Read Online The Nice Old Man and the Pretty Girl by Italo Svevo - Free Book Online

accept it in itself. He, too, old though he was, since he was in good health, looked at life with the keen desire of a person of intelligence and refused to admit that he was shut out from any of its manifestations.
    “At bottom,” he said to the old man, “you want to give us too much importance. We are by no means so very seductive.” He looked at the old man and then he looked at himself in the glass.
    “Yet we do seduce,” said the old man, secure in his own experience.
    “When that happens no great harm is done,” remarked the doctor, smiling.
    The old man also tried to smile, but the effort ended in a grimace. He, on the contrary, knew that a lot of harm was done.
    Then the doctor remembered that he was first of all a doctor and stopped discussing the theory, that is to say the medicine which he himself consideredto be important. He even wanted to help the theory, to play a part in it, but it was natural that his touch should destroy the old man’s illusions. “If you like,” he told the old man, “I will get you a book called
The Old Man
. Old age is treated in it as a disease, it is true, but one which does not last long.”
    The old man argued: “Old age a disease? A part of life a disease? Then what can youth be?”
    “I believe that youth is not complete health either,” said the doctor, “but that is another matter. Youth often catches diseases, but they are generally diseases without complications. In the case of an old man, however, even a cold is a complicated disease. This must have some significance.”
    “It proves merely that an old man is weak. In fact,” cried the old man triumphantly, “he is only a youth grown feeble.” He had found it. This discovery would have its place in his theory and would help it enormously. “Therefore, to prevent his weakness becoming a disease, the old man needs a thoroughly sound morality.” Modesty prevented him from saying that his work would supply this morality, but that was what he thought.
    This conversation with the doctor, which had proved so helpful to him, should have encouraged him to continue. But one day the doctor betrayed what he really thought so clearly that the old man realised that they had nothing in common.
    One day, in the course of working out his ideas, the old man found himself obliged to go into thequestion of what rights old age had over youth. Great Heavens, the Bible had not been written for nothing. Did youth owe obedience to age? Respect? Affection?
    The doctor began to laugh, and when he laughed he liked to reveal his inmost thoughts. “Obedience? Instant, because old men must not be kept waiting. Respect? All the young girls in Trieste on their knees to make it more easy to choose them. Affection? The good, solid kind, arms round the neck, or somewhere else, and lips pressed to lips.”
    In fact the poor old man had no luck. He had not found a kindred spirit. He did not realise that, as the doctor had not experienced the great attack of angina, he was not an old man like himself.
    But even this discussion bore fruit, if only of a negative kind. Several pages already written were put in quarantine by the old man inside a white sheet of paper on which he wrote: “What does youth owe to age?”
    Sometimes the theory got into a tangle and it was difficult to go on. Then the old man felt really ill. He had laid aside the work, thinking that a little rest would bring him the clearness he wanted, but the days ran emptily on. Suddenly death came nearer. Now the old man had time to feel the unsteady beating of his heart and to listen to his breathing, tired and noisy.
    It was during one of these periods that he sent and asked the girl to come to see him. He hoped that seeing her again would be enough to reawaken hisremorse, which was his chief incentive to write. But he failed to get the expected help, even from that quarter.
    The girl had continued to develop. Smartly dressed, as on her last visit, she had evidently expected to