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Chapter One
THE BANQUET
1
Attilio Raceni, publisher for four years of the women's (not feminist) magazine The Muses, woke up late that morning in a bad mood.
Under the eyes of innumerable young Italian women writers--poets, novelists, and short-story writers (even some playwrights)--watching him from photographs arranged in various groupings on the walls, all with faces composed in a particular attitude of vivacious or sentimental charm, he got out of bed--oh, dear, in his night shirt, naturally, but a long one, long enough to reach his ankles, fortunately. Slipping into house shoes, he went to open the window.
Attilio Raceni was little aware of what he did in the privacy of his home, so if someone had said to him: "You just did this and this," he would have objected, red as a beet.
"Me? Not true! Impossible."
And yet, there he is: sitting in his night shirt at the foot of his bed, with two fingers tenaciously tugging at a hair deeply embedded in his right nostril. And he rolls his eyes and wrinkles his nose and purses his lips in the sharp pain of that obstinate pinching until all at once he opens his mouth and his nostrils dilate for the sudden explosion of a couple of sneezes.
"Two hundred and forty!" he then says. "Thirty times eight, two hundred and forty."
Because while Attilio Raceni was tugging at that nose hair, he was absorbed in reckoning that if thirty guests paid eight lire each they might expect champagne, or at least some modest (that is, local) sparkling wine for the toasts.
In attending to his routine personal care, even if he had looked up he wouldn't have noticed the images of those writers, for the most part spinsters, although most of them tried to demonstrate in their writing that they were experienced in the ways of the world. Therefore, he wouldn't have noticed that those sentimental ladies seemed distressed at the sight of their nice director doing certain unpleasant things (however natural), out of unconscious habit, and that they were smiling about it rather superciliously.
Having recently turned thirty, Attilio Raceni had not yet lost his youthful appearance. The pale languor of his face, his curly mustache, his velvety almond-shaped eyes, his raven forelock, gave him the air of a troubadour.
He was basically satisfied with the regard he enjoyed as director of that women's (not feminist) magazine, The Muses, although it cost him considerable financial sacrifice. But from childhood he had been devoted to women's literature, because his "mamma," Teresa Raceni Villardi, had been a noted poetess, and in "Mamma's" house many women writers had gathered, some now dead, others now very old, upon whose knees he could almost say he had been raised. And their endless fondling and caresses had almost left an indelible patina on him. It seemed as if those light, delicate, experienced female hands, stroking and smoothing, had shaped him into that ambiguous, artificial beauty forever. He often moistened his lips, bent over smiling to listen, held his chest high, turned his head, patted his hair like a woman. Once a friend had jokingly touched his chest: "Do you have them?"
Breasts! The schmuck! He had turned bright red.
Left an orphan with a small income, the first thing he did was quit the university, and in order to give himself a profession, he founded The Muses . It ate into his inheritance, but gave him enough to live modestly and devote all his time to the magazine. With the subscriptions he had diligently garnered, he had assured its continuation, which, aside from the worries, no longer cost him anything: just as the numerous women collaborators cost him nothing, since they were never paid for their writing.
This morning he did not even have the time to regret the hairs his raven forelock left in the comb after a hasty styling. He had so much to do!
At ten he had to be at Via Sistina, at the home of Dora Barmis, the prima musa of The Muses, the very knowledgeable adviser on the beauty, natural charm, and morals of Italian signore and signorine. He had to get together with her to plan the banquet, the fraternal literary agape, that he wanted to give for the young and already very celebrated writer Silvia Roncella. Only recently she had come from Taranto with her husband to settle in Rome, "responding to Glory's first call, after the triumphant reception unanimously given by critics and public for her latest novel, House of Dwarves, " as he had written in the last issue of The Muses .
From his desk he took a bunch of papers dealing with the banquet, gave a final glance in the mirror almost as if to say good-bye to himself, and left.
2
A confused outcry in the distance, a flurry of people racing toward Piazza Venezia. On Via San Marco an alarmed Attilio Raceni approached an overweight merchant of aluminum kitchenware who was huffing and puffing as he hurriedly pulled down the metal barrier over his shop windows and asked him politely: "Please, what is it?"
"Uh ... they say ... I don't know," the man grunted in reply without turning.
