The Woman of Rome (53 page)

“I don’t know.”

I got up and walked around the room, furtively wringing my hands. “Let’s go into the other room, do you want to?” I suggested.

“Let’s go.”

We went out into the hall and there in the dark he put his arm around my waist and kissed me on the neck. For perhaps the first time in my life, then, I looked at making love as he did; that is to say, as a means to numb oneself and drive out thought, no more pleasurable or important than any other. I gripped his head with my hands and kissed him violently. We went into my room clinging together. It was plunged in darkness but I did not notice. A glowing light as red as blood filled my eyes and every movement we made had the splendor of a flame leaping rapidly and unexpectedly out of the fire that consumed us. There are times when we seem to see with a sixth sense diffused throughout our bodies and the shadows become as familiar as the light of the sun. But it is a vision that goes no further than the bounds of physical contact; and all I could see were our two bodies projected against the night like the bodies of two drowned people cast up on the shore from some black eddy.

Suddenly I found I was lying on the bed with the light from the lamp reflected on my naked belly. I squeezed my thighs together, I don’t know whether from cold or shame, and covered my sex with my two hands. Mino looked at me. “Now your belly will begin to swell,” he said, “more and more each month … and one day pain will make you open these legs you’re locking together so jealously now, and the baby’s head, already covered with hair, will pop out and you’ll thrust it out into the light of day and they’ll pick it up and put it in your arms, and you’ll be happy, and there’ll be another man in the world. Let’s hope he won’t end up saying what Astarita said.”

“What did he say?”

“ ‘I curse the day I was born.’ ”

“Astarita’s a wretched man,” I said. “But I’m sure my son will be happy and lucky.”

Then I wrapped myself up in the blanket and I believe I fell asleep. But Astarita’s name had reawakened in my heart the same feeling of anguish I had felt after his departure. Suddenly I heard an unknown voice shouting, “Pam, pam!” loudly in my ear, as if imitating the noise of two pistol shots; and I sat up sharply in bed in terror and anxiety. The lamp was still lit; I got out of bed quickly and went toward the door to make sure it was properly shut. But I ran into Mino who was standing fully dressed near the door smoking. Bewildered, I went back and sat down on the edge of the bed. “What do you think?” I asked him. “What will Sonzogno do?”

“How should I know?” he replied, looking at me.

“I know him,” I said, succeeding at last in finding words to express the anguish that oppressed me. “The fact that he let himself be pushed out of the room without protesting doesn’t mean anything. He’s capable of killing him. What do you think?”

“Maybe. It’s very likely.”

“Do you think he’ll kill him?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.”

“I have to warn him,” I cried, getting up and beginning to dress myself swiftly. “I’m sure he’ll kill him. Oh, why didn’t I think of it before?”

I dressed rapidly, continuing to talk about my fear and my presentiment. Mino said nothing; he was smoking and walking around. “I’m going to Astarita’s house,” I said at last. “He’s at home now. Wait here for me.”

“I’m coming, too.”

I did not insist. Truthfully, I was glad of his company, because I was so agitated that I was afraid I might be ill. “We must get a taxi at once,” I said as I put on my coat. Mino put on his coat, too, and we went out.

I began to walk hurriedly along the street, almost running, and Mino lengthened his stride to keep pace with me, his arm in mine. After a while we found a taxi and I hurried into it, shouting out Astarita’s address. It was a street in the Prati neighborhood; I had never been there but I knew it was near the law courts.

The taxi began to gather speed, and, as if I were crazy, I began to follow its route, leaning forward and watching the roads over the driver’s shoulder. At a certain moment I heard Mino behind me say softly, as if speaking to himself, “And what if he has? One serpent has devoured another,” but his words made no impression on me. As soon as we were outside the law courts, I stopped the taxi and got out and Mino paid the fare. We ran across the little formal gardens, following the gravel paths between the trees and benches. The street where Astarita lived unfolded itself suddenly before me, long and straight as a sword, illuminated as far as the eye could see by a row of large white lamps. It was a street of orderly, massively built houses, without any shops, and seemed deserted. From the number I guessed that Astarita’s house must be toward the end. The street was so peaceful that I said, “Perhaps it’s all my imagination.… Still, I had to come.”

