The Woman of Rome (9 page)

Offhand Gisella did not know what answer to make, and contented herself with refusing the cigarette. Then she glanced at her watch. “Adriana, we’ve got to go, it’s late,” she said. It was late, as
a matter of fact, and when we had said good-bye to Gino, we left the café.

When we were in the street Gisella said to me, “You’re about to do something absolutely crazy. I’d never marry a man like that.”

“Didn’t you like him?” I asked her anxiously.

“Not at all. Besides, you told me he was tall, but he’s almost shorter than you — then, he doesn’t look you straight in the face — he’s not natural at all, and he speaks in such an affected way that you can tell a mile off that he isn’t saying what he really thinks. Then all the airs and graces he gives himself, when he’s only a chauffeur!”

“But I love him!” I protested.

“Yes, but he doesn’t love you — and he’ll ditch you one day,” she replied calmly.

I was taken aback by this forecast; it was so assured and so exactly like one of Mother’s. I can say today that, leaving aside her ill will, Gisella had seen through Gino better in one hour than I did in many months. On his side, Gino’s opinion of Gisella was also malicious, but I must confess that later on it turned out to be not ill-founded. To tell the truth, my fondness for both of them, together with my inexperience, rendered me blind: it’s only too true that one is nearly always right in thinking badly of someone.

“That Gisella of yours,” he said, “is what we’d call a pick-up girl where I come from.”

I looked astonished. He explained. “A streetwalker. She’s got the manners and the character of one. She’s stuck-up because she dresses well — but how does she pay for her dresses?”

“Her fiancé gives them to her.”

“A different fiancé every night, I’ll bet.… Now, listen. It’s either me — or her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you can do as you like — but if you want to go on seeing her, you can count me out. Either me or her.”

I tried to dissuade him, but was unsuccessful. Obviously, he had been hurt by Gisella’s scornful contempt for him; but in his
indignant dislike of her there must have been something of the same faithfulness to the part he was playing as my fiancé that had made him suggest contributing to the costs of our setting up house together. He was as diligent as ever in the expression of sentiments he did not feel. “My fiancée must have nothing to do with bad women,” he repeated inflexibly. At last, being afraid our marriage would go up in smoke, I promised to see nothing more of Gisella, although I knew in my heart that I could not possibly keep my promise, because Gisella and I both worked at the same time, and in the same studio.

From that day on, I continued to see her unknown to Gino. When we were together, she seized every opportunity of referring to my engagement in the most ironic and deprecating terms. I had been so naive as to tell her all kinds of little things about my relations with Gino; and she used these confidences to wound me and to show me my present life and my future in a derisory light. Her friend, Riccardo, who seemed to make no distinction between Gisella and me, and looked on us both as easy girls unworthy of respect, lent himself willingly to Gisella’s game and doubled the dose of her mockery and cruelty. But he did it good-naturedly and stupidly, because, as I have said, he was neither clever nor really bad. My engagement was only a joking matter for him, a pastime. But Gisella, who found my virtue a constant reproof, attacked me bitter and insistently, trying in every way she could to mortify and humiliate me.

She touched me chiefly on my weakest point: my clothes. “Really,” she used to say, “I feel really ashamed to be seen with you today.” Or else, “Riccardo would never let me go out in the kind of things you put on — would you, Riccardo? Love shows itself in these things, my dear!” I was ingenuous enough to rise immediately to the bait. I began to lose my temper. I stood up for Gino and, though with less conviction, for my clothes, and always came off the worst, red in the face, with my eyes full of tears.

One day Riccardo, moved to pity, said, “I’m going to give Adriana a present today. Come along, Adriana. I want to give you a purse.” But Gisella opposed him violently, saying, “No, Riccardo!
No presents! She’s got her Gino, let him give her presents.” Riccardo, who had made the suggestion out of good nature, but without imagining the pleasure his gift would have caused me, yielded at once. And that very afternoon, out of pique, I went off to buy myself a handbag with my own money. Next day I met the two of them with my purse under my arm, and told them it was a present from Gino. This was the only victory I had in all the deplorable squabbling. And it cost me very dear, because it was a nice purse and I paid a great deal for it.

