III
With each day that passed, Gian-Luca’s vision was becoming more cruelly acute, so that now he observed the minutest details that accompanied the ritual of feeding. Nothing was too trifling to strike at his nerves, and via them to arouse his anger; he saw something to condemn in harmless people even, for if they were temperate in eating and drinking, then his mind would seize on their unconscious habits. There would be the crumbling of bread, for instance, and the making of small bread pills; the cleanest of hands would leave the pills dirty, and there they would lie on the spotless linen, an indictment against human skin. Then the habit of preparing a fork full of food so that it comprised a little of all things; a bit of potato, a couple of beans, a section of mushroom, a smear of tomato, a portion of veal—and how maddening the gesture that finally got it to the mouth! There was also the habit of relieving the teeth with the tip of a surreptitious tongue, it not being considered polite in this England to disengage food with a toothpick. Quite nice people would sometimes leave blurs on their tumblers, which they tried to wipe off with their thumbs; while others might leave little stains on their lips, and even after they had rubbed them with the napkin, the stains would remain in the corners. And then there were the people who peered at their food because they were very shortsighted, and the people who sat well back in their chairs because they were the other way round. There were people who made their plates rather untidy, and others who ate in a pattern; a trifle of this, a trifle of that, and keep it all nicely trimmed up and in order like a kind of suburban garden.
And then the chewing! There were so many methods of chewing, since everyone came there to chew. Gian-Luca would watch with a kind of fascination, and their busy moving jaws would make him want to scream for the ugly absurdity of it. Some people would chew with their mouths slightly open; if you faced them you knew the condition of a cutlet about to enter Nirvana. Some people would chew with their lips firmly closed, and this kind occasionally made a small noise, a rhythmical clicking connected with saliva, or their tongues, or perhaps their false teeth. Some chewed with a thoughtful, circular motion that suggested an aftermath of grazing, while others nibbled their food very quickly, like rabbits devouring a lettuce. But the thing that Gian-Luca detested most was a species of ball-bearing jawbone, you could see it rotating inside the cheek with the effort of mastication. The more his mind dwelt on this problem of chewing, the more he marveled that they did it in public; hundreds of good-looking people all chewing, openly chewing in front of each other—that was what amazed Gian-Luca.
One day he felt a violent distaste for the pleasant, white-tiled refectory, where he himself would begin to chew, and Roberto, and all the others. He tried to swallow his own food down quickly, tried not to look at Roberto, but Roberto was picking the leg of a chicken and Gian-Luca had to look.
“Do not do that!” he shouted suddenly; and Roberto dropped his bone in surprise.
But then Gian-Luca smiled blandly at him: “Scusa, Roberto, I was thinking aloud, please take up that bone again and pick it.”
Roberto obeyed, but that afternoon he whispered a little with Giovanni: “He is strange, very strange, our Signor Gian-Luca—and I do not much like the look on his face, it reminds me of men I have seen after battle—but then he was never near a battle.”
It was in March that her husband said to Maddalena: “It is horrible, all this eating. I hate them for it, they are pigs at a trough, they wallow, they make horrid noises.”
Maddalena looked up with fear in her eyes, a fear that had been growing lately. She said: “But, Gian-Luca, of course they must eat, otherwise you would not be a waiter.”
He scowled at her, then he began talking quickly: “Do you know the meaning of hatred? Of a hatred so enormous that it chokes a man’s breath and jerks the heart out of his body?”
“No—no—” she faltered. “I have never felt hatred—”
And now she was very much afraid.
He saw it and smiled grimly: “Because, Maddalena, that is what I feel for those beasts at the Doric, I hate them; and now I am going to tell you something: that is how I hated Ugo Doria.”
She got up and tried to take him in her arms, feeling an overwhelming need to protect him against this thing that menaced. “Tell me, my blessing, tell me—” she pleaded. “Tell Maddalena what has happened.”
Then he laughed: “What has happened? Why, this has happened; I see them exactly as they are, pigs at a trough with their noses in food, and when they are not gorging they are swilling! Perhaps you will wonder why I stay at the Doric? Well listen, mia donna, I will tell you. I stay at the Doric to make them eat more, to make them drink more; I coax, I persuade. I am all soft cajoling and smiles and politeness, for no one must know how intensely I hate them—oh, I do my work well—I am crafty, Maddalena, I do my work better than ever.”
