Some bitterness must have been discernible in my voice, for she seemed to recollect herself with an effort and, taking my hand again, she replied: 'Oh, Silvio, how can you imagine that I don't want it?' But this time again the goodwill was too obvious; it was just like that of a mother whose child, discouraged, says: 'Well then, if you don't want me to, I won't be a general,' and she answers: 'Oh, but I do want you to be one. . and I want you to win lots of battles.' I saw that this conversation was profitless, and I was seized again by the same irritation that I had felt with Antonio and which I had then attributed to hunger. I rose brusquely, saying: 'I think Anna's already taken the coffee outside.'
12
LATER, when she left me to rest, I went up to my study to begin my typing. I arranged my typewriter on the desk, opened it and put the cover down on the floor. On the right of the machine I placed my manuscript, on the left the blank sheets and the carbon paper. I took three sheets of paper, inserted two sheets of copying paper between them, put them into the machine and tapped out the title. But I had not arranged the paper rightly, and the title, as I at once saw, was all to one side; besides, I had forgotten to type it in capital letters. I took out the three sheets and inserted three more. This time the title came out right in the middle, but on examination I found that I had put the carbon paper in back to front, so that the two copies were spoiled.
Irritated, I tore the sheets out of the machine and put in others; this time I made two or three mistakes which made the title incomprehensible. All of a sudden a feeling almost of fear came over me. I rose from the desk and started wandering round the room looking at the old German prints that adorned the walls — 'The Castle of Kammersee', 'Panorama of the Town of Weimar', 'Storm over Lake Starnberg', 'The Falls of the Rhine'. The house was plunged in a profound silence, the shutters were half closed, and the dim light inside the room invited one to sleep. I reflected that I was tired, that the present conditions were not suitable for me to embark upon my task of copying; so I went and lay down on a very hard sofa, in the darkest corner of the room.
I stretched out my hand towards a little table laden with knick-knacks that stood beside the sofa, and took up a red leather, gilt-edged memorandum book: it was an old 'keepsake' of 1860. Its former owner had made, on each page, a pen-and-ink drawing of a little landscape — very similar, in their homely style, to the prints I had just been looking at. Beneath each landscape, in a cursive 'English' calligraphy, were reflections and maxims in French. I looked at the landscapes one by one and read through many of these extremely sentimental and conventional reflections. Meanwhile drowsiness was coming over me. I put the book back on the table and dropped off to sleep.
I slept for perhaps an hour. In my sleep I seemed, every now and then, to wake up, and I could see the desk, the chair, the typewriter, and thought I ought to be working, and was conscious of a bitter feeling of impotence. Finally, as though at a signal, I awoke completely and leapt to my feet.
The room was plunged in gloom. I went to the window, threw open the shutters; the sky was still luminous, but the sun was low and came in slantingly through the window. Without thinking of anything I sat down at the desk and started typing.
I tapped out a couple of pages mechanically and then, at the third, broke off and fell into deep meditation. Actually I was not thinking at all; merely I could not get the sense of the words that I had written with such ardour a few days before. I saw that they were words, but they remained mere words and it seemed to me that they had no weight, no meaning. They were parts of speech, not objects, parts of speech such as are drawn up in rows on the pages of dictionaries, parts of speech and nothing more. At that moment my wife appeared in the doorway, asking whether I wanted to have tea. I welcomed this proposal with relief, glad of some distraction from the feeling of remoteness and absurdity that I experienced in front of my manuscript; and I followed her downstairs. She was already dressed for our customary walk, and tea was on the table. I pulled myself together with an effort and began chatting in a self-possessed manner as I drank my tea. My wife now appeared less abstracted and preoccupied, and this pleased me. After tea we went out and strolled down the drive towards the gate.
As I have already said, there were few walks in that neighbourhood: and so we turned off down a lane that we knew extremely well, through the fields. I walked in front and Leda followed me. My mind, as I soon realized, was still bogged in that sensation of vagueness and lack of comprehension that my manuscript had aroused in me, but I made an effort — with, to tell the truth, only partial success — to thrust away this preoccupation and to talk lightly of unimportant matters. The lane wound about amongst the fields, according to the lay-out of the various farms, linking the groups of farm buildings together. Sometimes it would coincide with a threshing-floor, in front of an isolated cottage; and then it would start twisting about again between two hedges, or along a ditch beside a vegetable garden, or by the last row of vines at the edge of a vineyard. In the clear, even, brilliant autumn light the entire plain was visible, as far as the eye could reach — every field, every patch of cultivation — flat, luminous, with a few trees here and there, dark against their background of clear sky but with every leaf lit up in the sunshine. When we came to a little hump-backed bridge spanning a deep ditch I stopped to look at the view and my wife went on in front. I remember that she was wearing a coat and skirt of grey cloth flecked with red, green, yellow and blue. When I first glanced after her as she walked ahead I was frightened, because it suddenly seemed to me that she too, like the words of my manuscript, was nothing more than a speck in space. I said, gently: 'Leda', and felt I was saying the most absurd thing in the world. I went on: 'My name is Silvio Baldeschi and I married a woman whose name is Leda'; and I felt I had not said anything at all. It came into my mind, all of a sudden, that the only way I could escape from this atmosphere of unreality was by receiving or inflicting pain — for instance by seizing my wife by the hair, throwing her down on the sharp stones of the path, and receiving from her, in turn, a good kick on the shins. In the same way, perhaps I should awaken to the value of my manuscript by tearing it up and throwing it into the fire.
These reflections brought me a vivid feeling that I must be mad: was it not then possible to lay hold of one's own, or other people's, existence except through the medium of pain? But I consoled myself slightly with the thought that if it were so, if not only what I had written but also my wife, whom I knew I loved, seemed to me incomprehensible, then this feeling of absurdity did not depend upon the quality of what I had written but upon myself.