Eyewitness

They say that the day will come when we shall all be masters and there won't be any servants. They say that the occupation of a servant is unworthy of a man who is a man because one man ought not to serve another. They say that the day will come when we will do everything for ourselves, without any servants, like savages. I'm not disputing it: man never stands still; he feels a need to make changes in everything that exists, and very likely the changes are for the worse, but he is bound to make them and then, to comfort himself, he calls them progress. But there's one thing I'm sure of: out of ten men — as far as I know, anyhow — two, perhaps, are born masters, but the others are born servants. The master who is a born master likes to give orders from the very cradle; but the others are not content until they have found a master to give orders to them. Well, well, men are all different; and in spite of all sorts of progress there will always be masters and servants, only they'll call them by another name; as we all know, words, to men, are everything; and the man who is offended at hearing himself called "porter" will no doubt run up eagerly if someone shouts "luggage carrier" at him.

As for me, I was born a servant, I have lived up till now as a servant and I shall die, I daresay, as an old dotard, but still a servant. I like to serve; I like to obey; I like to submit to the will of another. To serve: there is a possibility, however, that the word may be misunderstood. For if you come to think of it, while I am serving my master, he is serving me. I mean, in fact, that if there wasn't a master I should not be able to be a servant. And what should I do then? Become a gravedigger?

And so, from one place to another, changing either because I did not like my master, or because he did not like me, or for some other reason, I finished up in a villa on the Via Cassia, where I thought I had found a good situation. In this recently built villa lived a recently married couple: she a blonde, with a long, lovely face and enormous, intense blue eyes, very thin and tall and elegant, her boyish appearance emphasized by her golden hair, cut short a la Bonaparte; he, small and dark and powerfully built, with disproportionately broad shoulders, a square face, a loud voice, his whole person full of authority and importance — one of those small men who make up for their size by a domineering, arrogant manner. He was evidently a proper rustic by origin — judging, anyhow, by his mother who turned up at the villa on one occasion and whom I very nearly mistook for one of the peasant women who go round with baskets of newlaid eggs. His wife, on the other hand, came of a good family; I think she was the daughter of a magistrate. I said it was a good situation, but I did not say it was an ideal one: for we were isolated, 20 kilometers along the Via Cassia, and for a manservant who did not have a contemplative character like mine this would have been a serious disadvantage. Then, the villa was a large one, with a ground floor all reception rooms and an upper floor all bedrooms, and there were only three of us servants, not counting the gardener: the cook, the housemaid and myself. Finally — and this, in my opinion, was the worst thing — neither he nor she was really and truly a "master," that is, a master born: he was a peasant, son and grandson of peasants; she was of good family but uprooted; she set herself up as mistress of the house but she hadn't the habit of it, and, as everyone knows, in these matters it's habit that counts.

Early in the morning, after breakfast, he would leave the house, get into his powerful, expensive car and drive off along the Via Cassia; generally he would stay out all day; and I have an idea that in Rome, apart from his import-export office, he also had some sort of a love nest. She also had an expensive car which she drove herself, but she used it rarely, either because she did not like going into town or, more probably, because she did not know anybody there; so she stayed at home, wandering round, in trousers and jumper, from one room to another, from one floor to the other, and also, if the weather was fine, round the garden. She was always doing something, it is true, for in such a big house there was always something to do; otherwise, especially in the afternoon, she would curl up in an armchair, sitting on her own legs, and read; but whatever she was doing, wandering round the house or reading, you could see that she was discontented and bored. Sometimes she would stand behind me, in the garden, while I was helping the gardener to put in plants and prune trees; or again she would get on her horse — for she had a fine horse in a stable at the far end of the garden — and go galloping off round the countryside; but always, whether in the garden or on horseback, she had that discontented, bored look on her face.

At last, often after dark, he would come home again, and would begin furiously blowing his horn as soon as he reached the turning from the Via Cassia. From the sound of that horn it was dear who was master in the villa: she would jump up from the sofa where she was reading and run to the door on long legs tightly encased in very tight trousers; beside her, barking, ran two enormous great Danes, as big as calves, which had been sleeping, curled up at her feet, all the afternoon; the maid, too, would come running, tying on her apron and adjusting her cap; the gardener, who was also the (continued on page 206) Eyewitness (continued from page 112) custodian, would run to open the gates of the drive; and I myself would run to open the front door. He would bring his car round the curve of the drive, enveloping us in the dazzling light of his headlamps, then get out and enter the house with the deportment of a Mussolini. His first words were always the same: "Is it ready?" Then he would go and stretch himself out on one of the many sofas in the drawing room; and she, like an amorous cat, would nestle close up to him and, taking his hand, begin stroking the long black hairs on his wrist with her fingertips. He abandoned his hand and arm to her, and meanwhile, with his other hand, held up the newspaper, which he read without taking any notice of her. Then I would button up my jacket, throw open the double doors of the dining room and announce, with a slight bow: "Dinner is served."

Have you ever seen, in some humble eating place on the outskirts of the city, a poor laborer, all dirty and sweaty and with his little hat made of newspaper still on his head, gulping down a big plateful of beans and pork cracklings? Well, my master behaved just like that, for all that he had come home in an expensive car and had suits made of English cloth. At one end of the very long yellow-marble table, with its lace mats and its glassware, silverware and porcelain that could not have been finer, she sat, stiff and upright and full of dignity; at the other end, sprawling crookedly at the table with his napkin tucked into his collar, sat he — in other words, the laborer. But why do I say the laborer? I'm slandering laborers. He, like a child that hasn't yet learned to walk and that tumbles down on all fours every other step, he, I say, tried to eat with a knife and fork but often resorted to his fingers, especially if it was a case of chicken or veal cutlets. No need to mention that he chewed with his mouth open or drank with his mouth full, that he wiped his lips with the back of his hand, that he balanced a row of peas on his knife and thrust them into his mouth: with him, one vulgar gesture succeeded another like so many pearls on a string. Naturally his wife suffered, for, as she often repeated, she set great store by good manners. I used to see her staring at him with her big blue eyes, then looking at me, and then at the flowers in the middle of the table; or again she would sigh and bend her head. But he took no notice and went on worse than before. Finally she would say to me: "Remigio, change the plates, please"; but he, as he gnawed away at some bone or other, would protest with a growl, just like a dog; and so I waited with the clean plate in my hand till he had finished.

