A Life (37 page)

“I wonder what mistakes you’ve managed to think up today!”

Alfonso went on comparing columns for some time longer, but did not find a single one of the errors which must be there: he realized the work had got on top of him and that he could not concentrate enough to compare the two sets of figures
properly
. Then he remembered telling Cellani that he wanted to go to Maller and complain of the injustice done him. He had not renounced this project; now he told himself that he had not gone to Maller at once in order to avoid disturbing him in working hours, but had never thought of taking the injustice done to him without a protest. The ineffable boredom of his day had an effect. Rather than go home with his worries about unfinished work, he turned his thoughts to the idea of Maller at that hour calmly
congratulating
himself on disposing of Alfonso; this made the blood go to Alfonso’s head, and he entered Maller’s room intending to
show his anger. Once inside there he had a second’s panic; Maller might reply by telling him frankly the reasons for his hatred. But he overcame his agitation. If that happened, which seemed very unlikely, he would have less regard for Maller, speak of Annetta as if the other were not her father, insulting him and, after taking his revenge, leave the bank with his head held high. A satisfaction like that was worth anything, the loss of his job was nothing in comparison.

Maller was lounging on a sofa reading a newspaper which hid half his face. He raised his head to speak to Alfonso and during the interview often let it drop back, either from weariness or to hide the expression on his face. In spite of the warning which Alfonso had given to Cellani, Maller did not seem prepared for the interview. His bearing was undecided, first cold and severe like a superior who considers he is being good to reply at all, then restless and changeable.

“Signor Cellani told me that I was transferred from the
correspondence
department to the counting house by your order,” began Alfonso, stuttering, “I’d like to know if that’s to punish me for some failure.”

“No” exclaimed Maller. “We needed a clerk in the counting house and could spare one in the correspondence department. That was all.”

He bent his head down behind the newspaper for the first time, obviously thinking the interview was over.

Maller’s coldness made Alfonso calm; its tone was very far from the frank one he had feared. The matter was represented as being purely office routine. In a cool-headed moment he realized that he must not behave in a way that would force Maller to dismiss him, yet possibly say all he had in his heart. But he was now in
battling
mood, conscious of being so and more resolved to fight than he had ever been in his life.

He had worked hard in the correspondence department, he said, and was sorry to lose through no fault of his own a place won with so much effort. In the correspondence department he knew he could be useful to the bank and expect quick
advancement
, while in the counting house he would just become like other employees.

“It’s for the moment,” said Maller, with a look of surprise at finding him so bold, and also of curiosity about what was in the back of Alfonso’s mind.

“For ever!” insisted Alfonso.

The resolute phrase gave him back the calm nearly expunged by Maller’s glance. In a voice no longer uncertain he said that he was not a person who could live among figures alone; his brain needed to use words and sentences because it was used to studies which Signor Maller knew something about. He tried to smile because this last observation was intended as a joke.

Maller’s face went the colour of his mottled hair; that must be his form of pallor. The smile froze on Alfonso’s lips; on that face there was no trace of good humour. What had alarmed Maller, he
realized
, was his allusion to studies which his chief could have known nothing about if they had not been connected with Annetta.

“Well, what d’you want?”

Alfonso had looked so fierce that Maller had gone calm; then as soon as the other went calm, he attacked in his turn.

The question annoyed Alfonso: was this a flat refusal?

“What do I want?” he said angrily. “I demand to be put back in the correspondence department. I need a chance of promotion,” and he gave a candid account of his financial difficulties.

“But people get on in the counting house too,” said Maller. He seemed very impatient.

Alfonso, firmly intending to put up an energetic defence and to give a quick reply to every remark, was now in a state of great agitation due to the intense effort required to be always on the alert. So he was more and more at the mercy of his first impressions. Usually he was hesitant and silent when faced by the unexpected, abandoning previous plans and eventually regretting his own lack of resolve. This time his regret was quite different. Maller was being brusque, and he wanted to be too.

He repeated that his transfer to the counting house must be a punishment; the clerks called the counting house the ‘Siberia’ of the bank.

“I don’t see why you’re doing me this wrong.”

If Maller lost patience and gave a frank explanation, then the battle was lost; otherwise this way it was won.

Maller dryly observed that he was not used to reversing his
decisions
and would be glad if Alfonso accepted them, otherwise … and he completed the phrase with a gesture which clearly meant that he would be consoled even if Alfonso left the bank.

“All right!” shouted Alfonso, “I’ll leave.” He felt strengthened at the thought that the worst that could happen to him was to be left jobless. He went on more calmly, but with a wish to hurt and offend, “I can’t stay in a job where I’m persecuted with no reason … or no reason I can see.”

This last addition gave him relief; he had had his say. For an instant he was undecided still, unwilling to leave before he was certain of having said his all, then he gave a bow and moved towards the door.

At his last remark Maller had made a slight movement which did not escape Alfonso, then raised his head from the newspaper.

“Don’t take a serious decision like that on the spot,” he said in a gentle voice, almost begging, which surprised Alfonso, because its tone was quite different from that of his replies till then. “I’ll see if I can get you back to the correspondence department one day.”

It was obvious. The great man was worried.

For a moment, quite dazzled by the unexpected victory, Alfonso did not find this result enough.

“Till then am I to go on working in the counting house?”

That day’s boredom was too recent for him not to raise this too.

“I’ll see you’re helped with your work there,” said Maller, giving way at once.

Alfonso left without any thanks after a slight bow.