When Gisella imagined that by dint of sarcasm, humiliation, and sermonizing she had worn me down sufficiently, she approached me and told me she had a suggestion to make. “But let me tell you the whole story,” she added. “Don’t be your usual pigheaded self before hearing what I’ve got to say.”

“Go on,” I said.

“You know I’m fond of you,” she began. “You’re like a sister to me. With your good looks, you could have everything you want — I hate seeing you go around so shamefully dressed that you look like a beggar. Now, listen.” She stopped and looked at me in all solemnity. “There’s a gentleman, a real gentleman, very distinguished, very decent, who has seen you and takes an interest in you. He’s married but his family lives in the provinces. He’s a big shot in the police,” she added in an undertone, “and if you want to get to know him, I can introduce you. Like I said, he’s very elegant, very serious, and you can be quite sure no one will ever get to know anything about it. He’s very busy, anyway, and you’d only see him two or three times a month, if that. He doesn’t object to your continuing with Gino if you like — doesn’t mind your marrying him, but in exchange he’ll see to it that you live an easier life than you do now. What about it?”

“Thank him very much,” I said frankly, “but I can’t accept.”

“Why not?” she asked. Her astonishment was sincere.

“Because I can’t. I love Gino and if I accepted, I couldn’t look him in the face.”

“Don’t be silly! When I tell you Gino needn’t know anything about it!”

“That’s just why.”

“To think,” she said, speaking as if to herself, “that if someone had put me onto anything like this.… What am I to say to him? That you’ll think it over?”

“No, no — tell him I can’t accept.”

“You’re a fool,” said Gisella, disappointed, “that’s giving good luck a kick in the pants.”

She said many other things of the same nature, which I answered in the same way, and at last went away very dissatisfied.

I had refused the offer on an impulse, without thinking over what it implied. Then, when I was alone, I felt almost regretful: perhaps Gisella was right and that was the only way to obtain all the things I needed so desperately. But I drove the thought away at once, and clung even more closely to the idea of marriage and the regular if modest way of life I promised myself. The sacrifice I had apparently made now obliged me to get married at all costs, even more insistently than before.

But I could not repress a certain feeling of vanity and told Mother of Gisella’s offer. I thought I would be giving her a twofold pleasure — I knew she was proud of my looks and still clung to her theories — this offer flattered her pride and strengthened her convictions. But I was astonished at the state of agitation into which my tale threw her. Her eyes kindled with a greedy light, her whole face flushed with pleasure.

“Who is it?” she asked at last.

“A gentleman,” I answered. I was ashamed to tell her it was someone in the police.

“Did you say he was very rich?”

“Yes. Apparently he earns a lot.”

She did not dare to say what she was obviously thinking, that I had been wrong to turn down the offer.

“He’s seen you and takes an interest in you? Why don’t you let her introduce him to you?”

“What’s the point, since I don’t want him?”

“Pity he’s already married.”

“I wouldn’t want to meet him if he wasn’t.”

“There are so many ways of going about things,” said Mother. “He’s rich, he likes you, one thing leads to another — he could help you, without asking for anything in return.”

“No, no,” I replied, “those people don’t give anything for nothing.”

“You never know.”

“No, no,” I repeated.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Mother, shaking her head. “Still, Gisella’s a very nice girl and is really fond of you. Any other girl would be jealous and wouldn’t have mentioned it to you. You can see she’s a real friend.”

After my refusal, Gisella did not talk of her gentleman friend anymore, and to my surprise she even stopped teasing me about my engagement. I continued to see her and Riccardo on the sly. But I mentioned her to Gino more than once in the hope they would make up, because I did not like these underhand dealings. But he never even allowed me to finish what I was saying, and only repeated his expressions of hatred, swearing that if ever he found out I was seeing her, everything would be over between us. He meant what he said, although I had an idea that he would not have been sorry for an excuse to break off the engagement. I told Mother of Gino’s dislike for Gisella and she said, almost without spite, “He doesn’t want you to see her because he’s afraid you’ll compare the rags you go about in with the clothes her fiancé gives her.”

“No, he says it’s because Gisella’s bad news.”

