The Oil Jar and Other Stories Read online

  Micuccio stood up with his brows knitted, as if to reassure himself about that conclusion; once again he blew on his ice-cold hands and stamped on the floor.

  “Cold?” the servant said to him passing by. “It won’t be long now. Come here into the kitchen. You’ll be more comfortable.”

  Micuccio didn’t want to follow the advice of the servant, who confused and irritated him with that lordly air. He sat down again and resumed thinking in dismay. Shortly afterward a loud ring roused him.

  “Dorina, the mistress!” screamed the servant, hurriedly slipping on his tailcoat as he ran to open the door; but seeing that Micuccio was about to follow him, he stopped short and issued an order:

  “You stay there; let me notify her first.”

  “Ohi, ohi, ohi … ,” lamented a sleepy voice behind the curtain; and after a moment there appeared a large, stocky, carelessly dressed woman who trailed one leg on the ground and was still unable to keep her eyes open; she had a woolen shawl pulled up over her nose and her hair was dyed gold.

  Micuccio kept looking at her foolishly. She too, in her surprise, opened her eyes wide when confronted by the outsider.

  “The mistress,” Micuccio repeated.

  Then Dorina suddenly returned to consciousness:

  “Here I am, here I am …,” she said, taking off the shawl and flinging it behind the curtain, and exerting her whole heavy body to run toward the entrance.

  The apparition of that dyed witch, and the order given by the servant, suddenly gave Micuccio, in his dejection, an anguished presentiment. He heard Aunt Marta’s shrill voice:

  “Over there, into the salon, into the salon, Dorina!”

  And the servant and Dorina passed by him carrying magnificent baskets of flowers. He leaned his head forward so he could observe the illuminated room at the far end, and he saw a great number of gentlemen in tailcoats talking confusedly. His sight grew dim; his amazement and agitation were so great that he himself didn’t realize that his eyes had filled with tears; he closed them, and he shut himself up completely in that darkness, as if to resist the torment that a long, ringing laugh was causing him. It was Teresina laughing like that, in the other room.

  A muffled cry made him open his eyes again, and he saw before him—unrecognizable—Aunt Marta, with her hat on her head, poor thing! and laden down by a costly and splendid velvet mantilla.

  “What! Micuccio … you here?”

  “Aunt Marta … ,” exclaimed Micuccio, almost frightened, pausing to examine her closely.

  “Whatever for?” continued the old lady, who was upset. “Without letting us know? What happened? When did you get here? … Tonight of all nights … Oh, God, God …”

  “I’ve come to … ,” Micuccio stammered, not knowing what more to say.

  “Wait!” Aunt Marta interrupted him. “What’s to be done? What’s to be done? See all those people, son? It’s Teresina’s celebration … her night … Wait, wait here for a bit …”

  “If you,” Micuccio attempted to say, as anxiety tightened his throat, “if you think I ought to go … ”

  “No, wait a bit, I say,” the kind old lady hastened to reply, all embarrassed.

  “But,” Micuccio responded, “I have no idea where to go in this town … at this hour … ”

  Aunt Marta left him, signaling to him with one of her gloved hands to wait, and entered the salon, in which a moment later Micuccio thought an abyss had opened; silence had suddenly fallen there. Then he heard, clear and distinct, these words of Teresina:

  “One moment, gentlemen.”

  Again his sight grew dim with the imminence of her appearance. But Teresina did not come, and the conversation resumed in the salon. Instead, after a few minutes, which seemed an eternity to him, Aunt Marta came back, without her hat, without her mantilla, without her gloves, and less embarrassed.

  “Let’s wait here for a while, would that be all right?” she said to him. “I’ll stay with you … Now they’re having supper … We’ll remain here. Dorina will set this little table for us, and we’ll have supper together, here; we’ll reminisce about the good old days, all right? … I can’t believe it’s true that I’m here with you, son, here, here, all by ourselves … In that room, you understand, all those gentlemen … She, poor girl, can’t avoid them … Her career, you get my meaning? Ah, what can you do! … Have you seen the newspapers? Big doings, son! As for me, I’m all at sea, all the time … I can’t believe I can really be here with you, tonight.”

  And the kind old lady, who had gone on talking, instinctively, to keep Micuccio from having time to think, finally smiled and rubbed her hands together, looking at him compassionately.

  Dorina came to set the table hastily, because there, in the salon, the meal had already begun.

  “Will she come?” Micuccio asked gloomily, with a troubled voice. “I mean, at least to see her.”

  “Of course she’ll come,” the old lady immediately replied, making an effort to get out of her awkward situation. “Just as soon as she has a minute free: she’s already told me so.”

  They looked at each other and smiled at each other, as if they had finally recognized each other. Despite the embarrassment and the excitement, their souls had found the way to greet each other with that smile. “You’re Aunt Marta,” Micuccio’s eyes said. “And you’re Micuccio, my dear, good son, still the same, poor boy!” said Aunt Marta’s. But suddenly the kind old lady lowered her own eyes, so that Micuccio might not read anything else in them. Again she rubbed her hands together and said:

  “Let’s eat, all right?”

