A Life (26 page)

“As you’re here I’ll get back to the garden. If you need me just knock on the window,” said Giuseppina and went out.

“What about this nurse?” asked Alfonso. “Does she usually leave you as much alone as I found you a short time ago?”

His mother explained that she only had her in the house for a month, partly to take over the little jobs that needed seeing to.

“I found her living in such squalor. She seemed so good and attentive.”

He noticed the past tense which suggested a present one in which her opinion about Giuseppina must have changed; and it was so obvious that his mother was surrounded by carelessness and utter indifference out of all proportion to the gravity of the
illness from which she was dying that he could not restrain himself and burst into tears.

She understood why he was crying and, with tears in her own eyes, at once hugged him in thanks for this sign of affection to which he must have been little used.

“Now you’re here, and I need nothing else.”

To soothe her he produced another reason for his outburst of grief, and lamented his not having been told before or he would have brought with him some competent doctor from town who would have cured her quicker and saved her a great deal of suffering. But these words only touched her the more. She wept and her poor half-lifeless body lay motionless as if nailed there; only her head drooped over the sheets to be nearer him.

Alarmed by the state he had thrown her into, he assured her that very soon, with the help of the doctor he intended calling that very day, she would be cured. For, unable to resign himself to the gravity of the situation, however little hope there was, he wanted to ask Prarchi to come and tend to her.

But she had a stronger mind than her son. She forbade him to call in other doctors because she had had enough of the one who came already. She wanted to die in peace and, taking one of Alfonso’s hands between hers, brought it to her cheek so as to lean her head against it, jerking herself on to one side with an immense effort in doing so. Then she wept silently without a sob, hiding her eyes with her hand.

She was utterly finished. What miracle could ever again set to rights that body which that movement had shown to be so misshapen?

As it was no longer a question of saving her, he made an effort to distract her. He asked her what medicines she had been given as if he thought it important.

“I’m supposed to take that one,” she replied, “but I don’t want to because it harms me. After taking it I not only have difficulty in breathing but feel my head going round … even convulsions sometimes.”

Her eyes were not yet free of tears before she raised her head and asked in a lively voice with an arch smile:

“Will you soon be boss? How are things at the bank?”

At that moment the notary came in, saying he was exhausted by the race Alfonso had made him run. The good man was actually breathing quite calmly, and there was no trace of sweat on his low, wrinkled forehead.

He rebuked Alfonso almost sharply for making Signora Carolina cry.

“You’re intelligent enough to realize it might do her harm.”

“I cried, but it wasn’t he who made me cry,” said Signora Carolina.

But Mascotti did not hear and repeated the same phrases, pleased maybe at a chance of showing zeal, while Alfonso suffered at his making as much thoughtless noise in that room as if he were in a public square.

With a determination of which he would not have thought her capable Signora Carolina interrupted his shouts by declaring in a loud voice that she was quite well and pressed the pulse of Alfonso’s left hand; his right was still beneath her head.

Alfonso longed to reprove Mascotti for not having sent a
warning
before and to make him realize that he was not satisfied with the way the poor sick woman had been treated, but could not for the moment. He felt a certain satisfaction at noticing that Mascotti himself must be feeling he was to blame, since he tried to excuse himself. Without anyone questioning him on the
reasons
which had induced him to leave Alfonso in ignorance of Signora Carolina’s illness, he said that it had seemed pointless to warn him since she had always been in good hands, and he repeated this phrase as if to silence anyone who asserted the contrary. Every day he paid her a visit, as he was only too pleased to, of course, and Giuseppina, whom he had put with her, was a good nurse.

This, which was perhaps true, seemed so little to Alfonso that he could not contain himself and he reprimanded him before his mother: “You should have warned me!” and looked at him angrily to make him realize that he had other more serious things of which to complain.

“And what about your career?” asked Mascotti. “I, as your guardian, had to see it was not interrupted.”

Signora Carolina was not listening to this conversation.

