The Woman of Rome (2 page)

My chief aim at that time, however, was to get married. My senses were still dormant, and the men who watched me while I was posing aroused no emotion in me other than vanity. I used to give Mother all the money I earned and, when I was not posing, I stayed at home with her and helped her cut out and sew shirts, our only means of livelihood since my father, who had been a railwayman, had died. We lived in a small apartment on the second floor of a long, low building, erected specially for the railwaymen fifty years earlier. The house was situated on a suburban avenue pleasantly shaded by plane trees. On one side was a row of houses exactly like ours, all alike, with two floors, brick facades without any stucco, twelve windows, and a central door; on the other side, the city walls extended from tower to tower, intact at that point and smothered in greenery.

There was a gate in the city walls not far from our house. Near this gate, running along inside the walls, stretched the enclosed site of Luna Park, an amusement park whose illuminations and music enlivened the summer months. If I looked out sideways from my window, I could see festoons of colored lamps, the beflagged roofs of the various booths and the crowd packed round the entrance under the branches of the plane trees. I could hear the music quite clearly and I often stayed awake at night listening to it and half dreaming, with my eyes wide open. It seemed to come from a world out of reach, at least for me, and this feeling was heightened by the darkness and narrowness of my room. The whole population of the city seemed to have come together at Luna Park, and I was the only one left out. I longed to get out of bed and join them, but I did not move, and the music, which kept up an uninterrupted jangle of sound the whole night through, made me conscious of a definite loss, the consequence of some sin I did not even know I had committed. Sometimes while listening to the music I even
began to cry, so bitter was it to be left out. I was very sentimental at this time and any little thing, a friend’s snub, a reproach from Mother, a touching scene at the movies, made tears well up in my eyes. Perhaps I would not have been conscious of a forbidden, happy world if Mother had not refused to let me go to Luna Park or have any other amusement when I was a child. But her widowhood, her poverty, and above all her hostility to all the pleasures fate had denied her, made her refuse to let me go to Luna Park, or to any other place of entertainment, except much later, when I was a grown girl and my character was already formed. I owe to this, in all probability, the suspicion that has remained with me all my life through of somehow being shut out from the gay, brilliant world of happiness, a suspicion I am unable to shake off, even when I know for certain that I am happy.

I have already said that at this time I thought only of getting married, and I can also say how it was that this thought was first planted in my mind. The suburban avenue where our house stood led a little farther on to a more prosperous district. Instead of the long, low railwaymen’s houses, which looked like so many dusty, worn-out old carriages, there were a number of little houses surrounded by gardens. They were not luxurious, clerks and small shopkeepers lived in them, but in comparison with our sordid dwelling they gave an impression of a gayer and easier life. First of all, each house was different; then, they were not all cracked and stained, with the plaster peeling off, as were our house and others like it, making them appear as though their inhabitants had long neglected them through sheer indifference. And finally, the narrow blossoming gardens that surrounded them created an impression of possessive intimacy, of remoteness from the confusion and promiscuity of the street. In the building where I lived, on the contrary, the street penetrated everywhere: into the huge hall that was like a warehouse, into the wide, bare, dirty staircase, even into the rooms, where the rickety, casual furniture was reminiscent of junkshops where the same sort of pieces are exhibited for sale on the pavements.

One summer evening, when I was out walking with Mother, I saw a family scene through a window in one of those villas; it impressed
me deeply and seemed to conform in every respect with the idea I had of a normal, decent life. It was a clean little room, with flowered wallpaper, a sideboard, and a central lamp hanging over a table laid ready for a meal. Around the table sat five or six people, among them three children between the ages of eight and ten. A soup tureen stood in the middle of the table, and the mother was standing up to serve the soup. It may seem strange, but what struck me most of all was the central lamp, or rather the extraordinarily peaceful and usual look everything had in that light. As I turned the scene over in my mind later on, I told myself positively that I ought to make it my aim in life to live one day in a house like that, to have a family like that and to live in that same light which seemed to reveal the presence of innumerable firm, constant affections. Perhaps many people will think my ambitions very modest. But my situation at that time must be taken into account. That little house had the same effect on me, born in the railwaymen’s houses, as the grander, wealthier dwellings in the luxury districts of the city had on the inhabitants of the little villas themselves. One man’s paradise is another’s hell.

