II
I
On the following Thursday Gian-Luca arrived at the Doric an hour before his time. He must interview the head chef regarding certain dishes that Doria had specially ordered; he must speak to Roberto about the champagne; he must give the final directions to Daniele; in fact he must rouse the whole staff of the Doric by announcing Doria’s prospective visit.
Doria’s table would be in the octagon room, in a quiet corner by the window, and at each of the plates there should be a red carnation made up as a buttonhole, for Gian-Luca felt sure in his own mind, somehow, that Doria’s friend would be a man. He might be bringing a well-known statesman, or a soldier famous in war, or perhaps a poet less great than himself, to whom he was doing a kindness. But whoever he brought was sure to be important, if not now, then at some future date, for the man who had written the “Gioia della Luce” was not likely to cast his pearls before swine—and then greatness attracted greatness.
Gian-Luca, who was now nearly thirty-two years old, was weaving romances like a boy; he pictured Doria as slender and tall, with the strong, lean flanks of a racehorse; his eyes would be inspired, the eyes of a poet, but above all the man would convey a sense of bigness, bigness of mind, bigness of spirit; oh, yes, and bigness of sin when he sinned—for nothing small or despicable or mean could have written the “Gioia della Luce,” nor could it have conceived those many other poems that burnt with the fires of the flesh. Serene and enduring he must be, this Doria, in spite of those outbursts of passion—a pasture swept by occasional storms, a valley that harbored a mountain torrent, a mountain whose peak was covered in snow, and illumined by swift crude lightning.
To everyone he met at the Doric that morning, Gian-Luca said: “Doria is coming here today.”
And they answered: “Ugo Doria the poet?” Then Gian-Luca nodded and smiled.
Monsieur Martin, the head of the army of chefs, was inclined to be short in his manner, however. For no war stopgap was Monsieur Pierre Martin, but a culinary king returned to his kingdom, and now on his coat showed a green and red ribbon which stood for the Croix de Guerre.
“Parbleu, is he God?” inquired Monsieur Martin. “Is he God, this poet you speak of? I have never so much as heard his name; now if it could have been Rostand—but Rostand is dead, a very great pity, for only the French can write verses.”
“As you please,” said Gian-Luca; “let us not discuss writers, I am here to discuss their food.”
“Why not cook it yourself!” suggested Monsieur Martin. Gian-Luca smiled: “I should do it so badly; it is you who are the poet of the kitchen!”
After which Monsieur Martin had himself to smile, remembering his exquisite dishes.
“You may leave it to me,” he said, graciously enough; “I will care for your poet’s digestion.”
II
At ten o’clock Gian-Luca put on his dress-suit, taking quite a long time in the process; he was almost as fussy about this ritual as he had been about all his other arrangements. But once dressed, there was nothing left for him to do, and more than two hours must elapse before luncheon; so he said to Roberto:
“I will open the wine, I wish to serve everything myself.”
“You have told me that three times already, signore,” Roberto replied, somewhat nettled.
“Very well then, I tell you again!” snapped Gian-Luca, who was feeling like an overwrought piccolo.
He sat down and anxiously studied his lists; nearly all the tables were booked. He said to Daniele:
“Can you manage, do you think? For God’s sake do not disturb me.”
“I can surely manage, Signor Gian-Luca,” Daniele replied, much aggrieved.
“Very well, then, remember all the things that I have told you,” warned Gian-Luca in an ominous voice.
They said to each other behind his back: “He is not like this as a rule—today one would think he was new to the work. And why must he wait on Doria himself? That is not a headwaiter’s business.”
Gian-Luca could feel their covert disapproval, but it left him entirely unmoved. Tomorrow he would be their headwaiter again, the implacable Gian-Luca with the all-seeing eyes, and the method of a ruthless machine. But today he was going to be human for once, he was going to be a creature of feeling; today he would serve for the joy of serving, and his service should be a thing to remember, because it would have come from his heart.
