The Woman of Rome (29 page)

“I’m not frightened at all,” I answered dryly, “but I don’t like violence, as I’ve told you.”

A long silence ensued. Sonzogno remained motionless, his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, the nerves in his jaw twitching as he stared at nothing; Gino was still smoking, with bent head, and the smoke crept up his face and ears that were still crimson. Then Sonzogno got up. “Well — I’m off,” he said.

Gino leaped eagerly to his feet. “No hard feelings, then, eh, Primo?” he said as he held out his hand.

“No hard feelings,” repeated Sonzogno through clenched teeth. He shook my hand, but without hurting me this time, and went away. He was slight and short; and it was really impossible to see where all his strength came from.

“You may be friends and even brothers — but the way he talked to you!” I said jokingly to Gino as soon as he had gone.

Gino had recovered by now. “He’s made that way,” he said, shaking his head. “But he’s not bad. It suits me to stay on the right side of him. He’s useful to me sometimes.”

“In what way?”

I noticed Gino was excited, trembling from the desire to tell me something. His face had suddenly become wildly excited and eager.

“You remember my mistress’s compact?”

“Yes — well?”

Gino’s eyes shone with delight. “Well, I thought it over and didn’t give it back,” he said lowering his voice.

“You didn’t give it back?”

“No. After all, I thought, she’s rich and one compact more or less won’t make any difference to her — especially since the deed was already done,” he added with characteristic reserve, “and, after all, I wasn’t the thief.”

“I was the thief,” I said quietly.

He pretended not to have heard me. “Still, later on, there was the problem of selling it,” he continued. “It was a showy thing, easy to identify, and I didn’t dare. So I kept it in my pocket for a good while until at last I met Sonzogno, told him the whole story —”

“Did you even tell him about me?” I interrupted.

“No, not about you — I told him a girlfriend had given it to me, without mentioning any names, and he … Just think, in three days he sold it and brought me the cash — of course, he kept his share, like we agreed.” He was trembling with joy and after having looked around him, he pulled a bundle of notes out of his pocket.

I do not know why but at that moment I felt a deep aversion to him. It was not that I criticized what he had done — I had no right to do that at all — but his gloating irritated me. Besides, I guessed he was keeping something back and what he had not told me was certainly far worse. “You were right,” I said shortly.

“Here,” he said, undoing the roll of banknotes, “these are for you — I’ve counted them.”

“No,” I replied immediately, “I want nothing, absolutely nothing.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want anything.”

“You’re trying to insult me,” he said. A shade of doubt and distress flitted across his face, and I was afraid I really had offended
him. I placed my hand on his. “If you hadn’t offered it to me,” I said with an effort, “I’d have been — well, not offended, perhaps, but surprised — but now it’s done it’s all right as it is. I don’t want it, because it’s over as far as I’m concerned, that’s all. I’m glad you’ve got it, though.”

He looked at me doubtfully, not understanding what I was saying, scrutinizing me as though he wanted to discover the hidden motive behind my words. I have realized since, when I have thought about him, that he was incapable of understanding me because he lived in a different world from mine, with different ideas and emotions. I do not know whether it was a worse world or a better one; I only know that some words did not have the same meaning for him as they did for me, and that most of the actions I criticized in him seemed to him both lawful and proper. He seemed to ascribe the utmost importance to intelligence, by which he meant cleverness. And in dividing humankind into two groups — those who were clever and those who were not — he always tried to place himself in the first category. But I am not at all clever myself, perhaps not even intelligent, and I have never been able to understand how a bad deed can be explained away, let alone admired, merely because it was cleverly done.

The doubt that was tormenting him suddenly seemed to dissolve. “I know what it is!” he exclaimed. “You don’t want to take the money because you’re afraid — you’re afraid the theft might be discovered. But you don’t have to worry. Everything’s come out all right.”

I was not afraid, but I did not trouble to deny it because I had not understood the second part of his sentence.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Everything’s come out all right.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Everything’s all right — you remember! I told you they suspected one of the maids, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Well — I’d had it with that maid because she gossiped about me behind my back.… A few days after the theft I could see things were looking bad for me — the police officer had been back twice, I thought I was under surveillance. Remember, they hadn’t searched the house yet.… So I got the idea of a second
theft that would provoke a search, so that the blame for both thefts would fall on her.”

