Authors: Cesare Pavese
"You can't," he said. "The indecencies must be kept up only in company; the ladies and heavy fathers must hear them. More orderly that way."
I asked him who these awful children were. He told me names, giving me to understand that they weren't all respectable people, that the young were corrupted and getting worse: "It's not a question of social class, for God's sake, but after the war and even before it, what has any of that mattered?" According to him, one used to be able to mix with people only on condition of knowing who one was. "Now these people don't know any more who they are or what they want," he said. "They don't even enjoy themselves. They can't talk: they shout. They have the vices of the old, but not the experience..."
I thought of the girl in the hotel and was about to ask him if he had heard any more about her. But I didn't do it; I realized he was stubborn in such matters, that for all his manners he had hair on his stomach, was graying and getting old. "He's as old as my father," I thought. "He knows so much and doesn't know anything. At least Father kept still and let us alone."
Morelli was now in the crowd, arguing. He was telling the bearded fellow that they should learn how to handle women instead of discussing nonsense with them, that they should learn how to live and stop being children; while the other, naturally, wanted to convince Morelli and make him agree that in life people are only acting. I have never seen Morelli so annoyed. The women were amused.
I caught Mariella as she went by, smiling easily at a preoccupied gentleman; I took her aside and said that we—that is, I—wanted to say good night and thank her for the evening. She was surprised and said that she still wanted to see me again, we had many things to talk over; she wanted to persuade me to so something for them, Momina had told her how nice I was.
"She didn't come this evening," I said, just to say something.
Mariella brightened and excused Momina. She said Momina had telephoned saying she didn't know, she thought she would visit the Molas.
"You know... ?" she said, lowering her voice and raising her eyes.
"Yes," I said. "How is Rosetta?"
Then Mariella colored and, flustered, said that if I knew Rosetta we would have to talk about it; poor thing, her parents didn't understand her and made life impossible for her, she was strong and sensitive, she absolutely needed to live, to have things, she was more mature than her years and she, Mariella, was afraid that now their friendship wouldn't survive that terrible experience.
"But she, the girl, how is she?"
"Yes, yes, she's recovered, but she doesn't want to see us, she doesn't want to see anyone. She only asks for Momina and won't see anyone else..."
"That's nothing," I said, "provided she gets better."
"Of course, but I'm afraid she hates me..."
I looked at her. She seemed upset.
"It must be the nausea after the Veronal," I said. "When one's sick to the stomach, one doesn't want to see people."
"But she sees Momina," Mariella shot back immediately. "It makes me sick."
I thought: You've some growing up to do, my dear. I hope I could control myself better in your place.
I said: "Rosetta didn't take Veronal just to spite you." I said this with a goodbye smile. Mariella smiled and held out her hand.
I waved at the nearest people, leaving Morelli in his circle with the bow tie and the girls, and went off. It was drizzling outside and I took a trolley on the avenue.
7
Not two days had passed before Mariella telephoned me. I hadn't seen anyone since that evening and had spent the whole time in the Via Po. The girl's voice laughed, insisted, panted with volubility. She wanted me to see her friends, to see them for her sake and help them. Would I be able to see her that afternoon for tea? Or better, could we stop a moment in Loris's studio?
"That way we'll encourage them," she said. "If you knew how nice they are."
She picked me up at the Via Po, dressed in a gay fur jacket in the Cossack style. The house was on the other side of the Via Po. We went under the porticoes around the square and Mariella drew away from the carnival booths without a glance. I thought of how only a few days' absence from Rome had settled me into new responsibilities and the company of true natives. Even Maurizio had sent no more narcissi.
Mariella chattered and told me many things about life in Turin and the shops. For having seen them only as a customer, she knew them well. To judge a shop by its show window is difficult for anybody who has never dressed one. Mariella, however, understood them. She told me that her grandmother was still the terror of the dressmakers.
We arrived at the top of a dirty stairway that I didn't much like. I would rather have continued talking. Mariella rang.
