Pleasure Page 24

  After a while, the ascent toward Schifanoja began. What immense melancholy in the evening! The first quarter of the moon shone in a delicate sky, slightly green, in which my eyes, or maybe my eyes only, still saw a faint appearance of rose, of the rosy hue that illuminated the ponds, down there in the forest.

  October 5. —He now knows that I love him; he knows it from my own mouth. I have no escape other than flight. This is the point I have reached.

  When he looks at me, there is deep in his eyes a singular glitter that was not there before. Today, in a moment when Francesca was not present, he took my hand and made as if to kiss it. I managed to withdraw it; and I saw his lips disturbed by a small tremor; I caught on his lips, for a second, almost the shape of a kiss not planted, an expression that has remained in my memory and that does not leave me, does not leave me!

  October 6. —On September 25, on the marble seat, in the arbutus woods, he said to me: “I know that you do not love me and that you cannot love me.” And on October 3: “You love me, you love me, you cannot not love me.”

  *

  In Francesca’s presence, he asked me if I would permit him to do a study of my hands. I consented. He will begin today.

  And I am apprehensive and anxious, as if I had to offer up my hands to an unknown torture.

  Nighttime. —The slow, sweet, indefinable torture has begun.

  He was drawing with black pencil and hematite pencil. My right hand was resting on a piece of velvet. On the table there was a Korean vase, yellowish and spotted like the skin of a python; and in the vase was a bunch of orchids, those grotesque multiform flowers that are Francesca’s sophisticated idiosyncrasy. Some green ones, of the almost animal green of certain locusts, hung down in the form of small Etruscan urns, with the lid slightly lifted. Others bore at the top of a silver stem a five-petaled flower with a small calyx at the center, yellow on the inside and white on the outside. Others bore a small purplish ampulla and, on the sides of the ampulla, two long filaments; and they brought to mind some minuscule king in fairy tales, greatly affected with goiter, and with a beard divided into two braids in the Oriental style. Still others bore a quantity of yellow flowers, similar to little angels in a long dress, hovering in flight with their arms raised high and their halo behind their head.

  I looked at them, when it seemed I could no longer bear the torment; and their unusual shapes engaged me for an instant, evoked a fleeting memory of their countries of origin, induced in my spirit some momentary sense of bewilderment. He drew without talking; his eyes went constantly from the paper to my hands; then, two or three times, they turned toward the vase. At a certain point, standing up, he said:

  “Forgive me.”

  And he took up the vase and took it farther away, to another table; I don’t know why.

  Then he began to draw with greater openness, as if liberated from an irritation.

  I cannot say what his eyes made me feel. It seemed to me that I was not offering to his scrutiny my naked hand, but rather a naked part of my soul; and that he had penetrated it with his gaze right down to the very base of it, uncovering all its innermost secrets. I had never felt such a sentiment from my hand; it had never appeared to me so alive, so expressive, so intimately tied to my heart, so dependent on my internal existence, so revealing. An imperceptible but constant vibration caused it to quiver under the influence of his gaze; and the vibration spread right to the depths of my being. At times the tremor became stronger and more visible; and if he was looking at me with too much intensity, I was gripped by an instinctive impulse to withdraw it; and sometimes this impulse was one of modesty.

  At times he gazed at me intently for a long time, without drawing; and I had the impression that he was drinking in some part of me with his pupils, or that he was caressing me with a caress softer than the velvet on which my hand was resting. Every now and then, while he was bent over the paper, perhaps instilling into the line whatever he had drunk from me, a faint smile drifted over his lips, but so light that I could barely glimpse it. And that smile, I don’t know why, gave me a tremor of pleasure in the upper part of my chest. Again, two or three times, I saw the shape of the kiss reappear on his mouth.

  Now and then, curiosity overcame me; and I asked: “Well?”

