Pleasure (22 page)

and under whose rule all harbors are embraced

At your feet my destiny is placed:

My Lady, please will you grant me your consent!

It was true! It was true! He loved her; he was placing at her feet his entire soul; he had one single desire, humble and immense:—to be earth beneath her footprints.

—How beautiful it is here! exclaimed Donna Maria, entering the dominion of the four-sided herm, in the acanthus paradise. —What a strange odor!

Indeed, an odor of musk pervaded the air, as if due to the invisible presence of a musk-secreting insect or reptile. The shade was mysterious, and the lines of light that filtered through the foliage already touched by autumn's damage were like lunar rays passing through the stained glass panes of a cathedral. A mixed sentiment, pagan and Christian, emanated from the place, as from a mythological painting by a pious quattrocento
⁴
artist.

—Look, look, Delfina! she added, with the excitement of one who sees an object of beauty, in her voice.

Delfina had ingeniously braided a garland from flowering orange twigs; and, with sudden childish imagination, now wanted to place it on the head of the stone divinity. But as she could not reach the top, she was exerting herself to accomplish this task by rising up on tiptoes, lifting her arm, stretching as far as she could; and her slender, elegant, and lively form contrasted with the rigid, square, and solemn form of the statue, like a lily stalk at the base of an oak tree. Every effort was in vain.

Then, smiling, her mother came to her aid. She took the garland from her hands and placed it on the four pensive foreheads. Involuntarily, her gaze fell on the inscriptions.

—Who wrote here? You? she asked Andrea, surprised and pleased. —Yes, it is your handwriting.

And immediately, she knelt on the grass to read; curiously, almost avidly. Imitating her, Delfina leaned over behind her mother, circling her neck with her arms and pushing her face against her cheek, almost covering it. Her mother murmured the rhymes. And those two feminine figures, crouching at the base of the tall, garlanded stone, in the uncertain light, among the symbolic acanthi, formed such a harmonious composition of lines and colors that the poet remained for a few moments under the sole dominion of aesthetic pleasure and pure admiration.

But the obscure jealousy still stung him. That tenuous creature, so wound around her mother, so intimately mingled with her soul, seemed an enemy to him; she seemed to him to be an insurmountable obstacle that rose up against his love, against his desire, against his hope. He was not jealous of the husband and he was jealous of the daughter. He wanted to possess not the body but the soul of that woman; and to possess her entire soul, with all her tenderness, all her joys, all her fears, all her anguish, all her dreams, in other words, the entire life of her soul; and to be able to say:
I am the life of her life.

The daughter, instead, had that possession, uncontested, absolute, continuous. It seemed as if the mother lacked some essential element of her existence when her adored child was far from her even for a short time. A sudden, very visible transfiguration took place on her face when she heard the childish voice after a brief absence. Sometimes, involuntarily, due to some secret correspondence, almost, one could say, by the laws of some common vital rhythm, she imitated the gesture of her daughter, a smile, a pose, a position of the head. Sometimes she had, at quiet times or when her daughter slept, moments of such intense contemplation that she seemed to have lost consciousness of every other thing, in order to become similar to the being that she was contemplating. When she spoke to her adored child, the word was a caress and her mouth lost every trace of pain. When she received kisses, a tremor shook her lips and her eyes filled with an indescribable joy, between the palpitating lashes, like the eyes of a beatified person at being taken up to heaven. When she conversed with others, or listened, she seemed every now and then to have a kind of sudden suspension of thought, like a momentary absence of spirit; and it was for her daughter, for her, always for her.

Who could ever break that chain? Who could conquer even a minimal part of that heart? Andrea suffered as from an irremediable loss, as from a necessary renouncement, as from hope that has died. Even now, even now, was the daughter not removing something from him?

In fact, in play, she wanted to force her mother to remain kneeling. She was leaning on her and pressing her arms around her neck, shouting and laughing:

—No, no, no; you can't get up.

