The Marquis of Mount Edgcumbe, opening the great secret armoire, the arcane library, was saying to Sperelli:
—You should design the clasps for me. The volume is in quarto,1 dated by Lampsaque2 the same as Les Aphrodites by Nerciat: 1734.3 These engravings seem very fine to me. You judge for yourself.
He handed Sperelli the rare book. It was titled GERVETII—De Concubitu—libri tres,4 decorated with erotic vignettes.
—This image is very significant, he added, pointing to one of the vignettes, which depicted an indescribable coupling of bodies. —It’s something new that I did not know about. None of my erotic writers makes any mention of it . . .
He continued to talk, discussing several details, following the lines of the drawing with that whitish finger sprinkled with hairs on the first phalanx and ending in a pointed, shiny, slightly bluish nail, like the nail of quadrumanous animals. His words penetrated into Andrea’s ear with an atrocious stridency.
—This Dutch edition by Petronius is magnificent. And this is the Erotopaegnion printed in Paris in 1798. Do you know the poem attributed to John Wilkes, “An Essay on Woman”? Here is a 1763 edition.
The collection was exceptionally rich. It included all the Pantagruelic and rococo literature of France: the Priapeia, the scatological fantasies, the Monacologies, the burlesque elegies, the catechisms, the idylls, the novels, the poems from the Pipe cassée by Vadé to the Dangerous Liaisons, from the Arétin by Augustin Carrache to the Tourterelles de Zelmis; from the Descouverture du style impudique to the Faublas. It included everything that was most refined and most ignoble produced by the human mind over the centuries in exposition of the ancient sacred hymn to the god of Lampsacus:5 Salve, sancte pater.6
The collector took the books from the rows in the armoire and showed them to his young friend, talking continuously. His obscene hands caressingly touched the obscene books bound in leather and precious fabrics. He smiled insidiously, constantly. And a flash of madness passed through his gray eyes, beneath his enormous convex forehead.
—I also possess the first edition of Martial’s Epigrams, the Venetian one, made by Vindelino di Spira in folio. Here it is. And here is Beau, the translator of Martial, the commentator of the famous three hundred and eighty-two obscenities. What do you think of these bindings? The clasps are by a master hand. This composition of priapi is done with great style.
Sperelli listened and looked, with a kind of shock that little by little changed to horror and pain. At every moment his eyes were drawn to a portrait of Elena that hung on the red damask on the wall.
—It is the portrait of Elena painted by Sir Frederick Leighton. But look here, everything Sade wrote! Le roman philosophique, La philosophie dans le boudoir, Les crimes de l’amour, Les malheurs de la vertu . . . You, surely, do not know this edition. It was made especially for me by Hérissey, with eighteenth-century Elzivirian characters, on paper made by the imperial manufacturers in Japan, in only one hundred and twenty-five exemplars. The divine marquis deserved this glory. The frontispieces, the titles, the initials, all the decorations bring together all the most exquisite things we know of erotic iconography! Look at the clasps!
The bindings of the volumes were admirable. Sharkskin leather, rough and rugged like the kind that encases the hilt of Japanese sabers, covered the front, back, and spine; the clasps and studs were of a bronze very rich in silver, very elegantly engraved, recalling the most beautiful ironwork of the sixteenth century.
—The author, Francis Redgrave, died in a madhouse. He was a young genius. I own all his studies. I’ll show them to you.
The collector was becoming excited. He left the room to fetch the album of drawings by Francis Redgrave in the adjacent room. He walked with an unsteady, skipping gait, like a man who has the beginnings of paralysis or an incipient spinal disease; his torso remained rigid, not coordinated with the movement of his legs, like the torso of an automaton.
Andrea Sperelli watched him as he walked to the doorway, disquieted. Left alone, he was gripped by a terrible sense of anxiety. The room, papered in dark red damask, like the room in which Elena had given herself to him two years earlier, now seemed to him tragic and dismal. Maybe those were the same hangings that had heard Elena’s words: “I like it!” The open armoire displayed the rows of obscene books, their outlandish bindings engraved with phallic symbols. On the wall hung the portrait of Lady Heathfield, alongside a copy of Joshua Reynolds’s Nelly O’Brien. Both of these creatures gazed out from the depths of the canvas with the same penetrating intensity, the same ardor of passion, the same flame of sensual desire, the same prodigious eloquence; both had an ambiguous, enigmatic, sibylline mouth, the mouth of indefatigable, inexorable drinkers of souls; and both had a marble, immaculate forehead shining with perpetual purity.
