III
I
In the months that followed on the meeting with Doria, Gian-Luca acquired the habit of watching. Never before had he watched like this, with eyes that weighed and appraised and condemned; with an anger that glowed all the more intensely because it was kept beneath the surface. For after that one wild night of destruction, Gian-Luca had found his self-control again; the next morning he had actually smiled at Maddalena, had actually assured her that Ugo Doria was as great as, if not greater than, his genius. Oh, yes, he was wonderfully self-controlled, and more attentive than ever to his clients; he was everywhere at once with his low-voiced suggestions regarding their food and drink.
He would say to Roberto: “They are drinking too little, go quickly, my friend, and make them drink some more, but do it with tact or else they may suspect you—never irritate, always persuade.”
And Roberto would sometimes stare, almost frightened at the look in Gian-Luca’s eyes; a brooding, cruel, inhuman expression. “They have ordered a bottle of champagne,” he would mutter; “that lot always drink a good deal.”
Then Gian-Luca would laugh: “Not enough, not enough! Go and try them with some Napoleon brandy; but always take care that they do not get quite drunk, for that would be bad for the Doric.”
Roberto would think: “What is the matter with the fellow? It is almost as though he hated our clients, it is almost as though he took pleasure in their weakness—ma che, we are all weak at times!”
In spite of his constant service on the clients, Gian-Luca found time to watch them, and the more he watched them the more he hated, and the deeper his hatred the greater his zeal.
And now there was plenty of eating and drinking and dancing and lusting to the tunes of the band; but never enough to content Gian-Luca, who, distrusting Roberto, would tempt them in person, with soft-voiced praise for this vintage or that. He would think of Giovanni who had gone to the war, but had come back to slice up their meats; Giovanni who had wished so much to get killed because of his faithless Anna. There would be Giovanni, very quiet, very pale, with his long knife always so busy—a patient, resigned, rather stupid sort of man who had said to Gian-Luca:
“I am back after all. Oh, well, I suppose it was fate!”
And Gian-Luca’s anger would flame into his eyes, because Giovanni must still slice meat. Yet Giovanni was quite unfit to rule empires, whereas he was an excellent trancheur …
Gian-Luca would think of Roberto, the wine-waiter, so humble, in spite of those years at the war—Roberto who would tolerate stupid impatience with a smile and a plea for forgiveness. “Scusi, signore, I am very sorry; the cocktails will not be long coming.” And then he would remember Roberto’s fine record, for Roberto had been an ace. Oh, yes, and he had flown with the gallant d’Annunzio, the dreamer who had known how to turn dreams into actions, and of whom it was told that in moments of peril, it had not been his way with the men to say: “You go!” But instead, “I am going, come with me.” Roberto had done many wonderful things, he had played many times with death. Like a fearless eagle he had soared in the air, swooping, destroying, then up, up and up, while something went spinning earthward! Roberto seldom spoke of these deeds, but one day he had said to Gian-Luca:
“I will never keep birds in a cage any more, for now I know what it means to have wings.”
Gian-Luca’s anger would well-nigh choke him, because this Roberto must open their wine; and then he would urge him to open still more, eager for their undoing. Yet all wars must end and with them brave deeds, while the Dorics go on forever, and Roberto had a mother to keep in Rapallo, so perhaps it was well that he understood wines, and was such a polite little waiter. And indeed he was marvelous, little Roberto, considering all he had done—a quiet, sober man with a great sense of duty; contented too, or so he appeared, as he opened those innumerable bottles. And if he was less contented than he seemed he took care that you should not see it, arguing no doubt that the longings of your waiter would make bad seasoning for supper.
II
Gian-Luca discovered that on certain days there would be more to watch than on others; on certain days interesting people would arrive, people whose faces appeared in the papers, together with their outlandish doings. Perhaps Jane Coram would come in with her friends, satellites surrounding the star—a generous star too, who provided them with money, and invariably paid for their meals. Gian-Luca would hasten to find them a table, for such people were always welcome at the Doric; they amused other clients, who could go home and say: “I saw Jane Coram at luncheon.”
