XI
I
“On s’accoutume a tout,” said a wise French writer, and he might have added, “Surtout quand on est jeune”; for youth in spite of its many small tragedies, its longings, its revolts, its uncertainties of spirit, has at least the blessing of adaptability, and no mean a blessing either. And so it was that by the end of eight months Gian-Luca had got used to the life of the Capo; his arms and his legs no longer ached acutely, his brain learnt to keep calm in moments of confusion, he seldom lost his temper and never lost his head; in fact, according to the watchful Padrone, Gian-Luca possessed that rarest of all gifts, the instinct for perfect service.
Mario’s fall from grace as a super-waiter had somewhat disconcerted his pupil, who had honestly believed all that he had said regarding his position at the Capo. Mario was such a fine fellow at home, at times almost overbearing; but Mario at the Capo was a very different person; a cringing, servile, incompetent creature, who, far from being the Padrone’s right hand, was obviously not even his left. It was evident therefore, that Mario had lied in a foolish spirit of bravado.
“Ma che!” thought Gian-Luca, making a grimace. “Ma che! He is really a very bad waiter; if I were the Padrone I would not keep him even if he is cheap.”
But then would come memories of early childhood, of a Mario more active, more fierce, more lighthearted; a Mario who had insisted that a lonely little boy should always take part in his rare excursions; and Gian-Luca would be conscious of a tightening of his throat at times when he looked at Mario, of a vague regret, of an irritating pity for the great, limping, foolish fellow—a pity that was irksome and quite out of place in the busy life of the restaurant. All the same, it inclined him to neglect his own work in order to help his friend; and this worried Gian-Luca, who would tell himself sternly that a boy who had not even got so much as a name could ill afford to neglect his work, could indeed ill afford to pity. For Gian-Luca, now fifteen years old and a Latin, was quickly advancing towards manhood; more than ever he discerned the important difference that lay between substance and shadow. And somewhere in the region of unpractical shadows belonged this pity for Mario; it went with the pity for Rocca’s small goats, a thing he sternly ignored.
Mario still bragged when Gian-Luca would listen—yes he actually still had the face to brag! Even after eight months of daily revelations, he continued to weave romances. Gian-Luca would stare incredulously at him, finding no adequate words; feeling hot and uncomfortable all down his spine, blushing with embarrassment for him. Then gradually a light began to dawn on Gian-Luca, though he tried to turn away his eyes; with a terribly clear vision he perceived the truth—Mario bragged from self-abasement; Mario had long ago realized himself, and he lied from the humility of failure.
“But a man should not fail,” thought Gian-Luca sternly. “Who has got the time for failures?”
Meanwhile he could not help glowing a little with the knowledge of his own success. The Padrone was pleased; he could see that by his fingers which now seldom signaled to him. Poems were all very well, thought Gian-Luca, for those who wished to stay poor—he knew a poet now who fed at the Capo, that was when he fed at all. He was always hungry and he never washed his neck, and moreover, he seldom paid his bills.
“Sapristi!” the Padrone would grumble when he saw him. “I am stupid to give that vile little worm credit; but he knows those of Chelsea, some that are famous, and they are the people I want. They shall come to the Capo and paint pictures on my walls, and eat foolish dry birds like peacocks. I shall make them believe that the peacocks strut in with their tails spread out: I shall say: ‘If only you had seen him, how he walked round the kitchen, so lovely, so elegant, only this morning!’ And then they will think that he tastes all the better; I know them; they like a sensation.”
So the poet got credit from time to time, but from time to time he did not; and when he came back with some money in his pockets he would usually be looking rather thin. He said to Gian-Luca:
“You’re a handsome boy, why don’t you go as a model? I can get you taken on by Munster, if you like; he’s looking for a sort of John the Baptist.”
“What would he pay me?” inquired Gian-Luca promptly.
“That depends on his circumstances. When he’s flush he pays well; otherwise, my true Italian, he might pay you nothing at all.”
