Pleasure (29 page)

—I brought you a bag of tea—said Musèllaro to Sperelli—much better than the one your famous Kien-Lung drank.

—Ah, do you remember, in London, when we composed tea according to the poetic theory of the great emperor?

—You know, said Grimiti. —Clara Green, the blonde, is in Rome. I saw her on Sunday at Villa Borghese. She recognized me, greeted me, and stopped the carriage. She's staying, for now, at the Albergo d'Europa, in Piazza di Spagna. She's still lovely. Do you remember what a passion she had for you, and how she pursued you when you were in love with the Landbrooke girl? She immediately asked about your news, before asking for mine . . .

—I'd willingly see her again. But does she still wear green and put sunflowers on her hat?

—No, no. She has abandoned aestheticism for good, it appears. She's now thrown herself into feathers. On Sunday she was wearing a huge hat in the Montpensier style with an incredible plume.

—This year—remarked Barbarisi—we have an extraordinary abundance of
demi-mondaines
.
³
There are three or four who are quite pleasing. Giulia Arici has a beautiful body and fairly aristocratic limbs. The Silva woman is also back; the day before yesterday our friend Musèllaro conquered her with a panther skin. Maria Fortuna has returned, but she's on bad terms with Carlo de Souza, who for the moment is being substituted by Ruggero . . .

—So the season is already in full swing?

—This year it's earlier than ever, as far as sinners and impeccables are concerned.

—Which of the impeccable ladies are already in Rome?

—Almost all of them: Moceto, Viti, the two Daddis, Micigliano, Miano, Massa d'Albe, Lùcoli . . .

—I saw the Lùcoli woman earlier from my window. She was driving. I also saw your cousin with the Viti woman.

—My cousin is here until tomorrow. Tomorrow she is going back to Frascati. On Wednesday she is throwing a party at the villa, a type of garden party, in the manner of the Princess of Sagan. It's not obligatory to wear any particular fancy dress, but all the ladies will wear Louis XV or Directoire hats. We're going.

—You're not leaving Rome for now, are you? Grimiti asked Sperelli.

—I'll stay until the beginning of November. Then I'm going to France for two weeks to restock with horses. And I'll come back here toward the end of the month.

—By the way, Leonetto Lanza is selling Campomorto, said Ludovico. —You know him: he is a magnificent animal and a great jumper. You'd be well advised to buy him.

—How much?

—Fifteen thousand, I think.

—We'll see.

—Leonetto is about to get married. He got engaged this summer at Aix-les-Bains to the Ginosa girl.

—I forgot to tell you—said Musèllaro—that Galeazzo Secìnaro says hello. We came back together. I wish I could tell you everything he got up to on the trip! He's in Palermo now, but he's coming to Rome in January.

—Gino Bommìnaco also sends his greetings, added Barbarisi.

—Ha, ha! exclaimed the duke, laughing. —Andrea, you must get Gino to tell you about his adventure with Donna Giulia Moceto . . . You're in a situation, I believe, to be able to give us a few explanations in this regard.

Ludovico also began to laugh.

—I've heard—said Giulio Musèllaro—that here in Rome you wrought awe-inspiring havoc.
Gratulor tibi!
⁴

—Tell me, tell me about the adventure, Andrea urged with curiosity.

—You have to hear it from Gino, to have a good laugh. You know his powers of mimicry. You have to see his face when he reaches the climax. It's a tour de force!

—I'll hear it from him, too—insisted Andrea, piqued by curiosity—but tell me about it in brief, please.

—Here it is, in a few words, Ruggero Grimiti assented, placing his cup on the table, setting about recounting the anecdote without scruples and without reticence, with that astonishing ability with which young gentlemen make public the sins of their ladies and those of others. —Last spring (I don't know if you noticed) Gino was paying court to Donna Giulia, extremely ardent and very visible court. At Le Capannelle racecourse, this courtship changed to a very spirited flirtation. Donna Giulia was on the point of capitulating; and Gino, as usual, was all aflame. The opportunity presented itself. Giovanni Moceto departed for Florence, to take his worn-out horses onto the turf at Le Cascine. One evening, one of the usual Wednesday evenings, indeed the last Wednesday evening, Gino thought that his great moment had come; and he waited for everyone to leave, one by one, and for the salon to remain empty, and finally to be alone with her . . .

