A Life (30 page)

The features were no longer those he had loved, and he turned pale at kissing a forehead that was already ice-cold. He had kissed a thing and not a person.

Then he was docile and did what Mascotti wanted. He left the house without giving Giuseppina any instructions; he was leaving so little in her custody. He walked along between the two men with bowed head. They too were silent because, after seeing those few tears torn from him by the violence of their condolences, his wordless sorrow touched them.

The ice-covered snow crackled beneath their feet and the full moon in a clear sky was bathing the white valley with its rays, dazzling in that cold light. The tip of the stone hillock beyond the village seemed afire, surrounded by pale motionless flames. In the village petty attempts had been made to sweep away the snow, and the terrible white uniformity was at last broken by some darker patches of bare earth.

The houses were silent and dark; only from two windows of a ground-floor room in Faldelli’s tavern came strips of bright light and the sound of loud voices.

They stopped in front of Mascotti’s house, next to the tavern. Frontini bid Alfonso farewell with some words which he did not hear; more sympathy, it must have been.

The notary’s daughter, an ugly little old spinster, opened the door, and although she already knew of Alfonso’s tragedy, as soon as she had shaken his hand as a sign of condolence, she
produced
a phrase prepared long before and which she was unable to renounce though it was now quite out of place.

“You’ve never even found time to pay me a visit; not in a whole month!”

He tried to excuse himself, but Mascotti interrupted him by brusquely ordering his daughter to go and prepare a bed for Alfonso. She obeyed, after saying she was surprised not to have been warned beforehand of the hospitality suddenly demanded of her. Alfonso would have left that house,
overcoming
his utter exhaustion, had she not made her remarks more polite by saying that as she had not been forewarned he would be very uncomfortable in the only room and bed which she could offer him.

In fact, when left alone in a tiny room with one window, he felt wretched. He had to open the window at once because the air was damper than outside. A strong smell of must increased his misery. Everything around him seemed to be rotting. The room was on the ground floor, and the window gave on to the main street. When he drew back from the window, the smell of the room was as strong as if the air had not been let in. He nearly escaped by jumping out into the street, afraid of being unable to sleep that night even though he longed for the relief of sleep; he yearned to
be free for an hour or two at least from the sadness which it seemed would never leave him again.

If only he could sleep. He felt utterly weary; his head would no longer stay upright. Had he left that house he would never have reached his home but would have fallen asleep in the snow.

In bed he felt wretched. The sheet was of coarse material, and what was more the bed seemed damp; immediately after he shut the window, the room began to stink strongly, the smell emanating from the walls, the old furniture. He did not feel the slow approach of restorative sleep. His misery, which he still attributed to the smell and lack of air, increased. Again he decided to get up and leave the house; so determined was he to do this that he began thinking up excuses for Mascotti next day. He seemed to have been on the point of putting his project into execution and had even raised the sash—but actually he could not remember lying down again and realized only that he was in the same bed,
pressing
his aching head against the pillow.

Suddenly he felt better, more comfortable in bed, without pain. He lay motionless, fearing to lose his well-being. He was certainly not asleep but pleasantly resting.

He never remembered how the change had taken place, but he suddenly saw himself in quite another place and in a very
different
state of mind.

He was lying in bed, at home, in a big airy room with summer sun entering an open window. He was convalescing from a long illness and was so weak that he could not succeed in moving the covers oppressing his chest. But this was his only worry, for apart from that he felt happy. He stared at the sunbeam lighting up innumerable specks suspended in the air, a faint mist found by the sun in the purest of atmospheres. He was glad because he knew that in a few days he would be allowed to go out into the sun and fresh air, glad because in the kitchen next door he could hear his mother still young and humming as she worked for him. A monotonous thud reached him of his mother pounding meat with a knife, but there was another monotonous sound, a
continuous
gentle buzz in his ears which made him doze off.