III
It was one o’clock, clients were beginning to arrive, Daniele was ready and smiling. Gian-Luca stood silently waiting near the table by the window in his octagon room. It was ten past one, then a quarter-past one, then all of a sudden it was half-past; the room had filled up, all the tables were occupied except that one by the window. It was twenty to two; Gian-Luca stiffened, Doria and his friend were late. Stooping down, he fingered the red carnations, very slightly changing their angle. Then someone was coming in at the door, a woman, the little Milady; and after her followed a white-haired man who was taking off pale grey gloves.
All in a moment Gian-Luca perceived him; every detail struck through to his brain; a bulky, elderly man of sixty with a self-willed mouth that had weakened and coarsened, with pale eyes that looked small because of the skin that was gathered in bladders beneath them. A man with a face that looked foolish at that moment because it was close to Milady, or rather to Milady’s elegant back which preceded it into the room.
Gian-Luca stepped forward and bowed very low. “Signor Doria’s table?” he inquired.
“Ma si, I have booked a table,” said Doria, “I have booked a table for two.”
“It is ready, signore,” Gian-Luca murmured. “It is ready—this way please, Milady.”
They sat down, and Doria smiled at his companion and she smiled back at Doria, and Gian-Luca served them with artichokes in oil and other delectable things.
Doria was talking in broken English, making gestures with his long white hands; every few minutes Milady laughed softly, and whenever she laughed Ugo Doria stopped talking, and his eyes looked sheepish, but old and tired—too tired to do justice to Milady.
“Open the champagne, waiter,” he ordered.
And Gian-Luca opened the champagne. He filled their glasses, while Milady said, still laughing, that she really preferred ginger-beer.
Presently they were comfortably launched, and Doria nodded with approval. “Buonissimo, quel poulet Maryland!” he murmured, spearing a piece with his fork.
And now he must drink very much champagne, because he was tired and ageing, and because Milady, who was little and lovely, was as greedy in passion as in food. Doria’s eyes grew bolder, ridiculously bold for a man who was tired and ageing, while over his face spread a deep red flush that was less of virility than wine.
He said softly: “You are beautiful like morning, bellezza, you are like my ‘Gioia della Luce.’ Have you read my ‘Gioia della Luce,’ bellezza?”
“Of course I have read it,” Milady lied; “everyone has read the ‘Gioia.’ ”
Gian-Luca smiled coldly as he poured the champagne: “Un’altra bottiglia?” he whispered.
Doria nodded: “Si, un’altra bottiglia!”
Then Gian-Luca opened a fresh bottle.
As he drank, Ugo Doria felt younger and younger, but his face remained terribly old. Milady’s eyes wandered away at moments to someone who sat near the door. And seeing this, Doria must work for her favors, smiling, and trying to be gay; trying to look clear-eyed and fair-haired and twenty, like the person who sat near the door. He talked of his poems, of his literary triumphs, laughing as though he were amused.
“A ridiculous success it have been, my new epic; what you call it?—a bumper success!”
He bragged like a child who covers its bragging with a flimsy pretense of humility; while his eyes, those lustful, miserable eyes, demanded and cringed and worshipped by turns whenever they dwelt on Milady.
Tall and silent, but terribly watchful, stood Gian-Luca, always at his elbow. From time to time he refilled Doria’s glass, and whenever he did this his lips would smile coldly; a queer, cruel smile that distorted his features, twisting the corners of his mouth.
Forgetting the presence of this soft-moving waiter, Doria expanded more and more; dragging his exquisite art in the mire, using his immortality as a cloak for a brainless woman to tread on. A large, foolish, lovesick viveur of sixty, greasy with food and wine; hot with the passing caprice of the moment—a triumph of a poet, a disaster of a man; this then was Ugo Doria.
Gian-Luca calmly brought in his coffee and poured out his liqueur brandy; very calmly, too, he presented the bill, which Doria paid with scarcely a glance. Then Milady got up, and as she did so, she smiled and nodded at Gian-Luca. Then Doria got up, but heavily, slowly; and he handed Gian-Luca a tip of two pounds in order to impress Milady. Not that he was rich, Ugo Doria, far from it—it costs money to make the beau geste; and all his life he had made the beau geste, whenever it seemed worth while.
