A Life (13 page)

Alfonso described his work on morals. As he spoke of it, he felt he had written it all, and following an opposite system to Annetta’s began describing what he had not done. He mentioned the kernel of his work, the negation of morality as everyone understood it, founded on religious law or individual good.

“If in a society founded on our moral ideas,” said Alfonso, “there happened to be a person with enough energy to put
himself
above all these, he would be better off than anyone else, as he would of course have the superlative intelligence needed to act astutely and ably in the abnormal circumstances in which he would soon find himself.”

Annetta looked at him, surprised at the ardour with which such an axiom was described by a voice which till a short time ago she had heard only in a timid and broken stutter. Then, less wordily
and less energetically, he also spoke of a new foundation he wanted to give morality. The explanation of the first part of his work had made a striking impression, and he could not hope to obtain an equal effect with this other part, which dealt not with destroying, but with creating laws, a very different and boring matter.

Such was Alfonso’s delight at finding himself linked in some way to Annetta that he thought of hurrying home and jotting down the whole subject of the novel, even arranging the chapters. How surprised he was to have become Annetta’s collaborator all of a sudden, and when he thought of the feelings for him which he had attributed to her the preceding week, it all seemed quite incredible. If he had run across Macario just then, he would have flung his arms round his neck to thank him for the great happiness which he owed him, and with the expansiveness due to happiness would have told him of Annetta’s suggestion and of the value he attached to it.

But a part of his enthusiasm was cooled that same evening. He set the plot out as succinctly as possible: “An impoverished young noble comes to seek his fortune in the city … persecuted by his boss and his companions … loved by them because an intelligent action by him saves the company from serious loss … marries the boss’s daughter.” The plot was not very original in itself, but what he disliked most about it was the end, which had not actually been suggested by Annetta though it naturally derived from the
principles
she had set out. To Annetta that marriage might seem like a proposal and alarm her, make her suspect him of aims similar to their hero’s. He also realized, when he had pen in hand, that he did not know what Annetta really wanted. They had both been content with half-hints: he because, in his happiness, he had not remembered the insignificant matter of the plot; Annetta perhaps because she was such a novice that she did not realize all that was needed to write a novel.

He turned to Macario and asked him to tell Annetta his doubts. Macario had free access to the Maller home and could talk to her before Wednesday.

But Macario seemed to have little wish to do this. He did not hide his surprise at hearing that they intended to write a novel in collaboration. Alfonso was now subdued, realizing it was not
dignified to show too much joy and thinking that he had even
succeeded
in seeming very cold. But Macario looked at him with a nasty ironic little smile and said: “Congratulations!”

Alfonso accompanied Macario to his office. Macario seemed very distracted, and when Alfonso told him with a serious air that he felt honoured by Annetta’s suggestion and wanted to return her trust by working hard and carefully, Macario covered his mouth with a hand as if to hide a yawn. Alfonso was a good enough observer not to believe in that yawn; under the hand he had seen a mouth open but inert, not contracted by any instinctive movement. Macario was jealous! Both the distraction as well as the yawn were affected, intending to hide anger or pain.

Alfonso went on talking with the same warmth, because
whenever
he noticed that somebody was trying to conceal something from him, his first instinct was to pretend he had not noticed it.

“Do please tell Signorina Annetta that I’m ready to begin at once, but need to know a little more about what I’m to do.”

“All right,” said Macario, who seemed to Alfonso a little paler than usual, “when I happen to see her, I’ll tell her.”

He regretted speaking to Macario and was sure he could no longer count on the other’s friendship. Perhaps Macario did not love Annetta, that Alfonso could not know, but was jealous of him only because he had a jealous nature. Alfonso had not understood this nature before because it was the first time Macario could have had any reason for jealousy. Macario’s own cleverness and social position must always have made him feel superior, and it was probably just because he enjoyed feeling that superiority and making it felt that he had sought out Alfonso’s company. Probably Macario had taken him to the Mallers supposing him too timid ever to gain Annetta’s friendship.