Someone must have entered the little passage because he could hear the sound of a light tread on the stone floor and the rustle
of a dress. From just in front of the door came the gentle voice of a woman: “How is Alfonso?” Then that voice though gentle became disagreeable because it seemed to echo and resound in all the empty spaces of the big house. Whose was it—that it sounded so familiar? He compared it with all the women’s voices that he knew but it wasn’t familiar. “Ah yes, Francesca’s!” And a sense of deep discomfort swept over him and he thought: “If she’s settled in the village, she’ll destroy the quiet of all its inhabitants.”

The door had opened, and at once the room was invaded by loud sounds of carts in the streets and prolonged shouts of carters. Instinctively he shut his eyes to isolate himself. It was his mother. Before she reached his bed, he saw her and her pleased smile at finding him so quiet. She bent down and kissed him, but on the cavity of his ear. He felt a sharp pain as if something inside had burst, and woke up.

Light entering the window dazzled him. Was it day already? His surprise was the greater because he still felt tired as if he had slept at most an hour.

By his bed stood Mascotti and Frontini; they did not seem to have noticed that he had opened his eyes.

“How long can it last?” asked Mascotti, looking worried and stroking his nose with his forefinger.

“Who can tell? Maybe a fortnight. It’s probably typhoid fever.”

“Typhus?” asked Alfonso.

“He understands, you see, so he must be feeling better,” cried Mascotti, pleased.

“He has a temperature, but it’s low,” said Frontini turning to Alfonso, “and probably due to exhaustion and grief. I guarantee it’s nothing serious. He’s much better now, it seems.”

So he was ill, and was surprised he’d not noticed it before. He had a fever which still sent shivers up his spine, made his body hot and dry, gave his lips an involuntary smile. It was not unpleasant, nor had the dreams it had given him been either.

“So you’re better, eh?” asked Mascotti, and bent over him as if wanting Frontini not to hear. Alfonso never forgot either that dream or what he heard then. “I’d be quite willing to have you here, but there’s no one who can look after you as you need. Guiseppina can act as nurse as she’s trained.”

“Yes, yes, home!” cried Alfonso, whose fever did not prevent him seeing this poor man’s fear of having to keep a sick man in his house.

He heard Mascotti turn to Frontini and say that Alfonso
himself
wanted to return home.

He dozed off again but did not fall fast asleep. He was struggling with fever and overcoming it every now and again. He heard his mother’s voice asking him how he was and soon after glimpsed the blond gleams of Frontini’s moustache. Frontini was very
assiduous
. Every time Alfonso opened his eyes he saw him by the bed taking his pulse or putting pieces of ice on his brow. He must be a good person, and Alfonso in his fever was touched by the poor man whom he had so hated.

Then his fever increased again and with it came a violent
headache
. He gasped in agony.

“Oh! Poor mother!” he thought, remembering that other
panting
he had watched and which must have been so much more agonizing than his own.

He must have lost sense of time because on reopening his eyes he found it was dark. A night-light was glimmering next to the bed, and Giuseppina, half-asleep, was lying under the window on a sofa parallel to his bed. So they had called her rather than put him out of the house. Mascotti was a good person too.

He felt very thirsty and put a foot out of bed to go and drink a bottle of water which he had noticed because it reflected the tiny night-light.

“Now will you stay in bed?” cried Giuseppina, suddenly coming towards him threateningly.

He drew his leg back in terror.

“I only wanted some water!” he said in excuse.

“Ah! He’s come round,” said Giuseppina, at her ease, thinking aloud. “Sorry,” she added, in her coarse man’s voice that was not used to apologizing. “They told me to be very careful with you!” She gave him as much water as he wanted.

He must have spent many days in that state because often on opening his eyes he would be surprised to find daylight after
shutting
them in the dark.

Once, on opening his eyes he was surprised to find himself in the street in front of Mascotti’s house, supported by Frontini and
Giuseppina. Uncertain whether it was a dream, he showed no surprise and asked for no explanations. He was put into a cart, which moved off at once, slowly but not avoiding a shaking like whiplashes on irregular cobbles. He was glad to find this vision driven out by others, and when that journey came back to him during the night, it seemed the fruit of delirium.

