Contempt (3 page)

Between our visit to the empty flat and the day of our entry into it a couple of months went by, during which the necessary contracts were drawn up, all in Emilia’s name, because I knew that this gave her pleasure; while we also collected together the small amount of furniture that, with my very limited means, I could afford to buy. Meanwhile, when the first feeling of satisfaction was over, I felt, as I have mentioned, extremely anxious about the future, and, at moments, positively desperate. I was earning enough by now, it is true, for us to live in a modest manner and even put aside a few pennies; but these savings were certainly not sufficient to pay the next installment on the flat. My desperation was all the more acute inasmuch as I could not even have the relief of talking about it to Emilia: I did not wish to spoil her pleasure. But I recall that time as a period of great anxiety and, in a way, of diminished love for Emilia. Indeed I could not help realizing that she was not in the least worried to know how I had managed to come by so much money, although she knew our real position perfectly well. This thought was vaguely surprising to me, and there were moments when it inspired me almost with irritation against her—she who now, all busy and cheerful, thought of nothing but going round the shops looking for things to furnish the flat, and who every day, in her most placid tone of voice, announced some new acquisition. I wondered how it came about that she, who loved me so much, failed to guess at the cruel anxieties that oppressed me; but I realized that, probably, she thought that if I had bought the lease of the flat I had no doubt also taken steps to procure the necessary money. Nevertheless her serenity and satisfaction seemed to me, in contrast to my own wretched worries, to be a sign of selfishness, or, at the least, of insensibility.

I was so troubled at that period that even the image I had hitherto made of myself in my own mind had changed. Up till then I had looked upon myself as an intellectual, a man of culture, a writer for the theater—the “art” theater, I mean—for which I had always had a great passion and to which I felt I was drawn by a natural vocation. This
moral
image, as I may call it, also had an influence on the
physical
image; I saw myself as a young man whose thinness, short sight, nervousness, pallor and carelessness in dress all bore witness, in anticipation, of the literary glory for which I was destined. But at that time, under the pressure of my cruel anxieties, this very promising and flattering picture had given place to an entirely different one, that of a poor devil who had been caught in a shabby, pathetic trap, who had not been able to resist his love for his wife and had over-reached himself and would be forced to struggle, for goodness knows how much longer, in the mortifying toils of poverty. I saw myself changed in my physical aspect as well: I was no longer the young and still unknown theatrical genius, I was the starving journalist, the contributor to cheap reviews and second-rate newspapers; or perhaps—even worse—the scraggy employee of some private company or government office. This man hid his anxieties from his wife, so as not to worry her; he ran about the town all day long, looking for work and often not finding any; he would wake up in the night with a start, thinking of the debts that had to be paid; in fact, he no longer thought of, or saw, anything but money. It was a touching picture, perhaps, but lacking in luster and dignity, the picture of a wretched, conventional literary figure, and I hated it because I thought that, slowly and insensibly, with the years, I should end by resembling it in spite of myself. But there it was: I had not married a woman who could understand and share my ideas, tastes and ambitions; instead I had married, for her beauty, an uncultivated, simple typist, full, it seemed to me, of all the prejudices and ambitions of the class from which she came. With the first I could have faced the discomforts of a poverty stricken, disorganized life, in a studio or a furnished room, in expectation of the theatrical successes that were bound to come; but for the second I had had to provide the home of her dreams. And at the cost, I thought in desperation, of having to renounce, perhaps for ever, my precious literary ambitions.

