Idiots First Page 13

  As jobs went, Rosa knew she had a good one. The professor paid well and promptly, and he never ordered her around in the haughty manner of some of her Italian employers. This one was nervous and fussy but not a bad sort. His main fault was his silence. Though he could speak a better than passable Italian, he preferred, when not at work, to sit in an armchair in the living room, reading. Only two souls in the whole apartment, you would think they would want to talk to each other once in a while. Sometimes when she served him a cup of coffee as he read, she tried to get in a word about her troubles. She wanted to tell him about her long, impoverished widowhood, how badly her son had turned out, and what her miserable daughter-in-law was to live with. But though he listened courteously; though they shared the same roof, and even the same hot water bottle and bathtub, they almost never shared speech. He said no more to her than a crow would, and clearly showed he preferred to be left alone. So she left him alone and was lonely in the apartment. Working for foreigners had its advantages, she thought, but it also had disadvantages.

  After a while the professor noticed that the telephone was ringing regularly for Rosa each afternoon during the time she usually was resting in her room. In the following week, instead of staying in the house until four, after her telephone call she asked permission to leave. At first she said her liver was bothering her, but later she stopped giving excuses. Although he did not much approve of this sort of thing, suspecting she would take advantage of him if he was too liberal in granting favors, he informed her that, until his wife arrived, she might leave at three on two afternoons of the week, provided that all her duties were fully discharged. He knew that everything was done before she left but thought he ought to say it. She listened meekly—her eyes aglow, lips twitching—and meekly agreed. He presumed, when he happened to think about it afterwards, that Rosa had a good spot here, by any standard, and she ought soon to show it in her face, change her unhappy expression for one less so. However, this did not happen, for when he chanced to observe her, even on days when she was leaving early, she seemed sadly preoccupied, sighed much, as if something on her heart were weighing her down.

  He never asked what, preferring not to become involved in whatever it was. These people had endless troubles, and if you let yourself get involved in them you got endlessly involved. He knew of one woman, the wife of a colleague, who had said to her maid: “Lucrezia, I am sympathetic to your condition but I don’t want to hear about it.” This, the professor reflected, was basically good policy. It kept employer-employee relationships where they belonged—on an objective level. He was, after all, leaving Italy in April and would never in his life see Rosa again. It would do her a lot more good if, say, he sent her a small check at Christmas, than if he needlessly immersed himself in her miseries now. The professor knew he was nervous and often impatient, and he was sometimes sorry for his nature; but he was what he was and preferred to stay aloof from what did not closely and personally concern him.

  But Rosa would not have it so. One morning she knocked on his study door, and when he said avanti, she went in embarrassedly so that even before she began to speak he was himself embarrassed.

  “Professore,” Rosa said, unhappily, “please excuse me for bothering your work, but I have to talk to somebody .”

  “I happen to be very busy,” he said, growing a little angry. “Can it wait a while?”

  “It’ll take only a minute. Your troubles hang on all your life but it doesn’t take long to tell them.”

  “Is it your liver complaint?” he asked.

  “No. I need your advice. You’re an educated man and I’m no more than an ignorant peasant.”

  “What kind of advice?” he asked impatiently.

  “Call it anything you like. The fact is I have to speak to somebody. I can’t talk to my son, even if it were possible in this case. When I open my mouth he roars like a bull. And my daughter-in-law isn’t worth wasting my breath on. Sometimes, on the roof, when we’re hanging the wash, I say a few words to the portinaia, but she isn’t a sympathetic person so I have to come to you, I’ll tell you why.”

  Before he could say how he felt about hearing her confidences, Rosa had launched into a story about this middle-aged government worker in the tax bureau, whom she had happened to meet in the neighborhood. He was married, had four children, and sometimes worked as a carpenter after leaving his office at two o’clock each day. His name was Armando; it was he who telephoned her every afternoon. They had met recently on a bus, and he had, after two or three meetings, seeing that her shoes weren’t fit to wear, urged her to let him buy her a new pair. She had told him not to be foolish. One could see he had very little, and it was enough that he took her to the movies twice a week. She had said that, yet every time they met he talked about the shoes he wanted to buy her.

  “I’m only human,” Rosa frankly told the professor, “and I need the shoes badly, but you know how these things go. If I put on his shoes they may carry me to his bed. That’s why I thought I would ask you if I ought to take them.”

  The professor’s face and bald head were flushed. “I don’t see how I can possibly advise you—”

  “You’re the educated one,” she said.

  “However,” he went on, “since the situation is still essentially hypothetical, I will go so far as to say you ought to tell this generous gentleman that his responsibilities should be to his own family. He would do well not to offer you gifts, as you will do, not to accept them. If you don’t, he can’t possibly make any claims upon you or your person. This is all I care to say. Your business is certainly none of mine. Since you have requested advice, I’ve given it, but I won’t say any more.”

