Pleasure Page 5

  Andrea was lying; but his eloquence was so warm, his voice so penetrating, the touch of his hand so loving, that Elena was invaded by an infinite sweetness.

  —Hush! she said. I must not listen to you; I am no longer yours; I can never be yours again. Hush! Hush!

  —No, listen to me.

  —I don’t want to. Good-bye. I must go. Good-bye, Andrea. It’s already late, let me go.

  She slipped her hand out of the young man’s grasp; and overcoming all her inner weakness, made as if to stand up.

  —Why did you come, then? he asked her, his voice slightly hoarse, stopping her from getting up.

  Although the violence of his gesture was but very slight, she frowned, and hesitated before answering.

  —I came—she answered with a certain measured slowness, looking her lover in the eyes—I came because you asked me to. For the love we once had, for the way that love was interrupted, for the long, obscure silence of distance, I could not have refused that invitation without harshness. And then, I wanted to tell you what I have told you: that I am no longer yours, that I can never be yours again. I wanted to tell you this, in fairness, to spare you and me any painful deceit, any danger, any bitterness, in the future. Do you understand?

  Andrea lowered his head almost onto her knees, in silence. She touched his hair, with a once-familiar gesture.

  —And also—she continued, in a voice that gave him a shiver throughout every fiber—and also . . . I wanted to tell you that I love you, that I love you no less than I once did, that you are still the soul of my soul, and that I want to be your dearest sister, your sweetest friend. Do you understand?

  Andrea did not move. Taking his temples between her hands, she lifted his forehead; she forced him to look her in the eyes.

  —Have you understood? she repeated, her voice even more tender and soft.

  Her eyes, in the shadow of her long lashes, seemed to be suffused with some pure and delicate oil. Her mouth, slightly open, had a light tremor in the upper lip.

  —No; you did not love me, you do not love me! Andrea finally broke out, removing her hands from his temples and drawing back, because he already felt in his veins the insidious fire that those pupils exhaled even involuntarily, and he felt more piercingly the pain of having lost the material possession of the beautiful woman. —You did not love me! You, then, had the courage to kill your love, suddenly, almost treacherously, while it was giving you its greatest elation. You fled from me, you abandoned me, you left me alone, dismayed, aching all over, dispirited, while I was still blinded by your promises. You did not love me, you do not love me! After such a long absence, full of mystery, mute and inexorable; after such a long wait, in which I wasted the best part of my life nurturing a sadness that was dear to me because it came from you; after so much happiness and after so much hardship, lo and behold, you come back to a place where everything holds such an intense memory for us, and you say to me sweetly: “I am no longer yours. Good-bye.” Ah, you do not love me!

  —Ingrate! Ingrate! exclaimed Elena, wounded by the young man’s almost irate voice. —What do you know about what happened, about what I suffered? What do you know?

  —I don’t know anything; I don’t want to know anything, Andrea answered harshly, looking at her with a somewhat troubled gaze, at the base of which his exasperated desires glittered. —I know that you were mine, once, all of you, with unrestricted abandon, with unlimited voluptuousness, as no other woman has ever been; and I know that neither my spirit nor my flesh will ever forget that exhilaration . . .

  —Hush!

  —What do I care about your sisterly pity? You, against your will, offer it to me with the eyes of a lover, touching me with unsure hands. Too many times have I seen your eyes close in ecstasy; too many times have your hands felt me shiver. I desire you.

  Incited by his own words, he grasped her wrists tightly and brought his face so close to hers that she could feel his warm breath in her mouth.

  —I desire you as I never have, he continued, trying to draw her to his kiss, enclosing her upper body with one arm. —Remember! Remember!

  Elena stood up, pushing him away. She was trembling all over.

  —I don’t want to. Do you understand?

  He did not understand. He came still closer, his arms stretched out to take her: extremely pale, resolute.

  —Could you bear—she cried with her voice slightly choked, unable to stand the violence—could you bear to share my body with others?

  She had uttered that cruel question without thinking. Now, with her eyes wide open, she looked at her lover, anxious and almost dismayed, like one who in self-defense has struck a blow without gauging its strength, and fears that one has wounded too deeply.

  Andrea’s ardor suddenly vanished. And on his face there appeared such deep pain that the woman felt a stab in her heart.

  Andrea said, after an interval of silence:

  —Farewell.

  In that one word was the bitterness of all the other words he had choked back.

  Elena answered gently:

  —Farewell. Forgive me.

  Both felt the need to conclude, for that evening, the dangerous conversation. The one assumed a form of external courtesy that was almost overstated. The other became even gentler, almost humble; and an incessant tremor shook her.

  She picked up her mantle from the chair. Andrea helped her with a concerned air. When she could not find the sleeve with her arm, Andrea guided it, barely touching her; then he handed her her hat and veil.

  —Do you wish to go into the other room, to the mirror?

  —No, thank you.

