Forse che sì, forse che no

Forse che sì, forse che no is the unfinished motto on the daisy frieze above the fireplace at La Montanina. In one evening, Massimo Alberti treats it first as a device for deciding whether to leave and later as a possible oracle about a feeling he will not name. Its cut-off words offer no answer; their force lies in keeping alternatives suspended as his own question changes.

The Motto and Its Setting

The phrase appears as a repeated inscription running through a frieze of daisies on the fireplace. Its material setting matters: Massimo has to approach the ornament and inspect how the words end, as if the arrangement of letters could settle a practical choice. The motto promises a binary response, but the visible text stops at Forse che… The incomplete phrase makes the yes or no he seeks both imaginable and unavailable.

The scene begins while Lelia is playing a Heller study. She says the music is for her father and that she does not like it. Massimo thinks he ought to tell her that leaving the day after tomorrow would be too late, but cannot interrupt her. He listens, then rises to go to Marcello Trento. The decision pressing on him is thus already set beside music, a conversation he cannot bring himself to begin, and the unresolved inscription waiting by the fireplace.

A Private Oracle About Leaving

Standing before the frieze, Massimo makes a rule for himself: if the motto is cut off and ends with yes, he will leave; if it is complete and ends with no, he will stay. He expects, reasonably in his own estimation, that the missing completion should be no. Yet the visible fragment gives him neither word, and he remains astonished before it. The act of interpretation does not resolve his choice; it exposes how readily he is willing to let an accidental sign decide it.

He immediately invents another way to read the decoration. The daisies on the frieze are being stripped of their petals, but the flower at the point where the motto breaks still has some. Massimo considers plucking them in imagination, one by one, to discover whether the last petal would be yes or no. This second procedure makes the oracle less a fixed message than a game he can adapt to preserve the possibility of an answer. The sign itself stays silent; the decision depends on the rule he supplies.

Donna Fedele Vayla comes up behind him and asks, “Lei consulta l'oracolo?” She has seen him absorbed in the fireplace while Lelia was playing Schumann. Her teasing name for his activity recognizes the solemnity with which he has been treating the ornament, but the exchange does not disclose what he hopes its answer will be. The scene keeps his indecision private even as another person notices its outward performance.

The Question Changes

Later, after Lelia has come through the veranda, wished Marcello good night, greeted Massimo politely, and withdrawn, he lingers on the terrace thinking over Marcello’s unusually confidential conversation. He admits to himself that hearing Lelia’s steps on the gravel stirred something in him, and that her courteous farewell brought both pain and sweetness. He tries to dismiss the feeling rather than pursue it.

On his way back through the salon, Massimo looks up at the daisies again. This time he decides there is no reason to question them about leaving or staying. He is tempted to ask them about something else, but refuses. The change is small and decisive: the earlier practical dilemma has receded, while a more intimate uncertainty has taken its place. The text does not state the new question, so the motto’s ambiguity now protects as well as expresses what Massimo will not admit aloud.

The Uncollected Flower

Instead of going upstairs, Massimo finds himself moving toward the piano and the open Heller score, as though that were his reason for being there. He senses Lelia’s presence in the room through what he calls an aura of her femininity, and sees a flower of memory on the piano seat, apparently fallen from her sash. He bends as if to pick it up, draws back, and leaves it where it is. The hesitation repeats the structure of his encounter with the motto: an impulse approaches action, then stops before it can become a declaration.

In his room he regrets not taking the flower, thinking he would have placed it beside the photograph of his dead friend. The motto has not supplied a verdict on departure, nor does Massimo let it answer his unspoken emotional question. Instead, the unfinished inscription and the uncollected flower mark two forms of restraint: he cannot settle his choice by reading the frieze, and he cannot yet act on the feeling that draws him toward Lelia. Forse che sì, forse che no gives that suspended state a visible form without closing it.