Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo

Author:Italo Svevo [Svevo, Italo]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: nepalifiction
ISBN: 9780375727764
Google: GYRQPgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0375727760
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1964-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Although there were no other guests except us family members, the older Malfentis wanted the banquet to unfold in all solemnity. Augusta had been asked to come and supervise the dining room and the table. Alberta would have nothing to do with such matters. A short time before, she had been awarded a prize for a one-act play, and now she was eagerly girding herself to reform the nation’s theater. So we bustled around that table, I and Augusta, assisted by a maid and by Luciano, a boy from Giovanni’s office, who showed as much feeling for order in the household as he did for order in the office.

I helped carry some flowers to the table and arranged them neatly.

“You see?” I said, joking, to Augusta, “I even contribute to their happiness. If they asked me also to make up the nuptial bed, I would do it with the same untroubled brow!”

Later we went to see the bridal pair, who had just returned from a formal visit. They had occupied the most secluded corner of the living room, and I suppose that until we arrived they had been cuddling. The bride hadn’t even changed her afternoon dress and was very pretty, flushed as she was by the heat.

I believe that the couple, to hide any sign of the kisses they had exchanged, wanted to persuade us that they had been discussing science. It was nonsense, perhaps even improper! Did they want to exclude us from their intimacy, or did they believe their kisses could cause someone pain? In any case, this didn’t spoil my good humor. Guido told me Ada wouldn’t believe him when he said that certain wasps could, with their sting, paralyze other insects even stronger than they, then preserve them, paralyzed, alive and fresh, as nourishment for their offspring. I thought I recalled that something so monstrous did exist in nature, but at this point I was unwilling to give Guido any satisfaction.

“You think I’m a wasp, so you’re aiming at me?” I said to him, laughing.

We left the couple so they could devote themselves to happier things. I, however, was beginning to find the afternoon quite long, and I wanted to go home and await the dinner hour in my study.

In the vestibule we found Dr. Paoli, coming out of my father-in-law’s bedroom. He was a young doctor who, nevertheless, had already been able to acquire a good clientele. He was very blond and ruddy and white, like an overgrown boy. His powerful physique, however, was so dominated by his eyes that his whole person seemed serious and imposing. His eyeglasses made him appear bigger, and his gaze clung to things like a caress. Now that I know very well both him and Dr. S.—the psychoanalysis man—it seems to me that the latter’s eyes are more deliberately inquiring, whereas in Dr. Paoli they indicate his tireless curiosity. Paoli sees his patient precisely, but also the patient’s wife and the chair on which he is sitting. God

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