The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl (2 page)

As he was leaving the tram he said to the girl: “Then I shall expect you this evening at nine.” Afterwards, as he remembered, he became aware that his voice, whether on account of the street or of his passion, had shaken. But he did not notice it at once, and when the girl answered: “Of course, I shan’t forget to turn up,” as she raised her eyes for a moment from the tram-lines and turned them towards him, it seemed to him that her promise had been made to the philanthropist. But, as he thought it over, all was as clear as forty years ago. The flash of her eye revealed the imp in her, as his own voice had revealed his anxiety. Without a doubt they understood each other. Mother Nature was graciously allowing him to love once again and for the last time.

The old man went off towards the Tergesteo with a more elastic step. He felt very fit, did the nice old man. Perhaps he had been without all that for too long. He had had so much to do that he had forgotten something which his system, still young, really needed. Feeling so fit, he could no longer have any doubt on the subject.

He was late when he reached the Tergesteo, so he had to hurry to the telephone to make up for lost time. For half an hour business absorbed his undivided attention. This calm was another source of satisfaction to him. He remembered how, when a young man, waiting had been such a torture and a delight to him that afterwards the pleasure awaited had paled by comparison. His calm seemed to him a proof of strength, and here he was certainly wrong.

When he had done his business he went towards the hotel where he always ate, like many other men of means who thus husbanded the supplies they had hoarded. He continued his self-examination as he walked. The desire within him was virile in its calmness, but complete. He had no scruples and he did not even remember how, when a young man, as became a person of refinement, every adventure of the kind had stirred within his breast the whole question of good and evil. He saw only one side of the problem, and it seemed to him that what he proposed taking was but his due, if only as a compensation for the long time during which he had been deprived of pleasure so great. As a rule most old men certainly believe that they have many rights and only rights. Knowing that they are beyond the reach of any education, they think they may live in accordance with the needs of their system. The nice old man sat down at the table with a desire for assimilating food that suggested real youth. “Lucky,” he thought. “The glorious cure begins.”

Yet, late in the afternoon, when, after leaving the office, the old man, in order to escape the dreary wait at home, went for a long walk by the sea and the jetty, there was a slight moral stirring in his breast which did not subside without leaving a trace in his heart. Not that this had the very least influence on the course of events, for, like other men, whether old or young, he did as he pleased, though he knew better.

The summer sunset was bright and pale. The sea, swollen, weary and motionless, looked colourless against the sky, still bright. The outlines of the mountains, dropping towards the Friulian plain, stood out clearly. There were even glimpses of the Hermada, and the air could be felt quivering with the ceaseless fire of the guns.

Every sign of the war that struck the old man reminded him, with a pang, that, thanks to it, he was making so much money. The war brought him wealth and humiliation. That day he thought: “And I am trying to seduce a girl of the people that is suffering and bleeding up there!” He had long grown accustomed to the remorse caused by his business success and he continued to make money, in spite of his remorse. His part of seducer was a new one and therefore the moral resistance was fresher and more intense. New crimes cannot be reconciled so easily with one’s own highest moral convictions, and it takes time to make the two lie down together in amity, but there is no need for despair. Meanwhile there, on the jetty, within sight of the Hermada in flames, the nice old man gave up the idea. He would find his girl some healthy job and would be nothing but the philanthropist to her.

The hour of the meeting had nearly come. The moral struggle had made the task of waiting for her even less difficult. The idea of the philanthropist went home with the nice old man, though it left him
the step of a conqueror which he had put on that morning as he left the footboard of the tram.

Even at home he did not abandon his purpose, but his actions belied it. To offer the girl a little supper was hardly the work of a philanthropist. He opened tins of nice food and prepared a choice little cold supper. On the table, between two glasses, he put a bottle of champagne. The time, however, was not very long.

Then the girl came. She was much better dressed than in the morning, but that did not alter matters, because she could not have made herself more desirable. In the presence of the sweets and the champagne the old man assumed a paternal aspect, to which the girl paid no attention, because she kept her innocent eyes fixed on the good supper. He told her he meant to have her taught a little German, which was necessary for the work, and then she made a remark that was decisive. She declared that she was ready to work the whole day on condition that she was allowed half an hour off for her bath.

The old man began to laugh: “Then we have known each other a long time. Are not you the girl who came to me with your mother? … How is the dear lady?”

The remark was really decisive, first of all because he learnt from it that they had known each other some time. Duration gives an adventure a more serious aspect. Then also the guarantee of the daily bath is, especially for an old man, of obvious importance. Even
now he could hardly have understood, had he thought of it, why the girl’s mother had mentioned the bath. The pose of the philanthropist vanished. He looked into her eyes laughing, as if meaning to laugh at his own moral struggles, seized her by the hand and drew her to him.

Then the old man would have liked to put on again at once his air of philanthropist. What was the use now of keeping up the odious appearance of seducer? He had the good taste to talk no more about jobs. Instead, he quickly gave her money. Then, after a slight hesitation, he gave her another separate sum, which he meant for that dear lady, her mother. To appear philanthropical, you must give also to the undeserving. Besides, old men always dole out their money in installments, whereas young men empty their pockets with a single gesture, only to repent later.

Thus the girl had the hard task of having to accept the money twice over and to pretend twice over that she did not want it. The first time is easy and it happens to them all. But the second time? She could not think of a different expression, as the occasion demanded, and repeated mechanically the words and the gestures she had used the first time. The third time too, she would have said: “Money? I don’t want any,” and would have taken it, saying: “I love you.” After the second time she was a little troubled, and the old man attributed her trouble to her disinterestedness.
But it may well be that she wondered whether the amount given her had been small and divided into two parts to make it seem larger.

