Pleasure (36 page)

He laughed at himself. And from that moment, the new phase of his moral destitution began.

Without any regard, or any reserve, or any remorse, he threw himself completely into bringing his unwholesome imaginings into being. In order to induce Maria Ferres to surrender herself to him, he used the most subtle ploys, the most delicate entanglements, deceiving her in matters of the soul, in spirituality, in ideality, in the intimate life of the heart. In order to proceed with equal rapidity in the acquisition of his new lover, and the reacquisition of the old one, in order to benefit from every situation in each of his endeavors, he encountered a variety of setbacks, inconveniences, bizarre circumstances; and in order to extricate himself from these, he resorted to a variety of lies, contrivances, unkind expedients, degrading subterfuges, despicable tricks. Donna Maria's goodness, her faith, her candor, did not subdue him. He had placed the verse of a psalm at the basis of his seduction:
“Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.”
¹⁰
The poor creature believed she was saving a soul, redeeming an intelligence, purifying a tainted man with her purity; she still deeply believed the unforgettable words she had heard in the park, in that Epiphany of Love, in the presence of the sea, under those florid trees. And this faith of hers restored her and uplifted her in the midst of the Christian battles that constantly were being fought in her conscience; it freed her from suspicion and it intoxicated her with a kind of lustful mysticism in which she poured out rich quantities of tenderness, the whole wave of her concentrated languor, the sweetest flower of her life.

For the first time, perhaps, Andrea Sperelli found himself in the face of a
real
passion; for the first time, he found himself before one of those great, feminine, extremely rare sentiments that illuminate the gray and changeable sky of human loves with a beautiful, terrible flash. He himself was grooming it. He became the ruthless executioner of himself and of the poor creature.

Every day there was a deception, a base act.

On Thursday, February 3, according to the agreement they had made at the concert, he met her in Piazza di Spagna in front of an exhibition of antique gold jewelry, with Delfina. As soon as she heard his greeting, she turned around; and a flame tinged her paleness. Together they examined the eighteenth-century jewels, the buckles and tiaras made of rhinestone, the enameled brooches and watches, the snuffboxes made of gold, ivory, tortoiseshell; all those trifles from a bygone century, which in that clear morning light created a harmonious sumptuousness. All about, flower sellers were offering up for sale their baskets of yellow and white jonquils, double violets, long almond-tree branches. A breath of spring pervaded the air. The slender Column of the Immaculate Conception rose up to the sun, like a flower stalk, with the
Rosa mystica
¹¹
at its summit; the Barcaccia Fountain was laden with diamonds; the Trinità widened its flights of stairs in delight toward the church of Carlo VIII, rising up with its two towers into a blue sky ennobled by clouds, an ancient sky reminiscent of Piranesi.
¹²

—How marvelous! Donna Maria exclaimed. —You are right to be so in love with Rome.

—Oh, you don't know it yet! Andrea said to her. —I would like to be your dux . . .
¹³

She smiled.

—. . . to carry out beside you, this spring, a sentimental Virgilian expedition.
¹⁴

She was smiling, her entire figure appearing less sad, less serious. Her morning apparel had a sober elegance, but revealed the stylish refinement of one whose tastes had been educated through art, through the delicacy of color. Her crossover jacket, in the form of a shawl, was of a gray fabric that tended slightly toward green; and a strip of otter fur decorated its edges; and the fur was embroidered with silken cord. And the jacket parted over an undercoat, also of otter fur. The outfit was cut superbly, and, together with the combination of the two tones, that indescribable gray and that opulent tawny shade, it was a delight to behold.

She asked:

—Where were you yesterday evening?

—I left the concert a few minutes after you. I went home; and I stayed there, because it seemed to me that your spirit was present. I reflected a lot. Did you not
feel
my thoughts?

—No, I did not feel them. My evening was gloomy, I don't know why. It seemed that I was so alone!

The Countess of Lùcoli passed by in a dogcart, driving a roan. Giulia Moceto walked by, accompanied by Giulio Musèllaro. Donna Isotta Cellesi went by.