“Then I think I am better where I am,” smiled Gian-Luca, “for some day I shall be a headwaiter.”
“Oh, summit of all ambition!” sighed the poet, who was picking a cutlet bone.
Gian-Luca surveyed him with patient eyes; he forgave much in one who was so hungry. There were not many people, for the luncheon hour was past, so he talked to the poet a little.
“You write poetry, do you not?” he said politely.
The young man looked up in feigned surprise. “Is it possible that my fame gets abroad?” he inquired. “Yes, I write, and I read too beautifully aloud—my own poems, of course; other people’s are so dull. I’ll send you my latest production, if you like, because I adore your profile. Only beautiful people are allowed to read my book; I’ve stated that clearly in the preface.”
But the book was never sent, for the poet went to Paris, owing ten pounds to the Padrone.
“No,” thought Gian-Luca, “I do not think I will write poems; I do not think I will try any more.”
II
The Padrone liked Gian-Luca so well that he went in person to see Fabio. “I hear that you are cheap,” was how he began. “Now suppose I should give you an order?”
“We are cheaper than cheap,” said Fabio promptly, “and we only sell of the best.”
“That remains to be seen,” said the Padrone suspiciously. “I have heard that story before.”
Now Fabio was mild, but the mildest Italian responds like an old warhorse to a bugle when he senses the battle of a bargain. Fabio’s eyes began to shine in anticipation, and he rubbed his plump hands on his apron.
“I am likely to require twelve dozen tins of tomatoes,” the Padrone announced with unction. “On so large an order what discount do I get? My order depends on the discount.”
“Is that all?” exclaimed Fabio. “So insignificant an order—will you not be requiring paste?”
“That is as it may be,” grinned the Padrone. “Let us first come to terms for the tomatoes.”
“Shall we say two percent, for cash?” inquired Fabio.
“Per Bacco! No!” shouted the Padrone.
“That is generous,” remarked Fabio in a rising crescendo.
“It is robbery!” retorted the Padrone.
They argued, they glared, they thumped on the counter, bringing strange but explicit accusations. One would have thought that blows were in the offing, so fierce were their faces and their gestures. As a matter of fact they were fast becoming friends, acquiring a mutual respect. In the end they retired to the room behind the shop and opened a bottle of wine.
“Salute!” smiled Fabio.
“Felicita!” bowed the Padrone, lifting his glass with an air. “Tomorrow we deliver without fail,” promised Fabio. “Do not incommode yourself unduly, Signor Boselli; tomorrow will be good, but a day more or less—”
“I thank you for your courtesy,” beamed Fabio.
III
In the course of a week came the beautiful Padrona to pay her respects to Teresa. Teresa surveyed her with critical eyes, not at all allured by her beauty.
“She is Venetian, she is false, she is stupid,” said Teresa; “and moreover she has a wanton eye on Gian-Luca.”
“Ma Dio!” gasped Fabio; “he is yet but a child.”
“He will not remain always a child,” she reminded.
“But what of the husband? I am certain he is firm, I am sure he is a lion among men.”
“When the lion lies down with the lamb,” smiled Teresa, “I have heard that he loses his strength.”
Fabio groaned loudly. “Madonna!” he complained; “and we have but now completed that large order.”
“That is why,” said Teresa. “Her eye is on Gian-Luca, so she sends her lion here to spend money.”
“What must be done?” inquired Fabio weakly, beginning to fidget with the things about the room.
“Nothing,” said Teresa. “If we take him away, we do but make him think the more.”
“But supposing—”
“We will not suppose,” she said firmly. “He is handsome and young, but he is also ambitious; he will not stay long at the Capo di Monte. Meanwhile he will probably meet some young girls, one of whom he can marry later on—there is Berta, for instance; it is true she is plain, still, she will probably improve.”
“Alas!” exclaimed Fabio, wringing his hands. “What a terrible danger is youth! When I think of our Olga—”
But Teresa’s face stopped him.