“Now I understand”—she seemed to have been studying Alfonso in silence for a long time—“now I understand why you look so changed. You’re dressed quite differently. You’re in the fashion.” And she laughed with pleasure at finding her son looking like a gentleman. She admired each garment, from his stiff straw hat to the cut of his trousers, and so interrupted the discussion between Mascotti and Alfonso. But not given up, thought Alfonso, who needed someone on whom to take his revenge.

Shortly after, in came Doctor Frontini, a handsome smartly dressed young man with an oval face, too regular features, and a thick brown moustache with gleams of gold. He was courteous to the sick woman but Alfonso sensed her antipathy to the doctor and realized that she feared him. She swore she had taken his potion twice that day, while to Alfonso she had confessed to not touching it since the night before.

As Alfonso later learned, Doctor Frontini was a young man who had started in a big city where, maybe for lack of patients, he had been unable to build up a sufficient practice and had fallen back on the wretched job of a ‘panel’ doctor; so he considered himself a misfit and disliked his patients.

After declaring that he found some improvement in the sick woman’s condition and recommending her to take the medicine regularly, he left.

Alfonso ran after him and caught up with him in the garden. He wanted to hear his frank opinion.

Doctor Frontini declared that the illness was very serious indeed, but he did not exclude a possibility of the heart
regaining
regular activity; that often happened. He had noticed the immense anguish in Alfonso’s face and added the last words out of pity. Seeing that the doctor was looking at him attentively, Alfonso, with his usual speed of perception, realized that the diagnosis had been modified to save his feelings. He could not complain of that. He knew as well as the doctor did himself how serious the illness was, and the latter’s opinion could not soothe him, but as the doctor had been so kind to him he felt he must be deceived about him. Certainly, at that instant at least, Doctor Frontini was taking an interest in the patient. Perhaps that was
an advantage obtained for Signora Carolina by Alfonso’s arrival, for a person’s life seems precious mainly because of the value others put on it.

Alfonso spent the rest of the day by his mother’s bedside. He suffered at being unable to go to the village and greet his friends, see some part of old haunts again, satisfy his yearning. But he could not move away.

On his re-entering the room Signora Carolina soon expressed a wish to sleep; her eyes were closing with drowsiness. He threw himself on his father’s bed to watch her fall asleep. But it was more difficult for Signora Carolina than she seemed to suppose. Just when she was about to fall asleep she came to with a violent start. Sometimes the start was so violent that she flailed her arms like a person losing balance.

“I can’t!” she sighed, and, already resigned, asked him to talk to her so as to dissipate the drowsiness which she could not
satisfy
. Readily he rose and sat by her bed. Instead of talking to her of other things as she wanted, he tried to persuade her to make another effort to sleep. She closed her eyes to please him, and he sat still, looking at her. When by an almost imperceptible
movement
of her arm he saw that she was about to give another start, incapable of remaining a passive spectator, he seized her hand in his and held it firmly. Seeing the sick woman grew quieter he gripped her other hand too. With surprise and happiness he saw her fall into a quiet restorative sleep; but even then, if he relaxed his grip, she at once seemed less secure.

So he could still bring some advantage to her, and this made him so happy that for some time he forgot the doctor’s bad forecast and his own despair. It was long since he had felt a joy so intense and pure! He thought with contempt of his sorrows in town. What importance could they have in comparison with the feelings
sweeping
over him by the poor dying woman’s bed? He remembered with pleasure Francesca’s remark that his leaving town would mean breaking off his relations with Annetta once and for all. Now, beside this bed, he felt neither remorse nor regret. His love for Annetta and his repugnance for her both seemed colourless. The whole affair lacked importance, except that it had chanced to bring him faster to his post, beside his mother.

