He had to re-read every phrase a number of times before transcribing it. Between words he would let his thoughts run on to other subjects and then find himself with pen in hand, forced to cancel some part in which he had absent-mindedly deviated from the original. Even when he managed to turn his whole attention to his work, it did not proceed with the speed of Miceni’s because he could not get the knack of copying mechanically. When he was attentive, his thoughts were always on the meaning of what he was copying, and that held him up. For a quarter of an hour nothing was heard but the squeak of pens and from time to time the sound of Miceni turning pages.

Suddenly the door opened with a crash. On the threshold, standing rigid for an instant or two, appeared Ballina, the clerk who was waiting for Alfonso to hand over Sanneo’s letter so that he could make other copies from it.

“What about that letter?”

He was a handsome fellow with a clever, rather sly look, a pair of Victor Emmanuel moustaches, but with an untrimmed beard. He was smoking, and the smoke he did not blow away—he would gladly have absorbed it to relish it the more—was filling his moustaches and covering his face to the eyes. His working jacket must once have been white, but was now dirty yellow, except for the cuffs which were quite black from nib cleaning. He worked in a little room with a door on to the small passage, like Miceni’s room.

Miceni raised his head with a friendly smile. Ballina was always popular, as he was a jester, the bank jester. But that evening he was not in form and was complaining. He had been working in his information office till then, and now he found he had to do other work; he did not even know if there would be any supper left for him that night. He was pretending to be more miserable than he really was. He once amazed Alfonso, whom Ballina called a sponge, by telling him that towards the end of the month he lived on Scott’s Emulsion given him by a doctor relative. He had well-to-do relatives who must have been a help because he was always speaking well of them.

Sanneo came in, rushed as ever; he was followed by the serious adolescent’s face of Giacomo, carrying a big pile of paper at which he was staring with excess of zeal.

Sanneo asked Ballina rather roughly why he was not yet writing.

“Well …” exclaimed Ballina with a shrug, “I’m waiting for the letter to copy out.”

“You’ve not had it yet?” Then, remembering that Alfonso was supposed to hand it over, he went on, “Hasn’t he done even one yet?”

Alfonso, shaken by the Sanneo’s angry look, rose to his feet. Miceni, still sitting, observed that he had not yet finished one either. Sanneo turned his back on Alfonso, looked at Miceni’s letter and asked him to hand it over to Ballina as soon it was done. He went out in the same rush, preceded by Ballina, who wanted to show that he had gone straight back to his own room, and followed by Giacomo strutting and banging his feet on the floor to make himself sound important.

A few minutes later Miceni handed Ballina the letter for copying. From the next room Alfonso heard Ballina’s curses, his voice thick with rage at seeing that the letter covered four pages.

In an hour or so Miceni had finished his work. Very calmly he settled his clothes, carefully put on his hat as though he would never take it off, picked up the telegrams and letters—including the two written by Alfonso—which he wanted to hand over to Signor Sanneo as he passed, and left humming.

In the complete quiet work went faster. To keep his attention on his work, Alfonso was in the habit when alone of declaiming aloud, for lack of anything more interesting, the letter he was writing. This one was particularly suitable for declamation as it was full of reverberating words and big figures. By reading out a phrase and repeating it as he transcribed it, he reduced the effort of writing because he needed only the memory of the sound to direct his pen.

To his surprise he suddenly found that he had finished and went straight off to Sanneo, fearing he was already late. Sanneo kept the telegrams and told him to put the letters on Signor Maller’s desk.

The floor of Signor Maller’s room was covered with grey carpets during the winter. The furniture was also dark grey, with arms and legs of black wood. Of the three gas brackets only one was lit, and at half pressure. In the dimness the room looked gloomier than ever. Alfonso always felt ill at ease there. He put down the letters on top of another pile already on the desk for signature and went out without making a sound, as if his chief had been present.

He could have left now but was held back by exhaustion. He thought of putting his desk in order but sat there inert, daydreaming.