I went on like this for about a month, and, apart from these regrettable dinners, I liked the place. I was left in peace, I had a nice room with a bath, and I was able, in the bargain, to devote myself to gardening, for which I have a passion. But one evening the storm broke which, secretly, I had always foreseen. He, as usual, had thrown himself on his plate of meat with his hands; I recall that it was grilled lamb cutlets; she was watching him and, as usual, the sight pained her. He gnawed all the cutlets, one after the other, four of them in all, covering himself with grease up to the ears, and then, when it seemed that he had finished, he started all over again. Firmly she said to him, from the other end of the table: "Valentino, couldn't you stop eating always with your hands? Apart from anything else, you wipe your fingers on the napkins and one would need a set of two dozen of them to keep up with you."

He was crushing a bone with his teeth, which were strong, close-set and white, like the teeth of a wolf. He rolled his eyes fiercely, and said nothing. She blinked her eyelids and persevered: "Valentino ..."

He put down the bone for a moment and said, very clearly: "Leave me alone!" Then he picked up the bone again.

"You oughtn't to eat with your fingers," she resumed, in an agitated, nervous way; "it's only boors who eat with their fingers."

"I'm a boor, then, am I?"

"Yes, if you go on like that, you certainly are."

"And d'you know what you are?"

"I don't know and I don't want to know ... but do stop eating with your fingers."

"You're a pauper, a bore and an idiot."

She flinched at these insults as though someone had thrown a glass of wine in her face. Then she said, with dignity: "I may be a pauper, but in my home people didn't eat with their fingers."

"Of course not: you didn't have anything to eat."

"Valentino!"

"Shut up, you idiot!"

Then she lost patience. Leaning forward on the table, her eyes narrowing with hatred, she hissed: "I've never told you all that I think of you ... but the moment's come to tell you now: you're a boor, you're a peasant, you're a lout ... you're no good for anything but making money. If you were at least good-looking — but you're not, you're just a dwarf."

To be called a dwarf was obviously the indignity that hurt him most. I drew back only just in time; otherwise he would have knocked me down as he rushed from his place to the other end of the table where his wife was sitting. She sat quite still and watched him coming with a pale, twisted smile. As her husband reached her he raised his hand; she stared straight at him. He struck her in the face, once and then again. She rose and walked slowly out of the room; her husband followed her, in a towering rage; and then I heard cries and yells but it was he who was shouting all the time, and there must have been blows given, but I saw nothing. Quietly I cleared the table, just as I did every evening, and then went to my own room. To tell the truth, this scene had not made any particular impression upon me: in the first place I had, as I have said, foreseen it for some time; besides, as we all know, the table is the place where scenes happen, and during my career as a manservant I had witnessed I don't know how many scenes of this kind — and even more violent ones.

Next morning I got up very early and went to the pantry. The villa was immersed in a deep silence, the silence of the country. I took a pair of his shoes and started cleaning them, humming under my breath, in front of the wideopen, sun-filled window. At that moment, suddenly the door opened and she appeared on the threshold.

I looked at her and at once realized that the blows must have been many and violent. One eye had swelled up and was half-closed in the middle of a circular bruise — one of those dark bruises that go green and then yellow and take a month to disappear. This bruise gave her whole face a strange look, at the same time both comic and sad. I looked at her, and the bruise was one of those things which, the less you want to look at it, the more you do so. Then she said: "Remigio, I'm very sorry, but I'm forced to give you notice."

This, truly, I was not expecting. I stood there openmouthed, with the shoe in my hand. Finally I stammered: "But, signora, what have I done that you should have to give me notice?"

She replied coldly: "You haven't done anything; in fact I'm very pleased with you."

"Well, then?"

"I'm giving you notice because of what happened yesterday evening."

"But what has that to do with me?"

"It has nothing to do with you, but you heard and saw, and I can't bear the idea of your staying in the house after what you heard and saw."

"But, signora," I said, understanding at last, "these are things that happen ... all husbands and wives come to words and blows — in the upper as well as the lower classes. I swear to you that, as far as I am concerned, it's just as though I hadn't seen or heard anything."

"That may be so, but I can't bear to be waited on by someone who heard and saw these things. I'm sorry, but you must go."

"But, signora, you're ruining me."

"I'll give you a very good reference," she said. And, with these words, she went away.

You see? It was they who came to words and blows; but I, who had nothing whatever to do with it, got the sack. I did not try to press this point, nor did I wish to refer the matter to her husband, who would certainly have admitted that I was right: fundamentally I liked her, and I understood her and was aware that for her it would be yet another humiliation. Furthermore, she would then have hated me and I should have had to leave just the same. So I did not breathe a word; I packed up and went away that same day, without waiting for my week's notice. But now we come back to what I said before: with one who was truly mistress in her own house this would not have happened. A real, born mistress does not even see her manservant; for her he is transparent like glass. Why, she can even take off all her clothes in his presence, or get exasperated with her husband; it's just as though the servant were not there. Well, well, it seems there are no real masters and mistresses left in the world.