This interview left him in a ghastly state of agitation. Once outside Maller’s room he was dissatisfied, felt that the victory obtained was not the desired one because he had not succeeded in destroying the management’s disdain for him. He was keeping his job—that was about all. The honest Cellani would continue to treat him coldly and contemptuously. Oh if he could speak out to him, tell him how much his affair with Annetta was due to her
flirtatiousness
which had aroused in him an emotion maybe ignoble or impure but irresistible. Then he would no longer be considered by Cellani merely a person who had insinuated himself into the Maller home in order to grab a dowry by dishonest wiles.

Every detail of that interview worried him as he went off, and he tried in vain to think of a word in it which he could
remember
with any pleasure. All Maller’s words had been stamped with antipathy or offhandedness when they did not betray fear; and he himself had made the mistake of aiming each word of his own at keeping his position and improving it, none at making Maller friendlier. What put him in despair, in fact, was that he had won the battle only by alluding to recondite reasons for his ill-treatment in the bank. Had he made a threat which alarmed Maller?

Then he must be thought a blackmailer! That was why he was feared. He did not want to let such an accusal stand. No voice would be raised in his defence if he did not act. Maller knew too little not to be suspicious of him, and Annetta’s memory of him must have been twisted by hatred into that of a mere adventurer.

He would ask for another interview with Maller the next day, hand in his resignation and tell him frankly his reasons for the action. He did not want to keep even for a day what he was allowed only for fear of vengeance. “You hate me,” he would say to him, “You’re the boss, why keep me on? It’s an insult not to dismiss me.”

This idea should bring him some calm, he felt. He went home and flung himself on his bed half-dressed, still feeling a need to find relief in dreams. He had made up his mind. He would be without a job; what would he do with his life? He could not live by studies even if they were much better than his were; and it would be very difficult to find another job. Which of all his contacts in town would be of use to him, except those made at the Mallers, and on one of those, the most important, he could not count. He saw himself abandoned, poor, starving maybe, and suffering from a hunger he knew too well that he could not endure; eventually he would even hold out a hand to the Mallers for their charity or perhaps reach the point of threatening them to make them help him. In his long soliloquy tears often came to his eyes. He must try to keep his job at the Maller bank as long as he could.

Then he thought of one possible way of giving necessary
explanations
without losing his job; by giving them to Annetta herself. He knew her to be vain and selfish, but not heartless; she had often forgiven him out of compassion, that compassion which made
her forget her fear of compromising herself. He would turn to her. After all he was asking nothing but to be left in peace, and he was asking it of those who should have even greater interest than he had himself in silence being kept; surely Annetta would grant his request?

His first idea had been to wait for a chance to talk to Annetta, maybe to stop her on the street; then he felt he could not bear to live in such a state of agitation and longed to get rid of it at once. Next day he would write to Annetta and ask her to grant him an interview.

Eventually he did it there and then; the activity would help restore his calm, he thought. He jumped out of bed and lit the lamp. It was a long time since he had written at that table; the rusty nib resisted, the ink refused to flow and had to be diluted.

He began with an opening which seemed dignified and humble
‘Illustrissima Signorina,’
then asked for the interview in a few words, saying that he had something to tell her of great importance for himself and he thought for her too. If she granted this interview, as he did not doubt she would, he asked her to be on the mole, closest to the Via dei Forni between eight and nine o’clock next evening. Then he added a touch of ingenuous regret:
‘I no longer know how to treat you, Annetta, now that you may hate me,’
and one of equally ingenuous irony:
‘I’m signing with both Christian name and surname as you may not recognize my Christian name alone.’

He did not sleep, but the depression which often brought tears to his eyes stopped. Now his agitation was of quite another kind, like an excited lover’s, and he traced this back to those two
gentler
phrases he had addressed to Annetta. How pleasantly he was lulled by the thought that he would see her again the next day. There, once again, at the thought of that face which had once blushed and paled for love of him, he had forgotten the hostile faces surrounding him. For love of him, not of Macario! He knew that from Macario himself, who had denied that passion could ever throw a shadow over her face.

Now his purpose in asking for that interview no longer
mattered
; his main wish was to reestablish himself in her eyes, to make her feel he was not the adventurer that she supposed. Not that this would mean the end of her projected match with Macario; but
affectionate gratitude and friendship for him remaining in the heart of the woman he had loved would be enough.

He began imagining what he would say to her. He would not apologize for seducing her, that would be an error in tactics; he had done it in passion and could not regret an action which had brought him the greatest happiness of his life. He knew from his reading that women always forgive an homage to their beauty in any even criminal form. He would waste few words about himself, just assure her that he would die rather than say a word about the secret
uniting
them. Maybe she would be able to guess that from his bearing without his lowering himself to saying so. Though he would have liked just to tell her he loved her, he would not say a word about love to her. In his misery now he no longer despised that love. Even the thought of it had comforted him in his gloom. To reveal the
slightest
hint of it to Annetta would be dangerous because a man in love cannot be trusted, however honest and benevolent he may appear; so he must be very careful to hide this new affection of his. He must appear as a lover with no rancour at being abandoned, one whose love has turned into sweet fraternal friendship. He would ask her affectionately if she was happy and make a great show of joy if, as she probably would, she assured him that she loved Macario. On the other hand, she might possibly confess that she was not happy and confide in him freely. If that happened there would be no more difficulties for him, and he would not need to expend much thought on what attitude to take up.

Santo willingly agreed to deliver the letter.

For the first time Alfonso was able to draw advantage from his observations on character. Assuming an air of importance he asked mysteriously whether Signorina Annetta had told him she was expecting that letter. Then he warned him that it was a matter of springing a surprise on one of the Maller family.

Santo, delighted to be in on a secret concerning Signorina Annetta, put the note in his pocket. He promised to be very
cautious
and was offended at Alfonso telling him so often to keep the secret. Then he went further and complained that Alfonso never showed his face at the Mallers any more. Was he offended with someone? He gave the impression that if Alfonso was, he would avenge him.