  Francesca was sitting at the piano, her back toward us; and was touching the keys, trying to remember Luigi Rameau’s gavotte, the Gavotte of the Yellow Ladies, which I played so often and which will remain the musical memory of my holiday at Schifanoja. She was muffling the notes with the pedal, and interrupting herself often. And those interruptions in the aria and in the cadences that were so familiar to me, which the ear would complete in advance, were another source of disquiet for me. Suddenly, she struck a key hard, repeatedly, as if incited by cranky impatience; and she got up and went to bend over the drawing.

  I looked at her. And I understood.

  This bitterness was the last thing I needed. God held aside this cruelest test for last. May His will be done.

  October 7. —I have but one single thought, one single desire, one single purpose: to leave, to leave, to leave.

  I am at the limit of my strength. I am swooning, I am dying from my love; and the unexpected revelation multiplies my mortal sadness. What does she think of me? What does she believe? Does she love him, then? And since when? And does he know? Or does he not even have the slightest suspicion? . . .

  My God, my God! I am losing my reason, my strength is abandoning me; my sense of reality is slipping away from me. At times my suffering pauses, similar to the lull that occurs during hurricanes when the furies of the elements are balanced in a terrible immobility, just to break out again with even greater violence. I find myself in a kind of stupefaction, my head heavy, my limbs tired and worn out as if someone had been beating me; and while the pain gathers itself to launch a new assault on me, I cannot manage to gather my will.

  What does she think of me? What does she think? What does she believe?

  To be snubbed by her, my best friend, the one who is dearest to me, the one to whom my heart was always open! It is the greatest bitterness; it is the cruelest test reserved by God for one who has made sacrifice the law of her life.

  I must talk to her before I leave. She must know everything from me, and I must know everything from her. This is my duty.

  Nighttime. —Toward five o’clock she proposed that we go for a ride in the carriage along the Rovigliano road. We went alone, in an open carriage. I thought, trembling: I will talk to her now. But the internal tremor deprived me of all courage. Was she waiting for me to speak? I don’t know.

  We remained silent for a long time, listening to the regular trot of the two horses, observing the trees and the hedges alongside the road. Now and then, with a brief phrase or a nod, she brought to my attention some detail of the autumnal countryside.

  All of autumn’s human enchantment was being disseminated at that hour. The oblique rays of evening lit up against the hill the diffuse, harmonious richness of dying foliage. Due to the constant blowing of the northeast wind with the new moon, premature death throes grip the trees of the coastal lands. Gold, amber, crocus, sulfur yellow, ocher, orange, bistre, copper, sea green, maroon, purple, crimson, the dullest hues, the most violent and most delicate shades mingled in a profound harmony that will never be surpassed in sweetness by any spring melody.

  Pointing out a cluster of black locust trees, she said: “Don’t they look as if they are full of flowers!”

  Already withered, they appeared to be of a slightly rose-colored white, like great almond trees in March, against the turquoise sky, which was already inclining toward ash-gray.

  After an interval of silence, I said, to begin with: “Manuel will come on Saturday, most likely. I’m awaiting his telegram, tomorrow. And we will depart on Sunday, with the morning train. You have been so good to me, these last days; I am so grateful to you . . .”<
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  My voice was trembling slightly; an immense tenderness swelled my heart. She took my hand and kept it in hers, without speaking, without looking at me. And we remained for a long time in silence, holding hands.

  She asked me: “How long will you stay at your mother’s?”

  I answered: “Until the end of the year, I hope; and maybe longer.”

  “So long?”

  Again, we fell silent. I already felt that I would not have the courage to confront the explanation; and I also felt that it was less necessary now. It seemed that she was drawing closer to me now, that she understood me, acknowledged me, was becoming my good sister. My sadness attracted her sadness, the way the moon attracts the waters of the sea.

  “Listen,” she said; because the sound of a chant, sung at the top of their voices by women of the village, was reaching us, a slow, extensive, religious song like a Gregorian chant.

  Farther on we saw the singers. They were emerging from a field of desiccated sunflowers, walking in line, like a sacred procession. And the sunflowers at the top of the long, leafless sulfur-yellow stalks bore their wide disks neither crowned with petals nor laden with seeds, but resembling in their bareness liturgical emblems, pale golden ostensories.

