—I saw: I guessed . . . I had been behind the windows, for a long time. I couldn’t bring myself to leave. All that whiteness was attracting me . . . I saw the carriage pass by slowly in the snow. I felt that it was you, before I saw you throwing the roses. No words can ever explain to you the tenderness of my tears. I cried for you, out of love; and I cried for the roses, out of pity. Poor roses! It seemed that they must be living, and suffering and agonizing on the snow. It seemed, I don’t know, that they called me, that they were lamenting, like abandoned creatures. When your carriage drove away, I looked out of the window to see. I was on the point of going down to the street to fetch them. But someone was still outside the house; and the servant was there in the entrance hall, waiting. I thought of a thousand ways, but I couldn’t find one that was feasible. I was desperate . . . You’re smiling? Really, I don’t know what kind of madness gripped me. I stood there, keeping a watchful eye on the passersby, my eyes full of tears. If they had trampled the roses, they would have trampled my heart. And I was happy in that torment; I was happy for your love, for your delicate and passionate gesture, your kindness, your goodness . . . I was sad and happy when I fell asleep; and the roses must already have been dying. After a few hours of sleep I was awoken by the sound of shovels on the paving. They were clearing away the snow, right in front of our door. I stayed there listening; and the noise and the voices continued until after dawn, and were making me so sad . . . Poor roses! But they will always be alive in my memory. Certain memories are enough to scent a soul forever . . . Do you love me very much, Andrea?
And after a pause:
—Do you love only me? Have you forgotten the rest, entirely? Are all your thoughts of me?
She was shaking and trembling.
—I suffer . . . because of your earlier life, the one I don’t know about; I suffer because of your memories, all the traces that perhaps still remain in your spirit, everything about you that I will never be able to understand and possess. Oh, if I could make you forget everything! I constantly hear your words, Andrea, the very first words. I think I will hear them at the instant of my death . . .
She shook and trembled beneath the force of overwhelming passion.
—I love you more each day, more each day!
Andrea intoxicated her with sweet and profound words, conquered her with ardor and recounted the dream of the snowy night and his desperate desire, and the entire convenient story of the roses and many other lyrical imaginings. It seemed to him that she was close to yielding; he could see her eyes swimming in a more bountiful wave of yearning; he could see on her suffering mouth the appearance of that inexpressible contraction which is like the concealment of an instinctive physical tendency to kiss; and he could see her hands, those delicate strong hands, archangel hands, quivering like the strings of a musical instrument, expressing all her internal agitation. If I could steal even just one fleeting kiss from her today—he thought—I will have greatly speeded up the goal I’m aspiring to.
But she, conscious of the danger, stood up suddenly, excusing herself; she rang the bell, ordered the servant to bring tea and to ask Miss Dorothy to bring Delfina into the sitting room. Then, turning to Andrea, somewhat convulsively, she said:
—It’s better this way. Forgive me.
And from that day on she avoided receiving him on days that were not, like Tuesdays and Saturdays, common reception days.
She permitted him, however, to guide her on various peregrinations across Imperial Rome and the Rome of the popes. This Lenten Virgilian tour was carried out in the villas, the galleries, the churches, the ruins. Where Elena Muti had passed, now passed Maria Ferres. Not infrequently, things inspired the poet to utter the same effusions of words that Elena had already heard. Not infrequently, a memory took him away from present reality, or suddenly disturbed him.
—What are you thinking about now? Maria would ask him, looking deeply into his eyes with a shadow of suspicion.
And he answered:
—About you, always you. I’m gripped by a kind of curiosity to look inside myself to see if there is still some minimal part of my soul that is not in the possession of your soul, some minimal fold that has not been penetrated by your light. It is like an internal exploration, which I am doing for you, since you cannot do it. Well, Maria, I have nothing more to offer you. You have absolute control of my entire being. Never, I think, has a human creature been more intimately possessed by a human creature, in spirit. If my mouth could be joined to yours, the transfusion of my life into yours would take place. I think I would die.
She believed him, because his voice gave his words the flame of truth.
One day they were on the belvedere atop Villa Medici: they were watching the gold of the sun ebb away slowly from the ample, somber boxwood canopies, and Villa Borghese, still bare of foliage, gradually being submerged in a purplish vapor. Maria said, invaded by a sudden sadness:
—Who knows how many times you’ve come here, to feel loved!
Andrea answered in the tone of a man lost in thought:
—I don’t know; I don’t recall. Whatever are you saying?
She was silent. Then she stood up to read the inscriptions on the columns of the small temple. They were mostly inscriptions made by lovers, newlyweds, solitary contemplators.
