At the back of his mind an idea had been forming, but as yet it was nebulous and vague; it had come to him first that day in the train when he had tried to console Maddalena. And because of this vague and nebulous idea he was thinking now of her future.
“Are you listening, piccina?” he said almost sharply when he thought her attention was straying.
“But why should I know all about these things?” she asked him. “It is you who decide such matters.”
“One can never be certain, Maddalena,” he answered. “I prefer you to understand.”
So to please him she tried to be more attentive, frowning and biting her pencil.
He stared at her thoughtfully; she was not looking well, and her eyes had grown dull and weary, and all this he knew was because of his burdens—too heavy for her to bear. He pictured her back on the wide Campagna in the sunshine among her own people.
He muttered: “Where the sheep all wear little bells—”
And half hearing, she looked up and smiled. Then he said: “if you go home again, Maddalena, it is you who must help the poor beasts, for the peasants do not look upon you as a stranger, they will listen to you who are one of themselves—you will try to help, Maddalena?”
She put down her pencil and looked at him closely: “Why do you speak so, Gian-Luca?”
“I was thinking of your Campagna,” he told her, “that is where you seem to belong.”
“I belong to you,” she said gently but firmly, “wherever you are is home.”
But he shook his head: “I belong nowhere, piccina—”
“You belong in my heart,” said Maddalena.
After that they were silent for quite a long time, while she went on doing her sums; and all the while he was staring at her thoughtfully, thinking of the wide Campagna. Presently he made her put away the books, and they drew their chairs close to the fire.
“I must get work,” he told her.
And she asked him what work, but he seemed at a loss how to answer.
Then he said: “I have such a strange feeling lately—as though something were calling me away, as though something were waiting for me to find it, something very splendid, Maddalena.”
She did not understand, and her eyes looked frightened. “Calling you, Gian-Luca?” she said slowly.
He nodded: “It is something that is waiting to be found—” Then because he could see that her eyes were frightened he tried to reassure her: “It is nothing, cara mia, it is only my fancy—Now come, go to bed, it must be getting late.” And he kissed her and patted her arm. But as she turned away his heart ached with pity. “Do not be afraid,” he comforted.
III
But Maddalena felt terribly afraid, and now she would never leave her husband; when he went out she must always go with him. He had not the heart to oppose her in this, yet he knew that he needed solitude, for he who had always so feared loneliness now craved it with all his being. He tried to make some sort of plans for their future, but somehow he could not think clearly. The noise of the traffic, the presence of people, the constant presence of Maddalena, these things bewildered; so the weeks slipped by and still he had come to no decision. He would walk about the streets with his wife at his side, or sit gazing out of the window; and a great urge would rise in him, filling him with longing—an urge so insistent that he wanted to cry out—
“I am coming!” he would mutter, and then grow afraid, not understanding his own words.
He was filled with an intolerable, homeless feeling—he felt like an atom cast into space—he wanted to stretch out his hand and grasp something that was infinitely stronger than he was.
He would think: “There is something greater than life—perhaps even greater than death—”
And then he would wonder if this thing might be God, and then he would wonder how a man might find God who was greater than life and death. But when he tried to think of God in this way, he would always grow appalled by God’s vastness, for his heart was aching for simple things; yet the simple things were terribly finite, or so it seemed to Gian-Luca.
There were days when his mind would be clouded and numbed by a deep sense of personal failure; when he saw his past life as a road that had led nowhere, when he saw his present as a kind of chaos in which he was involving Maddalena; and even more hopeless did he feel about the future, for when he looked forward he could not find the future, and this made him terribly afraid.
“What must I do?” he would sometimes mutter; and then again: “What must I do?”
He grew anxious about money and would sit for hours poring over his account books; yet all the while he would feel strangely detached, as though none of this mattered to him. Maddalena, it was, that was always in his mind, and how best he could provide for her; even his savings were not his, he felt, nothing was his any more. His clothes were growing shabby, the time had arrived when he usually ordered a new suit, but nothing would induce him to go to his tailor’s, for in all sorts of personal ways he was saving, depriving himself of the small luxuries to which he had been accustomed. And seeing this, Maddalena protested almost crossly.
“You cannot wear that suit, Gian-Luca!” For she took a great pride in her husband’s appearance, and she felt like weeping to see him these days, so disheartened and hopeless and shabby.
Gian-Luca would be thinking: “It is Maddalena’s money, I
