The Woman of Rome (40 page)

We looked at one another in silence for a moment “We can go away, Giacomo, if you like,” said the big man. “If you’re busy now we can come back tomorrow.”

I saw Mino start and look at him, and I could see he was about to tell them to stay and ask me to leave. I knew him well enough by now to understand that he could not have done otherwise. I remembered that I had given myself to him only a few minutes before — the sensation of his lips kissing me was still warm on my neck and the feeling of his hands clinging to me was in my flesh. It was my body, not my soul — which was always ready to yield and be resigned — which rebelled as if against treatment unworthy of its beauty and of the gift it had made. I took a step forward. “Yes, you’d better go,” I said violently, “you can see each other tomorrow. I’ve still got a lot of things to say to Mino.”

Mino objected with an air of startled displeasure.

“But I’ve got to talk to them.”

“You can talk to them tomorrow.”

“Well,” said Tommaso good-naturedly, “make up your mind — if you want us to stay, say so. If you want us to go …”

“We ask nothing better,” intervened Tullio, with his usual laugh.

Mino still hesitated. My body, despite myself, made another aggressive thrust. “Listen,” I said, raising my voice, “a few minutes ago Giacomo and I were making love, here, on the floor, on this carpet. What would you do in his place? Would you send me away?”

I believe Mino blushed. He certainly became confused, turned his back peevishly, and went over to the window. Tommaso gave me a sidelong look and then said, without smiling, “I see — we’ll go. Good-bye, Giacomo — we’ll see you tomorrow at the same time.”

But my words seemed to have upset little Tullio. He gaped at me, his eyes wide open behind his thick lenses. Certainly he had never heard a woman speak so frankly, and at that moment a thousand dirty thoughts must have crossed his mind. But the big man called to him from the doorway. “Let’s go, Tullio,” he said, and he, without taking his lustful, astonished eyes off me, walked backward to the door and left.

I waited for them to leave and then walked over to Mino, who was still standing by the window, his back to the room, and put an arm around his neck.

“Now I bet you can’t stand me.”

He turned slowly and looked at me. His eyes were full of anger; but at the sight of my face, which must have been loving, gentle, and in its way, innocent, his look changed and he spoke in a reasonable, almost sad, voice. “Are you happy, now? You got what you wanted.”

“Yes, I’m happy,”-I said, hugging him hard. He let me, then asked, “What was it you wanted to say to me?”

“Nothing,” I replied. “I wanted to spend the evening with you.”

“But I’m going in to eat soon,” he said. “And I eat here — with the widow Medolaghi.”

“So, invite me to dinner.”

He looked at me and smiled slightly at my boldness. “All right,” he said resignedly, “I’ll go warn them. How do you want me to introduce you?”

“As you like — as a relation.”

“No, I’ll introduce you as my fiancée — will that do?”

I did not dare to let him see how delighted I was at his suggestion. “It’s all the same to me,” I said, pretending to be indifferent, “as long as we can be together — as fiancés or anything else.”

“Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

He went out and I walked over to a corner of the sitting room, pulled up my dress, and hastily buttoned my underwear, which had remained disarranged from the confusion of lovemaking and the unexpected arrival of his friends. A mirror on the wall facing me showed me my long, perfect leg, sheathed in silk, and it made a curious impression on me among all that old furniture, in that silent, secluded atmosphere. I remembered the time when I had made love to Gino in his mistress’s villa and had stolen the compact, and I could not help comparing that distant moment in my life with the present one. At that time I had felt a sense of emptiness, bitterness, and a desire to revenge myself, if not upon Gino directly, at least upon the world, which by means of Gino had hurt me so cruelly. Now, instead, I felt happy, free, light. Once more I realized I really loved Mino and it did not matter much that he did not return my love.

I smoothed my dress, went over to the mirror, and tidied my hair. The door opened behind me and Mino returned.

I hoped he would come up to me and kiss me from behind while I was looking at myself in the mirror. But instead he went to sit down on the sofa at the end of the sitting room. “That’s done,” he said, as he lit a cigarette. “They’ve set another place — we’ll go in to dinner soon.”

I left the mirror and came to sit beside him, putting my arm through his and pressing against him. “Those two were your political friends, weren’t they?” I said at random.