She was still very young, the famous Jane Coram, and on rare occasions quite sober; but Gian-Luca knew the lure that would catch her, and almost before she could ask he would bring it; then she would sometimes look up with a grin, possessing a great sense of humor. She would sit lolling loosely back in her chair, with her long legs sprawled beneath the table; and as like as not she would have some grievance, a grievance with its tongue in its cheek.
“I’m a most unfortunate woman,” she would say, “everyone seems to be down on Jane—if I try to help people there’s sure to be a row, I’m always misunderstood. Got my brandy-and-soda, Gian-Luca? All right, now get us something to eat.” And then all the satellites called for brandy, just to show that they were satellites.
After a time they would get very loving, loving and jealous of each other. Their eyes would grow veiled and mysterious and pensive; but Jane’s eyes never changed, they were always the same, the eyes of a homesick monkey. There she would sprawl, this darling of the people, this plaything of the gallery and pit, with her body of an athlete and her mind of a buffoon and her soul of a Solitary. And now it would be the turn of Roberto to bring her those double-brandies, Roberto who had been such a fine man in the war, Roberto who had flown with d’Annunzio. While Gian-Luca, always watchful, would be thinking to himself:
“She cannot last very long at this rate.” But never a twinge of pity would he feel for those eyes of a homesick monkey.
Perhaps a pair of young lovers would arrive, temperate children who drank little as a rule, but because they wished to appear worldly, they must now order cocktails and wine. And gradually the fine ardor of their love would be superseded by something less fine, by something that made them look flushed and coarsened—a stupid, fictitious, unworthy thing, that sat ill on their fresh young faces. They would eat the rich food of the restaurant and their skins would look hot and even rather greasy; then the girl must get out her powder-puff to correct the effects of eating. And now their perceptions would have grown a little blurred, and their sense of values a little untrue, so that they felt much richer than they were, felt that the world was made for their buying, with all its delightful baubles. When they looked across the table at each other and smiled, they were looking through a mist of illusion. Not so Gian-Luca, the quietly observant, he had no illusions about them. He saw them precisely as they were at that moment, when the beauty and the glory of their youth had left them, and into its place had crept something ugly, something that reminded him of Doria.
He would think: “What fools, what intolerable fools! They need neither food nor wine for their loving, and yet they must do as the others are doing—as Ugo Doria did.”
Compassion? He had none; let them eat, let them drink, the more they consumed the better! “A generation of fools,” he would mutter; and then his anger would flare up afresh. So much splendor of suffering and sacrifice and death, and now this, a generation of fools!
Oh, but the aged who must needs feed alone, having neither lover nor friend—the people who drank their lonely champagne and ordered long, lonely meals! Sometimes a woman and sometimes a man, and how carefully they studied their menus; they would have the food-expression in their eyes, in their hands, in their backs, in their whole intent persons. They had come to an age when all other things failing, their meals must provide their diversion, when the garden of Kama must give place to the Doric, and passion to the lusts of the palate. Poor old pitiful, greedy babies, with their unreliable teeth; with their receding gums and their gouty knuckles; with their aches and their pains and their Continental Cures. Four weeks of strict diet then back at the Doric—but dear God! they had to do something for Old Age, he was really terribly insistent …
Gian-Luca detested these senile gourmets, they made him feel physically sick; and yet he would watch them as he watched all the others, in order the better to hate.
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.
VI
Terrible days indeed for Maddalena, but even more terrible days for Gian-Luca, who must struggle through his work at the Doric with a smile—especially if Millo was watching. And now he felt certain that everyone watched him: Millo, Giovanni, Roberto, the clients. It came down like an avalanche on him, their watching; their watching was a thing, an intolerable presence that stood between him and his own will to watch, so that he could not see clearly.
“Dio!” he would groan, “will they never stop watching? Do they think I am drunk, or crazy or what, that they follow me about with their eyes?”