The Woman of Rome (37 page)

“I wasn’t speaking for myself,” I retorted hotly. “I was thinking of you. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll do it.”

“I warn you,” he said again, “it’s really dangerous. If they find them, you’ll end up in jail.”

I looked at him and a flood of uncontrollable emotion swept over me. I do not know whether it was for him or for something else I could not define. My eyes filled with tears. “Don’t you understand it doesn’t matter to me at all?” I stammered. “I’d go to prison — so what?” I shook my head and the tears ran down my cheeks.

“And now what are you crying for?” he asked in astonishment.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m being stupid — I don’t know why myself, maybe because I wish you’d realize how much I love you and how ready I am to do anything for you.”

I had not yet learned that I must not mention my love to him. At my words, he did what I was to see so often in the future, his face filled with an expression of vague, distant embarrassment and he averted his eyes. “All right,” he said hurriedly, “I’ll bring you the parcel in a couple of days. We’re agreed, then. And now I’ve got to go, it’s getting late.” As he spoke, he leaped from the bed and began to dress quickly. I stayed where I was, on the bed, with my emotion and tears, naked and a little ashamed, either because I was naked or because I had been crying.

He picked his clothes up off the floor where they had fallen and put them on. He went over to the coatrack, got his overcoat, slipped into it and came over to me. “Feel here,” he said, with that charming, ingenuous smile I found so attractive.

I looked and saw he was pointing to one of the pockets of his overcoat. He had come near to the bed so that I could stretch out my hand without any effort. I felt something hard through the material of the pocket. “What is it?” I asked, without understanding.

He smiled in satisfaction, put his hand into his pocket and slowly drew a large, black pistol half out of it, staring at me fixedly all the while. “A pistol!” I exclaimed. “What are you going to do with it?”

“You never know,” he said. “It may come in useful one day.”

I did not know what to think, but he did not even give me time. He replaced the weapon in his pocket, bent down, brushed my lips with his as he said, “All right, then — I’ll be back in two days.” Before I could recover from my surprise, he was gone.

Since then I have often thought over our first assignation and have reproached myself bitterly for not having foreseen the danger his passion for politics exposed him to. I know I never had any influence over him; but at least, if I had known many of the things I have learned since, I would have been able to advise him and when advice was useless, I would have been at his side, fully conscious and decisive. The fault was certainly mine, or rather, was the fault of my ignorance, which, however, I could not help, as it was due to my condition. As I have already said, I had never given any thought to political things, of which I understood nothing and which I felt to be extraneous to my destiny, as if they were not unfolding around me but on another planet altogether. When I read a newspaper I always skipped the first page with its political news, which didn’t interest me, and went on to glance through the reports of criminal cases, where certain incidents and crimes gave my mind something to feed on, at least. My condition was actually very like that of those transparent little creatures that live, they say, in the depths of the sea, in the dark almost, knowing nothing of what is happening on the surface in the sunlight. Politics, like many other things that men seem to think so important, reached me from a higher and unknown world, they were even weaker and more incomprehensible to me than the light of day to those simple creatures in the depths of the sea.

But the fault lay not only in myself and my ignorance. In his vanity and lightness, he was at fault, too. If I had sensed anything else but vanity in him, as, in fact, there was, perhaps I would have acted differently and would have forced myself to understand and get to know all the things I was ignorant of: I cannot say with what success. And at this stage I would like to point out something else, which certainly contributed to my nonchalance, this was the fact that he always seemed to be acting a part in a farce rather than behaving seriously. He seemed to have built up an ideal character, piece by piece, but was able to believe in it only up to a certain point, and was striving all the time, almost mechanically, to adapt his actions to this ideal character. This ceaseless comedy created the impression that he was taking part in a game he had, in a certain sense, mastered perfectly; but, as happens in games, it also made what he was doing seem far less serious. At the same time it suggested that for him nothing was irreparable, that at the last moment, even if he were defeated, his opponent would return his losses to him and would shake his hand. Now perhaps he really was playing, like boys whose irrepressible instincts lead them to make a game of everything. But his opponent was in earnest as was evident later. So when the game was up, he found himself unarmed and helpless, outside all games, caught in a mortal strait.

