Tales of Madness (3 page)

Hesitating, I made an inquisitive gesture with my eyes.

"Yes, where you wanted to go before you saw me!"

I jumped to my feet, but couldn't stand, and falling onto the little table with my elbows, I shouted at him:

"Is it they? Tuda? Tuda and her mother?"

He seized me by the arm and brought his forefinger to his lips.

"Quiet! Quiet! Pay and then come with me. Hurry and pay."

We left the tavern. It was raining even harder. The wind which had grown in intensity slung water in our faces almost prevented us from walking. But the man dragged me away, away, against the wind, against the rain. Staggering, drunk, my head burning and heavier than lead, I moaned, "Tuda? Tuda and her mother?" In the violent shadow his cloaked figure became confused with the umbrella he carried high against the rain, and to my eyes it became huge. It was like a ghost in a nightmare, dragging me towards a precipice. And there, with a powerful shove, he thrust me into the small dark doorway, shouting into my ear, "Go, go visit my daughter!"

Now I have here, here in my head, only the screams of Tuda as
she clung to my neck, screams that had pierced my brain... Oh, it was he, I swear it again, it was he, Jacopo SturziL. He, he strangled that witch who was passing herself off as an aunt... But if he had not done it, I would have. But he choked her, because he had more of a reason to do so than I.

For some minutes he managed to distract himself. In his mind he pictured the interior of the train station, where the opaline brilliance of the electric light contrasts with the dismal and gloomily resounding emptiness under the immense, sooty skylight. And he began to imagine all the nuisances that a traveler encounters when he is departing or arriving.

Unwittingly, however, he again found himself gazing at that customer at the adjacent table.

The man, dressed in black, was about 40 years old. His thin, drooping hair and small moustache were reddish, his face was pale, and his green-gray eyes were cloudy and had rings around them.

Sitting beside the man was a little old woman who was half asleep. Contrasting strangely with her peaceful air was her hazel-colored dress, neatly trimmed with black rickrack. Moreover, covering her wooly hair was a small hat, worn and faded, with two large black ribbons tied voluminously under her chin. Oddly enough, these ribbons ended in silver tassels, making them seem as if they were ribbons taken from a funeral wreath.

Valdoggi again immediately took his eyes off the man, but this time he did so in a fit of great exasperation that made him turn rudely in his chair and blow forcefully through his nostrils.

What on earth did that stranger want? Why was that man looking at him that way? Valdoggi again turned around. He, too, wanted to look at that man in order to make him lower his eyes. At that point the stranger whispered: "Valdoggi." He did so as if speaking to himself, shaking his head slightly without moving his eyes.

The stranger smiled sadly and repeated:

"Valdoggi, right?"

"Yes...," answered Valdoggi, bewildered and trying to smile at him, although with some hesitation. And he stammered: "But I... pardon me... you, sir..."

"Sir? I'm Griffi!"

"Griffi? Ah...," uttered Valdoggi, confused, continually more perplexed, and searching his memory for an image that would bring that name back to life.

"Lao Griffi... 13th Infantry Regiment... Potenza."

"It's really me. Like this! Unrecognizable, right?"

"I wouldn't say that... but I pictured you..."

"Tell me, tell me, how did you picture me?" Griffi suddenly broke in. And, almost impelled by a strange feeling of anxiety, he drew close to Valdoggi with a sudden motion, blinking his eyes repeatedly and wringing his hands as if to repress his agitation.

"You pictured me? Oh, of course... but tell me, tell me how?"

"How should I know!" answered Valdoggi. "You, in Rome? Did you resign?"

"No, but tell me how you pictured me, I beg you!" insisted Griffi forcefully, "I beg you..."

"Well... I pictured you as still being an officer, I guess," Valdoggi continued, shrugging his shoulders. "At least a captain... Remember? Oh, and what about 'Artaserse'? Do you remember 'Artaserse,' the young lieutenant?"

"Yes, yes," answered Lao Griffi, almost crying. "'Artaserse'... Yes, certainly."

"I wonder what became of him."

"I wonder," repeated the other with grave and gloomy seriousness as he opened his eyes wide.

"I thought you were in Udine," continued Valdoggi in an effort to change the subject."

But Griffi, absorbed in thought, sighed absent mindedly:

"Artaserse..."

Then he roused himself suddenly and asked:

"And you? You resigned too, right? What happened to you?"

Valdoggi unwittingly sighed.

"She's sleeping, poor thing."

Griffi looked at his mother silently for a while. The warm-up notes of a violin concert about to be performed by blind men in the cafe roused him, and he turned to Valdoggi.

He pronounced these last words with a voice so altered and shaky, and with such unusual gestures, that many of the customers in the cafe turned around to look at him from the nearby tables, and some of them hissed.

His mother awoke with a start and, adjusting the large knot under her chin, quietly said to him:

"Lao, Lao, please control yourself..."

Valdoggi, somewhat dazed and astonished, looked him up and down, not knowing how to act.

Valdoggi tried to object, but Griffi insisted on paying. They got up, and all three of them set out towards Piazza dell'Indi-pendenza.

"Destiny!" sighed the old mother at this point, her eyes lowered.

"Destiny!" echoed her son, turning to her angrily. "You always repeat this word which irks me terribly, you know! If you would only say 'lack of foresight, predisposition'... Although, yes, foresight! What good is it? One is always exposed to the whims of fate — always. But look, Valdoggi, what man's life depends on... Perhaps not even you can understand me well. But picture, for example, a man who is forced to live chained to another person for whom he has been nursing a feeling of intense hatred which is stifled hour after hour by the most bitter reflections. Imagine! Yes, one fine day, while you're at dinner, conversing — you sitting here, she there — she tells you that when she was a child, her father was on the verge of leaving, let's say, for America, and of taking all his family with him, never to return; or else that she nearly became blind because one day she stuck her nose in certain chemical apparatuses belonging to her father. Well then, since this person is making you suffer the torments of hell, can you help reflecting that, if one or the other of these events had occurred (both quite possible), your life would not be what it is? Whether it would be better or worse matters little now. You would exclaim to yourself: 'Oh, if only it had happened! You would be blind, my dear; I would certainly not be your husband!' And, perhaps pitying her, you would imagine her life as a blind woman and yours as a bachelor, or yourself in the company of some other woman..."