Her Husband (23 page)

Stepping off the tram, the first impression that came to him as he put his feet down in the city again after nine months of deep, dark inner silence, of entombment and sadness, was that of no longer knowing how to walk amid noise and confusion. He was immediately deafened, almost as if in a heavy, hollow drunkenness–like the irritation, distaste, resentment of a sick person who is forced to go around with the buzz of medication in his ears among active and indifferent healthy people.

He looked rapidly sideways this way and that for fear that one of his old nonliterary acquaintances might recognize him, and for another, opposite fear, that one of his new acquaintances might pretend not to recognize him. More cruel than the mocking commiseration of the
former would have been the scornful snub of the latter, now that he was not even a shadow of what he had been.

If a journalist friend passing by had put an arm under his, cheerfully, as in the good old days, he might have said: “Dear Boggiolo, what’s new?”

And Giustino would have told him about the Parisian success he hadn’t been able to tell anyone about and that had left an anguished knot in his throat that would never go away!

“And your wife? What work can we expect? A new play, eh? Come on, tell me something. . . .”

He didn’t even know if the new play had been performed, or what reception it had had.

He went to the newsstand and bought newspapers from Rome, Milan, and the smaller cities.

No mention of it.

But in the announcements of plays in Rome, there it was, at the Argentina Theater:
If Not This Way
.

So it had been performed! It was successful! If it was still playing… Who knows how many nights? Very successful. . .

He imagined that this time Silvia must have been in charge. In his mind’s eye he saw the stage during the rehearsal. He imagined the impression it must have made on Silvia, who had never done this before, and he saw himself there with her, her guide with the actors; she uncertain, lost. He, on the other hand, experienced, sure of himself. And he displayed all his certainty, his command over everything, and he encouraged her not to despair at the actors’ laziness and indifference, at cuts made in the script, at the director’s angry outbursts. It sure wasn’t easy to work with those temperaments! You had to go along with them and be patient even if they didn’t seem to know their parts up to the last moment.

Suddenly his face darkened. Perhaps she had been assisted, escorted to those rehearsals by someone, perhaps by Baldani, or Luna, or Betti. … Who was her lover now? And with this thought it suddenly became much easier to imagine her staging that play, attending the rehearsals,
fighting with the actors. But yes, certainly, much easier now that she, thanks to him, had made such a name for herself and all doors were open to her and all the actors hung on her words with admiration and smiles. Much easier for her!

“It’s the accounts, however, that matter! The accounts! The accounts!” he exclaimed to himself. “Admiration, smiles . . . What are they worth! A woman … and after all, now … without a husband … But who’s taking care of the accounts? Will she do it? With all her fine experience! He’ll look after them, her lover. . . . They’ll eat her alive! Yes, yes, just see if you can get another villino now like that one! Just wait. . ..”

He opened a Turin newspaper and saw that the Carmi-Revelli Company was giving its final performances at the Alfieri Theater.

He stood there for a bit with that paper open before him, wondering whether or not to go. The desire to know about the play, to talk about it, to hear it talked about was urging him to go. The thought of facing all those actors and their questions was holding him back. How would they receive him? At one time they had made fun of him, but he held the rope then, and after letting them show off for a while like so many ponies frolicking around him, he could give the rope a tug and hook them up, tamed, to the triumphant cart. But now . ..

He kept walking, absorbed in the memories that were now all he had, and after a long time, unconsciously led by those memories, he found himself at the Alfieri Theater.

Maybe there was a rehearsal going on now. He stopped hesitantly at the entrance and pretended to be reading a poster about the play to be given that evening, the title, the list of characters. Finally, getting up his nerve, as though he were an inexperienced writer, he respectfully asked a guard who didn’t know him if Signora Carmi was in the theater.

“Not yet,” the man answered.

Giustino continued to stand in front of the poster without daring to ask anything else. In the past he would have entered like the lord of the theater, without even deigning to glance at that watchdog!

“And Revelli?” he asked after a bit.

“He came in just now.”

“It’s a rehearsal, isn’t it?”

“A rehearsal, a rehearsal.”

