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—”