Pleasure Page 26

  —So the season is already in full swing?

  —This year it’s earlier than ever, as far as sinners and impeccables are concerned.

  —Which of the impeccable ladies are already in Rome?

  —Almost all of them: Moceto, Viti, the two Daddis, Micigliano, Miano, Massa d’Albe, Lùcoli . . .

  —I saw the Lùcoli woman earlier from my window. She was driving. I also saw your cousin with the Viti woman.

  —My cousin is here until tomorrow. Tomorrow she is going back to Frascati. On Wednesday she is throwing a party at the villa, a type of garden party, in the manner of the Princess of Sagan. It’s not obligatory to wear any particular fancy dress, but all the ladies will wear Louis XV or Directoire hats. We’re going.

  —You’re not leaving Rome for now, are you? Grimiti asked Sperelli.

  —I’ll stay until the beginning of November. Then I’m going to France for two weeks to restock with horses. And I’ll come back here toward the end of the month.

  —By the way, Leonetto Lanza is selling Campomorto, said Ludovico. —You know him: he is a magnificent animal and a great jumper. You’d be well advised to buy him.

  —How much?

  —Fifteen thousand, I think.

  —We’ll see.

  —Leonetto is about to get married. He got engaged this summer at Aix-les-Bains to the Ginosa girl.

  —I forgot to tell you—said Musèllaro—that Galeazzo Secìnaro says hello. We came back together. I wish I could tell you everything he got up to on the trip! He’s in Palermo now, but he’s coming to Rome in January.

  —Gino Bommìnaco also sends his greetings, added Barbarisi.

  —Ha, ha! exclaimed the duke, laughing. —Andrea, you must get Gino to tell you about his adventure with Donna Giulia Moceto . . . You’re in a situation, I believe, to be able to give us a few explanations in this regard.

  Ludovico also began to laugh.

  —I’ve heard—said Giulio Musèllaro—that here in Rome you wrought awe-inspiring havoc. Gratulor tibi!4

  —Tell me, tell me about the adventure, Andrea urged with curiosity.

  —You have to hear it from Gino, to have a good laugh. You know his powers of mimicry. You have to see his face when he reaches the climax. It’s a tour de force!

  —I’ll hear it from him, too—insisted Andrea, piqued by curiosity—but tell me about it in brief, please.

  —Here it is, in a few words, Ruggero Grimiti assented, placing his cup on the table, setting about recounting the anecdote without scruples and without reticence, with that astonishing ability with which young gentlemen make public the sins of their ladies and those of others. —Last spring (I don’t know if you noticed) Gino was paying court to Donna Giulia, extremely ardent and very visible court. At Le Capannelle racecourse, this courtship changed to a very spirited flirtation. Donna Giulia was on the point of capitulating; and Gino, as usual, was all aflame. The opportunity presented itself. Giovanni Moceto departed for Florence, to take his worn-out horses onto the turf at Le Cascine. One evening, one of the usual Wednesday evenings, indeed the last Wednesday evening, Gino thought that his great moment had come; and he waited for everyone to leave, one by one, and for the salon to remain empty, and finally to be alone with her . . .

  —Here—interrupted Barbarisi—we would need Bommìnaco now. He is inimitable. You need to hear him recount, in Neapolitan dialect, the description of the ambient, and the analysis of his state of being, and then the reproduction of the psychological and the physiological moment, as he says, in his way. It’s irresistibly funny.

  —So—continued Ruggero—after the prelude, which you will hear from him, in the languor and the erotic excitement of a fin de soirée, he knelt in front of Donna Giulia, who was sitting in a very low armchair, an armchair “stuffed with complicity.” Donna Giulia was already drowning in sweetness, defending herself weakly; and Gino’s hands were getting ever more daring, while she was already sighing the sigh of surrender . . . But oh dear, from an attitude of extreme daring, those hands snapped back with an instinctual movement as if they had touched the skin of a snake, something revolting . . .

  Andrea broke out in peals of laughter so frank that his hilarity spread to all his friends. He had understood, because he knew. But Giulio Musèllaro said, with great concern, to Grimiti:

  —Explain it to me! Explain it to me!

  —You explain, said Grimiti to Sperelli.

  —All right—explained Andrea, still laughing—do you know Théophile Gautier’s most beautiful poem, the Musée secret?

