The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (22 page)

She made a face, which looked scornful.

“I’m
engaged,
don’t you know?”

Straight afterwards, she broke into a hearty laugh: “Oh, no, cheer up ... can’t you see I’m joking? It’s not much of a ring. Look.”

She took it off, moving her elbows a lot, and handed it to me, and it was really not much of a ring: just a circle of gold with a small turquoise. Her grandmother Regina had given it to her years before-she explained-hidden inside an Easter egg.

When she got the ring back, she put it on again, and then took my hand.

“Come on now,” she whispered, “otherwise they’re quite likely” -and she laughed-“to be worried, up there.”

As we went up, she was still holding my hand (she stopped on the stairs, looked carefully at my lips in the light, and concluded the examination with a casual “That’s fine!”), and never stopped talking for a moment, very volubly.

Yes-she said-the thesis business had gone better than she’d dared to hope. When she sat for the oral exam for her degree, she’d kept going for a good hour, haranguing away for all she was worth. At the end of it they’d sent her outside, and she’d been able to listen comfortably to all the examiners said about her, through the stained glass door in the main hall. Most of them wanted her to get the highest marks, but one, the professor of German (a real dyed-in-the-wool Nazi !) wouldn’t hear of it. This charming fellow was quite definite. They couldn’t, he said, give her high marks without provoking the most serious scandal. Whatever were they thinking of!-he cried.-Why, the girl wasJewish, and what was more not even in the favoured category, and here they were actually considering giving her honours ! Shame on them ! She was lucky she’d been allowed to take her degree at all. . . . The chairman, though, whose subject was English, retorted sharply that work was work, and that intelligence and being well prepared (heavens alive !) had nothing to do with blood groups, etc. etc. But when it came to the point, the Nazi won, as you might have guessed. And all the satisfaction she had-apart from the English don’s apologies later, when he dashed down the stairs at Ca’ Foscari (poor soul: his chin was trembling, he had tears in his eyes) - all the satisfaction she had was to receive the verdict with the most impeccable of Roman salutes. The dean of the faculty, in the act of calling her doctor, raised his arm. So what could she do? Give a sulky little nod? Certainly not!

She laughed gaily, and I laughed too, excitedly, and told her about my expulsion from the city library, with a wealth of comic detail. But when I asked her why she had stayed on in Venice for another month after getting her degree-in Venice, I added, where she said she not only disliked the place but had no friends at all, male or female-at this point she grew serious, withdrew her hand from mine, and gave me a quick sidelong glance as her only answer.

A foretaste of the gay welcome we were to receive in the dining-room was given us by Perotti, who was waiting in the hall. As soon as he saw us come down the main staircase, followed by Yor, he gave us an extraordinarily delighted smile, with a kind of complicity about it. At any other time his behaviour would have shocked me, I would have felt insulted by it. But for the last few minutes I had been feeling in a quite special state of mind. Stifling every reason for uneasiness, I went ahead feeling strangely light, as if borne on invisible wings. Perotti was a good soul, when you got down to it, I thought. He too was pleased to have the “signorina” back at home. And what was wrong with that in the poor old fellow? From now on he’d obviously stop his grousing.

We appeared side by side at the dining-room door, and our arrival was greeted, as I say, with great excitement. All the faces round the table were lit up rosily, all eyes were on us affectionately, benevolently. But the room, too, as it appeared to me suddenly that evening, seemed more welcoming and warmer than usual, rosy as well in a way, with the polished light-wood furniture, that gleamed a tender reddish brown in the light of the long flames licking in the fireplace. I’d never seen the room lit like this. Apart from the glow from the fire, the big central light, shaped like the corolla of a flower turned upside down, poured out on to the table still covered in a rich dazzlingly white linen cloth (plates and cutlery had obviously been cleared away) a positive cataract of light.

“Come along in! Come in!”

“Nice to see you!”

“We were beginning to think you wouldn’t want the bother of coming.”

This last remark was Alberto’s, but I could feel that my coming really pleased him. They were all looking at me, in particular. Some, like professor Ermanno, had twisted round completely on their chairs; some were leaning forward, their chests on the edge of the table, or else were pushing away from it, stiff-armed; and some, like signora Olga, who was sitting at the head of the table, with the fire just behind her, were leaning forward, their eyes half shut. They watched me, examined me, stared at me from head to foot, and seemed pretty satisfied with me, with the figure I was cutting beside MicOl. Only Federico Herrera, the railway engineer, hesitated a moment before sharing in the general delight, no doubt because he couldn’t remember who I was. But only for a moment. Having found out about me from his brother Giulio (I saw them discussing it briefly, their two bald heads together behind their old mother), he was all friendliness too, not only smiling to show his large top incisors, but even raising his arm in a gesture that was not so much a greeting as a movement ofsolidarity, rallying, sporty.

Professor Ermanno insisted on my sitting down at his right. It was my usual place, he explained to Micol, who had sat down on his left opposite me; the one I usually took when I stayed to dinner. Giampiero Mal-nate, he went on, Alberto’s friend, sat over there (he indicated where), on Mummy’s right. And Micol sat listening with a curious air, half nettled and half sardonic; as if she disliked seeing that the fa^aly’s life while she was away had carried on in directions she hadn’t completely foreseen, and at the same time was quite pleased that things had gone just that way.

I sat down, and at once, astonished to find I had been mistaken, I realized the table wasn’t cleared at all. A large flat silver tray stood in the centre, and in the middle of the tray, with a small space round it and then surrounded by a halo of pieces of white paper, with a letter of the alphabet in red pencil on each one, was a single glass of champagne.

“What’s that?” I asked Alberto.