—Here—interrupted Barbarisi—we would need Bommìnaco now. He is inimitable. You need to hear him recount, in Neapolitan dialect, the description of the
ambient,
and the analysis of his state of being, and then the reproduction of the
psychological
and the
physiological
moment, as he says, in his way. It's irresistibly funny.

—So—continued Ruggero—after the prelude, which you will hear from him, in the languor and the erotic excitement of a
fin de soirée,
he knelt in front of Donna Giulia, who was sitting in a very low armchair, an armchair “stuffed with complicity.” Donna Giulia was already drowning in sweetness, defending herself weakly; and Gino's hands were getting ever more daring, while she was already sighing the sigh of surrender . . . But oh dear, from an attitude of extreme daring, those hands snapped back with an instinctual movement as if they had touched the skin of a snake, something revolting . . .

Andrea broke out in peals of laughter so frank that his hilarity spread to all his friends. He had understood, because he knew. But Giulio Musèllaro said, with great concern, to Grimiti:

—Explain it to me! Explain it to me!

—You explain, said Grimiti to Sperelli.

—All right—explained Andrea, still laughing—do you know Théophile Gautier's most beautiful poem, the
Musée secret
?

—
O douce barbe feminine!
⁵
recited Musèllaro, remembering. —And so?

—And so, Giulia Moceto is a very delicate blonde; but if you had the luck, which I hope you do, to draw aside
le drap de la blonde qui dort,
⁶
certainly you would not find, as did Philippe de Bourgogne, the golden fleece.
⁷
She is, they say,
sans plume et sans duvet
⁸
like the marble sculptures of Paros, of which Gautier sings.

—Ah, a very rare rarity, which I appreciate greatly, said Musèllaro.

—A rarity that we know how to appreciate, repeated Andrea. —But Gino Bommìnaco is an ingenue, a simpleton.

—Listen, listen to the rest—said Barbarisi.

—Oh, if only the hero were here! exclaimed the Duke of Grimiti. —The story told by another mouth loses all its taste. Just imagine that the surprise was so great, and the confusion so great, as to extinguish any fire. Gino had to withdraw prudently, with the absolute impossibility of going any further. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the terrible mortification of a man who, having managed to obtain everything, can take nothing? Donna Giulia was green; Gino pretended to be listening out for noises, to procrastinate, hoping . . . Oh, the story of the retreat is a marvel! Anabasis
⁹
was nothing compared with this! You'll hear about it.

—And did Donna Giulia become Gino's lover after that? asked Andrea.

—Never! Poor Gino will never eat of that fruit; and I think that he will die of regret, of desire, of curiosity. He vents by laughing about it with his friends, but watch him well, when he talks about it. Underneath the joking, there's anguish.

—Nice topic for a short story, said Andrea to Musèllaro. —Don't you think? A short story entitled “The Obsessed” . . . One could make something very refined and intense. The man, continually possessed, pursued, tormented by the fantastic vision of that rare form he has touched and therefore imagined but never enjoyed, nor seen with his eyes, consumes himself with passion little by little and goes mad. He cannot remove from his fingers the impression of that contact; but the first instinctual revulsion has mutated into an inextinguishable ardor . . . One could, in short, make a work of art based on the real event; accomplish something like an erotic Hoffmann story, written with the plastic precision of a Flaubert.

—Try.

—Who knows! Anyway, I'm sorry for poor Gino. The Moceto woman has, I've heard, the most beautiful belly of all Christendom . . .

—I like that “I've heard”—interrupted Ruggero Grimiti.

—. . . the belly of an infertile Pandora, an ivory bowl, a radiant shield,
speculum voluptatis;
¹⁰
and the most perfect belly button that one has ever seen, a small rounded belly button, as in the Clodion's terra-cotta statuettes, a pure seal of grace, an eye that is blind but more splendid than a star,
voluptatis ocellus,
¹¹
to celebrate in an epigram worthy of Greek anthology.

Andrea was becoming excited by these discussions. Supported by his friends, he entered into a dialogue on female beauty, much less restrained than Firenzuola's. His sensuality of old was reawakening in him, after his long abstinence; and he spoke with intimate and profound fervor, as a great connoisseur of the
nude,
priding himself on his more colorful words, drawing fine distinctions like an artist and a libertine. And, in truth, the dialogue of those four young men amid those enchanting Bacchic tapestries, had it been recorded, could well have been the
Breviarium Arcanum
¹²
of elegant corruption at this turn of the nineteenth century.

