The Conformist (36 page)

They got out of the car in front of the hotel to say good-bye. Quadri, after shaking Marcello’s and Giulia’s hands in a hurry, sat back down in the car. Lina lingered a moment to say something to Giulia, and then Giulia said good-bye and went into the hotel. For an instant Lina and Marcello remained alone together on the sidewalk.

He said, in embarrassment, “Till tomorrow, then.”

“Till tomorrow,” echoed the woman, tilting her head with a worldly smile.

Then she turned her back to him; and he caught up with Giulia in the lobby.

W
HEN MARCELLO WOKE UP
and raised his eyes to the ceiling in the uncertain half-light of the shutters left ajar, he remembered immediately that at that hour Quadri was driving down the roads of France, followed at a short distance by Orlando and his men; and he understood that the trip to Paris was over. The trip was over, he repeated to himself, although it had barely begun. It was over because with Quadri’s death, which he already took as a
fait accompli
, that period of his life during which he had sought by any means to free himself from the burden of loneliness and abnormality that Lino’s death had left him with had come to an end. He had managed to do it, at the cost of a crime — or rather, of what would have been a crime if he had not known how to justify and make sense of it. As far as he was concerned personally, he felt sure that such justification would not be lacking: he would be a good husband, a good father, a good citizen, also thanks to Quadri’s death, which definitively precluded any going back, and he would watch his life slowly but surely acquire
the certainty and solidity that up until now it had lacked. In this way Lino’s death, which had been the chief cause of his obscure tragedy, would be resolved and annulled by Quadri’s, just as in the past the expiatory sacrifice of an innocent human being had served to resolve and annull the impiety of a previous crime. But he was not alone in this matter; and the justification of his life and of Quadri’s murder did not depend on him alone.

“Now,” he thought lucidly, “the others need to do their duties, too … Otherwise I’ll be left alone with this dead man in my arms and in the end I will have achieved nothing, nothing at all.”

“The others,” as he knew, were the government he had understood he was serving with that murder; the society embodied by that government; and the very nation that accepted guidance by that same society. It would never be enough for him to say, “I’ve done my duty; I acted this way under orders.” Such a justification might be enough for agent Orlando, but not for him. What he needed was the
complete
success of that government, that society, that nation; and not only an outer, but also an intimate and crucial success. Only in this way could what was normally considered a common crime become, instead, a positive step in a necessary direction. In other words, thanks to forces that did not depend on him, a complete transmutation of values must take place: injustice must become justice; betrayal, heroism; death, life. He felt the need at this point to express his situation to himself in coarse, sarcastic words, and he thought coldly, “In other words, if Fascism falls on its face, and if all the bastards, incompetents, and imbeciles in Rome drag the Italian nation down into ruin, then I’m nothing but a miserable assassin.” But right away he corrected himself mentally: “But things being as they are, I couldn’t have acted any differently.”

Beside him Giulia, who was still asleep, began to move, and with a slow, strong, gradual motion wrapped first her arms, then her legs around him, laying her head on his breast. Marcello let her do so, and stretching out one arm, picked up the small phosphorescent alarm clock from the bedside table and looked at the time: it was quarter past nine. He couldn’t help thinking that, if
things had gone the way Orlando had assumed they would go, at this very moment Quadri’s car was lying abandoned in a ditch somewhere in France with a corpse at the wheel.

Giulia asked in a low voice, “What time is it?”

“Quarter past nine.”

“Uh, how late it is,” she said without moving. “We slept almost nine hours.”

“Obviously we were tired.”

“Aren’t we going to Versailles, then?”

“Certainly we are. Actually, we should get dressed now,” he said with a sigh. “Signora Quadri will be here soon.”

“I’d prefer her not to come … she never leaves me in peace with that love of hers.”

Marcello said nothing.

After a moment, Giulia went on, “What’s the plan for the next few days?”

Before he could hold himself back, Marcello answered, “We’re leaving,” in a voice that he knew sounded almost dismal, such was the strength of his sorrow.

This time Giulia roused herself; without detaching herself from him, she pulled her head and shoulders back a little and said in a surprised, already alarmed voice, “Leaving? So soon? We just got here and already we have to leave?”

“I didn’t tell you last night,” he lied, “so as not to ruin your evening. But yesterday afternoon I received a telegram calling me back to Rome.”

