finché ci siamo,—gli rispose in fretta il cameriere.
E Micuccio rimase a tentennar la testa.
Perbacco, era vero dunque! La fortuna acciuffata. Affaroni. Quel cameriere che pareva un gran signore, il cuoco e il guattero, quella Dorina che ronfava di là: tutta servitù a gli ordini di Teresina … Chi l’avrebbe mai detto?
Rivedeva col pensiero la soffitta squallida, laggiù laggiù, a Messina, dove Teresina abitava con la madre … Cinque anni addietro, in quella soffitta lontana, se non fosse stato per lui, mamma e figlia sarebbero morte di fame. E lui, lui, aveva scoperto quel tesoro nella gola di Teresina! Ella cantava sempre, allora, come una passera dei tetti, ignara del suo tesoro: cantava per dispetto, cantava per non pensare alla miseria, a cui egli cercava di sovvenire alla meglio, non ostante la guerra che gli facevano in casa i genitori, la madre specialmente. Ma poteva egli abbandonar Teresina in quello stato, dopo la morte del padre di lei? abbandonarla perché non aveva nulla, mentre lui, bene o male, un posticino ce l’aveva, di sonator di flauto nel concerto comunale? Bella ragione! e il cuore?
Ah, era stata una vera ispirazione del cielo, un suggerimento della fortuna, quel por mente alla voce di lei, quando nessuno ci badava, in quella bellissima giornata d’aprile, presso la finestra dell’abbaino che incorniciava vivo vivo l’azzurro del cielo. Teresina canticchiava un’appassionata arietta siciliana, di cui a Micuccio sovvenivano ancora le tenere parole. Era triste Teresina, quel giorno, per la recente morte del padre e
forth, muttering now about Dorina, who went on sleeping, now about the cook, who was most likely a new man, called in for that evening’s event, and who was annoying him by constantly asking for explanations. Micuccio, to avoid annoying him further, deemed it prudent to repress all the questions that he thought of asking him. He really ought to have told him or given him to understand that he was Teresina’s fiancé, but he didn’t want to, though he himself didn’t know why, unless perhaps it was because the servant would then have had to treat him, Micuccio, as his master, and he, seeing him so jaunty and elegant, although still without his tailcoat, couldn’t manage to overcome the embarrassment he felt at the very thought of it. At a certain point, however, seeing him pass by again, he couldn’t refrain from asking him:
“Excuse me … whose house is this?”
“Ours, as long as we’re in it,” the servant answered hurriedly.
And Micuccio sat there shaking his head.
By heaven, so it was true! Opportunity seized by the forelock. Good business. That servant who resembled a great nobleman, the cook and the scullery boy, that Dorina snoring over there: all servants at Teresina’s beck and call … Who would ever have thought so?
In his mind he saw once again the dreary garret, way down in Messina, where Teresa used to live with her mother … Five years earlier, in that faraway garret, if it hadn’t been for him, mother and daughter would have died of hunger. And he, he had discovered that treasure in Teresa’s throat! She was always singing, then, like a sparrow on the rooftops, unaware of her own treasure: she would sing to annoy, she would sing to keep from thinking of her poverty, which he would try to alleviate as best he could, in spite of the war his parents waged with him at home, his mother especially. But could he abandon Teresina in those circumstances, after her father’s death?—abandon her because she had nothing, while he, for better or worse, did have a modest employment, as flute player in the local orchestra? Fine reasoning!—and what about his heart?