He knew that Revelli was very strict about outsiders at the rehearsals. If he gave that man a calling card to take to Revelli, he certainly would let him in. But then he would be exposed to everyone’s indiscreet and insolent curiosity. He didn’t want that. Better to stay there like a beggar waiting for Signora Carmi, who couldn’t be much later, if the others had already come.

In fact, Signora Carmi arrived shortly in a carriage. She wasn’t expecting to see him by the door and at his greeting she bowed slightly and went on without recognizing him.

“Signora . . .” Giustino called after her, transfixed.

Signora Carmi turned, blinking her myopic eyes, and suddenly her face lengthened into an
oooh
of surprise.

“You, Boggiolo? Why are you here? Why?”

“Well. . .” Giustino said, barely opening his arms.

“I heard, I heard,” continued Signora Carmi with compassionate concern. “My poor friend! What an awful thing to do! Believe me, I never would have expected it. I don’t mean I wouldn’t have expected it from her. Ah, I know something about that woman’s ingratitude! But awful for you, dear. Come along, come with me. I’m late!”

Giustino hesitated, then said in a trembling voice, his eyes glassy with tears: “Please, Signora, I don’t want … I don’t want them to see me.”

“You’re right,” Signora Carmi realized. “Wait. Let’s go this way.”

They entered the nearly dark theater, crossed the hallway of the first row of boxes. Signora Carmi opened the little door of the last box and said to Boggiolo in a whisper:

“Wait for me here. I’m going to the stage and I’ll be right back.”

Giustino crouched down at the back in the dark, his shoulders against the wall adjacent to the stage in order not to be seen by the actors whose voices echoed in the empty theater.

“
Oh, Signora, oh, Signora
,“ Grimi intoned in his usual baritone, overriding the prompter’s irritating voice. “
Does she seem too lovely to you?
”

“
But no, not lovely, my dear sir
,“ little Signora Grassi smiled, her tiny voice tender.

And Revelli shouted: “More drawn out! More drawn out!
But nooo, but not at all lovely, friend–
“

“The second
but’s
not there!”

“Just put it in, for heaven’s sake! It sounds more natural!”

Giustino listened to those familiar voices that unconsciously changed as they gave life to the characters of the scene, he looked at the vast resonant emptiness of the dark theater, and he breathed in that particular mixture of dampness, dust, and stagnant human breath. He could feel his anguish growing, as if his throat were seized by the vivid memory of a life that could no longer be his, which he could never be part of again, except like this, hidden, almost furtive, or pitied just as he was a few moments ago. Signora Carmi had recognized, and everyone would certainly have recognized along with her, that he didn’t deserve to be treated that way. The pity of others, though it made him feel his misery more deeply and bitterly, was also a precious reminder of what he had been.

He waited some time for Signora Carmi to rehearse a long scene with Revelli. When it was finished, she returned to find him weeping, sitting with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He wept silently, but with an abundance of hot tears and restrained sobs.

“Now, now,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Yes, I understand, poor friend, but come on now! This isn’t like you, dear Boggiolo! I know, devoting everything, body and soul, to that woman; and now . . .”

“It’s the ruin, don’t you see?” Giustino burst out, stifling his tears. “The ruin, the ruin of all I built, Signora, stone by stone. Built by me, by me alone! When everything was in place and it was time to enjoy what I had made, a blast of traitorous wind blew over it, a blast of insanity, believe me, of insanity with that old man, with that cowardly
old lunatic, who, maybe out of revenge, offered to destroy another life as his had been destroyed. Everything collapsed, everything!”

“Quiet, yes, quiet, calm down!” Signora Carmi urged him with words and gestures.

“Let me get it off my chest, for heaven’s sake! I haven’t talked or cried for nine months! They’ve destroyed me, my dear lady! I’m not anything now! I put everything into that work that only I could do, only I. I say that with pride, my dear lady. I alone because I paid no attention to all the foolishness, to all the whims, to all the strange ideas these literary types get in their heads. I never let it get to me and I let them laugh, if they wanted to. You laughed at me, too, didn’t you? Everyone laughed at me. What did I care? I had something to build! And I did it! And now . . . now do you understand?”

