Two Friends Read Online Free Page B

Maurizio had said: “Why get upset … what can we do about it? And if we can’t do anything, why get upset?” Sergio envied the few resolute anti-Fascists he knew, Communists and the like, because their attitude was as clear as that of the Fascists. But he was not able to distill his doubts and disgust into an unambiguous attitude, a plan of action. Even though he hated Fascism, he felt that it had wormed its way into his blood, not in the form of political allegiance, but rather as a kind of torpor and mortal passivity, like a poison that slowly intoxicates and weakens the body. He was confronted once again with his feeling of impotence, but this time it not only affected his personal life but encompassed the destiny of the nation and humanity as a whole. This thought paralyzed him and infused him with a kind of deadly inertia. Later he would remember this period as a nightmare he had experienced with his eyes open, like a dream where all is a blur andnothing happens and yet one is overcome by a sense of unjustified and terrifying oppression from which one does not have the will or strength to free oneself. In addition, for some reason during that period he was not commissioned to write any of the articles that normally kept him afloat; and to make matters worse, most of his few friends had left the city, either because they had been drafted or for other reasons.
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    Sergio found himself alone and out of work and began to lead a solitary, monotonous existence, filled with uneasiness and anxiety. He lived at home with his father—an office worker of middling importance—and mother, and his two older sisters, unmarried and by now decidedly spinsterish. He spent most of the day in his small bedroom, reading and daydreaming, and went outside only to buy cheap cigarettes from the tobacconist across the street. Or else he wandered the streets, not daring to sit down at a café because he had no money. His daily cigarette runs and solitary meanderings filled him with a dull, subdued, deadening, airless melancholy, almost as if he were not living but rather dreaming that he was alive, in a world where the talk was increasingly of war and violence, a world that was plunging, like a rock down a steep hill, toward the abyss, an abyss that could be seen and measured. He was simply waiting, for events that he could neither avoid nor change in any way, not even within the narrow arena of his personal feelings. Every morning he bought a newspaper and cigarettes; he went home, read the front page, and then threw the newspaper aside, picked up a book, and tried to read. It was summertime and his room, facing a courtyard, was suffocating and hot.Sergio lay on his bed, book in hand, half naked, and tried to concentrate. But he was only partly successful. He was easily distracted and would inevitably begin to inspect the few worn-out furnishings in his room, or gaze out the window at the little balconies hanging from the wall across the way, loaded with belongings. Even when he managed to read, it seemed to him, as when he took walks or did anything else, that he used only one part of his brain, almost mechanically, while the rest remained far away and preoccupied, though he could not quite say with what. He took a funereal, almost morbid pleasure in this solitary, silent, passive, wan existence, while at the same time reproaching himself for it, seeing it as further proof of his impotence and lack of self-confidence. At home, his parents—however timidly and discreetly—pushed him to work, implying that they could not continue
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    to pay his way if he remained idle. He responded evasively that there was no point in looking for work under the circumstances, with war about to break out. But he knew that this response was inspired by the deep indolence he felt rather than by a sense of reality. There was work to be had, and it probably would not have been so difficult to secure a job. The truth was that he did not even have the