Two Friends Page 20

  “Finally!” Maurizio said, in a tone that was already less intimate and bore a trace of irony. He opened the car door, saying, “Get in, get in … I haven’t seen you in ages! Get in, we’ll talk.”

  “I’m not alone,” I said, not moving.

  Maurizio answered calmly: “I can see that … Well, why don’t you both get in?”

  I took a step as if to get into the car. But Maurizio’s voice, now completely sarcastic, stopped me in my tracks: “I see you haven’t changed … head still in the clouds … Why don’t you introduce us?”

  I thought to myself: “Here we go, right from the start, putting me in my place and making me feel inferior. He can go to hell.” I gave Nella a little push and said: “Nella, this is Maurizio.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Maurizio said, taking Nella’s hand. Timidly, she mumbled a few words. “Here, climb in next to me,” Maurizio said, pointing to the front seat, “there’s enough space for all of us.” Without a word, Nella climbed in next to him and I followed. Maurizio shut the door and we set off.

  Maurizio drove a short distance without saying a word. Nella was sitting next to him in an embarrassed, almost fearful position, pressed against my side, as if afraid that he might touch her. I had placed my arm on the headrest and could almost touch Maurizio’s neck. As we turned onto a larger, more brightly illuminated street, I glanced over at him, scanning his profile as he drove. I hadn’t seen him in four years, but at first he did not seem changed. His face was still pale and perfectly smooth beneath his dark hair, which was not exactly curly but, just as

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  I remembered, had a slight undulation and a kind of liveliness, falling in long, graceful waves at his temples and on the nape of his neck. His eyes were black, deeply set and slightly hollow, and there was a look of concentration and sharpness about him, oblique and fierce, like a predatory bird. But something had changed: his mouth, which I remembered as having a particular, almost contemptuous, even slightly cruel expression, was now partly hidden by a short mustache that almost completely covered his upper lip. There was something slightly unreal about it; in my mind I continued to see Maurizio’s mouth as I remembered it, without the mustache, and the two images did not quite coincide; instead, they seemed superimposed. It was almost as if he were wearing a mask which I could see, while still remembering his real face underneath. The dimple in his willful, shapely chin seemed to underscore his domineering, obstinate nature. As if sensing my gaze with his highly developed awareness, he was silent and still as I watched him. As soon as my curiosity was satisfied and I turned away, he began to speak. “Let’s go to the Gianicolo,” he said; “it’s a beautiful night … We can talk in peace … unless the signorina would rather go to a café …”

  The car turned off of the Corso and sped down Via del Plebiscito toward Largo Argentina. It was still early and the streets were illuminated and full of cars. The car turned onto Via Merulana; we crossed the Ponte Garibaldi and took the Viale del Re. “You keep staring at me … do I look so different?” he asked.

  Somewhat disconcerted, I said: “Not at all … except for the mustache.”

  “Left over from the war … I had a beard when I was with the partigiani.”

  So he had been with the partigiani and he was letting me know, I thought to myself. It was almost as if he knew that I had done nothing, that during the civil war I had stayed in Rome and hadn’t even bothered to hide, since I wasn’t on any list. Once again I sensed the feeling of inferiority that had so deeply

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  marked my relationship with Maurizio. I wondered whether I should tell him that I had joined the Party, but decided to wait. He added: “I’m sure you haven’t changed … I don’t even need to look at you; I’m sure you’re still the same.”

  “Well, I’ve changed too,” I couldn’t help saying, with a touch of irritation in my voice. “I haven’t grown a mustache, but I’ve changed.”

  “In what way, I’d like to know? When I spotted you, I thought you looked exactly the same … still that intelligent look … always the intellectual …”

  I felt a sense of profound exasperation; once again, he was accusing me of being an intellectual. “I see your opinion hasn’t changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You still think that intellectuals are good for nothing.”

  “Why do you say that?” He feigned surprise. “I only said that you looked like an intellectual, not that you looked like a good-for-nothing.”

  Once again he was right, and once again I had revealed my own weakness. I bit my tongue out of exasperation and said, “I know that’s what you believe.”

  “No, actually, that’s not at all what I believe,” he said, quite seriously.

  Meanwhile, we had turned onto Via Dandolo and were speeding up the spiraling road, swerving around each turn in the shade of the tall trees. I felt Nella’s hand reach for mine, and once again, I became irritated with her. It seemed to me that she had noticed Maurizio’s effect on me and wanted to console me with her gesture, and assure me of her solidarity and affection. Almost violently, I pulled my hand away and said with ill-concealed bitterness: “So neither of us has changed … that’s the truth of the matter.”

  After a long series of uphill turns, we finally arrived at the square in front of the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola. Maurizio drove up to the stone parapet and turned off the motor. For a moment we sat in silence. Then Maurizio said, “Let’s stretch our legs,” opening the car door. We climbed out and went over to the stone wall, gazing down at the sparkling lights of the darkened city. I was eager to reveal that I had joined the Party; it was the most important news in

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  my life, and also the newest weapon in my struggle with Maurizio. But I wanted to approach the subject gradually: “So,” I asked in the dark, “do you still live in your old villa on Via Bertoloni?”

