Pleasure (40 page)

It was a warm and humid afternoon toward the end of April. The sun appeared and disappeared between fleecy, idle clouds. The sluggishness of the sirocco held Rome in its grip.

On the sidewalk of Via Sistina, he glimpsed ahead of him a lady walking slowly toward the Trinità. He recognized Donna Maria Ferres. He looked at his watch: it was, in fact, around five; just a few minutes before their habitual meeting time. Maria was going, certainly, to Palazzo Zuccari. He speeded up to reach her. When he was near her, he called her by name:

—Maria!

She gave a start.

—What are you doing here? I was coming up to you. It's five o'clock.

—There's still a few minutes to go. I was running so that I could await you. Forgive me.

—What's wrong? You're very pale, all agitated . . . Where have you been?

She frowned, staring at him through her veil.

—From the stables, replied Andrea, holding her gaze without reddening, as if he had no more blood in his body. —A horse that is very dear to me has hurt its knee through the fault of the jockey. He won't be able to participate in the Derby on Sunday, therefore. It makes me upset and angry. Forgive me. I was delayed without realizing it. But there are still a few minutes to five . . .

—Fine. Good-bye. I'm going.

They were on Piazza della Trinità. She stopped to take her leave, holding out her hand. A crease still remained between her brows. In the midst of her great sweetness, sometimes she had bouts of intolerance that were almost harsh, and disdainful movements that transfigured her.

—No, Maria. Come. Be nice. I'm going up to await you. Go as far as the gates of the Pincian Hill and come back again. Will you?

The clock of Trinità de' Monti sounded five.

—Do you hear that? added Andrea.

She said, after a slight hesitation:

—I'll come.

—Thank you. I love you.

—I love you.

They parted.

Donna Maria continued her walk; she crossed the square and entered the tree-lined avenue. Above her head, at intervals, along the wall, the languid breeze of the sirocco stirred the green trees to a murmur. In the humid warmth of the air, waves of scent occasionally wafted by and vanished. The clouds appeared lower; flocks of birds almost grazed the ground. Yet, in that enervating heaviness, there was something mild that softened the tormented heart of the Sienese woman.

Since she had yielded to Andrea's desire, her heart pulsed in happiness furrowed with deep disquiet; all her Christian blood was becoming inflamed with the pleasure she had never experienced before, and chilled with the consternation of guilt. Her passion was supreme, overwhelming, immense; so fierce that often for long hours it deleted the memory of her daughter. She went so far as to forget Delfina sometimes; to neglect her! And then she had sudden recurrences of remorse, repentance, tenderness, in which she covered the head of her astonished daughter in kisses and tears, sobbing with a desperate grief, as if over the head of a dead person.

Her entire being was becoming refined by the flame, sharper, stimulated, was acquiring a prodigious sensitivity, a kind of clairvoyant lucidness, a faculty of divination that gave her strange tortures. Almost at each of Andrea's deceits, she felt a shadow pass over her soul and felt an undefined restlessness that sometimes became condensed, taking the form of suspicion. And suspicion ate at her, made kisses bitter and caresses sour for her, until it dissipated beneath the impulses and ardor of her uncomprehending lover.

She was jealous. Jealousy caused her an implacable spasm; jealousy not of the present but of the past. Due to that cruelty that jealous people inflict on themselves, she would have liked to read Andrea's mind, uncover all his memories, see all the traces left by ex-lovers; to know, to know. The question that most often came to her lips, when Andrea was silent, was this:—What are you thinking about?—And while she was uttering these words, inevitably the shadow was passing into her eyes and over her soul; inevitably a wave of sadness rose up from her heart.

That day, too, with Andrea's sudden arrival, had she not felt an instinctive stirring of suspicion deep inside her? Indeed, a lucid thought had flashed into her mind: the thought that Andrea had come from Lady Heathfield's house, from Palazzo Barberini.