  She went toward the wall, next to the fireplace, where a small antique mirror hung, with an ornate frame sculpted with figures in such an agile and candid style that it appeared to have been formed from some malleable gold rather than from wood. It was an exceedingly light thing, made surely by the hands of a delicate fifteenth-century artist for a Mona Amorrosisca or for a Laldomine.9 Very often during the happy times, Elena had put on her veil before that clouded, tarnished glass, which had the appearance of dark, slightly greenish water. This came to her mind again now.

  When she saw her image appear in those depths, it gave her a strange impression. A wave of sadness, heavier than before, passed through her spirit. But she did not speak.

  Andrea was watching her with intent eyes.

  When she was ready, she said:

  —It must be very late.

  —Not very. It must be around six, perhaps.

  —I told my carriage to go, she added. —I would be very grateful if you could have a closed carriage called for me.

  —Will you permit me to leave you alone here, for a moment? My manservant is out.

  She nodded.

  —Will you give the address to the coachman, please? Hotel Quirinale.

  He went out, closing the door of the room behind him. She was left alone.

  Rapidly, she cast her eyes about, encompassing the whole room with an indefinable gaze, and paused on the goblet of flowers. The walls seemed wider to her; the ceiling higher. Looking around, she had the sensation of the beginnings of dizziness. She no longer smelled the scent; but certainly the air had to be as warm and heavy as that of a greenhouse. The image of Andrea appeared to her in a kind of intermittent flash; in her ears some indistinct wave of his voice resounded. Was she about to faint? And yet, what a delight to close one’s eyes and abandon oneself to that languor!

  Shaking herself, she went toward the window, opened it, and breathed in the wind. Revived, she turned once again to the room. The dim flames of the candles oscillated, stirring delicate shadows on the walls. The fireplace no longer had any flames, but the embers partially illuminated the sacred figures in the fire screen, which was made of a fragment of ecclesiastical stained glass. The cup of tea had remained on the edge of the tabl
e, cold, untouched. The cushion on the armchair still retained the imprint of the body that had been pressed into it. All the things around her exhaled an indistinct melancholy that flowed into and crowded the woman’s heart. The weight was increasing on that weak heart, becoming a harsh oppression, an unbearable anguish.

  —My God! My God!

  She would have liked to flee. A stronger gust of wind swelled the curtains, agitated the small candle flames, stirred up a rustling sound. She started, with a shiver; and almost involuntarily called:

  —Andrea!

  Her voice and that name, in the silence, gave her a strange jolt, as if her voice and that name had not come from her own mouth. Why was Andrea taking so long? She began to listen. Nothing came to her except for the dull, bleak, jumbled sound of urban life, on the eve of the New Year. No carriage was passing on the square of Trinità de’ Monti. As the wind was blowing hard in gusts, she closed the window again: she glimpsed the peak of the obelisk, black against the starry sky.

  Perhaps Andrea had not immediately found a covered carriage in Piazza Barberini. She waited, sitting on the couch, trying to still the mad agitation within her, avoiding any examination of her soul, forcing her attention to external things. The glassy figures of the fire screen caught her eyes, barely lit by the half-dead coals. Higher up, on the mantelpiece, from one of the goblets, petals were falling from a huge white rose10 that was falling apart slowly, languidly, softly, with something almost feminine, almost fleshlike about it. The concave petals were poised delicately on the marble, like falling flakes of snow.

  How sweet, then, did that scented snow seem to the fingers! she thought. All shredded, the roses were scattered over the carpets, the couches, the chairs; and she laughed, happy, amid the devastation; and her lover, happy, was at her feet.

  But she heard a coach stop before the front door, in the street; and she stood up, shaking her poor head, as if to chase away that kind of dullness that enveloped it. Immediately after, Andrea returned, panting.

  —Forgive me, he said. —But I could not find the doorman, so I went right down to Piazza di Spagna. The coach is below, waiting.

  —Thank you, Elena said, looking at him timidly through the black veil.

  He was serious and pale, but calm.

  —Mumps is arriving tomorrow, perhaps, she added, in a soft voice. —I will send you a note to tell you when I can see you.

  —Thanks! Andrea said.

  —Good-bye, then, she continued, holding out her hand to him.

  —Would you like me to accompany you down to the street? There is no one about.

  —Yes, come down with me.

  She looked about, slightly hesitant.

  —Have you forgotten anything? Andrea asked.

  She looked at the flowers. But she answered.

  —Oh yes, my cardholder.

  Andrea ran to pick it up from the tea table. Handing it out to her, he said:

  —A stranger hither!11

  —No, my dear. A friend.

  Elena uttered this reply with a very animated, vivacious voice. Then, suddenly, with a smile halfway between suppliant and flattering, of mingled fear and tenderness, above which trembled the edge of her veil, which reached her upper lip, leaving her whole mouth free:

  —Give me a rose.

  Andrea went to each vase; and removed all the roses, pressing them together into a great bunch that he could barely hold in his hands. Some fell, others fell apart.

  —They were for you, all of them, he said, without looking at the woman he loved.

  And Elena turned to go out, her head bent, in silence, followed by him.

  They walked down the stairs still in silence. He saw the nape of her neck, so fresh and delicate, where below the knot of her veil the small black curls mingled with her ashen fur coat.

