Pleasure Read online

  Andrea saw his own anxiety reflected in the appearance of the things around him; and as his desire dispersed uselessly in the wait and his nerves became weaker, so it appeared to him that the almost erotic essence of those things also vaporized and dissipated into futility. For him, all those objects among which he had so many times loved and taken pleasure and suffered had taken on something of his sensitivity. Not only were they witness to his loves, his pleasures, his moments of sadness, but they had participated in them. In his memory, every shape and every color harmonized with a feminine image, was a note in a chord of beauty, an element in an ecstasy of passion. By nature of his taste, he sought out multiple aspects of enjoyment in his love affairs: the complex delight of all the senses, intense intellectual emotion, abandons of sentiment, impulses of brutality. And because he sought out these things with skill, like an aesthete, he naturally drew from the world of objects a great part of his exhilaration. This delicate actor could not comprehend the comedy of love without the backdrops.

  Therefore his house was the most perfect theater; and he was an extremely skillful set designer. But he almost always invested all of himself in this artifice; he lavishly spent in it the richness of his spirit; he would sink so far into oblivion within it, that not infrequently he would be deceived by his own insidiousness, wounded by his own weapons, like an enchanter trapped within the circle of his own spell.

  Everything around him had taken on for him that inexpressible appearance of life that is acquired, for example, by sacred implements, the insignia of a religion, the instruments of a cult, every figure on which human meditation is accumulated, or from which human imagination rises toward some ideal height. Just as a vial still emits after many years the scent of the essence that was once contained in it, so, too, did certain objects still preserve even just an indistinct part of the love with which that fantasizing lover had illuminated and penetrated them. And such a strong stimulation came to him from these objects that he was disturbed by it at times, as by the presence of a supernatural power.

  It truly seemed that he knew the latent aphrodisiacal potentiality of each of those objects, and that he felt it at certain times bursting forth and developing and palpitating around him. Then, if he was in the arms of his beloved, it gave his and her body and soul one of those supreme feasts, the memory of which alone is sufficient to illuminate an entire life. But if he was on his own, a deep anguish pressed down upon him, an inexpressible regret at the thought that that great and rare apparatus of love was going uselessly to waste.

  Uselessly! In the tall Florentine goblets the roses, also waiting, exhaled all their intimate sweetness. On the couch, on the wall, the silvery verses dedicated to the glory of women and wine, which blended so harmoniously with the indefinable silken colors in the sixteenth-century Persian carpet, scintillated as they were struck by the light of the setting sun in a bare corner framed by the window, which rendered the nearby shadows more diaphanous and spread their glow to the cushions beneath. The shadow all around was diaphanous and rich, almost animated by the vague luminous palpitation found in dark sanctuaries that hold some occult treasure. The fire in the fireplace crackled; and each of its flames was, as in Percy Shelley’s imagery, like a precious stone dissolved in ever-moving light.4 It seemed to the lover that every shape, every color, every scent offered up the most delicate flower of its essence, in that moment. And she was not coming! And she was not coming!

  Then there arose in his mind, for the first time, the thought of her husband.

  Elena was no longer free. She had renounced the merry freedom of her widowhood, entering into a second marriage with an English gentleman, a certain Lord Humphrey Heathfield, some months after her sudden departure from Rome. Andrea indeed remembered having seen the announcement of the marriage in a social column, in October 1885; and having heard an infinite number of comments about the new Lady Helen Heathfield throughout all the holiday resorts in that Roman autumn. He also remembered having encountered that Lord Humphrey about ten times during the preceding winter at Princess Giustiniani-Bandini’s home on Saturdays, and at public auctions. He was a man of forty, with ash-blond hair, bald at the temples, deadly pale; with light-colored sharp eyes and a great protruding forehead crisscrossed by veins. His name, Heathfield, was indeed that of the lieutenant general who had been the hero of the famous defense of Gibraltar (1779–83), also immortalized by Joshua Reynolds’s paintbrush.

  What part did that man play in Elena’s life? By what ties, beyond those of marriage, was Elena bound to him? What transformations had the material and spiritual contact of her husband exerted upon her?