We passed three or four buildings and crosswalks and then Mino spoke. “Still, something must have happened,” he said calmly. “Look.” I raised my eyes and saw a black crowd gathered before one of the front doors, not far away. A row of people stood lined up on the opposite sidewalk, gazing up toward the dark sky. I was sure right away that that must be Astarita’s house, and I began to run, and it seemed to me that Mino was running, too. “What
is it? What’s happened?” I panted to the first people in the crowd pressing around the doorway.

“It’s not altogether clear,” said the person I had turned to, a young blond boy, hatless and coatless, who was holding a bicycle by the handlebars. “Someone threw himself down the stairwell. Or he was thrown down. The police have gone up onto the roof and are looking for someone else.”

I made my way through the crowd and elbowed myself into the entrance hall, which was spacious and well lit and crammed with people. A white stairway with an iron railing rose in a wide curve over the heads of the crowd. As I pushed ahead, almost lifted up by my own impetus, I was able to see, over all those heads and shoulders, an open space on the floor underneath the stairway. A round white marble column supported a naked, winged figure in gilded bronze, whose one upraised arm held a frosted glass torch with an electric bulb inside it. A human body covered with a sheet lay immediately underneath the column. Everyone was looking in the same direction, and I looked too, and then I saw that they were gazing at a foot in a black shoe that stuck out from under the sheet. At that moment a number of voices began to shout imperiously. “Get back, get back!” and I was pushed violently out with all the others into the street.

“Mino, let’s go home,” I said faintly to someone just behind me, and I turned around. I saw an unknown face looking at me in astonishment. The people, after protesting loudly and hammering in vain on the shut door, began to disperse and make their comments on what had happened. Others kept running up from other directions; two cars and a number of cyclists had stopped for information. I began to wander through the crowd in a state of increasing anxiety, looking into each face one by one without daring to speak to anyone. Certain shoulders, certain necks seen from the back seemed like Mino’s; I would push my way impetuously into the groups of people only to find a number of unknown faces looking at me in surprise. The crowd was still at its densest around the doorway; they knew there was a body there and they still hoped to catch a glimpse of it. They were closely packed, with patient,
serious faces; it was as though they were lining up outside a theater. I went on wandering around, but at a certain point I realized I had looked into every face and kept coming across the same ones. I thought I heard Astarita’s name mentioned in one of the groups and realized I no longer cared about him at all, and that all the anguish I felt was centered on Mino. At last I convinced myself that he was no longer there. He must have gone off when I pushed my way into the hall. It seemed to me, I don’t know why, that I should have foreseen his flight; and I was astonished at not having thought of it before. Pulling myself together with great effort, I dragged myself as far as the piazza, got into a taxi, and gave my home address. I thought that perhaps Mino had lost me and had gone home on his own. But I was almost certain that this was not true.

He was not at home and did not come back that evening or the day after. I shut myself up in my room, overwhelmed by such a strong feeling of uneasiness and anxiety that I could not prevent myself from trembling all over. I did not have a temperature, but I seemed to be living outside myself, in an abnormal, excessive atmosphere in which every sight, every noise, every contact hurt me and made me faint. Nothing could distract me from the thought of Mino, not even the detailed descriptions of the new crime Sonzogno had committed, which filled all the papers Mother brought me. This crime bore Sonzogno’s unmistakable imprint: perhaps they had struggled with one another on the landing outside Astarita’s front door for a moment, then Sonzogno had bent Astarita back against the railing and had lifted him up and thrown him down the stairwell. Such brutality was extremely expressive: only Sonzogno could have thought of murdering a man that way. But, as I have said, I had one thought only and was unable to take any interest even in the articles that told how Sonzogno had been shot dead later that night as he was escaping across the roofs like a cat. Any form of occupation, distraction, or even reflection unconnected with Mino filled me with a kind of nausea, and at the same time to think of Mino caused me unbearable anguish. Two or three times I happened to think of Astarita, and as I remembered his love for me and his melancholy, I experienced a strong feeling of helpless
pity for him and told myself that if I had not been so anxious about Mino, I would surely have wept for him and prayed for his soul, which had never been gladdened by any light and which had been cut off from his body so barbarously and prematurely.

