A Life by Italo Svevo Read Free Book Online Page B

stuttered in wishing him a pleasant holiday and was thanked with a really kindly smile. In spite of what had been said, Alfonso thought he could see, in those restless eyes, a gleam of joy at a fortnight’s freedom.
    Miceni occupied Sanneo’s room so as to be on hand for the directors. He received his orders straight from Signor Maller and Signor Cellani, and Alfonso envied the easy manner with which he treated these high personages.
    For Alfonso this was an interval of rest from all the copying he had to do for Sanneo, and afterwards he missed that fortnight.Miceni did not care whether large numbers of offers were sent out; to carry out his responsibilities all he asked for was the necessary work to be completed without errors. He had the sense to abandon Sanneo’s system at once. The latter had passed on current mail only to Miceni and two other clerks; all the others merely copied out letters and revised accounts: “One clerk who knows his job is worth a dozen who are fools,” Sanneo used to say. Miceni called on all their assistance, and Alfonso was given the job of writing short letters about contracts for Italy, less and more varied work than he had done till then.
    Alone in his room he found time to read books brought from home. He read no novels, still having a boy’s contempt for so-called ‘light’ literature. What he loved were his school texts, which reminded him of the happiest time of his life. One of these, a treatise on rhetoric containing a small anthology of classic writers, he read and re-read constantly. There was a lot in it about style flowing or not, and about language pure or impure, and Alfonso absorbed all this theory and dreamt of becoming a great writer who would unite good qualities and be immune from bad ones.
    Towards evening, a number of correspondence clerks would meet to gossip in Alfonso’s room, which was the most separate. When Signor Sanneo was there, they had to be on the alert all the time, as he would appear unexpectedly, always in a rush and shouting as he came in, whatever the hour, “Don’t waste time, now, don’t waste time!” Nobody risked a reply, and the group melted away like a flock dispersed by an angry sheep dog.
    Miceni, on the other hand, even now came to spend a quiet half-hour some evenings in Alfonso’s room. He would lie silently on an old sofa, tired but pleased by his day, rather worried by the importance of his work.
    Ballina treated him with affected respect but derided him. One day, in the stress of work, Miceni had rebuked him for slowness, and the other did not forgive this. When Miceni tried to justify his outburst, Ballina laughed in his face.
    “You seem to think the bank’s business is your very own! I can understand Signor Maller or Signor Sanneo bossing us, but not someone who’s just head of the correspondence department for a fortnight.”
    Even Alfonso noticed that Ballina must be a happy man, for he obviously enjoyed his mechanical labour, though unwilling to admit it. Ballina called himself Head of the Information Office out of vanity, though actually he was its only member. He himself asked for information, copied it out and filed it away alphabetically inside a big cupboard. He had nothing pending as his work did not require it, and had a habit of staying at the office many more hours than he needed to. He would clean bone cigarette-holders, of which he had many, mend locks, sharpen razors, and shave in the office when he did shave. A great smoker, he always had a big pile of tobacco on oiled paper in a drawer. It was a mixture of different kinds, scented by some root which gave his room a strong smell of resin. That room was his real home: he had introduced his own little comforts, even nailed a bit of leather over his straw seat for greater comfort. One drawer of his desk was set aside exclusively for food and drink; bread, sometimes butter, often a bottle of beer, always a little flask of grog which he offered to any friends who