I
The family boarding-house of Signora Carolina Pentoni (Big Carolini, or Carolinona, as she was called, because of the excessive flesh which distressed her) was patronized by certain scatterbrains, droll fellows, who were the delight of the well-behaved who frequented the table, not so much because of the good cooking perhaps, but that they might be present at the gratuitous gaiety offered them during the meals.
One of these excellent, well-mannered people, without the least suspicion that he might be included among the so-called amusing types of the pension, had been for some time the butt of the scatterbrains, Biagio Speranza and Dario Scossi, who played all sorts of tricks on him; but he remained calm; so calm and obstinate that they were finally forced to let him alone. “Laughter is healthy. You gentlemen make me laugh, so I shall remain.”
And he did remain, cordially disliked by all. His name was Cedebonis; he was a physician, professor of philosophy in the liceo, and of pedagogy in a normal school for girls; he was a Calabrian, short, thick-set, dark, bald, with an oval-shaped head, with no neck to speak of; mulish, with a leather-colored face, enormous bushy eyebrows, and mustache the color of ebony. As the resigned victim of his many scientific doctrines, both philosophical and pedagogical, he had come to live almost automatically, with a brain like a warehouse, in which his thoughts, precise, well-weighed, and classified, were arranged in perfect order according to their various categories. Possibly his robust and vigorous body would gladly have lent itself to violent exercises, but Cedebonis made himself a storehouse for archives, or so said Scossi, and did not permit himself any expansiveness that was not according to the dictates of science, philosophy, and pedagogy. “To live is not enough; live to do good,” he used to say placidly, in his big, oily voice. And he would ask: “Reason, reason, gentlemen, for what was it given us?”
“That we might be worse than beasts,” once replied scornfully the music teacher Trunfo, who could not endure him.
Separated with much scandal from his wife, always scowling, gloomy, grumbling, and at times explosive, Trunfo passed almost the whole day in the house of Carolinona, in the dining-room there, intent, like a dog who licks the bruises he has received, on correcting and rewriting the most hissed parts of his opera, for the production of which he had half beggared himself. He smoked continually. Biagio Speranza called him “Vesuvius.”
Sometimes Cedebonis would go quietly up behind him, and sit beside him in order to inhale the odor of the tobacco, which he delighted in. Trunfo, grumbling, would squint at him a couple of times, then fuming, fidgeting with annoyance, would draw a cigar from his pocket, and offer it to him rudely: “Pray take it. Smoke, for Heaven’s sake!”
“No, thank you,” Cedebonis would reply, without the least discomfiture. “You must know that nicotine is very injurious. I only like to inhale the smoke, to smell its fragrance.”
“At my expense,” Trunfo would then burst out furiously. “How about the damage to my health? Get out of here, I say! Shame on you! If you want your pleasure you can pay for it!”
“Cedebonis,” said Scossi—who every time he began to speak would shove out the tip of his terrible tongue like an arrow-head—“Cedebonis, with that face of his, like a happy monk, would be quite capable of presenting himself calmly in the house of our dear Martinelli, and, with the pretext that woman, like nicotine, is injurious, ask him to lend him, yes, I say, for a moment—”
“His wife?” asked Biagio Speranza.
“Oh, shocking! Her powder puff.”
“But what has my wife to do with the matter?” exclaims harmless Martino Martinelli, hit when least expecting it, his eyelashes quivering rapidly over his round, owl-like eyes, very close together, separated by an extremely long, thin nose, and which seemed to draw up and leave his upper lip suspended in the air.
“Calm yourself,” replied Scossi; “I merely mentioned her because I know that your excellent wife is in Sicily, Signor Martinelli.” And good Martinelli became calm, sighed, and shook his head bitterly. Ah, he thought continually of his poor wife, banished to a normal school in Sicily, and he spoke of her always in his own peculiar manner, groping along in his discourse, half helping himself, half covering every pause with a “Yes, I say,” an interjection which they all imitated, without his perceiving it. The poor fellow could not resign himself to the bureaucratic cruelty which, at a blow and without cause, had separated him at sixty-four from his wife, thus destroying his home and family, forcing him to live alone, in a furnished lodging, and to dine there at the boarding-house of Carolinona, whom he alone called Signora Carolina.