“What a shame … really, what a shame,” said Giulia in a good-natured, already resigned tone of voice. “Just as I was starting to enjoy myself in Paris. And we haven’t even seen anything yet.”

“Are you very disappointed?” he asked gently, stroking her head.

“No, but I would have preferred to stay here a day or so, at least … if only to get some idea of Paris.”

“We’ll come back.”

A silence followed. Then Giulia threw her arms around him and pressed her whole body against his, saying, “Then at least tell
me what we’re going to do in the future … tell me what our life is going to be like.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Just because,” she answered, hugging him even more tightly. “Because I love to talk about the future … in bed … in the dark.”

“All right,” began Marcello, in a calm and colorless voice. “First we’ll go back to Rome and look for a house.”

“How big?”

“Four or five rooms with a kitchen and bath. Once we’ve found it, we’ll buy everything we need to furnish it.”

“I’d like an apartment on the ground floor,” she said in a dreamy voice, “with a garden. It wouldn’t have to be big … but with flowers and trees, so we could sit out there when the weather’s nice.”

“Nothing could be easier,” confirmed Marcello. “So, we’ll set up house.… I think I’ll have enough money to outfit it completely. Not with expensive furniture, of course.…”

“You’ll make a nice study for yourself,” she said.

“Why should I have a study, when I do my work at the office? Better to have a big living room.”

“Yes, a living room, you’re right … sitting room and dining room together. And we’ll have a beautiful bedroom, won’t we?”

“Certainly.”

“But no couches that fold out, they’re so squalid … I want a regular bedroom, with a big double bed. And tell me, will we have a nice kitchen, too?”

“A nice kitchen, why not?”

“I want a double-burner stove, with gas and electricity, and I want to have a big beautiful frigidaire.… If we don’t have enough money, we could buy them on the installment plan.”

“Of course, on the installment plan.”

“Tell me some more. What will we do in this house?”

“We’ll live there and be happy.”

“I need to be happy so much,” she said, curling herself even more tightly against him, “so much. If you only knew … it feels like I’ve wanted to be happy ever since I was born.”

“All right, we’ll be happy,” said Marcello firmly, almost aggressively.

“Will we have children?”

“Certainly.”

“I want a lot of them,” she said in a lilting voice, “I want one for every year, at least for the first four years of our marriage. That way we’ll have a family, and I want to have a family as soon as possible.… It seems to me we shouldn’t wait, otherwise it will be too late … and when you have a family, all the rest comes by itself, doesn’t it?”

“Certainly, all the rest comes by itself.”

She was quiet for a minute and then asked, “Do you think I’m already pregnant?”

“How would I know that?”

“If I was,” she laughed, “it would mean that our child was conceived on a train.”

“Would you like that?”

“Yes, it would be a good omen for him. Who knows, maybe he’d become a great traveler! I want the first one to be a son … for the second, I’d prefer a girl … I’m sure she would be really beautiful. You’re so handsome and I’m not exactly ugly.… The two of us will surely give birth to really beautiful children.”

Marcello said nothing and Giulia went on, “Why aren’t you saying anything? Wouldn’t you like to have children with me?”

“Certainly,” he replied; and all of a sudden, to his astonishment, he felt two tears well up from his eyes and slide down his cheeks. And then two more — hot, burning, as if they had already formed in some remote, long-ago time and remained in his eyes to fill them with fiery pain. He understood that what had made him cry was Giulia’s earlier discourse on happiness, although he wasn’t sure why. Maybe because this happiness had been paid for in advance and at such great cost; maybe because he realized that he would never be happy, at least in the simple and affectionate way Giulia had described. With an effort, he finally stifled his desire to weep and, without letting Giulia see it, dried his eyes with the back of his hand.

In the meantime Giulia was hugging him ever more tightly, gluing her body seductively to his, trying to guide his inert and distracted hands to hold and caress her. Then he felt her raise her face to his and start to kiss him hard, all over his cheeks, on his mouth, on his forehead, on his chin, with frenetic and infantile greed. At last she whispered, almost wailing, “Why don’t you come into me … take me,” and in her imploring voice he seemed to hear some reproach for having thought more of his own happiness than of hers. Then, as he was embracing her and sweetly and smoothly penetrating her; as beneath him, her eyes closed and her head on the pillow, she was beginning to raise and lower her hips in a regular, passive, and obscurely reflexive movement, like the motion of a wave in the sea that swells and flattens according to the ebb and flow, there was a resounding knock at the door.

