Difficult Loves (22 page)

were a little family coming home in their boat as they did every evening during the fishing season. The gray fishermen's houses overlooked the dock; red nets were stretched across short stakes; and from the boats, already tied up, some youths lifted lead-colored fish and passed them to girls standing with square baskets, the low rims propped against their hips. Men with tiny gold earrings, seated on the ground with spread legs, were sewing endless nets; and in some tubs they were boiling tannin to dye the nets again. Little stone walls marked off tiny vegetable gardens on the sea, where the boats lay beside the canes of the seedbeds. Women with their mouths full of nails helped their husbands, lying under the keel, to patch holes. Every pink house had a low roof covered with tomatoes split in two and set out to dry with salt on a grill; and under the asparagus plants the kids were hunting for worms; and some old men with bellows were spraying insecticide on their loquats; and the yellow melons were growing under creeping leaves; and in flat pans the old women were frying squid and polyps or else pumpkin flowers dredged in flour; and the prows of fishing boats rose in the yards redolent of wood fresh from the plane; and a brawl among the boys caulking the hulls had broken out, with threats of brushes black with tar; and then the beach began, with the little sand castles and volcanoes abandoned by the children.

Signora Isotta, seated in the boat with that pair, in that excessive green-and-orange dress, would even have liked the trip to continue. But the boat was aiming its prow at the shore, and the beach attendants were carrying away the deck chairs, and the man had bent over the motor, turning his back: that brick-red back divided by the knobs of the spine, on which the hard, salty skin rippled as if moved by a sigh.

THE ADVENTURE OF A CLERK

It so happened that Enrico Gnei, a clerk, spent a night with a beautiful lady. Coming out of her house, early, he felt the air and the colors of the spring morning open before him, cool and bracing and new, and it was as if he were walking to the sound of music.

It must be said that only a lucky conjunction of circumstances had rewarded Enrico Gnei with this adventure: a party at some friends' house, a special, fleeting mood of the lady's—a woman otherwise controlled and hardly prone to obeying whims—a slight alcoholic stimulation, whether real or feigned, and in addition a rather favorable logistic combination at the moment of good-byes. All this, and not any personal charm of Gnei's—or, rather, none but his discreet and somewhat anonymous looks, which would mark him as an undemanding, unobtrusive companion—had produced the unexpected result of that night. He was well aware of all this and, modest by nature, he considered his good luck all the more precious. He also knew that the event would have no sequel; nor did he complain of that, because a steady relationship would have created problems too awkward for his usual

way of living. The perfection of the adventure lay in its having begun and ended in the space of a night. Therefore Enrico Gnei that morning was a man who has received what he could most desire in the world.

The lady's house was in the hill district. Gnei came down a green and fragrant boulevard. It was not yet the hour when he was accustomed to leave home for the office. The lady had made him slip out now, so the servants wouldn't see. The fact that he hadn't slept didn't bother him; in fact, it gave him a kind of unnatural lucidity, an arousal no longer of the senses but of the intellect. A gust of wind, a buzzing, an odor of trees seemed to him things he should somehow grasp and enjoy; he couldn't become accustomed again to humbler ways of savoring beauty.

Because he was a methodical sort of man, getting up in a strange house and dressing in haste without shaving left in him an impression of disturbed habits; for a moment he thought of dashing home to shave and tidy himself up before going to the office. He would have had the time, but Gnei immediately dismissed the idea; he preferred to convince himself it was too late, because he was seized by the fear that his house, the repetition of daily acts, would dispel the rich and extraordinary atmosphere in which he now moved.

He decided that his day would follow a calm and generous curve, to retain as far as possible the inheritance of that night. His memory, if he could patiently reconstruct the hours he had passed, second by second, promised him boundless Edens. And thus, letting his thoughts stray, Enrico Gnei went without haste to the beginning of the tramline.

The tram, almost empty, was waiting for the time when its schedule began. Some drivers were there, smoking. Gnei

whistled as he climbed aboard, his overcoat open, flapping; he sat down, sprawling slightly, then immediately assumed a more citified position, pleased that he had thought to correct himself promptly but not displeased by the carefree attitude that had come to him naturally.