A street sweeper, sitting quietly on the shaft of his cart with a broom on his shoulder like a flag, one arm on its handle as counterbalance, took his pipe from his mouth, spat, and said in Roman dialect: "They're trying it again."
Attilio Raceni turned and looked at him as though in pity. "A demonstration? Why?"
"Uhm!"
"Dogs!" shouted the potbellied merchant, purple-faced and panting as he straightened up.
Under the cart a hairless old dog with half-closed, runny eyes was stretched out, more placid than the street sweeper. At the merchant's "Dogs!" he barely raised his head off his paws without opening his eyes, only wiggling his ears a little sorrowfully. Were they talking to him? He waited for a kick. The kick didn't come. Then they weren't talking to him. He settled down to sleep again.
The Roman street sweeper observed: "They've done with their meeting."
"And they want to kick in the windows," the other one added. "You hear? You hear?"
A cacophony of whistles rose from the next piazza and right after that a shout that reached the heavens.
The chaos there must be awful.
"There's a police barricade, no one can get through." Without moving from the shaft, the placid street sweeper sang out after the people who were rushing by, and he spat again.
Attilio Raceni hurried off in a huff. Fine thing if he couldn't get through! All these obstacles now, as if the worries, cares, and annoyances plaguing him since he got the idea of that banquet weren't enough. Now all he needed was the rabble in the streets demanding some new right, and the tremendous April weather didn't help things: the fiery warmth of the spring sun was inebriating!
At Piazza Venezia Attilio Raceni's face dropped as though an inner string had suddenly let go. Struck by the violent spectacle before him, he stood open-mouthed.
The piazza swarmed with people. The soldiers' barrier was at the head of Via del Plebiscito and the Corso. Many demonstrators had climbed onto a waiting trolley and were yelling at the top of their lungs.
"Death to the traitors."
"Death!"
"Down with the minister."
"Down!"
In a fit of spite toward these dregs of humanity, and not about to take it quietly, Attilio Raceni got the desperate idea of elbowing his way quickly right across the piazza. If he managed that, he would plead with the officer guarding the Corso to please let him pass. He wouldn't refuse him. But suddenly from the middle of the piazza: "Beep, beep, beep."
The trumpet. The first blare. A crushing confusion: many, roughed up in the rioting, wanted to run away, but they were so crammed and squeezed together they could only struggle angrily, while the most overwrought ruffians tried to force their way through the crowd, or rather, push ahead of the others among the ever more tempestuous whistles and shouts.
"To Palazzo Braschiiii!"
"Go! Go ahead!"
"Break through the barriers!"
And again the trumpet blared.
Suddenly, without knowing how it happened, Attilio Raceni, choking, crushed, gasping like a fish, found himself bounced back to Trajan's Forum in the middle of the fleeing and delirious crowd. Trajan's Column seemed to be teetering. Where was it safe? Which direction to take? It seemed to him that the greater part of the crowd was moving up a street northeast of the Forum, Magnanapoli, so he bolted like a deer up Via Tre Cannelle. But even there he stumbled onto soldiers blocking off Via Nazionale.
"No passing here!"
"Listen, please, I must...."
A furious push from behind broke off Attilio Raceni's explanation, causing his nose to squirt on the face of the officer, who repulsed him fiercely with blows to his stomach. But another very violent shove hurled him against the soldiers who caved in at the onslaught. A tremendous discharge of rifles roared from the piazza. And Attilio Raceni, in the terror-crazed crowd, was lost in the middle of the cavalry that appeared suddenly from heaven knows where, perhaps from Piazza Pilota. Away, away with the others, away at full speed, he, Attilio Raceni, followed by the cavalry, Attilio Raceni, director of the women's (not feminist) magazine The Muses .
Out of breath, he stopped at the entrance to Via Quattro Fontane.
"Cowards! Riffraff! Scoundrels!" he shouted through his teeth, turning into that street, almost crying with anger, pale, shaken, trembling all over. He touched his ribs, his hips, and tried to straighten his clothes, to remove every trace of the violence suffered in the humiliating rout.
