The Woman of Rome (12 page)

“I’m tired,” I lied. I was incapable of sulking, and her arm around my waist was enough to make my resentment fade.

“So am I,” she answered. “I had the wind blowing in my face all the way here.” A moment after, as we waited on the doorstep of the restaurant while the two men went toward the car, she spoke again.

“You aren’t mad at me because of what happened?”

“Not at all,” I answered. “What’s it got to do with you?” Having got out of her little plot all the different kinds of satisfaction she could, she also wanted to be sure that I was not annoyed with her. I felt I understood her only too well. And for this reason, because I was afraid she might realize I understood her and be angry, I was anxious to dispel all her doubts and to make a show of affection toward her. I turned to her and kissed her on the cheek, saying, “Why should I be mad at you? You always said I ought to give up Gino and go with Astarita.”

“That’s it,” she agreed emphatically. “I still think so. But I’m afraid you’ll never forgive me.”

She seemed anxious; and I, as if by some curious infection, was even more anxious than she was herself, for fear she might discover what I really felt.

“Obviously you don’t really know me,” I answered simply. “I know you want me to leave Gino because you’re fond of me and you’re sorry I don’t do the best I can for myself. I might even say,” I added, telling one more lie, “that perhaps you’re right.”

She was evidently satisfied and taking me by my arm said in conversational, but at the same time measured and confidential, tones, “You must understand what I mean. Astarita or anyone else would do — anyone but Gino! If you knew how it upsets me to
see a beautiful girl like you throwing herself away! Ask Riccardo. I keep on at him all day long about you.” She was chatting to me now without any embarrassment, as she usually did, and I was careful to agree with whatever she said. And so we reached the car. We took the places we had coming, and the car started up.

None of us spoke during the return journey. Astarita went on gazing at me, but with a look of humiliation rather than of desire. By now his gaze caused me no embarrassment and I felt no wish, as I had coming, to speak to him or to be pleasant. I breathed in the air that blew on my face from the open window and automatically counted the milestones that measured the distance from Rome. At a certain moment I felt Astarita’s hand brush against mine and noticed he was trying to put something into it, a piece of paper, perhaps. I imagined that he had scribbled something to me because he did not dare to address me, but when I glanced down I saw that it was a banknote folded in four.

He looked at me fixedly while he tried to make me close my fingers over the note, and for a moment I was tempted to throw it in his face. But at the same time it occurred to me that such behavior would have been quite insincere, inspired by a spirit of imitation rather than by a deep impulse coming from the heart. The feeling I experienced at that moment bewildered me and, no matter how or when I have received money from men since, I have never again experienced it so clearly and so intensely. It was a feeling of complicity and sensual conspiracy such as none of Astarita’s caresses in the restaurant bedroom had been able to rouse in me. It was a feeling of inevitable subjection that showed me in a flash an aspect of my own nature I had ignored until then. I knew, of course, that I ought to refuse the money, but at the same time I wanted to accept. And not so much from greed, as from the new kind of pleasure that this offering had afforded me.

Although I had decided to accept it, I made a movement as if my intention were to push back the note; I did this from instinct, with no shadow of calculation. Astarita insisted, still gazing into my eyes, and then I slipped the note from my right hand into my left. I felt strangely thrilled, my face was burning and my breathing labored. If
Astarita had been capable of guessing my feelings at that moment, he might have imagined I loved him. Nothing could have been further from the truth; it was only the money and the way it was earned and the way it was given me that filled my mind. I felt Astarita take my hand and I let him kiss it, then pulled it away. We did not look at one another again until we reached Rome.

Once back in town, we parted from each other almost as if we had been fugitives, as if each of us knew we had committed some crime and only wanted to get away and hide. As a matter of fact, something very like a crime had been committed that day, by all of us — by Riccardo through stupidity, by Gisella through envy, by Astarita through lust, and by me through inexperience. Gisella made a date with me for the following day to go and pose, Riccardo said good-night, Astarita could only press my hand silently, still as earnest and worried as ever. They took me as far as my own door. Despite my tiredness and remorse, I remember I could not help a feeling of satisfied vanity as I got out of the magnificent car at my own street door, under the very eyes of the family of the railwayman, our neighbors, who were looking out of their window.

