Her Husband Read Online Free PDF Page B

already taken her place between Maurizio Gueli and Senator Romualdo Borghi. Attilio Raceni had given a lot of thought to the seating arrangement, so that when he saw Casimiro Luna sitting in a corner by Signora Barmis, who had left the seat next to herself empty for Boggiolo, he ran over to advise him that that was not his seat, confound it! Come on, come on, next to Marchesa Lampugnani.
    “No, thank you, Raceni,” Luna said to him. “Please let me sit here. We have her husband with us.”
    As if she had understood, Silvia Roncella turned to look for Giustino. That long searching look around the table and then around the hall itself seemed a painful effort, interrupted at a certain point by the sight of someone dear to her to whom she gave a sad, sweet smile. It was an elderly woman who had come in the carriage with her, to whomno one paid any attention, hidden away in a corner, since Raceni had forgotten about introducing her, at least to those near her at the table, as he had promised. The elderly woman, who wore a blond wig low on her forehead and whose face was heavily powdered, made a short energetic gesture with her hand to Signora Roncella, as if to say: “Chin up!” Silvia Roncella smiled sadly, barely nodding her head. Then she turned to Gueli, who had said something to her.
    Giustino Boggiolo, coming back into the glassed-in hall with the Swede, went up to Raceni, who had taken Luna’s place next to Lampugnani, and quietly told him that the very learned Lifjeld, professor of psychology at the University of Upsala, had nowhere to sit. Raceni gave him his place at once, introducing him to Lampugnani on one side and Donna Maria Bornè-Laturzi on the other. This was the result of the loss of the first guest list: the table was set for thirty, and there were thirty-five guests! Never mind. He, Raceni, would make the best of it and sit in some corner.
    “Listen,” Giustino Boggiolo added very softly, pulling Raceni by the sleeve and furtively handing him a small scrap of rolled-up paper. “Here is the title of Silvia’s play. It would be nice if Senator Borghi would mention it when he makes the toast. What do you say? You can take care of it.”
    The waiters came in at a fast clip with the first course. It was very late and the prospect of food provoked a religious silence in everyone.
    Maurizio Gueli noticed it, turned to look at the Palatine ruins, and smiled. Then he bent toward Silvia Roncella and said quietly: “Look, Signora Silvia. You’ll see that at a certain point the ancient Romans will come out to watch us, with satisfaction.”

5

    Do they really come out?
    Certainly none of the guests would notice. The reality of the banquet, a not very well cooked reality, to tell the truth, and not abundant or varied, the reality of the present with its secret rivalries that flower on the lips of the various guests in false smiles and poisonous compliments,with badly concealed jealousies that pull here and there in subdued backbiting, with the unsatisfied ambitions and fatuous illusions and aspirations that find no way to reveal themselves, this reality held all those restless souls captive by the effort that the pretense and defense cost each one. Like snails that, unable or unwilling to withdraw into their shells, wrap themselves in their slime and from that unproductive iridescent foam stretch out their prudent tentacles, they fried the others in their gossip, maliciously raising hints of cuckoldry from time to time.
    Who among all these people could think about the ruins of the Palatine and imagine the souls of the ancient Romans gazing with satisfaction upon that modern symposium? Only Maurizio Gueli. In one of his better-known books, Favole di Roma , Gueli had collected and fused (discovering the most hidden analogies) the lives and most representative figures of the three Romes. His profound and characteristic philosophical humor was more accessible in this book than in some of his others. In Favole di