All these things, and others far sadder and no less reasonable, occurred to me later on when I thought over what had happened. But at the time the idea that his business of the parcels might influence our relationship in any way did not even cross my mind. I was glad he had returned to me, glad I could do him a favor and at the same time have an opportunity of seeing him again. I did not look beyond this double source of happiness. I remember that when I happened to think vaguely and dreamily about the odd favor he had asked me I shook my head as if to say, “Schoolboy tricks!” and turned my mind to other things. In any case, I was so happy that even if I had wanted to, I would not have been capable of directing my thoughts to any troubling topic.

6

E
VERYTHING SEEMED TO BE
improving: Giacomo had come back and at the same time I had found the way to have the maid who had been unjustly accused released from jail, without being obliged to take her place. After Giacomo left that day, I spent at least a couple of hours delighting in my own happiness, as one might delight in a jewel or other precious object newly possessed, that is, in a puzzled, astonished, dazed way that did not, however, exclude profound enjoyment. The bells ringing for vespers roused me from this voluptuous contemplation. I remembered Astarita’s advice, the urgent need to help the wretched woman who was in jail. I dressed hurriedly and went out.

It is sweet, in winter, when the days are short and the whole morning and the early hours of the afternoon have been passed at home alone in thought, to go out and walk the streets in the heart of the city, where the traffic is thickest, the crowds fullest, the shops most brilliantly lit. In the pure, cool air, amid the noise, movement, and glitter of city life, the brain clears and the heart
lightens, fills with a joyous excitement and gay intoxication, as if all our difficulties had suddenly been solved and nothing was left but to wander lightheartedly and thoughtlessly among the crowd, content to follow any fleeting sensation suggested to an idle mind by the pageant of the streets. It really seems at such times as if for a few moments all our trespasses had been forgiven, as the Christian prayer says, without any merit on our part and without retribution, merely by virtue of some mysterious and general benevolence. Naturally, this requires a happy or at least contented frame of mind, since otherwise city life provokes an anguished sense of absurd, aimless motion. But as I said, I was happy that day, and I was most aware of this when I began to walk the sidewalks in the center of town, among the crowds of people.

I knew I had to go to church to make my confession. But probably just because I knew that this was my purpose and was glad I had resolved to do it, I was in no hurry and did not even think about it. I walked slowly from one street to another, stopping from time to time to look at the goods on display in the shop windows. If anyone who knew me had seen me then, they would certainly have thought I was intent on picking up some man. But, truly, nothing could have been further from my thoughts. I might have let some man I liked the look of stop me, but not for money, only out of an impulse of gaiety, an exuberance for life. But the few men who came up to me with the usual phrases and offers of company, when they saw me standing still and looking in at the shop windows, had nothing that attracted me about them. So I made no reply, did not even look at them, and continued to walk along the pavement with my usual lazy, majestic gait as if they did not even exist.

The sight of the church where I had been to confession before, after the trip to Viterbo, caught me unaware, in this gay and absent mood. The baroque facade of the church, standing there as it did between the movie posters and the hosier’s window, which were both brilliantly lit, sunk in darkness and set like a folding screen in an indentation of the street, its high pediment topped by two trumpeting angels and streaked with violet reflections from the luminous sign on a neighboring house, seemed to me like the dark, wrinkled
face of an old woman beckoning to me confidentially from the shadow of an old shawl, among the other, lighted faces of the other passersby. I remembered the handsome French confessor, Father Elia, and how I had been attracted by him, and I thought no one could perform the task of returning the compact better than he, for he was young, intelligent, and a man of the world, different in every way from other priests. Besides, Father Elia already knew me, in a way, and so I would find it easier to confess to him the many terrible, shameful things that weighed so heavily upon my soul.

