'Why?'
'Well — so many things. . ' And Angelo smiled again, shaking his head. It was a self-conscious, knowing smile and yet full of dislike for Antonio, as though the fault that the local people found with the barber was something that had a funny side to it.
'What sort of things, for instance?' I asked.
I saw him grow serious; and then he answered, stressing his words in a slightly unctuous way: 'Well, you see, Signor Baldeschi, in the first place he's always annoying women. . '
'Really?'
'Ugh — and how!. . you've no idea…. Pretty or ugly, old or young, anything does for him.. . And not only in his shop, where they go to get their hair curled — but outside it too, ask anyone you like. . On Sundays he takes his bike and goes prowling round the countryside — as you might go out shooting. . it's disgusting. But I tell you, one of these days he's going to find someone who'll put a stop to his tricks. . ' Having now overstepped the limit of his usual reserve, Angelo had become loquacious, adopting a sort of moralizing tone, rather heavy and flattering, typical of a peasant who speaks more or less as he imagines his landlord likes him to speak.
'What about his wife?' I asked, interrupting him.
'His poor wife, what can she do? She cries and gets all worked up. . He's taught her to shave his clients, and every now and then he leaves her in charge of the shop and gets out his bike and tells her he's going into the town. . but instead of that he goes round looking for a girl. Why, last year. .'
I decided that Angelo had now given me all the information I needed; there was nothing more to be expected from him except more gossip about Antonio's shocking behaviour, and it seemed to me hardly dignified to drag it out of him and listen to it. And so I changed the conversation and soon afterwards sent him away.
When I was alone, I fell into a kind of thoughtful abstraction. So my wife had been right, or at least there was a strong probability that she had been right. This Antonio was a libertine, and it was even possible that he had actually tried to seduce my wife. I realized now that the mystery of Antonio — who did not seem to care much about his work, nor to be excessively fond of his family, nor interested in politics — did not exist. There was no mystery, and that was the whole mystery. Antonio was a commonplace Casanova, a perfectly ordinary fornicator. And those discreet, oily manners of his were the manners of a man who, as he himself had expressed it, was loved by women because he did not talk.