The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl Read Online Free Page B

long that even at night it stained the pavement with black. Even then he did not really pity these people who were sleepy and could not go and sleep. He had a bed and could not sleep. Those waiting in the queue were certainly better off.
    These were the days of Caporetto. His doctor gave him the first news of the disaster. He had come to weep in the company of his old friend, whom he (poor doctor!) believed to be capable of feeling as he did. Instead the old man could see nothing but good in what had happened: the war was moving away from Trieste and therefore from him. The doctor wailed: “We shan’t see even their aeroplanes any longer.” The old man muttered: “True, probably we shan’tsee them any more.” In his heart he rejoiced at the prospect of quiet nights, but he tried to copy the pain he saw in the doctor’s face in his own expression.
    In the afternoon, when he felt up to it, he interviewed his confidential manager, an old clerk who enjoyed his complete confidence. In business the old man was still sufficiently energetic and clear-headed, and the clerk came to the conclusion that the old man’s illness was not very serious and that he would come back to work sooner or later. But his energy in business was of the same kind as that which he displayed in looking after his health. The slightest indisposition was sufficient to make him put off business to the next day. And for the sake of his health he managed to forget business the moment his clerk was gone. He sat down by the stove into which he liked to throw bits of coal and watch them burn. Then he shut his dazzled eyes and opened them to go on with the same game. This is how he passed the evenings of days which had been quite as empty.
    But his life was not to end in this way. Some organisms are fated to leave nothing behind them for death, which merely succeeds in seizing an empty shell. All that he could burn, he burnt, and his last flame was the finest.

VII
    The old man was at his window, looking out on to the road. It was a dull afternoon. The sky was covered with a greyish mist, and the pavement wet, though it had not rained for two days. The queue of hungry customers was forming in front of the baker’s door.
    As luck would have it, the girl went by at that very moment in front of the balcony he was occupying. She had no hat on, but the old man, who would not have known how to describe a single detail of her dress, thought her better dressed than in the days when he loved her. With her was a young man, fashionably dressed to the point of exaggeration. He wore gloves and carried a smart umbrella, which he raised two or three times with the arm with which he wasgesticulating in accompaniment to his talk, which was clearly lively. The girl, too, was laughing and chatting.
    The old man looked and sighed. It was no longer the life of others that was passing along the street, it was his own. And the old man’s first instinct was one of jealousy. There was no question of love, only the most abject jealousy: “She is laughing and enjoying herself while I am ill.” They had done wrong together, and the resulting illness had come upon him; upon her, nothing. What was to be done? She was walking with her light step and would soon be at the corner, where she would disappear. That was why the old man sighed. There was not even time to disentangle his own thoughts, and he felt such a longing to speak to her and give her a moral lecture.
    When the girl and her companion disappeared the old man tried to check his excitement, as it might be bad for him, and said: “All the better. She is alive and enjoying herself.” There were two lies in those few words, which implied first of all that the old man had worried what had happened to the girl during his illness, then that it gave him satisfaction to see her running about the streets in that way enjoying herself. Therefore he could not get her out of his mind. He remained by the window and looked in the direction