  —O douce barbe feminine!5 recited Musèllaro, remembering. —And so?

  —And so, Giulia Moceto is a very delicate blonde; but if you had the luck, which I hope you do, to draw aside le drap de la blonde qui dort,6 certainly you would not find, as did Philippe de Bourgogne, the golden fleece.7 She is, they say, sans plume et sans duvet8 like the marble sculptures of Paros, of which Gautier sings.

  —Ah, a very rare rarity, which I appreciate greatly, said Musèllaro.

  —A rarity that we know how to appreciate, repeated Andrea. —But Gino Bommìnaco is an ingenue, a simpleton.

  —Listen, listen to the rest—said Barbarisi.

  —Oh, if only the hero were here! exclaimed the Duke of Grimiti. —The story told by another mouth loses all its taste. Just imagine that the surprise was so great, and the confusion so great, as to extinguish any fire. Gino had to withdraw prudently, with the absolute impossibility of going any further. Can you imagine? Can you imagine the terrible mortification of a man who, having managed to obtain everything, can take nothing? Donna Giulia was green; Gino pretended to be listening out for noises, to procrastinate, hoping . . . Oh, the story of the retreat is a marvel! Anabasis9 was nothing compared with this! You’ll hear about it.

  —And did Donna Giulia become Gino’s lover after that? asked Andrea.

  —Never! Poor Gino will never eat of that fruit; and I think that he will die of regret, of desire, of curiosity. He vents by laughing about it with his friends, but watch him well, when he talks about it. Underneath the joking, there’s anguish.

  —Nice topic for a short story, said Andrea to Musèllaro. —Don’t you think? A short story entitled “The Obsessed” . . . One could make something very refined and intense. The man, continually possessed, pursued, tormented by the fantastic vision of that rare form he has touched and therefore imagined but never enjoyed, nor seen with his eyes, consumes himself with passion little by little and goes mad. He cannot remove from his fingers the impression of that contact; but the first instinctual revulsion has mutated into an inextinguishable ardor . . . One could, in short, make a work of art based on the real event; accomplish something like an erotic Hoffmann story, written with the plastic precision of a Flaubert.

  —Try.

  —Who knows! Anyway, I’m sorry for poor Gino. The Moceto woman has, I’ve heard, the most beautiful belly of all Christendom . . .

  —I like that “I’ve heard”—interrupted Ruggero Grimiti.

  —. . . the belly of an infertile Pandora, an ivory bowl, a radiant shield, speculum voluptatis;10 and the most perfect belly button that one has ever seen, a small rounded belly button, as in the Clodion’s terra-cotta statuettes, a pure seal of grace, an eye that is blind but more splendid than a star, voluptatis ocellus,11 to celebrate in an epigram worthy of Greek anthology.

  Andrea was becoming excited by these discussions. Supported by his friends, he entered into a dialogue on female beauty, much less restrained than Firenzuola’s. His sensuality of old was reawakening in him, after his long abstinence; and he spoke with intimate and profound fervor, as a great connoisseur of the nude, priding himself on his more colorful words, drawing fine distinctions like an artist and a libertine. And, in truth, the dialogue of those four young men amid those enchanting Bacchic tapestries, had it been recorded, could well have been th
e Breviarium Arcanum12 of elegant corruption at this turn of the nineteenth century.

  The day was ebbing away; but the air was still permeated with light, retaining light within it the way a sponge retains water. Through the window one could see, on the horizon, an orange strip against which the cypresses on Monte Mario were clearly traced, like the teeth on a great ebony rake. Now and then one could hear the cries of crows flying in flocks to reunite on the roofs of Villa Medici, then descending to Villa Borghese, in the small valley of sleep.

  —What are you doing this evening? Barbarisi asked Andrea.

  —I really don’t know.

  —Come with us, then. We’re having dinner at the Doney, at eight, at the Teatro Nazionale. We’re inaugurating the new restaurant, rather, the cabinets particuliers13 of the new restaurant, where at least we will not have to resign ourselves,14 after the oysters, to the aphrodisiac uncovering of Judith and of the Bather, as at the Caffè di Roma.15 Academic pepper upon fake oysters . . .

  —Come with us, come with us, urged Giulio Musèllaro.

  —It’s the three of us—added the duke—with Giulia Arici, the Silva girl, and Maria Fortuna. Ah, a wonderful idea! Come with Clara Green.