I climbed the steps, pushed aside the heavy covering over the door, and entered, putting a handkerchief on my head. While I dipped my fingers in the holy water stoup, I was struck by a scene carved around the edge of the stoup — it showed a naked woman, her hair streaming in the wind, her arms raised as she fled, pursued by a foul dragon, with a parrot’s beak, that was standing upright on its hind legs like a man. I seemed to recognize myself in that woman and thought how I, too, was fleeing just such a dragon, that the course of my flight was circular, like hers, but that as I ran around in circles, I sometimes found I was not fleeing but was following a desire and gaily pursuing the ugly beast. I turned from the holy water stoup to the church as I crossed myself, and it seemed to me to have remained in the same darkness, squalor, and disorder I had noticed the last time I had seen it. Everything lay in darkness, as then, except the high altar with all its candles burning closely around the crucifix in a confused glitter of brass candlesticks and silver vases. The chapel dedicated to the Madonna, where I had prayed so fervently and uselessly, was also illuminated. Two vergers were standing on ladders fixing gold-fringed red hangings to the architrave. I found that Father Elia’s confessional was engaged, so I went and knelt down in front of the high altar on one of the displaced straw-bottomed chairs. I was not at all moved, but merely impatient to settle the matter of the compact. My impatience had something peculiar about it, it was gay, impetuous, self-congratulatory and rather vain, the kind you feel when you are on the point of doing some good deed you have been contemplating for a long time. I have often noticed that this kind of impatience,
which springs from the heart and is deaf to the counsel of intelligence, usually ends by compromising the good deed and often doing greater harm than would more calculated behavior.

As soon as I saw the person who was confessing get up and go away, I went straight to the confessional, knelt down, and began to speak quickly, without waiting for the confessor to address me. “Father Elia,” I said, “I have not come to make my confession in the usual sense. I have come to speak to you of a very serious matter and to ask you a favor I am sure you will not refuse.”

The confessor’s low voice on the other side of the grill invited me to proceed. I was so sure Father Elia was on the other side that I almost imagined I could see his calm, handsome face outlined against the dark grill pierced with little holes. Then, for the first time since I had entered the church, an impulse of devout and trusting emotion swept over me. It was as though my soul felt impelled to free itself from my body and kneel down naked on the steps before the grill, with all its stains exposed. I felt for a moment as if I were a disembodied spirit, free, formed of light and air, as they say we are after death. And I imagined, too, that Father Elia, whose spirit was so much more luminous than mine, had broken free of the prison of the flesh and had caused the grill, the walls, and the darkness of the confessional to vanish and stood there in person before me, dazzling and comforting. Perhaps this is the emotion we ought to feel every time we kneel down to confess. But I had never felt it so intensely before.

I began to speak with my eyes closed, leaning my head against the grill. And I told him everything. I told him of my profession, of Gino, Astarita, Sonzogno, of the theft and the murder. I told him my name, Gino’s, Astarita’s, and Sonzogno’s. I told him where the theft and the murder had taken place, told him where I lived. I even described what the different people looked like. I do not know what impulse swept me along. Perhaps it was the same impulse that a housewife feels when she finally decides to clean up her house after a long period of neglect and is unable to rest until she has swept away the last speck of dust, the last bit of fluff under the furniture or in the corners. And, in fact, as I went on telling my
tale in all its particulars, I felt as if I were unburdening my heart and soul and felt lighter and cleaner.

I spoke in the same quiet, reasonable voice the whole time. The confessor listened to me without interruption to the very end. When I stopped a moment’s silence ensued. Then I heard a dreadful, slow, unctuous, dragging voice address me. “You have told me of terrible, fearful things, my child, the mind finds them hardly credible. But you did well to come to confession — I will do everything that lies in my power for you.”