Pleasure Page 7

  —Did you see Madame de Cahen? Elena asked her. —She wore a dress of yellow tulle scattered with innumerable hummingbirds with ruby eyes. A magnificent dancing birdcage. And Lady Ouless, did you see her? She had on a dress of white tarlatan fabric, with seaweed strewn all over it and I don’t know how many goldfish, and over the seaweed and the goldfish there was another layer of sea-green tarlatan. Did you not see her? She was the most impressive beautiful aquarium . . .

  And she laughed after making these little cutting remarks, a cordial laugh that lent a tremor to the underside of her chin and her nostrils.

  In the presence of this incomprehensible volubility, Andrea was still perplexed. Those frivolous or cutting comments issued forth from the same lips that had just then, uttering a simple phrase, agitated him to the very depths of his soul; they came from the same mouth that just then had seemed to him like the mouth of Leonardo’s Medusa, a human flower with a soul made divine by the flame of passion and the anguish of death. What, therefore, was the true essence of that creature? Did she have any perception or consciousness of her constant metamorphosis or was she impenetrable even to herself, remaining on the outside of her own mystique? How much, in her expressions and manifestations, was artificial and how much was spontaneous? The need to know prickled him even amid the delight infused in him by the proximity of the woman he was beginning to love. The wretched habit of analysis continued to incite him still, still preventing him from forgetting; but every effort was punished, like Psyche’s curiosity, by the distancing of love, by the eclipsing of every desired object, by the cessation of pleasure. Wasn’t it better instead to surrender oneself innocently to the first ineffable sweetness of budding love? He saw Elena in the act of moistening her lips in wine as blond as liquid honey. He sought among the glasses before him the one in which the butler had poured the same wine, and drank with Elena. Both, at the same time, placed their glasses on the table. The commonality of the act made the one turn toward the other. And their look inflamed them both, much more than the sip of wine.

  —You are not talking? Elena asked him, affecting lightness in her tone, which altered her voice slightly. —Rumor has it that you are an exquisite conversationalist. Bestir yourself, in that case!

  —Oh, cousin, cousin! exclaimed Donna Francesca, with an air of commiseration, while Don Filippo del Monte murmured something in her ear.

  Andrea started laughing.

  —Cavalier Sakumi, we are the silent ones! Let us bestir ourselves!

  The Asian’s long eyes glittered with malice, even redder above the dark red flush that the wine was kindling on his cheekbones. Until that moment he had stared at the Duchess of Scerni with the ecstatic expression of a Buddhist priest in the presence of divinity. His wide face, which seemed to have come straight from the classic pages of the great comic illustrator Hokusai, glowed crimson like an August moon amid the chains of flowers.

  —Sakumi—added Andrea in a low voice, leaning toward Elena—is in love.

  —With whom?

  —With you. Have you not noticed?

  —No.

  —Look at him.

  Elena turned. And the loving contemplation of the daimyo in disguise prompted in Elena such an open laugh that he was hurt and visibly humiliated.

  —Take this, she said to make up for it; and plucking a white camellia from the festoon, she threw it toward the envoy of the Rising Sun. —Find a simile in it, in my honor.

  The Asian drew the camellia to his lips with a comic gesture of devotion.

  —Ah, ah, Sakumi—said the small Baroness of Isola—you are being unfaithful to me!

  He stammered a few words, becoming even more scarlet in the face. Everyone was laughing openly, as if that foreigner had been invited with the sole reason of providing them with a source of entertainment. And Andrea, laughing, turned toward Elena Muti.

  Keeping her head lifted high and even tilted back slightly, she was glancing furtively at the young man from beneath her half-closed eyelids, with one of those indescribable female gazes that seem to absorb and almost drink in from the favored man everything in him that is most lovable, most desirable, most delectable, everything that has awoken in her that instinctive sexual exaltation from which passion is born. Her exceedingly long lashes veiled the iris slanted toward the corner of her eye; and the white floated as in a liquid, almost azure light; and an almost imperceptible tremor moved her lower eyelid. It seemed as if the range of her gaze were confined to Andrea’s mouth, as if to the sweetest thing.

