Authors: Cesare Pavese
"What do people say?"
"I don't know," he said. "I don't listen to such talk. It's like wartime conversation. Anything may be true. It might be a man, a revulsion, a whim. But there's only one real reason."
He tapped his forehead with a finger. He smiled again with his eyes. He held his hand on the oranges and said: "I've always seen you eating fruit, Clelia. That's real youth. Leave flowers to the Romans."
That bald character of the story muttered something to the waiter, threw down his napkin, and left, fat and solemn. He bowed to us. I laughed right at him; Morelli, expressionless, waved.
"Man is the only animal," he said, "who labors to dress himself."
When the coffee came, he still hadn't asked me what I was doing in Turin. Probably he knew already and there was no need to tell him. But neither did he ask me how long I was staying. I like this in people. Live and let live.
"Would you like to go out this evening?" he asked. "Turin by night?"
"First I've got to have a look at Turin by day. Let me get myself settled. Are you staying in this hotel?"
"Why not come to my place?"
He had to say that. I let the suggestion pass. I asked him to call for me at nine.
He repeated: "I can put you up at my place."
"Don't be foolish," I said. "We're not children. I'll come and pay you a visit one day."
That afternoon I went out on my own, and in the evening he took me out to a party.
3
When I returned in the evening, Morelli, who had been waiting for me, noticed that I had gone out in my cloth coat and left the fur behind. I had him come up and while I was getting ready I asked him if he spent his days in the hotel.
"I spend my nights at home," he said.
"Really?" I was talking into the mirror, my back turned to him. "Don't you ever visit your estate?"
"I pass over it in the train on my way to Genoa. My wife lives there. Nobody like women for certain sacrifices."
"Married ones, too?" I murmured.
I could tell he was laughing.
"Not only them," he sighed. "It hurts me, Clelia, that you should go around in overalls bossing whitewashers ... However, I don't like that place in the Via Po. What do you expect to sell there?"
"Turin is really an old woman, a concierge."
"Cities grow old like women."
"For me it's only thirty. Oh, well, thirty-four... But I didn't pick the Via Po. They decided in Rome."
"Obviously."
We left. I was glad that Morelli, who understood everything, hadn't understood why I went out that day in a cloth coat. I was thinking about it when we got into the taxi, and I thought about it later. I believe that in the hubbub of the party, when cherry brandy, kummel, and meeting new people had made me restless and unhappy, I told him. Instead of going to the Via Po, I had gone to the hairdresser—a little hairdresser two steps from the hotel— and while she was drying my hair I heard the sharp voice of the manicurist behind the glass partition telling how she was awakened that morning by the smell of milk spilled on the gas stove. "What a mess. Even the cat couldn't take it. Tonight I'll have to clean the burner." That was enough for me to see a kitchen, an unmade bed, dirty panes on the balcony door, a dark staircase seemingly carved out of the wall. Leaving the hairdresser, I thought only of the old courtyard, and I went back to the hotel and left my fur. I had to return to that Via della Basilica and perhaps someone might recognize me; I didn't want to seem so proud.
I had gone there, after exploring the district first. I knew the houses, I knew the stores. I pretended to stop and examine the shop windows, but really I was hesitating: it seemed impossible that I had been a child in those crannies, and at the same time, with something like fear, I felt no longer myself. The quarter was much dirtier than I remembered it. Underneath the portico on the little square I saw the shop of the old woman who sold herbs; now there was a thin little man, but the bags of seeds and the bunches of herbs were the same. On summer afternoons the shop used to give off a pungent smell of countryside and spices. Farther down the bombs had destroyed an alley. Who knows what's become of Carlotta, the girls, Slim? Or of Pia's children? If the bombs had flattened the whole district, it would have been easier to face my memories. I went down the forbidden alley, passed the tiled doorways of the brothels. How many times had we run by those doorways? The afternoon I stared at a soldier who came out with a dark look... what had got into me? And by the time I was old enough to dare to discuss such things (and the district had begun to make me less afraid than angry and disgusted), I was going to my shop in another part of town and had friends and knew all about it because I was working.