  —Elena! he called, in a low voice, no longer able to conquer the consuming passion that was swelling his heart.

  She turned, placing her index finger on her lips to indicate to him to be silent, with a suffering, imploring gesture, her eyes glittering. She quickened her pace, climbed up into the coach, and felt the roses being placed on her lap.

  —Good-bye! Good-bye!

  And as soon as the coach moved forward she lay back in the farthest corner, overcome, bursting into unrestrained tears, shredding the roses to pieces with her poor convulsed hands.

  CHAPTER II

  Beneath today’s gray democratic flood, which wretchedly submerges so many beautiful and rare things, that special class of ancient Italic nobility in which from generation to generation a certain family tradition of elect culture, elegance, and art was kept alive is also slowly disappearing.

  To this class, which I would call Arcadian because it rendered its greatest splendor in the sweet life of the eighteenth century, the Sperelli family belonged. Urbanity, elegant writing skills, a love of delicacy, a predilection for unusual studies, a mania for archaeology, refined gallantry, were all hereditary qualities of the house of Sperelli. A certain Alessandro Sperelli, in 1466, had carried to Federigo d’Aragona, the son of Ferdinando, King of Naples, and brother of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, the codex in folio containing some “less coarse” poems of the old Tuscan writers, which Lorenzo de’ Medici had promised in Pisa in ’65; and that same Alessandro had written upon the death of the divine Simonetta,1 in chorus with the sages of the time, a Latin elegy, melancholic and forsaken, in imitation of Tibullus. Another Sperelli, Stefano, in the same century, had been in Flanders amid a life of pomp, of exquisite elegance, of unparalleled Burgundian splendor; and he remained there at the court of Charles le Téméraire, marrying into a Flemish family. One of his sons, Giusto, studied painting under the instruction of Jan Gossaert; and together with his teacher he came to Italy in the retinue of Philippe de Bourgogne, ambassador of Emperor Maximilian to Pope Julius II, in 1508. He took up residence in Florence, where the main branch of his line continued to flourish; and had as a second teacher Piero di Cosimo, that jocund and easygoing painter, a strong and harmonious colorist who brought pagan fables freely back to life with his paintbrush. This Giusto was not a common artist, but he consumed all his strength in futile efforts to reconcile his primitive Gothic education with the recent spirit of the Renaissance. Toward the second half of the seventeenth century, the house of Sperelli relocated to Naples. There, in 1679, a Bartolomeo Sperelli published an astrological treatise, De Nativitatibus; in 1720 a Giovanni Sperelli gave the theater a comic opera entitled La Faustina and then a lyrical tragedy entitled Progne; in 1756 a Carlo Sperelli printed a book of amateur verse in which many lascivious mottos of classical derivation were rhymed with the Horatian elegance then in mode. A better poet was Luigi, a man of exquisite gallantry, at the court of the Beggar King2 and Queen Caroline. He wrote verses with a certain melancholic and courteous Epicureanism, with great limpidity; and he loved like a very fine lover, and had abundant affairs, some of them celebrated, like the one with the Marchioness of Bugnano, who out of jealousy poisoned herself, and the one with the Countess of Chesterfield, whom, when she died of consumption, he mourned in songs, odes, sonnets, and elegies that were extremely sweet, though somewhat florid.

  Count Andrea Sperelli-Fieschi of Ugenta, the sole heir, continued the family tradition. He was, in truth, the ideal type of young Italian gentleman of the nineteenth century, the legitimate defender of a lineage of gentlemen and elegant artists, the last descendant of an intellectual race.

  He was, as it were, completely impregnated with art. His adolescence, nurtured with varied and profound studies, seemed prodigious. He had alternated, until the age of twenty, lengthy bouts of study with lengthy travels with his father and had been able to complete his extraordinary aesthetic education under his father’s guidance, without the restrictions or constrictions of pedagogues. It was indeed from his father that he had inherited his taste for objects of art, his passionate cult of beaut
y, his paradoxical scorn for prejudice, his avidity for pleasure.

  This father who had grown up amid the extreme splendors of the Bourbon court knew how to live to the full; he had a deep knowledge of the voluptuous life and also a certain Byronesque inclination toward fanciful romanticism. His own marriage had taken place in almost tragic circumstances, after a furious passion. After that he had disturbed and tormented conjugal harmony in every possible way. In the end he had separated from his wife and had always kept his young son with him, traveling with him throughout Europe.

  Andrea’s education had hence been, so to say, through life itself, namely not based so much on books as derived from the presence of human reality. His spirit was corrupted not only by high culture but also by experience: and his curiosity became ever sharper as his knowledge grew. Right from the start he had been lavish with himself; because his gift, the power of great sensibility, never tired of providing resources for his prodigality. But the expansion of that power of his led to the destruction in him of another strength, that of moral strength, which his own father had not been averse to discouraging. And he did not realize that his life was the progressive reduction of his own faculties, of his hopes, of his pleasure, almost a progressive renunciation; and that the circle was growing ever tighter around him, a process that was inexorable though slow.