The Oil Jar and Other Stories Read Free Page B

eaten in his life, no longer thinking about his hands or the servant.
    Nevertheless, each and every time the latter, entering or leaving the salon, opened the glass double door, and a sort of wave of mingled words or some burst of laughter came from that direction, he turned around uneasily and then looked at the old lady’s sorrowful, loving eyes, as if to read an explanation there. But what he read there instead was an urgent request to ask no more for the moment, to put off explanations till a later time. And again they both smiled at each other and resumed eating and talking about their far-off hometown, friends and acquaintances, concerning whom Aunt Marta asked him for news endlessly.
    â€œAren’t you drinking?”
    Micuccio put out his hand to take the bottle; but, just at that moment, the double door to the ballroom opened again; a rustle of silk, amid hurried steps: a flash, as if the little room had all at once been violently illuminated, in order to blind him.
    â€œTeresina ...”
    And his voice died away on his lips, out of amazement. Ah, what a queen!
    With face flushed, eyes bulging and mouth open, he stopped to gaze at her, dumbfounded. How could she ever ... like that! Her bosom bare, her shoulders bare, her arms bare ... all ablaze with jewels and rich fabrics ... He didn’t see her, he no longer saw her as a living, real person in front of him ... What was she saying to him? ... Not her voice, nor her eyes, nor her laugh: nothing, nothing of hers did he recognize any more in that dream apparition.
    â€œHow are things? Are you getting along all right now, Micuccio? Good, good ... You were sick if I’m not mistaken ... We’ll get together again in a little while. In the meantime, you have Mother with you here ... Is that a deal? ...”
    And Teresina ran off again into the salon, all a-rustle.
    â€œYou’re not eating any more?” Aunt Marta asked timorously after a brief pause, to cut short Micuccio’s silent astonishment.
    He looked at her in bewilderment.
    â€œEat,” the old lady insisted, showing him his plate.
    Micuccio raised two fingers to his smoke-blackened, crumpled collar and tugged at it, trying to draw a deep breath.
    â€œEat?”
    And several times he wiggled his fingers near his chin as if waving goodbye, to indicate: I don’t feel like it any more, I can’t. For another while he remained silent, dejected, absorbed in the vision he had just seen, then he murmured:
    â€œHow she’s turned out ...”
    And he saw that Aunt Marta was shaking her head bitterly and that she too had stopped eating, as if in expectation.
    â€œIt’s not even to be thought of ... ,” he then added, as if to himself, closing his eyes.
    Now he saw, in that darkness of his, the gulf that had opened between the two of them. No, she—that woman—was no longer his Teresina. It was all over ... for some time, for some time, and he, the fool, he, the imbecile, was realizing it only now. They had told him so back home, and he had stubbornly refused to believe it ... And now, how would he look staying on in that house? If all those gentlemen, if even that servant had known that he, Micuccio Bonavino, had worn himself out coming such a distance, thirty-six hours by train, seriously believing he was still the fiance of that queen, what laughs they would raise, those gentlemen and that servant and the cook and the scullery boy and Dorina! What laughs, if Teresina had dragged him into their presence, in the salon there, saying: “Look, this pauper, this flute player, says he wants to become my husband!” She, yes, she had promised him this; but how could she herself suppose at that time that one day she would become what she now was? And it was also true, yes, that he had opened that path for her and had given her the means to travel it; but, there! by this time she had come so very far, how could he, who had stayed where he was, always the