King of Romancers was Momo Cariolin, a little dwarf, who seemed like a living joke. To look at him, it seemed impossible that such a tiny frame could conceive such enormous lies, uttered imperturbably, with the air of a diplomat.
“But tell me,” Biagio Speranza once asked him seriously, “have you ever looked in a mirror?” because Momo Cariolin boasted with particular pride of the favor which women showed him. They had been women of his own rank at the very least, or ladies of the nobility; or they were of royal blood or imperial archduchesses (notably Austrian), these victims of Cariolin. And such adventures had befallen him during the various congresses of Orientalists in the capitals of Europe! For Cariolin professed himself, although a dilettante, a profound student of Oriental languages.
“But for Heaven’s sake, look at Martino’s nose!” Biagio Speranza would suddenly cry out, interrupting the marvelous narrations of Cariolin. And good Martinelli, abruptly roused amid the laughter of the others, would begin to smile.
Biagio Speranza’s jokes, Dario Scossi’s sarcasms, Trunfo’s outbursts and sneers did not disturb Martino Martinelli. But another of the boarders frightened him, and this was none other than the poet Giannantonio Cocco Bertolli, who undoubtedly was the most ridiculous type of the house. But the poet had been absent for nearly a month, owing to a serious misfortune which had befallen him. A single one? No. All the misfortunes in the world had befallen the poor poet Cocco Bertolli, who for this reason was given to railings against injustice, both human and divine. What worse misfortune could befall him than this? To defend himself from celestial and terrestrial perfidies he had had only his powerful voice, his tongue of fire, and now he could not even whisper. Everybody knew it; those who had declared they were his friends had even done it purposely; they had teased him, tormented him, that they might utterly ruin him, might actually kill him; he roared, roared, until it seemed as though his enormous bovine eyes would burst out of his congested face. His bile accumulated. “My muse is bile! It was with bile that Shakespeare created Othello, King Lear!”
And he prepared a poem, “Erostratus,” a tremendous poem. Ah, the magnificent temple of Imposture, the temple of so-called Civilization, where infamous Hypocrisy was enthroned and adored, he would kindle it with his verses. But as soon as people knew that he was at work on this poem he was attacked on all sides. Though deprived of his professorship at the ginnasio because of these tragic bestialities, thrown out on the streets, until a short time before, Giannantonio Cocco Bertolli had not been cast down. Sleep? Why, for two cents he could sleep at a resort of beggars and of sublime, ragged, louse-covered fellows. Eat? Good Carolinona had given him credit for more than a year already. “And I, Carolina, I will make you immortal,” he would repeat to her. “You only love me, you who beneath a rough exterior conceal a heart of gold, a most noble soul, Carolina!”
“Yes, sir, do not worry,” Carolina would hasten to reply, for she, like good Martinelli, was afraid of those great eyes which opened so widely whenever he began to speak, while his mouth wore so complacent a sneer that one never knew, even when he paid a compliment, but that he was satirizing in his own way.
Signora Pentoni also feared that her other patrons, those who paid, would stay away because of him, would be annoyed or disgusted by his presence at table; and although, whether from good-heartedness or from fear, she could not show him the door, she lovingly advised him to be calm, prudent, sought with all politeness to tame him, and also took care of him and the garments in which he draped himself, mended them, brushed them, and finally even made him cravats out of the ribbons from her discarded hats.
Not understanding why all this care was taken of him, Giannantonio Cocco Bertolli finally—and why not?—fell in love with Signora Pentoni. He took to composing odes, sonnets, anacreonic songs, and read them while she sewed buttons on his coat or vest, or brushed them. Carolinona did not comprehend that these verses were addressed to her, and why he read them; but since she thought him mad, she did not ask for a reason, and allowed him to read on.
Giannantonio Cocco Bertolli, violent and bestial in everything else, was most timid in love. Not knowing how to confess directly to Pentoni the passion she had inspired, he poured it out in poetry, hoping to arrive by means of the monstrous flowery paths of his limping metaphors. But seeing that Carolinona remained impassive, he became frenzied, violent.
“And what is the matter with you now?” the poor woman asked him in amazement.
“What?” cried Cocco Bertolli in a trembling voice, folding the paper on which he had scrawled the poetry, and opening his eyes very wide, as usual, and stamping his feet. “You ask me? Nothing! But I know! This is to be my lot! Thus my accursed fate has decreed! I am to be understood by no one! Not even by you!”