So he had confided in an enemy whom he had already given a chance to harm him, because it was likely that Annetta did not want their plan to be known. However much Alfonso wanted to appear cold, he must have shown his joy, and Macario was capable of describing it to Annetta with exaggeration. He saw him repeating some phrase of his, raising that hand which was sometimes more malicious than his tongue, and he imagined that would be enough to lose him Annetta’s friendship, won with so
much effort. He recalled the treatment of that clerk who had dared to pay court to Annetta.

That week had been disagreeable because the fear of being reproached with tactlessness took away the joy of Annetta’s sudden friendship. He waited in vain from day to day for some
communication
from Macario in reply to the request which he had made. The man did not even bother to hide his ill-will and seemed to be avoiding him, because Alfonso did not manage to set eyes on him for the whole week.

He went to Annetta’s anxious to learn how Macario had behaved; he would know from the way she greeted him.

The whole company was gathered in the living-room. Fumigi, Spalati, Prarchi, and Macario; even Maller stayed for half-an-hour. Macario greeted Alfonso with a smile that was not malicious, and Annetta shook his hand warmly. Annetta’s friendship had not diminished since the Wednesday before. Alfonso suddenly felt other ideas open out, but could not even enjoy sloughing off his worries because he was disturbed by Maller’s presence, in spite of the latter’s friendly handshake.

Francesca was sitting apart on the sofa, holding some
embroidery
. Alfonso greeted her and went up to her, and she rose to her feet to give more warmth to her words which were as always rather dry and brusque. Signorina Francesca was never embarrassed. He had heard her talk in friendly, happy or annoyed tones, but always briefly and decisively like someone not to be imposed on. Maller was sitting on Annetta’s right, Spalati on her left. The latter always sat next to Annetta and seemed to set great store by it.

Alfonso, although more disturbed by Maller’s presence than were the others, noticed how their behaviour changed because of it.

At that period, whenever literature was mentioned, there was always a discussion about realism and romanticism; this was a cosy literary argument in which all of them could play a part.

Maller was a partisan of ‘realism’, but, as he always wanted to seem more witty than learned, he confessed that he liked the realists all the more because they were not moralists. He also pretended to despise them because he considered their methods made it easy for them to achieve popularity.

Spalati, whose ideas as far as Alfonso knew were not likely to conform to Maller’s, immediately found a point of view from which he could agree.

“Yes, you who read only for pleasure are right to enjoy them.” Prarchi tried to go too far. He wanted to prove to Maller, who denied it, that the pleasure he found in reading those immoral authors derived from an unconscious artistic sense.

“You think you love them for the reason you say, but without your realizing it, surely it’s the books’ artistic merits that you enjoy?”

“Maybe,” said Maller, who did not seem to perceive that these two literary men were doing their best to flatter him. “I don’t understand, though, why some pages please me more than others. They’re the most artistic, perhaps.”

If he had perceived they were trying to flatter him, he was
deriding
the flatterers. When Maller began making his literary
confessions
, Annetta said to Alfonso in a loud voice: “Just listen carefully and you’ll hear some nonsense.”

Alfonso was so flustered by this phrase, which came as an
unexpected
gift to him in that general discussion, that he actually
listened
less.

Very soon Maller got up and bowed goodbye to everyone. He moved towards Francesca, followed by an attentive look from Alfonso. Francesca did not seem to notice his approach but, when he was near, raised her eyes from her work without pretending to affect surprise, looked at him calmly and held out a little hand which he, as calmly, took in his.

“Why do you ruin your eyesight by such work?”

She withdrew her hand, which he still wanted to hold: “It does me no harm.”

As Maller passed once more before the table on his way out, the men rose to their feet in farewell. The one person who had neither tried to rise nor changed her bearing at his departure was Annetta.

Only when saying goodbye did Annetta ask Alfonso in a whisper how far he had got with the novel.

“I’ve not been able to do anything because the trouble is I don’t yet know what to do.”

After reflecting for an instant, Annetta said in a low voice: “Come tomorrow at seven, will you?”