  “I’m good and hungry!” exclaimed Micuccio, quite happy and reassured.

  “Let’s cross ourselves first: here, in front of you, 1 can do it,” added the old lady in a mischievous manner, winking an eye, and she made the sign of the cross.

  The manservant came, bringing their first course. Micuccio observed with close attention the way that Aunt Marta transferred her helping from the serving platter. But when his turn came, as he raised his hands, it occurred to him that they were dirty from the long trip; he blushed, he got confused, he raised his eyes to steal a glance at the servant, who, now the height of good manners, nodded slightly to him and smiled, as if inviting him to serve himself. Fortunately Aunt Marta helped him out of his predicament.

  “Here, here, Micuccio, I’ll serve you.”

  He could have kissed her out of gratitude! Once he received his helping, as soon as the servant had withdrawn, he too crossed himself hurriedly.

  “Good boy!” Aunt Marta said to him.

  And he felt carefree, contented, and started eating as he had never eaten in his life, no longer thinking about his hands or the servant.

  Nevertheless, each and every time the latter, entering or leaving the salon, opened the glass double door, and a sort of wave of mingled words or some burst of laughter came from that direction, he turned around uneasily and then looked at the old lady’s sorrowful, loving eyes, as if to read an explanation there. But what he read there instead was an urgent request to ask no more for the moment, to put off explanations till a later time. And again they both smiled at each other and resumed eating and talking about their far-off hometown, friends and acquaintances, concerning whom Aunt Marta asked him for news endlessly.

  “Aren’t you drinking?”

  Micuccio put out his hand to take the bottle; but, just at that moment, the double door to the ballroom opened again; a rustle of silk, amid hurried steps: a flash, as if the little room had all at once been violently illuminated, in order to blind him.

  “Teresina …”

  And his voice died away on his lips, out of amazement. Ah, what a queen!

  With face flushed, eyes bulging and mouth open, he stopped to gaze at her, dumbfounded. How could she ever … like that! Her bosom bare, her shoulders bare, her arms bare … all ablaze with jewels and rich fabrics … He didn’t see her, he no longer saw her as a living, real person in front of him … What was she saying to
him? … Not her voice, nor her eyes, nor her laugh: nothing, nothing of hers did he recognize any more in that dream apparition.

  “How are things? Are you getting along all right now, Micuccio? Good, good … You were sick if I’m not mistaken … We’ll get together again in a little while. In the meantime, you have Mother with you here … Is that a deal? …”

  And Teresina ran off again into the salon, all a-rustle.

  “You’re not eating any more?” Aunt Marta asked timorously after a brief pause, to cut short Micuccio’s silent astonishment.

  He looked at her in bewilderment.

  “Eat,” the old lady insisted, showing him his plate.

  Micuccio raised two fingers to his smoke-blackened, crumpled collar and tugged at it, trying to draw a deep breath.

  “Eat?”

  And several times he wiggled his fingers near his chin as if waving goodbye, to indicate: I don’t feel like it any more, I can’t. For another while he remained silent, dejected, absorbed in the vision he had just seen, then he murmured:

  “How she’s turned out …”

  And he saw that Aunt Marta was shaking her head bitterly and that she too had stopped eating, as if in expectation.

  “It’s not even to be thought of … ,” he then added, as if to himself, closing his eyes.

  Now he saw, in that darkness of his, the gulf that had opened between the two of them. No, she—that woman—was no longer his Teresina. It was all over … for some time, for some time, and he, the fool, he, the imbecile, was realizing it only now. They had told him so back home, and he had stubbornly refused to believe it … And now, how would he look staying on in that house? If all those gentlemen, if even that servant had known that he, Micuccio Bonavino, had worn himself out coming such a distance, thirty-six hours by train, seriously believing he was still the fiance of that queen, what laughs they would raise, those gentlemen and that servant and the cook and the scullery boy and Dorina! What laughs, if Teresina had dragged him into their presence, in the salon there, saying: “Look, this pauper, this flute player, says he wants to become my husband!” She, yes, she had promised him this; but how could she herself suppose at that time that one day she would become what she now was? And it was also true, yes, that he had opened that path for her and had given her the means to travel it; but, there! by this time she had come so very far, how could he, who had stayed where he was, always the same, playing the flute on Sundays in the town square, catch up to her any more? It wasn’t even to be thought of! And, then, what were those few paltry cents spent on her back then, now that she had become a great lady? He was ashamed merely to think that someone might suspect that he, with his coming, wanted to assert some rights in exchange for those few miserable pennies …—But at that moment he remembered that he had in his pocket the money sent him by Teresina during his illness. He blushed: he felt a twinge of shame, and he plunged one hand into the breast pocket of his jacket, where his wallet was.

  “I’ve come, Aunt Marta,” he said hastily, “also to return to you this money you sent me. Is it meant as a payment? As repayment of a loan? What would that have to do with anything? I see that Teresina has become a … she looks like a queen to me! I see that … never mind! It’s not even to be thought of any longer! But as for this money, no: I didn’t deserve such treatment from her … Where does that come in? It’s all over, and we won’t talk about it any more … but money, no way! I’m only sorry that it’s not all here … ”

  “What are you saying, son?” Aunt Marta tried to interrupt him, trembling, pained and with tears in her eyes.