She knew that Andrea had been that woman's lover; she knew that that woman's name was Elena, and lastly, she knew that she was the Elena of the inscription.
“Ich lebe! . . .”
Goethe's couplet blared loudly in her heart. That lyrical shout gave her the measure of Andrea's love for that beautiful woman. He must have loved her immensely!

Walking beneath the trees, she remembered Elena's appearance in the concert hall, at Palazzo dei Sabini, and the badly concealed agitation of her ex-lover. She remembered the terrible emotion that had overcome her one evening at a party at the Austrian Embassy, when Countess Starnina had said to her as Elena passed them: “How do you find the Heathfield woman? She was a great flame of our friend Sperelli's, and I think she still is.”

“I think she still is.” How much torment because of that phrase! She had watched her great rival, constantly, amid the elegant crowd; and more than once their eyes had met, and she had felt an indefinable shiver. Then, that same evening, having been introduced to each other by the Baroness of Boeckhorst, in the midst of the crowd, they had exchanged a simple bow of the head. And the tacit nod had been repeated subsequently, on the very rare occasions that Donna Maria Ferres y Capdevila had passed through a society salon.

Why were these fears, appeased or quelled beneath the wave of elation, rising up again with so much vehemence? Why could she not manage to repress them, expel them? Why did all those unknown forebodings agitate inside her at every small jolt of her imagination?

Walking beneath the trees, she felt her anxiety grow. Her heart was not satisfied; the dream that had risen in her heart—on that mystical morning, beneath the florid trees in the presence of the sea—had not come true. The purest and most precious part of that love had remained there, in the solitary wood, in the symbolic forest that flowers and bears fruit, perpetually contemplating the Infinite.

She stopped in front of the parapet that faces San Sebastianello. The ancient oaks, of a green so dark it seemed almost black, extended their branches over the fountain, creating an artificial, lifeless roof. The trunks bore numerous lesions, patched with lime and brick, like the openings in a wall.—Oh, young arbutuses radiant and breathing in the light! The water dripping from the upper granite basin into the lower basin emitted a burst of moans, at intervals, like a heart that fills up with anguish and then flows over in weeping. Oh, melody of the Hundred Fountains, on the bay-tree avenue! The city lay dead, as if covered by the ash of an invisible volcano, silent and funereal like a city undone by pestilence, enormous, formless, dominated by the cupola that rose up from its lap like a cloud. Oh, sea! Oh, calm sea!

She felt her anxiety grow. An obscure threat came to her from these things. She was invaded by that same sense of fear that she had already experienced more than once. The thought of punishment flashed into her Christian mind.

And yet she shivered deep within her being at the thought that her lover was waiting for her; at the thought of the kisses, the caresses, the crazy words, she felt her blood inflame, her soul become languid. The shiver of passion superseded the shiver of divine fear. And she set off toward her lover's house, anxious, upset, as if she were going to their first rendezvous.

—Oh, finally! exclaimed Andrea, gathering her into his arms, drinking in her breath from her breathless mouth.

Then, taking her hand and pressing it to his chest:

—Feel my heart. If you had delayed one more minute, it would have broken.

She placed her cheek where her hand had just been. He kissed the nape of her neck.

—Can you hear?

—Yes; it's speaking to me.

—What's it saying?

—That you don't love me.

—What's it saying to you? repeated the young man, biting her on the back of her neck, preventing her from straightening up.

She laughed.

—That you love me.

She took off her mantle, her hat, her gloves. She went to smell the white lilac flowers that filled the tall Florentine goblets; the ones in the Borghese tondo. On the carpets her steps were of an extraordinary lightness; and nothing was sweeter than the act with which she buried her face in the delicate blooms.

—Take it, she said, biting off a flower head and holding it in her mouth, outside her lips.

—No, I shall take another flower from your mouth, less white but more delicious . . .

They kissed, for a long, long time, amid the perfume.

He said, his voice slightly distorted, pulling her:

—Come, let's go there.

—No, Andrea, it's late. Not today. Let's stay here. I will make tea for you; you will give me lots of sweet caresses.

She took his hands and entwined her fingers with his.

—I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel my heart so full of tenderness I could almost cry.

