Pleasure Read online

  But the obscure jealousy still stung him. That tenuous creature, so wound around her mother, so intimately mingled with her soul, seemed an enemy to him; she seemed to him to be an insurmountable obstacle that rose up against his love, against his desire, against his hope. He was not jealous of the husband and he was jealous of the daughter. He wanted to possess not the body but the soul of that woman; and to possess her entire soul, with all her tenderness, all her joys, all her fears, all her anguish, all her dreams, in other words, the entire life of her soul; and to be able to say: I am the life of her life.

  The daughter, instead, had that possession, uncontested, absolute, continuous. It seemed as if the mother lacked some essential element of her existence when her adored child was far from her even for a short time. A sudden, very visible transfiguration took place on her face when she heard the childish voice after a brief absence. Sometimes, involuntarily, due to some secret correspondence, almost, one could say, by the laws of some common vital rhythm, she imitated the gesture of her daughter, a smile, a pose, a position of the head. Sometimes she had, at quiet times or when her daughter slept, moments of such intense contemplation that she seemed to have lost consciousness of every other thing, in order to become similar to the being that she was contemplating. When she spoke to her adored child, the word was a caress and her mouth lost every trace of pain. When she received kisses, a tremor shook her lips and her eyes filled with an indescribable joy, between the palpitating lashes, like the eyes of a beatified person at being taken up to heaven. When she conversed with others, or listened, she seemed every now and then to have a kind of sudden suspension of thought, like a momentary absence of spirit; and it was for her daughter, for her, always for her.

  Who could ever break that chain? Who could conquer even a minimal part of that heart? Andrea suffered as from an irremediable loss, as from a necessary renouncement, as from hope that has died. Even now, even now, was the daughter not removing something from him?

  In fact, in play, she wanted to force her mother to remain kneeling. She was leaning on her and pressing her arms around her neck, shouting and laughing:

  —No, no, no; you can’t get up.

  And as her mother opened her mouth to talk, she placed her small hands on her mouth to stop her from talking; and made her laugh; and then she blindfolded her with her braid; and would not stop, excited and elated by this game.

  Watching her, Andrea had the impression that with those actions she was shaking from her mother and destroying and dispersing everything that the reading of the verses had perhaps caused to blossom in her spirit.

  When finally Donna Maria managed to free herself from the sweet tyrant, she said to him, reading his vexation in his face:

  —Forgive me, Andrea. Sometimes Delfina has these silly whims.

  Then, with a light hand, she tidied the folds of her skirt. A slight flame suffused the area beneath her eyes, and she was also breathing slightly irregularly. She added, smiling a smile which in that unusual animation of her blood was of remarkable luminosity:

  —And forgive her, as a reward for her unconscious augur; because earlier she had the inspiration of placing a nuptial crown on your poem, which sings of a nuptial communion. The symbol is a seal of the alliance.

  —To Delfina and to you, my thanks, replied Andrea, who had heard her calling him for the first time not by his ancestral title but simply by name.

  That unexpected familiarity and the kind words brought confidence back to his soul. Delfina had run on ahead up one of the avenues.

  —These verses therefore are a spiritual document, continued Donna Maria. —You must give them to me, so that I may keep them always.

  He wanted to tell her: They come to you today, naturally. They are yours, they speak of you, they entreat you. But instead he simply said:

  —I will give them to you.

  They took up their walk again toward the Cybele. Before leaving the herm’s dominion, Donna Maria turned toward it, as if she had heard some call; and her forehead seemed very pensive. Andrea asked her with humbleness:

  —What are you thinking about?

  She replied:

  —I’m thinking about you.

  —What are you thinking of me?

  —I’m thinking about your earlier life, which I do not know about. Have you suffered very much?

  —I have sinned very much.

  —And loved very much, also?

  —I don’t know. Perhaps love is not as I experienced it. Perhaps I must still love. I don’t know, truly.

  She fell silent. They walked alongside each other for a stretch. To the right of the path grew tall laurel trees, interposed by a cypress at regular intervals; and the sea sparkled here and there in the background, between dainty foliage, as blue as flax blossoms. On the left against the embankment there was a kind of wall, similar to the backrest of a very long stone seat, bearing the Ateletas’ escutcheon5 repeated along its entire length, alternating with an alerion.6 Below each escutcheon and each alerion was to be found a sculpted mask, from the mouth of which a small water pipe emerged, emptying itself into underlying basins that had the shape of sarcophagi placed alongside each other, decorated with mythological stories in bas-relief. There must have been one hundred mouths, because the avenue was named One Hundred Fountains; but some no longer dispensed water, having become clogged over time, while others barely dripped. Many shields were broken and moss had covered the heraldic device; many alerions had been decapitated; the figures in bas-relief appeared amid the moss like pieces of silver imperfectly concealed beneath an old torn velvet cloth. In the basins, upon the water that was clearer and greener than an emerald, maidenhair fern trembled or a few rose leaves floated, fallen from the shrubs above; and the surviving water pipes emitted a hoarse, gentle sound that flowed over the sound of the sea, like a melody over its accompaniment.

