Conjugal Love (12 page)

These reflections brought me a vivid feeling that I must be mad: was it not then possible to lay hold of one's own, or other people's, existence except through the medium of pain? But I consoled myself slightly with the thought that if it were so, if not only what I had written but also my wife, whom I knew I loved, seemed to me incomprehensible, then this feeling of absurdity did not depend upon the quality of what I had written but upon myself.

My wife was looking for a place to sit down - a difficult matter in a countryside like that, where every foot of space was cultivated, every plant had its use, and every clod of earth held a seed. We came at last to a cleft in the ground at the bottom of which ran a little stream called - perhaps because of its twisting course - the Ess. At this point the grassy banks sloped gently down, and the stream formed a tiny pool, like a round mirror, of dense green water, overshadowed by three or four poplar trees. A sloping strip of cement, half in and half out of the water, such as is used by women for beating and wringing out clothes, showed that this apparently remote spot was used as a washing-place. But in any case, as Leda said, throwing herself down on the grass, in this part of the country every little corner is put to some use and there is nothing to be done about it.

We started talking quietly, in that moment just before sunset when both light and sound are softened. My wife had picked a blade of grass and was chewing it; and I, sitting a little lower down the bank, was looking at the vague shadows of the poplars reflected in the glassy water of the stream. We spoke for a little about the day and the place, and then, on a very slight pretext (I had asked her if she would like to go up into the mountains in the winter) she started relating an episode in her past life which had, in fact, occurred in a mountain resort two years before. My wife's first marriage, as I have already explained, lasted only a very short time, and after that, for ten years, she had lived alone and had had, as I was aware, numerous lovers. I had no feelings of jealousy for these predecessors of mine, and she, seeing that I was indifferent, had taken to talking about them, circumspectly at first and then quite openly. Why she should have done so, I do not know: perhaps out of vanity, or - in her present very different circumstances - from a vestige of regret for the uncontrolled freedom she had enjoyed. I cannot say that these stories gave me any pleasure; when I least expected it, I would feel myself giving a start of surprise, the involuntary effect, as it were, of a sensibility I did not know I possessed. Certainly this was not jealousy; nor, however, was it the complete, rational objectivity that I prided myself on being able to display. But when, that day, chewing her blade of grass, her eyes staring fixedly not at me but at something which she perhaps saw in her imagination, she told me the story of one of her adventures, I was aware that the slightly uncomfortable feeling that her reminiscences usually aroused in me was, this time, proving agreeable, like a fortifying tonic to someone who is feeling faint. When I sat down I had been a prey to a distressing sense of unreality; and now that warm, sensual voice of hers was speaking to me of real things, of things which had really happened and which, into the bargain, had happened to her and were displeasing to me. In others, more hot-blooded, these memories might perhaps have kindled a raging hatred; but to me, bloodless as I was, they restored the sense of what I myself was and of what she was to me. Certainly I suffered when I listened to her telling me, quite plainly, how she had allowed herself to be approached by a man she liked, how she had let herself be kissed, how they had slept together; but this suffering, just sufficing, as it did, to re-awaken my failing vitality, became almost pleasant and lost its harmful and gratuitous quality. It was a poison, perhaps, but one of those poisons which, taken in small doses, restore the patient to life.

