The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (25 page)

I went in as she was putting down the receiver, and again, not without surprise, I realized she had nothing against me.

She leant out of bed to pour out a cup of tea.

“Now please sit down,” she said, “and have a drink.”

In silence I obeyed. I drank in slow, unflustered sips, without looking up. Lying on the parquet floor behind me, Yor was asleep. His heavy, drunk tramp’s snorting filled the room.

I put down the cup.

It was Micol who started to talk. Without mentioning what had happened a while ago, she began by saying that for a long time, perhaps much longer than I imagined, she’d been meaning to talk to me frankly about the situation that had gradually grown up between us. Did I remember that time last October, she went on, when we’d sheltered from the rain in the coach-house, and sat in the carriage? Well, from then on she’d realized our relationship had taken a wrong turning, she’d realized right away that something false and mistaken and very dangerous had come between us, and it was mostly her fault, she was quite ready to admit, that things had gone from bad to worse ever since. What should she have done? Perfectly simple: she should have taken me aside and talked to me openly then, without any further delay. Whereas, like a real old coward, she’d done just what she shouldn’t have and escaped. Oh, yes, it was easy to cut free: but where does it get you, especially in “delicate situations”? Ninety-nine per cent of the time the embers go on glowing away under the ashes: with the fine result that afterwards, when you meet again, talking quietly together like good friends has become fearfully difficult, in fact practically impossible.

I understood too-l broke in at this point-and was very grateful to her after all, for her sincerity.

But there was something I wished she’d explain. She’d run off quite suddenly, without even saying good-bye, and then, as soon as she got to Venice, she’d got only one idea in her head: to make sure I didn’t stop seeing Alberto. “Why?” I asked. “If, as you say, you really wanted me to forget you (forgive the way I’m putting it, don’t burst out laughing!) then couldn’t you have dropped me altogether? It was hard: but it wasn’t impossible that, if you didn’t poke them at all, all the embers might have gradually gone out altogether, left on their own.”

She looked at me without hiding her surprise: astonished perhaps that I was tough enough to counterattack, however feebly.

I’d got something, she agreed, shaking her head thoughtfully : yes, I’d really got something there. But she begged me to believe her, all the same. When she’d done what she did, she hadn’t meant to go looking for trouble in the least. She wanted my friendship, that was all, rather too possessively, even; and then, quite seriously, she was really worried about Alberto, who had absolutely nobody left to talk to except Giampiero Malnate. Poor Alberto !-she sighed.-Hadn’t I realized, being with him in these past months, how much he 
needed
company? I must agree that for a man like him, who was now used to spending the winter in Milan, with theatres, cinemas and all the rest ofit to hand, the prospect of staying in Ferrara, shut up in the house for months on end and with pretty well nothing to do either, wasn’t exactly very gay. Poor Alberto !-she repeated. Compared with him she was very much tougher, very much more
autonomous:
able to put up with the most frightful loneliness, if she had to. And besides, she thought she’d already told me: as far as gloominess went, Venice in winter was probably even worse than Ferrara, and her uncles’ house was no less sad and “cut off” than this.

“This house isn’t sad in the least,” I said, suddenly stirred.

“D’you like it?” she asked, livening up. “Then I’ll confess something: but you mustn’t scold me, you mustn’t accuse me of hypocrisy, now, or even of double-dealing! ... I terribly much wanted you to see it.

“But why?”

“I don’t know why. I honestly couldn’t tell you why. I suppose the same way I’d have so liked to pull you in under Papa’s
taled,
when we were children in the synagogue . . . . Oh, if only I could have done it! I can still see you there, under your father’s
taled,
in the seat in front of ours. I felt so sorry for you ! It’s absurd, I know: but when I looked at you, I felt just as sorry as if you’d been an orphan, without father and mother.”

Having said this, she was silent for a few minutes, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then, leaning her elbow on the pillow, she started talking to me again: but serious, now, grave.