  Elena was, indeed, captivated by that mouth. Pure in form, intense in color, swollen with sensuality, with a slightly cruel expression when firmly closed, that youthful mouth recalled, for its singular resemblance, the portrait of the unknown gentleman that is to be found in the Galleria Borghese, the profound and mysterious work of art in which fascinated minds believed they could perceive the figure of the divine Cesare Borgia painted by the divine Sanzio.8 When his lips opened in a laugh, that expression vanished; and the white, square, even teeth, of an extraordinary brightness, lit up his mouth, which was as fresh and joyous as that of a young boy’s.

  As soon as Andrea turned, Elena dropped her gaze; but not so fast that the young man could not catch its blaze. It gave him such a fierce joy that he felt a flame rise to his cheeks. She wants me! She wants me! he thought, exulting in the certainty of having already conquered the rare creature. And he also thought: It is a pleasure never felt before.

  There are certain glances from a woman that a lover would not exchange for the possession of her entire body. Whoever has never seen the radiance of tenderness glow for the first time in another person’s clear eyes does not know the highest form of human happiness. After that, no other moment of joy will equal that moment.

  While the conversation around them grew more vivacious, Elena asked:

  —Will you remain in Rome for the whole winter?

  —For the whole winter, and beyond, answered Andrea, for whom that simple question seemed to harbor a promise of love.

  —You have a house, therefore!

  —Palazzo Zuccari: domus aurea.9

  —At Trinità de’ Monti? Lucky you!

  —Why lucky?

  —Because you live in one of my favorite places.

  —All the sovereign charm of Rome is gathered there, like an essence in a vase, isn’t it?

  —It is true! Between the obelisk of the Trinità and the column of the Conception, my Catholic and pagan heart is suspended ex-voto.

  She laughed at that phrase. He had a madrigal on the topic of the suspended heart ready to recite, but did not utter it; because he did not like to prolong the dialogue in that false and light tone and thus disperse his intimate pleasure. He remained silent.

  She was thoughtful for a while. Then she threw herself into the general conversation again, with even greater vivacity, lavishing witticisms and laughter, her teeth and her words scintillating. Donna Francesca was gossiping about the Princess of Ferentino, not without subtlety, alluding to her lesbian affair with Giovanella Daddi.

  —By the way, the Princess of Ferentino is announcing another charity fair for the Epiphany, said the Baron of Isola. —Do you not know about it yet?

  —I am the patroness, replied Elena Muti.

  —You are a peerless patroness, said Don Filippo del Monte, a man of forty, almost completely bald, a fine crafter of epigrams, who wore on his face a kind of Socratic mask in which his mobile right eye scintillated with a thousand different expressions, while his left remained immobile and almost vitrified beneath the round lens, as if he used one for expressing himself and the other to see with. —At the May Fair, you received a cloud of gold.

  —Ah, the May Fair! A folly, exclaimed the Marchioness of Ateleta.

  While the butlers passed around the table pouring chilled champagne, she added:

  —Do you remember, Elena? Our st
alls were close by.

  —Five luigi10 for a sip! Five luigi for a bite! Don Filippo del Monte began to shout, jokingly imitating the voice of a town crier.

  Elena Muti and the Marchioness of Ateleta were laughing.

  —Right, right, it’s true. You were proclaiming the wares, Filippo, said Donna Francesca. —It’s a pity you weren’t there, cousin of mine! For five luigi you could have eaten some fruit marked by my teeth, and for another five luigi you could have drunk champagne from Elena’s cupped hands.

  —What a scandal! interrupted the Baroness of Isola, with a grimace of horror.

  —Ah, Mary! And did you not sell cigarettes lit by yourself, and much moistened, for a luigi? said Donna Francesca, still laughing.

  And Don Filippo said:

  —I saw something better. Leonetto Lanza obtained from the Countess of Lùcoli, for I don’t know how much, a Havana cigar that she had held in her armpit . . .

  —Goodness gracious! the small baroness interrupted again, comically.