  Enigmas arose all of a sudden in Andrea’s mind, tumultuously. Amid this tumult, the image of the physical union of those two appeared to him, clear and precise; and the pain was so unbearable that he bounded up with the instinctive reflex of a man who has suddenly been wounded in a vital limb. He crossed the room, went out into the entrance hall, and listened at the door that he had left slightly open. It was almost a quarter to five.

  After a while he heard footsteps coming up the stairs, a rustle of skirts, someone breathing heavily. Certainly, a woman was coming up. All his blood then surged with such vehemence that, unnerved by the long wait, he thought he would lose all his strength and collapse. But still he heard the sound of the feminine foot on the last steps, a longer breath being drawn, her tread on the landing, on the threshold. Elena entered.

  —Oh, Elena! Finally.

  In those words the expression of his protracted anguish was so profound that an indefinable smile appeared on the woman’s lips, of compassion mixed with pleasure. He took her right hand, ungloved, pulling her toward the room. She was still panting; but a faint glow lit her entire face beneath the black veil.

  —Forgive me, Andrea. But I couldn’t get away until now. So many visits . . . so many calling cards to return . . . The days are tiring. I can’t take it anymore. How hot it is here! What a scent!

  She was still standing in the middle of the room; slightly hesitant and troubled, although she was talking rapidly and lightly. A mantle of Carmelite fabric5 with sleeves in the imperial style cut with wide puffs at the top, flattened and buttoned at the wrist, an immense collar of blue fox fur its only embellishment, covered her entire body without diminishing the grace of her slimness. She was looking at Andrea, her eyes full of a tremulous smile that veiled their acute examination. She said:

  —You are somewhat changed. I could not say how. Your mouth, for example, has something bitter about it that I don’t recall seeing before.

  She said these words with a tone of affectionate familiarity. Her voice resounding in the room gave Andrea such intense delight that he exclaimed:

  —Speak, Elena; speak again!

  She laughed. And asked:

  —Why?

  He answered, taking her hand:

  —You know why.

  She withdrew her hand; and looked the young man deeply in the eyes.

  —I don’t know anything anymore.

  —You’ve changed, then?

  —Changed very much.

  Already the “sentiment” was drawing both of them. Elena’s answer clarified the problem all at once. Andrea understood; and rapidly but with precision, by some phenomenon of intuition that is not rare in certain spirits well exercised in the analysis of their internal being, glimpsed the moral disposition of the visitor and the unfolding of the scene that had to follow. He was, however, already completely invaded by the sorcery of that woman, the way he had once been. Also, his curiosity was pricking him strongly. He said:

  —Won’t you sit down?

  —Yes, for a moment.

  —There, on the armchair.

  Oh, my armchair! she was about to say with a spontaneous impulse, because she had recognized it; but she stopped herself.

  It was a wide, deep chair, covered with an antique leather skin scattered with p
ale embossed Chimeras,6 in the same style as one that covers the walls of a room in Palazzo Chigi. The leather had acquired that warm and opulent patina that recalls certain backgrounds of Venetian portraits, or a beautiful bronze that still retains a trace of gilding, or a fine tortoiseshell through which gold leaf glints. A large cushion cut from a dalmatic of a rather faded color, the color that Florentine silk weavers call saffron pink, softened the headrest.

  Elena sat down. She placed her right glove on the edge of the tea table, as well as her calling-card case, which was a slender case of smooth silver with two linked garters engraved on it, bearing a motto. Then she took off her veil, lifting her arms to untie the knot behind her head; and the elegant act caused a shining ripple to run through the velvet: at her armpits, along her sleeves, along her bust. As the heat of the fireplace was so strong, she shielded herself with her bare hand, which lit up like rose alabaster: her rings glittered with the gesture. She said:

  —Cover the fire; please. It’s burning too strongly.

  —Don’t you like the flames anymore? And you were once a salamander! This fireplace remembers . . .

  —Don’t stir up memories, she interrupted. Just cover the fire and light a lamp. I’ll make the tea.

  —Don’t you want to take off your mantle?

  —No, because I must leave soon. It’s already late.

  —But you will suffocate.

  She rose with a small sign of impatience.

  —Help me, then.

