The Woman of Rome (22 page)

“But why did you steal it?” he asked. Obviously he wanted to force me to say what he dimly guessed.

“Because,” I answered simply.

“Because! That’s not an answer.”

“If you really want to know, then,” I answered quietly, “I stole it, not because I wanted it or needed it, but because now I can even steal if I feel like it.”

“What do you mean?” he began. But I did not let him continue. “At night now I go on the streets, I pick up a man, I bring him here, and afterward he pays me. If I do this I can steal, too, can’t I?”

He understood and his reaction was typical of him. “So you do that, too … great … yes, I’d have been in big trouble if I’d married you!”

“I wouldn’t have done it then,” I said. “I’ve done it since I found out you’ve got a wife and child.”

He had been waiting for this statement all along and answered promptly. “No, my dear — don’t put the blame on me. No one has to be a whore and a thief if she doesn’t want to.”

“Obviously I was one without knowing it, then,” I answered. “You gave me my chance to become it.”

He realized from my lack of concern that there was nothing to be said, so he changed his tactics. “All right — what you are and what you do aren’t my business. But I’ve got to have that compact back. Otherwise sooner or later I’ll lose my job. You’ve got to give it back to me, and I’ll pretend I’ve found it in the garden or somewhere.”

I answered immediately. “Why didn’t you say so before? If it’s so you won’t lose your job, take it. It’s in the first drawer of the closet.”

He hurried over to the closet at once in his relief, opened the drawer, took out the powder compact, and put it in his pocket. Then he looked at me with a different expression in his eyes, a hint of shame and a desire for reconciliation. But I really could not face the embarrassing scene his look promised.

“Have you got the car outside?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s late and you’d better not wait. We’ll talk it all over the next time we meet.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, I’m not mad at you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

He sighed, bent over the bed, and I let him kiss me.

“You’ll phone me?” he asked as he reached the door

“Don’t worry.”

And in this way Gino learned of my new way of life. But the next time we met we did not mention the compact or my profession; they were like uninteresting, commonplace matters, whose only importance had been their novelty. He behaved more or less like Mother, in fact, except that he did not appear to feel even for one moment the shock Mother had felt the first time I took Giacinti home, and which, from time to time, I couldn’t help seeing beneath her satisfaction and even in the unhealthy, puffy look she had. Gino’s chief characteristic was a kind of dull and shortsighted cunning. I imagine that when he learned of the changes brought about in my life by his betrayal of me he simply shrugged his shoulders and said to himself, “Oh, well — two birds with one stone — this way, she can’t reproach me and I can go on being her lover all the same.” There are men who think themselves lucky if they can keep what they have, whether it is money or women or life itself, even at the expense of their own dignity. And Gino was one of them.

I continued to see him because, as I have said, I still liked him despite everything and there was no one I liked more. And also because, although I believed everything was over between us, I was
not anxious for an abrupt, unpleasant break. I have never liked sharp breaks or sudden interruptions. I think things in life die as they are born, by themselves, through boredom, through indifference or even through habit, which is in itself a kind of steady and faithful boredom; and I like to be conscious of them dying in this way, naturally, without it being my fault or anyone else’s, and slowly giving place to other things. After all, we never get clear, definite changes in life; and those who do make hurried changes risk seeing their old habits come to the fore once again, still alive and as deep-rooted as ever. I wanted to reach the stage where Gino’s caresses would leave me as indifferent to him as did his words, and I was afraid that, if I did not let things take their own time, he would continually keep cropping up in my life and oblige me, despite myself, to renew our old relationship.

Another person who came back into my life at this period was Astarita. It was far simpler in his case than in Gino’s. Gisella used to see him secretly and I suppose he made love to her just to be able to talk about me. Anyway, Gisella was on the lookout for an opportunity to mention him to me, and when she thought enough time had passed and I had recovered my good humor, she took me aside, and very cautiously told me that she had met Astarita and he had asked for news of me. “He didn’t say anything exactly,” she continued, “but I could see he’s still in love with you. As a matter of fact, I felt sorry for him — he looks wretched. Of course, he didn’t say anything to me — but I’m positive he’d like to see you again — and after all —”

“Listen, it’s useless to go on talking this way!” I interrupted her.

