Her Husband (13 page)

When Giustino Boggiolo came back home later (barely leaving time to hurriedly pack his suitcase), he was so tired, and in such a stupefied condition, that even stones would have taken pity. But he gave himself no pity.

As soon as he entered the shadowy gloom of the studio, he found himself, without knowing how or why, in the arms and against the breast of a woman who gently caressed his cheek with a warm perfumed hand and said to him in a sweet, maternal voice: “Poor man … poor man … I know! . . . Keep this up and you’ll destroy yourself, darling! … Oh, poor man . . . poor man . . .”

And without the slightest clue as to why Dora Barmis was here in his house, in the dark, or how she could have known that because of his troubles, because of the unpleasant encounters, and because of his tremendous tiredness, he had an overwhelming need for solace and rest, he let himself be stroked like a baby.

Perhaps he had come into the study raving and complaining.

He really couldn’t take it anymore! At the office his boss had listened to him with his ears cocked like a dog’s, and he had sworn he would no longer be able to call himself Gennaro Ricoglia if he didn’t wholeheartedly deny his request for six months’ leave. After that, in Gueli’s house … Oh, Lord, what had happened at Gueli’s house?… He didn’t know how to reconstruct it. . . . Had he dreamed it? But why? Hadn’t Gueli gone to the station that morning? He must have gone mad. . . . One of them was loony…. But perhaps in the middle of all that giddy confusion, something happened that he hadn’t noticed, and that was the reason why he couldn’t understand anything now, not even why Signora Barmis was here. … Perhaps it was right and natural for her to be here . . . and that compassionate and affectionate comfort was
also appropriate, and–yes–deserved . . . but now . . . now enough of that.

And he started to move away. Dora stopped him by pressing his head against her breast: “No, why? Wait. . . .”

“I must. . . the . . . the suitcases . . .” Giustino stammered.

“No! What are you saying!” Dora’s voice spoke to him. “You want to leave in this state? You can’t, darling, you can’t!”

Giustino resisted the pressure of that hand. By now that comfort was beginning to seem too much and a little odd, even though he knew that Signora Barmis often forgot she was a woman.

“But… but why?…” he continued to stammer, “without… without a light here? What has Signora Ely’s maid done?”

“The light? I didn’t want it,” Dora said. “They brought it. Here, here, sit with me here. It’s nice in the dark . . . here. . . .”

“And the suitcases? Who’s going to pack for me?” asked Giustino, miserably.

“Do you have to leave?”

“My dear signora . . .”

“And if I keep you from going?”

In the dark Giustino felt his arm squeezed tightly. More than ever bewildered, upset, trembling, he repeated: “My dear signora . . .”

“You idiot!” she broke out with a quivering, convulsive laugh, taking him by the other arm and shaking him. “Stupid! Stupid! What are you doing? Don’t you see? It’s stupid … yes, stupid, your wanting to leave like this. . . . Where are your suitcases? They’ll be in your bedroom. Where’s your bedroom? Come on, let’s go, I’ll help you!”

Giustino felt he was being coerced. He was reluctant, lost, stammering: “But. . . but if. . . if they don’t bring us a light. . .”

A strident laugh at this moment rent the darkness and seemed to shake the whole silent house.

By now Giustino was accustomed to Signora Barmis’s sudden bursts of mad hilarity. Dealing with her was always like skating on thin ice, never knowing how he should interpret certain actions, certain looks, certain smiles, certain words. At that moment, yes, it really seemed
obvious that. . . but what if he were mistaken? And then . . . Forget it! Aside from the state he was in . . . Forget it! That would definitely be wrong, something he couldn’t do.

With this knowledge of his incorruptible conjugal honesty, he found the courage to resolutely and with a certain contempt light a match.

Another, more strident, wilder laugh seized and contorted Signora Barmis at the sight of him with that match burning between his fingers.

“What’s the matter?” Giustino asked angrily. “In the dark . . . surely . . .”

It took some time before Dora recovered from that convulsive laughter. She composed herself and wiped away her tears. In the meanwhile he lit a candle he had found on the desk after brushing aside three of Pirino’s pastels.