  My emotion grew. The chant behind us dispersed in the evening. We crossed Rovigliano, where the lights were already being lit; then we emerged again onto the main road. Behind us, the sound of the bells faded. A damp wind blew across the tops of the trees, which cast a bluish shadow on the white street, and an almost liquid shadow, as in water, in the air.

  “Aren’t you cold?” she asked me; and ordered the lackey to unfold a plaid blanket and the coachman to turn the horses around for the return journey.

  In the Rovigliano bell tower a bell still tolled, with slow tolls, as if for a religious rite; and it seemed to propagate, in the wind, a wave of frost along with the wave of sound. Of common accord we drew close to each other, pulling the blanket over our knees, infecting each other with the shiver of cold. And the carriage entered the village at a walking pace.

  “Whatever is that bell tolling for?” she murmured, in a voice that no longer seemed hers.

  I replied: “Unless I’m mistaken, the viaticum is coming out.”

  Farther on, in fact, we saw the priest enter a doorway while a cleric held a raised umbrella and two others held lit lanterns aimed directly on the doorposts, on the threshold. In that house one single window was illuminated, the window of the Christian on his deathbed awaiting the holy oil. Slight shadows appeared in the glow; on that rectangle of yellow light, there could be seen, faintly traced, the entire silent drama enacted around whoever is about to enter into death.

  One of the two servants asked in a low voice, bending down slightly from above: “Who is dying?” The person questioned gave the name of a woman, in his dialect.

  And I would have liked to attenuate the noise of the wheels on the cobblestones, I would have liked to silence our passage through that place where the breath of a spirit was about to depart. Certainly, Francesca had the same sentiment.

  The carriage reached the Schifanoja road, speeding up to a trot. The moon, encircled by auras, shone like an opal in diaphanous milk. A bank of clouds arose from the sea and slowly transformed into globe shapes, like fickle smoke. The choppy sea drowned all other sounds with its din. Never, I think, has a heavier sadness bound two souls.

  I felt a sense of warmth on my cold cheeks, and I turned to Francesca to see whether she had realized that I was crying. I met her eyes full of tears. And we remained mute, alongside each other, our mouths pressed shut, squeezing our hands together, knowing that we were crying for him; and the tears descended drop by drop, silently.

  Near Schifanoja I dried mine and she hers. Each of us hid our own weakness.

  He was waiting for us with Delfina, Muriella, and Ferdinando in the atrium. Why did I feel toward him, deep in my heart, an indistinct sense of diffidence, as if instinct were warning me of an obscure damage? What suffering did the future hold for me? Will I be able to escape the passion that attracts me, blinding me?

  Yet those few tears have done me so much good! I feel less oppressed, less parched, more trustful. And I feel an inexpressible tenderness repeating the last excursion to myself, while Delfina sleeps, content with all the crazy kisses I placed on her face, and while the melancholy of the moon, which earlier saw me cry, smiles on the windowpanes.

  October 8. —Did I sleep last night? Did I remain awake? I cannot say.

  Obscurely, terrible thoughts and images of unbearable suffering flashed through my brain like thick shadows; and my heart was subject to sudden jolts and palpitations, and I would find myself with my eyes open in the darkness, not knowing whether I had come out of a dream, or whether until then I had been awake, thinking and imagining. And this sort of ambiguous drowsiness, much more tormenting than insomnia, continued, continued, continued.

  Nonetheless, when I heard the voice of my daughter calling me in the morning, I did not answer; I pretended to be sleeping deeply, to avoid getting up, to remain there still, to procrastinate, to postpone for a while the inexorable certainty of necessary realities. The tortures of my thoughts and my imagination seemed less cruel than the unforeseen tortures my life is preparing for me in these last two days.

  After a short while, Delfina came in on tiptoe, holding her breath, to look at me; and she said to Dorothy, her voice agitated by a slight tremor: “She’s sleeping so deeply! Let’s not wake her.”

  Nighttime. —I seem not to have a drop of blood left in my veins. While ascending the stairs it felt that with every effort I made to climb one step, my blood and my life escaped through all my open-ended veins. I am weak like a dying woman . . .