In the long hours which he spent there inert, he tried once more to reason out again the motives which had induced him to leave Annetta; but as always his reasoning was nothing but dressed-up emotion. His revulsion for Annetta, he said to
himself
, was explicable, indeed natural. There was nothing in common between him and a silly woman whom he had come to know as closely as if he had been able to watch her every action, hear her every word, know her every thought since birth. Her chief motive when she spoke was a desire to please—when she wrote she was vain, vain and sensual when she loved. He compared her with the poor woman whose sleep he was now watching. Even in that state Signora Carolina betrayed how much and in what manner she had loved her husband; so humbly that she still kept him as a living memory and unconsciously imitated his gestures and ways, even something of his physiognomy.

It would have been torture for him to live with Annetta. She would have made him rich and held to her right to enslave him; the vanity and sensuality which had flung her in his arms might lead to her doing the same with others.

“Aren’t you very bored?” asked Signora Carolina, opening her eyes towards evening. In the weak light of dusk those eyes were gleaming with laughter. She had not slept so well for a long time, and as she said this, she gave a grateful kiss to Alfonso’s hands, which he could then withdraw.

“Who knows, maybe I’ll still live!” To talk like that she must be feeling much better, and it was enough to rouse Alfonso’s hopes. He gave her a long kiss on the forehead and said they would always be together for the rest of their lives, identifying his own condition with his mother’s to fortify her illusions. She did not have any great hopes even then. She declared that she’d given up any idea of ever running or jumping again, of ever leaving the house perhaps; she might always stay in bed, but she wanted to live.

While she had supper with him, he looked at her
ecstatically
, amazed at watching the desire to live awakening in her so promptly. He tried not to see that the hunger suddenly aroused in his mother was merely the natural reaction of a weakened
organism
making a last effort. The haste with which she swallowed the
small amount of food showed how much she wanted to delude herself, to make quick use of the truce granted her. Very soon she pushed the tray away with disgust. She stretched out on the bed, and it was difficult to know if she was really pleased when she said, “It’s ages since I’ve eaten such a lot!”

Giuseppina announced a visit from the doctor, which
disturbed
Signora Nitti. Surprised and put out, she said that this was the first time he had felt a need to come and see her twice in one day. Alfonso laughingly asked her if she wanted to criticize him for coming twice that day or only once on others. She replied disdainfully that he understood nothing about her illness and would have done better not to have come at all.

Then she agreed to the visit, unable or not bothering to hide that it annoyed her. The doctor was attentive, asked her for news, gave her advice, but in reply received only monosyllables, and found his advice received with silence interrupted by an
unenthusiastic
exclamation or two:

“Yes … yes … I’ll try this too if you want me to.”

Alfonso tried to make up for his mother’s rudeness by himself giving the answers that the doctor wanted from the sick woman, but he saw from the latter’s pallor and embarrassment, and from the sudden interruption of the visit, that his intention had not succeeded. Alarmed by the anger which he thought must be
hidden
beneath the pretence of coldness, he ran after him and with the frankness which he thought his best policy asked if his
mother
’s behaviour had put him out. He awaited the reply with real anxiety. There being no other doctors in the neighbourhood he was anxious to keep in with this one. The young doctor made the mistake of hesitating for a second and then the even greater one of saying contemptuously as he smoothed his big moustache affectionately with a hand:

“Oh! These old people lose their heads, particularly when they’re ill.” Then he did not reply to Alfonso’s promise that he would induce his mother to be more respectful towards those who deserved it. The young doctor was offended and obviously intended to show it.

On returning to Signora Carolina Alfonso tried to convince her that Doctor Frontini was worth treating better.

“Yes, yes,” she replied, bored. “I’ll treat him better; but not twice a day,” and she forgot the doctor at once.

She had no wish to sleep any more, and they spent half the night making plans for the future. She would come and live with him in the city. To lure her into hoping and to make her believe in the sincerity of his own hopes, he described life in town and even tried to embellish it. Then he found himself telling her most of his own adventures there and, since it was the most important, could not wholly avoid his adventure with Annetta. He described his
friendship
with old Signor Maller, with Macario, and then how he spent his evenings writing the novel with Annetta. This girl Annetta was immediately suspected by Signora Nitti, and he told her she was very ugly and, what was more, engaged to a cousin; he could not have better assumed a tone of indifference.