All painters' studios are alike. They have the disorder of certain shops, but studied and done on purpose. You never can find out when they work; there always seems to be something wrong with the light. We found Loris on the unmade bed—no bow tie this time —and the girl with bangs let us in. She had on a threadbare coat and glowered at Mariella. She was smoking. Loris was also smoking, a pipe,- and both seemed put out of temper by our arrival. Mariella laughed warmly and said: "Where's my stool?" Loris stayed on the bed.
We sat down with forced gaiety. Mariella began her prattling, asked for news, was amazed, went to the window. Loris, black and taciturn, barely responded. The thin girl, whose name was Nene, looked me over. She was a strange, heavy-lipped girl of about twenty-eight. She smoked with impatient gestures and bit her nails. She smiled nicely like a child, but her abrupt manner was annoying. It was clear that she considered Mariella a fool.
As it happened, I expected what followed. They began to talk about their own affairs, about people I didn't know. There was the story of a painting sold before it was finished, but then the painter decided it was already perfectly finished as it stood and he didn't want to touch it again, but the client wanted it really finished and the painter wouldn't hear of it and wouldn't change his mind. Nene got heated, indignant and excited, chewed her cigarette and took the words out of Mariella's mouth. I understand how people talk shop according to their professions; but there's nobody like painters, all those people you hear arguing in the cheaper restaurants. I could understand if they talked about brushes, colors, turpentine—the things they use—but no, these people make it difficult on purpose, and sometimes no one knows what certain words mean, there's always somebody else who suddenly starts arguing, says no, that it means this other thing, and everything's upside down. The kind of words you see in the newspapers when they write about painting. I expected that Nene would also exaggerate. But no. She talked rapidly and angrily but didn't lose her childlike air: she explained to Mariella that one never stops a painting too soon. Loris sucked on his pipe in silence. Mariella, who cared nothing about painting, suddenly came out with: Why didn't we discuss the play? Loris turned over on the bed, Nene looked unpleasantly at both of us. She was aware of it herself and burst out laughing. It struck me that she laughed in dialect, as counter girls laugh, as I sometimes laugh myself.
Nene said: "But it's all up in the air now. After what's happened to Rosetta, we can't stage a suicide..."
"Nonsense," Mariella shouted. "Nobody'd think twice about it."
Nene looked at us again, provocatively and happy.
"That's all woman's stuff," Loris said, contemptuous. "It might interest the bourgeois husband, but as for me... Anyhow, we have to deal with the Martelli women, with the people putting up the cash. I don't know what Rosetta may have done... What I like, on the other hand, is this fantasia on reality in which the artistic situation jumps into life. The personal side of it doesn't concern me... But it would be too good if Rosetta had really acted under suggestion... However, the Martellis have backed out."
"What's all this have to do with it?" Mariella said. "Art is something else..."
"Are you sure?" Loris argued. "It's another way of looking at the same thing, if you like, but not another thing. As for me, I'd like to dramatize the dramatic suggestion itself. I'm sure it would be fantastic... a collage of theater news ... to treat these clothes you wear, this room, this bed, as the stuff of theater ... an existential theater. Is that how one says it?"
He looked at me, really at me, from that bed, with those hairy eyes. I can't stand these nasty-clever people and was about to tell him off when Nene jumped up, fresh: "If Rosetta had really died, one could do it.
Un hommage à Rosette ..."
Mariella said: "Who's not in favor?"
"Momina," the other said. "The Martelli women, the president, Carla and Mizi. They were Momina's friends ..."
"That fool should have died, it would have been better..." Mariella cried out.
I'm used to hearing all the scandal and gossip of Rome in our shop, but this bickering between friends because a third one didn't succeed in killing herself impressed me. I was on the point of believing that the acting had already begun and that all that was going on was theatrical make-believe, as Loris wanted. Coming to Turin, I walked out on a stage and was acting now myself. "It's carnival time," I thought to myself. "You'll find that in Turin they play these tricks every year."
"As for me," Loris said, biting his pipe, "you agree among yourselves."