“Of course!” and he felt his heart leap.

In such low voices are lovers’ appointments made.

A
LFONSO WAS MET
by Santo on the stairs. “I was waiting for you,” the man said, smiling at him in a most friendly way.

He treated Alfonso respectfully, letting him pass through doors first and bowing deeply after opening the library door for him. At the bank also he took every opportunity to show deference.

In the library were Annetta and Francesca, the latter at her eternal embroidery, the former writing.

“I was doing the first draft,” Annetta said to him. “Come on, help me because I can’t do it alone.”

She put some paper in front of him, elegant little pieces of
writing
-paper, and a pen.

“The space is a bit awkward for you, but there’s room enough when two people want to work as much as we do.”

The table was too low and there was no room on it because she had not bothered to clear some newspapers. Francesca remedied Annetta’s forgetfulness.

“I see that without my help you’ll never get down to work.”

She took the bundle of newspapers and threw them in a corner.

The relations between the two women seemed improved. Francesca no longer looked so ill, though she was still pale; but her lips were less white, and Annetta was not avoiding speaking to her.

“Take care not to try and put your ideas into the novel too, as a novel might conceivably be written by two people, but not by three.”

Annetta and Francesca had an urge to address each other often, like two people reminding themselves all the time that they were no longer on bad terms.

“A preliminary word or two,” said Annetta to Alfonso with some gravity. “I’d like to explain the method which I consider should be followed in our work so as to avoid obvious signs of two minds or intentions. Of course we must first see that our two intentions
differ
as little as possible. That will be the most difficult thing, but with a few concessions on both sides I think we can achieve it. As to our method, we’ll just have to divide the work.”

With a nervous hand she traced some circles on the paper in front of her to make her idea of this division clear. But she had some hesitation, so she asserted, in explaining how the division should actually work in practice, since she feared he might find her allotting him too inferior a part.

“Don’t hesitate to tell me,” said Alfonso with a smile and a blush, “I want to do my part, but nothing can make me forget what an honour it is to collaborate with you.”

The compliment was not badly put. Annetta thanked him.

“Well, you have good ideas, that we know, so we’ll allot you the part of suggesting and developing them. As I happen to move round town more, I’ll do the dialogue and descriptions. You live among books the whole time.”

This observation was to console him for having suggested that he never moved around town. Alfonso, much flattered, accepted the suggestion. Every chapter would be drafted by him first and then be re-done by Annetta.

“I hope I’ll at least be able to recognize your good ideas and leave them intact.” She could not have been more modest. “Well, that’s all settled!” and she gave a sigh of satisfaction as if, with that settled, part of the novel was already finished.

“Now let’s go on to settle the plot.”

Here too some principles were needed. They must remember, warned Annetta, that they wanted a success. They would be
publishing
under a pseudonym, but there would be little pleasure in such a publication unless it was successful. They were not out for future glory or thinking at all of posterity. But they did want an immediate success.

“I know the way to get it. It’s not so difficult, you know! For some years I’ve been noticing what succeeds best with theatre-goers or readers, and I always find the same recipe of taming a shrew. It doesn’t matter much if the shrew is male or female, but he or she must be tamed by the force of love.”

Alfonso too admitted that he had sometimes found his
interest
aroused by such productions, though never enough to lessen his contempt for book and author. But this was not the moment to emphasize this contempt. Annetta had never attracted him so much. Bent over her writing, her smooth brown hair simply
dressed, pen in delicate hand, he saw her for the first time wholly oblivious to her beauty, not bothering whether she was pleased or not, with pursed lips and frowning brow, her noble head nobly poised. Alfonso agreed to everything. At top speed she jotted down the contents of the first ten chapters, then in a few words a
general
idea of the rest. He had not noticed one original attitude or concept, but the slightest doubt would have seemed an offence to Annetta’s first flight of enthusiasm. Anyway, it seemed premature to give opinions; the plot could improve in execution.