There was another factor which contributed at that time to increase my feeling of anguish and impotence in face of material difficulties. I felt that the metal of my spirit, like a bar of iron that is softened and bent by a persistent flame, was being gradually softened and bent by the troubles that oppressed it. In spite of myself, I was conscious of a feeling of envy for those who did not suffer from such troubles, for the wealthy and the privileged; and this envy, I observed, was accompanied—still against my will—by a feeling of bitterness towards them, which, in turn, did not limit its aim to particular persons or situations, but, as if by an uncontrollable bias, tended to assume the general, abstract character of a whole conception of life. In fact, during those difficult days, I came very gradually to feel that my irritation and my intolerance of poverty were turning into a revolt against injustice, and not only against the injustice which struck at me personally but the injustice from which so many others like me suffered. I was quite aware of this almost imperceptible transformation of my subjective resentments into objective reflections and states of mind, owing to the bent of my thoughts which led always and irresistibly in the same direction: owing also to my conversation, which, without my intending it, always harped upon the same subject. I also noticed in myself a growing sympathy for those political parties which proclaimed their struggle against the evils and infamies of the society to which, in the end, I had attributed the troubles that beset me—a society which, as I thought, in reference to myself, allowed its best sons to languish and protected its worst ones. Usually, and in simpler, less cultivated people, this process occurs without their knowing it, in the dark depths of consciousness where, by a kind of mysterious alchemy, egoism is transmuted into altruism, hatred into love, fear into courage; but to me, accustomed as I was to observing and studying myself, the whole thing was clear and visible, as though I were watching it happen in someone else; and yet I was aware the whole time that I was being swayed by material, subjective factors, that I was transforming purely personal motives into universal reasons. I had never wished to become a member of any political party, as almost everyone did during that uneasy period after the war, just because it seemed to me that I could not take part in politics, as so many did, for personal motives, but only from intellectual conviction, which, however, I had so far lacked; and I was therefore very angry when I felt my ideas, my conversation, my whole demeanor going very gradually adrift on the current of my own interests, slowly changing color according to the difficulties of the moment. “So I’m really just like everyone else,” I thought furiously; “does it only need an empty purse to make me dream, like so many other people, of the rebirth of humanity?” But it was an impotent fury; and one day when I felt more desperate or less firm than usual, I let myself be convinced by a friend who had been hovering around me for some time, and became a member of the Communist party. Immediately afterwards I reflected that, once again, I had behaved, not like the young, unrecognized genius, but like the starving journalist or the scraggy employee into which I was so terrified that time would transform me. But the thing was done now, I was inside the party and I could not draw back again. Emilia’s reception of the news of the step I had taken was characteristic: “But now only the Communists will give you work...the others will boycott you.” I had not the courage to tell her what I was thinking—which was that, in all probability, I should never have become a Communist if I had not bought the lease of that over-expensive flat, in order to give her pleasure. And that was the end of it.

At last we moved in, and the very next day, by a coincidence that seemed to me providential, I met Battista, and, as I have already related, was at once invited by him to work on the script of one of his films. For some time I felt relieved and more cheerful than I had been for many weeks: I thought I would do four or five film-scripts to pay off the lease of the flat, and then devote myself again to journalism and my beloved theater. Meanwhile my love for Emilia had come back to me stronger than ever, and sometimes I went so far as to reproach myself, with the bitterest remorse, for having been capable of thinking ill of her and judging her to be selfish and insensitive. This brief bright interval, however, lasted only a very short time. Almost immediately the sky of my life clouded over again. But at first it was only an exceedingly small cloud, though of a decidedly gloomy color.

MY MEETING WITH Battista took place on the first Monday in October. The day before, we had moved into the flat, which was now completely furnished. This flat, the cause, to me, of so many anxieties, was in truth neither large nor luxurious. It had only two rooms—a big living-room, of greater length than width, and a bedroom, also of good proportions. The bathroom, the kitchen and the maid’s room were all three very small—reduced, as always in modern buildings, to the smallest possible size. Besides this there was a little windowless box which Emilia intended to make into a dressing-room. The flat was on the top floor of a newly built block, as smooth and white as if it had been all made of plaster, in a narrow, slightly sloping street. The whole of one side of the street was occupied by a row of buildings similar to ours, while along the other side ran the boundary wall of the garden of a private villa, with branches of great leafy trees hanging over it. It was a beautiful view, as I pointed out to Emilia, and we could almost delude ourselves into thinking that this garden, in which we could catch glimpses of winding paths and fountains and open spaces, was not cut off from us by a street and a wall, and that we could go down and walk about in it as often as we liked.

