Pleasure (26 page)

What a strange frame of mind I find myself in this evening! I have a kind of dull and acrid wrath at the base of my heart, and I don't know why; I have a kind of intolerance of myself and of my life and of everything. The nervous agitation is so strong that now and then I am gripped by a mad impulse to shout, to sink my nails into my flesh, to break my fingers against the wall, to provoke whatever sort of material agony in order to extract myself from this unbearable internal malaise, this unbearable torment. I seem to have a knot of fire at the top of my chest, my throat blocked by a sob that does not want to come out, my head empty, now cold, now burning; and from time to time I feel myself invaded by a kind of sudden anxiety, by an absurd dismay that I can never repel nor repress. And at times, involuntary images and thoughts flicker through my mind, arising from heaven knows what depths of my being: base images and thoughts. And I feel languid and faint, like one who is immersed in a binding love; and yet it is not a pleasure, it is not a pleasure!

October 3.
—How weak and wretched our soul is, without defense against the reawakening and the assaults of everything that is least noble and pure, dormant in our unconscious life, in the unexplored abyss where blind dreams are born of blind sensations!

A dream can poison a soul; one sole involuntary thought can corrupt the will.

*

We are going to Vicomìle. Delfina is in a state of joy. It is a religious day. Today is the name day of Mary, Virgin of the Rosary. Have courage, my soul!

October 4. —
No courage.

The day yesterday was, for me, so full of little episodes and great emotions, so happy and so sad, so strangely troubled that I become bewildered remembering it. And already all the other memories fade away and vanish in the face of one single one.

After visiting the tower and admiring the ostensorium, we prepared to leave Vicomìle toward five thirty. Francesca was tired; and she preferred to return with the mail coach rather than remount the horse. We followed for a while, trotting at times behind, at times alongside it. From the coach, Delfina and Muriella shook long flowered canes toward us, and laughed, threatening us with the lovely violet plumes.

It was a very peaceful evening, windless. The sun was about to set behind the Rovigliano hill, in a sky all rosy like one in the Far East. Everywhere, roses roses roses drifted down, slowly, densely, delicately, like snowfall at dawn. When the sun disappeared, the roses multiplied, spreading out almost as far as the opposite horizon, vanishing, dissolving in an infinitely pale azure, in a silvery azure, indefinable, similar to the hue that curves over the peaks of ice-covered mountains.

It was he who said to me from time to time: “Look at the tower of Vicomìle. Look at the cupola of San Consalvo . . .”

When the pine forest was in view, he asked me: “Shall we cross it?”

The main road skirted the woods, describing a wide curve and approaching the sea, almost right on the shore, at the summit of the arch. The woods appeared to be already dark, a somber green, as if the shadows had gathered on the tops of the trees, leaving the air above it still clear; but within them, the ponds shone with an intense deep light, like fragments of a sky much purer than the one that stretched above our heads.

Without waiting for my answer, he said to Francesca:

“We're going to ride through the pine forest. We'll meet you on the road, at the Convito bridge, on the other side.”

And he held back his horse.

Why did I consent? Why did I enter the woods with him? In my eyes, I had a kind of dazzle; it seemed to me that I was under the influence of a confused fascination; it seemed that that countryside, that light, that event, all that combination of circumstance was not new to me, but had already existed once, almost, I could say, in a previous existence, which was now existing again . . . The impression is inexpressible. It seemed to me then that that hour, those moments, had already been lived through by me, were not happening outside of me, independently of me, but rather belonged to me, had a natural and indissoluble bond with my person, so that I could not withdraw myself to relive them in that given way, but that I
necessarily
had to relive them, rather. I had a very clear feeling of this necessity. The inertia of my will was absolute. It was like when an episode of life returns in a dream with something more than truth, and different from truth. I can't even describe a minimum part of that extraordinary phenomenon.