But Mother had made elaborate plans for my future; I soon realized they were plans that put entirely out of the question any such arrangements as the one I desired most. Mother firmly believed that with my beauty I might aim at any kind of success, but not at becoming a married woman with a family like everyone else. We were extremely poor and she looked on my beauty as our only available capital and, as such, as belonging to her as well as to me; if for no other reason than that it was she who had given me birth. I was to draw on this capital as she decreed, without any consideration for appearances, in order to improve our situation. Probably the whole scheme was due chiefly to a lack of imagination. In a situation like ours, the idea of capitalizing on my beauty was the first to occur to her. Mother stopped short at this idea and did not delve any deeper.

At that time I had a very imperfect understanding of what Mother’s plans were. But even later, when they were quite clear to me, I never dared to ask her why, with these ideas, she had been reduced to such poverty — she, the wife of a railwayman.
I understood from various hints that I was the cause of Mother’s failure, since she had had me both unwillingly and unexpectedly. In other words, I was conceived by accident and Mother, who did not dare to prevent my birth (as she ought to have done, she said), had been obliged to marry my father and accept all the consequences of such a marriage. When she referred to my birth, she often used to say, “You were the ruin of me,” a phrase that at one time hurt me and was obscure, but whose meaning I understood fully later on. The phrase meant, “If it had not been for you, I would not have married that man, and by now I’d have had my own car.” Obviously, as she pondered over her own life in this way, she did not want her daughter, who was so much more handsome, to make the same mistakes and incur the same fate. Today, seeing things from a certain distance, I really cannot bring myself to say she was wrong. A family for Mother had meant poverty, slavery, and a few infrequent pleasures that came to an abrupt end with the death of her husband. Naturally, she considered a decent family life as a great misfortune, and was ever on the lookout to prevent me from being attracted by the same mirages that had led to her own downfall.

In her own way Mother was very fond of me. As soon as I began to go the rounds of the studios, for instance, she made me a two-piece skirt and jacket and a dress. As a matter of fact, I would have preferred some underwear, because every time I had to undress I was ashamed of the coarse, threadbare, often soiled lingerie I displayed, but Mother said it did not matter if I wore rags underneath, what was important was to look presentable. She chose two cheap pieces of cloth of striking color and pattern, and cut out the dresses herself. But since she was a shirtmaker and had never made dresses before, she made them both up wrongly. The one-piece, I remember, pouched in front so that my breasts showed and I always had to pin it up. The jacket of the two-piece was too short and too tight, it pulled across my breasts and hips, and the sleeves did not cover my wrists; the skirt, on the other hand, was too wide and made creases in front. But I thought they were splendid because until then I had been dressed even worse, in blouses, short little skirts that showed my thighs, and skimpy little scarves. Mother bought me two pairs
of silk stockings as well: I had always worn short socks and had bare knees before. These presents filled me with joy and pride; I never grew tired of looking at them and thinking about them, and used to walk self-consciously along the streets, holding myself upright, as if I were wearing a priceless dress made by some fashionable dressmaker, and not those poor rags.

Mother was always thinking about my future and before long she began to be dissatisfied with my profession as a model. According to her, my earnings were too small; then, too, the artists and their friends were poor and there was little hope of making useful acquaintances in their studios. Mother suddenly conceived the idea that I might become a dancer. She was always full of ambitious ideas, while I, as I have said, thought of nothing more than a tranquil life, with a husband and some children. She got hold of this idea of dancing when a promoter of a variety company, who put on shows between movies, ordered some shirts from her. She did not think the profession of a dancer would prove to be very profitable in itself, but, as she so often said, “One thing leads to another, and by showing oneself on the stage, there was always the chance of meeting some gentleman.”