"Cowards! Scoundrels!" and he turned to look behind him, afraid someone might have seen him in that condition, and he rubbed his quivering neck with his fist. And there, to be sure, was a little old man standing at a window taking it all in with his mouth open, toothless, scratching his short yellowish beard with pleasure. Attilio Raceni wrinkled his nose and was just about to hurl some insults at that blockhead, but he looked down, snorted, and turned again to look toward Via Nazionale. To regain his lost sense of dignity, he would have liked to throw himself into the fray again, to grab those rascals one by one and grind them under his feet, to knock that crowd around that had unexpectedly assaulted him so savagely and had made him suffer the disgrace of turning tail, the shame of his fear and flight, the derision of that old imbecile.... Ah, beasts, beasts, beasts! How triumphantly they rose up on their hind legs, shouting and lurching, about to snatch up the sop of those charlatan organizers!
This image pleased him, and comforted him somewhat. But, looking down at his hands ... Oh, God, the papers, where were the papers he had taken with him when he left home? The guest list ... the acceptances? They had been torn from his hands, or he had lost them in the crush. How could he remember everyone he had invited? Those who had accepted or excused themselves from participating in the banquet? And among the acceptances, one dear to him, really precious, one that he had wanted to show Signora Barmis and then get framed to hang in his room: the one from Maurizio Gueli, the Maestro, sent from Monteporzio, handwritten.... That one lost as well! Ah, Gueli's autograph, there, trampled under the filthy feet of those brutes.... Attilio Raceni felt all worked up again. How disgusting to be living in times of such horrid barbarity masquerading as civility!
With the proud bearing and mien of an indignant eagle, he was already on Via Sistina near the descent of Via Capo le Case. Dora Barmis lived there alone in four small, dark rooms with low ceilings.
3
Dora Barmis enjoyed letting everyone think she was extremely poor, however many her cosmetics, galas, and charmingly capricious gowns. The little sitting room that also served as a writing room, the alcove, the dining room, and entry hall were, like the owner, strangely but certainly not at all poorly outfitted.
Separated for years from a husband no one had ever known, dark and agile, with eyes lightly touched up, her voice a little hoarse, she clearly declared her knowledge of life with her looks and smiles, with every movement of her body. She knew the throbs of heart and nerves, the art of pleasing, of awakening, of arousing the most refined and vehement male desires that made her laugh loudly when she saw them flame in the eyes of the man she was talking to. But she laughed even louder at seeing certain eyes grow dreamy as if from the promise of a lasting sentiment.
Attilio Raceni found her in the little sitting room near a small nickel-plated iron desk decorated with arabesques. She was engrossed in reading, wearing a low-necked Japanese gown.
"Poor Attilio! Poor Attilio!" she said after roaring with laughter at his account of the disagreeable adventure. "Sit down. What can I give you to soothe your troubled spirit?"
She looked at him with a kindly mocking air, winking an eye and cocking her head on her provocative bare neck.
"Nothing? Nothing at all? Anyway, you know? You look nice this way ... a bit untidy. I've always told you, darling: a nuance of brutality would do wonders! Too languid and ... must I say it? Your elegance has been for some time a little ... a little démodée . For example, I don't like the gesture you made just now as you sat down."
"What gesture?" asked Raceni, who didn't know he had made one.
"Pulling your lapels this way and that ... And put that hand down! Always in your hair. We know it's beautiful!"
"Please, Dora!" Raceni snorted. "I'm frazzled!"
Dora Barmis broke into laughter again, placing her hands on the desk and leaning backward. "The banquet?" Then she said, "Are you serious? While my proletarian brothers are protesting ..."
"Don't joke, please, or I'm leaving!" Raceni threatened.
Dora Barmis got to her feet. "But I'm serious, darling! I wouldn't worry myself so much if I were you. Silvia Roncella ... but first of all tell me what she's like! I'm dying of curiosity to meet her. She's not receiving yet?"
"Uh, no. Poor things just found a house a few days ago. You'll see her at the banquet."
"Give me a light," Dora said, "and then answer me frankly."
She lit her cigarette, bending over and leaning her face toward the match held by Raceni; then, in a cloud of smoke, she asked: "Are you in love with her?"
"Are you crazy?" Raceni fired back. "Don't make me angry."
"A little plain, then?" Signora Barmis observed.
Raceni did not reply. He crossed one leg over the other; he looked up at the ceiling; he closed his eyes.
"Oh, no, darling!" Signora Barmis exclaimed. "We'll get nothing done like that. You came to me for help. First you have to satisfy my curiosity."