And there was a secret correspondence, a mysterious affinity between my soul and the countryside. The image of the woods in the water of the ponds appeared in fact, to be the
dreamed
image of the real scene. As in Percy Shelley's poem, each pond seemed to be a brief sky engulfed in a subterranean world; a firmament of rose-colored light, spread out above the dark earth, more infinite than the infinite night and purer than day; where the trees developed in the same way as in the air above but more perfect in form and shade than any of the others undulating there.
¹¹
And delicate views, such as have never been seen in our world above, were painted there by the love of the waters for the beautiful forest; and all their depth was penetrated by a faint heavenly light, by an unchanging atmosphere, by an evening that was gentler than the one above.
¹²

From what remote time did that hour come to us? We rode along at walking pace, in silence. The occasional cries of magpies, the gait and the breathing of the horses did not disturb the tranquillity, which seemed to become greater and more magical as each minute passed.

Why did he have to shatter the magic we ourselves had created?

He spoke; he poured into my heart a wave of ardent, crazy, almost senseless words, which in that silence of the trees alarmed me, because there was something not human about them, something indefinably strange and fascinating. He was not humble and meek as in the park; he did not tell me about his timid and discouraged hopes, his almost mystical aspirations, his incurable sadness; he did not beseech; he did not implore. He had the voice of passion, audacious and strong; a voice that I did not recognize in him.

“You love me, you love me, you
cannot not love me
! Tell me that you love me!”

His horse was walking alongside mine, very close by. And I felt him brush against me; and I also thought I could feel his breath on my cheek, the ardor of his words; and I thought I would faint from the great agitation I felt, and that I would fall into his arms.

“Tell me that you love me!” he repeated, obstinately, without pity. “Tell me that you love me!”

Out of my mind, in the terrible exasperation his demanding voice caused me, I believe that I said, I don't know whether with a cry or with a sob:

“I love you, I love you, I love you!”

And I urged my horse into a gallop along the road that was barely visible in the density of the tree trunks, not knowing what I was doing.

He followed me shouting:

“Maria, Maria, stop! You're going to get hurt . . .”

I did not stop; I don't know how my horse avoided the trees; I don't know how I did not fall. I cannot describe the impression given to me during this ride by the dark forest interrupted here and there by the wide shining patches of the ponds. When finally I emerged from it onto the road, at the opposite side near the Convito bridge, it seemed that I was emerging from a hallucination.

He said to me with some severity:

“Did you want to kill yourself?”

We heard the sound of the coach approaching; and we moved toward it. He still wanted to talk to me.

“Be quiet, I pray you; please!” I implored, because I felt that I could take no more.

He fell silent. Then, with a confidence that amazed me, he said to Francesca:

“What a pity that you did not come! It was enchanting . . .”

And he continued to talk, frankly, simply, as if nothing had occurred; rather, with a certain gaiety. And I was grateful to him for his dissimulation, which seemed to save me, because certainly, if I had had to talk, I would have betrayed myself; and if we had both been silent it would have perhaps seemed suspicious to Francesca.

After a while, the ascent toward Schifanoja began. What immense melancholy in the evening! The first quarter of the moon shone in a delicate sky, slightly green, in which my eyes, or maybe my eyes only, still saw a faint appearance of rose, of the rosy hue that illuminated the ponds, down there in the forest.

October 5. —
He now knows that I love him; he knows it from my own mouth. I have no escape other than flight. This is the point I have reached.

When he looks at me, there is deep in his eyes a singular glitter that was not there before. Today, in a moment when Francesca was not present, he took my hand and made as if to kiss it. I managed to withdraw it; and I saw his lips disturbed by a small tremor; I caught on his lips, for a second, almost the shape of a kiss not planted, an expression that has remained in my memory and that does not leave me, does not leave me!

October 6. —
On September 25, on the marble seat, in the arbutus woods, he said to me: “I know that you do not love me and that
you cannot love me
.” And on October 3: “You love me, you love me, you
cannot not love me
.”

*

In Francesca's presence, he asked me if I would permit him to do a study of my hands. I consented. He will begin today.

And I am apprehensive and anxious, as if I had to offer up my hands to an unknown torture.