And as her mother opened her mouth to talk, she placed her small hands on her mouth to stop her from talking; and made her laugh; and then she blindfolded her with her braid; and would not stop, excited and elated by this game.

Watching her, Andrea had the impression that with those actions she was shaking from her mother and destroying and dispersing everything that the reading of the verses had perhaps caused to blossom in her spirit.

When finally Donna Maria managed to free herself from the sweet tyrant, she said to him, reading his vexation in his face:

—Forgive me, Andrea. Sometimes Delfina has these silly whims.

Then, with a light hand, she tidied the folds of her skirt. A slight flame suffused the area beneath her eyes, and she was also breathing slightly irregularly. She added, smiling a smile which in that unusual animation of her blood was of remarkable luminosity:

—And forgive her, as a reward for her unconscious augur; because earlier she had the inspiration of placing a nuptial crown on your poem, which sings of a nuptial communion. The symbol is a seal of the alliance.

—To Delfina and to you, my thanks, replied Andrea, who had heard her calling him for the first time not by his ancestral title but simply by name.

That unexpected familiarity and the kind words brought confidence back to his soul. Delfina had run on ahead up one of the avenues.

—These verses therefore are a spiritual document, continued Donna Maria. —You must give them to me, so that I may keep them always.

He wanted to tell her:
They come to you today, naturally. They are yours, they speak of you, they entreat you.
But instead he simply said:

—I will give them to you.

They took up their walk again toward the Cybele. Before leaving the herm's dominion, Donna Maria turned toward it, as if she had heard some call; and her forehead seemed very pensive. Andrea asked her with humbleness:

—What are you thinking about?

She replied:

—I'm thinking about you.

—What are you thinking of me?

—I'm thinking about your earlier life, which I do not know about. Have you suffered very much?

—I have sinned very much.

—And loved very much, also?

—I don't know. Perhaps love is not as I experienced it. Perhaps I must still love. I don't know, truly.

She fell silent. They walked alongside each other for a stretch. To the right of the path grew tall laurel trees, interposed by a cypress at regular intervals; and the sea sparkled here and there in the background, between dainty foliage, as blue as flax blossoms. On the left against the embankment there was a kind of wall, similar to the backrest of a very long stone seat, bearing the Ateletas' escutcheon
⁵
repeated along its entire length, alternating with an alerion.
⁶
Below each escutcheon and each alerion was to be found a sculpted mask, from the mouth of which a small water pipe emerged, emptying itself into underlying basins that had the shape of sarcophagi placed alongside each other, decorated with mythological stories in bas-relief. There must have been one hundred mouths, because the avenue was named One Hundred Fountains; but some no longer dispensed water, having become clogged over time, while others barely dripped. Many shields were broken and moss had covered the heraldic device; many alerions had been decapitated; the figures in bas-relief appeared amid the moss like pieces of silver imperfectly concealed beneath an old torn velvet cloth. In the basins, upon the water that was clearer and greener than an emerald, maidenhair fern trembled or a few rose leaves floated, fallen from the shrubs above; and the surviving water pipes emitted a hoarse, gentle sound that flowed over the sound of the sea, like a melody over its accompaniment.

—Can you hear that? Donna Maria asked, stopping, straining her ears, captivated by the enchantment of those sounds. —The music of bitter water and of sweet water!

She stood in the middle of the path, bending slightly toward the fountains, attracted more by the melody, with her index finger lifted to her mouth in the involuntary gesture of those who fear that their listening will be disturbed. Andrea, who was nearer the basins, saw her stand out against a background of foliage as delicate and graceful as an Umbrian painter could have placed behind an Annunciation or a Nativity.

—Maria, murmured the convalescent, whose heart was swollen with tenderness. —Maria, Maria . . .

He felt an inexpressible voluptuousness in mingling her name with that music of the waters. She pressed her finger against her mouth, indicating that he must be quiet, without looking at him.

—Forgive me—he said, overcome by emotion—but I cannot stand it anymore. It is my soul that is calling you!