We moved in during the afternoon. I was busy the whole day, and I do not remember where we dined, nor with whom; I only remember that, towards midnight, I was standing in the middle of the bedroom in front of the triple looking-glass, looking at myself and slowly undoing my tie. All at once, in the mirror, I saw Emilia take a pillow from the double bed and go off towards the door of the living-room. Surprised, I asked: “What are you doing?”

I had spoken without moving. Still in the mirror, I saw her stop in the doorway and turn, as she said in a casual tone: “You won’t mind, will you, if I sleep on the divan bed, in the other room?”

“Just for tonight, you mean?” I inquired, puzzled and still uncomprehending.

“No, for always,” she replied hurriedly. “To tell you the truth, that was one of the reasons why I wanted a new home. I really can’t go on sleeping with the shutters open, as you like to do. I wake up every morning at the crack of dawn and then I can’t go to sleep again, and I go about all day long with a sleepy feeling in my head. You don’t mind, do you? I do think it’s really better for us to sleep separate.”

I still failed to understand, and at first I felt no more than vaguely irritated at an innovation so completely unexpected. Walking across to her, I said: “But this can’t go on. We’ve only two rooms; in one there’s the bed, and in the other, the armchairs and divans. Why...? Besides, sleeping on a divan, even if it can be turned into a bed, is not very comfortable!”

“I never dared tell you, before, “ she answered, lowering her eyes without looking at me.

“During these two years,” I persisted, “you’ve never once complained...I thought you’d got accustomed to it.”

She raised her head, pleased, it seemed to me, that I had taken up the point of the excuse she had made. “I’ve never got accustomed to it...I’ve always slept badly...recently, in fact, perhaps because my nerves are bad nowadays, I’ve hardly been sleeping at all...If we could only go to bed early; but, one way or another, we’re always late...and then...” She did not finish her sentence and made as if to move away towards the living-room. I went after her and said hastily: “Wait a minute. If you like, we can perfectly well give up sleeping with the shutters open. It’s all right—from now on we’ll sleep with them shut.”

I realized, as I spoke, that this proposal was not merely a demonstration of affectionate compliance; in reality, as I knew, I wanted to put her to the test. I saw her shake her head, and she answered, with a faint smile: “No, no...why should you sacrifice yourself? You’ve always said you feel suffocated with the shutters closed. It’s better for us to sleep apart.”

“I assure you, for me it will be a very slight sacrifice...I shall soon get used to it.”

She appeared to hesitate and then said, with unexpected firmness: “No, I don’t want any sacrifices—either great or small...I shall sleep in the other room.”

“And what if I say I don’t like it, and that I want you to sleep with me?”

She hesitated again. Then, in the good-natured tone which was usual to her: “Riccardo, that’s just like you. You didn’t want to make this sacrifice two years ago, when we got married; and now you want to make it, at all costs. What’s the matter with you? Plenty of married people sleep apart and are fond of each other just the same. And you’ll be freer in the mornings, too, when you have to go to work; you won’t wake me up any more.”

“But you’ve just said you always woke at dawn...I don’t leave the house at dawn!...”

“Oh, how pig-headed you are!” she exclaimed impatiently. And this time, without paying any more attention to me, she left the room.

Left alone, I sat down on the bed, which, despoiled of one of its pillows, already had about it a suggestion of separation and desertion, and so I remained for some moments in bewilderment, looking at the open door through which Emilia had disappeared. One question came into my mind: did Emilia not want to sleep with me any longer because the daylight really annoyed her, or simply because she did not want to go on sleeping with me? I was inclined to believe in the second of these alternatives, although I longed with all my heart to believe in the first. I felt, however, that if I had accepted Emilia’s explanation, there would always have been a doubt in my mind. I did not admit it to myself, but the final question, in reality, was, “Has Emilia perhaps ceased to love me?”