Ah, it had been a true inspiration from heaven, a prompting of fortune, when he had paid attention to that voice of hers, when no one was giving it heed, on that very beautiful April day, near the garret window that framed the vivid blue of the sky. Teresina was singing softly an impassioned Sicilian arietta, the tender words of which Micuccio still remembered. Teresina was sad, that day, over the recent death of her father and over his family’s stubborn opposi-
per l’ostinata opposizione dei parenti di lui; e anch’egli—ricordava—era triste, tanto che gli erano spuntate le lagrime, sentendola cantare. Pure tant’altre volte l’aveva sentita, quell’arietta; ma cantata a quel modo, mai. N’era rimasto così colpito, che il giorno appresso, senza prevenire né lei né la madre, aveva condotto seco su nella soffitta il direttore del concerto, suo amico. E così erano cominciate le prime lezioni di canto; e per due anni di fila egli aveva speso per lei quasi tutto il suo stipendietto: le aveva preso a nolo un pianoforte, comperate le carte di musica e qualche amichevole compenso aveva pur dato al maestro. Bei giorni lontani! Teresina ardeva tutta nel desiderio di spiccare il volo, di lanciarsi nell’avvenire che il maestro le prometteva luminoso, e, frattanto, che carezze di fuoco a lui per dimostrargli tutta la sua gratitudine, e che sogni di felicità commune!
Zia Marta, invece, scoteva amaramente il capo: ne aveva viste tante in vita sua, povera vecchietta, che ormai non aveva più fiducia nell’avvenire: temeva per la figliola, e non voleva che ella pensasse neppure alla possibilità di togliersi da quella rassegnata miseria; e poi sapeva, sapeva ciò che costava a lui la follia di quel sogno pericoloso.
Ma né lui né Teresina le davano ascolto, e invano ella si ribellò quando un giovane maestro compositore, avendo udito Teresina in un concerto, dichiarò che sarebbe stato un vero delitto non darle migliori maestri e una completa educazione artistica: a Napoli, bisognava mandarla al conservatorio di Napoli, a qualunque costo.
E allora lui, Micuccio, rompendola addirittura coi parenti, aveva venduto un suo poderetto lasciatogli in eredità dallo zio prete, e così Teresina era andata a Napoli a completar gli studii.
Non la aveva più riveduta, da allora; ma aveva le sue lettere dal conservatorio e poi quelle di zia Marta, quando già Teresina s’era lanciata nella vita artistica, contesa dai principali teatri, dopo l’esordio clamoroso al San Carlo. A piè di quelle tremule incerte lettere raspate alla meglio su la carta dalla povera vecchietta c’eran sempre due paroline di lei, di Teresina, che non aveva mai tempo di scrivere: «Caro Micuccio, confermo quanto ti dice la mamma. Sta’ sano e voglimi bene». Eran rimasti d’accordo che egli le avrebbe lasciato cinque, sei anni di tempo per farsi strada liberamente: eran giovani entrambi e pote-
tion; and he too—he recalled—was sad, so much so that tears had come to his eyes when he heard her sing. And yet he had heard that arietta many other times; but sung that way, never. He had been so struck by it that the following day, without informing her or her mother, he had brought with him his friend, the orchestra conductor, up to the garret. And in that way the first singing lessons had begun; and for two years running he had spent almost all of his small salary on her; he had rented a piano for her, had purchased her sheet music and had also given the teacher some friendly remuneration. Beautiful faraway days! Teresa burned intensely with the desire to take flight, to hurl herself into the future that her teacher promised her would be a brilliant one; and, in the meantime, what impassioned caresses for him to prove to him all her gratitude, and what dreams of happiness together!
Aunt Marta, on the other hand, would shake her head bitterly: she had seen so many ups and downs in her life, poor old lady, that by now she had no more trust left in the future; she feared for her daughter and didn’t want her even to think about the possibility of escaping that poverty to which they were resigned; and, besides, she knew, she knew how much the madness of that dangerous dream was costing him.
But neither he nor Teresina would listen to her, and she protested in vain when a young composer, having heard Teresina at a concert, declared that it would be a real crime not to give her better teachers and thorough artistic instruction: in Naples, it was essential to send her to the Naples conservatory, cost what it might.
And then he, Micuccio, breaking off with his parents altogether, had sold a little farm of his that had been bequeathed to him by