She was telling me of an adventure that she had had with a red-haired lieutenant in the Alpini. 'I was in the mountains in March,' she said, 'and since the snow had already gone where I was, I went up and stayed in a climbers' hostel at about 5,000 feet. Nobody ever came there, and I spent the days on the terrace in front of the hostel, in a long chair, reading and basking in the sun. One day a group of Alpini came up from the valley. I was on the terrace, as usual, and they started taking off their skis all round about me, so as to go in and have a drink in the hostel. Amongst them was a young officer, with red hair and a freckled face and blue eyes. He wore no hat or jacket - just a grey-green shirt - and as he stooped down to undo his skis, I saw that his back was youthful and vigorous - powerful, but slim at the waist. When he stood up again he looked at me and I at him, and that was enough for me. A great fear came over me that he hadn't understood - whereas really he had understood perfectly well, as you shall see. I remember that I got up and, all upset, I went into the main room of the hostel. He went and stuck his skis upright in the snow and then came in after me. His companions had already sat down at a table and he sat down with them, with his back to the window and his face to the room. I went to the counter and ordered tea, then took a table opposite theirs. They were laughing and joking, and I, like a fool, was trying to catch his eye. Afterwards he told me that he had observed my manoeuvre; but at the time, seeing that he did not even deign to glance at me, I thought he had not noticed. At last he looked at me, and then, so that there should be no possible mistake, I put my fingers to my lips and threw him a kiss, like a little girl. He saw me do this but gave no sign of having understood; and then I began to be afraid that he didn't like me. As if I had been too hot, I took off my jacket, and, pretending that I wanted to pull up my shoulder-strap under my blouse, I uncovered my shoulder slightly. But next moment I felt angry, and I left the room and went back to my long chair on the terrace. They sat a little longer over their drinks and then they too came out, took their skis and went off. I sat waiting in my chair, still uncertain. The sun went down and still I waited, numb with cold and now almost without hope. I was completely in despair when he suddenly appeared coming down the slope on his skis. I went forward to meet him, filled with joy, and he said: "I had to invent a whole lot of excuses . . . they didn't believe me, but that really doesn't matter." That was what he said, just as though we had always known each other. I didn't answer; I was so excited I hadn't even the strength to speak. He took off his skis very slowly, and I took him by the hand and led him straight to my room upstairs. Fancy! I never knew what his name was!'

I have written down this story in her own brief, laconic words. She never dallied over the sensual part of these recitals of hers; but she appeared to suggest it by the rich tones of her voice and by a kind of lively, carnal participation of her whole body in what she was saying. She became animated; her beauty was intensified. And that day, when she had finished, I seemed to understand that there was, in her, a vitality stronger than any moral rule; and that I myself had a need to draw upon this vitality if - as, indeed, was the case - it was necessary for me to repress certain reactions of my own sensibility. For a moment I had not, in fact, been a husband listening, with mind disturbed, to the love reminiscences of his wife, but rather a dry clod of earth saved from crumbling into dust by the timely fall of a beneficent shower of rain. I looked at her as she sat there, absorbed in thought, chewing her blade of grass, and I realized, to my surprise, that I was no longer conscious of that painful feeling of unreality.

13

W
E
went slowly back to the house, and I was calm and happy again as at my best moments, and I talked and joked with full self-confidence. When we reached the house it was later than usual, and my wife went straight upstairs to her room to change for dinner. I put a record on the radiogramophone - a Mozart quartet - and sat down in the armchair. I felt myself to be in a joyful, detached state of mind. Soon, when the quartet reached the minuet and entered upon the ceremonious but touching dialogue of this dance, with its loud, sonorous questionings and its melancholy but graceful replies, the thought came to me that there was more in these questions and answers than a mere masculine and feminine tone of voice: there were two well-defined attitudes, one active, the other passive, one aggressive, the other shy, one flattered, the other flattering. The notes, I thought, suggested a relationship that was unchangeable through time, and little did it matter whether the two people who met in the dance belonged to today or to two centuries ago. It might be we two, my wife and I; and this was the dance that we danced in our own way, as, before us, in all ages, innumerable couples had danced it. Lost in my thoughts, I did not notice the passing of time, and was almost astonished when I saw Leda appear in front of me, in the white, low-cut  dress  of the evening before.   She stopped the gramophone half-way through the record, saying with a slight air of impatience: 'I don't know why, but I don't want to listen to any music this evening.' Then, sitting down beside me, on the arm of my chair, she asked me in a casual tone of voice: 'So you're going to begin typing your story this evening?'

As she asked this question, she looked at herself in the mirror from her handbag and re-adjusted the bunch of fresh flowers in her hair. I answered with satisfaction: 'Yes, this evening I shall begin the typing and I shall work at least until midnight. ... I want to get on with it and finish it within a few days.'

Touching her hair, she said: 'Until midnight? Won't you be sleepy?'