“Express!”

“What can that be,” she murmured, panting, half-opening her eyes,” don’t move. What do you care?”

Marcello turned and glimpsed — down on the floor, in the faint light by the door — a letter being pushed through the crack. At the same moment, Giulia fell back and stiffened beneath him, throwing back her head, sighing deeply, and digging her nails into his arms. She tossed her head back and forth on the pillow, and murmured, “Kill me.”

For no reason Marcello suddenly remembered Lino’s cry, “Kill me like a dog,” and felt a terrible anxiety invade his spirit. He waited a long moment for Giulia’s hands to fall back on the bed; then he switched on the lamp, put his feet on the floor, went to pick up the letter, and returned to stretch out beside his wife. Giulia had turned her back to him now and was curled up on herself with her eyes shut. Marcello looked at the letter before putting it on the edge of the bed, near her open, still panting lips. On the envelope was written: “Madame Giulia Clerici,” in a clearly feminine hand.

“A letter from Signora Quadri,” he said.

Giulia murmured, without opening her eyes, “Give it to me.”

A long silence followed. The letter, placed at the level of Giulia’s
mouth, was plainly illuminated by the lamp; Giulia, motionless and collapsed, seemed to be asleep. Then she sighed, opened her eyes, and, holding the letter by its corner in one hand, tore the envelope open with her teeth, pulled out the paper, and read.

Marcello saw her smile; then she murmured, “They say that in love, they win who flee.… Since I treated her badly yesterday evening, she’s informing me that she changed her mind and left this morning with her husband. She hopes that I’ll join her.… Have a good trip.”

“She left?”

“Yes, she left this morning at seven o’clock with her husband to go to Savoy. And you know why she left? Do you remember last night when I danced with her the second time? I asked
her
to dance, and she was happy since she hoped that I was finally going to give in to her. Well, instead I told her very frankly that she must absolutely leave me alone, and that if she kept it up I’d stop seeing her altogether and that I only loved you and would she leave me in peace and wasn’t she ashamed of herself.… Well, I gave her such a talking- to that she almost cried. So today she left. You understand how calculated it was … I’m leaving so that you can run after me.… She’ll wait a while.”

“Yes, she’ll wait a while,” repeated Marcello.

“But, I’m glad she’s gone,” continued Giulia. “She was so insistent and annoying. As far as running after her, let’s not even talk about it. I don’t ever want to see that woman again.”

“You’ll never see her again,” said Marcello.

T
HE ROOM MARCELLO
worked in at the ministry looked out on a secondary courtyard. It was very small, asymmetrical in shape, and contained only a desk and a couple of bookshelves. It was located at the bottom of a dead-end hallway far away from the rooms in the front; to get there Marcello climbed up a backstairs that came out behind the palazzo into a more or less deserted alleyway.

One morning, a week after his return from Paris, Marcello was sitting at his desk. Despite the intense heat, he had not taken off his suit jacket or unknotted his tie, as his colleagues generally did; it was his punctilious habit not to modify his street clothes in any way when he was in the office. Completely dressed, then, his neck squeezed into a high, tight, detachable collar, he began to examine the foreign and Italian newspapers before starting work. This morning, too, although six days had passed, he looked first for news of Quadri’s murder. He noticed that the articles and headlines about it were much reduced, undoubtedly a sign that
the investigation had not made much progress. A couple of left-wing French papers were going over the tale of the crime one more time, dwelling on their interpretations of some of its strangest or most significant details: Quadri knifed to death in the thick of the woods; his wife, instead, struck by three pistol bullets at the edge of the road and then dragged, already dead, to lie beside her husband; the car taken into the woods as well and hidden in the brush. This careful concealment of the car and the corpses among the trees, far from the road, had kept them from being discovered for two days. The left-wing newspapers were sure that that the married couple had been murdered by hired assassins come up from Italy for the express purpose of killing them. A few of the foreign right-wing papers ventured to print, somewhat hesitantly, the official explanation of the Italian newspapers: that they had been assassinated by anti-Fascist companions over dissensions regarding the conduct of the war in Spain.