  —Wonderful idea! repeated Ludovico.

  —And where do I find Clara Green?

  —At the Albergo d’Europa, near here, in Piazza di Spagna. A card from you would make her happy. You can be sure that she would abandon any previous engagements.

  Andrea liked the proposal.

  —It would be better—he said—for me to pay her a visit. She’s probably back by now. Don’t you think so, Ruggero?

  —Get dressed and we’ll go immediately.

  They went out. Clara Green had just returned to the hotel. She greeted Andrea with a childlike joy. Most certainly, she would have preferred to dine alone with him; but she accepted the invitation without hesitation; she wrote a note to free herself from a previous commitment; she sent the key of a theater box to a friend. She seemed happy. She began to tell him about a number of her sentimental affairs; she asked him numerous sentimental questions; she swore to him that she had never been able to forget him. She held his hands while talking.

  —I love you more than any words can say, Andrew . . .16

  She was young still. With her pure, straight profile, crowned with blond hair, parted above her forehead in a low style, she resembled a Greek beauty in a keepsake.17 She had a light dusting of aesthetic cultivation, left to her by her love for the poet-painter Adolphus Jeckyll,18 who followed John Keats in poetry and Holman Hunt in painting, composing obscure sonnets and painting subjects taken from the Vita Nuova. She had “posed” for a Sibylla palmifera19 and for a Madonna of the Lily.20 She had also once “posed” for Andrea, for a head study he required for his etching of Isabetta in Boccaccio’s story.21 She was therefore ennobled by art. But, deep down, she did not possess any spiritual quality; on the contrary, ultimately, that certain exalted sentimentalism she affected, to be encountered not uncommonly in Englishwomen of pleasure, and which makes a strange contrast with the depravations of their lasciviousness, rendered her somewhat tedious.

  —Who would have thought we would be together again, Andrew!22

  After an hour, Andrea left her and returned to Palazzo Zuccari, ascending the staircase that leads from Piazza Mignanelli to the Trinità. The noise of the city in the mild October evening reached the solitary staircase. Stars scintillated in a humid, clear sky. Down below at the Casteldelfino house, on the other side of a small gate, shrubs immersed in a mysterious dim light cast indistinct fluttering shadows, without a rustle, like marine plants undulating at the bottom of an aquarium. From the house, through an illuminated window with red curtains, came the sound of a piano. The church bells tolled. All of a sudden he felt his heart grow heavy. A memory of Donna Maria filled him, suddenly; and provoked in him, confusedly, a sense of regret and almost of repentance. What was she doing right now? Thinking? Suffering? With the image of the Sienese woman, the old Tuscan city appeared in his memory: the white-and-black Dome, the loggia, the fountain. A heavy sadness possessed him. It seemed to him that something had vanished from the base of his heart; and he did not know precisely what it was, but he was afflicted by it as if by an irremediable loss.

  He thought once again about the resolution he had made that morning. One evening in solitude, in the house where she would perhaps come one day; a melancholic but pleasant evening, in the company of his memories and dreams, in the company of her spirit; an evening of meditation and concentration! In truth, his resolution could hardly have been better kept. He was about to go to a dinner with friends and women; and, without a doubt, he would spend the night with Clara Green.

  His repentance was so unbearable, and gave him such torment, that he dressed with unusual speed, jumped into the coupé, and was driven to the hotel, arriving early. He found Clara ready. He suggested to her that they go for a ride in the coupé along the streets of Rome, to fill the time that remained till eight o’clock.

  They passed along Via del Babuino, around the obelisk in Piazza del Popolo, and from there up the Corso and then right, along Via della Fontanella di Borghese; they returned via Montecitorio on the Corso to Piazza di Venezia, and then up to the Teatro Nazionale. Clara prattled constantly, and now and then leaned toward the young man to place a half kiss on the corner of his mouth, hiding the furtive act with a fan made of white feathers, from which drifted a very subtle scent of white rose.23 But Andrea appeared not to be listening and at her gesture barely smiled.

  —What are you thinking about? she asked, pronouncing the Italian words with a slight graceful uncertainty.

  —Nothing, Andrea answered, taking one of her hands, which was not yet gloved, and looking at her rings.