I went and shut myself up in my own room, and the first thing I did was to look at the money. I found that there was not one, but three notes of a thousand lire each, and for a moment I felt almost happy as I sat on the edge of the bed. The money would not only pay the rest of the installments on the furniture, but would be enough for me to buy one or two other things I needed. I had never had so much money in my life before, and I could not stop fingering the notes and staring at them. My poverty made the sight of them not only delightful but almost incredible. I had to keep on looking longingly at these notes, as I had at my pieces of furniture, in order to convince myself that they really belonged to me.

5

M
Y LONG NIGHT’S DEEP SLEEP
had obliterated, or so I thought, even the memory of my Viterbo adventure. Next day I awoke, my usual placid self, determined to persist in doing all I could to attain a normal family life. Gisella, whom I saw that morning, made no allusion to the trip, either out of remorse for what she had done or well-advised tact, and I was grateful to her for this. But I was becoming anxious about my next meeting with Gino. Although I was sure that I was not at all guilty, I knew that I would have to lie to him and I felt displeased at having to do this. I was not even sure whether I would be capable of doing it, because it would be the first time that I had not been absolutely straightforward with him. Of course, I had not told him that I had been seeing Gisella; my motives in this case had been so innocent that I had not even considered it a lie, but, rather, a resort to which I had been driven by his unreasonable dislike of her.

I was so worried that as soon as we met that day I found it difficult to prevent myself from bursting into tears, telling him everything and begging his forgiveness. The whole story of my trip to Viterbo weighed heavily on me, and I longed to free myself by talking about it. If Gino had been anyone else, and I had known him to be less jealous, I would certainly have spoken of it, and then, I thought, we would have loved one another more than ever, and I would have felt cherished and bound to him by a tie stronger than love itself. We were in the car as usual, in the usual suburban avenue in the early morning. He noticed my uneasiness and asked me what was the matter.

Now I’ll tell him all about it — even if he kicks me out of the car and I have to walk back into town, I thought. But I did not have the courage and asked him instead whether he loved me.

“What a question!” he replied.

“Will you always love me?” I continued, my eyes brimming over with tears.

“Always.”

“Will we be married soon?”

He seemed irritated by my insistence.

“Really!” he exclaimed, “I might think you didn’t trust me — didn’t we say we’d get married at Easter?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Didn’t I give you the money to set up house?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then — am I the kind of man to keep my word, or not? When I say a thing I do it. I bet it’s your mother putting you up to this.”

“No, Mother’s got nothing to do with it!” I denied, feeling alarmed. “But tell me, will we live together?”

“Of course.”

“And be happy?”

“It depends on us.”

“Will we live together?” I repeated, unable to escape the recurrent thoughts my anxiety caused me.

“Oh, my God! You’ve already asked me, and I told you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but sometimes it hardly seems possible.” Unable to control myself any longer, I began to cry. He was astonished at my tears, and also uneasy, but it was an uneasiness apparently filled with remorse, the reasons for which became clear to me only much later on. “Come on, now!” he said. “What are you crying for?”

I was crying really because of the bitterness and pain of being unable to tell him what had happened and so freeing my conscience of the burden of regret. I was also crying because I felt humiliated at the thought that I was not good enough for anyone so fine and perfect as he was. “You’re right,” I said at last with an effort, “I’m being stupid.”

“I wouldn’t say that — but I don’t see what you’ve got to cry about.”

But that weight on my soul remained with me. That very afternoon, after I had left him, I went to church to make my confession. I had not been for nearly a year; I had known all along that I could go at any time, and that had been enough for me. I had given up going to confession when I kissed Gino for the first time. I realized that, according to the church, my relations with Gino were a sin, but since I knew we were going to get married, I did not feel any remorse and meant to get absolution once and for all before my wedding.

