A Very Old Man by Italo Svevo

Author:Italo Svevo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2022-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

MY LEISURE

ONE CAN’T look for the present on a calendar or clock, instruments useful only to mark a personal relationship with the past or to move into the future with some semblance of preparation. The present—the real present—is composed of oneself and the things and people that surround one.

My own present is actually told in various tenses. A first, lengthy present begins with my withdrawal from business. It began eight years ago. A heartrending example of inertia. Although there are some highly significant events that divide it. For instance, my daughter’s marriage, an event well in the past which figures in the other lengthy present, interrupted—or maybe refreshed, or better, corrected—by the death of her husband. There’s the birth of my grandson, Umberto, also distant, because the true present where Umberto is concerned is my affection for him, a conquest he’s not even aware he made, which he imagines is his birthright. Does he believe in anything, that miniature soul? His, and my, present as it relates to him, are those sure, small steps of his interrupted by bitterly painful fears, in turn soothed by his army of dollies when he can’t win the aid of his mother, or his grandfather, me. My present is also Augusta as she is today—poor thing!—with her animals, her dogs, cats, and birds, and the perpetual indisposition of which she refuses to cure herself properly. She does the minimum that Dr. Raulli prescribes, and won’t listen either to me—who, making a superhuman effort, overcame the same tendency to heart fatigue—or to Carlo (Guido’s son, our nephew), who’s just back from university and knows all the most modern medicines.

It must be said that a large part of my present comes from the pharmacy. I can’t recall exactly when this present began, but it was a period thoroughly defined by new medicines and new ideas. Whatever happened to those days when I thought I was providing for all my organism’s needs by swallowing a hefty dose of compound licorice powder every evening, or one of those simple powdered or liquid bromides? Today, with Carlo’s help, I have far different means at my disposal to fight disease. Carlo tells me everything he knows, and I, on the other hand, don’t say everything I imagine, because I fear he won’t agree with me, and will destroy with his objections the castle I have struggled to build, which ensures me a peace of mind and security that people of my age don’t usually enjoy. A real castle! Carlo believes I accept his every suggestion so promptly because I have faith in him. Anything but! I know he’s very knowledgeable, and I try to learn from him and follow, but with discretion. My arteries are in a sorry state, no doubt about that. Last summer my blood pressure shot up to 240 mm. Whether on account of the pressure or not, I was very, very low at the time. But large doses of iodide (or some other medicine whose name I can never remember) brought my pressure to 160, where it has remained since .

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