I remained silent, and after having glanced at me with wide-open, glittering eyes, as if to see whether I was admiring his cunning, he continued. “The mistress had some dollars in a drawer. I took them and hid them in the maid’s room in an old suitcase. When they did search the house, of course the dollars were found and she was arrested. She swears she’s innocent, naturally, but who’d believe it? They found the dollars in her bedroom.”

“Where is this woman now?”

“In prison, and she won’t confess. But do you know what the police officer told the mistress? ‘Don’t worry, ma’am,’ he said, ‘by hook or by crook, she’ll confess in the end.’ Know what they mean? By hook or by crook? They’ll beat her up.”

I looked at him and, seeing him so excited and proud of himself, I felt all chilled and confused. “What’s her name?” I asked casually.

“Luisa Fellini — she’s not so young, and she’s very stuck-up — to hear her talk, she’s a maid by mistake and no one is as honest as she is!” He smiled, highly amused.

I made an effort, like someone trying to take a deep breath. “Do you know you’re contemptible?” I said.

“What? Why?” he asked me in amazement.

Now that I had told him he was contemptible, I felt freer and more determined. My nostrils quivered with rage. “And you wanted me to take that money!” I continued. “But I could feel it was money I shouldn’t take.”

“What’s all the fuss?” he said, trying to regain his composure. “She won’t confess — and then they’ll let her go.”

“But you’ve just said yourself that they’ll keep her in prison and beat her up!”

“I was just talking.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’ve sent an innocent woman to jail — and then you have the gall to come and tell me about it! You’re contemptible.”

He suddenly grew furious, the blood left his face. He gripped my hand. “You just stop calling me contemptible.”

“Why? I think you’re contemptible and I’ll say so.”

He lost his head and made a curiously violent gesture. He twisted my hand in his as if he wanted to crush it and then suddenly bent his head and bit my hand hard. I freed myself with a jerk and stood up. “Are you crazy?” I exclaimed. “What’s got into you now? Biting? It’s no good — you’re scum and you’ll always be scum.” He did not reply but sunk his head on his hands as if he wanted to tear his hair out.

I called the waiter and paid for all the drinks, mine, his, and Sonzogno’s. “I’m going,” I said. “And I’m telling you — everything’s over between us. Don’t show up again, don’t look for me, don’t come — I don’t know you anymore.” He said nothing, but kept his head lowered. I left.

The café was at the top of the main road not far from the house where I lived. I began to walk slowly along on the side opposite the city walls. It was night, the sky was covered with clouds and a fine rain was falling like watery dust through the mild, unstirring air. The walls were in darkness as usual, except for an occasional rarely spaced streetlamp. But I immediately noticed a man slip away from one of the streetlamps as I left the café and begin to follow along the walls at my pace in the direction I was going. I recognized Sonzogno, with his raincoat nipped in at the waist and his blond, shaven head. He looked small there beneath the walls, disappeared every now and again in the shadows, then reappeared in the gleam of a streetlamp. For the first time I felt sick of men, all men, always after my skirt, like a bunch of dogs following a bitch. I was still trembling with rage; and as I thought of the woman Gino had sent to jail I could not help being filled with remorse, because, after all, I had been the one to steal the compact. But perhaps what I felt were revolt and irritation rather than remorse. Although I rebelled against injustice and hated Gino, yet I hated hating him and knowing injustice had been done. I am not really made for such things; I felt terribly distressed and not at all myself. I walked hurriedly, wanting to reach home before Sonzogno approached me, as he apparently intended doing. Then I heard Gino’s voice calling me desperately from behind. “Adriana! Adriana!”

I pretended I had not heard and hastened on. He took me by the arm. “Adriana! We’ve always been together — we can’t leave each other like this —”

I freed myself with a jerk and went on walking. The clear-cut little figure of Sonzogno shot out of the darkness into the circle of light shed by a streetlamp on the other side of the road beneath the walls. “But I love you, Adriana,” Gino continued as he hurried along beside me.