  Micuccio signaled to her to be silent.

  “It wasn’t I who spent it: my family spent it, during my illness, without my knowledge. But let’s say it makes up for that trifle I spent back then … you remember? It doesn’t matter … Let’s think no more about it. Here is the difference. And I’m leaving.”

  “What! Like that, all of a sudden?” exclaimed Aunt Marta, trying to hold him back. “At least wait until I tell Teresina. Didn’t you hear that she wanted to see you again? I’m going over to tell her … ”

  “No, it’s no use,” Micuccio replied, with determination. “Let her stay there with those gentlemen; it suits her there, she belongs there. I, poor fool … I got to see her; that was enough for me … No, now that I think of it, do go over there … you go there, too … Do you hear how they’re laughing? I don’t want the laugh to be on me … I’m leaving.”

  Aunt Marta interpreted that sudden determination of Micuccio’s in the worst possible light: as an act of anger, a jealous reaction. By now it seemed to her, the poor woman, as if everybody—seeing her daughter—ought immediately to conceive the meanest of suspicions, that very one which caused her to weep inconsolably as, without a moment’s rest, she bore the burden of her secret heartbreak amid the hubbub of that life of detestable luxury which ignominiously dishonored her old age.

  “But I,” the words escaped her, “by this time there’s no way for me to stand guard over her, son …”

  “Why?” asked Micuccio, suddenly reading in her eyes the suspicion he had not yet formulated; and his face turned dark.

  The old lady became bewildered in her sorrow and hid her face in her trembling hands, but failed to check the onrush of the tears that now gushed forth.

  “Yes, yes, go, son, go …,” she said, strangled by sobs. “She’s not for you any more, you’re right … If the two of you had listened tome…”

  “And so,” Micuccio burst out, bending over her and violently pulling one hand away from her face. But so afflicted and wretched was the look with which she begged him for mercy, as she put a finger to her lips, that he restrained himself and added in a different tone of voice, making an effort to speak softly: “And so she, she … she is no longer worthy of me. Enough, enough, I’m leaving just the same … in fact, all the more, now … What a dumbbell, Aunt Marta: I hadn’t understood! Don’t cry … Anyway, what does it matter? Fate … fate …”

  He took his little suitcase and little sack from under the table and was on his way out when he recalled that there, in the sack, were the beautiful citrons he had brought for Teresina from their hometown.

  “Oh, look, Aunt Marta,” he continued. He opened the top of the sack and, creating a barrier with one arm, he emptied that fresh, aromatic fruit onto the table. “And what if I started tossing all these citrons I brought for her at the heads of those honorable gentlemen?”

  “For mercy’s sake,” the old lady groaned amid her tears, once more making a beseeching sign to him to be silent.

  “No, of course I won’t,” added Micuccio, smiling sourly and putting the empty sack in his pocket. “I’m leaving them for you alone, Aunt Marta. And to think that I even paid duty on them … Enough. For you alone, mind me now. As for her, tell her ‘Good luck!’ from me.”

  He picked up the valise again and left. But on the stairs, a sense of anguished bewilderment overpowered him: alone, deserted, at night, in a big city he didn’t know, far from his home; disappointed, dejected, put to shame. He made it to the street door, saw that there was a downpour of rain. He didn’t have the courage to venture onto those unfamiliar streets in a rain like that. He went back in very quietly, walked back up one flight of stairs, then sat down on the first step and, leaning his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands, began to weep silently.

  When the supper was finished, Sina Marnis made another appearance in the little room; but she found her mother alone crying, while back there the gentlemen were clamoring and laughing.

  “He left?” she asked in surprise.

  Aunt Marta nodded affirmatively, without looking at her. Sina stared into space, lost in thoughts, then sighed:

  “Poor guy …”

  “Look,” her mother said to her, no longer stemming her tears with the tablecloth. “He had brought citrons for you …”

  “Oh, what beauties!” exclaimed Sina, cheering up. She clutched one arm to her waist and with the other hand
gathered up as many as she could carry.

  “No, not in there!” her mother vigorously protested.

  But Sina shrugged her bare shoulders and ran into the salon shouting:

  “Citrons from Sicily! Citrons from Sicily!”

  WITH OTHER EYES

  Through the large window that opened onto the house’s little hanging garden, the pure, fresh morning air made the pretty little room cheerful. An almond branch, which seemed to be all a-blossom with butterflies, projected toward the window; and, mingled with the hoarse, muffled gurgle of the small basin in the center of the garden, was heard the festive peal of faraway churchbells and the chirping of the swallows intoxicated with the air and the sunshine.

  As she stepped away from the window, sighing, Anna noticed that her husband that morning had forgotten to rumple his bed, as he used to do each time, so that the servants couldn’t tell that he hadn’t slept in his room. She rested her elbows on the untouched bed, then stretched out on it with her whole torso, bending her pretty blonde head over the pillows and half-closing her eyes, as if to savor, in the freshness of the linens, the slumbers he was accustomed to enjoy there. A flock of swallows flashed headlong past the window, shrieking.