One day Mother told me she had had a talk with this producer and he had encouraged her to take me along to see him. One morning we went to the hotel where he lodged with the whole company. I remember the hotel was an enormous old palace near the station. It was nearly midday, but still quite dark in the corridors. The impression of sleep being wooed in a hundred rooms filled the air and took one’s breath away. We went along several corridors and at last reached a kind of murky antechamber where three girls and a musician were practicing in the sparse light as if they were on the stage. The piano was wedged into a corner near the opaque glass window of the bathroom; in the opposite corner stood a huge pile of dirty sheets. The musician, a broken-down old man, was playing from memory, as though he were thinking of something else or drowsing. The three dancers were young and had taken off their jackets; they stood in their skirts, their breasts and arms bare. They had their arms around each other’s waists, and, when the musician struck up an air,
they all three advanced toward the pile of dirty sheets, kicking their legs high, waving them to the right and left, and finally turning their backs and waggling their behinds, with provocative movements that produced a most incongruous effect in such a dim and squalid setting. My heart stood still as I watched and saw how they beat time with their feet in a dull and heavy thudding on the floor. I knew that although I had long, muscular legs, I had no gift for dancing. I had already had some dancing lessons with two girlfriends at a dancing academy in our district. They knew how to keep time and kick their legs and swing their hips like two experienced dancers after the first few lessons, but I could only drag myself about, as if I were made of lead from the waist down. I didn’t seem to be built like other girls; there was something massive and heavy about me that even music was unable to dispel. Besides, feeling an arm round my waist had filled me with a kind of languorous abandon the few times I had danced, so that I dragged my legs rather than moved them. The artist, too, had said to me, “Adriana, you ought to have been born four centuries ago! They had women like you then. It’s fashionable nowadays to be thin, you’re a fish out of water. In four or five years’ time you’ll be a Juno.” He was mistaken there, though, because today, five years later, I am no stouter or more Junoesque than before. But he was right in saying that I was not made for these days of slim women. My clumsiness made me wretched and I would have given anything to be slim and able to dance like other girls. But although I ate little, I was always as solidly built as a statue, and when I danced I was quite incapable of grasping the rapid, jerky rhythms of modern music.

I told Mother all this because I knew the interview with the producer of the variety show would only be a fiasco, and I was humiliated at the idea of being turned down. But Mother began shouting at once that I was far more beautiful than all the wretched girls who showed themselves off on the stage and the producer ought to thank Heaven if he could get me for his company, and so on. Mother knew nothing about modern beauty, and honestly believed that the more fully developed her breasts, and the rounder her hips, the more beautiful a woman must be.

The producer was waiting in a room that led out of the antechamber; I suppose he watched his dancers’ rehearsals from that room through the open door. He was sitting in an armchair at the foot of the unmade bed. There was a tray on the bed and he was just finishing his breakfast. He was a stout old man, but the excessive elegance of his clothes, his brilliantine, his impeccable tidiness, made a strange effect against those tumbled sheets, in the low light of that stuffy room. His florid complexion looked painted to me, because unhealthy, dark, uneven patches showed beneath the rose flush on his cheeks. He was wearing a monocle and puffed and panted all the time, showing such extremely white teeth that they were probably false. He was dressed very smartly, as I said. I still remember his bow tie of the same pattern and color as the handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. He was sitting with his belly sprawling forward and, as soon as he had finished eating, he wiped his mouth and said in a bored, complaining voice, “Come on, show me your legs.”

“Show the gentleman your legs,” repeated Mother anxiously.

I was no longer shy after the studios, so I pulled up my dress and showed him my legs, then stood still, holding my dress up and leaving my legs exposed. My legs are magnificent, long and straight, but just above the knees my thighs began to swell out round and solid, broadening gradually to my hips. The producer shook his head as he looked at me. “How old are you?” he asked,