  —Who knows! she sighed, giving singular expression to those two monosyllables that foreign women learn immediately; in which they believe all the melancholy of Italian love to be enclosed. —Who knows!

  Then she added, with an almost pleading tone:

  —Love me this evening, Andrew!24

  Andrea kissed her ear, passed an arm around her waist, told her a quantity of silly trifles, and changed his mood. The Corso was full of people, shopwindows gleamed, newspaper vendors shouted, public and elegant carriages intersected with the coupé, and from Piazza Colonna to Piazza di Venezia extended all the evening bustle of Roman life.

  When they entered the Doney, it was ten past eight. The other six dining companions were already present. Andrea Sperelli greeted the company and, holding Clara Green by the hand, said:

  —Ecce25 Miss Clara Green, ancilla Domini, Sibylla palmifera, candida puella.26

  —Ora pro nobis,27 Musèllaro, Barbarisi, and Grimiti answered in chorus. The women laughed, but without understanding. Clara smiled; and having slipped off her cloak, appeared in a white, simple, short dress, with a décolletage coming down to a point on her chest and on her back, with a sea-green ribbon on her left shoulder, two emeralds at her ears, self-assured under the triple scrutiny of Giulia Arici, Bébé Silva, and Maria Fortuna.

  Musèllaro and Grimiti knew her. Barbarisi was introduced to her. Andrea was saying:

  —Mercedes Silva, known as Bébé, chica pero guapa.28

  —Maria Fortuna, the lovely Talisman, who is a real public Fortune . . . for this Rome of ours, which has the fortune of possessing her.

  Then, turning to Barbarisi:

  —Do us the honor of introducing us to that lady who, if I am not mistaken, is the divine Giulia Farnese.

  —No: Arici, interrupted Giulia.

  —I beg your pardon, but to believe it I need to gather all my good faith and consult the Pinturicchio29 in the Sala Quinta.30

  He uttered these nonsensical things without laughing, taking pleasure in astonishing or irritating the sweet ignorance of these lovely foolish women. When he happened to be in the demimonde, he had his ow
n particular manner and style. In order not to be bored, he started to compose grotesque phrases, to spout huge paradoxes, atrocious impertinences that he dissimulated with the ambiguity of his words, incomprehensible subtleties, enigmatic madrigals, in an unorthodox language, mingled like slang, with a thousand flavors as in a Rabelaisian olla podrida,31 laden with strong spices and succulent flesh. No one knew better than he how to recount a coarse tale, a scandalous anecdote, a Casanovian deed. No one, in the description of something pertaining to sensual pleasure, knew better than he how to choose a lewd word, but one that was precise and powerful, a real word made of flesh and bones, a sentence full of substantial marrow, a phrase that lives and breathes and palpitates like the object of which it depicts the form, communicating to the worthy listener a double pleasure, an enjoyment not only of the intellect but of the senses, a joy partly similar to that produced by certain paintings of the great master colorists, blended with purple and milk, bathed as if in the transparency of liquid amber, impregnated with a warm and unquenchably luminous gold like immortal blood.

  —Who is Pinturicchio? asked Giulia Arici of Barbarisi.

  —Pinturicchio? exclaimed Andrea. —A superficial interior decorator, who some time ago had the whim to paint a portrait of you above a door in the apartment of the Pope. Don’t worry about it. He’s dead.

  —But how? . . .

  —Oh, in a frightful manner! His wife was the lover of a soldier from Perugia, who was garrisoned at Siena. Ask Ludovico about it. He knows everything; but he has never spoken to you about it, for fear of troubling you. Bébé, I would like to caution you that the Prince of Wales, at table, begins to smoke between the second and the third course; not before. You are somewhat premature.

  The Silva woman had lit a cigarette; and was swallowing oysters while smoke issued from her nostrils. She resembled a sexless schoolboy, a small, depraved hermaphrodite: pale, thin, with eyes made bright by fever and charcoal, an excessively red mouth, and short, woolly, slightly curly hair, which covered her head like an astrakhan pageboy. In her left eye socket was wedged a round lens; she wore a high starched collar, a white cravat, an open waistcoat, a black jacket with a masculine cut, a gardenia in her buttonhole, affecting the manners of a dandy, talking in a hoarse voice. She was attractive, tempting, because of that stamp of vice, of depravity, of monstrosity that was in her appearance, in her poses, in her words. Sal y pimiento.32