She stared at him aghast: “You are ill,” she whispered. “You are surely very ill, Gian-Luca.”
But he pushed her away: “I am well, I tell you, I never felt better in my life. I am working like ten men; you ask them at the Doric, they will tell you I am working like ten men.”
At that moment he caught sight of his untasted breakfast—and all of a sudden he was violently sick.
Nothing that Maddalena could say would persuade him to see a doctor.
“You want me to lose my position,” he told her. “No doubt you pity those pigs of the Doric for having Gian-Luca to tempt them.” He refused to see Teresa, or Mario, or Rosa, or indeed any member of the clan. “I am well, I tell you,” he kept on repeating. “Millo has not complained of my work—I forbid you to go and discuss me with Rosa, or with anyone else, for that matter.”
And Maddalena, afraid to enrage him, must needs keep her great fear hidden in her heart. But now he was eating less and less, complaining again about the richness of her cooking.
“For the love of God, cook things simply!” he would say. “You disgust me with all your grease.”
Then Maddalena would try to cook simply, boiling his vegetables in water like the English; but even so he would always complain: “It is horrible, all this food!”
At the Doric he was finding it hard to eat a mouthful, for there the headwaiters must finish the remains of all those expensive dishes. They might help themselves freely from the buffet or wagons, feasting like kings, if they felt so disposed, on the very fat of the land. Gian-Luca would scrape off the rich yellow sauces and the soft white billows of cream, but everything he ate would have too strong a flavor; his nostrils would be full of the smell of the cooking and his ears of the sizzling and hissing and bubbling that came from the kitchens near by. But in case they suspected, he must try hard to eat, and this was a veritable torture; his throat would close up when he wanted to swallow; he would not know how to get rid of the food with which he had filled his mouth.
Daniele, who was still young, enjoyed the fine fare. “U‑m,” he would gurgle, “e molto buono! E buono, non e vero, signore?”
Then Gian-Luca must nod and reply: “Buonissimo!” in case Daniele suspected. And then there was Roberto who picked every bone, spitting out little bits of gristle; and he watched Gian-Luca with large, anxious eyes—Roberto was always watching.
He would say: “Will you not eat your chicken, signore? Shall I go and fetch you some mousse—or perhaps you would like a little ‘sole Mornay’? It is good, the ‘sole Mornay’ today!”
So terribly watchful he was, this Roberto, almost as watchful as Gian-Luca; almost as anxious to feed him, it seemed, as Gian-Luca was to feed the clients. Yes, but that was another terrible thing; it was not so easy any more to feed the clients, for whenever Gian-Luca must talk about food his stomach would heave and his head would grow dizzy—God! how he loathed them, those hungry clients who would force him to talk about food! But he must talk. Oh, more than ever he must talk, in case any client suspected; in case Millo suspected, or Giovanni or Roberto—did Roberto suspect already?
Night after night he would lie in bed sleepless, wondering if Roberto suspected. What should he do if Roberto told Millo? What should he do if Millo dismissed him? Ruined, he was ruined if Millo dismissed him, no one would give him a manager’s job—perhaps no one would come to his restaurant if he bought it; they would all know that Millo had dismissed him. And his money; he would lie there and count up his money—a good sum by now, but not nearly enough for him and Maddalena to live on; one of them might live on it perhaps, but not both—two could never live in comfort on that money. He would hear Maddalena whispering her prayers, prayers to the Madonna, and one special prayer that began with: “Blessed be God.”
He would shake her: “Stop praying like that, Maddalena! Why must you always be whispering something? I can hear you, it gets on my nerves; do stop praying, I am tired, I want to go to sleep.”
Maddalena would lie there obediently silent, but Gian-Luca would know that she was praying in her heart. What was she praying about in her heart? Her silent prayers would begin to torment him, he would try to imagine those prayers in her heart and would want her to whisper again. In the mornings he would get up angry and weary, and there would be Maddalena. Then she too would watch him as Roberto watched him, following him round the room with her eyes; urging him to let her send for the doctor, urging him to eat his breakfast.
“Eat, amore!” she was always saying. “Try to eat something, amore.”
And one day his hand shot out and he struck her. Full in the face he struck Maddalena, then he struck her again because she said nothing but just stood there dumb like an animal who loves and is wounded unto death by its master.