—Poor Redgrave! said Lord Heathfield, returning with the case of drawings in his hands. —Without a doubt, he was a genius. No erotic fantasy surpasses his. Look! . . . Look! . . . What style! No artist, I think, in the study of human physiognomy, has come close to the depth and acuteness Redgrave achieved in his study of the phallus. Look!
He walked away for a moment to go and close the door again. Then he returned to the table near the window; and began to leaf through the collection, with Sperelli looking on, talking constantly, indicating with his apelike nail, sharpened like a weapon, the details of every figure.
He was speaking in his own language,7 starting every sentence with a questioning tone and ending each one in the same tiresome cadence. Certain words lacerated Andrea’s ears like the harsh sound of iron being scraped, like the screeching of a steel blade against a crystal plate.
And the drawings of the late Francis Redgrave passed before him.
They were frightening: they seemed to be the dream of an undertaker tortured by satyriasis; they unfolded like a terrifying macabre and priapic dance; they represented a hundred variations of one single motif, a hundred episodes of one single drama. And there were two dramatis personae: a priapus and a skeleton, a phallus and a rictus.8
—This is the best page, exclaimed the Marquis of Mount Edgcumbe, pointing to the last drawing, upon which at that moment a pale gleam of sunlight fell, slanting through the windows.
It was, in fact, a composition of extraordinary imaginative power: female skeletons dancing, in a night sky, guided by a flagellating Death. Over the wanton face of the moon drifted a black, monstrous cloud, drawn with vigor and skill worthy of the pencil of Hokusai; the pose of the dark dancer, the expression of her skull with the empty eye sockets, were imprinted with an admirable vitality, with a breathing reality never achieved by any other artist in the representation of Death; and that entire grotesque Sicinnide dance9 of dislocated skeletons in scanty skirts, threatened by the whip, revealed the fearsome fever that had gripped the hand of the artist, the fearsome madness that had gripped his brain.
—This is the book that inspired Francis Redgrave to create this masterpiece. A great book! . . . the rarest among the rare . . . Do you not know Daniel Maclisius?
Lord Heathfield held out to Sperelli the treatise De verberatione amatoria.10 He became more and more aroused, reflecting on cruel pleasures. His bald temples reddened and the veins of his forehead swelled and his mouth wrinkled constantly, slightly convulsively. And his hands, those hateful hands, gesticulated with brief but excited gestures, while his elbows remained rigid, of a paralytic rigidity. The unclean, ugly, ferocious beast within him appeared, all veils stripped away. In Sperelli’s imagination11 all the horrors of English profligacy arose: the acts of the Black Army12 on the pavements of London; the implacable hunt for the “green virgins”; the brothels of the West End and of Halfousn Street; the elegant houses of Anna Rosemberg13 and of the Jefferies woman;14 the secret hermetically sealed rooms, padded from floor to ceiling, which muffle the sharp cries of the victims being tortured . . .
—Mumps! Mumps! Are you alone?
It was Elena’s voice. She was knocking softly on one of the doors.
—Mumps!
Andrea jumped: all his blood veiled his eyes, inflamed his forehead, roared in his ears, as if a sudden dizziness was about to come over him. An insurgency of brutality unsettled him; an obscene vision swept through his mind, lit by a flash of lightning; a criminal thought passed darkly through his brain; a bloodthirsty craving roused him for a moment. Amid the upheaval provoked in him by those books, those drawings, the words of that man, the same instinctive impulse was rising up again from the blind depths of his being, that he had already felt that day on the racecourse, after the victory over Rùtolo, amid the pungent exhalations of his steaming horse. The phantom of a crime of passion tempted him and dissipated, rapidly, in a flash of lightning: to kill that man, take that woman with violence, thus satisfying the terrible carnal covetousness, and then to kill himself.
—I’m not alone, said the husband, without opening the door. —In a few minutes I will be able to bring Count Sperelli, who is here with me, into the salon to you.
He replaced Daniel Maclisius’s treatise in the armoire; closed the case of drawings by Francis Redgrave and carried it into the adjacent room.
Andrea would have paid any price to extract himself from the torment that was awaiting him, and he was drawn to that torment at the same time. Once more, his gaze went up to the red wall, toward the dark painting where Elena’s bloodless face shone, with her eyes that followed one, and her sibylline mouth. An acute and constant fascination emanated from that imperious immobility. That unique pallor dominated the red dusk of the room in a somber way. And he felt, again, that his wretched passion was incurable.