She said she was sorry to hurt me, terribly sorry, but on the other hand she really must persuade me: wejust mustn’t spoil the happy memories of childhood we had in common, the way we were doing. To think of the pair of us making love! Did it really seem possible to me?

I asked why it seemed so impossible to her.

For any number of reasons-she replied, the first of them being that the thought of making love with me was just as embarrassing as the thought of doing it with a brother, oh, with Alberto, say. It was true: as a child she’d had just a little bit of a
thing
about me: and maybe, who could tell, it was this very thing that now stood between us. I ... I was
beside
her, did I see?, not in
Jront
of her: whereas love-at least so she imagined -love was for people who’d made up their minds to dominate, turn and turn about: a cruel, ferocious game, much crueller and more ferocious than tennis, played with no holds barred, where goodness of heart and honesty of purpose just never came into it, to alleviate things.

Maudit soit a jamais le reveur inutile qui voulut le premier, dans sa stupidite, s’eprenant d’un probleme insoluble et sterile, aux choses de 1’amour meler 1’honnetete

we had been warned by Baudelaire, and he knew what he was talking about. And what about us? Both stupidly honest, as alike as two peas in everything and for everything (“and people who’re alike don’t fight, believe me!”), could we ever manage to dominate each other? Did we seriously want to rend one another? No, it wasn’t possible. According to her, seeing the way the good Lord had made us, the whole business wasn’t either desirable or possible.

But even supposing, quite hypothetically, we were unlike what we were, in fact that there was the faintest possibility of a cruel ferocious relationship between us, how on earth should we behave?
Get engaged,
say, with rings exchanged, and parents calling on each other, and so on and so forth? What an edifying idea! If he were still alive and told about it, she’d be ready to bet Zangwill himself would draw a juicy little codicil from it to add to his
Dreamers of the Ghetto.
And how delighted, how devoutly delighted everyone would be when we appeared together at the Italian synagogue next Kippur; a bit scraggy with fasting, but handsome in spite of it, and a perfectly marvellous match! There’d even be people who’d bless the racial laws when they saw us, and say there was only one thing to say in the face of such a wonderful union: it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Maybe even the Federal Secretary in viale Cavour might be moved by it: wasn’t he really a secret Jew-lover, dear old consul Bolognesi? And she gave a sickened snort.

I kept silence, dejectedly. Micol took advantage of this to pick up the receiver and ask the kitchen to bring up her supper, but in about half an hour, not before, as-she said again-she wasn’t the least bit hungry that evening. It was only the following day, when I thought it all over, that I remembered I had heard her talking on the telephone while I was in the bathroom. So I was wrong-I said to myself next day. She might have been talking to someone else in the house (or outside), but
not
to the kitchen.

But now I was deep in other thoughts. When Micol had put down the receiver I looked up.

“You said we were exactly alike,” I said. “In what way?

Yes, yes, we were, she exclaimed: in the sense that I, like her, hadn’t the instinctive taste for things that
normal
people had. She could see it perfectly well: for me, no less than for her, the memory of things was much more important than the possession of them, and in comparison with that memory all possession, in itself, seemed just disappointing, delusive, flat, insufficient.

How well she understood me! The way I longed for the present to become the past
at once,
so that I could love it and gaze fondly at it any time; it wasjust exactly the way she felt. It was
our
vice, this: looking backwards as we went ahead. Wasn’t that so?

Yes, it was-I had to admit to myself-it really was so. Only an hour before I had taken her in my arms. And already, as always happened, everything had become unreal and fabulous again: it had become something I couldn’t believe in, or of which I must be afraid.

“You never can tell,” I replied. “It may be much simpler. Maybe you find me physically unattractive, and that’s all there is to it.”

“What rubbish,” she protested. “That’s got nothing to do with it!”

“Oh, hasn’t itjust!”