A strange sentimental excitement had overcome him; all the lyrical peaks of his spirit had ignited and were flaming; the hour, the light, the place, all surrounding things suggested love to him; from the farthest end of the sea right to the humble maidenhair fern of the fountains, a single magical circle was being drawn; and he felt that its center was that woman.

—You will never know—he added, his voice low, almost fearing to offend her—you will never know the extent to which my soul is yours.

She became even paler, as if all the blood in her veins had gathered in her heart. She said nothing; she avoided looking at him. She called, her voice agitated:

—Delfina!

Her daughter did not answer, perhaps because she had gone deeper into the thicket at the end of the path.

—Delfina! she repeated, more loudly, with a kind of alarm.

In the wait, after her shout, one could hear the two waters singing in a silence that seemed to expand.

—Delfina!

A rustling came from amid the foliage, as if from the passing of a roebuck; and the little girl burst forth nimbly from the depths of the laurel trees, carrying her straw hat full of small red fruit that she had gathered from an arbutus. She was red from the effort and from running; many thorns had become stuck in the wool of her tunic; and some leaves were entangled in the rebellion of her hair.

—Oh, Mommy, come, come with me!

She wanted to drag her mother to gather the rest of the fruit.

—Down there there's a wood; so so many! Come with me, Mommy, come!

—No, love, please. It's late.

—Come!

—But it's late.

—Come! Come!

This insistence forced Donna Maria to yield and allow herself to be led by the hand.

—There is a way to get to the arbutus wood without passing through the thicket, Andrea said.

—Did you hear, Delfina? There is a better way.

—No, Mommy! Come with me!

Delfina pulled her between the wild laurels on the side facing the sea. Andrea followed; and he was happy to be able to gaze freely upon the figure of his beloved before him, to drink her in with his eyes, to be able to watch all her different movements and rhythms, constantly interrupted by the passage along the uneven slope, among the obstacles formed by trunks, between the hindrances of the saplings, between the resistance of the branches. But while his eyes fed on those things, his mind retained one pose, one expression, above all the others. Oh, the pallor, the pallor he had just seen, when he had uttered those subdued words! And the indefinable sound of that voice which had called Delfina!

—Is it still far off? Donna Maria asked.

—No, no, Mommy. Here we are, we're there already.

A kind of shyness invaded the young man at the end of the walk. After those words, his eyes had not met hers even once. What was she thinking? What was she feeling? With what expression in her eyes would she look at him?

—Here we are! shouted the little girl.

The laurel thicket was indeed thinning out and the sea appeared more clearly; suddenly the thicket of
Arbutus andrachne
revealed itself, glowing red like a grove of earthly coral, bearing at the tips of their branches abundant bunches of flowers.

—How wonderful! murmured Donna Maria.

The beautiful grove flowered and bore fruit within an inlet curved like a hippodrome, deep and sun-drenched, in which all the mildness of that shore was delightfully assembled. The slender trunks of the shrubs, mostly vermilion, some yellow, rose up tall, bearing large shiny leaves, green above and pale blue below, immobile in the quiet air. The florid clusters, similar to bunches of lily of the valley, white and rose-colored and innumerable, hung from the tops of the young branches; the red and orange berries hung from the tops of the old branches. Every plant was laden with them; and the magnificent pomp of the flowers, the fruit, the leaves, and the stems displayed itself against the vivid azure of the sea with the intensity and incredibility of a dream, like the remains of some legendary kitchen garden.

—How wonderful!

Donna Maria entered slowly, no longer held by the hand by Delfina, who was running around crazy with joy, with one sole desire: to strip the entire bush.

—Can you forgive me? Andrea dared to say. —I did not wish to offend you. Rather, seeing you so elevated, so far from me, so pure, I thought that I would never ever speak to you of my secret, that I would never ask your consent, nor would I ever cross your path. Since I met you, I have dreamed very much of you, by day and by night, but without any hope or any goal. I know that you do not love me and that you cannot love me. And yet, believe me, I would renounce all the promises of life, just to live in a small part of your heart . . .