  As Andrea took off her mantle, he caught a whiff of her scent. It was not the same as the one she had once worn; but it was so exquisite that it reached his innermost fibers.

  —You’re wearing a new perfume, he said, with a strange tone.

  She answered, simply:

  —Yes. Do you like it?

  Andrea, still holding the mantle in his hands, buried his face in the fur that decorated the collar and that was therefore more scented from the contact with her skin and her hair. Then he asked:

  —What is it called?

  —It has no name.

  She sat down again on the armchair and was illuminated by the flames. She was wearing a black dress made all of lace, amid which innumerable beads sparkled, black and steel.

  The twilight was fading against the windowpanes. Andrea lit some twisted candles of an intense orange shade, on the wrought-iron candlesticks. Then he drew the fire screen in front of the fireplace.

  Both, in that interval of silence, felt perplexity within their souls. Elena did not have an exact consciousness of the moment, nor self-confidence; even if she attempted to do so, she could not grasp her sense of purpose or ascertain her intentions or find her willpower once more. In the presence of that man to whom she had once been bound by such a great passion, in that place where she had experienced the most ardent moments of her life, little by little she felt all her thoughts vacillate, dissolve, disappear. By now her spirit was about to enter that delicious state, almost, one could say, of sentimental fluidity, in which it perceives every movement, every disposition, every form of external events like ethereal vapors caused by mutations of the atmosphere. She hesitated before abandoning herself to it.

  Andrea said, softly, almost humbly:

  —Is that all right?

  She smiled at him without answering, because those words had given her an indefinable pleasure, almost a tremor of sweetness at the summit of her breast. She began her delicate work. She lit the lamp below the pot of water; she opened the lacquer box in which the tea was kept, and put into the porcelain pot a measured quantity of the flavor; then she prepared two cups. Her gestures were slow and slightly irresolute, as occurs with someone working with the mind turned to some other object; her white and pure hands had, in their movement, a lightness almost of butterflies, not appearing to touch things, but rather barely brushing against them; from her gestures, from her hands, from every light undulation of her body wafted some faint emanation of pleasure that soothed the senses of her lover.

  Andrea, sitting nearby, watched her with eyes slightly closed, drinking in through his pupils the voluptuous allure that radiated from her. It was as if every act became ideally tangible for him. What lover has not felt this inexpressible delight, in which it almost seems as if the sensitive power of touch becomes so refined as to be able to experience sensation without the immediate materiality of contact?

  Both were silent. Elena had leaned back on the cushions: she was waiting for the water to boil. Watching the blue flame of the lamp, she was removing her rings from her fingers and putting them on again, lost in an apparent dream. It was not a dream, but a kind of vague, wavering, confused, fleeting remembrance. All the memories of the past love affair were rising again in her mind, but without clarity: and they gave her an uncertain impression that she could not identify as pleasure or pain. It was similar to when many flowers have wilted and each has lost its particular color and scent, and a common exhalation arises from them, in which it is not possible to recognize the different elements. It appeared as if she were bearing within her the last breath of already vanished memories, the last traces of joy that has already passed, the last aftereffects of already dead happiness, something similar to a dubious vapor from which nameless, shapeless, interrupted images emerge. She could not tell if it was pain or pleasure; but slowly that mysterious agitation and that indefinable disquiet were growing and swelling her heart with sweetness and bitterness. The obscure forebodings, the dark perturbations, the secret regrets, the superstitious fears, the vanquished aspirations, the stifled pains, the embattled dreams, the unrealized wishes, all those turbid elements that constituted her inner life now roiled within her and assailed her.

  She was silent, absorbed within herself. While her heart was nearly overflowing, it pleased her to increase its commotion even more with silence. By speaking, she would disperse it.

  The water in the pot started slowly to come to a boil.

  Andrea, seated on the low chair, with his elbow supported on his knee and his chin on the palm of his hand, now gazed at the beautiful being with such intensity that she, even not turning toward him, could feel that persistence on her person and it gave her almost a vague physical unease. Andrea, watching her, thought: I once possessed this woman. He repeated this affirmation to himself, to convince himself; and made, to convince himself, a mental effort to recall to his memory some pose of hers during the act of pleasure, attempting to see her again in his arms. The certainty of possession was escaping him. Elena seemed to him to be a new woman, never enjoyed, never embraced.