“I wish you would weigh up those hams,” she said quickly; “I feel sure they are under weight again.”
IV
A year slipped by uneventfully enough in all save one momentous happening; Gian-Luca experienced his first love of woman, and the woman he loved was the blue-eyed Padrona with her masses of red-gold hair.
A boy’s first love is a love apart, and never again may he hope to recapture the glory and the anguish of it. It is heavy with portent and fearful with beauty, terrible as an army with banners; yet withal so tender and selfless a thing as to brush the very hem of the garment of God. Only once in a life comes such loving as this, and now it had come to Gian-Luca. In its train came all those quickening perceptions that go to the making of a lover; the acuteness of hearing, of seeing, of divining. A hitherto unsuspected capacity for joy; and an equal capacity for sorrow.
Gian-Luca felt himself taken unawares; yet when he thought it over he would feel quite convinced that he must have always loved the Padrona. Be this as it may, he now noticed things about her that had quite escaped him in the past; the lights in her hair; a dimple in her cheek, so faint as to be almost imperceptible; the fact that two of her pink fingernails had little white marks upon them, and above all a tiny scar on her hand, a scar that filled him with the queerest emotion whenever his eyes beheld it. And what he now found so strange in his condition was his yearning over imperfections; he loved those two nails with the white marks the best, and the hand with the scar, and the whole of the Padrona when she looked tired, or ill, or fretful—or if her hair was untidy.
Alone in the night he would think mighty thoughts about goodness and greatness and valor; yet so humble was he that these thoughts would be detached. He longed to lay down his life for the Padrona, but that would be neither greatness nor valor, not even goodness—just something quite simple, like fetching cigarettes from the bar. This love of Gian-Luca’s was a thing of pure giving, expecting nothing in return. Its motto was to serve, its desire to comfort, its ultimate ambition to worship. And as all that he now did was done unto Love, he polished the nickel more brightly; his tumblers and wineglasses shone like the sun, his aprons were spotless, his hands red from washing, and he surreptitiously bought a pocket-comb with which he was always combing his hair when he found himself alone in the pantry.
If the Padrona noticed these things, she gave no sign that she did so. Her manner was gentle, her smile kind and sunny—though in this last respect she unbent just a little, she was always smiling at Gian-Luca. As time went on it was him she would call to fetch and carry for her bar.
“You go,” she would say, and her small front teeth would come gleaming out at him like pearls of great worth, “you go—that old Mario is always so slow, and I cannot endure our fat Swiss.”
Occasionally too, she would send him on errands in the time between luncheon and dinner. This time belonged by rights to the waiters, in it they could usually do as they pleased; but the days when Gian-Luca was not sent on errands he would generally sit near the bar with a book, for among other things he wished to grow wise, in order to be worthy of the Padrona.
The Padrona would sometimes come into the bar. “Reading, Gian-Luca?” she would say, smiling at him; and once she had asked him to show her his book. “Dio Santo!” she had exclaimed, “it looks very dull; as for me, I am not at all clever!”
At such moments Gian-Luca could only stare, all his self-assurance would leave him. In the hands of the Padrona he melted like wax; and once he had had to remember his motto: “I have got myself,” in order to be certain that his legs were not turning into fluid. But somehow these days the motto sounded wrong, nor could it restore his self-assurance. “I have got Gemma!” he would catch himself repeating; Gemma being the name of the Padrona that nobody used but the Padrone.
The Padrone! a large, black-browed, insolent man who bullied the miserable Mario; a man whom the fierce Moscatone of the kitchen had threatened to split like a fowl. A man who had more lurid titles below stairs than hairs in his greasy black head; a man who owned the Capo and the food of the Capo and the slaves of the Capo and the mistress of the Capo.
“If only I too, were a man!” groaned Gian-Luca, writhing at the thought of the Padrone.
