Two Friends (7 page)

“That’s right.”

“Well, I can imagine that your point is that those responsible are not the military but the Fascists and the government in general. How original …” He dug around in his pocket for his gold cigarette case, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. Sergio watched as he

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smoked and repeatedly pushed back one of his blond curls, a familiar gesture. Just as he had when he saw the suffering of the two dying animals, Sergio felt the desire to speak up and explain his thoughts, or rather his feelings, but once again he lost his nerve. Maurizio was obviously a million miles away from what he considered to be the true path, and he felt an almost painful need to warn him and open his eyes. Maurizio did not seem to think that he too might be partly responsible. How could he, when even those directly and flagrantly responsible, the generals and the bosses, did not know it? Sergio felt a terrible sense of futility. He held out his hand, took back the newspaper, and said, somewhat falsely: “It doesn’t matter … If you don’t feel like reading it, I’m sure you have your reasons.”

There was a long pause. Maurizio smoked, seemingly lost in thought. Then he said, “How long do you think the war will last at this point?”

Sergio answered, “I don’t know, probably a long time.”

“I’m convinced,” Maurizio said, “that it will end very soon … I think the Allies will be in Rome in a week at the most, and then everything will return to normal. That’s why I’m going to Capri; it’s not worth giving up our vacation and even risking injury for something that is about to end.”

He continued to smoke with an air of conviction, adding, after a short pause: “Considering everything, Italy will come out all right … We haven’t been in the war for too long … As soon as it really got started, it’s all over, at least for us …”

Once again, Sergio was tempted to contradict his friend’s reasoning, which to him seemed so full of cynicism and skepticism. To Maurizio it was simply good sense. Once again, he held his tongue. Then he asked: “And then what?”

“Then, nothing,” Maurizio said offhandedly. “The Allies will arrive and set up whatever government they please. Of course, they’ll take away our colonies and our empire. After all, it’s what we deserve. If we hadn’t gone to war, we would have kept everything,

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and Italy would have become the richest, most influential country in Europe. Mussolini was stupid.”

“Only stupid?”

“I can’t wait for it all to end,” Maurizio continued, without noting Sergio’s interruption. “I’ve wasted the past few years … I’d like to get a degree, even though it’s late now.”

“What kind of degree?”

“Maybe law,” Maurizio answered, in an uncertain tone which reflected the uncertainty of his decision. “I must tell you that from time to time I think that you may be right … It’s not good to hang around doing nothing … even people like me who have enough to live on. You were right when you told Emilia that I was wasting my life, do you remember? It made me angry at the time, of course, because no one likes to hear certain things; and the way she said it was so irritating … But I have to admit it: you were right.”

Sergio said nothing and instead peered at his friend. He saw that Maurizio had changed, like his house and everything it contained. His face was still youthful and attractive, but it had a grim and tired quality that was new. His blue eyes, which had once been clear, limpid, and pure, seemed to have a dark halo around them, with a turbid, bored quality around the irises, a sickly glow. A line, as fine as a razor’s edge, framed one corner of his mouth, making that side of his face look ten years older. And he was losing his hair, unevenly and in a manner that suggested dissoluteness and fatigue: a few blond hairs still stuck out of the middle of his balding pate, combed back, fine and trembling like bushes in the middle of a hillside full of mud, stones, and boulders. It was the face of a man who had enjoyed life to the fullest, and who still knew how. But when he spoke of wasted time and admitted to Sergio that he was right, his tone was unusually sincere and almost anguished. Sergio was moved by the idea that Maurizio

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was opening up to him, and realized once again that
despite everything, his friend still occupied a place in his heart. As if guessing at his thoughts, Maurizio said: “I haven’t been well for some time … I think I smoke too much.” He threw away the cigarette he had just lit. “Or maybe I drink too much … And you know”—he hesitated for a moment and lowered his eyes almost shamefully—“the years go by and I realize I’m not young anymore.”

Gently, almost as if fearing that he would interrupt the flow of Maurizio’s confidences, Sergio said: “You’re only twenty-seven.”