  Courage, courage! There are still a few hours left; Manuel will arrive tomorrow; we will leave on Sunday; by Monday we will be at my mother’s.

  Earlier, I gave him back two or three books that he had lent me. In the book by Percy Shelley, at the end of a stanza, I underlined two lines with my nail and made a visible sign on the page. The lines said:

  And forget me, for I can never

  Be thine!13

  October 9, nighttime. —The entire day, the entire day he sought a moment to talk to me. His suffering was manifest. And the entire day I tried to escape from him, so that he could not cast into my soul other seeds of suffering, of desire, of regret, of remorse. I won; I was strong and heroic. I thank you, my Lord.

  This is the last night. We are leaving tomorrow morning. Everything will be over.

  Will everything be over? Deep down, a voice speaks to me; and I don’t understand it, but I know that it speaks to me of distant disasters, unknown yet inevitable, mysterious yet detestable as death. The future is dismal, like a field full of graves already dug and ready to receive cadavers; and on the field, here and there, pale lamps glow, which I can barely distinguish; and I don’t know whether they are burning to attract me toward danger or to signal a path of salvation for me.

  I read my journal again, attentively, slowly, from September 15, the day I arrived. What a difference between that first night and this last one!

  I wrote: “I will awaken in a kindly home, to Francesca’s cordial hospitality, in this Schifanoja, which has such beautiful roses and tall cypresses; and I will wake up with a few weeks of peace before me, twenty days of spiritual existence, maybe more.” Alas, where has the peace gone? And the roses, so beautiful, why were they also so treacherous? Perhaps I have opened my heart too much to fragrances, starting with that night, on the veranda, while Delfina was sleeping. Now the October moon is flooding the sky; and I see the tips of the cypresses through the windowpanes, black and unchanging, which were touching the stars that night.

  I can repeat one single phrase from that prelude in this wretched ending. “So much hair on my head, so many wheat spikes of pain in my destiny.” The spikes multiply, rise up
, undulate like a sea; and the iron to form the scythe has not yet been extracted from the mines.

  I am leaving. What will become of him, when I am far away? What will become of Francesca?

  Francesca’s change is still incomprehensible, inexplicable; it is an enigma that tortures and confuses me. She loves him! And since when? And does he know?

  My soul, confess the new misery. A new infection is poisoning you. You are jealous.

  But I am ready for ever more atrocious suffering; I know the agony that awaits me; I know that the torments of these days are nothing compared to the torments to come, to the terrible cross to which my thoughts will bind my soul in order to devour it. I am ready. I ask only for a respite, O Lord, a brief respite for the remaining hours. I will need all my strength tomorrow.

  How strangely, sometimes, in the different events of life, external circumstances resemble each other, correspond to each other! This evening, in the vestibule hall, it seemed as if I had returned to the evening of September 16, when I sang and played; when he began to invade me. Tonight, too, I was sitting at the piano, and the same dim light illuminated the hall and in the adjacent room Manuel and the marquis were playing cards; and I played the Gavotte of the Yellow Ladies, the one that Francesca likes so much, the one that on September 16 I heard being repeated while I was awake during the first indeterminate nocturnal restlessness.

  Certain fair-haired ladies, no longer young but just out of their youth, dressed in a dull silk the color of a yellow chrysanthemum, dance it with adolescent dancing partners, dressed in rose, somewhat listless; they carry in their hearts the image of other, more beautiful women, the flame of a new desire. And they dance it in a hall that is too large, which has all the walls covered in mirrors; they dance it upon a floor inlaid with amaranthus and cedar, beneath a great crystal chandelier in which the candles are about to burn out, but never do. And on their slightly faded mouths the women have a faint but never-dimming smile; and the gentlemen have an infinite boredom in their eyes. And a pendulum clock is always sounding the same hour; and the mirrors always repeat repeat repeat the same poses; and the gavotte continues continues continues, always sweet, always slow, always the same, eternally, like a prison sentence.