  —Can you hear that? Donna Maria asked, stopping, straining her ears, captivated by the enchantment of those sounds. —The music of bitter water and of sweet water!

  She stood in the middle of the path, bending slightly toward the fountains, attracted more by the melody, with her index finger lifted to her mouth in the involuntary gesture of those who fear that their listening will be disturbed. Andrea, who was nearer the basins, saw her stand out against a background of foliage as delicate and graceful as an Umbrian painter could have placed behind an Annunciation or a Nativity.

  —Maria, murmured the convalescent, whose heart was swollen with tenderness. —Maria, Maria . . .

  He felt an inexpressible voluptuousness in mingling her name with that music of the waters. She pressed her finger against her mouth, indicating that he must be quiet, without looking at him.

  —Forgive me—he said, overcome by emotion—but I cannot stand it anymore. It is my soul that is calling you!

  A strange sentimental excitement had overcome him; all the lyrical peaks of his spirit had ignited and were flaming; the hour, the light, the place, all surrounding things suggested love to him; from the farthest end of the sea right to the humble maidenhair fern of the fountains, a single magical circle was being drawn; and he felt that its center was that woman.

  —You will never know—he added, his voice low, almost fearing to offend her—you will never know the extent to which my soul is yours.

  She became even paler, as if all the blood in her veins had gathered in her heart. She said nothing; she avoided looking at him. She called, her voice agitated:

  —Delfina!

  Her daughter did not answer, perhaps because she had gone deeper into the thicket at the end of the path.

  —Delfina! she repeated, more loudly, with a kind of alarm.

  In the wait, after her shout, one could hear the two waters singing in a silence that seemed to expand.

  —Delfina!

  A rustling came from amid the foliage, as if from the pas
sing of a roebuck; and the little girl burst forth nimbly from the depths of the laurel trees, carrying her straw hat full of small red fruit that she had gathered from an arbutus. She was red from the effort and from running; many thorns had become stuck in the wool of her tunic; and some leaves were entangled in the rebellion of her hair.

  —Oh, Mommy, come, come with me!

  She wanted to drag her mother to gather the rest of the fruit.

  —Down there there’s a wood; so so many! Come with me, Mommy, come!

  —No, love, please. It’s late.

  —Come!

  —But it’s late.

  —Come! Come!

  This insistence forced Donna Maria to yield and allow herself to be led by the hand.

  —There is a way to get to the arbutus wood without passing through the thicket, Andrea said.

  —Did you hear, Delfina? There is a better way.

  —No, Mommy! Come with me!

  Delfina pulled her between the wild laurels on the side facing the sea. Andrea followed; and he was happy to be able to gaze freely upon the figure of his beloved before him, to drink her in with his eyes, to be able to watch all her different movements and rhythms, constantly interrupted by the passage along the uneven slope, among the obstacles formed by trunks, between the hindrances of the saplings, between the resistance of the branches. But while his eyes fed on those things, his mind retained one pose, one expression, above all the others. Oh, the pallor, the pallor he had just seen, when he had uttered those subdued words! And the indefinable sound of that voice which had called Delfina!

  —Is it still far off? Donna Maria asked.

  —No, no, Mommy. Here we are, we’re there already.

  A kind of shyness invaded the young man at the end of the walk. After those words, his eyes had not met hers even once. What was she thinking? What was she feeling? With what expression in her eyes would she look at him?

  —Here we are! shouted the little girl.

  The laurel thicket was indeed thinning out and the sea appeared more clearly; suddenly the thicket of Arbutus andrachne revealed itself, glowing red like a grove of earthly coral, bearing at the tips of their branches abundant bunches of flowers.

  —How wonderful! murmured Donna Maria.

  The beautiful grove flowered and bore fruit within an inlet curved like a hippodrome, deep and sun-drenched, in which all the mildness of that shore was delightfully assembled. The slender trunks of the shrubs, mostly vermilion, some yellow, rose up tall, bearing large shiny leaves, green above and pale blue below, immobile in the quiet air. The florid clusters, similar to bunches of lily of the valley, white and rose-colored and innumerable, hung from the tops of the young branches; the red and orange berries hung from the tops of the old branches. Every plant was laden with them; and the magnificent pomp of the flowers, the fruit, the leaves, and the stems displayed itself against the vivid azure of the sea with the intensity and incredibility of a dream, like the remains of some legendary kitchen garden.

  —How wonderful!

  Donna Maria entered slowly, no longer held by the hand by Delfina, who was running around crazy with joy, with one sole desire: to strip the entire bush.

  —Can you forgive me? Andrea dared to say. —I did not wish to offend you. Rather, seeing you so elevated, so far from me, so pure, I thought that I would never ever speak to you of my secret, that I would never ask your consent, nor would I ever cross your path. Since I met you, I have dreamed very much of you, by day and by night, but without any hope or any goal. I know that you do not love me and that you cannot love me. And yet, believe me, I would renounce all the promises of life, just to live in a small part of your heart . . .

  She continued to walk slowly, beneath the brilliant trees that spread their dangling bunches, their delicate white and rose-colored clusters above her head.