Her words trembled; her eyes grew wet.

—If only I didn't have to leave you, if only I could stay all evening!

A deep sorrow in her was prompting tones of indefinable melancholy.

—To think that you will never know all of my love! To think that I will never know yours! Do you love me? Tell me, always tell me that you do, a hundred times, a thousand times, tirelessly! Do you love me?

—Don't you know, perhaps?

—I don't know.

She uttered these words in such a low voice that Andrea barely heard her.

—Maria!

She bent her head onto his chest, in silence; she rested her forehead on it, almost waiting for him to talk, to listen to him.

He looked at that poor head tilted under the burden of foreboding; he felt the light pressure of that noble and sad forehead on his breast, which was hardened by lies, bound in falseness. An anguished emotion constricted him; a sense of human mercy for that human suffering closed his throat. And that good sentiment of his soul converted itself into lying words, giving the tremor of sincerity to lying words.

—You
don't know
! . . . You spoke softly; the breath died on your lips; something inside you rose up against what you were saying; all those memories of our love rose up against what you were saying. You
don't know
that I love you! . . .

She remained bowed, listening, quivering intensely, recognizing, or believing that she recognized the real sound of passion in the young man's emotional voice, that intoxicating sound that she believed was inimitable. And he spoke to her almost in her ear, in the silence of the room, exhaling his warm breath onto her neck, with pauses softer than words.

—To have one single assiduous thought, at all times, at all moments; . . . not to conceive of any other happiness than the superhuman one irradiated by your sole presence onto my being; . . . to live all day in restless raging, terrible expectation, for the moment in which I will see you again; . . . to nurture the image of your caresses, once you have left, and again to possess you in a shadow I have almost created; . . . to feel you, when I sleep, to feel you on my heart, alive, real, palpable, mingled with my blood, mingled with my life; . . . and to believe
only
in you, to pledge myself
only
to you, to place my faith, my strength, my pride, my entire world, everything I dream, and everything I hope for,
only
in you . . .

She lifted her face streaked with tears. He fell silent, stopping the warm drops on her cheeks with his lips. She wept and smiled, placing her tremulous fingers in his hair, lost, sobbing:

—My soul, my soul!

He made her sit down and knelt at her feet, without ceasing to kiss her on the eyelids. Suddenly, he experienced a jolt. He had felt her long lashes palpitate rapidly on his lips, like a restless wing. It was a strange caress that gave him unbearable pleasure; it was a caress that Elena had once used to make, laughing, again and again, forcing her lover to feel the small nervous spasm caused by tickling; and Maria had learned it from him, and often, under the effects of that caress, he could evoke the image of the
other.

At his jolt, Maria smiled. And as she still had one glittering tear remaining on her lashes, she said:

—Drink this one, too!

And as he drank, she laughed, unaware.

She was emerging from her weeping almost happy, reassured, full of charm.

—I will make tea for you, she said.

—No, stay here, seated, with me.

He was becoming aroused, seeing her on the sofa among the cushions. A sudden image of Elena superimposed itself on his mind.

—Let me get up! Maria begged, freeing her upper body from his embrace. —I want you to drink my tea. You'll see. The scent will go right into your soul.

She was talking about a precious tea that had arrived from Calcutta, which she had given to Andrea the day before.

She stood up and went to sit on a leather chair covered with Chimeras, where the saffron-pink color of the ancient dalmatic was still fading exquisitely. The fine Casteldurante majolica still shone on the small table.

In carrying out the task, she said many kind things, spreading her goodness and tenderness with complete abandon; she naively enjoyed that dear secret intimacy, in that tranquil room, amid that refined luxury. Behind her, as behind the Virgin in Sandro Botticelli's tondo, the crystal cups could be seen, crowned by bunches of white lilacs; and her archangel hands moved between Luzio Dolci's mythological scenes and Ovid's hexameters.

—What are you thinking about? she asked Andrea, who was near her, seated on the carpet, his head leaning against an arm of the chair.

—I'm listening to you. Speak some more!