Andrea greeted each of them. Donna Maria asked him the names of the ladies: Giulia Moceto's was not new to her. She remembered the day when it was spoken by Francesca, in front of the archangel Michael painted by Perugino,
¹⁵
when Andrea was paging through his drawings in the sitting room at Schifanoja; and she watched her beloved's ex-lover as she walked along. She was gripped by anxiety. Everything that tied Andrea to his previous life cast a shadow over her. She would have liked that life, unknown to her, never to have taken place; she would have liked to delete it completely from the memory of the one who had immersed himself in it with such avidness, and had emerged from it with so much fatigue, so much loss, so many ills. “To live uniquely in you and for you, without any tomorrow, without any yesterday, without any other bond, without any other preference, out of the world . . .” These were his words. Oh dream!

And Andrea was clutched by a different anxiety. Time was drawing near for the lunch to which he had been invited by the Princess of Ferentino.

—Where are you heading? he asked her.

—Delfina and I had tea and sandwiches at the Caffè Nazzarri,
¹⁶
with the intention of enjoying the sun. We're going up the Pincio and maybe we will visit Villa Medici. If you'd like to accompany us . . .

He wavered, painfully. The Pincio, Villa Medici, on a February afternoon, with her! But he could not miss the lunch invitation; and he was also tormented by the curiosity of encountering Elena after the episode of the evening before, since, although he had gone to the Angelieri house, she had not made an appearance. He said, with a desolate air:

—How unfortunate! I need to be at a luncheon, in a quarter of an hour. I accepted the invitation last week. But if I had known, I would have been able to free myself of any obligation. What a pity!

—Go; don't waste time. Don't keep them waiting . . .

He looked at his watch.

—I can still walk a little farther with you.

—Mommy—Delfina begged—let's go up the stairs. I went up them yesterday with Miss Dorothy. If you could only see!

As they were in the vicinity of Via del Babuino, they turned in order to cross the square. A boy followed them, persistently trying to sell them a large almond-tree branch, which Andrea bought and gave to Delfina. Blond ladies were emerging from hotels carrying red Baedeker books; heavy two-horsed carriages rode past each other, with metallic glints on their old-fashioned trimmings; flower sellers were lifting their full baskets toward foreign ladies and calling out to them, vying with one another for trade.

—Promise me—Andrea said to Donna Maria, placing his foot on the first step—promise me that you won't go to Villa Medici without me. Please don't go today; I beseech you.

She appeared preoccupied by a sad thought. She said:

—I won't go.

—Thank you.

The flight of stairs ahead of them rose up in triumph, emanating gentle warmth from the sun-heated stone; and the stone was the color of ancient silverware, similar to that of the fountains at Schifanoja. Delfina ran ahead of them, holding her flowered branch, and as she ran, some fragile rose-colored petals took off like butterflies in the breeze she generated.

Acute regret pierced the young man's heart. All the sweet pleasures of a sentimental walk along Medicean pathways appeared to him, beneath the mute boxwoods, in that early hour of the afternoon.

—Whose house are you going to?—Donna Maria asked him after a pause.

—To the old Princess Alberoni, answered Andrea. —A Catholic table.

He lied once more, because instinct warned him that perhaps the name of the Princess of Ferentino would arouse some suspicions in Donna Maria.

—Good-bye, then, she added, holding her hand out to him.

—No; I'll come as far as the square. My carriage is waiting for me there. Look: that is my house.

He pointed out Palazzo Zuccari, the
buen retiro,
drenched in sunlight and resembling a strange greenhouse that has become opaque and dark with time.

Donna Maria looked at it.

—Now that you know where it is, won't you—sometime . . . in spirit?

—In spirit, always.

—Won't I see you before Saturday evening?

—It will be difficult.

They said good-bye. With Delfina, she began walking up the tree-lined avenue. He mounted his carriage and drove away down Via Gregoriana.

He arrived at the Ferentino house a few minutes late. He apologized. Elena was there with her husband.