Yet he served him more devotedly than ever before, in mortal terror of offending. To offend the Padrone was to anger the Padrona—how strange were the ways of women!
At about this time Schmidt grew very friendly to Gian-Luca, anxious to curry favor, for everyone knew at the Capo di Monte that Gian-Luca was much liked by the Padrona. No doubt it was owing to her intercessions that he was given an evening now and then, and sometimes, on a Sunday, he would get the day off, an unusual proceeding at the Capo. She had once been heard telling the Padrone that Gian-Luca was young and still growing: “If we work him too hard he may get ill,” she had said, “and that would be very inconvenient.” Schmidt had winked heavily at Mario over this, but Mario had only frowned. Mario, outrageous old poacher that he was, had the makings of a fine gamekeeper.
To Gian-Luca, Schmidt said: “You admire our Padrona? She is beautiful, wunderschön!”
Schmidt looked very sympathetic, he sighed once or twice, and just at that moment Gian-Luca’s heart was full; so instead of snubbing Schmidt as he generally did he expanded ever so slightly. Schmidt was as sentimental as a schoolgirl and as lustful as any satyr, thus Gian-Luca’s budding manhood began to amuse him.
“Ach Gott! They are dreadful, these women,” mourned Schmidt, “they are surely put here to torment us.”
Mario, ever watchful, cautioned Schmidt severely. “You be careful with Gian-Luca; I will not have you teach him to be a dirty dog like you are. I love him, he is clean, he knows nothing of life, my wife she was his foster-mother.”
Schmidt nodded and grinned wisely. “I understand,” he said, “but Gian-Luca is in love mit die Padrona.”
“You shut your face up quick,” Mario told him in a rage. “If you do not, I make it shut up for you.”
In his methods with Gian-Luca, however, Mario was foolish for he jeered at the Holy of Holies. “Caspita!” he laughed one afternoon that summer, “you are growing as vain as any peacock. Now if all this fuss is about our Padrona, I advise you to stop being silly; for one thing you are young, for another she is old, I can see several wrinkles already—anyhow, it is silly, and if your Nonna knew she would certainly laugh at you as I do.”
Gian-Luca got up quickly from his chair in the pantry; he was pale, and his voice shook a little. “She is young and she has not got one single wrinkle.” He turned to the door. “I am going out with Schmidt,” he flung over his shoulder at Mario.
Now this was the last thing that Mario had wanted, so he hobbled after Gian-Luca. “Piccino!” he called, “do not stay out too long, and be a good boy, remember.”
Schmidt, who was standing on the pavement, sniggered: “You are his little baby.”
Gian-Luca grew scarlet. “I am sixteen,” he said hotly; “at sixteen one is not a baby.”
Schmidt whistled and merrily twirled his cane. His hat was too small for his head; he looked vulgar and foolish with a rosebud in his coat, and an imitation diamond in his tie. Gian-Luca eyed him with disapproval, and decided that he could not endure him. But presently Schmidt said:
“I have heard the Padrona—she praised you today to that husband.”
“Did she?” breathed Gian-Luca, trying to keep calm. “Do you think you could remember what she said?”
Schmidt pretended to think hard, and after a minute he invented a little conversation. He watched Gian-Luca from the corner of his eye; he was inwardly splitting with laughter. “Did she really say that?” Gian-Luca kept repeating.
“Jawohl,” smiled the mendacious Schmidt. Then he suddenly got bored—“I shall follow that girl, look how pretty she is, she have got die small feet! You come on, Gian-Luca, perhaps we can speak—you make love, I let you this time, and that way you forget all about your Padrona for a while, and that do you good.”
Gian-Luca turned and left him in disgust, his soul had been deeply outraged. It was almost as though Schmidt had spat in the face of something very pure and sacred. He felt, too, as though he himself had been to blame, as though he had exposed her to this. “Oh, forgive me!” he murmured. “My very dear, forgive me. My beautiful—my good—my holy—”