The day was ebbing away; but the air was still permeated with light, retaining light within it the way a sponge retains water. Through the window one could see, on the horizon, an orange strip against which the cypresses on Monte Mario were clearly traced, like the teeth on a great ebony rake. Now and then one could hear the cries of crows flying in flocks to reunite on the roofs of Villa Medici, then descending to Villa Borghese, in the small valley of sleep.

—What are you doing this evening? Barbarisi asked Andrea.

—I really don't know.

—Come with us, then. We're having dinner at the Doney, at eight, at the Teatro Nazionale. We're inaugurating the new restaurant, rather, the
cabinets particuliers
¹³
of the new restaurant, where at least we will not have to resign ourselves,
¹⁴
after the oysters, to the aphrodisiac uncovering of
Judith
and of the
Bather,
as at the Caffè di Roma.
¹⁵
Academic pepper upon fake oysters . . .

—Come with us, come with us, urged Giulio Musèllaro.

—It's the three of us—added the duke—with Giulia Arici, the Silva girl, and Maria Fortuna. Ah, a wonderful idea! Come with Clara Green.

—Wonderful idea! repeated Ludovico.

—And where do I find Clara Green?

—At the Albergo d'Europa, near here, in Piazza di Spagna. A card from you would make her happy. You can be sure that she would abandon any previous engagements.

Andrea liked the proposal.

—It would be better—he said—for me to pay her a visit. She's probably back by now. Don't you think so, Ruggero?

—Get dressed and we'll go immediately.

They went out. Clara Green had just returned to the hotel. She greeted Andrea with a childlike joy. Most certainly, she would have preferred to dine alone with him; but she accepted the invitation without hesitation; she wrote a note to free herself from a previous commitment; she sent the key of a theater box to a friend. She seemed happy. She began to tell him about a number of her sentimental affairs; she asked him numerous sentimental questions; she swore to him that she had never been able to forget him. She held his hands while talking.

—
I love you more than any words can say, Andrew . . .
¹⁶

She was young still. With her pure, straight profile, crowned with blond hair, parted above her forehead in a low style, she resembled a Greek beauty in a keepsake.
¹⁷
She had a light dusting of aesthetic cultivation, left to her by her love for the poet-painter Adolphus Jeckyll,
¹⁸
who followed John Keats in poetry and Holman Hunt in painting, composing obscure sonnets and painting subjects taken from the
Vita Nuova.
She had “posed” for a
Sibylla palmifera
¹⁹
and for a
Madonna of the Lily
.
²⁰
She had also once “posed” for Andrea, for a head study he required for his etching of
Isabetta
in Boccaccio's story.
²¹
She was therefore ennobled by art. But, deep down, she did not possess any spiritual quality; on the contrary, ultimately, that certain exalted sentimentalism she affected, to be encountered not uncommonly in Englishwomen of pleasure, and which makes a strange contrast with the depravations of their lasciviousness, rendered her somewhat tedious.

—
Who would have thought we would be together again, Andrew!
²²

After an hour, Andrea left her and returned to Palazzo Zuccari, ascending the staircase that leads from Piazza Mignanelli to the Trinità. The noise of the city in the mild October evening reached the solitary staircase. Stars scintillated in a humid, clear sky. Down below at the Casteldelfino house, on the other side of a small gate, shrubs immersed in a mysterious dim light cast indistinct fluttering shadows, without a rustle, like marine plants undulating at the bottom of an aquarium. From the house, through an illuminated window with red curtains, came the sound of a piano. The church bells tolled. All of a sudden he felt his heart grow heavy. A memory of Donna Maria filled him, suddenly; and provoked in him, confusedly, a sense of regret and almost of repentance. What was she doing right now? Thinking? Suffering? With the image of the Sienese woman, the old Tuscan city appeared in his memory: the white-and-black Dome, the loggia, the fountain. A heavy sadness possessed him. It seemed to him that something had vanished from the base of his heart; and he did not know precisely what it was, but he was afflicted by it as if by an irremediable loss.