“What way?”

“Beating around the bush like this! Why don’t you say straight out that he sent you to me, that he wants to see me again, and you’ve promised to give him my reply?”

“Suppose I have?” she said, taken aback. “What then?”

“Then,” I said, “you can tell him I’ve nothing against seeing him again — like I do the others, of course, from time to time, without committing myself.”

She was completely astonished by my calm; she thought I hated Astarita and would never agree to meet him again. She did
not understand that by now love and hatred had ceased to exist for me, and, as usual, thought that I had some hidden motive.

“You’re right,” she said, after a moment’s reflection and with a certain shyness. “In your place I’d do the same. You have to overlook your dislikes in some cases. Astarita really loves you and might even have his marriage annulled and marry you. Still — you are a clever one! And I thought you were such an innocent!”

Gisella had never understood the least thing about me, and I knew by experience that I would be wasting my breath if I tried to explain to her. Therefore I agreed. “That’s just how it is,” I said, feigning nonchalance, and left her in a state of mingled admiration and envy.

She gave Astarita my reply and I met him at the same pastry shop where I had met Giacinti for the first time. As Gisella had said, he still loved me passionately and, in fact, as soon as he saw me he went as white as a sheet, lost his self-possession, and was unable to speak. His emotion must have been stronger than himself, and I believe some of the simple women of the people, like Mother, must be right when they say that some men have been bewitched by their lovers. I had cast a sort of enchantment over him, without any desire or intention on my part; and although he realized it and did all he could to break free he was quite incapable of doing so. Once and for all time I had rendered him inferior, dependent, subject to me; once and for all I had disarmed him, hypnotized him, and placed him at my mercy. He explained later that sometimes he used to rehearse to himself the cold, scornful part he would play, and even learned his phrases by heart; but as soon as he saw me, he grew pale, his breast was filled with anguish, his mind became a blank, and his tongue refused to speak. He even seemed unable to face me, he lost his head and felt driven irresistibly to throw himself on his knees before me and kiss my feet.

He really was different from all the others; I mean he was quite obsessed. The evening we met he begged me, as soon as we had had a meal at a restaurant in tense and nervous silence and had reached my place, to tell him every single detail of my life from the
day we went to Viterbo until the day I broke up with Gino. “Why does it interest you so much?” I asked him in astonishment.

“There’s no real reason,” he replied, “but what difference does it make to you? Don’t think about me, just talk.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, “if it’ll give you any pleasure —” So I told him precisely everything that had happened after the trip; how I had had a talk with Gino, had followed Gisella’s advice, and had met Giacinti. The only thing I did not mention was the matter of the compact, perhaps because I did not want to embarrass him, given his profession as a policeman. He asked me a number of questions, especially about my meeting with Giacinti. He never seemed to tire of the details, it was as if he wanted to see and touch everything, take part in it, not only hear about it. I can’t tell you how often he interrupted me with, “And what did he do?” or, “And what did you do?” When I had finished, he embraced me. “It was all my fault,” he stammered.

“No, it wasn’t,” I said, rather bored by the discussion. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

“Yes, it was my fault. It was I who ruined you. If I hadn’t behaved as I did at Viterbo, everything would have been different.”

“You’re absolutely wrong,” I said quickly. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Gino’s — it has nothing to do with you. You, my dear, wanted to have me by force and things taken by force don’t count. If Gino hadn’t deceived me, I’d have married him, then I’d have told him all about it and it would have been as if I had never met you.”

“No, it was my fault … maybe it seemed like Gino was to blame … but in reality the fault was mine.”