“Yes.”

“They can’t be very rich.”

“Why not?”

“Judging by the way they dress, anyway.”

“Tommaso is our bailiff’s son,” he said, “and the other one’s a schoolteacher.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Who?”

“The schoolteacher. He’s dirty-minded and gave me such a look when I said I had been making love to you.”

“He must have liked you, obviously.”

We were silent for some time.

Then I said, “You’re ashamed to introduce me as your fiancée. If you want, I’ll go.”

I knew this was the only way to wring an affectionate gesture out of him: by blackmailing him with the accusation that he was ashamed of me. And, as I had expected, he immediately put his arm around my waist.

“I suggested it,”-he said. “Why should I be ashamed of you?”

“I don’t know. I can see you’re in a bad mood.”

“I’m not in a bad mood. I’m dazed,” he answered, in a tone of voice that was almost scientific. “And that’s because we’ve made love. Give me time to get over it.”

I noticed he was still very pale and was smoking with disgust.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. But you’re always so cold and withdrawn that you make me lose my head. If you were different, I wouldn’t have insisted on staying a while ago.”

He threw his cigarette down.

“I’m not cold and withdrawn,” he said.

“And yet —”

“I like you a lot,” he continued, looking at me attentively, “and in fact I didn’t resist you a little while ago as I meant to.” This phrase delighted me and I lowered my eyes without speaking. “Still, I suppose you’re right, really … this can’t be called love.”

My heart hurt me and I could not help murmuring, “What do you mean by love, then?”

“If I loved you,” he replied, “I wouldn’t have wanted to send you away a moment ago. And then I wouldn’t have been angry when you wanted to stay.”

“Were you angry?”

“Yes — and now I’d be chatting to you, I’d be cheerful, gay, witty, amusing, I’d be caressing you, complimenting you, kissing you, making plans for the future — isn’t that how love is?”

“Yes,” I said softly. “At least, these are the effects of love.”

He was silent for a long time and then said, without any pleasure, but with a dry humility: “I do everything in the same way; without loving what I’m doing or feeling it in my heart — knowing
intellectually how to do it and occasionally even doing it, but always coldly and from the outside. That’s how I am and apparently I can’t be otherwise.”

I made a great effort to control myself.

“I like you as you are,” I said. “Don’t worry.” And I embraced him with intense affection. Almost at the same instant, the door opened and the old servant looked in to tell us dinner was ready.

We left the sitting room and went along a passage to the dining room. I remember all the details of that room and the people in it perfectly, because I was as sensitive to impressions at that time as a photographic plate. I felt I was not so much acting as watching myself act, with wide, melancholy eyes. Perhaps this is an effect of the feeling of rebellion we experience when faced with a reality that causes us to suffer and that we wish were otherwise.

I don’t know why, but Signora Medolaghi, the widow, seemed to me to resemble closely the black ebony furniture with the white mother-of-pearl inlays in her parlor. She was a middle-aged woman, imposingly tall, with a voluminous bosom and massive hips. She was dressed entirely in black silk, had a broad, flabby face, whose pallor was just like mother-of-pearl, framed in black hair that looked dyed, and she had huge, dark shadows under her eyes. She was standing in front of a flowered soup tureen and was serving the soup with a kind of disdain. The weighted lamp that had been pulled down over the table lit up her bosom — which was very like a large, black, shiny parcel — and left her face in shadow. In that shade her white face with its black-ringed eyes reminded me of the little silk masks worn during carnival. The table was small and four places were laid, one on each side. The widow’s daughter was already seated in her place and did not get up when we entered.

“The young lady can sit here,” said the widow Medolaghi. “What’s the young lady’s name?”

“Adriana.”

“Just like my daughter,” said the woman, without thinking what she was saying. “We’ve got two Adrianas.” She spoke self-consciously, without looking at us, and obviously she did not welcome my presence there at all. As I have already said, I used hardly
any makeup, never dyed my hair and, in fact, gave no hint of any kind of my profession. But anyone could see that I was a simple, uneducated girl of the people, and I took no trouble to conceal it. What sort of people you bring to my house! the lady must have been thinking at that moment. A common girl.

