One time Carlo explained to me why our father had lost his factory. “The idea that someone, some bad person, ruined him isn’t important — that’s just a fairy tale circulated in the family to preserve the patriarch’s honor; it could even be true, maybe someone made him fail intentionally, and if so, so what? Why should the world have been more generous with our father? Just because he was a serious and sober person, just because he was a fair-minded and energetic entrepreneur? Come on, no one gets a break if he screws up; that’s been true since the dawn of humankind. Filippo Fratta paid the price for his own mistake — and what was his mistake? He didn’t grasp that between 1965 and 1975 the concept of quality was turned upside down—” (At this point Carlo’s explanation becomes very technical and I’m not sure I can render it exactly; I’ll try to reconstruct it from memory, based on where we were standing and why we had begun this conversation.)
This is how it went: in the basement a while ago we found some brochures that our father had had printed at the beginning of the 1970s, and we started leafing through them, joking about the photographs and the copy put together by an advertising agency that then tendered an outrageously high bill, which led to weeks of (silent) recrimination from my mother. Here again was the unmistakable furniture that perfectly matched the personality of its maker; we always knew the pieces looked like him, but what’s incredible is that our father was able to give such a personal briefing to the advertising agency (“who were absolutely genius mind readers,” according to Carlo) that even the room settings and the captions were completely Fratta-esque. “What did he say, what silences did he use, to make himself clear? These must have been the most perceptive advertising men ever — they must be millionaires by now.”
Whether or not he said them out loud, his words must have been “functional” and “modular.” The furniture had simple, modern, clean lines, the materials were solid, the details spare, the composition rational. The room settings were subtle, neither loud nor dull (a vase of flowers here, a table lamp there). The colors were natural; the dominant note was of wood finishes, such as birch and cherry. Only one clashing element leapt out at us: the rugs, which were thick and furry, in white, gray, or brown, and even a bottle green as luxuriant as a rich, fertile American prairie. Not at all a Fratta Furniture type of thing; but it was a masterly tribute to the taste of the period (we laughed when we imagined how the art director must have insisted on it). And the captions! “Door fronts with contrasting trim highlight the elegance of this suite of furniture,” “The corner night tables extend the lines of this charming combination,” “Beautiful lines and spare styling make this the perfect bedroom set.” Our father himself couldn’t have written them any better, even if he had been able to express his feelings in words.
So why did people stop wanting this stuff in the mid-1970s? Why did Filippo Fratta get into trouble? Because, according to Carlo, quality ceased to be an internal attribute (and not only for furniture). Quality became external; in other words, it was nothing but the image that the product managed to project into the consumer’s mind. “Don’t get me wrong: it’s not as if customers used to buy an armoire only for its usevalue; objects have always represented something else too. But at a certain point the process swung to the extreme: image became everything. The image of our father’s furniture never fucking changed: it was solid, robust, reliable — but who the hell cares about things being robust? Who the hell cares about things being reliable? People buy new things because they want to live a different life, because they want to dream … There’s no reason to make a face like that. It benefits you too.”
I didn’t realize I was making any face. “Me?” I said.
“Yes, you, with your innocent look. What do you think you’re doing? All you do is sell dreams too.”
Selling dreams. That didn’t seem so bad. I just smiled; ultimately, no matter what he said, Carlo couldn’t be really harsh with me, he couldn’t help loving me (that’s how it seemed to me).
Anyway, I think it’s a professional liability of his. This is the way Carlo explains everything, or almost everything. There’s no such thing as individual responsibility, or if there is, it’s only minimaclass="underline" we’re crushed by things that are bigger than we are, we’re tossed on the waves. The course of our lives is shaped by great historical forces.
Marriage, for example: it’s an anachronistic institution, based on social controls that no longer exist, on traditional values that were completely swept away at least half a century ago, not only swept away but forgotten, suppressed, or — worse yet — served up again in a kitschy version; anyway, everything is supposed to be more flexible nowadays, so why not values too? Such as fidelity: it’s not his fault that he couldn’t be faithful, it’s society’s fault (and is it really a fault at all?).
Carlo and Cecilia met at university; they were both getting advanced degrees in modern history. They were thirty. They lived together for five years. They got married. They had no children for another six years. In the meantime, she became a full professor. Carlo remained an assistant professor (the fault of the university system). At forty they decided they wanted children. They had them. Last year Cecilia walked in on Carlo kissing a student during his office hours in a room in the History Department. Carlo made the following series of declarations: (1) it was the first time it ever happened; (2) it was the third or fourth time; (3) she wasn’t the first girl he’d kissed; (4) he did more than just kiss them; (5) there had also been some fellow teachers; (6) and some friends; (7) and some strangers; (8) even before they had the kids; (9) even before they were married; (10) anyway he was still in love with Cecilia. This episodic series of confessions took five months, and at the end of it Carlo was invited to hit the road.
What fascinates me about Cecilia is her tenacity. She was as persistent as a Los Angeles Police Department detective with a suspected serial killer; she shined the interrogation light in his eyes and she waited. She staged scenes: jealous rage, then indifference, then suicide attempts, then a polar freeze, then a fake attempt at getting back together, then a famous biting episode (“I bit his thing — it was in my mouth and I bit it,” she told me. “Thing?” “Thing, cock, penis, what do you men call it?”); then she feigned forgiveness (which led to the most important confessions); then came the suitcases on the landing outside the door and a changed set of locks.
That’s how history punished my brother, while he was studying history to make some sense of it.
“Papa moved out because his keys didn’t work anymore,” Filippo told me on the phone a few days later.
At 1:00 a.m. I’m waiting near the abandoned factory; I would stay here until tomorrow morning just to catch sight of Elisabetta again, even from far away, while she gets out of a car holding up her long red dress to walk, like a bride. One by one, the big sedans that were parked in the field go past, and by the light of the streetlamp at the intersection I count the gigantic knots of the chauffeurs’ ties: thirty-six. To kill some time I try making a more discreet knot for myself — I’d like to reuse the tie, at least, but I can give the shoes to Witold, if he needs them for going to church on Sunday. At two o’clock I decide there’s no middle ground: it’s either a gigantic knot or a skinny, constipated one that makes the tie into a noose. I could ignore the notion, but I follow it all the way to its logical conclusion: it’s too late, I’ll never learn to craft a proper, balanced knot.