“He’s bad news! I wish he’d find out you’re seeing Gisella and really would break off the engagement.”

I was terrified. “But Mother!” I exclaimed. “You’d never go and tell him!”

“No, no,” she replied hastily, with a trace of bitterness. “It’s your business, and I’ve got nothing to do with it.”

“If you were to tell him,” I said passionately, “it would be the last you’d ever see of me.”

It was St. Martin’s summer and the days were mild and clear. One day Gisella told me she and Riccardo and a friend of his had planned an outing by car. They needed another woman to make
up the foursome and had thought of me. I was delighted to accept because I was always on the lookout for any pleasure to lighten the misery of my days. I told Gino I had to pose for a few extra hours, and in the morning, fairly early, met the others by appointment on the other side of Ponte Milvio.

The car was already waiting and when I drew near, Gisella and Riccardo, who were sitting in front, kept their places, but Riccardo’s friend jumped out and came to meet me. He was young, of medium height, bald, with a sallow face, large dark eyes, an aquiline nose, and a wide mouth whose corners turned up as if he were smiling. He was smartly but quietly dressed, quite differently from Riccardo, with a dark gray jacket and lighter gray trousers, a starched collar and black tie with a pearl tiepin. He had a kind voice and his eyes looked kind, too, but at the same time sad and disillusioned. He was very polite, even ceremonious. Gisella introduced him to me as Stefano Astarita, and I immediately felt sure that he must be the gentleman whose gallant suggestions she had conveyed to me. But I was not displeased at meeting him, because his suggestions had not really been offensive and from a certain point of view were even flattering. I gave him my hand, and he kissed it with a strange air of devotion, an almost painful intensity. Then I got into the car, he sat beside me, and we set off.

While the car sped along the bare, sunny road between parched fields, we hardly spoke. I was happy at being in a car, happy over the trip, happy at the fresh air that caressed my cheeks, and I never grew tired of looking at the country. It was only the second or third time in my life that I had been out for a real trip by car and I was almost afraid of missing something. I opened my eyes and tried to see as many things as possible — haystacks, farmhouses, trees, fields, hills, woods — thinking all the time that months, perhaps years, would pass before I could go on another such trip, and that I ought to get all the details by heart so that I would preserve a perfect memory of it. But Astarita, who was sitting stiffly beside me at a little distance, seemed to have eyes for me alone. His sad, longing gaze never left my face and figure, and his look had the effect on me of a hand touching me here
and there. I do not say that this attention annoyed me, but it did embarrass me. Gradually I felt obliged to take some notice of him and talk to him. He sat with his hands on his knees and I could see that he was wearing a wedding ring and another ring with a diamond.

“What a lovely ring!” I exclaimed clumsily.

He lowered his eyes and looked at the ring, without moving his hand. “It was my father’s. I took it from his finger when he died,” he said.

“O!” I said, as if to apologize. And added, pointing to the wedding ring, “Are you married?”

“Indeed I am,” he replied with grim complacency. “I’ve got a wife — children — everything.”

“Is your wife beautiful?” I asked shyly.

“Not as beautiful as you,” he replied without smiling, in a very low, emphatic voice, as if he were stating some important truth. And, with the hand on which he wore the ring, he tried to take my hand. But I pulled mine away at once.

“Do you live with her?” I asked at random.

“No,” he answered. “She’s living in —” and he mentioned a far-off provincial town, “and I’m living here — alone — I hope you’ll come to visit me.”

I pretended I had not heard the information he had given me in a tragic and almost convulsive fashion.

“Why? Don’t you like living with your wife?” I asked.

“We are legally separated,” he said, grimacing. “I was only a boy when I got married. The marriage was arranged by my mother. You know how they do these things — a girl of good family, with a handsome dowry. The parents fix everything up and it’s the children who have to get married. Live with my wife? Would you live with a woman like this?” He took his wallet from his pocket, opened it, and handed me a photograph. I saw two dark, pale children, looking like twins, dressed in white. A little dark, pale woman, with close-set eyes like an owl’s and a malicious expression, stood behind them placing her hands on their shoulders. I returned it to him. He put it away in his wallet.