One day he felt a violent distaste for the pleasant, white-tiled refectory, where he himself would begin to chew, and Roberto, and all the others. He tried to swallow his own food down quickly, tried not to look at Roberto, but Roberto was picking the leg of a chicken and Gian-Luca had to look.
“Do not do that!” he shouted suddenly; and Roberto dropped his bone in surprise.
But then Gian-Luca smiled blandly at him: “Scusa, Roberto, I was thinking aloud, please take up that bone again and pick it.”
Roberto obeyed, but that afternoon he whispered a little with Giovanni: “He is strange, very strange, our Signor Gian-Luca—and I do not much like the look on his face, it reminds me of men I have seen after battle—but then he was never near a battle.”
It was in March that her husband said to Maddalena: “It is horrible, all this eating. I hate them for it, they are pigs at a trough, they wallow, they make horrid noises.”
Maddalena looked up with fear in her eyes, a fear that had been growing lately. She said: “But, Gian-Luca, of course they must eat, otherwise you would not be a waiter.”
He scowled at her, then he began talking quickly: “Do you know the meaning of hatred? Of a hatred so enormous that it chokes a man’s breath and jerks the heart out of his body?”
“No—no—” she faltered. “I have never felt hatred—”
And now she was very much afraid.
He saw it and smiled grimly: “Because, Maddalena, that is what I feel for those beasts at the Doric, I hate them; and now I am going to tell you something: that is how I hated Ugo Doria.”
She got up and tried to take him in her arms, feeling an overwhelming need to protect him against this thing that menaced. “Tell me, my blessing, tell me—” she pleaded. “Tell Maddalena what has happened.”
Then he laughed: “What has happened? Why, this has happened; I see them exactly as they are, pigs at a trough with their noses in food, and when they are not gorging they are swilling! Perhaps you will wonder why I stay at the Doric? Well listen, mia donna, I will tell you. I stay at the Doric to make them eat more, to make them drink more; I coax, I persuade. I am all soft cajoling and smiles and politeness, for no one must know how intensely I hate them—oh, I do my work well—I am crafty, Maddalena, I do my work better than ever.”
She stared at him aghast: “You are ill,” she whispered. “You are surely very ill, Gian-Luca.”
But he pushed her away: “I am well, I tell you, I never felt better in my life. I am working like ten men; you ask them at the Doric, they will tell you I am working like ten men.”
At that moment he caught sight of his untasted breakfast—and all of a sudden he was violently sick.
Nothing that Maddalena could say would persuade him to see a doctor.
“You want me to lose my position,” he told her. “No doubt you pity those pigs of the Doric for having Gian-Luca to tempt them.” He refused to see Teresa, or Mario, or Rosa, or indeed any member of the clan. “I am well, I tell you,” he kept on repeating. “Millo has not complained of my work—I forbid you to go and discuss me with Rosa, or with anyone else, for that matter.”
And Maddalena, afraid to enrage him, must needs keep her great fear hidden in her heart. But now he was eating less and less, complaining again about the richness of her cooking.
“For the love of God, cook things simply!” he would say. “You disgust me with all your grease.”
Then Maddalena would try to cook simply, boiling his vegetables in water like the English; but even so he would always complain: “It is horrible, all this food!”
At the Doric he was finding it hard to eat a mouthful, for there the headwaiters must finish the remains of all those expensive dishes. They might help themselves freely from the buffet or wagons, feasting like kings, if they felt so disposed, on the very fat of the land. Gian-Luca would scrape off the rich yellow sauces and the soft white billows of cream, but everything he ate would have too strong a flavor; his nostrils would be full of the smell of the cooking and his ears of the sizzling and hissing and bubbling that came from the kitchens near by. But in case they suspected, he must try hard to eat, and this was a veritable torture; his throat would close up when he wanted to swallow; he would not know how to get rid of the food with which he had filled his mouth.
Daniele, who was still young, enjoyed the fine fare. “U‑m,” he would gurgle, “e molto buono! E buono, non e vero, signore?”
Then Gian-Luca must nod and reply: “Buonissimo!” in case Daniele suspected. And then there was Roberto who picked every bone, spitting out little bits of gristle; and he watched Gian-Luca with large, anxious eyes—Roberto was always watching.
He would say: “Will you not eat your chicken, signore? Shall I go and fetch you some mousse—or perhaps you would like a little ‘sole Mornay’? It is good, the ‘sole Mornay’ today!”
So terribly watchful he was, this Roberto, almost as watchful as Gian-Luca; almost as anxious to feed him, it seemed, as Gian-Luca was to feed the clients. Yes, but that was another