“Ah, twenty years! Twenty years! Twenty years!” Dora shuddered finally. “Men, you know? To me they are toothpicks! Here, between the teeth, clean, and toss away! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! The soul, then, the soul, the soul. . . Where is the soul? God! God! My, how good it is to breathe. . . . Tell me, Boggiolo: according to you, where is it? Inside or out? I’m talking about the soul! Inside or outside us? Everything depends on it! You say inside? I say outside. The soul is outside, darling; the soul is everything in the world; and once dead we will be nothing anymore, darling, nothing, nothing more…. Go ahead with the light! To the suitcases at once . . . I’ll help you. . . . Seriously!”

“You’re too kind,” Giustino said quietly, flabbergasted, moving ahead with the candle toward the bedroom.

As soon as she entered, Dora looked at the double bed and looked around at the other more than modest furniture under the low roof: “Ah, here…” she said. “Yes, well… That nice odor of home, family, the provinces … Yes, yes … well… lucky you, darling! May it always be so! But you must hurry. When does the race start? Oh, right away . . . Hurry, hurry, without losing any more time . . .”

And into the two bags open on the bed she quickly and skillfully packed the items that Giustino took from the drawer and handed her.
While doing so: “Do you know why I came? I wanted to warn you that Signora Carmi… all the actors of the company, but especially Signora Carmi, are furious, my dear!”

“Why?” asked Giustino, stopping.

“Your wife, darling, didn’t you notice?” Dora responded, signaling with her hand for him to keep going. “Your wife… perhaps, poor thing, because she’s still. . . she received them very very badly.”

Giustino, swallowing bitterly, nodded his head several times to signify that he had noticed and had been pained.

“Amends must be made!” continued Signora Barmis. “As soon as you join the company in Naples after Bologna … That’s it, Signora Carmi wants to get revenge at all costs. You absolutely have to help her get revenge.”

“Me? How?” Giustino asked, again confused.

“Oh, dear!” Signora Barmis exclaimed, hugging her shoulders. “Don’t expect me to teach you how. You are so difficult. . . . But when a woman wants to get revenge on another woman . . . Look, a woman can be good to a man, especially if he is like a devoted child…. But to another woman she can be wicked, my dear, capable of anything then if she feels she has been insulted or treated rudely. And envy! If only you knew how much envy there is between women, and how mean it makes them! You’re a nice, good young man, a very good man… enormously kind, I know. But if you want to look after your own interests, you must… you must force yourself… even to be a little wild…. Besides, you will be away from your wife for several months, won’t you? Now you don’t expect me to believe . . .”

“No, no, believe me, my dear signora!” Giustino exclaimed. “I don’t think about it! I don’t even have time to think about it! As far as I’m concerned, I’m a married man, and that’s that!”

“Are you her possession?”

“It’s over! I don’t think about it anymore! All other women are the same as men to me; I don’t see any difference anymore. My wife is enough woman for me. Maybe for women it’s different… but for men, at least for me … A man has so many other things to think about. .. . Imagine if I, with so many worries, so much to do . . .”

“Oh, dear, I know! But I’m telling you for your own sake, can’t you understand that?” Signora Barmis went on, bending over the suitcases, trying hard to keep from laughing. “If you want to look after your interests, dear… It may be fine for you, but you have to deal with women—actresses, journalists. . . . And if you don’t do what they want? If you don’t follow them in their inclinations, even if naughty? Right! If these women envy your wife? If they want revenge . . . understand? I’m telling you for your own good. . . . These are necessities, darling, why do you want to make so much out of them? Life’s necessities! Come on, they’re packed. Close them up and let’s get on our way at once. I’ll go to the station with you.”

In the carriage she took his hand instinctively; suddenly she remembered and was about to let it go, but then . . . since it was already there. . . . Giustino did not object. He was thinking about what had happened at Gueli’s house.

“You explain it. I don’t understand,” he said to Dora. “I went to Gueli’s . . .”

“To his house?” asked Dora, and immediately she exclaimed: “Oh, God, what have you done?”

“Why?” questioned Giustino. “I went to … to ask him a favor…. All right. Would you believe it? He received me as if we had never met….”

“Was Signora Frezzi there?” asked Signora Barmis.

“Yes, she was . . .”

“Well, then, why are you surprised?” Dora said. “You don’t know?”

“But, I don’t get it!” Giustino went on. “I’m dumbfounded! To pretend not to remember being at the station that morning . . .”

“You said that, too, in Signora Frezzi’s presence?” Dora burst out laughing. “Poor Gueli, poor Gueli! What you have done, dear Boggiolo!”

“Why?” Giustino asked again. “Excuse me, but I can’t imagine . . .”

