Grandsire and grandson hated each other, and their feuds robbed the house of all peace; for Geppe could bellow much louder than Nerone—youth gave him a laryngeal advantage.
Geppe, who was now nearly nineteen years old, wished to be a commercial traveler. This struck him as a pleasant, safe way to see life, and one that would release him from the shop. He had met a young commercial traveler one day through a friend of Berta’s at Madame Germaine’s; a very smart fellow with plenty of money and a staggering knowledge of the world. Geppe of course had little to spend—only what Mario could give him—and being the grandson of Nerone, it was natural that he thought a great deal about money. But unlike Nerone, and herein lay the trouble, he liked it for what it could buy; to keep it in a till or to send it to a bank seemed to Geppe the height of all foolishness, and he said so when Nerone was listening.
Nerone had refused point-blank to pay him wages, and this was a very sore point. Geppe would have liked to run away to sea—he had read of such things in his paper-backed “shockers”—but whenever he thought of the sea for too long he invariably felt rather sick. He had many wonderful adventures in his mind, but his body shrank weakly from hardships. He was soft; his skin was now colorless and flabby, his hands would easily blister; woolen vests made him itch; and now, when he shaved, the razor brought up little pimples. He was lazy with youth and would lie long abed; when he did appear at last it would be yawning. In the evening, however, he was as wakeful as an owl. In the evening he would go to a cinematograph, a form of entertainment which he liked above all others. He would sit in the darkness and watch desperate deeds, with a pleasant conviction of safety. And sometimes, if he found the heroine attractive, he would conjure up all sorts of amorous scenes in which he himself was the hero. Geppe was greedy, he still loved jam tartlets, he also loved chocolate creams; he would stroll about eating the latter while smoking, a perversion of the palate that disgusted Nerone.
“Che bestia!” he would mutter, unable to resist a morbid desire to look. And if Geppe noticed his grandfather looking, he would open his mouth and show chocolate creams in the process of mastication.
Nerone said that his grandson’s place was behind the counter of the shop; as for wages, what was the good of wages? The shop might be Geppe’s one day. He also said that cinemas were evil and encouraged immoral behavior. Now Geppe was longing to be immoral, his difficulty was to find a partner in sin. He would often try to borrow money from Gian-Luca, who must obviously be very rich; but Gian-Luca would find an excuse for not lending.
“He is mean,” thought Geppe in bitterness of spirit. “He himself is always after women.”
Mario was anxious, inadequate and pious, for he felt that his sins might be finding him out; he remembered those bygone halcyon days, when Rosa had had cause to be jealous of the barmaid—and many other things did Mario remember that Rosa had never known.
“He is like me and yet he is not,” mourned Mario, “for I at least never feared hard work—and yet it is natural for a boy to want money—I think it is time the Babbo paid him something.”
But neither he nor Rosa dared anger Nerone, who still had to contribute towards their support, for Mario’s wages at the Capo had not risen, though the Capo was rising every day. All sorts of great people now dined at the Capo and got drunk on its excellent liquor. There was Munster the painter, and Jenkins the sculptor, and their wives and their women and their models and their offspring, to say nothing of a certain broad-minded countess who had reincarnated from a Babylonian suburb—there was also the poet who had once admired Gian-Luca and who, having lately married, had become very rich. He no longer wrote poems, his wife fed him too well—in the winter he wore a magnificent coat with a collar of Russian sable. But of him be it said that he was faithful to the Capo—grateful, let us hope, for past favors—for he brought many friends to eat costly dinners, and his wife always seemed to have his purse in her bag.
Oh, but many grand people now rejoiced the Padrone, who was somewhat less fierce than he had been. The best cure for bad temper is prosperity, of course—what a pity that we cannot all be prosperous! And then there was now something living upstairs, a tiny, red, bawling Padroncino; a thing with eyes the color of gentians, and lungs that left no manner of doubt regarding its paternity. Whenever its father could spare a minute he would rush upstairs and yell: “Bimbo!” Or perhaps he would tickle, when the small Padroncino would respond with such vigor that Munster would look up from his tumbler of brandy and smile a large smile. For if Munster loved women he also loved babies—which in his case was fortunate, perhaps.
There were now red silk curtains at the windows of the Capo, and Mario began to think himself a prophet, as indeed he had been in all but one thing, and that was his own promotion. The Padrone had now four waiters in all, but as yet he had no head waiter, so that Mario continued to live in hopes. But his present circumstances did not warrant interference with Nerone on behalf of his son.
“After all,” he told Rosa, “the time is approaching when Geppe will have to go to Italy to serve. His military service will make a man of him, and when he