  Rosa sighed. “The truth of it is I could use a pair of shoes. Mine look as though they’ve been chewed by goats. I haven’t had a new pair in six years.”

  But the professor had nothing more to add.

  After Rosa had gone for the day, in thinking about her problem, he decided to buy her a pair of shoes. He was concerned that she might be expecting something of the sort, had planned, so to speak, to have it work out this way. But since this was conjecture only, evidence entirely lacking, he would assume, until proof to the contrary became available, that she had no ulterior motive in asking his advice. He considered giving her five thousand lire to make the purchase of the shoes herself and relieve him of the trouble, but he was doubtful for there was no guarantee she would use the money for the agreed purpose. Suppose she came in the next day, saying she had had a liver attack that had necessitated calling the doctor, who had charged three thousand lire for his visit; therefore would the professor, in view of these unhappy circumstances, supply an additional three thousand for the shoes? That would never do, so the next morning, when the maid was at the grocer’s, the professor slipped into her room and quickly traced on paper the outline of her miserable shoe—a distasteful task but he accomplished it quickly. That evening, in a store on the same piazza as the restaurant where he liked to eat, he bought Rosa a pair of brown shoes for fifty-five hundred lire, slightly more than he had planned to spend; but they were a solid pair of ties, walking shoes with a medium heel, a practical gift.

  He gave them to Rosa the next day, a Wednesday. He felt a bit embarrassed to be doing that, because he realized that despite his warnings to her, he had permitted himself to meddle in her affairs; but he considered giving her the shoes a psychologically proper move in more ways than one. In presenting her with them he said, “Rosa, I have perhaps a solution to suggest in the matter you discussed with me. Here are a pair of new shoes for you. Tell your friend you must refuse his. And when you do, perhaps it would be advisable also to inform him that you intend to see him a little less frequently from now on.”

  Rosa was overjoyed at the professor’s kindness. She attempted to kiss his hand but he thrust it behind him and at once retired to his study. On Thursday, when he opened the apartment door to her ring, she was wearing his shoes. She carried a large paper bag from which she offered t
he professor three small oranges still on a branch with green leaves. He said she needn’t have bought them but Rosa, smiling half hiddenly in order not to show her teeth, said that she wanted him to see how grateful she was. Later she requested permission to leave at three so she could show Armando her new shoes.

  He said dryly, “You may go at that hour if your work is done.”

  She thanked him profusely. Hastening through her tasks, she left shortly after three, but not before the professor, in his hat, gloves and bathrobe, standing nervously at his open study door as he was inspecting the corridor floor she had just mopped, saw her hurrying out of the apartment, wearing a pair of dressy black needlepoint pumps. This angered him; and when Rosa appeared the next morning, though she begged him not to when he said she had made a fool of him and he was firing her to teach her a lesson, the professor did. She wept, pleading for another chance, but he would not change his mind. So she desolately wrapped up the odds and ends in her room in a newspaper and left, still crying. Afterwards he was upset and very nervous. He could not stand the cold that day and he could not work.

  A week later, the morning the heat was turned on, Rosa appeared at the apartment door, and begged to have her job back. She was distraught, said her son had hit her, and gently touched her puffed black-and-blue upper lip. With tears in her eyes, although she didn’t cry, Rosa explained it was no fault of hers that she had accepted both pairs of shoes. Armando had given her his pair first; had, out of jealousy of a possible rival, forced her to take them. Then when the professor had kindly offered his pair of shoes, she had wanted to refuse them but was afraid of angering him and losing her job. This was God’s truth, so help her St. Peter. She would, she promised, find Armando, whom she had not seen in a week, and return his shoes if the professor would take her back. If he didn’t, she would throw herself into the Tiber. He, though he didn’t care for talk of this kind, felt a certain sympathy for her. He was disappointed in himself at the way he had handled her. It would have been better to have said a few appropriate words on the subject of honesty and then philosophically dropped the matter. In firing her he had only made things difficult for them both, because, in the meantime he had tried two other maids and found them unsuitable. One stole, the other was lazy. As a result the house was a mess, impossible for him to work in, although the portinaia came up for an hour each morning to clean. It was his good fortune that Rosa had appeared at the door just then. When she removed her coat, he noticed with satisfaction that the tear in her dress had finally been sewn.