“I? Why?”
“She does not even say that she seems to understand!”
“Understand what? The poetry? But good gracious! I understand nothing. You know that. Be good, come now! Why do you act thus?”
“Because—because—” In vain! He could not pour out his heart in a declaration.
For this was needed the impelling force of an odious suspicion that came upon him suddenly, during one of these scenes, while poor Pentoni was urging him to be quiet, at least to speak softly, since nearby was the musician correcting his music.
“Ah, so it is for him?” Cocco Bertolli had thundered forth. “You love him? He is your lover? Confess! Viper, viper, viper—and why, then, have you flattered me until now?”
“I? Leave me!” Pentoni had cried, trembling with fear. “You are mad!”
“Cry; yes, cry out so that he will hear! I wish to see your knight; he too is a viper!”
“But be quiet, hush!” Carolinona had implored him. “Are you speaking seriously, Signor Bertolli? What do you want of me? Let me alone!”
“I can not! I love you. Do you love another? We shall see.”
“But I love no one. Are you trying to make fun of me? At my age? This is the last straw! And pray who would fall in love with me, Signor Bertolli?”
“I! And I have told you so!”
“Pardon me, but this is madness. And not even laughable. Let me be—I am a poor woman.”
The Pentoni knew very well the vile calumnies which had been circulated about her, but she had not even tried to contradict them. What did it matter to her? She was conscious of her virtue, long resigned to discretion because of her sad lot, and that sufficed her. And how could calumnies harm her now? She knew that she was ugly; she was already thirty-five years old, and might have been fifty as far as she was concerned; she had never flattered herself that a man could fall in love with her; she had never even had the time to think that fate might perhaps concede her a different lot, the compensation of some affection in the dark poverty which had always oppressed her, weighed upon her, and against which she had sought courageously to defend herself with every means in her power. Did people believe that in her life there had been some slip from the path of virtue, or even more than one? Very well, let them believe it! At heart this not only no longer offended her, but almost flattered her self-love, her deep-rooted feminine instinct. She closed her eyes. But it was not true. No one had ever cared for her, save this insane Cocco Bertolli. It would have been laughable had the poor fellow not worn such a tragic expression.
“Must I go away then?” he asked.
“Why, no; stay!” she hastened to reply. “But you must think no more of such madness.”
“I can not help it! When an idea has taken root here, it will not leave me, even if my head were to be broken open with Vulcan’s hammer. You know that. And know that my proposals were honest, and always will be. Carolina, will you be my wife?”
She had begun to laugh at such a precipitate proposal, but Cocco Bertolli, furious, checked the laugh on her very lips.
“Do not laugh, do not laugh, by Heaven! At least believe me, you who are a woman of heart. Save me! I have need of some one who loves me and calms me. I will resume my position as professor; you shall be the wife of a great poet, who is now miserably wasting his talent. And if you do not understand the poet, no matter; you shall be the wife of a professor; does that content you? and I will liberate you from all these good-for-nothings who came to play the buffoon at your table. Listen; I will give you the greatest proof of my love, of the seriousness of my proposal. When I leave here I must go to the hospital and submit myself to a terrible operation. The doctors have told me that it may kill me. So be it! But if I recover, I will be yours, Carolina. Leave me this hope. Farewell!” And he rushed away without giving the poor woman time even to try to dissuade him.
At the hospital he had compelled the physicians to risk the terrible operation, declaring: “I neither can nor will go on living thus. It would kill me! Therefore operate on me without fear, without remorse. At the worst I am but anticipating my death by a few days.”
Two days after the operation good Martinelli, to whom Pentoni had weepingly confided this fresh outburst of madness on the part of Bertolli, was despatched to the hospital for news. Poor Signor Martinelli returned with his great nose pale with terror, his eyes round and glassy.
Cocco Bertolli was dying, and had asked him as a favor to persuade “his” Carolina to see him for the last time. The physician had assured Martinelli that the dying man would not outlive the night. Signora Pentoni, overcome with pity, had gone to the hospital, and there had been obliged to promise, solemnly to swear to the dying man, that if he should escape death she would be his wife.
“But there will be no danger, you will see, there will be no danger!” good Martinelli had said to her, reassuringly, as they were returning from this visit. “Because—yes, I say—”
And he had raised one hand as though to bless the dying man.