“You! We’re starting all over from the beginning!” exclaimed Signora Barmis. “You want to reckon without the woman! You’ve got to get that out of your head. . . . You want a favor from Gueli, who has a warm feeling for your wife? My dear, you have to try to court her enemy a little. Who knows!”

“Her as well?”

“Livia Frezzi’s not ugly, for goodness sakes! She’s not young anymore . . . but. . .”

“Don’t say it even as a joke,” said Giustino.

“But I’m really serious, darling, dead serious,” Dora retorted. “You have to change your tune! Like this you’ll get nowhere. . . .”

And until the train gave a shuddering start, Dora Barmis continued to hammer on that nail: “Remember… Signora Carmi! Signora Carmi! Help her get revenge. . . . Patience . . . darling . . . Good-bye! … Be strong… for your own good … Be tough…. Good-bye, darling, good luck! Good-bye! Good-bye!”

Where was she?

Yes, over there, beyond the meadow, beside the path, the old church dedicated to the Virgin of the Rising Star rose out of the grassy clearing. It had a tall bell tower with an octagonal cusp, mullioned windows, and a clock that bore a rather odd motto for a church:
TO EACH HIS OWN
. Next to the church was the white rectory with the deserted garden, and beyond that a little walled cemetery.

At dawn the sound of bells over those neglected tombs.

No, perhaps not the bells, but their echo penetrated those tombs, making the dead shiver with anxious desire.

Oh, women of the scattered hamlets, women of Villareto and Galleana, women of Rufinera and Pian del Viermo, women of Brando and Fornello, go away so that your ancient, devout grandmothers may attend this dawn mass alone just this once. And let their old parish priest officiate, who has also lain buried for so many years, and who perhaps when the mass is finished, before going back to rest underground, will linger to look through the gate at the solitary garden of the priest’s house, to see if the new priest is taking as good care of it as he did.

No . . . Where was she? Where was she?

By now she knew so many places and their names, places even far from Cargiore. She had been on Roccia Corba, on Braida hill, to view
the entire immense Valsusa. She knew that the lane beyond the church descended through chestnut and oak woods to Giaveno, where she had also been, going down that strange Via della Buffa, wide and hollowed out, singing with water running down the center. She knew it was the sound of the Sangone River that she always heard, whose frenzy kept her from sleeping at night with the image of all that water running forever. She knew that further down, the Sangonetto made its noisy way into the Indritto valley; she had stood on the rocks in the middle of that thunderous roar to see it: a good part of the water separated into canals that were harnessed for various purposes. Up there noisy, free, swirling, foaming, unrestrained, down below in the canals placid, tamed, subjugated to man’s industry.

She had visited all the hamlets around Cargiore, their stumplike houses scattered among the chestnut, alder, poplar trees, and she knew their names. She knew that the church to the east, far, far in the distance, high on the hills, was the Basilica of Superga. She knew the names of the surrounding mountains, already covered with snow: Luzer and Uja and the Costa del Pagliajo and the Cugno dell’ Alpet, Brunello and Roccia Vrè. That one opposite, at twelve o’clock, was Bocciarda mountain, and the Rubinett beyond that.

She knew everything. Mamma (Madama Velia, as they called her here), and Graziella, and that dear Signor Martino Prever, Mamma’s suitor, had already told her about everything. Yes, everything. But she . . . where was she? Where was she?

Her eyes felt full of a vague, unnatural splendor, in her ears was a continual musical wave that was both voice and light in which her soul rocked serenely with an extraordinary weightlessness, provided she was not so indiscreet as to want to understand that voice or gaze at the light.

Was the silence of those green hills really as full of throbbing life as it seemed? Pricked, almost pierced at intervals by long, thin, high-pitched animal squeals, by sharp threads of sound, by crickets? Was that everlasting throbbing the laughter of all those streams running through deep, dark ravines, puddles, torrents in the shade of the low
alder trees, blessed brooks rushing downward in frothy garrulous cascades after watering a meadow, to do good elsewhere, in another field awaiting them, where it seems that the very leaves call for them, joyful and sparkling?

No, no, she saw everything–people, places, and things–suffused in a vaporous dreamlike air, making even the closest things seem far away and unreal.

At times, it is true, that dreamlike quality would suddenly be shattered, and then certain details would fling themselves before her eyes, transformed in their bare reality. Disturbed, stunned by that cold, hard, impassible, inanimate stupidity that assaulted her so violently, she would close her eyes and press her hands hard against her temples. Was it really like that? No, perhaps it wasn’t! Perhaps, others saw it differently . . . if they even saw it! And that dreamlike quality would fall back in place.

