The Woman of Rome (35 page)

“What does that matter? You’ve come back; it’s only right that I should celebrate your return.”

“No,” he said. “Better not.” He tried again to shake hands and leave me. This time I took his arm.

“Let’s not talk about it anymore.” And I started toward the restaurant.

We sat at the same table as before and everything was just as it had been, except for a ray of wintry sunlight that shone through the glass-fronted door and lit up the tables and the wall. The proprietor brought the menu and I gave my order in a firm, protective voice, just as my lovers did for me. He said nothing while I was ordering, his eyes were downcast. I had forgotten the wine because I don’t drink; then I remembered he had had some wine last time we were together so I asked for a liter.

As soon as the proprietor had gone, I opened my bag, took out a hundred-lira note, folded it in four and, after a rapid glance around, held it out to Giacomo under the table.

He looked at me questioningly.

“The money,” I said in a low voice. “Then you can pay afterward.”

“Oh, the money,” he said slowly. He took the bill, opened it out on the table, looked at it, then folded it again, opened my purse and put it back — all this in ironical seriousness.

“Do you want me to pay?” I asked him, feeling disconcerted.

“No, I’ll pay,” he said.

“Then why did you say you hadn’t any money?”

He hesitated for a moment. “I didn’t come to see you by chance,” he replied with bitter sincerity. “The fact is — I’ve been thinking of coming for a month now. But every time I found myself outside your place, I felt impelled to go away again.… So I thought I’d say I didn’t have any money, in the hope that you’d send me to the devil.” He smiled and passed his hand over his chin. “Apparently I was mistaken.”

So he had tried out a kind of experiment on me. He did not want to have anything to do with me. Or rather, his heart was torn in two between the attraction I had for him and the equally potent aversion he had for me. Later I was to discover that his capacity for feigning a part he did not feel sincerely was an essential part of his character. But at that time I felt utterly confused. I did not know whether I ought to be cheerful or to feel upset by his deceit and his defeat.

“But why did you want to go away?” I asked mechanically.

“Because I realized I felt nothing for you. Or rather, all I felt was the kind of desire my friend felt for your girlfriend that evening.”

“Did you know they’re living together?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied scornfully, “they’re made for one another.”

“You felt nothing for me,” I said, “and you didn’t want to come see me — and yet you came!” His lack of logic was something of a consolation in the disillusionment I had foreseen my love would cause me.

“Yes,” he replied, “because I’m what’s usually called a weak character.”

“Still, you came, and that’s enough for me,” I said cruelly. I stretched my hand out under the table and placed it on his knees. Meanwhile I was watching him and saw that my touch troubled him, his chin began to quiver. I was delighted at seeing him so moved; and I realized that although he wanted me very much as he had confessed when he said he had been thinking about coming to see me for a whole month, there was a part of him that was hostile to me. I would have to do everything that lay in my power to humiliate and destroy that part. I remembered his keen, cutting gaze at my naked back the first time we were together, and I told myself I had been wrong to let myself be frozen by such a look, and that if I had persisted in my efforts to seduce him, the look would have faded, just as the convulsive dignity in his face was now breaking up and fading.

Leaning against the table, as if I wanted to speak to him confidentially, I went on caressing him and at the same time saw with gay satisfaction the effects of my caresses as they were reflected in his face. He was looking at me with an offended, questioning air out of his large, dark, shining eyes with their long, feminine eyelashes.

“If it’s enough for you to please me this way, go ahead,” he said at last.

I straightened myself immediately. And at that moment the proprietor put the knives and forks and plates on the table. We began to eat in silence; neither of us had any appetite.

“If I were you, I’d try to make me drink,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I do what other people want me to more easily when I’m drunk.”

His phrase, “If it’s enough for you to please me this way, go ahead,” had already offended me. What he said about drinking was enough to convince me that my efforts were useless.

“I only want you to do what you feel like doing,” I said in despair. “If you want to go, go — there’s the door.”

“I’d have to be sure that that was what I wanted, if I were to go away,” he said teasingly.

“Do you want me to go?”