The neighborhood was sparsely inhabited, and the inhabitants were not early risers. On the tram there was an elderly housewife, two workmen having an argument, and himself, the contented man. Solid, morning people. He found them likable; he, Enrico Gnei, was for them a mysterious gentleman, mysterious and content, never seen before on this tram at this hour. Where could he come from? they were perhaps asking themselves now. And he gave them no clue: he was looking at the wistaria. He was a man who looks at the wistaria like a man who knows how wistaria should be looked at: he was aware of this, Enrico Gnei was. He was a passenger who hands the money for his ticket to the conductor, and between him and the conductor there is a perfect passenger-conductor relationship; it couldn't be better. The tram moved down toward the river; it was a great life.

Enrico Gnei got off downtown and went to a café. Not the usual one. A café with mosaic walls. It had just opened; the cashier hadn't arrived yet; the counterman was starting up the coffee machine. Gnei strode like a master right to the center of the place, went to the counter, ordered a coffee, chose a cake from the glass pastry case, and bit into it, first with hunger, then with the expression of a man with a bad taste in his mouth after a wild night.

A newspaper lay open on the counter; Gnei glanced at it. He hadn't bought the paper this morning—and to think that that was always the first thing he did on leaving his

house. He was a habitual reader, meticulous; he kept up with the most trivial events and there wasn't a page he skipped without reading. But that day his gaze ran over the headlines and his thoughts remained unconnected. Gnei couldn't manage to read: perhaps—who knows?—stirred by the food, by the hot coffee, or by the dulling of the morning air's effect, a wave of sensations from the night came over him. He shut his eyes, raised his chin, and smiled.

Attributing this pleased expression to the sports news in the paper, the counterman said to him, "Ah, you're glad Boc-cadasse will be playing again on Sunday?" and he pointed to the headline that announced the return of a center-half. Gnei read, recovered himself, and instead of exclaiming, as he would have liked to, "Oh, I've got something a lot better than Boccadasse to think about, my friend!" he confined himself to saying, "Hmm ... right ..." And, unwilling to let a conversation about the forthcoming match disrupt the flow of his feelings, he turned toward the cashier's desk, where, in the meantime, a young girl with a disenchanted look had installed herself.

"So," Gnei said, in a tone of intimacy, "I owe you for a coffee and a cake." The cashier yawned. "Sleepy? Too early for you?" Gnei asked. Without smiling, the cashier nodded. Gnei assumed an air of complicity: "Aha! Didn't get enough sleep last night, did you?" He thought for a moment, then, persuading himself he was with a person who would understand, added, "I still haven't gone to bed." Then he was silent, enigmatic, discreet. He paid, said good morning to all, and left. He went to the barber's.

"Good morning, sir. Have a seat, sir," the barber said in a professional falsetto that to Enrico Gnei was like a wink of the eye.

"Um hum, give me a shave!" he replied with skeptical condescension, looking at himself in the mirror. His face, with the towel knotted around his neck, had the appearance of an independent object, and some trace of weariness, no longer corrected by the general bearing of his person, was beginning to show. It was still quite a normal face, like that of a traveler who had got off the train at dawn, or a gambler who has spent the night over his cards; except there was a certain look that marked the special nature of his weariness—Gnei observed smugly—a certain relaxed, indulgent expression, that of a man who has had his share of things and is prepared to take the bad with the good.

Far different caresses—Gnei's cheeks seemed to say to the brush that encased them in warm foam—far different caresses from yours are what we're used to!

Scrape, razor—his skin seemed to say—you won't scrape off what I have felt and know!

It was, for Gnei, as if a conversation filled with allusions were taking place between him and the barber, who, however, was also silent, devoting himself to handling his implements. He was a young barber, somewhat taciturn more from lack of imagination than from a reserved character; and in fact, attempting to start a conversation, he said, "Some year, eh? The good weather's already here. Spring ..."

The remark reached Gnei right in the middle of his imaginary conversation, and the word "spring" became charged with meanings and hidden references. "Aaah! Spring ..." he said, a knowing smile on his foamy lips. And here the conversation died.

But Gnei felt the need to talk, to express, to communicate, and the barber didn't say anything further. Two or three times Gnei started to open his mouth when the young man lifted

the razor, but he couldn't find any words, and the razor descended again over his lip and chin.