One evening Mamma had retired to her room with a headache. Silvia went with Graziella to see how she was. In the clean, modest little room, a single votive light burned on a table below an old ivory crucifix, but the full moon filled the room with its soft white light. As soon as Graziella entered the room, she went to look out the window at the green meadow flooded with light. Suddenly she sighed:

“What a moon, Madama! My goodness, it seems like daytime. . . .”

Mamma then asked her to open the shutter.

Oh, what amazing, sublime enchantment! In what dream had those tall poplars risen up from the meadows that the moon flooded with limpid silence? And to Silvia that silence seemed to be founded in time immemorial, and she thought of nights long ago, watched over by the moon like this, and all that peace surrounding her then acquired a mysterious meaning. Far away in the valley, the Sangone continued to rumble, a gloomy admonition. Out there, close by, a curious intermittent screeching.

“What’s that screeching, Graziella?” Mamma asked.

And Graziella, gazing out the window at the clear night, had replied happily: “A farmer. He’s cutting hay under the moon. He’s sharpening his scythe.”

Where had Graziella spoken from? To Silvia it seemed she had spoken from the Moon.

A short time later, from a distant group of houses, women’s voices were raised in sweet song. And Graziella, still almost as though speaking from the Moon, announced: “They’re singing at Rufinera. . ..”

Silvia couldn’t utter a sound.

Since she left Rome, and while on the journey, many new images had tumultuously invaded her mind, from which the shadow of death had barely faded. She was dismayed to notice an irreparable separation from all her former life. She could no longer speak or communicate with the others, with all those who wanted to continue to have the same relations with her as before. She felt totally cut off by that separation. She no longer felt she belonged to herself.

What was bound to happen had happened. Was it perhaps because up here, where they had taken her, she missed those humble, familiar things around her, things that she had clung to before and in which she used to take refuge? She felt lost up here, and her demon had taken advantage of it. He caused a kind of deafening drunkenness that made her delirious, flushed, and stupefied, since he transformed everything with that dreamlike fog. But sometimes he pierced through the fog in such a way that she suddenly saw the stupidity of everything. He was terribly spiteful: he took pleasure in revealing the stupidity of everything she held most dear and sacred, and he had no respect even for her baby or her motherhood! He suggested to her that both of these would no longer be stupid if she, through him, made a beautiful creation out of them. He also told her that those things were like everything else, and that she was born only for creating, and not for materially producing stupid things, or for being caught up and losing herself in them.

What was there, in the valley of the Indritto? Channeled water–a good, obedient housewife–and free, rumbling, foaming water. She had to be the latter and stop being the former.

Now the hour was striking. What did the tower clock say?
TO EACH HIS OWN
.

Soon the eternal snow will come,
houses and meadows will all be white,
the roof the bell tower of that country church,
where now, at dawn, like sheep from a pen,
the peasant women exit through two gates,
their bridegrooms at their sides.
They have thought about death and the soul
(nearby is the cemetery lined with crosses);
now life reclaims them, they speak loudly,
happy to hear their own voices
in the fresh holiday air,
amid the fast-flowing streams,
amid the meadows greening around them.

Just like that!
TO EACH HIS OWN
. How could that be! Never before had she written a line of poetry! She didn’t even know how to go about it…. How was it possible? But she had done it! Just as they had sung inside her. . .. Not the lines, the things.

Things really were singing inside her, and everything was transfigured, suddenly revealing incredible new facets. And she was reveling in nearly sublime joy.

Those clouds and mountains . . . Often the mountains seemed like great stone clouds, and the clouds like black, heavy, somber mountains of air. The clouds over those mountains were a busy lot! At times they attacked them with thunder and lightning; then, languid, gentle, they draped over them caressingly. But the mountains, their blue faces in the sky, absorbed in the mystery of the remote ages within them, seemed indifferent both to the furies and the languor. Never mind women and clouds! The mountains were fond of snow.

And that meadow up there, at this time of year, covered with daisies? Was she dreaming it? Or had the earth wanted to tease the sky, making the ground white with flowers before it was white with snow? No, no. In certain deep, humid recesses of the woods, flowers were still blooming, and she had almost felt a strange religious awe of such hidden
life. . . . Ah, man, who takes everything from the earth and believes everything is made for him! Even this life? No. Here the absolute lord was a large buzzing hornet that stopped to drink voraciously from the tender, delicate flower chalices that bowed beneath him. And the brutality of that brown roaring beast, velvety and gold-striped, was as offensive as something obscene. It almost gloated over the way those tremulous, fragile bell flowers submitted to its assault, and then remained quivering slightly on their stems after the insect, satisfied though still greedy, went leisurely on its way.