This simple adventure became more complex in the excited brain of the nice old man. It is fate. Somehow or other, even when an old man pays, knowing that favours will no longer be given him, he always ends by falsifying his love adventures and soon earns the laugh of Beaumarchais and the music of Rossini. My nice old man—so intelligent—did not laugh at the words, simple as they were, of the young girl. The adventure must turn out to be “real” and he willingly lent his hand to the deceit. The girl was so charming that no word of hers could ring false. Now such falsifying had some importance, but only in the mind of the old man. Outwardly its only effect was to make the duration of that first interview, and also of those that followed, a little longer. If the old man had been able to do as he liked, he would have sent the girl away soon, because the immorality of old men is of short duration. But with a woman who loves, you cannot adopt such cavalier methods. He was not vain. He thought: “The girl loves the luxury of my office, of my house, of my person. Perhaps also she likes the gentleness of my voice and the refinement of my manners. She loves this room of mine where there is so much good food. She loves so many things of mine that she may love even me a little.” The proffer of love is a very high compliment and pleases even when
we don’t know what to do with it. At worst it is at least the equivalent of the knightly titles of persons who deal in oxen, and we know how jealous they are of them. She told him, but without any intention of being tragic, that he was her first lover. And he believed it. In fact the nice old man had to put restraint on himself to prevent himself from offering her money for the third time. So willingly did he yield to the pleasure she gave him that he felt hurt when she told him that she did not like young men, and preferred old ones. This hearing himself called old was a rude awakening and it was painful to have to bow acknowledgments for the flattering declaration. However, the interview, even when least amorous, was anything but a torture to the nice old man. All the energies of the girl were concentrated upon devouring the good supper offered her, so that he could rest at his ease.

But he was glad to see her go and to be left alone. He was used to the talk of serious persons and it was impossible for him to endure long the foolish talk of the pretty girl. I shall be told that there are artists and thinkers, people more serious than my old business man, who, when young, endure with pleasure the chatter of a pretty mouth. But clearly old men are in certain respects more serious than the most serious young men.

The nice old man went to bed still a little troubled. When he was in bed he said: “We must think no more about her. Perhaps I shall never see her again.”
So doubtful was he of his own love that he had arranged with her that he would send her a note of invitation for their next meeting.

Before going to sleep he was tortured with thirst. He had drunk too much and eaten things too highly spiced. He called his housekeeper, who brought him a glass of water and a reproachful glance. She was no longer very young, and it had always been her ambition to end up as mistress of the house. Then she had thought that the restraint of the old man arose from class feeling and had accepted the fact because one is born in one class or another without any fault of one’s own. Now she had been able to see the girl for a moment when she left. This taught her that class feeling did not prevent the old man from doing anything. That was as good as a genuine slap in the face for her. Obviously the qualities that make a person more or less desirable do not depend on their merits or demerits. But she held that she possessed those qualities, and therefore it was the old man’s fault if he did not recognise them.

The note with which the old man invited the girl to another meeting was written a few days later, much sooner than he had imagined when he went to bed that night. He wrote to her with a smile on his face, satisfied with himself. He flattered himself that the second meeting would be even more fruitful in pleasure. Instead it was exactly like the first. When he dismissed the girl he was as cautious as before and arranged once more that she should come to him next when he sent for her. He invited her to the third meeting even more quickly, but the parting was the same. He never brought himself to arrange the next meeting at once. For the old man was always happy, both when he sent for the girl and when he dismissed her, that is, when he meant to return to the path of
virtue. If, when he dismissed the girl, he had arranged the next meeting at once, this return to virtue would have been less genuine. In this way there was no idea of compromise, and his life remained orderly and virtuous with the exception of a very brief interval.

There would be little more for us to say about the interviews, if, after a time, the old man had not been seized with an insane jealousy—insane not for its violence, but for its strangeness. This is how it was. It did not appear when he wrote to the girl, because that was the moment when he was taking her away from the others; nor when he said good-bye to her, because that was the moment when he gave her over, willing and whole, to the others. In his case jealousy was inseparable from love, in space and time. Love was revived by it, and the adventure became more “real” than ever. A bliss and a pain indescribable. At a certain moment he became obsessed with the idea that the girl certainly had other lovers, all as young as he was old. He grieved over it for his own sake (oh, so much!), but also for hers, since she could thus throw away all hope of a decent life. It would be disastrous if she trusted others as she had trusted him. His own sin played its part in his jealousy. That is why, in order to make up for his own bad example, the old man habitually preached morality at the very moment when he was making love. He explained to her all the dangers of promiscuous love.

The girl protested that she had but one love, for himself. “Well,” cried the old man, ennobled at one and the same time by love and morality, “if, in your desire to return to virtue, you had to decide not to see me again, I should be delighted.” Here the girl made no answer, and for good reasons. For her the adventure was so clear that it was impossible for her to lie, as he did. She must not break off that relationship for the moment. It was also easy to keep silence when he was covering her with kisses. But when he gave vent to feelings more sincere and talked of other lovers, accusing her of having them, she found words again: How could he believe it? In the first place, she only went through the streets of the town on her tram, and besides, her mother kept an eye on her, and lastly, nobody wanted her, poor thing! And down fell a couple of tears. It was bad reasoning to use so many arguments, but in the meantime love and jealousy disappeared from the old man and she could go back to her supper.

This will show how old men regularly function. With young men each single hour is filled irregularly with the most diverse feelings, whereas with old men every feeling has its hour complete. The young girl fell in with the old man’s ways. When he wanted her, she came; she went off when he had done with her. If they differed, they ended by making love and eating afterwards in the best of humours.