Read Online The Watcher and Other Stories by Italo Calvino - Free Book Online

on the phone. I’m not yet sure, really, I’ll tell you about it when I’m sure, no, I’d better tell you now. It’s something important. I’m afraid it’s yes” (they spoke in clipped phrases: she, because she couldn’t decide to be frank; he, because the maid was in the next room—at one point he went and shut the kitchen door—and also because he was afraid he understood), “no use getting angry, Amerigo darling, if you’re angry, then you must have understood, well, I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but...” In other words, she was trying to tell him she was pregnant.
    There was a chair near the telephone. Amerigo sat down. He didn’t say anything, until Lia finally said: “Hello? Hello?” thinking they had been cut off.
    At times like this Amerigo would have liked to remain calm, master of the situation—he wasn’t a boy any longer!—to put up a reassuring front, a serene, protective presence, and at the same time be cold and lucid, the sort of man who knows what has to be done. Instead, he immediately lost his head. He felt his throat go dry, he couldn’t speak calmly, or think before he spoke. “Oh no, you must be crazy, how can you...” and he was immediately in the grip of rage, a precipitous rage that seemed to want to drive back, into nonbeing, the glimpsed eventuality, the thought that permitted no other thought, the obligation to act, to assume responsibilities, to decide another’s life and one’s own. He went on talking, inveighing: “You tell me like this? You’re so irresponsible! How can you stay calm?” until he provoked her indignant, wounded reaction: “You’re the irresponsible one. No, you’re right: it was crazy of me to tell you. I shouldn’t have said anything, I should have managed alone, and never seen you again!”
    Amerigo knew well that he was calling her “irresponsible” because that was what he wanted to call himself, he was angry only with himself, but at that moment his regret and his guilt were translated into an aversion for the woman in trouble, for that risk that could become an irrevocable presence, that could make an endless future of what now seemed to him a relationship that had already lasted long enough, something finished, relegated to the past.
    At the same time he felt constant remorse for his egoism, for having such a comfortable role compared to hers; and the girl’s courage seemed great to him, sublime, and now his admiration of this courage, the fondness for her uncertainty, so linked to his own, and his certainty that he was after all better than his first hasty reaction made him seem, that he could draw on a reserve supply of mature judgment and responsibility—all this led him to assume a completely different attitude, again with precipitate haste, and say: “No, no, darling, don’t worry, I’m here, I’m beside you, whatever happens...”
    Her voice melted quickly, seeking an expression of consolation. “Listen, after all, if...” And he was already fearing he had gone too far, perhaps making her think him prepared to have a child of hers, so without breaking off his protective pressure, he tried to clarify his intentions. “You’ll see, darling, it’ll be nothing.... I’ll take care of everything, poor sweetheart, don’t worry, in a few days’ time you won’t even remember...”
    At which, from the other end of the wire, came a shrill, almost strident voice: “What are you talking about? What are you going to take care of? What have you got to do with it? The child’s mine.... If I want to have a baby, I’ll have it! I’m not asking you for anything! I never want to see you again! My child will grow up without even knowing who you are!”
    This didn’t mean she really wanted to have the baby; perhaps she only wanted to release a woman’s