One bore, below the date and the name of a woman, a fragment of Pausias:1
SIE
Immer allein sind Liebende sich in der grössten Versammlung;
Aber sind sie zu Zweien, stellt auch der Dritte sich ein.2
ER
Amor, ja!3
Another one was the glorification of a sublime name:
A solis ortu usque ad occasum laudabile nomen Helles.4
Another was a plaintive quatrain by Petrarch:
I always loved and I still love intensely,
And I love more day by day,
That sweet place to which I return in tears
Many times when Love pierces my heart.5
Another seemed to be a loyal declaration, signed by two loyal lovers:
Ahora y no siempre.6
They all expressed an erotic, or sad, or cheerful sentiment; they sang the praises of a beautiful woman or mourned a remote happiness; they recounted an ardent kiss or a languid ecstasy; they thanked the old courteous boxwoods, indicated a secret hiding place to future happy couples, or noted the wonder of a sunset they had contemplated. Whoever they were, bridegroom or lover subject to feminine allure, they had been infused with lyrical enthusiasm on the small solitary belvedere, which is reached by a stone staircase carpeted with velvet. The walls spoke. Indefinable melancholy emanated from those unknown voices of dead loves, an almost sepulchral melancholy, such as from the epitaphs of a chapel.
Suddenly, Maria turned to Andrea, saying:
—You’re here, too.
He answered, looking at her, in the same tone as before:
—I don’t know; I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. I love you.
She read it. It was, written in Andrea’s hand, an epigram by Goethe, a distich, the one that begins: “Sage, wie lebst du?”—Tell me, how do you live?—“Ich lebe!”—I live! And, if I were given hundreds and hundreds of centuries, I would wish only that tomorrow were like today. Below there was a date: Die ultima februarii 1885,7 and a name: Helena Amyclaea.8
She said:
—Let’s go.
The boxwood canopy rained shadows over the velvet-covered staircase. He asked:
—Do you want to lean on me?
She answered:
—No, thank you.
They descended in silence, slowly. Both their hearts were heavy.
After a pause, she said:
—You were happy, two years ago.
And he, with considered obstinacy:
—I don’t know; I don’t remember.
The woods were mysterious in a green dusk. The trunks and branches rose up with serpentine tangles and snarls. A few leaves glittered like emerald eyes in the shade.
After a pause, she added:
—Who was that Elena?
—I don’t know; I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything anymore. I love you. I love only you. I think only about you. I live only for you. I don’t know anything else; I don’t remember anything else; I don’t desire anything else, besides your love. No string ties me to my past life any longer. I am outside of the world now, entirely lost in your being. I am in your blood and in your soul; I can feel myself in every beat of your arteries; I do not touch you, yet I am mingled with you as if I held you constantly in my arms, on my mouth, on my heart. I love you and you love me; and this has lasted for centuries, will last for centuries, forever. Near you, thinking about you, living for you, I am conscious of infinity, of eternity. I love you and you love me. I don’t know anything else; I don’t remember anything else.
He inundated her sadness and suspicion with a wave of burning and sweet eloquence. She listened, standing erect at the balustrades of the wide terrace that opened onto the edge of the woods.
—Is it true? Is it true? she repeated with a flat voice, which was like the faint echo of a cry coming from her inner soul. —Is it true?
—It’s true, Maria; and only this is true. All the rest is a dream. I love you and you love me. And you possess me as I possess you. I know you to be so profoundly mine that I do not ask caresses of you; I do not ask you any proof of love. I wait. I prefer, more than any other thing, to obey you. I do not ask caresses of you; but I feel them in your voice, in your gaze, in your attitude, in your smallest gestures. Everything that comes from you intoxicates me like a kiss; and I don’t know, when brushing against your hand, what is stronger: the pleasure of my senses or the upliftment of my spirit.
He placed his hand lightly on hers. Seduced, she trembled, feeling an insane desire to lean toward him, to offer him, finally, her lips, her kiss, her entire self. It seemed to her (because she had faith in Andrea’s words) that with such an act she would tie him to her with the final knot, an indissoluble knot. She believed she was fainting, being consumed, dying. It was as if all the turmoils of passion that she had already suffered were swelling her heart, augmenting the turmoil of the present passion. It was as if she were reliving in that moment all the emotions she had passed through since she had met that man. Schifanoja’s roses were flowering again among the bay trees and box trees of Villa Medici.
—I am waiting, Maria. I’m not asking anything of you. I’m keeping my promises. I’m waiting for the supreme hour. I can feel that it will come, because the power of love is invincible. And all fear, all terror will vanish from you; and the communion of bodies will seem as pure to you as the communion of souls, since all flames are equally pure . . .