Lunch was served in a cheerful room decorated with tapestries from the Barberini factory,
¹⁷
which depicted Bambocciata
¹⁸
scenes in the style of Pieter van Laer. In the midst of that lovely grotesque seventeenth-century setting, a blaze of marvelous backbiting began to scintillate and crackle. All three women had a gay and ready wit. Barbarella Viti was laughing her strong masculine laugh, throwing back her lovely boyish head slightly; and her black eyes met and mingled too often with the green eyes of the princess. Elena was making witticisms with extraordinary vivacity; and she seemed so distant, so estranged, so indifferent to Andrea, that he almost feared: Was last night a dream? Ludovico Barbarisi and the Prince of Ferentino were indulging the ladies. The Marquis of Mount Edgcumbe was taking care to bore his
young friend
asking him for news about the impending auctions and talking to him about a very rare edition of Apuleius's novel,
Metamorphoses,
that he had acquired a few days earlier for 1,520 lire:—
ROMA
, 1469, in folio.—Every now and then he interrupted himself to follow one of Barbarella's gestures; and the look of a maniac came into his eyes, and a singular tremor began in his odious hands.

Andrea's irritation, vexation, intolerance, grew to such a level that he could no longer conceal them.

—Ugenta, are you in a bad mood? the Princess of Ferentino asked him.

—A little. Miching Mallecho is ill.

And then Barbarisi bored him with many questions about the horse's illness. And then Mount Edgcumbe began again with
Metamorphoses.
And the Princess of Ferentino said, laughing:

—You know, Ludovico, yesterday at the quintet concert, we caught him in a flirtation with an Unknown Woman.

—That's right, said Elena.

—An Unknown Woman? exclaimed Ludovico.

—Yes; but maybe you can give us some information about her. She is the wife of the new Guatemalan minister.

—Ah, I understand.

—Well?

—For now, I know only the minister. I see him playing cards at the club every night.

—Tell us, Ugenta: has she already been received by the queen?

—I don't know, Princess, Andrea answered, with a slight impatience in his voice.

That chatter was becoming unbearable to him; and Elena's gaiety was causing him horrible torment, and the proximity of her husband disgusted him as never before. He was angrier with himself than with the latter. At the base of his irritation, a sense of regret stirred at the happiness he had refused earlier on. His heart, disillusioned and offended by Elena's cruel attitude, turned to the other woman with acute repentance; and he saw her, thoughtful, in a solitary avenue, beautiful and noble as never before.

The princess stood up, and everyone stood up, to pass into the adjacent room. Barbarella ran to open the piano, which was hidden under a vast saddlecloth made of red velvet embroidered in dull gold; and she began to hum Georges Bizet's
Tarantelle,
dedicated to Christina Nilsson. Elena and Eva leaned over her to read the sheet of music. Ludovico stood behind them, smoking a cigarette. The prince had disappeared.

But Lord Heathfield did not leave Andrea alone. He had drawn him into a window alcove and was talking to him about certain “lover's cups” from Urbania that he had purchased at the sale of Cavalier Dàvila; and that strident voice, with those nauseating interrogative intonations, and those gestures indicating the dimensions of the cups, and that look in his eyes, alternating between dead and penetrating, beneath his enormous convex forehead, and in short, all those hateful features, caused Andrea such violent torture that he clenched his teeth together, convulsed like a man beneath a surgeon's instruments.

Only one desire occupied him: to leave. He thought of rushing to the Pincio; he hoped to find Donna Maria there, to take her to Villa Medici. It was possibly two o'clock. Through the window he saw the cornice of the house across the road, resplendent with sun in the blue sky. Turning around, he saw the group of women at the piano amid the vermilion glow cast by the saddlecloth. With this glow was mingled the light smoke of cigarettes; and the prattle and the laughter mixed with chords that Barbarella's fingers were trying out haphazardly on the keys. Ludovico spoke softly into his cousin's ear; and his cousin perhaps conveyed this information to her friends, because once again there was a clear and tinkling outburst, like a necklace that has spilled its beads onto a silver tray. Barbarella resumed with Bizet's allegretto, softly.

—
Tra la la . . . Le papillon s'est envolé . . .
¹⁹
Tra la la . . .

Andrea was waiting for the right moment to interrupt Mount Edgcumbe's lecture and hence to take his leave. But the collector was emitting a string of sentences tied one to the other, without intervals, without pause. A pause would have saved the martyr, and it did not come; and his anxiety was growing with every second.