CITRONS FROM SICILY
“Is Teresina here?”
The servant—still in his shirt sleeves, but with his neck already squeezed into an extremely high collar and with his sparse hair carefully dressed and arranged on his cranium—raised his thick, joined eyebrows, which resembled a displaced mustache that had been shaved off his lips and pasted up there so he wouldn’t lose it, and examined from head to foot the young man standing in from of him on the staircase landing: a rustic from the look of him, with the collar of his rough overcoat raised up to his ears and his hands—purple, numbed with cold—holding a dirty little sack on one side and a small old suitace on the other, as a counterweight.
“Who is Teresina?”
The young man first shook his head to get rid of a little water drop on the tip of his nose, then replied:
“Teresina, the singer.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the servant
with a smile of ironic amazement: “That’s her name, just plain Teresina? And
who are you?”
“Is she here or isn’t she?” asked the young man, knitting his brows and sniffling. “Tell her that Micuccio is here, and let me in.”
“But there’s no one here,”
continued the servant with his smile congealed on his lips. “Madame Sina
Marnis is still at the theater and…”
“Aunt Marta, too?” Micuccio interrupted him.
“Ah, you’re a relative, sir? In that case, step right in, step right in…No one’s at home. She’s at the theater, too, your aunt. They won’t be back before one. This is the benefit night of your…what is she to you, the lady? Your cousin, perhaps?”
Micuccio stood there embarrassed
for a moment.
“I’m not a relative…I’m
Micuccio Bonavino, she knows…I’ve come of purpose from our hometown.”
Upon receiving this reply, the
servant deemed it suitable above all else to take back the polite lei
form of address and go back to the ordinary voi; he led Micuccio into a
small unlighted room near the kitchen, where someone was snoring noisily, and
said to him:
“Sit here.” I’ll go and get
a lamp.”
Micuccio first looked in the
direction from which the snoring was coming, but couldn’t make out anything;
then he looked into the kitchen, where the cook, aided by a scullery boy, was
preparing a supper. The mingled aromas of the dishes being prepared overpowered
him; their effect on him was like a heady intoxication; he had hardly eaten a
thing since that morning; he had traveled from Reggio di Calabria: a night and a
full day on the train.
The servant brought the lamp, and
the person who was snoring in the room, behind a curtain hung from a cord
between two walls, muttered sleepily:
“Who is it?”
“Hey, Dorina, get up!” the servant called. “Look, Mr. Bonvicino is here…”
“Bonavino,” Micuccio corrected
him, as he blew on his fingers.
“Bonavino, Bonavino…an
acquaintance of the mistress. You really sleep soundly: they ring at the door
and you don’t hear it…I have to set the table: I can’t do everything
myself, understand—keep an eye on the cook, who doesn’t know the ropes;
watch for people who come to
call…”
A big, loud yawn from the maid,
prolonged while she stretched and ending ina whinny caused by a sudden shiver,
was her reply to the complain of the manservant, who walked away exclaiming:
“All right!”
Micuccio smiled and watched him
depart across another room in semidarkness until he reached th4e vast, well-lit
salon at the far end, where the splendid supper table towered; he kept on gazing
in amazement until the snoring made him turn once more and look at the curtain.
The servant, with his napkin under
his arm, passed back and forth, muttering now about Dorina, who went on
sleeping, now about the cook, who was most likely a new man, called in for that
evening’s event, and who was annoying him by constantly asking for
explanations. Micuccio, to avoid
annoying him further, deemed it prudent to repress all the questions that he
thought of asking him. He really
ought to have told him or given him to understand that he was Teresina’s fiancé,
but he didn’t want to, thought he himself didn’t know why, unless perhaps it
was because the servant would then have had to treat him, Micuccio, as his
master, and he, seeing him so jaunty and elegant, although still without his
tailcoat, couldn’t manage to overcome the embarrassment he felt at the very
thought of it. At a certain point,
however, seeing him pass by again, he couldn’t refrain from asking him:
“Excuse me…whose house is this?”
“Ours, as long as we’re in
it,” the servant answered hurriedly.
And Micuccio sat there shaking his
head.
By heaven, so it was true!
Opportunity seized by the foreock. Good business. That sevant who
resembled a great nobleman, the cook and the scullery boy, that Dorina snoring
over there: all servants at
Teresina’s beck and call…Who would ever have thought so?