We looked at one another. In my misery, I was quite determined. And my determination seemed to trouble him as much as my caresses had done a moment earlier. “No,” he said with an effort, “stay here.”

We continued to eat in silence. Then I saw him pour out a large glass of wine and empty it at a gulp. “You see,” he said, “I’m drinking.”

“I can see that.”

“I’ll soon be drunk and then I might even make you a declaration of love.”

His words pierced me to the heart. I really could not continue to suffer in this way. “Stop it,” I said humbly, “stop torturing me.”

“Am I torturing you?”

“Yes, you’re making fun of me.… Now the only thing I ask of you is not to bother with me.… I’ve got a crush on you — it’ll pass — but meanwhile, leave me alone.”

He said nothing and drank off a second glass of wine. I was afraid I had offended him. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Are you mad at me?”

“Mad at you? Not at all.”

“If you like making fun of me, it’s all right. I was just talking.”

“But I’m not making fun of you.”

“And if you like saying cruel things to me,” I insisted, driven by I knew not what desire to humble myself before him, without calculation or cunning, to the point of abjection, “say them. I’ll
love you all the same — even more. Even if you hit me, I’d kiss the hand that did it.”

He was examining me attentively. He seemed extremely embarrassed, obviously he found my passion disconcerting. “Let’s go, all right?” he then said.

“Where?”

“To your place.”

I was so hopeless that I had almost forgotten the cause of my hopelessness; and his invitation, so unexpected, when we had only just finished the first course and half the wine was left in the carafe, astonished more than delighted me. I supposed rightly that not love, but his embarrassment at what I was saying, made him want to interrupt his meal.

“You can’t wait to be done with me, can you?” I said.

“How did you guess?” he asked, but his reply, too cruel to be true, inexplicably encouraged me.

“Some things go without saying,” I said, lowering my eyes. “Let’s finish our meal, though — then we’ll go.”

“As you like. But I’ll get drunk.”

“Get drunk, then, as far as I’m concerned.”

“But I’ll get so drunk, I’ll be ill, and then instead of having a lover to love, you’ll have a sick man to nurse.”

I was simple enough to show my anxiety and stretched out my hand toward the carafe. “Don’t drink, then!” I said. He burst into laughter. “You fell for it!” he said.

“Fell for what?”

“Don’t worry. I don’t get sick as easily as all that.”

“I was thinking of you,” I said, feeling humiliated.

“Of me — oh, oh!”

He continued to tease me. But his innate kindness underlay all his teasing and so I did not mind very much.

“Why don’t you drink, though?” he added.

“I don’t like it. Besides, a glass is enough to make me drunk.”

“What does that matter? We’ll be drunk together.”

“Women are ugly when they’re drunk. I don’t want you to see me drunk.”

“Why? What’s ugly about it?”

“I don’t know. It’s awful to see a woman stagger around, talk rubbish, make coarse gestures. It’s sad. I’m a disgraced woman, I know, and I know that’s how you think of me. But if I were to drink and you saw me drunk, you’d never look me in the face again.”

“Suppose I ordered you to drink?”

“You really want to see me humiliated,” I said pensively. “The only good thing about me is that I’m not clumsy. Do you really want me to lose that quality, too?”

“Yes, that’s just what I want,” he said emphatically.

“I don’t know what sort of a kick you get out of it, but if it gives you one, pour me some wine.” And I held out my glass.

He looked at the glass, at me, then burst into laughter again. “I was only joking,” he said.

“You’re always joking.”

“So you’re not clumsy?” he went on after a moment, looking at me attentively.

“That’s what they say, anyway.”

“Do you think I agree?”

“How do I know what you think?”

“Let’s see. What do you suppose I think and feel about you?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly and fearfully. “Certainly you don’t love me as I love you.… Perhaps I please you, as a woman can please a man if she’s not really ugly.”

“Oh, so you think you aren’t really ugly!”

“Yes,” I said proudly. “In fact, I know I’m beautiful; but what use have my looks been to me so far?”

“Beauty isn’t meant to be of any use.”