Nighttime.
—The slow, sweet, indefinable torture has begun.

He was drawing with black pencil and hematite pencil. My right hand was resting on a piece of velvet. On the table there was a Korean vase, yellowish and spotted like the skin of a python; and in the vase was a bunch of orchids, those grotesque multiform flowers that are Francesca's sophisticated idiosyncrasy. Some green ones, of the almost
animal
green of certain locusts, hung down in the form of small Etruscan urns, with the lid slightly lifted. Others bore at the top of a silver stem a five-petaled flower with a small calyx at the center, yellow on the inside and white on the outside. Others bore a small purplish ampulla and, on the sides of the ampulla, two long filaments; and they brought to mind some minuscule king in fairy tales, greatly affected with goiter, and with a beard divided into two braids in the Oriental style. Still others bore a quantity of yellow flowers, similar to little angels in a long dress, hovering in flight with their arms raised high and their halo behind their head.

I looked at them, when it seemed I could no longer bear the torment; and their unusual shapes engaged me for an instant, evoked a fleeting memory of their countries of origin, induced in my spirit some momentary sense of bewilderment. He drew without talking; his eyes went constantly from the paper to my hands; then, two or three times, they turned toward the vase. At a certain point, standing up, he said:

“Forgive me.”

And he took up the vase and took it farther away, to another table; I don't know why.

Then he began to draw with greater openness, as if liberated from an irritation.

I cannot say what his eyes made me feel. It seemed to me that I was not offering to his scrutiny my naked hand, but rather a naked part of my soul; and that he had penetrated it with his gaze right down to the very base of it, uncovering all its innermost secrets. I had never felt such a sentiment from my hand; it had never appeared to me so alive, so expressive, so intimately tied to my heart, so dependent on my internal existence, so revealing. An imperceptible but constant vibration caused it to quiver under the influence of his gaze; and the vibration spread right to the depths of my being. At times the tremor became stronger and more visible; and if he was looking at me with too much intensity, I was gripped by an instinctive impulse to withdraw it; and sometimes this impulse was one of modesty.

At times he gazed at me intently for a long time, without drawing; and I had the impression that he was drinking in some part of me with his pupils, or that he was caressing me with a caress softer than the velvet on which my hand was resting. Every now and then, while he was bent over the paper, perhaps instilling into the line whatever he had drunk from me, a faint smile drifted over his lips, but so light that I could barely glimpse it. And that smile, I don't know why, gave me a tremor of pleasure in the upper part of my chest. Again, two or three times, I saw the shape of the kiss reappear on his mouth.

Now and then, curiosity overcame me; and I asked: “Well?”

Francesca was sitting at the piano, her back toward us; and was touching the keys, trying to remember Luigi Rameau's gavotte, the
Gavotte of the Yellow Ladies,
which I played so often and which will remain the musical memory of my holiday at Schifanoja. She was muffling the notes with the pedal, and interrupting herself often. And those interruptions in the aria and in the cadences that were so familiar to me, which the ear would complete in advance, were another source of disquiet for me. Suddenly, she struck a key hard, repeatedly, as if incited by cranky impatience; and she got up and went to bend over the drawing.

I looked at her. And I understood.

This bitterness was the last thing I needed. God held aside this cruelest test for last. May His will be done.

October 7. —
I have but one single thought, one single desire, one single purpose: to leave, to leave, to leave.

I am at the limit of my strength. I am swooning, I am dying from my love; and the unexpected revelation multiplies my mortal sadness. What does she think of me? What does she believe? Does she love him, then? And since when? And does he know? Or does he not even have the slightest suspicion? . . .

My God, my God! I am losing my reason, my strength is abandoning me; my sense of reality is slipping away from me. At times my suffering pauses, similar to the lull that occurs during hurricanes when the furies of the elements are balanced in a terrible immobility, just to break out again with even greater violence. I find myself in a kind of stupefaction, my head heavy, my limbs tired and worn out as if someone had been beating me; and while the pain gathers itself to launch a new assault on me, I cannot manage to gather my will.