But in the morning, calm now as if after a long rest, with a mind quiet and somewhat torpid—his thoughts turned only to what had preceded his illness and he realized that journey had not been a vision. There was his room at home in exact detail, its old
furniture
, the pendulum clock which was ticking and showing eight o’clock, two beds. There was his mother’s bed too. The body had been taken away, and it had been remade as if the person who had left it intended to lie down that night. The pillow was the same; he recognized it by a coffee mark made by the dead woman when she pushed away a cup offered her in a moment of intense suffering.

That was enough to evoke in him all the terrible events at which he had been present during the last fortnight. Tears came to his eyes, sweet ones of compassion. It was not sorrow at feeling
himself
alone in the world that made him weep. He wept for the poor old woman who had died loving a life which she had long known was to abandon her. He himself was still living, and life was sweet, when he was not consciously aware of the flow of blood, the
mechanism
responsible for its regularity, and there was only the calm and certainty of living, the sense of lasting for ever.

At seeing Giuseppina he began to laugh, because he
remembered
her already at work as a nurse.

“So the old man put me out of his house, did he?”

Giuseppina protested: “He had you brought here comfortably in a carriage.”

From Giuseppina he learned that he had been taken away from Mascotti’s house because of the latter’s fear, which Frontini had been unable to destroy, that it was a case of typhus. The notary’s daughter had been the most insistent and vehement in
demanding
his departure, and one day, terrified by a headache she had had for some hours, she gave her father an ultimatum in front of Frontini.

“Either he goes or I do.”

Frontini had asked for two days’ grace; the third day on his arrival he found Alfonso already carried down the stairs, so he had been unable to do anything but help with the move and see it was done with care. Every detail which Alfonso had thought a dream was a reality. He had put up some weak resistance on the stairs, but after the first breath of fresh air had calmed down, looked round with an air of surprise and, without a word, let himself be laid in the cart, to the great joy of Mascotti who cried: “Why, he’s all right, he could even be taken as far as the city without danger!”

“Swine!” muttered Alfonso in indignation, thinking that for over three years that person had indeed been his mother’s only protector.

Shortly afterwards Frontini came and was much surprised to find him in his right mind and hear he had been so for some hours; though the doctor asserted shortly afterwards that it was a natural development and he had foreseen it. He was a doctor who must have been used to making mistakes because he did not seem
surprised
to find facts not agreeing with his opinions.

But he had behaved well during his illness, and Alfonso thanked him with tears in his eyes, thankful too for the pleasure which he saw shining in the other’s face at his words.

In the afternoon Mascotti came and seemed unwilling to speak of the journey which he had made Alfonso take during his
illness
. Alfonso tried to be distant, which Mascotti at once noticed because he had seen him angry and knew how he looked then. He explained that he had wanted him moved because that room in his home was in no way suitable for a sick man. Then, seeing that Alfonso’s expression did not change at all, Mascotti grew
confused
and said that it had really been Lina his daughter who had wanted him out of the house. Alfonso was still silent and
eventually
Mascotti became indignant.

“We may be old,” he replied, “but we want to live another few years.”

This remark was enough to make Alfonso gentle and friendly.

Mascotti at once changed the subject. He talked of the sale of the house which was now necessary. Creglingi, Rosina’s future husband, was offering ten thousand francs including everything, even the furniture.

“It doesn’t seem a bad offer to me,” said Mascotti. Shortly
afterwards
he left.

Alone again for the first time Alfonso thought over that
adventure
of his in the city. Illness had rested his brain, and the thought of Annetta seemed almost new to him. He could not feel
passionate
about things that had happened so long before, although he considered himself almost responsible for them. Now he was a new man who knew what he wanted. The other person, the one who had seduced Annetta, was an ailing boy with whom he had nothing in common. It was not the first time he thought he had left boyhood behind.