  “Yes,” he answered, distractedly.

  “With your parents?”

  “My father is dead. I live with my mother.”

  “And your sister?”

  “My sister?”

  “Is she married?”

  “No.”

  “Do you still give parties with music and dancing?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And cocktail parties?”

  “Yes.” He was silent for a moment. “We had a party just the other day in honor of my Allied friends … If we’d crossed paths earlier, I would have invited you.”

  “Do you still have a butler and staff?”

  My tone had become clearly sarcastic. Still he answered with the same calm confidence. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Do you still live off of your annuity?”

  “More or less. But I also work.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I work in the movies.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, it’s not much … I’m in business with a small producer.”

  Cautiously, I asked: “So you were with the partigiani?”

  “Yes, in the North, in the Veneto.”

  “What party were you affiliated with?”

  I was so used to having him slip through my fingers

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  that for a moment I was afraid he would say that he had been with the Communists and that my secret weapon would be obliterated before I had even had the chance to use it. But he said, with the same calm air: “Oh, no party in particular … I’m more or less a liberal, if you must know my political allegiance.”

  I hoped he would ask me about myself, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Let’s talk about other things … It’s such a beautiful night, and this is such a beautiful view.” I detected a decidedly ironic note in his voice. In fact, after a moment, he added: “You’re just being your usual intellectual self … you can’t relax even for a moment.”

  “I’m not an intellectual,” I couldn’t help saying. “The reason why I like to discuss such matters even while gazing out at the view on a b
eautiful night is that I’m a Communist. I joined up after the war.”

  He said nothing. “The revolution is coming,” I blurted out, “and when it does, there will be no place in it for people like you.”

  He did not respond to my attack. Instead he turned to Nella, unexpectedly, and asked her: “Signorina, are you a Communist like your boyfriend?”

  I was surprised to hear her respond, shyly but firmly: “I haven’t joined the Party, but I agree with Sergio, naturally.” I felt her hand squeeze mine, and again felt irritated by the gesture, taking it to mean that she thought I was weak, despite my political affiliations, and needed her help. But I also felt a tinge of gratitude, and could not help squeezing her hand as well. Maurizio insisted: “Do you also believe that soon it will be the end of the road for the likes of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see,” he continued, “so we’re class enemies.”

  “That’s right,” I said triumphantly.

  “Well,” he said, after a short pause, “that shouldn’t keep us from being friends, at least until the revolution comes.”

  I detected a sincere, friendly tone in his voice, and all of a sudden, as if pushed by an unexpected inspiration, I said: “We’ve always been friends … and I hope that before that day comes, we will become even more so.”

  “What do you mean?”

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  “I hope that eventually you will feel the same way I do … Then we will not only be friends, but also comrades.”

  He was silent for a moment. I hoped he would say “perhaps”; I had never loved him as I did at that moment. But instead, after a long silence, he said, slowly: “Unfortunately, at least for the time being, I’m not looking for comrades …”

  “Go to hell,” I thought, with some disappointment. Instead, I said, “You never know.”

  As if struck by my good sense, Maurizio answered, “Yes, that’s true, one never knows.”

  We remained there, gazing silently at the panorama. Finally, just as I was thinking, “Now I’ll tell him that I need to go home … He shouldn’t get the idea that I enjoy his company,” he suddenly took the initiative, saying brusquely, “I’ll take you home … It’s late.”

  I bit my lip and followed him to the car. We did not speak during the drive. At a certain point Maurizio asked Nella, “Where do you live, signorina?” With a slight note of satisfaction, she said, “with Sergio.”

  When we arrived at our destination, he got out of the car and helped Nella to the curb. “Listen,” he said, “I have a few friends coming over on Sunday. I’d love it if you would join us … That is, if you don’t mind spending time with a bunch of capitalists.”

  I answered that we would love to come and thought I detected a happy note in Nella’s voice as she said, “Of course, we’ll be there.” Once again, I became annoyed with her. Then the car drove away and we went inside.

