in such a way that gradually . . .

“Naturally!”

“Yes, it can be done.”

“Naturally in three … four months … Shall we go tomorrow to buy it together?”

That settled, Giustino pulled out some albums from a desk drawer and grumbled: “Look, four today!”

A serious business, these albums. They rained down from every direction on his wife. Admirers who, directly or through Raceni, or even through Senator Borghi, asked for a thought, a quotation, or a simple autograph to be written in them.

Silvia would waste a lot of time attending to each one. It’s true that she didn’t have much to do right now, considering her condition. But she kept occupied with some little piece of work or another in order not to be completely idle and to answer the small requests of various newspapers.