III
Gian-Luca washed the glass, and then, just for fun, he polished all the brass as well. He brushed down the steps and finally retired to sweep up the restaurant floor. From the corner of his eye he watched Mario and Schmidt scuttling in and out of the pantry; they were very busy laying the tables for luncheon, and Mario puffed a good deal. Schmidt, who was rather a painstaking fellow, had a habit of breathing on things, especially the glasses, which he always suspected, and once, when he thought he detected a smudge, he spat on his finger and removed it. Gian-Luca, thumping about on his knees, watched the proceedings with interest.
“Nun was! You not got those clean serviettes yet? Mein Gott! You take long, venever you be ready?” he heard Schmidt grumbling at Mario.
“Mind you your business!” shouted Mario hotly. “I know how I set the table!” Schmidt laughed. “You not spit on the glasses,” went on Mario, who had looked up and caught him in the act.
“Then why you bring them in dirty from the pantry?”
“You not make them any cleaner with spit!”
“Was? Do you say then that my mouth is dirty?” Schmidt’s face was now red with temper, “Ich ask; you perhaps would accuse my mouth?”
“Dio!” groaned Mario, who was limping a little. “What do I care about your mouth!”
Schmidt went back to the pantry, muttering in German, and Mario stood still for a moment; very gently he began to rub his sore joint against the calf of his leg, then he sighed, and mopping his brow with his napkin he too hobbled off to the pantry.
Gian-Luca, left alone, settled into his stride—the proverbial new broom sweeps clean. The dust rose in clouds, in less than five minutes he produced a miniature dust-storm.
Through the haze he could see a woman approaching: “Santa Madonna!” she was saying. “Santa Madonna! Do not use so much force. Have we imported a Samson?” He paused with the brush firmly gripped in his hand and, still kneeling, stared up into her face. Then he sneezed and she sneezed; after that he stood up.
“The floor is very dirty,” he told her.
The Padrona laughed softly. “Do I not know as much? Naturally the floor is very dirty.” And then, speaking in Italian: “But you must brush gently. One flicks with the brush to make the top clean; one does not disinter all the filth of a year—see, like this, I will show you, like this—”
And together they both went down on their knees.
The Padrona smelt nice when she came close to you. Gian-Luca could smell her through the dust. She had very small hands with pink-tinted nails; her feet were small, too—she wore little bronze slippers and thin silk stockings to match. She laid her hand gently over Gian-Luca’s and moved the brush backwards and forwards.
“Ecco!” she murmured. “Now I think you understand. As they say here in England, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie!’ And that proverb applies to our dust.”
“Thank you,” said Gian-Luca, very red in the face, and he quickly looked down at the floor. With a gentleness worthy of the Padrona he caressed the carpet with his brush.
The Padrona went behind the counter of the bar and busied herself with some bottles; from time to time she glanced at Gian-Luca, and her lips twitched into a smile. She began to notice his ash-blond head bent in an effort of attention. The back of his neck looked absurdly young, the hair grew down into a youthful hollow, and where it ended it turned suddenly sideways, forming a little comma.
“Have you not swept enough?” inquired the Padrona. “I think you have swept enough.”
“As you will,” said Gian-Luca, getting to his feet, “but I feel that the floor is not clean.”
“Come here,” said the Padrona. “You shall help me with these bottles; you shall take this damp cloth and wipe them; but first, what is your name and how old are you? Mario brought you, did he not?”
He was staring at her now because he found her lovely; his pleasure overcame his shyness. He said: “I am called Gian-Luca, signora; I am nearly fifteen, I was fourteen last November, I came here with Mario this morning.”
“I see—Gian-Luca; but Gian-Luca what?”
“Boselli,” he told her, and flushed; then quickly, “But I’d like to be called Gian-Luca, please; I have always been called just Gian-Luca.”
“Why not? It’s a very nice name,” she smiled, surveying him calmly with experienced eyes, the color of mountain gentians. “You are tall, very tall for your age, Gian-Luca—” And she nearly added, “and amazingly handsome.” But instead she pointed to the row of bottles, which Gian-Luca proceeded to dust.
The Padrona was thirty; she was also a Venetian; she was also married to the Padrone; three facts which she found no cause to resent—she looked younger than thirty, she was proud of her birthright, and her husband was—well, just the usual husband—a thing it was always essential to possess and to pet into comparative good temper. Her nature was skeptical, sunny and placid; having never expected too much of life, she had never been disappointed. She was conscious of her beauty and in consequence of men, but her technical virtue was perfectly intact, and was always likely to remain so. With the clients she assumed that air of aloofness that had always impressed the good Mario. With her husband she was docile and unfailingly good-tempered, there was no necessity to be anything else; her beauty was the only weapon she needed to subjugate the Padrone. The Padrone was jealous, he adored and he suffered, and the more he suffered the more he adored. He lived in perpetual terror of losing the love of so beautiful a creature. Her docility never made him quite happy—he feared that it might be a cloak; yet so foolish was his love that he cringed to his wife and vented his anguish on the waiters.
But at moments the Padrona felt a little dull; she detested the English climate. It was weary work standing for hours behind the counter, serving out other people’s drinks. There were times when her husband’s ridiculous outpourings had begun to get on her nerves, when she noticed that little inclination to a paunch—it had not been there when they married. So when Gian-Luca turned to her with a smile, because he could not resist it, the Padrona smiled back and said:
“Splendid, Gian-Luca; you polish my bottles to perfection.”
And when he was once more busily at work she began to speculate about him, her speculations being principally concerned with what he would be like in a few years’ time, and with what would happen when he first fell in love, and with whether the woman would be fair or dark, older than he was or younger. For of such fairly harmless but foolish romancing the mind of the Padrona was full. The more strictly virtuous the married woman, the more she will sometimes dally with fancies; and then Gian-Luca being almost a child, what could be the harm in her fancies?
Presently she said: “Is your mother dead, Gian-Luca?”
“Si, signora; she is dead.”
“And your father?”
A long pause and then: “Si, signora; my father is also dead.”
The Padrona sighed. “I see, that is sad; but I also have lost both my parents. What part of Italy do you come from—from Rome?”
“My mother was born here in England, signora, and I too was born in England.”
He stood quite still with a bottle in his hand, dreading the Padrona’s next question. Would she ask if his father had been born in England, too? And if she did, what would he say? The Padrona spared him this embarrassment, however; her mind had reverted to business; it was nearly one o’clock and she had suddenly discovered that she had only two siphons left.
“Go quickly, piccolo, and fetch me six more siphons and twelve small bottles of soda,” she ordered.
He flew to obey and went rushing downstairs, all but upsetting Mario in the process.
“Piano, piano!” cautioned Mario. “You must walk with more repose; a waiter should never appear hurried.”
“Where are the siphons?” said Gian-Luca breathlessly.
“In the cellar at the end of the passage,” Mario told him; “but, Gian-Luca, remember what I say and walk softly; a waiter must not be a whirlwind.”