A desperate anguish assailed him. Would he therefore never again be able to possess that flesh? Was she therefore determined not to surrender to him? And would he eternally harbor within him the flame of unfulfilled desire? The arousal provoked in him by Lord Heathfield’s books intensified his suffering, stirred up the fever. There was, in his mind, a confused tumult of erotic images: Elena’s naked body joined the vile groups in the vignettes engraved by Coiny, took up poses of pleasure he had already seen during their erstwhile affair, twisted itself into new positions and offered itself up to the bestial lasciviousness of her husband. Horror! Horror!
—Would you like to go into the salon? the husband asked, reappearing in the doorway, fully composed and tranquil. —Are you going to design those clasps for me, then, for my Gervetius?
Andrea answered:
—I will try.
He could not repress his inner tremor. In the salon, Elena looked at him curiously, with an irritating smile.
—What were you both doing there? she asked, still smiling in the same way.
—Your husband was showing me memorabilia.
—Ah!
Her mouth was sardonic and she had a certain derisive air and evident mockery in her voice. She made herself comfortable on a wide couch covered with an amaranth Bukhara rug, on which pale cushions languished, embroidered with dull gold palms. She lounged in a relaxed position, looking at Andrea from beneath her enticing lashes, with those eyes that seemed to be suffused with the purest and finest oil. And she began to talk about mundane things, but with a voice that penetrated right into the young man’s deepest veins, like an invisible fire.
Two or three times Andrea caught a burning look from Lord Heathfield fixed on his wife: a look that seemed charged with all the impurities and infamies he had previously stirred up. Elena laughed at almost every sentence, a mocking laugh, with strange ease, undisturbed by the desire of those two men who together had become aroused at the figures in the obscene books. Once more, the criminal thought passed through Andrea’s mind, in a flash of lightning. All his fibers trembled.
When Lord Heathfield got up and left the room, Andrea burst out in a hoarse voice, grabbing Elena’s wrist, coming so close to her as to graze her with his vehement breath:
—I’m losing my mind . . . I am going insane . . . I need you, Elena . . . I want you . . .
She freed her wrist with a haughty gesture. Then she said, with terrible coldness:
—I will have my husband give you twenty francs. Once you leave here, you may go and satisfy your cravings.
Sperelli leaped to his feet, livid.
Reentering the room, Lord Heathfield asked:
—Are you already leaving? Whatever’s wrong with you?
And he smiled at his young friend, because he knew the effects of his books.
Sperelli bowed. Elena held out her hand to him without losing composure. The marquis accompanied him to the door, saying to him softly:
—I urge you not to forget my Gervetius.
Once he reached the portico, Andrea saw a carriage approaching on the avenue. A man with a great blond beard looked out of the window, waving. It was Galeazzo Secìnaro.
Instantly, the memory of the May Fair returned to mind, with the episode of Galeazzo paying for Elena Muti to dry her beautiful fingers, dipped in champagne, on his beard. He walked faster and stepped out onto the street: his senses were numbed and confused as if a deafening noise were issuing from deep inside his brain.
It was a warm and humid afternoon toward the end of April. The sun appeared and disappeared between fleecy, idle clouds. The sluggishness of the sirocco held Rome in its grip.
On the sidewalk of Via Sistina, he glimpsed ahead of him a lady walking slowly toward the Trinità. He recognized Donna Maria Ferres. He looked at his watch: it was, in fact, around five; just a few minutes before their habitual meeting time. Maria was going, certainly, to Palazzo Zuccari. He speeded up to reach her. When he was near her, he called her by name:
—Maria!
She gave a start.
—What are you doing here? I was coming up to you. It’s five o’clock.
—There’s still a few minutes to go. I was running so that I could await you. Forgive me.
—What’s wrong? You’re very pale, all agitated . . . Where have you been?
She frowned, staring at him through her veil.
—From the stables, replied Andrea, holding her gaze without reddening, as if he had no more blood in his body. —A horse that is very dear to me has hurt its knee through the fault of the jockey. He won’t be able to participate in the Derby on Sunday, therefore. It makes me upset and angry. Forgive me. I was delayed without realizing it. But there are still a few minutes to five . . .
—Fine. Good-bye. I’m going.
They were on Piazza della Trinità. She stopped to take her leave, holding out her hand. A crease still remained between her brows. In the midst of her great sweetness, sometimes she had bouts of intolerance that were almost harsh, and disdainful movements that transfigured her.
—No, Maria. Come. Be nice. I’m going up to await you. Go as far as the gates of the Pincian Hill and come back again. Will you?