"Well, I'm sorry!" Raceni snorted again, relaxing somewhat. "Those are some questions you're asking!"
"I understand," Signora Barmis said. "It's either one thing or the other: either you truly are in love or she must be really ugly, as they say in Milan. Come on now, tell me: how does she dress? Badly, without a doubt!"
"Rather badly. Inexperienced, you understand."
"I see, I see," repeated Signora Barmis. "Shall we say a ruffled duckling?"
She opened her mouth, wrinkled her nose, and pretended to laugh, with her throat.
"Wait," she went over to him. "You're losing your pin. My goodness, how have you knotted this tie?"
"Oh," Raceni began. "With all that ..."
He stopped. Dora's face was too close. Concentrating on his tie, she felt herself being watched. When she finished she gave him a little tap on his nose, and with an indefinable smile: "Well, then?" she asked him. "We were saying ... ah, Signora Roncella! You don't like duckling? Little monkey, then."
"You're wrong," retorted Raceni. "She's pretty enough, I assure you. Not striking, perhaps; but her eyes are exceptional!"
"Dark?"
"No, blue, intense, very gentle. And a sad smile, intelligent. She must be very very nice, that's all."
Dora Barmis attacked: "Nice you said? Nice? Go on! The person who wrote House of Dwarves can't be nice, I assure you."
"And yet ..." Raceni said.
"I assure you!" Dora repeated. "That woman goes well armed, you can be certain!"
Raceni smiled.
"She must have a character sharp as a knife," continued Signora Barmis. "And tell me, is it true she has a hairy wart here, on her lip?"
"A wart?"
"Hairy, here."
"I never noticed one. But no, who told you that?"
"I imagined it. As far as I'm concerned, Roncella must have a hairy wart on her lip. I always seem to see it when I read her things. And tell me: her husband? What's her husband like?"
"Just drop it!" Raceni replied impatiently. "He's not for you."
"Thank you very much!" Dora said. "I want to know what he's like. I imagine him rotund.... Rotund, isn't he? For heaven's sake, tell me he's rotund, blond, ruddy, and ... not mean."
"All right: that's the way he'll be, if it makes you happy. Now, please, can't we be serious?"
"About the banquet?" Signora Barmis asked again. "Listen, darling: Silvia Roncella is no longer for us. Your little dove has flown too too high. She has crossed the Alps and the sea and will go to make herself a nest far far away, with many golden straws, in the great literary journals of France, Germany, and England.... How can you expect her to lay any more little blue eggs, even if very tiny ones, like this ... on the altar of our poor Muses ?"
"What eggs! What eggs!" Raceni said, shaking himself. "Not dove eggs, not an ostrich egg. Signora Roncella won't write for any magazine again. She's devoting herself entirely to the theater."
"To the theater? Really?" exclaimed Signora Barmis, her curiosity aroused.
"Not to act!" Raceni said. "That would be the last straw! To write."
"For the theater?"
"Yes. Because her husband ..."
"Right! Her husband ... what's his name?"
"Boggiolo."
"Yes, yes. I remember. Boggiolo. And he writes, too."
"Hardly! He's at the Notary Public Office."
"A notary? Oh, dear! A notary?"
"In a record office. A fine young man. Stop it, please. I want to finish with this business of the banquet as quickly as possible. I had a guest list, and those dogs ... But let's see if we can reconstruct it. You write. By the way, did you know that Gueli has accepted? It's the clearest proof he really admires Signora Roncella, as they say."
Dora Barmis was absorbed in thought; then she said: "I don't understand.... Gueli ... he seems so different...."
"Let's not argue," Raceni cut her off. "Write: Maurizio Gueli."
"I'll add in parenthesis, if you don't mind, Signora Frezzi permitting . Next?"
"Senator Borghi."
"Has he accepted?"
"Good heavens. He'll be presiding! He published House of Dwarves in his literary review. Write: Donna Francesca Lampugnani."
"My lovely president, yes, yes," Signora Barmis said as she wrote. "Dear, dear, dear ..."
"Donna Maria Rosa Bornè-Laturzi," Raceni continued to dictate.
"Oh, God!" snorted Dora Barmis. "That virtuous little guinea hen?"
"And decorative," Raceni said. "Write: Filiberto Litti."