When alone with the work he had taken on, he had a stronger sense than ever of its vulgarity. The shrew this time was feminine. Annetta had sketched out a plot about a young lady of rank who was jilted by a duke and, on the rebound, agreed to marry a rich industrialist. She did not love him and treated him with contempt. The industrialist, who was an excellent man, with muscles as strong as his character was gentle, eventually triumphed over his wife’s aversion and the two of them lived happily together for many a long year. Annetta’s skeleton plot was marked with ‘scenes’ at what she thought effective points, which made it all the more like the plot for a comedy, a very everyday comedy.

But the first chapter, though it plunged right into the subject, because Annetta said that long openings bored the public, was so vaguely sketched that from it Alfonso could make up a chapter to his own taste.

‘
Clara, a young countess, learns that the duke is marrying a shopkeeper’s daughter; her despair.’
The precedents of this situation needed
describing
, and this became something in which Alfonso could have a free hand. In a few words he described the state of mind of the girl’s mother on receiving the announcement of the duke’s marriage; she tells her daughter, not knowing the storm this news would arouse in the heart of the poor girl, who takes the blow with dignity and only gives vent to her feelings when alone again in her room. There she not only gives vent to them but muses sorrowfully over the past, her early childhood with the duke, who was a cousin, a wild lad who had often hit her yet was very lovable. Down went what Alfonso thought a successful description, sweet as an idyll. Various touches showed that the author was someone with grave worries who had been unable to give all his attention to the account and so let his
pen run on, putting it back on its path every now and again and not bothering much if it soon wandered again. He knew that the whole novel could not go like that, but anyway the chapter was done.

He handed it over to Annetta on the next Wednesday, when Annetta told the whole company about the work she and Alfonso had embarked upon. She then explained to Spalati and Prarchi why she had not chosen them instead of Alfonso. She said that she had not chosen the first because people are shy of working with their own teachers; Prarchi on the other hand she had excluded because he was too determinedly ‘realist’. Prarchi asserted that he was less of a ‘realist’ than he had said himself, and would sacrifice any exaggerated opinions for this chance. He spoke seriously, as if still in time to persuade Annetta to go back on her resolution. Then he began to laugh.

“For this chance I’d have collaborated on a really romantic romance.”

Alfonso took this quip as a warning to himself.

Fumigi walked with Alfonso for part of the way home, asked shyly about their method of work and seemed very interested in the novel’s plot, but when, with an affectation of indifference and looking elsewhere, he asked how many times they met a week, Alfonso felt the same surprise as he had at Macario’s yawn.

“Are they all in love with Annetta, then?”

He went to visit Annetta next evening as they had agreed. He found her writing in the library. On seeing him she gave a movement of pleased impatience, then pushed aside the
manuscript
and started to talk of other things, of the wonderfully mild weather for that time of year. Alfonso, who knew no motive for hesitation, asked her how she had liked his chapter, with a smile asking for clemency. It was rather unpromising that she had not mentioned the subject first.

“I don’t like it!” Annetta said to him, giving him a friendly look to attenuate the crude phrase: “It’s very fine, of course, I recognize its merits, but it’s dull.”

She told him that she had begun correcting it but had not
succeeded
, and that he would definitely have to re-write it, because she had to confess that even now she did not know just what was lacking in that chapter.

“It’s all of a piece!”

At this critic’s expression she became enthusiastic because she knew that things ‘all of a piece’ are praiseworthy; and Alfonso’s heart beat lighter.

“But it’s dull, very dull. Who d’you expect to read with any pleasure such a string of thoughts with no interruption or
ornamentation
? And then you do too little narrating; you’re always describing, even when you think you’re narrating. After an
opening
like that, how are we to go on? There are a thousand words of description to one of narrative. The other way round would have been better. It’s more important to lay down the main theme, Clara’s first reactions on her marriage to that industrialist and his longstanding love for her, rather than describe some
drawing-room
which the reader is never going to see again, and give all those details about Clara’s childhood.”

She read her own version aloud to him. A few of Alfonso’s words and phrases were kept, obviously from kindness, but they were so unimportant that he could not feel grateful; the very parts that meant most to him had been treated most summarily.