"What did you say?" the barber asked, having seen Gnei's lips move without producing any sound.

And Gnei, with all his warmth, said, "Sunday, Bocca-dasse'll be back with the team!"

He had almost shouted; the other customers turned toward him their half-lathered faces; the barber had remained with his razor suspended in air.

"Ah, you're a - fan?" he said, a bit mortified. "I'm a

follower of -," and he named the city's other team.

"Oh, - has an easy game Sunday; they can't lose. ..."

But his warmth was already extinguished.

Shaven, he came outside. The city was loud and bustling; there were glints of gold on the windows, water flew over the fountains, the trams' poles struck sparks from the overhead wires. Enrico Gnei proceeded as if on the crest of a wave, bursts of vigor alternating in his heart with fits of lassitude.

"Why, it's Gnei!"

"Why, it's Bardetta!"

He ran into an old schoolmate he hadn't seen for ten years. They traded the usual remarks, how time had gone by, how they hadn't changed. Actually, Bardetta had somewhat faded, and the vulpine, slightly crafty expression of his face had become accentuated. Gnei knew that Bardetta was in business, but had a rather murky record and had been living abroad for some time.

"Still in Paris?"

"Venezuela. I'm about to go back. What about you?"

"Still here," and, in spite of himself, he smiled in embarrassment, as if he were ashamed of his sedentary life, and at

the same time irked because he couldn't make it clear, at first sight, that his existence in reality was fuller and more satisfied than might be imagined.

"Are you married?" Bardetta asked.

To Gnei this seemed an opportunity to rectify the first impression. "Bachelor!" he said. "Still a bachelor, ha ha! We're a vanishing race!" Yes, Bardetta, a man without scruples, about to leave again for America, with no ties now to the city and its gossip, was the ideal person; with him Gnei could give free rein to his euphoria, to him alone Gnei could confide his secret. Indeed, he could even exaggerate a little, talk of last night's adventure as if it were, for him, something habitual. "That's right," he insisted. "The old guard of bachelorhood, us two, eh?"—meaning to refer to Bardetta's onetime reputation as a successful chaser of chorus girls. And he was already studying the remark he would make to arrive at the subject, something on the order of "Why, only last night, for example..."

"To tell the truth," Bardetta said, with a somewhat shy smile, "I'm married and have four children. ..."

Gnei heard this as he was re-creating around himself the atmosphere of a completely heedless, epicurean world; and he was thrown a bit off balance by it. He stared at Bardetta; only then did he notice the man's shabby, downtrodden look, his worried, tired manner. "Ah, four children ..." he said, in a dull voice. "Congratulations! And how are things going over there?"

"Hmph ... not much doing ... It's the same all over. ... Scraping by ... feeding the family ..." and he stretched out his arms in a gesture of defeat.

Gnei, with his instinctive humility, felt compassion and

remorse: how could he have thought of trumpeting his own good luck to impress a wreck of a man like this? "Oh, here, too, I can tell you," he said quickly, changing his tone again, "we barely manage, living from day to day. ..."

"Well, let's hope things will get better. ..."

"Yes, we have to keep hoping. ..."

They exchanged all best wishes, said good-bye, and went off in different directions. Immediately, Gnei felt overwhelmed with regret: the possibility of confiding in Bardetta, that Bar-detta he had first imagined, seemed to him an immense boon, now lost forever. Between the two of them—Gnei thought— a man-to-man conversation could have taken place, good-natured, a shade ironic, without any showing off, without boasting; his friend would have left for America bearing a memory that would remain unchangeable; and Gnei vaguely saw himself preserved in the thoughts of that imaginary Bardetta, there in his Venezuela, remembering old Europe—poor, but always faithful to the cult of beauty and pleasure—and thinking instinctively of his friend, the schoolmate seen again after so many years, always with that prudent appearance and yet completely sure of himself: the man who hadn't abandoned Europe and virtually symbolized its ancient wisdom of life, its wary passions. ... Gnei grew excited: thus the adventure of the previous night could have left a mark, taken on a definitive meaning, instead of vanishing like sand in a sea of empty days, all alike.