In his mind he saw once again the dreary garret, way down in Messina, where Teresa used to live with her mother…Five years earlier, in that faraway garret, if it hadn’t been for him, mother and daughter would have died of hunger. And he, he had discovered that treasure in Teresa’s throat! She was always singing, then, like a sparrow on the rooftops, unaware of her own treasure: she would sing to annoy, she would sing to keep from thinking of her poverty, which he would try to alleviate as best he could, in spite of the war his parents waged with him at home, his mother especially. But could he abandon Teresina in those circumstances, after her father’s death?—abandon her because she had nothing, while he, for better or worse, did have a modest employment, as flute player in the local orchestra? Fine reasoning!—and what about his heart?
Ah, it had been a true inspiration
from heaven, a prompting of fortune, when he had paid attention to that voice of
hers, when no one was giving it heed, on that very beautiful April day, near the
garret window that framed the vivid blue of the sky.
Teresina was singing softly an impassioned Sicilian arietta, the tender
words of which Micuccio still remembered. Teresina was sad, that day, over the
recent death of her father and over his family’s stubborn opposition; and he
too—he recalled—was sad, so much so that tears had come to his eyes when he
heard her sing. And yet he had heard that arietta many other times; but sung
that way, never. He had been so struck by it that the following day, without
informing her or her mother, he had brought with him his friend, the orchestra
conductor, up to the garret. And in that way the first singing lessons had
begun; and for two years running he had spent almost all of his small salary on
her; he had rented a piano for her, had purchased her sheet music and had also
given the teacher some friendly remuneration. Beautiful faraway days! Teresa
burned intensely with the desire to take flight, to hurl herself into the future
that her teacher promised her would be a brilliant one; and, in the meantime,
what impassioned caresses for him to prove to him all her gratitude, and what
dreams of happiness together!
Aunt Marta, on the other hand, would shake her head bitterly: she had seen so many ups and downs in her life, poor old lady, that by now she had no more trust left in the future; she feared for her daughter and didn’t’ want her even to think about the possibility of escaping that poverty to which they were resigned; and, besides, she knew, she knew how much the madness of that dangerous dream was costing him.
But neither he nor Teresina would listen to her, and she protested in vain when a young composer, having heard Teresina at a concert, declared that it would be a real crime not to give her better teachers and thorough artistic instruction: in Naples, it was essential to send her to the Naples conservatory, cost what it might.
And then he, Micuccio, breaking off with his parents altogether, had sold a little farm of his that had been bequeathed to him by his uncle the priest, and in that way Teresina had gone to Naples to perfect her studies.
He hadn’t seen her again since
then; but he had received her letters from the conservatory and afterwards those
of Aunt Marta, when Teresina was already launched on her artistic life, eagerly
sought by the major theaters after her sensational debut at the San Carlo. At
the foot of those shaky and hesitant letters, which the poor old lady scratchd
onto the paper as best she could, there were always a few words from her,
from Teresina, who never had time to write: “Dear Micuccio, I go along with
everything Mother is telling you. Stay healthy and keep caring for me.” They
had agreed that he would leave for five or six years’ time to pursue her
career without impediment: they were both young and could wait.
And in the five years that had already elapsed, he had always shown those letters to anyone who wanted to see them, to combat the slanderous remarks his family would hurl at Teresina and her mother. Then he had fallen sick; he had been on the point of dying; and on that occasion, without his knowledge, Aunt Marta and Teresina had sent to his address a large sum of money; part had been spent during his illness, but the rest he had violently torn out of his family’s hands and now, precisely, he was coming to return it to Teresina. Because money—no! He didn’t want nay. Not because it seemed like a handout, seeing that he had already spent so much on her; but…no! He himself was unable to say why, and how more than ever, there, in that house…money, no! Just as he had waited all those years, he could wait some more…Because if Teresina actually had money to spare, it was a sign that the future was now open to her, and therefore it was time for the old promise to be kept, in spite of anyone who refused to believe it.
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 dejction, 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, I 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 in 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, abso4rvbed 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 fiancé,
of that queen, what laughs they would raise, those gentlemen and that servant
and the cook and the scullery boy and D ornia! 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, the, 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 here 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, to 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 a, 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 to
me…”
“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 sac
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 form 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 hand,
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!”