He was pressing her gloved hand with his ungloved one. The garden seemed deserted. No noise, no voice reached them from the Academy building.9 The gurgle of the fountain in the middle of the clearing could be heard distinctly; the avenues continued straight toward the Pincian Hill, as if they were enclosed between two bronze walls, on which the gilding of vespers had not yet faded; the immobility of all shapes gave the appearance of a petrified labyrinth: the tips of water reeds around the basin were immobile in the air, like statues.
—It seems—said the Sienese woman, half closing her eyes—as if I were on the terrace at Schifanoja, far, far away from Rome, alone . . . with you. If I close my eyes, I can see the sea.
She saw a great dream rising from her love and from the silence, and dispersing in the sunset. She fell silent, beneath Andrea’s gaze, and smiled faintly. She had said “with you”!10 Uttering those two syllables, she had closed her eyes: and her mouth had appeared more luminous, almost as if the splendor hidden by her eyelids and eyelashes were also gathered there.
—It seems to me that all these things are not outside of me, but that you created them in my soul, for my own joy. I have this illusion in me, deep down, every time I am standing before some vision of beauty and you are near me.
She was speaking slowly, with pauses, as if her voice were the delayed echo of another inaudible voice. Her words had, therefore, a strange tone, taking on a mysterious sound, seeming to come from the most secret depths of her being; they were not the common imperfect symbol, they were an intense, more vibrant expression, transcendent, with a vaster significance.
“And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full / Of honeydew, a liquid murmur drops, / Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops / Of planetary music heard in trance.”11 The poet was recalling the verses of Percy Shelley. He repeated them to Maria, feeling himself won over by her emotion, penetrated by the charm of the hour, exalted by the appearance of things. A shiver ran through him when he was about to address her with the mystical familiar “you.”12
—I have never managed, in the wildest dreams of my spirit, to reach this height. You rise above all my idealities, you shine above all the splendors of my thoughts, you illuminate me with a light that is almost unbearable . . .
She was standing erect in front of the balustrades, with her hands resting on the stone, her head raised, paler than on that memorable morning when she was walking beneath the flowers. Tears filled her half-closed eyes and glinted between her lashes; and from below lowered lids, she saw the sky before her turn rose-pink through the veil of her weeping.
There was a rainfall of roses in the sky, as when on October evenings the sun sank behind the Rovigliano hill, lighting up the ponds throughout the pine forest in Vicomìle. “Everywhere, roses roses roses drifted down, slowly, densely, delicately, like snowfall at dawn.” Villa Medici, eternally green and bare of flowers, caught the countless soft petals, fallen from celestial gardens, on the peaks of its rigid arboreal walls.
She turned to go down. Andrea followed her. They walked in silence toward the stairs; they observed the woods that extended between the terrace and the belvedere. It seemed as if the brightness stopped at the edge, where the two custodial herms rise up, and could not pierce the darkness; it seemed that those trees stretched their branches into a different atmosphere or into dark water, below the sea, like oceanic vegetation.
She was possessed by sudden fear; she hurried toward the stairs, went down five or six steps; stopped, lost, quivering, hearing the beating of her arteries in the silence expanding like an enormous din. The villa had vanished; the damp gray staircase was narrowly enclosed between two walls, invaded here and there by weeds, dismal as that of a subterranean prison. She saw Andrea bend toward her, with a sudden gesture, to kiss her on the mouth.
—No, no, Andrea . . . No!
He held out his hands to restrain her, to force her.
—No!
Lost, she took his hand and drew it to her lips; she kissed it two, three times, lost. Then she began to run down the stairs, toward the door, as if demented.
—Maria! Maria! Stop!
They met face-to-face in front of the closed door, pale, panting, shaken by a terrible tremor, looking at each other’s altered eyes with the roaring of their blood in their ears, believing they would suffocate. And at the same time, with unanimous impulse, they drew close together and kissed.
She said, fearing that she would faint, leaning against the door with a gesture of supreme supplication:
—No more . . . I am dying.
They remained for a minute facing each other without touching. It seemed that all the silence of the villa weighed upon them in that narrow place surrounded by high walls, like an uncovered tomb. One could distinctly hear the low and fitful cawing of the crows that were gathering on the roofs of the building or traversing the sky. Again, a strange sense of fear occupied the woman’s heart. She glanced upward in alarm, to the summit of the walls. With effort, she said:
—We can go out now . . . You can open the door.
And her hand encountered Andrea’s on the banister, in the urgency of her haste.
As she passed the two granite columns beneath the jasmine, bare of flowers, Andrea said:
—Look! The jasmine is flowering.
She did not turn, but smiled; and her smile was very sad, full of the shadows that were cast over her soul by the sudden reappearance of the name written on the belvedere. And while she walked down the mysterious avenue feeling all her blood altered by the kiss, an implacable anguish engraved that name, that name, upon her heart!