  She was, in truth, even more desirable than she had once been. The almost plastic enigma of her beauty was even more obscure and alluring. Her head with its narrow forehead, straight nose, arched eyebrows, of such a pure design, so firm, so classic, that it seemed to have emerged from a Syracusan medal, had about the eyes and mouth a singular contrast in its expression: that passionate, intense, ambiguous, superhuman expression that only some modern spirit, impregnated with all the profound corruption of art, has been able to infuse into types of immortal women such as the Mona Lisa or Nelly O’Brien.7

  Others possess her now, Andrea thought, watching her. Other hands touch her; other lips kiss her. And, while he could not manage to form in his imagination the image of his union with her, he saw once again with implacable precision the other image. And an acute frenzy invaded him, to know, to discover, to interrogate.

  Elena had leaned over the table because steam was now escaping through the joint of the lid from the boiling pot. She poured a small amount of water onto the tea; she put two cubes of sugar into one cup; she poured some more water onto the tea; then she extinguished the blue flame. She did all this with almost tender care, but without ever turning toward Andrea. Her internal tumult was now becoming such a soft tenderness that she felt her throat close up and her eyes moisten; and she could not resist it. So many contrary thoughts, so many cont
rary anguishes and alterations of her soul gathered now together into a tear.

  With a movement of her hand she knocked over her silver cardholder, which fell onto the carpet. Andrea picked it up and looked at the two linked garters. Each bore a sentimental motto: From Dreamland—A stranger hither.8

  When he lifted his eyes to her, Elena offered him the steaming cup with a smile slightly veiled by tears.

  He saw that veil; and at that unexpected sign of tenderness was invaded by such an impetus of love and gratefulness that he put down his cup, knelt, took Elena’s hand, and placed his mouth on it.

  —Elena! Elena!

  He spoke to her in a low voice, kneeling, so close that it seemed he wanted to drink in her breath. His ardor was sincere, while his words sometimes lied. “He loved her, he had always loved her, he had never ever ever been able to forget her! He had felt, meeting her again, all his passion rising up with such violence that he had almost been terrified of it: a type of anxious terror, as if he had glimpsed, in a flash, the overturning of his entire life.”

  —Hush! Hush! Elena said, with her face drawn in pain, extremely pale.

  Andrea went on speaking, still kneeling, becoming more impassioned in the imagination of his sentiment. “He had felt the greatest and best part of himself dragged away by her in that sudden flight. Afterward, he could not tell her about all the misery of his days, the anguish of his sorrow, the assiduous implacable devouring internal suffering. His sadness grew, breaking every dam. He was overcome by it. Sadness was at the base of everything, for him. The passage of time was an unbearable torment. He did not miss so much the happy days as much as he mourned the days that now passed uselessly, deprived of happiness. The former at least had left a memory for him: the latter left him a profound grief, almost remorse . . . His life was consuming itself, drawing into itself the inextinguishable flame of one desire alone, the incurable disgust for every other pleasure. Sometimes he was assailed by impulses of almost enraged lust, by a desperate fury for gratification; and it was like the violent rebellion of a heart not sated, like the flaring up of hope that cannot resign itself to die. Sometimes it also seemed to him that he had been reduced to nothing; and he shivered in the face of the great empty abyss of his being: and of the great flame of his youth nothing remained to him but a fistful of ashes. Sometimes, too, as in one of those dreams that vanish at dawn, his entire past, his entire present dissolved; they detached themselves from his consciousness and fell, like a fragile slough, an empty garment. He remembered nothing more, like a man who has emerged from a long illness, like a dazed convalescent. Finally, he was in oblivion; he felt his soul enter gently into death . . . But, suddenly, from that kind of oblivious tranquillity a new pain burst forth, and the fallen idol surged up again, even taller, like an indestructible shoot. She, she was the idol who seduced all the willpower of his heart, broke all the strength of his intellect, kept closed all the most secret avenues of his soul to any other love, to any other pain, to any other dream, forever, forever . . .”