I studied Nene's bangs, her heavy lips, her faded coat. People live in strange ways. Listening to them talk about their work and the right they had to sell it unfinished, I understood that they were defending not so much the money as their arrogance. I wanted to say to her: My dear girl, you never know where the next meal's coming from, yet you put on these airs. Where do you sleep at night? Does someone keep you? Mariella, who doesn't paint, is well-born and has a fur coat.
They began to argue again about the play and said that there wasn't time to find another, and all right, they wouldn't do anything this year.
"That fool," Mariella said. "Let's read a single act, without action or scenery," Nene said, and then Loris jumped up, looked at them disgustedly, as the idiots they were, and said: "All right. Only leave me alone."
I looked again at a certain unframed picture against the wall under the window. It seemed dirty, unfinished: since I'd come in I'd been asking myself what it was. I didn't want anyone to notice my interest, lest Mariella should say: "Come on, show her your pictures." But that mess of violet and blackish colors fascinated me; I didn't want to look at it and yet I always returned to it; I thought to myself that it was like the whole room and Loris's face.
I asked when they planned to give the play. "Who knows?" Nene said. "Nobody's coughed up a penny yet."
"Don't you have an angel?"
"The angels," Mariella said nastily, "think they can impose their tastes even on us... That's why."
Loris said: "I'd be happy if anyone tried to impose a taste on me ... But you don't find anyone nowadays who has a taste. They don't know what they want..."
Mariella gave a self-satisfied laugh, from inside her fur coat. Nene squirmed and said: "There are too many Martellis and too many Mizis mixed up in this. Too many hysterical women... Momina..."
"She overdoes everything," Mariella said.
"Momina knows what she wants. Let her do what she likes."
"So then who will come to hear us?" said Mariella, annoyed. "Who'll do the acting? The hysterical women?"
"Acting is out. We'll just read."
"Nonsense," Loris said. "We wanted to paint an atmosphere..."
They went on awhile. It was clear that the painter only wanted to daub some scenery to earn a little money. And that Mariella wanted to be an actress. Only Nene seemed without pretenses, but there was something at the bottom of her interest, too.
Then Momina arrived.
8
She came in with that discontented, dominating air of hers. Her gloves alone were worth more than the whole studio. Nene, opening the door for her, seemed like a servant. Everyone said a smiling hello.
"Why, you visit everybody," Momina said on seeing me.
"That's not difficult in Turin," I replied.
She moved here and there, going up very close to the pictures, and I saw that she was nearsighted. All the better. I watched Mariella closely.
"Put on the lights," she told us. "Don't you see it's night?"
When the lights came on, the window disappeared and the painting became a puddle of flayed faces.
"Everybody's dropping out," Nene said. "I'm dropping out, too. One loses time over a lot of dumb excuses and we still don't know What we're doing. Clara's right, let's recite in the dark, like a radio broadcast..."
Momina smiled in her dissatisfied way. She didn't answer Nene but instead told Loris that she had talked with somebody who had told her this and that, and Loris grunted something from the bed, holding his ankle; Mariella jumped in and they laughed and chattered and Nene said: "Crazy nonsense," and they forgot about the theater. Now Momina held forth, telling about a certain Gege di Piové who, meeting a girl he'd known as a child—they hadn't seen each other for years—went up to her in the bar of a big hotel: "Hello."
"Hello."
"They tell me you've developed," and slipping his hand down the front of her dress he brought out a breast and they both laughed with Filippo the bartender and the onlookers. Momina and Nene laughed; Mariella looked disgusted; Loris jumped up from the bed, saying: "It's true. She has magnificent tits."
"Slander," Mariella said. "Vanna's not like that."
"They're not magnificent?" Loris said.
They went on in that vein and Momina skipped from one subject to another, looking at me out of the corners of her eyes in her searching way, asked my opinion, tried to fascinate me. I was glad that the play didn't come up again. Only Mariella was restless, one saw that Momina had taken her place. Momina was younger than I, but not by much: she dressed very well, a gray suit under her beaver coat, her skin was massaged, her face fresh; she took advantage of her nearsightedness by passing it off as detachment. I recalled her violet dress on the first night and looked at her naked ring finger.