The Woman of Rome (51 page)

“I should have thought of that first … do as you do — accept right from the beginning. Even the beggars that sit warming themselves in the sunshine on the church steps have accepted it from the beginning. It’s too late for me.”

“But why?”

“There are some who accept and some who don’t. Obviously I belong to the second category.”

I did not know what to say so I remained silent. “Now turn out the light,” he added after a moment. “I’ll get undressed in the dark. It must be time to go to sleep.”

I obeyed and he undressed in the dark and got into bed beside me. I turned toward him to embrace him, but he pushed me away wordlessly and curled himself up on the edge of the bed with his back to me. This gesture filled me with bitterness and I, too, hunched myself up, waiting for sleep with a widowed spirit. But I began to think about the sea again and was overcome by the longing to drown myself. I imagined it would be only a moment’s suffering, and then my lifeless body would float from wave to wave beneath the sky for ages. The gulls would peck at my eyes, the sun
would burn my breast and belly, the fish would gnaw at my back. At last I would sink to the bottom, would be dragged head downward toward some icy, blue current that would carry me along the sea bed for months and years among submarine rocks, fish, and seaweed, and floods of limpid saltwater would wash my forehead, my breast, my belly, my legs, slowly wearing away my flesh, smoothing and refining me continually. And at last some wave, someday, would cast me up on some beach, nothing but a handful of fragile, white bones. I liked the idea of being dragged to the bottom of the sea by my hair. I liked the idea of being reduced one day to a little heap of bones, without human shape, among the clean stones of a shore. And perhaps someone without noticing it would walk on my bones and crush them to white powder. With these sad, voluptuous thoughts I finally fell asleep.

11

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY, ALTHOUGH I
tried to force myself to believe that rest and sleep had changed Mino’s feelings, I noticed immediately that he was the same as ever. In fact, if anything, he seemed decidedly worse. As he had the day before, he kept passing from periods of long, gloomy, obstinate silence to outbursts of rambling, sarcastic discourse about irrelevant things in which, however, the same dominant thought was always apparent, like the watermark in some kinds of paper. As far as I could see, his deterioration consisted also of a kind of willful inertia, apathy, and carelessness that were something quite new in him, for he had always been extremely active and energetic; it was a kind of progressive detachment from all the things he had done so far. I opened his suitcases and put his suits and other clothes in my closet. But when it came to the books he needed for his studies — I suggested temporarily putting them in a row on the marble-topped chest of drawers underneath the mirror — he said, “Leave them in the case. They won’t be any use to me anymore, anyway.”

“And why not?” I asked. “Don’t you have to get your degree?”

“I’m not going to get my degree.”

“Don’t you want to go on with your studies?”

“No.”

I did not insist, fearful lest he begin to talk again about the thing that was grieving him, and I left the books in the suitcase. I noticed that he did not think to shave and did not wash himself. Before this he had always been very clean and finicky in his person. He spent the whole of the second day in my room either lying on the bed smoking or walking thoughtfully up and down with his hands in his pockets. But he did not say anything more to Mother at lunch, as he had promised me. When evening came he said he would dine out and left the house by himself, without my daring to suggest that I should accompany him. I have no idea where he went. I was just going to bed when he came back in and I noticed immediately that he had been drinking. He embraced me in a theatrical and exaggerated manner and insisted on making love to me. I had to give in to him, although I realized that making love for him was now like drinking, something unpleasant that he forced himself to do in order to tire and numb himself. I told him so. “You might as well do this with some other woman,” I told him. He laughed. “I might as well,” he replied, “but you’re here, right to hand.” I was offended by these words and hurt even more than offended since they proved he felt little or no affection for me.

Then I had a sudden kind of illumination, and turning toward him I said, “Look, I know I’m only a poor girl like any other, but try to love me. It’s for your own good that I ask you this. If you could manage to love me, I’m sure you’d be able to love yourself in the end.” He looked at me, then repeated, “Love, love,” in a loud, mocking voice and switched out the light. I lay there in the dark with staring eyes, feeling bewildered and embittered, not knowing what to think.