I went to a little church in the heart of the city, the one with its door between the entrance to a movie theater and the window of a hosiery shop. It was almost pitch dark inside, except for the high altar and a side chapel dedicated to the Madonna. It was a dirty, neglected little church; the straw-bottomed chairs were pushed here and there in the untidy way the congregation had left them when they went out, and this made you think of some boring meeting you’d heave a sigh of relief to get away from, rather than of going to a Mass.

A feeble light falling from the apertures in the lantern of the dome showed up the dust on the paved floor and the white cracks in the yellow, mottled varnish of the imitation marble columns. The numerous silver ex-voto tablets in the form of flaming hearts
that hung jostling each other on the walls created a gimcrack and melancholy impression. But a smell of stale incense in the air put heart into me. As a little girl, I had breathed in the same smell and the memories it awakened in me were all innocent and pleasurable. I seemed to be in a familiar spot, and although I had never been there before, I felt as if I had been frequenting that same church all my life.

But before confessing, I wanted to go into the side chapel where I had caught sight of a statue of the Virgin. I had been dedicated to the Virgin ever since the day of my birth. Mother even used to say that I looked like her, with my regular features and large, dark, gentle eyes. I had always loved the Madonna because she carried a baby in her arms and because her baby, who became a man, was killed; and she who bore him and loved him as any mother loves her son and suffered so when she saw him hanging on the cross. I often thought to myself that the Madonna, who had so many sorrows, was the only one who could understand my own sorrows, and as a child I used to pray to her alone, as the only one who could understand me. Besides, I liked the Madonna because she was so different from Mother, so serene and tranquil, richly clothed, with her eyes that looked on me so lovingly; it was as if she were my real mother instead of the mother who spent her time scolding me and was always worn out and badly dressed.

So I knelt down, and hiding my face in my hands, with my head bent, I said a long prayer to the Madonna in person, begging her to protect me, my mother, and Gino. Then I remembered it was my duty to bear no malice toward anyone and I called down the protection of the Madonna upon Gisella, and Riccardo, and in the end upon Astarita, too. I prayed longer for Astarita than for the others, just because I was full of resentment against him and I wanted to blot it out, to love him as I loved the others and forgive him and forget the harm he had done me. At length I felt so deeply moved that tears came to my eyes. I raised my eyes to the statue of the Madonna over the altar, and my tears were like a veil before me, so that the statue was misty and quivering as if seen through water, and the candles that glittered all round the statue made
many little golden points, lovely to behold yet at the same time embittering, as are at certain times the stars we yearn to touch but know to be far beyond our reach. I remained for some time in contemplation of the Madonna, almost without seeing her; then the bitter tears began to trickle slowly from my eyes and roll down my face, tickling me, and I saw the Madonna looking at me, her baby in her arms, her face illuminated by the candle flames. She seemed to be looking at me with sympathy and compassion, and I thanked her in my heart. Then rising to my feet, my peace of mind restored, I went to confess.

The confessionals were all empty; but, while I was wandering around looking for a priest, I saw someone come out of a little door to the left of the high altar, pass in front of the altar, genuflect and cross himself, and make his way toward the other side. He was a monk, I did not know of what order, and summoning my courage I called out to him in a humble voice. He turned and came toward me at once. When he was nearby I saw that he was fairly young, tall and vigorous, with a rosy, fresh, and virile face framed by a sparse blond beard, blue eyes, and a high white forehead. I thought, almost involuntarily, that he was an extraordinarily good-looking man, of a kind rarely to be met with either in or out of church, and I was glad I was going to confess to him. I told him in an undertone what I wanted, then, making me a sign to follow him, he led the way to one of the confessionals.

He entered the box, and I went to kneel down in front of the grill. A small enameled plate nailed on to the confessional bore the name of Father Elia, and this name pleased and inspired faith in me. When I was on my knees, he said a short prayer and then asked me how long it was since I had last been to confession.