He began to grow anxious about himself, because of this curious indifference. He who had all but reached the height of his ambition, and could buy his own restaurant now if he chose, or if he preferred it get a manager’s job and work up in time to be a rival to Millo; he who had achieved so much single-handed in the face of unpropitious fate, what had he got to complain of? Nothing—and yet, somehow, the thought of his days lay heavy, like a cold, hard stone on his brain. The clashing of music, the clattering of dishes, the incessant talking and laughing; the perpetual movement of knives and forks, the perpetual chewing of food.
“Maître d’hotel!”
“Si, signore?”
“I want the wine-waiter.”
“Si, signore, I will send him at once!”
“Gian-Luca—”
“Si, signore?”
“I’d like some more hors d’oeuvres.”
“Si, signore, I will send you your waiter.”
Food, food, food—all those dozens of people thinking of it, talking of it, eating. His business in life just to see that they got it, just to see that they ate more and more. His head would feel dizzy with the fumes of the food, until he would grow almost stupid; but then he would suddenly pull himself up, while a kind of terror seized him.
“This is my life, my whole life,” he would mutter, “and I like it—I like my work.”
To assure himself how much he liked his work, he took to going down to the basement again, in the time between luncheon and dinner. He would stand on the steps that led into the great kitchen, and listen to the pulsing of that mighty heart; he would think of Millo, the heart of that heart, while he tried to recapture the lure of the place that had held him before the war. Food, food, food—great cauldrons of food. Food on the tables of wood and of iron; splashes of food on the walls, on the floor, on the clothes and the hands of men. The vastness of the thing would begin to oppress him—grotesque that it should be so vast—the vastness of the Doric and all that it stood for, the vastness of the appetites that it must appease, the vastness of that long vista of jaws. Yet the larger the Doric grew in his imagination, the smaller it seemed to become; so small that now it was crushing and squeezing; a prison, a press that closed in and in until he could scarcely breathe. But how could a thing be vast and yet small? Surely that way lay madness.
His hand would go up to his throat. He would think: “It is awful—it suffocates!” And then he would hurry away to the larders, afraid of these fantastic fancies.
In the principal larder there would be much to see, the chopping and slicing of meat, for instance; great chunks of raw meat, which a chef called Henri was forever dividing with his knife. There were also those long rows of newly-plucked chickens, with their necks swinging over the shelves, and those deep, white dishes of quaking entrails, and those slabs full of slow-moving, beady-eyed lobsters, who protested that they were alive. Henri would look up from his work with a smile, and perhaps he would say: “Good morning, Gian-Luca. Would you like to select a nice, fat lobster for your pretty Milady? You are always so fussy, and no wonder, for she is extremely gourmande, she will eat it up shell and all!”
And Gian-Luca might answer: “She is little and lovely—they are always the greediest kind.” But he would not select the fat lobster for Milady, instead he would just stand staring at Henri, and one day he said: “Do you like what you do? Do you like the feeling of food?”
“Ma foi! But why not?” laughed Henri, surprised. “Do I not live by their food?”
III
Gian-Luca still found consolation in his books, he still read the “Gioia della Luce,” and now Ugo Doria had written a new poem, an epic of peace and of peaceful things, of vineyards and hillsides and valleys. It had come to Gian-Luca like a breath of sweet air, like a cool hand laid on the forehead. He said to Maddalena:
“When I read Doria’s words I can almost believe in the Spirit—I can almost believe in your God, Maddalena, for that is how Doria writes sometimes—as though he wrote with his spirit.”
One day he went off to see the Librarian, taking the poem in his pocket. “Have you read it?” he demanded. “It is wonderful, sublime—it is equal to the ‘Gioia della Luce.’ ”
The Librarian shook his head. “No,” he said slowly; “I am sick unto death of books.”
Gian-Luca stared: “You are tired of your books? But I thought you loved books as I do.”
“A man may change—” the Librarian said softly, “perhaps every man must change.”
Then Gian-Luca was silent because he felt frightened, terribly frightened of change. But presently he said:
“A man must not change, he might lose