“
You are fishing for compliments,*
and you know it perfectly well. But I’m not going to give you the satisfaction: you don’t deserve it, and then, suppose I did try and tell you all the nice things I’ve ever thought about those famous old glaucous eyes of yours (and not only about your eyes, at that), what would be the result? You’d be the first to think me a beastly hypocrite. You’d think: look at her: after the stick the carrot, a sop to his . . .”

“Unless ...”

“Unless what?”

I hesitated, then at last took the plunge.

“Unless,” I said, “there’s somebody else.”

She shook her head, staring at me.

“There’s not the faintest anybody else,” she replied. “Who might there be?”

I believed her. But I was desperate, and wanted to hurt her.

“Are you asking me?” I said, pouting. “Anything might happen. Who’s to say whether you met anyone this winter in Venice?”

She burst out laughing: a gay, fresh, crystalline laugh.

“What an idea,” she exclaimed. “Why, I was slaving over my thesis the whole time!”

“You’re not going to tell me that in all these five years at the university you’ve never made love with anyone! Come along, now: there must have been somebody after you, while you were there!”

I was sure she’d deny it. But I was wrong.

“Well, I have had some boy friends,” she admitted.

It was as if a hand had suddenly gripped my stomach and was twisting it.

“Lots?” I managed to ask.

Lying flat as she was, her eyes staring at the ceiling, she raised an arm slightly.

“Well now ... I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Let me think.”

“So there’ve been such a lot?”

She glanced at me sidelong, with a sly, definitely bitchy expression, that I didn’t know and that terrified me.

“Well . . . let’s say three or four. In fact five, to be precise. . . . Butjust
little flirts,
ofcourse, and perfectly harmless . . . and even rather dreary.’’

‘“Flirts,
how d’you mean?”

“Oh, you know . . . long walks along the Lido . . . two or three Torcellos* * 
Trips to Torcello, an island in the Venetian lagoon.
. . the odd kiss . . . lots of hand-holding . . . and
lots
of films. Orgies of films.”

“All of them students?”

“More or less.”

“Catholics, I suppose.”

“Of course. But not on principle. You’ve got to make do with what there is, you see.”

“Never with . . .”

“No. Never with
judim,
I must say. Not that there weren’t any. But they were so solemn and ugly!”

She turned to look at me again, and smiled:

“But this winter there was nothing, I swear. All I did was work and smoke, so hard that signorina Blumen-feld actually urged me to go out.”

From under the pillow she pulled out a packet of Lucky Strike, unopened.

“D’you want one? I’ve started with the tough stuff, as you see.”

In silence I pointed to the pipe tucked into myjacket pocket.

“You as well!” she laughed, extraordinarily amused. “Why, that old Giampi of yours really has his followers !”

“And you were complaining you had no friends in Venice !” I said. “What lies. You’re just like all the others, that’s what you are.”

She shook her head, whether pitying me or herself, I couldn’t tell.

“Not even
flirts,
however small they are, can be mixed up with friendship,” she said sadly; “and so, when I spoke to you about friendships, you must realize I was oily half lying to you. But you’re right. I
am
like other girls :-liar, traitress,
unfaithful
. ... Not really any different from Adriana Trentini, when you get down to it.”

When she said “unfaithful” she separated the syllables, with a kind of bitter pride. Then she went on to say that if I’d been wrong it was rating her rather too high. Not that she was trying to justify herself in the least-heavens, no ! But it was a fact: she’d always seen such “idealism” in my eyes that she felt somehow forced to seem better than she actually was.

There wasn’t much more to say. A little later, when Gina came in with her supper (it was now past nine), I got up.

“Well, I must go now,” I said, holding out my hand.

“You know the way down, don’t you? Or would you rather Gina took you?”

“No, it’s quite all right. I can manage perfectly well on my own.”

“Do take the lift, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

At the door I turned. She already had the spoon at her lips.

I said: “
Ciao
.”

“
Ciao
,” she smiled. “I’ll ring you up tomorrow.”