I felt both pity and hatred for him, and this mixture of emotions was indescribably distasteful to me. I tried to think about something else. I suddenly had a kind of illumination, I don’t know why. I remembered Astarita and how he had always offered me his assistance, and I thought he would almost certainly be able to have the poor woman released. This idea revived my spirits immediately; my heart was freed of its load and I even felt as if I did not hate Gino anymore and was only sorry for him. I stood still and addressed him calmly. “Gino,” I said, “why don’t you go away?”

“But I love you.”

“I loved you, too — but it’s all over. Go away now, it’ll be better for both of us.”

We were standing in a dark stretch of the road where there were no shops or streetlamps. He took hold of me around the waist and tried to kiss me. I could have broken free easily enough because I am very strong and no one can kiss a woman if she doesn’t want it. But some malicious whim put it into my head to call Sonzogno, who was standing motionless on the other side of the road under the walls, watching us, his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. I suppose I called him because now that I had discovered a way of remedying the harm Gino’s action had done, my curiosity and coquetry were aroused once more. “Sonzogno! Sonzogno!” I cried out twice, and he immediately crossed the road. Gino was disconcerted and let me go.

“Tell him he’s got to let me alone,” I said to Sonzogno calmly as soon as he came up. “I don’t want him anymore. He won’t believe me; maybe he’ll believe you since you’re a friend of his.”

“Did you hear what the young lady said?” asked Sonzogno.

“But I —” began Gino.

I supposed that they would continue arguing for some time, as usually happens; and that at last Gino would become resigned and go away. But instead I suddenly saw Sonzogno make a gesture I did not understand; Gino stared at him for a moment in amazement, then collapsed wordlessly on the ground, rolling off the pavement into the gutter. Or perhaps all I saw was Gino falling and guessed from that what Sonzogno’s gesture had been. The movement was so swift and silent that I thought I had imagined it. I shook my head and took another look. Sonzogno stood in front of me, his legs wide apart, and was looking at his clenched fist; Gino, who was lying on the ground with his back to us, had come to again and had slowly lifted his head as he leaned on one elbow in the gutter. But he did not look as though he wanted to get to his feet; rather, it seemed as if he preferred to keep on staring at a small scrap of white paper that could be clearly seen glimmering against the mud in the ditch.

“Let’s go,” said Sonzogno at last, and I went as in a dream toward my own place with him.

He walked in silence, holding me by the arm. He was shorter than I, and his hand gripping my arm was exactly like an iron press.

“You shouldn’t have hit Gino like that,” I said after a while. “He’d have gone away all the same without being hit.”

“He won’t bother you anymore this way,” he replied.

“But how did you do it?” I asked. “I didn’t even see what you did — I just saw Gino fall.”

“It’s a matter of practice,” he said.

I longed now to squeeze his arm and feel his hard, taut muscles again beneath my fingers. He aroused more curiosity than attraction in me, but chiefly fear. Still fear can be a pleasant and exciting feeling in a way, until the cause of it is known.

“What have you got here inside your arm?” I asked. “I still can’t believe it!”

“But I let you touch it,” he said with such earnest vanity that it sounded sinister.

“Not properly — Gino was there — let me feel it again.”

He stood still and flexed his arm, looking sideways at me with a serious and, in a certain way, ingenuous air. But there was nothing childlike about his ingenuousness. I stretched out my hand and slowly felt his muscles, running my hand all the way down his arm from the shoulder. The sensation of feeling them, so alive and as hard as iron, was extraordinary. “You’re really very strong,” I said in a ghost of a voice.

“Yes, I’m strong,” he affirmed grimly. And we began walking again.

I was sorry I had called him, now. I did not like him. Besides, his seriousness and his behavior frightened me. We reached my house without speaking. I took out my key. “Thanks for seeing me home,” I said and held out my hand.

“I’m coming up,” he said and drew near.

I wanted to say no. But his way of staring into my eyes fixedly and with incredible insistence, overwhelmed and troubled me. “If you like,” I said. And I did not realize until after I had spoken to him that I had used the intimate form of speech with him.