“I know,” answered Maurizio, “but, I don’t know if it’s the same for you … probably not, because your life is so different from mine … but even though I’m twenty-seven, I feel as if I were forty. I notice it especially in my relations with women.” He stopped and was suddenly quiet, and seemed almost to regret having spoken.

“What do you mean, in your relations with women?”

“Well, you see,” Maurizio said, uncomfortably, “I have a lot of dealings with women … Let’s just say, I don’t have many distractions … And for some time it has felt like it’s always the same thing, and I’m bored.” After a moment he continued, in an exasperated tone: “It’s always the same—the meeting, the amusing repartee to show my interest, the invitation to go for a drive, dinner, or a day at the beach, the first kiss, then the second, then the third, and finally, the surrender. Every woman gives herself with the same gestures, the same words, the same objections, and the same impulses as the one who came before and the next one … You can see how all this could
become a bore,” he said, raising his voice slightly as if Sergio had contradicted him.

“I agree, of course,” Sergio said, with a smile that he knew to be slightly false. The smile of a man who has never been in love with a woman.

“It’s a bore,” Maurizio went on. “It almost sickens me … When I put my hand on a girl’s breast for the first time, it feels like the same breast as the last time, with another girl … And that goes for everything else, as well … Do you know what happened to me recently? After overcoming a woman’s final resistance I sent her away. I told her that I had a serious

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venereal disease and did not want to infect her. She was horrified, but I knew that if I insisted, illness or no illness, she would still be willing … They’re all the same, and I too keep repeating myself … All of this leads me to think that my youth is finished. What more is there to say?”

He seemed unhappy, but his uncomprehending, innocent sadness was like that of an animal that suddenly feels something amiss—a lessening or a change in its vitality—and cannot understand the cause. Maurizio did not understand the war or what was happening in his own house, just as he did not understand the illness of his cat and dog; in fact, he did not seem to understand even himself. After a pause, he said, “This is why I want to go to Capri. It’s relatively quiet there because of the war. I want to spend a summer alone, without anyone around, so I can reflect a bit. Meanwhile, the war will end and then I will return to Rome and make a decision.”

“What decision?”

“I don’t know … maybe I’ll find a job … or maybe I’ll get married … I’ll have lots of children and become a paterfamilias.” He said this with a certain sour note in his voice, unsentimentally, with a kind of coarseness that Sergio envied, if only momentarily. “Why are you smiling?” Maurizio asked. “Don’t you think I would be a good father?”

“I’m sure you would,” Sergio answered, now smiling sincerely.

“After all,” Maurizio said, more calmly, “this is more or less how things have always been. A young man would have a good time and then, later, he would get married. Why should I be different? I’ll get married, I’ll be faithful to my wife, I’ll work … A wife, children, and a job—it’s probably what I need.”

“What do your parents think of your plans?” Sergio asked, not knowing what to say.

“Oh, nothing. They don’t know … I am, as my father likes to say, his greatest worry in life. My mother

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behaves as if I were still seven years old … but they know nothing about my life.” By now Maurizio was speaking with complete openness, in a voice filled with fervor. He got up from the couch, went to a cabinet in a corner of the room, and opened it, revealing a bar, bottles, and mirrors gleaming. He poured himself a generous portion of whiskey. “Would you like some?” he asked.

“At this time of day? No, thank you.”

“It picks me up,” Maurizio said, pouring some water into the glass. “I confess that I was almost afraid that you would accept, because it has become very hard to find and can only be bought at a very
high price … I had a good supply at the beginning of the war but it’s almost gone now.”

“Did your family stock up on many provisions before the war?” Sergio asked, gently.

“I’m not sure,” Maurizio said vaguely, slightly surprised at the question. “I think so … When the war began, and for months after that, my mother did nothing but accumulate things, as if we were under siege … I think we have enough clothes and food to last us several years.” He returned to the couch and sat sideways, with one leg over the armrest, glass in hand. “Tell me the truth … You must see me as a kind of glutton: drinking, smoking, making love to women.”

Sergio hesitated and peered closely at his friend before answering: in effect, the word Maurizio had chosen fit him quite well. His face, once so fresh and youthful, now clouded and impure, was that of a glutton. “No,” he said finally, “I think you look tired.”