I sat down and looked at the girl who shared my name. In everything she was precisely the half of me — her head, her bosom, her hips. She was thin, with scanty hair and a refined, oval face with huge dull eyes whose expression was terrified. I looked at her and saw that under my gaze, she lowered her eyes and forehead. I thought she might be shy. “Do you know,” I said, to break the ice, “it seems curious to me that someone else should have the same name as I do and yet be so different?”

I had spoken at random, to start the conversation flowing, and it was a silly remark. But to my surprise I received no reply. The girl looked at me with wide-open eyes and then bent her head over her plate and began to eat in silence. Suddenly the truth dawned upon me; she was not shy but terrified. And I was the cause of her terror. She was terrified by my beauty, which exploded in the dusty, spent air of her house like a rose in a cobweb; by my exuberance, which could not pass unnoticed even when I was silent and motionless; but above all by the fact that I was a common girl. A rich man surely bears no love toward a poor man, but neither does he fear him, and he knows how to keep him at a distance through his own pride and conceit; but a poor man who by education or by origin has the soul of a rich man is absolutely terrified by a real poor man, like someone who feels predisposed to catch a certain illness from those who are already infected. The two Medolaghi women were certainly not rich, otherwise they would not have let rooms. Since they were conscious of their poverty but unwilling to admit it, my presence as a poor girl wearing no mask struck them as both dangerous and insulting. Who can say what passed through the girl’s mind when I spoke to her? … This girl here is talking to me, she wants to become my friend, I won’t be able to get rid of her.… I realized all these things in a flash and decided not to utter another word until the end of the meal.

But her mother, who was more uninhibited and possibly more curious, did not want to renounce all conversation. “I didn’t know you were engaged,” she said to Mino. “How long have you been?”

Her voice was affected and she spoke from behind the mass of her bosom as if from behind a protective trench.

“About a month,” said Mino. This was true, we had known one another for only a month.

“Is the young lady a Roman?”

“Indeed she is, seven generations back.”

“And when is the wedding to be?”

“Soon — as soon as the house we’re going to live in is free.”

“Oh, you’ve already got a house?”

“Yes, a little villa with a garden — and a little tower. It’s charming.”

This was how he described, in his sardonic tone of voice, the little villa I had pointed out to him on the main road near my apartment.

“If we wait for that house,” I said, with an effort, “I am afraid we’ll never get married.”

“Nonsense,” said Mino cheerfully. He seemed completely recovered and even had more color in his cheeks. “You know it will be free on the day we fixed.”

I don’t like playacting so I said nothing. The maid changed the plates. “Villas, Signor Diodati,” said Signora Medolaghi, “are all very well but they aren’t convenient. You need a lot of servants.”

“Why?” said Mino. “That won’t be necessary. Adriana will be cook, maid, housekeeper … won’t you, Adriana?”

Signora Medolaghi sized me up with a glance. “Really,” she said, “a lady has other things to do beside thinking of cooking and sweeping and making beds. But if the young lady Adriana is accustomed to it, in that case —” She did not finish her sentence and turned her attention to the plate the parlormaid was offering me. “We didn’t know you were coming; we could only add another egg or two.”

I was angry with Mino and with the woman and was almost tempted to reply, “No, I’m accustomed to walking the streets.” But
Mino, who was bubbling over with a crazy kind of gaiety, poured himself out a generous glassful of wine, poured some for me — Signora Medolaghi’s eyes followed the bottle uneasily — and continued. “Oh, but Adriana’s not a lady! And she never will be — Adriana’s always made beds and swept floors. Adriana’s a girl of the people.”

Signora Medolaghi looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. “Exactly as I was saying — if she’s accustomed —” she repeated, with insulting politeness. Her daughter bowed her head over her plate.

“Yes, she is,” went on Mino, “and I’m certainly not going to be the one to make her give up such useful habits. Adriana’s a shirtmaker’s daughter and a shirtmaker herself — aren’t you, Adriana?” He stretched his arm across the table, seized my hand, and turned it over, palm upward. “She paints her nails, I know, but it’s the hand of a working girl — big, strong, unaffected — like her hair, curly but rebellious, coarse at the roots.” He let my hand fall and pulled my hair hard, like an animal’s. “Adriana, in fact, is in every way a worthy representative of our fine, healthy, and vigorous people.”