I arrived in the Via della Basilica and didn't have the courage. I passed in front of that courtyard and caught a glimpse of the low vaulting of a second-story bedroom and of balconies. I was already in the Via Milano; impossible to go back. The mattress maker looked at me from his doorway.
I told Morelli something of all this at the height of the party when it was nearly morning and one kept on drinking and talking just to hold out a little longer. I said: "Morelli, these people dancing and getting drunk are well-born. They've had butlers, nurses, maids. They've had country vacations, all kinds of protection. Good for them. Do you think that any of them could have started from nothing—from a courtyard the size of a grave—and got to this party?"
And Morelli patted my arm and said: "Cheers. We arrived. If necessary we'll even get home."
"It's easy," I said, "for the wives and daughters of wealthy families to dress the way they're dressed. They've only to ask. They don't even have to sleep around. Give you my word, I'd rather dress real whores. At least they know what work is."
"Do whores still dress?" Morelli said.
We had eaten and danced. We had met many people. Morelli always had someone at his shoulder who was saying loudly: "Be seeing you." I recognized some names and faces of people who had been in our fitting room in Rome. I recognized some gowns: a countess wore one with a peplum which we had designed and which I myself had sent several days before. A little woman in ruffles even gave me a tiny smile; her escort turned around; I recognized him, too; they had been married the year before in Rome. He bowed deeply and gravely in recognition—he was a tall, blond diplomat—then he was jerked away: I suppose his wife brought him to his senses by reminding him that I was the dressmaker. That was when my blood began to boil. Then came a collection for the blind: a man in a dinner jacket and a red paper hat made a comic speech about the blind and deaf, and two blindfolded women ran around the room grabbing men who, after paying, could kiss them. Morelli paid. Then the orchestra began playing again and some groups got noisy, singing and chasing one another. Morelli came back to the table with a large woman in rose lamé with the belly of a fish; a young man and a cool young woman who had just stopped dancing and suddenly dropped on the divan. The man immediately jumped up.
"My friend Clelia Oitana," Morelli was saying.
The large woman sat down, fanning herself, and looked at me. The other, in a low-cut, clinging violet gown, had already examined me and smiled at Morelli as he lit her cigarette.
I don't recall what was said at first. I was watching the younger woman's smile. She had an air of having always known me, of mocking both Morelli and me, although she was only watching the smoke from her cigarette. The other woman laughed and prattled nonsense. The young man asked me to dance. We danced. He was called Fefé. He told me something about Rome, tried to glue himself to me and squeeze me and asked if Morelli were really my squire. I told him I wasn't a horse. Then, laughing, he pulled me closer. He must have had more to drink than I.
When we came back, there was only the fat woman, still fanning herself. Morelli was making his rounds. Fish-belly sent the bored young man off to find something, them patted me on the knee with a neat little hand and gave me a malicious look. My blood boiled again.
"You were in the hotel," she whispered, "when poor Rosetta Mola was taken sick last night?"
"Oh, you know her? How is she?" I asked immediately.
"They say she's out of danger." She shook her head and sighed. "And tell me, did she really sleep in that hotel? What girls. Was she in there all day? Was she really alone?"
Her fat, dancing eyes bored in like two needles. She was trying to control herself but didn't succeed.
"Imagine! We saw her the night of the dance. She seemed calm enough... Such distinguished people. She danced a great deal."
I saw Morelli approaching.
"Listen, did you see her, afterwards? They say she was still in her party dress."
I mumbled something: that I hadn't seen anything. A furtiveness in the woman's tone prompted me to hold back. Or perhaps just contempt. Everybody came up, Morelli, the brunette in violet, that unpleasant Fefé. But the old lady, opening wide her large sharp eyes, said: "I was really hoping that you had seen her... I know her parents ... What a shame. To want to kill oneself. What a day ... One thing is certain, she didn't say prayers in that bed."