'Why?' I replied. 'I'm used to working at night. . . . I want,' I concluded, putting my arm round her waist, 'I want to finish quickly so as to be able to devote myself completely to you.'

She put the mirror back in her bag and asked: 'Why? Don't you think we're enough together as it is?'

I answered, in a meaning tone of voice: 'No, not in the way I want.'

'Ah, I understand,' she said. And, rising from the armchair, she started walking up and down the room in an impatient, tireless sort of way. 'What's the matter?' I asked.

'I'm hungry,' she replied, in a hard, irritated tone of voice: 'that's what's the matter.' She added, more gently: 'Aren't you hungry too?'

'So so,' I answered, 'but I don't want to eat too much, or I shall be sleepy later on.'

'You certainly take good care of yourself,' she said; and I gave a start, for it was an unpleasant remark and I was not prepared for it.

'What d'you mean by that?' I asked quietly.

She saw that she had offended me, and, stopping in front of me, touched me caressingly, saying: 'I'm sorry . . . when one's hungry one becomes aggressive. . . . Don't take any notice of me.'

'It's quite true,' I said, remembering the incident with Antonio; 'hunger makes one irritable.'

'Well, well,' she went on hastily, 'how d'you like this frock?'

Possibly she asked me this in order to change the conversation; for, as I have said, it was the same dress that she had worn the evening before and I had already seen it several times. Nevertheless I said, indulgently: 'Yes, it's lovely, and it suits you very well. . . . Turn round and let me look.'

She revolved obediently, so as to show herself; and then I noticed a small alteration. The evening before I had remarked that, round her belly and hips, beneath the light, almost transparent material of the dress, she wore an elastic belt, of American type, made of silk and rubber, that she sometimes put on to preserve the correct line of her figure. I did not at all like this belt, which, besides being visible, was so hard and tight underneath the loose-fitting dress that, to the touch, it was unpleasantly suggestive of some orthopaedic apparatus. But now, as I immediately noticed, the belt was not there; and she did in fact look more supple and slightly fatter. 'You haven't put on your American armour-plating this evening,' I said casually.

She glanced at me and then answered with indifference : 'I didn't put it on because I was bored with it.. . . But how did you know?'

'Because yesterday you had it on, and it was obvious.'

She said nothing, and just at that moment the maid came to tell us that dinner was ready. We went into the dining-room and sat down, and my wife helped herself. I noticed then that, contrary to what she had said before, she was clearly not hungry: she had taken only half a spoonful from the dish that was offered to her. I remarked as I helped myself: 'You were so hungry . . . and now you won't touch anything.'

She gave me a look of displeasure, as though she were irritated at my having caught her in a contradiction. 'I was wrong,' she said. 'I'm not really in the least hungry. ... In fact the sight of food makes me feel rather sick.'

'Don't you feel well?' I asked anxiously.

She hesitated, then answered all in one breath, in a very low voice: 'I think I'm all right . . . but I'm not hungry.' I noticed that her voice was languid, and her breath seemed almost to fail her between one syllable and the next. Then she was silent, poking about with her fork in her plate; then she put down the fork and sighed deeply, laying her hand on her breast. 'But you
don't
feel well,' I said, alarmed.

This time she admitted it. 'No ... I feel rather oppressed,' she said in an exhausted voice, as though she were going to faint.

'Would you like to lie down on the divan?'

'No.'

'Would you like me to call the maid?'

'No . . . but you can give me something to drink.'

I poured her out some wine, and she drank it and it appeared to revive her. The maid brought in the fruit and she did not touch it; I ate a bunch of grapes, slowly, while she looked at me with eyes that seemed to be counting each single grape as I raised it to my mouth. The moment the stripped stalk fell from my hand, she jumped impetuously to her feet, saying: 'Now I'm going to bed.'

'Don't you want any coffee?' I asked, alarmed at her loud, distressed tone of voice, as I followed her into the drawing-room.

'No, no coffee, I want to sleep.' She was standing at the door as she spoke, stiff, impatient, her fingers on the handle.