  —Believe me, Maria, believe me. If they told me now to abandon all vanity and all pride, every desire and every ambition, any dearest memory of the past, the sweetest future enticement, and to live uniquely in you and for you, without any tomorrow, without any yesterday, without any other bond, without any other preference, out of the world, entirely lost in your being, forever, until death, I would not hesitate, I would not hesitate. Believe me. You have looked at me, spoken with me, and smiled and answered; you have sat beside me, and you have been silent and thought; and you have lived, alongside me, your internal existence, that invisible and inaccessible existence that I do not know, that I will never know; and your soul has possessed mine right down to the depths, without changing, without even knowing it, like the sea drinks a river . . . What does my love do for you? What does love do for you? It is a word that has been profaned too many times, a sentiment that has been falsified too many times. I do not offer you love. But will you not accept the humble tribute of religion that the spirit addresses to a nobler and higher being?

  She continued to walk slowly, her head bent, extremely pale, bloodless, toward a seat that was placed at the edge of the wood facing the shore. As soon as she reached it, she sat down with a kind of abandon, in silence; and Andrea sat down near her, still talking to her.

  The seat was a large semicircle of white marble, edged along its length with a smooth, shining backrest, with no other ornament but for a lion’s paw carved at each end serving as an armrest; and it recalled those ancient ones upon which, in the Archipelago islands and in Magna Graecia and in Pompeii, women lazed and listened to poets reading in the shade of oleanders, overlooking the sea. Here the arbutus bushes cast shade more with flowers and fruit than with leaves; and the coral stems, contrasting with the marble, appeared more vivid.

  —I love all those things that you love; you possess all those things that I seek. The mercy that came from you would be dearer to me than the passion of any other woman. Your hand on my heart would, I feel, cause a second youth to germinate, much purer than the first, much stronger. That eternal oscillation which is my interior life, would find repose in you; it would find calmness and security in you. My restless and discontented spirit, tormented by attractions and revulsions and by pleasure and disgust in constant conflict, eternally, irremediably alone, would find in yours a refuge from the doubt that contaminates all ideality and defeats all will and diminishes all strength. Others are unhappier; but I don’t know if there has been a man less happy than I, in the world.

  He was making Obermann’s words7 his own. In that kind of sentimental elation, all gloomy thoughts rose to his lips; and the very sound of his voice, humble and slightly trembling, increased his emotion.

  —I dare not express my thoughts. Being near you over these few days since I met you, I have had moments of such complete oblivion that it almost seemed to me to have returned to the earliest days of my convalescence, when I was experiencing the deep sentiment of another life. The past, the future, were no more; rather it was as if the one had never been and the other would never be. The world was like a shapeless and obscure illusion. Something like a vague but great dream was rising up in my soul: a fluttering veil, sometimes opaque, sometimes diaphanous, through which now and again the intangible treasure of happiness shone. What did you know about me, in those moments? Perhaps you were far away, in your soul; very, very far! But still, your visible presence alone was enough to intoxicate me; and I felt it flow in my veins like blood and invade my spirit like a superhuman sentiment.

  She was silent, with her head erect, immobile, her torso upright, her hands placed on her knees in the position of one who is keeping herself awake with a fierce effort of courage against a sense of languor that invades her. But her mouth, the expression of her mouth, with lips fruitlessly and fiercely pressed together, betrayed a sort of painful voluptuousness.

  —I dare not express my thoughts. Maria, Maria, do you forgive me? Do you forgive me?

  Two small hands, from behind the seat, stretched out to blindfold her and a voice palp
itating with joy shouted:

  —Guess who! Guess who!

  She smiled, leaning against the backrest because Delfina was pulling her, holding her fingers on her eyelids, and Andrea saw lucidly, with a strange clarity, that light smile dispersing on that mouth all the obscure contrast of her earlier expression, deleting every trace that could signal to him the indication of consent or confession, routing every dubious shadow that could convert itself into a glimmer of hope in his heart. And he was left like a man who has been deceived by a cup that he thought was almost brimming, which offers nothing but air to his thirst.

  —Guess who!

  The daughter was covering the mother’s head with hard and rapid kisses, in a kind of frenzy, perhaps hurting her slightly.

  —I know who you are, I know who you are, the blindfolded woman said. —Let me go!

  —What will you give me, if I let you go?

  —Whatever you want.

  —I want a mule to carry my berries home! Come and see how many I’ve got!

  She went around the seat and took her mother by the hand. She stood up with some difficulty; and once on her feet, she blinked several times as if to clear a dazzle from her vision. Andrea also stood up. They both followed Delfina.

  The terrible creature had stripped almost half the thicket of its fruit. The lower plants no longer displayed even one berry on their branches. She had used a cane found heaven knows where, and had collected a prodigious quantity, lastly gathering all the berries into a single heap that resembled a pile of burning coals for the intensity of their hue on the brown earth. But the bunches of flowers had not attracted her: they hung, white, pink, faintly yellow, almost diaphanous, more delicate than the clusters of an acacia, gentler than lily of the valley, immersed in the indistinct light as in the transparence of an amber milk.