The brunette smoked, curled up on the divan, and looking at us mockingly said to me: "Adele sees sex everywhere." She blew out smoke. "But it's no longer the fashion... Only servants or little dressmakers want to kill themselves after a night of love..."
"A night and a day," Fefé said.
"Nonsense. Three months wouldn't have been enough... As far as I'm concerned, she was drunk and mistook the dosage..."
"Probable," Morelli said. "Or rather, it's certain." He bent toward the fat woman. Instead of taking her by the arm, he touched her shoulder and they went off, he joking, she bouncing.
The brunette spun around in a whiff of smoke, gave me a hard look, and praised the cut of my dress. She said it was easier to dress well in Rome. "It's another society. More exclusive. Did you make it yourself?"
She asked this with her dissatisfied and quizzical air.
"I don't have time to make my dresses," I snapped. "I'm always busy."
"Do you see people?" she asked. "Do you see so-and-so? Do you see such-and-such?" There was no end to the names.
"So-and-so and such-and-such," I said, "don't pay by day the debts they contract at night. And as for
her,"
I went on, "when too many bills come due, she escapes to Capri..."
"Stupendous!" the brunette shouted. "What nice people."
They called her from the crowd; someone had come. She got up, brushed the ashes off her dress, and rushed off.
I was alone with Fefé, who looked at me dumbly. I told him: "You're thirsty, young man. Why don't you circulate?"
He had already explained that his system of drinking was to stop at the various tables, recognize somebody at each, and accept a drink. "You mix your drinks. However... You dance, and there's your cocktail."
I sent him away. Morelli arrived, and that thin smile of his.
"Like the women?" he asked.
Then it struck me that the party didn't mean much to me, and I began to tell him what I really felt.
4
But before leaving me that evening Morelli gave me a lecture. He said that I was prejudiced—I had only one prejudice, but it was a big one: I thought that working to get ahead, or even just to get by, was as important as the qualities, some admittedly stupid, of well-born people. He said that when I talked enviously of certain fortunes I seemed to be taking it out on the pleasure of life itself. "At bottom, Clelia," he said, "you wouldn't think it right to win a football pool."
"Why not?" I said.
"But it's the same as being well-born. Just luck, a privilege..."
I didn't answer; I was tired, I pulled his arm.
Morelli said: "Is there really this great difference between doing nothing because one is too rich or doing nothing because one is too poor?"
"But when you get there by yourself..."
"So..." Morelli said. " 'Get there.' A sporting program." He barely moved his mouth. "Sport means renunciation and an early death. Why not stop along the road and enjoy the day? If you can. Is it always necessary to have suffered and come out of a hole?"
I kept still and pulled him by the arm.
"You hate other people's pleasures, Clelia, and that's a fact. You're wrong, Clelia. You hate yourself. And to think what a gifted person you are. Cheer up, make other people happy, forget your grudge. Other people's pleasures are yours, too..."
The next day I went to the Via Po without announcing myself or telephoning the contractors. They didn't know I was already in Turin. I wanted to get an unrehearsed idea of what had been done and how it had been done. When I came into the wide street and saw the hill in the background streaked with snow, and the church of the Gran Madre, I remembered it was carnival time. Here, too, stands with
torrone,
horns, masks, and colored streamers filled the arcades. It was early morning but the people were swarming toward the square at the end of the street where the booths were.
The street was even wider than I remembered. The war had opened a frightful hole, gutting three or four large buildings. Now it looked like a big excavation of earth and stones, a few tufts of grass here and there; one thought of a cemetery. Our store was right here, on the edge of the blankness, white with lime, still a doorless and windowless shell.
Two plasterers wearing white paper hats were seated on the floor. One was dissolving whitewash in a bucket, and the other was washing his hands in a lime-caked can. My arrival didn't seem to affect them. The second of them had a cigarette stuck behind his ear.
"The supervisor is never here this early," they told me.
"When does he come?"
"Not before evening. He's working at Madonna di Campagna."
I asked if they were the whole gang. They surveyed my hips with mild interest, not raising their eyes very far.
I stamped my foot. "Who's in charge here?"