  —Every act of charity is blessed, the marchioness decreed. —I, with all my biting of fruit, managed to gather about two hundred luigi.

  —And you? Andrea Sperelli asked of Elena Muti, smiling with difficulty. —And you, with your fleshly cup?

  —I made two hundred and seventy.

  Everyone continued to banter in this fashion, except for the marquis. Ateleta was already an old man, afflicted with an incurable deafness, well waxed, painted a blondish color, artificial from head to toe. He resembled one of those fake personages that one sees in wax museums. Every now and then, almost always inopportunely, he emitted a type of dry little laugh that sounded like the squeaking of a rusty machine that he had inside his body.

  —But, at a certain point, the price of the sip went up to ten luigi. Do you understand? added Elena. —And finally that crazy Galeazzo Secìnaro came to offer me a five-hundred-lire note asking in return that I dry my hands in his blond beard . . .

  The finale of the dinner was, as always in the d’Ateleta home, exceedingly splendid; as the true luxury of a dinner table consists of the dessert. All those delicious and rare things delight the eye in addition to the palate, artfully arranged on crystal plates adorned with silver. The festoons threaded with camellias and violets curled between the vine-leafed eighteenth-century candelabra, decorated with fauns and nymphs. And the fauns and the nymphs and the other graceful forms of that Arcadian mythology, and the Sylvanders and the Phyllises and the Rosalinds brought life to the tapestries on the walls with their tenderness, representing one of those luminous landscapes of Cythera that emerged from the imagination of Antoine Watteau.

  The light erotic stimulation that invades the spirits at the end of a dinner embellished with women and flowers was revealed by the words being spoken, and revealed by the memories of that May Fair where the women, spurred on by a burning competitiveness to gather the largest possible sum through their vending efforts, had enticed buyers with unprecedented audacity.

  —Did you accept? Andrea Sperelli asked the duchess.

  —I sacrificed my hands for the sake of Charity, she replied. —Twenty-five luigi more!

  —All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand . . .11

  He laughed, repeating the words of Lady Macbeth, but deep down in him there was a confused suffering, an ill-defined torment that resembled jealousy. It now suddenly appeared to him that there was a certain excessive or almost courtesan-like air that in some moments dimmed the fine manners of the gentlewoman. From certain sounds of her voice and her laugh, from certain gestures, certain postures, certain glances, she exuded, perhaps involuntarily, a charm that was too aphrodisiacal. She dispensed too easily the visual enjoyment of her graces. From time to time, in front of everyone, perhaps involuntarily, she had a bearing or a position or an expression that in a bedroom would have made a lover thrill. Each person, looking at her, could steal from her a spark of pleasure, make her the object of their impure fantasies, visualize her secret caresses. She seemed to be created, truly, for the sole purpose of the act of love;—and the air she breathed was always inflamed by the desires she provoked around her.

  How many have possessed her? Andrea thought. How many memories does she foster, of the flesh and of the soul?

  His heart swelled as with a bitter wave, at the base of which simmered his tyrannical intolerance of every imperfect possession. And he could not take his eyes off Elena’s hands.

  In those incomparable hands, soft and white, of an ideal transparency, marked by a web of barely visible blue veins; in those slightly hollowed and rose-shadowed palms, where a clairvoyant would have found dark entanglements, ten, fifteen, twenty men had drunk, one after the other, at a price. He saw the heads of those unknown men bending over and sucking the wine. But Galeazzo Secìnaro was one of his friends: a handsome and cheerful gentleman, imperially bearded like a Lucius Verus, and a rival to be feared.

  Then, incited by those images, his lust grew so fiercely and he was invaded by an impatience so tormenting that it seemed the dinner would never end. I will have from her, this same evening, her promise, he thought. Inside him, anxiety stung him as it would one who fears to see some precious object, coveted by many rivals, escape him. And his incurable and insatiable vanity made the exhilaration of victory tangible. Certainly, the more an object possessed by a man arouses the envy and the craving of others, the more the man takes pleasure and pride in this object. It is precisely this that makes women on the stage so enticing. When the whole theater resounds with applause and burns with desire, he who alone receives the glance and the smile of the star feels drunk with pride, as from a glass of too-strong wine, and loses his reason.