  [V]

  In order to make clear how important this meeting

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  was to me at the time, I should reiterate how firmly I believed in the imminence of a revolution in Italy. I was as convinced of it as I am of writing these words today. It seemed impossible that the disorder, poverty, corruption, and social disintegration which had befallen the country in those years would not lead to a revolution. I had no doubt that as soon as the Allied forces left, a revolution would break out, destroying everything in its path. But even more than the conditions in the country, what drove me to believe this was something that lay in the deepest recesses of my soul, something that I considered to be the only firm, luminous reality in my life, buried beneath the contradictory passions, the impotence, and the darkness. It was my rapt, ineffable, almost mystical hope for a better world, one where I would finally feel happy and at peace. It is impossible to explain in words what this hope meant to me; such feelings can be understood only by those who have experienced them. I can only say that my hope, which rendered the day-to-day reality that surrounded me almost unbearable, conjured a not-too-distant mirage of an almost perfect human society; it was my firm belief that the cruel imperfections of the present world were the result of social ills which the revolution would eliminate. Depending on one’s point of view, this mirage could be described as deceptively utopian, or as an achievable goal. I suppose that those who find pleasure in the world as it is, who love reality and do not believe that things can improve except in certain limited circumstances, would see this hope as a pipe dream. And those who do not see it as a mirage in the true sense, or who prefer this mirage to reality—because it creates a goal that is not immediate or material and allows them to project the best part of themselves upon that goal—fall into the category that is vulgarly referred to as idealists. I was an idealist, a concept which has become quite ridiculous in our time but which originally had a very precise meaning. I did not approve of the world as it was, either socially or personally; in other words I loved neither the world nor myself, and thus it was logical that I should believe in something that seemed to promise both a better world and a better self.

  I imagine that such sentiments might drive a

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  more simple man to religious exaltation; in the past, they might have driven even a cultivated man to such religious zeal. But I was not a simple man; as Maurizio liked to say, I was an intellectual, and we were no longer living in the Middle Ages, but rather in the twentieth century. Communism, whose theories I had studied in depth, seemed to provide a blueprint which, through mathematical calculations and hypotheses based on real-life experience and concrete, undeniable values, would lead to the construction of a solid edifice in the near future. I had examined Communist theory from every angle, and I was increasingly impressed by how closely enthusiasm and calculation, psychology and statistics, theory and practice, history and utopianism, means and ends, were bound together. Communist theory was like a marvelously well-built machine, in which moral and human factors fit together perfectly. In a century marked by scientific progress, Communist theory, which was ultimately as dependent on faith as Christianity, had the advantage of being expressed in the language of our time, which was not religious but scientific. In other words, Communist theory represented the embodiment of the ancient dream of total palingenesis, if one believed—as I did—that science was man’s truest path toward pulling himself out of the dark ages.

  There was something else, in addition to my exalted, mystical hope and my confidence in science, which confirmed both my hope and my confidence: my acute, absolutely real sense of the decadent, faded, empty, spent, worn, tired state of the world that Communism intended to banish, by which I mean the world of which Maurizio was an amiable but typical representative. I felt that this world was irreparably doomed, not only in the vague future—one can say this about all living things—but now, in the very near future. The corruption and stultification of Maurizio’s world, which I sensed not only intellectually but even physically, could not go on for much longer. The world that blocked the way toward Communism was to me like a majestic old tree which has been devoured from the inside by insects, sustained only by its bark, so weak that it could be knocked over by a child despite its enormous size. Of course I realized

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  that not everyone could see the internal corruption of that world, but it seemed to me that it would soon be apparent to all. I was simply more informed and more prescient. But soon, everyone would know that the tree was only a pile of dust. And then the revolution would erupt, as they say, spontaneously.

  It is likely that my state of mind, which was more one of certainty than one of expectancy, rendered me particularly insensitive to the small complications of daily life. Maurizio’s invitation gave me the sense of once again entering into a dialogue with him, a healthy exchange of ideas, but it also forced me to face certain challenges that I normally tried to ignore by losing myself in dreams of total palingenesis.

  The invitation was for seven-o’clock—in other words, it was a cocktail party. Nella and I spe
nt the afternoon at home; I worked on my translation while Nella lay on the bed reading as usual. She was a bit agitated; several times she interrupted her reading to kiss me behind the ear, or to speak to me from the bed, or to complete some small task or walk around the room. I knew what was bothering her: our visit to Maurizio’s. I knew it because I also felt the same agitation, and for the same reason. Thus, after she had listlessly picked up and laid down her reading several times and I had listlessly forced myself to continue working, we finally reached the end of the afternoon. I glanced at my watch and shut the dictionary, covered the typewriter, saying, as I rose from the table: “I think it’s time to go to Maurizio’s.”

  There was no answer from the bed. I turned toward Nella and saw that she was lying on her back with one arm under her head, staring up at the ceiling. She was wearing only her slip, her breasts and arms bare. I said quietly: “Come on, get dressed … it’s time to go.”

  Finally, she answered me in an obstinate tone I had never heard: “You go … I’ll stay here.”

  I went over to the bed, surprised, and asked: “Why don’t you want to come? He invited you as well.”

  “I don’t feel like going … You go … I’ll wait here.”

  Now more irritated than surprised, I asked: “What’s

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  wrong with you? Why don’t you want to come?”

  “I just don’t.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s the only answer I can give you.”

  I sat on the bed and took her hand. “But why? Don’t you like Maurizio?”

  “No, that’s not it,” she said, breaking free almost rudely. “I don’t have anything against him … I don’t mind him at all.”

  “So what is it?”