While Boggiolo talked and wept in the dark box, choked by anguish, he was following the rehearsal taking place there on the stage. Signora Carmi suddenly noticed, with a shiver, the strange contemporaneity of those two dramas–one real, here, of a man consumed with tears, with his back against the wall facing the stage, where the voices of the other fictional drama sounded false. The direct comparison wearied and nauseated her, as if the play was a pointless, impudent, disrespectful game. She was tempted to lean out of the box and motion for the actors to stop and come here. Here to see, to witness this other real drama. Instead, she went over to Boggiolo again and with kind words and pats on his back, begged him to calm down.

“Yes, yes, thank you, Signora … I’m calm, I’m calm,” Giustino said, swallowing his tears and drying his eyes. “Excuse me, Signora. I really needed this. Excuse me. Now I’m calm. Tell me something about this play . . . this new play,
If Not This Way
. It’s going well, isn’t it? How’s it doing?”

“Ah, don’t talk to me about it!” Signora Carmi protested. “It’s the same business, darling, the same ugly business she did to you! Don’t talk to me about it. Let’s drop it.”

“I just wanted to know the end result….” Giustino insisted timidly, humiliated by his own suffering.

“Silvia Roncella, my dear friend, is ingratitude personified!” Signora Carmi pronounced. “Who made her a success? Say it, Boggiolo! Didn’t I, I alone, believe in the power of her talent and her work while everyone else laughed or doubted it? Well, then: she thought of everyone but me for the new play! Listen, I’m telling you this because I know what happened to you, too. I told the others–oh, thank heavens I keep my dignity–I told the others that I didn’t want to do it. And I don’t even act in
The New Colony
anymore. Thank goodness people come to the theater for me, to hear me, whatever I do: I don’t need her! I mention it only because no one likes ingratitude, and you will understand.”

Giustino remained silent for some time, shaking his head. Then he said: “Everyone, you know? She treated all the friends who helped me the same. I remember Signora Barmis, too. . . . Well, then, this new play . . . how is it going?”

“Oh!” Signora Carmi said. “It seems . . . nothing out of the ordinary . . . It’s what is called a critical success. Some scenes here and there seem good … the last scene of the last act, especially. Yes, that one has saved the work. Haven’t you read the papers?”

“No, Signora. For nine months I’ve been shut up in the house. This is the first time I’ve come down to Turin. I’m staying up there above Giaveno, in my little village, with my mother and my son. …”

“Ah, you’ve kept your son with you?”

“Certainly! With me . . . He’s always been there, really, with my mother.”

“Bravo, bravo,” Signora Carmi approved. “And so you haven’t had any more news?”

“No, nothing at all. By chance I learned a new play was being performed. I bought the newspapers today, and I saw that it was being performed in Rome. . . .”

“Also in Milan,” Signora Carmi said.

“Ah, it’s playing in Milan, too?”

“Yes, yes, with the same success.”

“At the Manzoni Theater?”

“Yes, at the Manzoni. And soon… wait, in three days the Fresi Company
will come from Milan to put it on here, in this theater. Roncella is in Milan now and will be here for the opening.”

At this news Giustino jumped to his feet, breathless. “You know that for certain?”

“Yes, that’s how I understood it. What? Has it. . . has it upset you? I understand. . . .”

Signora Carmi also stood up and looked at him compassionately.

“She’ll come?”

“That’s what they say! And I believe it. After all the stir created around her, her presence can help a lot, as the play isn’t all that good. And then the public doesn’t know her yet, and wants to know her.”

“Yes, yes,” Giustino said eagerly. “It’s natural… this is like the first work for her. . . . Maybe they even insisted she come. . . . The Fresi Company will be here in three days?”

“Yes, in three days. The poster is in the lobby. Didn’t you see it?”

Giustino couldn’t stay still any longer. He thanked Signora Carmi for her warm welcome and went away feeling suffocated in the heavy darkness of the theater, agitated as he was by the tremendous news she had given him.

Silvia in Turin! They might call her out, there, in the theater, and he could see her again!

He felt weak in the knees as he went outside. Feeling a sort of vertigo, he put his hand to his face. The blood had all run to his head and his heart was pounding. He would see her again! Ah, who knows what she was like now, after the storm she had lived through! Who knows how she had changed! Perhaps nothing of the Silvia he had known existed any longer!