Tales of Madness (24 page)

During the summer, in the afternoon, her grandmother would order that all the windows in the little villa be kept tightly shut. Dreetta, of course, would have wanted them all wide open. She liked it a lot, therefore, when the fierce, unrelenting sun still managed to find a way to penetrate into that almost pitch-black shade preferred by her grandmother.

Dreetta was sure that her grandmother, with that fist always resting under her chin, would never die. And this was one of the things that most frequently triggered those flashes of madness. Her cousins would have a fine time showing her the room already reserved for her, telling how they would decorate it for
her, and inventing stories about the life all four of them would some
day live together and share forever. She liked all of that, would verbally agree with everything they said, would even join them in inventing stories, but in the bottom of her heart she didn't have even the faintest hope that the dream would come true.

Were she ever in a position to free herself, she could only expect her freedom to come about as a result of a sudden and unpredictable chance happening; a chance encounter on the street, for example. Therefore, when she went strolling with her uncle and her cousins, or when she walked to or from school, she always became flushed with excitement and seemed elated. And she would tremble with anxiety to such a degree that she paid no attention to what they were saying to her. She would concentrate on looking here and there, her eyes beaming and a nervous smile on her lips, as if she really felt exposed to that chance happening which was suddenly to seize and ravish her. She was ready. Was there no elderly English or American gentleman who would take such a fancy to her that he would ask her uncle... for her hand? No! Of course not! ... for permission to adopt her and take her away, far away from the living nightmare of life with that awful grandmother, and from her aunt's benevolence, which was so pitifully ostentatious? And would he not take her to London or to America, where he'd marry her to his nephew or to the son of a friend?

That's why she was studying English.

How odd that, by keeping the idea of marriage so far from her mind so as not to blush at it, she had not till now viewed Mr. Walston, her teacher, as the Englishman who, being so close at hand, could marry her!

Her cheeks suddenly turned red-hot as if Mr. Walston stood there in front of her expressly for that purpose. And she felt herself shudder from head to foot when she noticed that he, in turn, was also blushing. Yet she knew quite well that it was Mr. Walston's nature to blush at little or nothing. She had often laughed at that, considering it extremely funny in a man with such a powerful physique, despite his truly childish appearance.

He was a huge man, and so it happened that, while crossing his legs, he exposed almost the whole of his calf above his white
cotton sock, which was held up by the taut elastic band of his old
pink garter. Dreetta caught a glimpse of it and suddenly felt a sense of revulsion, the sort that also invites looking. She observed that the flesh of the calf was lifelessly white and that on that flesh some reddish metallic hairs curled here and there. In the semidarkness the entire living room seemed to be still, in expectation of something. It seemed as if it was trying to make Dreetta increasingly aware of the contrast between her strange anxiety, exasperated by the revulsion she felt—as from a scorching, shameful contact—and the detached, intellectual placidity of that huge Englishman who was busily reading, his calf exposed like any old husband already deaf to all the feelings of his wife.

"Present tense: I do not go,
io
non
vado;
thou dost not go,
tu non vai;
he does not go,
egli non va
."

All of a sudden, Mr. Walston heard a deafening cry, and, raising his eyes from the book, he saw his pupil shudder as if something painful had unexpectedly passed through her flesh. She dashed out of the living room, shouting frenetically, her face hidden under both arms. Dazed, his face aflame, he was still looking about, when he saw the old grandmother almost dancing in front of him. Convulsed with contempt, she was shouting some incomprehensible words. The poor man could have imagined anything but that the smile of bewilderment on his large flushed face would be mistaken at that moment for a smile of impudence.

"Teacher, catch me!"

He caught sight of a body dangling from the eaves of the little villa. It was Dreetta, her hair disheveled and her eyes flashing with madness. She was clenching her teeth in terror, and, remorseful, was tossing about in an effort to climb back to safety. Then he heard a ragged, agonized laugh that lingered for a moment in the air, as a wake to the horrible thud made by the body that plummeted and lay crushed at his feet.

But before coming to this crucial point in our story, we should call to mind many other previous events that can somehow explain how the ants had been able to invade the house to that extent, and how bizarre thought of an alliance between the ants and the wind could occur to him.

Reduced to hunger from the affluent position in which he had been left by the death of his father, he was abandoned by his wife and children, who managed to get along on their own as best they could, finally freed from his abuses, which could be characterized in so many ways, but above all as being incongruous. He, on the other hand, felt victimized by them on account of his all too submissive disposition and because not one of them had ever supported his peaceful pleasures and judicious opinions. He lived alone on a small parcel of land, the last of the possessions he had once had, including all his houses and fields. It was a small parcel of reclaimed land, below the town, at the edge of the valley, with a shack of a house consisting of barely three rooms where a peasant who formerly leased the land had once lived. Now he lived there, the master worse off than the most miserable peasant, and still wearing his high-class suit that on him seemed more horribly ragged and soiled that it would have on a beggar who had received it in charity. Nonetheless, his urbane, frightening poverty at times seemed almost cheerful, like certain colorful patches on the clothes worn by the poor, that almost make such people look like they're wearing a flag.

He had discovered this new wealth, having learned that one needs very little to live and yet remain healthy and carefree. He had also learned that you have the whole world to yourself when you have neither a house nor a family, neither responsibilities nor business to take care of. You may indeed be dirty and have ragged clothes, but you're left in peace. How delightful it is to sit on the doorstep of your shack on a starlit night and, if a dog approaches, lost like you, to have it curl up beside you and to pet it on the head: a man and a dog, alone on this earth, under the stars.

But it wasn't true that he was carefree. A little later, throwing himself down like an animal on a straw mattress laid out on the ground, he would bite his fingernails instead of sleeping, and inadvertently tear out his hangnails to such an extent that they would bleed. His fingers would then smart for several days, being swollen and discharging pus. He would mull over everything he should have done and didn't do to save his possessions, and he would writhe with anger or whine from remorse as if his ruin had occurred yesterday, as if yesterday he had pretended not to notice that it would occur before too long, and that nothing could prevent it. He couldn't believe it! One by one he had allowed his fields to be taken away from him by his creditors, and one by one he had allowed them to take away his houses in order to have a little money to pay for a few inexpensive and occasional pastimes behind his wife's back (actually they were neither inexpensive nor occasional; it was useless for him now to seek mitigating circumstances; he had to confess to himself, unequivocably, that he had secretly lived for years like a real pig. Yes, he had to admit that; like a real pig: whoring, drinking, gambling), and yet it had sufficed him to know that his wife had not yet noticed anything for him to continue living as if not even he were aware of his imminent ruin. In the meantime he had taken out his anger and secret frustrations on his innocent son, who was studying Latin. Yes
sir. Incredible as it might seem, he, too, had taken up Latin again
in order to monitor and help his son. As if he had had nothing else to do, and this attention and concern of his could actually compensate for the disaster that in the meantime he was preparing for his entire family. He had been secretly exasperated by the thought that his son would face this same disaster if he didn't succeed in grasping the function of the ablative absolute or of the adversative form. Consequently he had tirelessly attempted to explain them to him, while the whole house trembled at his cries and fits of anger over the bewilderment of the poor boy, who eventually perhaps would have managed to grasp them by himself.