He said to Gian-Luca: “It have been a fine meal,” and his voice was a little husky.
Gian-Luca bowed and held open the door: “Buon giorno, signore, e grazie.”
When Doria looked back, Gian-Luca was still standing with his hand on the open door.
And that was how Gian-Luca served his father; and that was how Doria was served by his son—neither of them any the wiser.
IV
That night, while Maddalena slept, Gian-Luca burnt Doria’s books. He burnt them deliberately, one by one, and the pound notes that Doria had given him he burnt also; and the flames that consumed these things were less searing than the anger within his heart.
Now he no longer felt weary and indifferent, he was terribly alive with this anger. It shone in his eyes, it tightened his muscles; he felt young with the will that he had to hate, and as he watched Doria’s verses burning he leant forward and spat into the fire.
He talked to the shrinking, shriveling things: “You hypocrites! You impostors! You liars! Here is Gian-Luca who believed you all these years, who went to you for comfort when he was so lonely, who went to you for courage when he was afraid, who set you apart as though you were worthy to live all alone in your grandeur; and all the while you were nothing but lies. He is small, small, small, the man who conceived you; his vanities are small and his lusts and his sins. His sins are the sins of an overcharged belly, he must drink in order to sin. I must fill up his glass many times while he sits there in order that your Doria may be sinful! Dio buono, if I could not sin better than that I would call myself less than a man!”
All the years of his lonely, outraged childhood, of his painful adolescence, his maturity of toil with its bitter will to succeed; all the dull resentment of that period in France, and the weariness of spirit that had followed after; yea, and strangely enough, that occasional yearning towards the ideal that had come to the son from the father who had written the “Gioia della Luce”—all these things now struck with the blows of a hammer on nerves too long sternly repressed; a hammer in the hand of Ugo Doria, who struck and struck and struck. Fantastically enormous he loomed, that poor creature, by very reason of his smallness; a monster, an outrage, an idol in ruins, a god with feet of coarse clay.
The flames that had destroyed the “Gioia della Luce” illumined Gian-Luca’s face, a face that seen thus in the gleaming firelight came perilously near to madness. And now he turned, as though Doria were present, and began to revile him also:
“You beast, you fool, you ridiculous bladder! You say to Gian-Luca: ‘Quick, open the champagne!’ You say to Gian-Luca: ‘It is excellent, this chicken!’ You say to the woman: ‘You are beautiful like morning, you are like my “Gioia della Luce”!’ And all the while she is splitting with laughter. Do you hear? She is splitting her sides with laughter! And her eyes are on someone who is stronger and younger, because she is greedy; I know her, the Milady—and all the while your eyes are on her, and your eyes make Gian-Luca go mad with anger, because of the ‘Gioia della Luce.’ But you are not alone, there are many more like you, the Doric is full of you, the whole world is full of you, eating and drinking and moving your jaws, pouring the wine down your gullets. You say to Gian-Luca: ‘Come here, my good fellow, and tell me what I must eat.’ He is such an obliging headwaiter, the Gian-Luca; he bows, he smiles, he produces his menu, he recommends this, he recommends that, he feeds you up like a lot of stud cattle. Damn you!” he shouted, shaking his fists, suddenly beside himself with anger; “damn you and your children and your children’s children! May you all eat and drink yourselves to hell.”
Upstairs, Maddalena moaned in her sleep as if she were suffering with him; and as though he heard her, Gian-Luca fell silent, while his face took on a brooding expression.
“I must be very careful with Maddalena, or else she will think I have gone mad,” he muttered. “What shall I say about all this burnt paper? I think I will get it out of the house, I can dump it somewhere in the street. And if she asks me about Doria’s books, I will say that I have lent them to Roberto; and if she says that they were all there this evening, I will say that she has made a mistake; and if she asks me about Ugo Doria, I will say that he is all and more than I thought him—it is lucky that I found her asleep when I got home, it is very lucky indeed!”
And stooping, he began to collect the burnt paper, which he presently threw into the street.