On returning to the quiet little house, she felt uncomfortable not to be, or at least not to seem to be, what she had once been to her dear old mother-in-law. Perhaps because she had never been able to keep herself, compose herself, mold herself into a solid and stable concept, she had always nervously sensed the extraordinary, disorderly restlessness of her inner being and had often rejected it in astonishment, immediately, like a shameful thing. She had surprised so many unconscious, spontaneous movements of both her mind and body, strange, odd, almost like those of a darting, incorrigible animal. She had always been somewhat afraid of herself, as well as curious, almost suspecting that an alien inside her was making her do things she wasn’t aware of or didn’t want to do: grimaces, even inappropriate gestures, and other worrisome things neither of heaven nor earth, but yes! horrible, sometimes really incredible things that filled her with shock and horror. She! She so anxious not to take up too much space or call attention to herself, or even to have the bother of many eyes on her! Now she hoped her mother-in-law would not notice in her eyes the laughter she felt quivering inside her when in the little dining room she found that good, innocuous Signor Martino Prever knitting his hairy eyebrows, puffed up with grim ferocity, jealous as a tiger of Uncle Ippolito, who seemed to thoroughly enjoy irritating him by continuing his customary habit of quietly stroking the ribbon on his
bersagliere
hat and smoking his long pipe from morning to evening.

“Monsù” (as a gentleman is addressed in the Piedmont dialect) Prever was also a nice-looking elderly gentleman, with a beard even longer
than Uncle Ippolito’s (but untended and unruly), and with the clear blue eyes of a boy in spite of his frequent attempts to make them appear ferocious. On his head there was always a white linen cap, with a large leather visor. Though very well off, he sought only the company of more humble folk and secretly helped them. He had also built and supported a children’s preschool. He owned a beautiful little house at Cargiore, and on top of Braida hill in Valgioje, a great solitary villa, where beyond chestnut, beech, and birch trees spread the wide, magnificent, blue-veiled Valsusa. In compensation for the many benefices it had received, the little town of Cargiore had not reelected him mayor, and perhaps for that reason he avoided the company of the few so-called well-bred people. Nevertheless he never left town, not even in wintertime.

There was a reason, and everyone in Cargiore knew it: that persistent, stubborn love for “Madama” Velia Boggiolo. Poor Monsù Martino couldn’t exist without seeing that “madamina” of his. Everyone in Cargiore knew Madama Velia, and no one spoke badly of her, even knowing that Monsù Martino spent almost every day in her home.

He would have liked to marry her, but she didn’t want to, and she didn’t want to because . . . My goodness, it would be pointless now at their age. Get married just for the fun of it? Didn’t he stay there in her house all day like the master? Well, then! That should be enough for him. . . . Money? Everyone knew that as Prever had no relatives anywhere, all he had, except perhaps for some little legacy for the servants, would one day go to Madama Velia just the same, if he died first.

It was a kind of fascination, a mysterious attraction that Monsù Martino had felt late in life for that little woman, who always stayed quietly, humbly, and timidly in her place. Signor Martino might be late, but a brother of his had been too early and too violent, so that one day, knowing she was already engaged, he very quietly, poor boy, killed himself.

More than forty years had passed, and Madama Velia still felt a sorrow, if not remorse, in her heart because of it; and for that reason also perhaps, though sometimes feeling somewhat embarrassed (she
wouldn’t say annoyed) by Prever’s continual presence in her house, she bore it with resignation. Graziella had whispered to Silvia that madama tolerated his presence out of the fear that he, too, Monsù Martino–if she ever tried to distance him from her a little–might do, God forbid, what his younger brother had done. Yes, yes, because . . . You laugh? Well, there’s nothing to laugh about. Those Prevers must be touched by a little madness, everyone in Cargiore said it, a little strain of madness. You should hear how monsù talks out loud to himself for hours and hours. . . . And perhaps it would be better if her uncle, Signor Ippolito, didn’t tease him so unmercifully about wanting to marry madama. Graziella had advised Silvia to persuade her uncle to tease Don Buti instead, the priest who also came to the house occasionally.