Sergio looked around. The place was utterly squalid; long and narrow as a corridor, with a bed at one end and a dresser and chest at the other. The heat was oppressive and the furniture was seedy, of the type found in most boardinghouses. With some effort, he said: “It’s a bit hot.”
“Yes, but it’s in Rome.”
She went to the window and opened it wide, looking out. She seemed so satisfied with her room and happy to be in Rome that Sergio could not help adding: “Well, at least it has its own entrance.”
“Is that a good thing?” she asked, distractedly.
“Well, you can invite whomever you like.”
She went over to the suitcase and said, in a dreamy voice: “I wouldn’t know whom to invite … I don’t know anyone here … You’re the only person I know.”
Almost teasingly, he said, “Well, you can invite me.”
“I already have.”
He held out his hand and said, as he held hers, “I’m sorry that this visit must end so soon, but I have to go.”
“Why? Why don’t you come have lunch with me?”
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It seemed natural, he thought, to join her for lunch; and just as natural that he should pay. But he couldn’t pay. He was about to say that he really had to go, when an idea occurred to him. They would go for lunch, and he would call Maurizio from the restaurant and ask him to join them. He would ask Maurizio to pay the bill, as a favor. He knew that Maurizio would not leave Rome that afternoon, and also that Nella was the reason, but for some reason he felt neither jealousy nor any scruples about asking him for a loan. “All right, then, let’s go … but where?”
“Somewhere not too expensive and close by.”
“We can go around the corner … to La Pergola.”
“All right.”
Nella locked the door with an air of satisfaction, holding up the key to show Sergio. He smiled and began to descend the stairs ahead of her. They sat down at one of the few empty tables at the trattoria. It was crowded, mostly with men, but, as they soon found out, almost nothing on the menu was available. Sergio explained to Nella that it was the same everywhere; between the bombings and the German occupation, food was growing increasingly scarce. They ordered rice and a focaccia with a bit of meat that the owner called steak. Nella eagerly ate this paltry lunch and Sergio, who wasn’t hungry, nibbled on a bit of rice. He was thinking about Maurizio and realized he had begun to feel a kind of anticipatory jealousy at the idea of his friend’s paying for lunch. But someone had to pay, and he had no money. He got up, mumbled an excuse, and went off to find a phone.
But when he dialed Maurizio’s number, he had an unpleasant surprise: Maurizio wasn’t home. Sergio returned gloomily to the table […]
Version B
[I]
That winter, Sergio became friendly with a young
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man his age by the name of Maurizio. In many ways, Maurizio was Sergio’s opposite. Sergio was poor; he lived in a furnished room in central Rome and survived on a meager income from tutoring and writing for various newspapers. Maurizio was well off and lived with his parents in their villa on the outskirts of town; he was slowly studying toward a still-distant degree. Physically, Sergio was rather slight and very pale, with a grayish complexion and a long, thin face framed by black hair, small, intense eyes, a sharp nose, and a large mouth with extremely thin lips, curled at the corners. It was the face of a hunchback, long-suffering and always on edge. Maurizio, on the other hand, was tall and well proportioned, with regular, harmonious features, curly brown hair, tranquil, open eyes, and a robust, slender frame. Sergio felt a kind of attraction toward Maurizio and envied these qualities — his serenity, his quiet sense of humor, his pleasant nature or even goodness, his vigorous good health — which seemed to augment his own flaws. Sergio was a Communist and he considered Maurizio bourgeois, even though he also had certain non-bourgeois characteristics. But Sergio also realized that because he was poor and came from a poor family, he envied Maurizio’s comforts and wealth or at least coveted them. He was attracted by the nonchalance with which Maurizio had become his friend, unfazed by the difference in their social status and their contrasting ideologies. Sergio was convinced that this nonchalance was born not of indifference but rather out of a secret yet clear sympathy that Maurizio, despite his wealth and social station, felt toward Sergio’s Communist ideals and toward people who were simple and poor and different from him. Sergio could not help expressing his thoughts to Maurizio. He told him: “You are bourgeois because you were born into a wealthy home, from wealthy parents. But your sympathies lie with us and underneath it all you probably share our ideas.” Maurizio laughed but after further discussion he did not completely contradict Sergio’s claim. A friendly struggle had emerged between them, a struggle which, in Sergio’s case, had a precise goal. He wanted to convert his friend and convince him to join the Party. Maurizio, who still denied having the Communist sympathies
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that Sergio attributed to him, or even a hidden desire to adopt them, did not completely close the door. On the contrary, he lured Sergio on with an attentive attitude that was both facetious and evasive. That winter, Sergio felt particularly oppressed by a sense of inferiority toward life and other people, a feeling that had tormented him since childhood. Even more than in the past, he felt that he needed some sort of personal victory in order to believe in himself and in his own destiny, a destiny that had never seemed clear. Almost without realizing it, his desire to find affirmation became increasingly focused on one specific goaclass="underline" converting Maurizio to Communism. To compensate for his own shortcomings, he had a tendency to consider the life of the Party as his own, its victories as his. While he felt that without the Party he would be nothing, he was continually reassured that at least he could say to himself: “I am a Communist, and this is already a lot.” The idea of winning Maurizio over to the cause pleased him to no end: firstly, because he was vaguely worried by his attraction to Maurizio and thought that once his friend became a Communist this attraction would become more licit and justified; and secondly, because Maurizio’s conversion would reaffirm his own ties to the Party, which was an integral part of his life and had increasingly become the very matter of his life itself.
None of this was clear in his mind, however, and the only thing he was sure of was the obsessive, driving, and omnipresent desire to guide Maurizio toward his way of thinking. He felt that he needed this victory, or rather that the Party needed it — given that he and the Party were one and the same — and to this end, he carefully studied the best means to achieve his goal, with all the shrewdness and rationality he could muster. Even though he was convinced that Maurizio was ripe, like a fruit about to drop from the branch, he realized that it would not be easy, in part because of this ripeness. It was perhaps easier to convert an enemy in a moment of weakness, by simply vanquishing his point of view, than a sympathizer; a sympathizer could always defend himself from taking the leap with the comforting alibi of his sympathy.
Sergio’s almost obsessive desire to convert Maurizio
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to his fervently held ideas was no secret. Sergio had a girlfriend, Lalla, with whom he had been living for almost two years. Sergio had spoken to her about his aspirations regarding Maurizio from the very beginning of their relationship. As for Lalla, though she was not a Communist, she was able to comprehend and appreciate Sergio’s ideas; all of their friends were Communists, and she herself professed to be a sympathizer. After a few discussions with Maurizio, Sergio told his lover that he felt that if he could not convince Maurizio, he could no longer consider himself a man. This desperate declaration expressed the anxiety and insecurity that Sergio felt at the time. One day, after going to see Maurizio, Sergio confidently told Lalla that he felt close to his goal. She observed, calmly: “In my opinion you’re wasting your breath … He’ll never come to a decision … Just wait and see.”