“I am,” Maurizio said in a tone that was suddenly innocent and plaintive, almost like that of a child. “You know, I hardly sleep. The doctor says there’s nothing wrong with me … but I don’t sleep at all, even when I take pills.”

“You need to rest,” Sergio hazarded.

“Yes,” Maurizio answered with conviction, “I need to rest. In Capri I’ll eat, exercise, sleep … it’s exactly what I need. It’s probably just this heat and this

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damned war.”

“What are you saying? I thought you didn’t give a damn about the war.”

“That’s right, I don’t … and why should I? I didn’t declare it and I have nothing to lose or to gain from it … But they just won’t leave us alone, will they?”

“But you didn’t fight in the war.”

“I’m not crazy … I was an officer for a few months and then I managed to get myself demobilized … My father knows someone at the ministry of defense.”

Feeling a wave of resentment, Sergio retorted: “My brother was deployed to the Russian front.”

“You should have told me,” Maurizio said, surprised. “We could have arranged for him to stay here.”

“My family belongs to the class of people who do what has to be done and pay the price for the rest of us,” Sergio said, darkly.

Maurizio did not react to his comment. “You know what troubled me the most? Emilia’s death.”

“Emilia is dead?” Sergio exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes, she died in tragic circumstances … I heard about it by chance from a German living in Italy … poor thing … She was Jewish, you know, and they came to arrest her … She jumped out of a window so they wouldn’t take her … She must have been about fifty … What a way to die. At the time, it didn’t affect me … I never really loved her and so much time had passed … But then I began to have trouble sleeping and I realized that whenever I lay in my bed I was thinking about her, or rather about the time when we were lovers … I suppose that my unconscious mind was marked by her death. In any case, perhaps it’s a coincidence.”

He had told this story in a casual, conversational

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tone. Evidently, Sergio thought, her death had not affected him too deeply; similar cases were quite frequent, even, one might say, normal. But Maurizio’s unconscious, as he had said, adopting a term from psychoanalysis, which was all the rage, had been
shaken. Sergio asked himself whether Maurizio’s unconscious might be aware of other things, or at least sense them, and he concluded that perhaps his friend was not completely sincere, not only with Sergio but with himself. He was trying to protect himself, that was all. And if he felt the need to defend himself, perhaps all was not lost. Gently, Sergio asked: “I don’t understand … what do you mean by your ‘unconscious’?”

“You know,” Maurizio said, awkwardly, “it’s like when you fall and you think you haven’t hurt yourself … Then a few days later it starts to hurt and you get a bruise … The unconscious … don’t you know what it is?”

“You’re the one who doesn’t know,” Sergio thought, changing the subject. “Maybe you should fall in love … If you could fall in love, everything would be all right. You’d be able to sleep, and all the rest.”

“I can’t fall in love,” Maurizio said sincerely, with clear bitterness. “Either a woman jumps into bed with me too quickly, or something is missing … Either way, I soon lose interest. I have no illusions … It’s been years since I’ve been in love.”

“So how are you planning to go about getting married?”

“Finding a wife is a different matter … You don’t need to be in love. I’ll get married and we’ll have four or five kids. I won’t be in love with her but she’ll still be my wife … No, love isn’t for me.”

Maurizio shook his hand and then lit another cigarette. Sergio insisted: “But wouldn’t you like to fall in love?”

Maurizio was pouring himself another glass. Just as he was about to answer, he stopped, holding up one finger as if commanding Sergio to be silent.

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Sergio watched in surprise. Sergio could hear a low rumbling from outside, barely distinguishable from the silence, almost part of it. Then, like an airplane engine gaining speed, the noise grew, louder and louder, eventually becoming a howl. “The alarm siren,” Maurizio said, calmly.

Sergio instinctively jumped up. These were the first air raids they had experienced, and the sound of the siren, linked to the idea of bombs falling out of the sky, inspired an agitation in him that was not quite fear but rather a sensation like being immersed in freezing water. It was the sensation of passing too quickly from a state of safety and calm to one of danger and tension. He bit his tongue as he looked over at Maurizio and saw that he was still sitting in his chair with an indifferent air. He began to pace up and down, saying: “I’m tense and this wailing irritates my nerves.”