“Oh, that’s the big surprise I told you about!” exclaimed Alberto. “It’s simply fabulous; what happens is that three or four people in a ring put their fingers on the edge of this glass and it goes from one letter to another, answering.”

“Answering?”

“Certainly! It
ivrites
the answers, very very slowly. And proper answers, you know, youjust can’t imagine what sensible ones!”

It was a long time since I had seen Alberto so euphoric, so excited.

“And where does it come from,” I asked, “this brand new marvel?”

“It’s only a game,” said professor Ermanno, laying a hand on my arm and shaking his head. “Something Micol brought from Venice.”

“Ah, so it’s your doing!” I said, turning to Micol. “And does this glass of yours read the future, too?”

“Why of course!” she exclaimed, with a mischievous wink. “In fact, that’s just its strong point, I’d say.”

At that moment Dirce came in, a round dark wooden tray loaded with paschal sweets, balanced high on one hand. Dirce’s cheeks were rosy, too, glowing with health and good humour. As the guest, and the latest arrival, I was served first. The sweets, called 
zucarin,
made of sweet pastry mixed with raisins, were more or less the same as those I had tasted so reluctantly a little earlier at home. But these at the Finzi-Continis’ at once seemed to me much better, quite remarkably delicious; and I said so too, turning to signora Olga, who, busy choosing a
zucarin
from the plate Dirce held out to her, seemed not to notice my compliment.

Then Perotti came in, his big peasant hands clutching the edge of a second tray (of pewter, this one) with a flask of white wine on it and glasses for everyone. And then, as we sat quietly round the table, slowly sipping Albana and nibbling
zucarin
, Alberto told me, in particular, about the “divining powers” of the glass that stood there in the middle of the table, as silent as any plain honest “verre”* in the world, but which, until a little time ago, had been quite exceptionally, quite astoundingly chatty when they had put questions to it.

I asked what sort of questions.

“Oh, a bit of everything,” Alberto said.

They had asked, for instance-he went on-whether he, Alberto, would some day manage to get his degree in engineering ; and the glass had retorted at once with the dryest of “noes”. Then Micol wanted to know if she’d get married, and when; and to that the glass was much less definite, in fact it was pretty confused, and answered like a proper classic oracle, so that you could interpret it in absolutely opposite ways. They’d even asked it about the tennis court, poor wretched glass!; trying to find out if Papa would stop his everlasting game of putting off the work that needed doing from year to year. And on this point the oracle, patient soul, had gone back to being nice and explicit, and had assured them that the improvements they longed for would be made just as soon as possible during that same year.

* In French in the original.

But it was on the question of politics, above all, that the glass had done marvels. Soon, in a few months-it had said-war would break out: a war that would be long, bloody, and painful to
everyone,
that would overturn the entire world, but which would end, after years of uncertain fighting, with the complete victory for the powers of good. “The powers of good?” MicOl, who had always been famous for putting her foot in it, asked at this point: “And which, pray, might the powers of good be?” At which the glass, dumbfounding everyone, replied with a single word: “Stalin.”

“Can you imagine,” exclaimed Alberto, while everyone roared with laughter, “can you imagine how thrilled old Giampi’d be if he were here? I must write and tell him.”

“Isn’t he in Ferrara?”

“No, he left yesterday. He’s gone home for Easter.”

Alberto went on rather long-windedly about what the glass had said, after which we took up the game again. I too was urged to put my first finger on the rim of the glass, I too asked questions and waited for replies. But now, heaven knows why, the oracle said nothing that made sense. Alberto hammered away, tougher and more obstinate than ever. No good.

In any case, I wasn’t really too keen on it. I wasn’t so much paying attention to him and the game with the glass as looking round the room, and outside, through the big round window that gave on to the park, and at Micol, above all, who sat opposite me at the table: Micol who, from time to time, feeling my eyes on her, stopped frowning, as she did when she played tennis, to give me a quick, thoughtful, reassuring smile.

I gazed at her lips, faintly coloured with lipstick.

Yes, I had actually kissed them myself, a short while ago. But hadn’t it already been too late? Why hadn’t I done so six months before when everthing was still possible, or at least during the winter? The time we’d wasted: I here in Ferrara, and she in Venice! I could perfectly well have taken the train one Sunday and gone to see her. There was an express that left Ferrara at eight in the morning and got to Venice at half-past ten. As soon as I arrived at the station I could have rung her up and suggested she take me to the Lido (that way, among other things-I’d say-I’d at last visit the famous Jewish cemetery of San Niccolo). Later we could have lunch together, still somewhere around there, and afterwards, having rung up her uncles’ house to keep Fraulein quiet (oh, Micol’s face as she telephoned, the funny faces she’d pull!), we could go for a long walk along the empty beach. There had been all the time in the world for this as well. Then, when it came to leaving, I’d have had a choice of two trains, one at five and one at seven, on either of which I could have got home without the family noticing a thing. Yes, that was it: if I’d done it then, when I ought to have, it would have been perfectly easy. Nothing to it. Whereas now it was late, it was terribly late.

What was the time? Half-past one, or even two. I’d soon have to leave and probably Micol would come downstairs with me, to the garden door.

Perhaps this was what she was thinking of, too; this was what was worrying her. Through room after room, passage after passage, we’d walk along side by side, not daring to look at each other or to exchange a word. We were both scared of the same thing, I could feel it: my leave-taking, the ever closer and less imaginable moment when we’d say good night, kiss good night. And yet, if by any chance Micol didn’t come with me, and left it to Alberto or (as indeed happened soon afterwards) actually to Perotti, how could I face the rest of the night, in what sort of state? And the next day?

But maybe not-1 was already dreaming again, stubbornly, desperately-maybe there was no point, no need, to get up from the table. That night, in any case, would never end.