"Very good! It gets better and better!" Signora Barmis approved. "Archaeology next to antiquity! Tell me, Raceni: we're having this banquet in the ruins of the Forum?"
"By the way!" exclaimed Raceni. "We still have to decide where to have it. Where would you suggest?"
"But with these guests ..."
"Oh, God, no, I say again, let's be serious! I was thinking of the Caffè di Roma."
"In the evening? No! It's spring. We need to have it during the day, in a beautiful place, outside ... Wait: at the Castello di Costantino. That's it. Delightful. In the glassed-in hall, with the whole countryside in view ... the Albani mountains ... the Castelli romani ... and then, opposite, the Palatine ... Yes, yes, there ... it's enchanting! Without a doubt!"
"I'm for the Castello di Costantino," Raceni said. "Let's go there tomorrow to make the arrangements. I think we'll be about thirty. Listen, Giustino has been particularly insistent...."
"Who is Giustino?"
"Her husband, I told you, Giustino Boggiolo. He's insisting on the press. He would like a lot of journalists. I invited Lampini...."
"Ah, Ciceroncino, bravo!"
"And I think another four or five, I don't know: Bardozzi, Centanni, Federici, and ... what's his name? the one who writes for the Capitale ...."
"Mola?"
"Mola. Write it down. We need some others who are a little more ... a little more ... With Gueli coming, you understand. For example, Casimiro Luna."
"Wait a minute," Signora Barmis said, "if Donna Francesca Lampugnani comes, it won't be difficult to get Betti."
"But Betti gave The House of Dwarves a bad review. Have you seen it?" Raceni asked.
"What does that matter? It's even better. Invite him! I'll speak to Donna Francesca. As for Miro Luna, I hope to bring him along with me."
"You'll make Boggiolo happy, really happy! Now write down the Honorable Carpi, and that little cripple ... the poet ..."
"Zago, yes! Poor little dear! What beautiful poems he writes. I love him, don't you know? Look at his portrait there. I made him give it to me. Doesn't he look like Leopardi with glasses?"
"Faustino Toronti," Raceni continued dictating. "And Jacono ..."
"No!" shouted Dora Barmis, throwing down her pen. "You've invited that dreadful Neapolitan Raimondo Jacono? Then I'm not coming!"
"Calm down. I had to," Raceni replied regretfully. "He was with Zago.... If I invited one I had to invite the other."
"Well, then, I insist on Flavia Morlacchi," Signora Barmis said. "There: Fla-vi-a Morlacchi. Flavia's not her real name. Her name's Gaetana, Gaetana."
"That's what Jacono says!" smiled Raceni. "After the tiff."
"Tiff?" Signora Barmis replied. "But they beat each other with sticks, darling! They spat in each other's faces, the watchmen came running...."
Signora Barmis and Raceni reread the list, taking their time over this or that name, as if honing their list to a fine point on a grinder as they sharpened their tongues, which hardly needed it. Finally, a large fly quietly sleeping on a door woke up and zoomed in to make a third in the conversation. Dora reacted with terror--more than disgust, real terror. First she grabbed Raceni, holding him tight, her fragrant hair beneath his chin; then she ran to the alcove, shouting to Raceni behind the door that she wouldn't come back in the room until he chased the fly out the window or killed the horrible beast .
"I'll leave you there and be on my way," Raceni said calmly, taking the new list from the desk.
"No, Raceni, for heaven's sake!" Dora entreated from the other side.
"Well, open the door then!"
"There, I opened it, but you ... Oh! what are you doing?"
"One kiss," said Raceni, his foot holding the door open the crack allowed by Dora. "Just one ..."
"What's got into you?" she shouted, straining to close the door again.
"Just a little one," he insisted. "I've practically come from a war.... A tiny reward, from there, come on ... just one!"
"The fly might come in. Oh, dear, Raceni!"
"Well, do it quickly!"
Through the crack in the door their two mouths met and the opening gradually widened, when they heard the newsboy's cry in the street outside: "Third edition! Four dead and twenty wounded! Clash with the military! Assault on Palazzo Braschiiii! Bloodshed on Piazza Navonaaaa!"
Attilio Raceni withdrew from the kiss, ashen: "Did you hear? Four dead. For God's sake! Don't they have anything to do? And I could have been there smack in the middle...."
(Continues...)
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