  —You who are so innovative—Elena Muti was saying to Donna Francesca, while she cleansed her fingers in tepid water in a bowl of blue crystal edged with silver—you should bring back the custom of washing one’s hands with the pitcher and bowl of old, away from the table. This modernity is ugly. Don’t you think so, Sperelli?

  Donna Francesca stood up. Everyone followed her example. Andrea offered his arm to Elena, bowing, and she looked at him without smiling, while placing her naked arm slowly on his. Her last words had been gay and light; her look, by contrast, was so grave and profound that the young man felt his soul overcome by it.

  —Are you going—she was asking him—are you going to the ball at the French Embassy tomorrow evening?

  —Are you? Andrea asked her in turn.

  —I am, yes.

  —So am I.

  They smiled, like two lovers. And she added, while taking a seat:

  —Sit down.

  The couch was placed at some distance from the fireplace, along the rear of the piano, which was partly hidden by rich folds of fabric. A bronze crane at one side held in its uplifted beak a plate suspended from three chains, like a scale; and the plate contained a new book and a small Japanese saber, a waki-zashi, decorated with silver chrysanthemums on the scabbard, on the guard, and on the hilt.

  Elena picked up the book, of which half the pages were still uncut; she read the title; then she replaced it in the plate, which swung from side to side. The saber fell to the ground. As both she and Andrea leaned down to pick it up at the same time, their hands touched. Sitting up again, she examined the beautiful weapon with curiosity; and held it, while Andrea talked to her about that new novel, gradually and by stealth moving toward general topics of love.

  —Why ever do you keep yourself so removed from the “grand public”? she asked him. —Have you sworn loyalty to the “Twenty-five Exemplars”?

  —Yes, forever. Indeed, my dream is the “Unique Exemplar” to offer to the “Unique Woman.” In a democratic society like ours, the creator of prose or verse must renounce every benefit except that of love. The true reader is not really the one who buys me, but the one who loves me. The true reader is therefore the benevolent lady. The
laurel serves for nothing other than to attract the myrtle12 . . .

  —But glory?

  —True glory is posthumous, and therefore not able to be enjoyed. What does it matter to me, for example, to have one hundred readers on the island of Sardinia, and another ten in Empoli, and five, say, in Orvieto? And what pleasure can I derive from being as well known as the pastry maker Tom and the perfumier Harry? I, the author, will go into posterity armed as best I can, but I, the man, do not desire any other crown of triumph but one . . . of beautiful naked arms.

  He looked at Elena’s arms, uncovered right to the shoulder. They were so perfect at the join and in their form that they recalled the Florentine simile about the ancient vase “made by the hand of masters”; those of “Pallas before the shepherd” would have been like these. Her fingers wandered over the engravings of the weapon; and her shining nails seemed to replicate the daintiness of the gems that adorned her fingers.

  —You, if I am not mistaken—said Andrea, enveloping her in his flaming gaze—must have the body of Correggio’s Danäe. I feel it, no, I see it in the shape of your hands.

  —Oh, Sperelli!

  —Can you not imagine the entire shape of the plant from the flower? You are, most certainly, like the daughter of Acrisius who receives the golden shower—not the one of the May Fair, for shame! Do you know the painting in Galleria Borghese?

  —I know it.

  —Am I wrong?

  —Enough, Sperelli: please.

  —Why?

  She remained silent. By now, both felt the circle that was rapidly to enclose them and bind them together, coming closer. Neither one nor the other was conscious of its rapidity. Only two or three hours after seeing each other for the first time, the one was giving herself to the other, in spirit; and reciprocal surrender seemed natural.

  She said, after a while, without looking at him:

  —You are very young. Have you been in love many times?

  He answered with another question.

  —Do you believe that there is greater nobility of soul and of art to imagine in one sole woman the entire feminine Eternal, or that a man of discerning and intense spirit must traverse all the lips that pass by him, like the notes of an ideal harpsichord, until he finds the joyful Ut?13