There was no change in him in the days that followed and everything continued in the same way. He merely seemed to have formed new habits to replace the old ones. Previously he had studied, gone to the university, seen his friends at some café, and
read. Now he lay on the bed smoking, strolled around the bedroom, went on making the same crazy, rambling allusions, got drunk, and made love. On the fourth day I began to feel really desperate. I could see that his anguish was as bitter as ever, and it seemed to me it would be impossible to continue living in such pain. My room, which was always full of cigarette smoke, seemed to me like a factory working day and night to manufacture sorrow, without a moment’s break; and the very air I breathed had by now become a thick gelatinous mass of sad, obsessive thoughts. During these times I often cursed my ignorance and ineptitude and the fact that Mother was even more inept and ignorant than I was. One’s first impulse in moments of difficulty is to turn to someone older and more experienced for advice. But I did not know anyone who possessed these qualities, and asking Mother for help would have been like asking help from one of the many children playing in our courtyard. Aside from this, I was unable to penetrate to the depths of his sorrow; many things escaped me; little by little, I came to the conclusion that what tormented him most of all was the thought that everything he had said to Astarita was written down in the police report and kept in the archives, as a perpetual witness to his weakness. Several things he said strengthened me in this conviction. So one afternoon I spoke to him about it. “If you’re sorry they wrote down everything you said to Astarita — well, Astarita would do anything I asked him. I’m sure if I ask him he’ll have the report on you destroyed.”

“What makes you think so?” he said, giving me a strange look.

“You said so yourself the other day. I told you that you ought to try to forget and you told me that even if you forgot the police wouldn’t.”

“But how would you go about asking him?”

“That’s easy enough. I’ll simply phone him and go to the Ministry.”

He would not say what he wanted. “Well — do you want me to ask him?” I insisted.

“Do what you like, as far as I’m concerned.”

We went out together and phoned from a café. I got hold of Astarita at once and told him I had to speak to him. I asked him if
I might come to the Ministry. “Either at your place or not at all,” he replied in a strange, stuttering voice.

I realized that he wanted to be paid for the favor I was going to ask him to do; and I tried to avoid the point. “Let’s meet in a café,” I said.

“Either at your place or not at all.”

“All right, then,” I said, “at my place.” I added that I would expect him that same day, late in the afternoon.

“I know what he wants,” I said to Mino as we returned home, “he wants to make love to me — but no one has ever been able to force a woman to make love against her will. He blackmailed me once, when I was still inexperienced, but he won’t be able to bring that off again.”

“But why don’t you want him to make love to you?” asked Mino indifferently.

“Because I love you.”

“But maybe he’ll refuse to destroy the reports if you don’t let him make love to you — and what then?” he asked, still in a casual tone.

“He’ll destroy them, don’t worry.”

“But suppose he didn’t want to except on this one condition?”

We were on the stairs. I stood still, “Then I’ll do what you want me to do,” I said.

He put his arm around my waist. “Well,” he said slowly, “this is what I want — I want you to get Astarita to come to your place and go into your room with you under the pretext of making love. I’ll be waiting behind the door and as soon as he comes in, I’ll kill him with a pistol. Then we’ll shove him under the bed and make love ourselves, all night.”

His eyes were shining; for the first time for days they were cleared of the oppressive mist that had obscured them. I grew frightened, mainly because I could see that there was a certain logic in what he suggested and also because by now I was resigned to the idea of ever worse and more definitive disasters and it seemed just the kind of crime that might happen. “For God’s sake, Mino!” I exclaimed. “Don’t say that even in fun.”

“Not even in fun,” he repeated. “I was only joking, as a matter of fact.”

I thought that probably he had not been joking at all; but I was reassured by the thought that his pistol was unloaded, although he did not know this, since I had removed the bullets from it. “Don’t worry,” I continued. “Astarita will do anything I want. Don’t talk like that anymore. You gave me such a scare.”