He seemed to cling to the idea that he was to blame, not because he was sorry, but because, on the contrary, it pleased him to think he had corrupted me and led me astray. But to say that it pleased him is too feeble an expression: I should say the idea excited him, and perhaps this was the chief cause of his passion for me. I understood this later on when I noticed that he often insisted on my telling him, when we met, all that had happened, in full detail, between me and my paying lovers. During these accounts, he had a troubled, tense, and attentive expression on his face that
embarrassed me and filled me with shame. And immediately afterward he would throw himself onto me and while he was taking me, he would passionately repeat obscene, brutal, offensive words I won’t mention, but which would be insulting to even the most depraved women. How he could reconcile this extraordinary attitude with his adoration of me I never could fathom; in my opinion it is impossible to love a woman and at the same time fail to respect her, but in Astarita love and cruelty were mixed, the one lent the other its own color and strength. I have sometimes thought that his strange excitement at imagining me degraded by his own fault had been suggested to him by his profession as a member of the political police; his function, as far as I could understand, was to find the weak point in the accused, and corrupt and humiliate them in such a way that they would be harmless ever afterward. He told me himself, I cannot remember in what connection, that every time he succeeded in persuading an accused man to confess or break down, he felt a peculiar kind of satisfaction, like the satisfaction of possession in love. “An accused man’s like a woman,” he used to say, “as long as she resists she can hold her head up.… But as soon as she’s surrendered she’s a rag and you can have her again how and when you like.” But more probably his cruel, complacent character was natural to him and he had chosen his profession simply because that was his character, and not the other way around.

Astarita was not happy; in fact, his unhappiness seemed the most utter and incurable I had ever known, because it was not due to any external cause, but originated in some weakness or twist I never succeeded in fathoming. When he was not obliging me to tell him my professional adventures he usually knelt in front of me, put his head in my lap, and stayed like that, motionless, sometimes for an entire hour. I had only to stroke his head lightly every now and again, like mothers stroke their children. From time to time he uttered a moan, perhaps he was even crying. I never loved Astarita but at such moments he roused a feeling of immense pity in me, because I could see he was suffering and there was no way of alleviating his pain.

He used to talk very bitterly about his family: his wife, whom he hated; his little girls, whom he did not love; his parents, who had given him a difficult childhood and had forced him to make a disastrous marriage while he was still an inexperienced youth. He hardly ever referred to his profession. Only once he told me, with an expression of peculiar distaste, “there are lots of useful things in a house, even if they aren’t all clean — I’m one of them — a garbage can for rubbish.” But I formed the impression that on the whole he considered his profession an honorable one. He had a high sense of duty and was a model official — as far as I could judge from my visit to him at the Ministry and his way of talking — being zealous, secretive, sharpsighted, incorruptible, and inflexible. Although he formed part of the political police force, he declared he knew nothing about politics. “I’m a cog in a wheel,” he said to me another time. “What they say, I do.”

Astarita would have liked to meet me every evening, but in addition to the fact that I did not wish to be tied up to any one man, he bored me and his convulsive seriousness and strange ways made me feel uneasy, so that every time I left him I heaved a sigh of relief, although I pitied him. For this reason, I tried to avoid seeing him more than once a week. The rareness of our meetings certainly helped to keep his passion for me ever wakeful and burning. If I had agreed to live with him, on the other hand, as he continually suggested, he would gradually have become accustomed to my presence and in the end would have seen me for what I really am — a poor girl like dozens of others. He gave me the number of the phone on his desk at the Ministry. It was a secret number, known only to the chief of police, the head of the government, the minister, and a few other important people. When I phoned he used to reply at once, but as soon as he found it was me his voice, which had been clear and calm a moment before, became troubled, and he began to stutter. He really was completely submissive and under my thumb, like a slave. I remember that once I absentmindedly stroked his cheek, without having been asked. He immediately seized my hand and kissed it passionately. On other occasions he asked me to repeat my impulsive gesture; but caresses cannot be given to order.