On finishing her reading Annetta looked at him expecting enthusiastic approval; but Alfonso with a great effort just managed to mutter some words of praise which were still too cold. He made things worse because he was unable to hide his disappointment at having worked so hard and uselessly—finding no immediate way of expressing disappointment without offending Annetta, when he thought he had found such a way, he used it without stopping to consider its outcome. Without speaking of his own work he said that Annetta’s would be more popular, but went on to criticize her theories. It was quite true, he said, that they would have a success by using those theories but denied that it was worthwhile
sacrificing
every higher artistic aim for a hunger for ephemeral success.

“Excuse me!” interrupted Francesca, who had been silent till then and had not seemed to follow the conversation, “By the look on your face I’d have said you enjoyed Annetta’s work. So it
cannot
be as unartistic as you say.”

Alfonso thought that Francesca accompanied her phrase with a glance which might have been an invitation for him to agree, and this was such a surprise that for a time he could not take his eyes
off her. Had Francesca also collaborated on that chapter she was defending? Now it was obvious that he had to admire it, and he adapted himself with the best grace he could. He said that he had liked the chapter but was only against the theory.

Actually the chapter had seemed to him ugly, bare and
declamatory
, and he was humiliated to have to make that explicit
declaration
by which he abdicated the right of giving his own opinion. He was amazed to see that Annetta had no doubts about the sincerity of his declaration. Then it was settled, she said, that this chapter was to stay just as she had rewritten it, and they would agree about the other chapters in the same way.

In fact about the second and third chapters they did agree in the same way but more easily. Alfonso wrote them out trying to imitate Annetta, and Annetta rewrote them without bothering much about the first version.

This situation had an agreeable side for Alfonso. Having won her superiority and made it manifest, having probably noticed how much it cost Alfonso to submit, Annetta tried to make up for this by showing him more friendship, at times even a
protectiveness
, a kind of maternal affection. She derided him for his weakness, described him as a little bear who lacked tact and who did not know how to pay a compliment; one evening she said to the Wednesday group in his presence that there may be greater philosophers than Alfonso, but none who had taken philosophy so seriously or lived in such conformity with its dictates. She gave him, but only when they were alone together, the nickname of ‘frog’. A ‘frog’ when he stuttered out half a phrase and did not know how to complete it, a ‘frog’ when he said that literary success was worth little because it was made by the ignorant; she even called him a ‘frog’ when he brought her his drafts all ready to be thrown aside.

She would say the word to him with a sweet smile, looking at him with admiration as if he were some eccentric creature to be studied but not read, while he stood rigid, talking little and clipping his words to deserve her nickname the more. She always stuck firmly to her first opinion that although Alfonso had many more superior ideas at his disposal, he did not know how to connect them and form a good novel. He was too heavy, too dull. Sooner
or later he would make a fine name for himself by some excellent work of philosophy, but not by novels, which were too light for him.

But the tedium of the work was considerable. In the second chapter there was a terrible scene between Clara and her husband in their bedroom, but in the third, and by Annetta’s express wish, husband and wife both realized they loved each other, although divided by immense pride. The whole of the rest of the novel was to be about these two prides which had to be tamed, because such was the plot. But it did not even continue about these two prides, for Annetta wanted to graft into the novel a thousand other little tales which had nothing to do with the main one. A former fiancé, a shopkeeper, Clara’s rival the nobleman’s wife, and also a brother of Clara’s and a sister of the industrialist whom she eventually married, were all brought in; so were various other characters who took part in some political comedy, an election put in to swell the novella up to a full-scale novel. Alfonso proposed omitting all this useless matter and leaving the two prides as Annetta wanted them, facing each other to fight it out between them; a good analysis of pride could still be made of that. Annetta found this suggestion positively comical. There was to be chapter after chapter of long talks and struggles between the two women, Clara and the noble’s wife; every chapter was to be adorned by one or more glances of love between husband and wife. They got no further.