This was how I passed all the first day and night and the whole of the day and night following. I lay on my bed, or sat in the armchair at the foot of the bed. In my hands, I clutched one of Mino’s jackets that I had found hanging up, and every now and then I kissed it passionately or bit it to calm my restlessness. Even when Mother forced me to eat something, I ate with one hand only and continued to grip the jacket convulsively in the other. Mother wanted to put me to bed on the second night and I let her undress me passively. But when she tried to take the jacket from me, I let out such a shrill scream that she was terrified. Mother did not know anything for certain, but she had more or less guessed that Mino’s absence had driven me to desperation.

On the third day I managed to work out an idea and I stuck to it all morning tenaciously although I dimly felt how unfounded it was. I thought that Mino had become scared when he found out I was pregnant, that he had wanted to escape the obligations inherent to my condition and had gone home to the provinces. It was an unpleasant supposition, but I preferred to think him vile rather than to accept the other possibilities I could not help imagining to explain his disappearance. They were such tragic ones, suggested to me by the circumstances accompanying his flight.

At noon that day Mother came into my room and threw a letter on the bed. I recognized Mino’s writing and my heart leaped with joy. I waited for Mother to leave the room and then waited for my excitement to die down a little. Then I opened the letter. Here it is.

Dearest Adriana,

By the time you receive this letter, I shall already be dead. When I opened the pistol and found it unloaded, I realized right away that it was you and I thought of you with great affection. Poor Adriana, you don’t know anything about guns and you didn’t know there was a bullet in the barrel. The
fact that you didn’t notice it strengthened me in my decision. And anyway, there are so many ways to kill yourself.

As I already told you, I cannot accept what I did. I have realized in these past few days that I love you; but if I were logical, I should hate you; because you are everything I hate in myself, as revealed to me by my interrogation, to the highest degree. What really happened at that moment was that the character I should have been collapsed, and I was only the man I am. It wasn’t a question of cowardice or treachery but only a mysterious interruption of the will. Perhaps not even so mysterious — but that would take me too far from the point. All I need to say is that by killing myself I am putting things back in the order they should be.

Don’t be afraid. I don’t hate you, in fact I love you so much that just thinking of you reconciles me to life. If it had been possible, I surely would have lived and would have married you and we’d have been, as you so often say, so happy together. But it really wasn’t possible.

I have thought about the child that is to be born and have written two letters concerning him, one to my family and one to a lawyer friend. They’re decent people, after all, and although one can’t have illusions about their feelings toward you, I am sure they will do their duty. If they should refuse, which I think highly unlikely, don’t hesitate to go to law. My lawyer friend will come and see you and you can trust him.

Think of me sometimes. I hug you, your Mino.

P.S
. My lawyer friend’s name is Francesco Lauro. His address: Via Cola da Rienzo, 3.

As soon as I had read this letter, I buried myself under the covers, pulled the sheet over my head, and cried bitterly. I cannot say how long I cried. Every time I thought I had finished, a kind of violent, bitter laceration pierced my breast and made me burst out
sobbing again. I did not scream out loud, as I longed to, because I was afraid of attracting Mother’s attention. I wept silently and felt that this was the last time I would ever cry in my whole life. I wept for Mino, for myself, for my whole past and my whole future.

At last I got up, still crying, and feeling dazed and stupid, with my eyes blinded by tears, I began to dress hurriedly. Then I washed my eyes in cold water, made up my red, swollen face as best I could, and went out quietly without telling Mother.

I went to the local police station and had myself shown in to the commissioner. He listened to my story and then said skeptically, “Really, we haven’t heard anything about it. You’ll see, he will have changed his mind.”