  She went grimly to work, dusting, polishing, cleaning everything in sight. She unmade beds, then made them, swept under them, mopped, polished head and foot boards, adorned the beds with newly pressed spreads. Though she had just got her job back and worked with her usual efficiency, she worked, he observed, in sadness, frequently sighing, attempting a smile only when his eye was on her. This is their nature, he thought; they have hard lives. To spare her further blows by her son he gave her permission to live in. He offered extra money to buy meat for her supper but she refused it, saying pasta would do. Pasta and green salad was all she ate at night. Occasionally she boiled an artichoke left over from lunch and ate it with oil and vinegar. He invited her to drink the white wine in the cupboard and take fruit. Once in a while she did, always telling what and how much, though he repeatedly asked her not to. The apartment was nicely in order. Though the phone rang, as usual, daily at three, only seldom did she leave the house after she had talked with Armando.

  Then one dismal morning Rosa came to the professor and in her distraught way confessed she was pregnant. Her face was lit in despair; her white underwear shone through her black dress.

  He felt disgust, blaming himself for having re-employed her.

  “You must leave at once,” he said, trying to keep his voice from trembling.

  “I can’t,” she said. “My son will kill me. In God’s name, help me, professore.”

  He was infuriated by her stupidity. “Your adventures are none of my responsibility.”

  “You’ve got to help me,” she moaned.

  “Was it this Armando?” he asked almost savagely.

  She nodded.

  “Have you informed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He says he can’t believe it.” She tried to smile but couldn’t.

  “I’ll convince him,” he said. “Do you have his telephone number?”

  She told it to him. He called Armando at his office, identified himself, and asked the government clerk to come at once to the apartment. “You have a grave responsibility to Rosa.”

  “I have a grave responsibility to my family,” Armando answered.

  “You might have considered them before this.”

  “All right, I’ll come over tomorrow after work. It’s impossible today. I have a carpentering contract to finish up.”

  “She’ll expect you,” the professor said.

  When he hung up he felt less angry, though still more emotional than he cared to feel. “Are you quite sure of your condition?” he asked her, “that you are pregnant?”

  “Yes.” She was crying now. “Tomorrow is my son’s birthday. What a beautiful present it will be for him to find out his mother’s a whore. He’ll break my bones, if not with his hands, then with his teeth.”

  “It hardly seems likely you can conceive, considering your age.”

  “My mother gave birth at fifty.”

  “Isn’t there a possibility you are mistaken?”

  “I don’t know. It’s never been this way before. After all, I’ve been a widow—”

  “Well, you’d better find out.”

  “Yes, I want to,” Rosa said. “I want to see the midwife in my neighborhood but I haven’t got a single lire. I spent all I had left when I wasn’t working, and I had to borrow carfare to get here. Armando can’t help me just now. He has to pay for his wife’s teeth this week. She has very bad teeth, poor thing. That’s why I came to you. Could you advance me two thousand of my pay so I can be examined by the midwife?”

  I must put an end to this, he thought. After a minute he counted two one thousand lire notes out of his wallet. “Go to her now,” he said. He was about to add that if she was pregnant, not to come back, but he was afraid she might do something desperate, or lie to him so she could go on working. He didn’t want her around any more. When he thought of his wife and daughter arriving amidst this mess, he felt sick with nervousness. He wanted to get rid of the maid as soon as possible.

  The next day Rosa came in at twelve instead of nine. Her dark face was pale. “Excuse me for being late,” she murmured. “I was praying at my husband’s grave.”

  “That’s all right,” the professor said. “But did you go to the midwife?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?” Though angry he spoke calmly.

  She stared at the floor.

  “Please answer my question.”

  “I was going to say I lost the two thousand lire on the bus, but after being at my husband’s grave I’ll tell you the truth. After all, it’s bound to come out.”

  This is terrible, he thought, it’s unending. “What did you do with the money?”

  “That’s what I mean,” Rosa sighed. “I bought my son a present. Not that he deserves it but it was his birthday.” She burst into tears.

  He stared at her a minute, then said, “Please come with me.”

  The professor left the apartment in his bathrobe, and Rosa followed. Opening the elevator door he stepped inside, holding the door for her. She entered the elevator.

  They stopped two floors below. He got out and nearsightedly scanned the names on the brass plates above the bells. Finding the one he wanted, he pressed the button. A maid opened the door and let them in. She seemed frightened at Rosa’s expression.

  “Is the doctor in?” the professor asked the doctor’s maid.

  “I will see.”

  “Please ask him if h
e’ll see me for a minute. I live in the building, two flights up.”

  “Si, signore.” She glanced again at Rosa, then went inside.

  The Italian doctor came out, a short middle-aged man with a beard. The professor had once or twice passed him in the cortile of the apartment house. The doctor was buttoning his shirt cuff.

  “I am sorry to trouble you, sir,” said the professor. “This is my maid, who has been having some difficulty. She would like to determine whether she is pregnant. Can you assist her?”

  The doctor looked at him, then at the maid, who had a handkerchief to her eyes.

  “Let her come into my office.”

  “Thank you,” said the professor. The doctor nodded.

  The professor went up to his apartment. In a half hour the phone rang.