“Oh, we can’t even joke anymore!” he said lightly as he went indoors.

I noticed that a sudden fit of restlessness possessed him as soon as we entered the living room. He began to walk up and down with his hands in his pockets as usual. But he was moving differently, more energetically than usual, with an expression on his face that showed that he was thinking clearly and profoundly and had shaken off his usual disgust and apathy. I attributed this change to the relief of knowing that the compromising papers would soon be destroyed. “You’ll see, everything will be all right,” I said, hope springing once more within my breast.

He shuddered deeply, looked at me as if he did not recognize me, and then repeated mechanically, “Yes — everything will be all right.”

I had sent Mother out on the pretext of doing some shopping for supper. I suddenly felt optimistic. I thought everything really would be all right, perhaps even better than I expected. Astarita would do what I wanted, if he had not already done so; and day by day Mino would become detached from his remorse, would begin to enjoy life again, and look confidently towards the future. In time of trouble we all content ourselves with merely surviving, but as soon as the wind changes we begin to construct ambitious, far-reaching plans. Two days earlier I had thought myself capable of giving Mino up for his own happiness; but now that I had persuaded myself into believing that I might be able to restore this happiness I not only renounced all ideas of leaving him, but tried to work out how I could bind him ever more strongly to me. It was not my reason that urged me to form these plans; it was an obscure impulse within my spirit, which wants always to hope and cannot
bear humiliation and sorrow for long. It seemed to me that there were only two possible solutions for us, as things stood: either we must separate or be bound to one another for life. Since I did not even want to consider the first alternative, I began to wonder whether there was not some means by which I could achieve the second. I hate lying and I think I may count a sometimes even excessive sincerity among my few admirable qualities. If I lied to Mino at that moment, it was because I did not feel as though I were lying at all; I seemed to be telling the truth. It was a truth that was truer than truth, a spiritual and not a material truth. As a matter of fact, I did not think at all; it was, if anything, a kind of inspiration.

He was walking up and down as usual and I was sitting at one end of the table. “Listen,” I said suddenly, “stand still. I’ve got something I have to tell you.”

“What?”

“I haven’t been feeling well lately. I went to see a doctor a few days ago.… I’m pregnant.”

He stood still and looked at me, “You’re pregnant?” he repeated.

“Yes. And I’m absolutely sure it was you.”

Mino was intelligent and although he could not guess that I was lying, he immediately understood the real purpose of my announcement. He took a chair, came and sat down beside me, and caressed my cheek fondly. “I suppose this ought to be one more reason, the reason par excellence, in fact, for me to forget what has happened and go ahead with life. Isn’t that so?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, pretending I had not understood him.

“Since I’m going to become a
pater familias
,” he continued, “I should, for the sake of this innocent creature, as you women say, do what I wouldn’t do for love of you.”

“Do what you like,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I’ve told you because it’s the truth, that’s all.”

“After all,” he went on in that reflective tone of his, as if he were thinking aloud, “a child can be a reason for living. Many
people ask for nothing more. A child is a good justification. You can even steal or murder for a child.”

“Who’s asking you to steal or murder?” I interrupted him indignantly. “I’m only asking you to be happy. If you aren’t — then there’s nothing more to be said.”

He looked at me and stroked my cheek again fondly. “If you’re glad, I’m glad. Are you glad?”

“I am, yes,” I said proudly and firmly. “First of all, because I like children and then because it’s yours.”

He laughed. “You’re a clever one,” he said.

“Why? What’s so clever about being pregnant?”

“Nothing. But you must admit it’s a good stroke just at this moment and in these circumstances. ‘I’m pregnant and therefore —’ ”

“Therefore?”

“Therefore you must accept what you’ve done,” he shouted unexpectedly at the top of his voice as he leaped to his feet, waving his arms wildly, “therefore you must live, live, live!”

The tone of his voice was indescribable. I felt pierced to the heart and my eyes filled with tears. “Do what you like,” I stammered, “if you want to leave me, leave me, then. I — I’ll go away.”