Meanwhile we had finished our meal and had nearly emptied two carafes. “You see,” he said, “I’ve been drinking, but I’m not drunk.” But his shining eyes and trembling hands seemed to contradict him. I looked at him with a glimmer of hope. “You want to go home, eh?” he added. “Venus in her entirety encircling her prey.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Only a line of verse I translated to fit the occasion. Innkeeper!”

He was still speaking emphatically but farcically. And farcically he asked the proprietor how much the bill was and thrust the money under his nose, adding an exaggerated tip, as he said, “This is for you.” Then he swallowed the rest of the wine and joined me outside the restaurant.

As soon as I was in the street, I felt frantic to reach home. I knew he had come to see me against his will and I knew he hated and despised the feeling that had driven him to seek me out. But I had a great faith in my beauty and my love for him, and was impatient to overcome his hostility with these weapons. A gay, aggressive will inspired me once more, and I felt sure my love would prove to be stronger than his aversion, and that at last, in the ardor of my own fire, the harsh, unyielding mettle in him would be melted and he would reciprocate my love.

“Still,” I said as I walked along beside him in the street, empty at that early hour in the afternoon, “you’ve got to promise you won’t try to get away once we’re home.”

“I promise.”

“And you’ve got to promise something else.”

“What?”

I hesitated before answering. “The other time,” I said, “everything would have gone all right if you hadn’t looked at me in a certain way that made me feel ashamed. You’ve got to promise me you won’t look at me like that again.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know — a nasty look.”

“You can’t control the way you look at things,” he replied after a moment. “But if you want, I won’t look at you at all. I’ll shut my eyes.… That’ll be all right.”

“No, it won’t,” I protested obstinately.

“How do you want me to look at you, then?”

“The way I look at you,” I answered. I took hold of him by the chin while we were still walking and showed him how he ought to look at me. “Like this, meltingly —”

“Oh, I see, meltingly —”

When we were on the squalid and filthy staircase that led to
my apartment I could not help remembering the place Gisella lived in, so clean, white, and shining. “If I didn’t live in an ugly old house like this,” I said, as if speaking to myself, “and weren’t disgraced as I am, you’d like me a lot more.”

Quite unexpectedly he stood still and took hold of me by the waist with both hands. “If that’s what you think,” he said earnestly, “you can be sure you’re mistaken.” Something very like affection seemed to gleam in his eyes. At the same time he bent down and sought my mouth. His breath smelled strongly of wine. I never could stand the stink of wine; but in his mouth at that moment it seemed innocent and charming, touching almost, as touching as it would have been in the mouth of an inexperienced boy. I also realized that my words had unintentionally touched him on his most sensitive spot. I imagined I had awakened in his heart a spark of affection. Afterward I recognized it was, if anything, an impulse of self-love and in embracing me he was submitting to a kind of moral blackmail rather than yielding to an amorous impulse. Subsequently I blackmailed him in the same way quite often: by accusing him of despising me because of my poverty and my profession. And I always achieved the desired results, although as my understanding of him grew, this was peculiarly humiliating and disappointing.

But I did not know him so well then as I came to later on. And his kiss filled me with joy, as if I had won a decisive victory. I merely touched his lips with mine, content with the gesture alone, and taking him by the hand I pulled him up the last flight of stairs gaily and ardently, saying, “Come on, come on, let’s run up!” He let himself be dragged up without a word.

I entered my room almost at a run — knocking him against the walls of the entrance as though he were a puppet. I entered with violence and, rather than joining him, I flung him on the bed. Then I noticed for the first time that he was not only drunk, as I had foreseen, but was so drunk that he was on the point of vomiting. He was extremely pale, kept passing his hand across his forehead with a bewildered expression, had a dazed and wandering look in his eye. I noticed all this in a flash; and immediately I
began to be afraid he might really be sick, and for the second time our meeting would go up in smoke. I was filled with remorse as I walked about the room undressing, because I had not prevented his drinking. I was almost in despair. But notably, it never even crossed my mind to give up on his love, for which I so yearned. I hoped for one thing only — that he would not feel so sick as to be unable to make love to me, and that if he really were so sick, the effects of it would not make themselves felt until after my desire had been satisfied. I was truly in love with him, but I was so afraid of losing him that my love was unable to go beyond the limits of selfishness.