The clock of Trinità de’ Monti sounded five.
—Do you hear that? added Andrea.
She said, after a slight hesitation:
—I’ll come.
—Thank you. I love you.
—I love you.
They parted.
Donna Maria continued her walk; she crossed the square and entered the tree-lined avenue. Above her head, at intervals, along the wall, the languid breeze of the sirocco stirred the green trees to a murmur. In the humid warmth of the air, waves of scent occasionally wafted by and vanished. The clouds appeared lower; flocks of birds almost grazed the ground. Yet, in that enervating heaviness, there was something mild that softened the tormented heart of the Sienese woman.
Since she had yielded to Andrea’s desire, her heart pulsed in happiness furrowed with deep disquiet; all her Christian blood was becoming inflamed with the pleasure she had never experienced before, and chilled with the consternation of guilt. Her passion was supreme, overwhelming, immense; so fierce that often for long hours it deleted the memory of her daughter. She went so far as to forget Delfina sometimes; to neglect her! And then she had sudden recurrences of remorse, repentance, tenderness, in which she covered the head of her astonished daughter in kisses and tears, sobbing with a desperate grief, as if over the head of a dead person.
Her entire being was becoming refined by the flame, sharper, stimulated, was acquiring a prodigious sensitivity, a kind of clairvoyant lucidness, a faculty of divination that gave her strange tortures. Almost at each of Andrea’s deceits, she felt a shadow pass over her soul and felt an undefined restlessness that sometimes became condensed, taking the form of suspicion. And suspicion ate at her, made kisses bitter and caresses sour for her, until it dissipated beneath the impulses and ardor of her uncomprehending lover.
She was jealous. Jealousy caused her an implacable spasm; jealousy not of the present but of the past. Due to that cruelty that jealous people inflict on themselves, she would have liked to read Andrea’s mind, uncover all his memories, see all the traces left by ex-lovers; to know, to know. The question that most often came to her lips, when Andrea was silent, was this:—What are you thinking about?—And while she was uttering these words, inevitably the shadow was passing into her eyes and over her soul; inevitably a wave of sadness rose up from her heart.
That day, too, with Andrea’s sudden arrival, had she not felt an instinctive stirring of suspicion deep inside her? Indeed, a lucid thought had flashed into her mind: the thought that Andrea had come from Lady Heathfield’s house, from Palazzo Barberini.
She knew that Andrea had been that woman’s lover; she knew that that woman’s name was Elena, and lastly, she knew that she was the Elena of the inscription. “Ich lebe! . . .” Goethe’s couplet blared loudly in her heart. That lyrical shout gave her the measure of Andrea’s love for that beautiful woman. He must have loved her immensely!
Walking beneath the trees, she remembered Elena’s appearance in the concert hall, at Palazzo dei Sabini, and the badly concealed agitation of her ex-lover. She remembered the terrible emotion that had overcome her one evening at a party at the Austrian Embassy, when Countess Starnina had said to her as Elena passed them: “How do you find the Heathfield woman? She was a great flame of our friend Sperelli’s, and I think she still is.”
“I think she still is.” How much torment because of that phrase! She had watched her great rival, constantly, amid the elegant crowd; and more than once their eyes had met, and she had felt an indefinable shiver. Then, that same evening, having been introduced to each other by the Baroness of Boeckhorst, in the midst of the crowd, they had exchanged a simple bow of the head. And the tacit nod had been repeated subsequently, on the very rare occasions that Donna Maria Ferres y Capdevila had passed through a society salon.
Why were these fears, appeased or quelled beneath the wave of elation, rising up again with so much vehemence? Why could she not manage to repress them, expel them? Why did all those unknown forebodings agitate inside her at every small jolt of her imagination?
Walking beneath the trees, she felt her anxiety grow. Her heart was not satisfied; the dream that had risen in her heart—on that mystical morning, beneath the florid trees in the presence of the sea—had not come true. The purest and most precious part of that love had remained there, in the solitary wood, in the symbolic forest that flowers and bears fruit, perpetually contemplating the Infinite.
She stopped in front of the parapet that faces San Sebastianello. The ancient oaks, of a green so dark it seemed almost black, extended their branches over the fountain, creating an artificial, lifeless roof. The trunks bore numerous lesions, patched with lime and brick, like the openings in a wall.—Oh, young arbutuses radiant and breathing in the light! The water dripping from the upper granite basin into the lower basin emitted a burst of moans, at intervals, like a heart that fills up with anguish and then flows over in weeping. Oh, melody of the Hundred Fountains, on the bay-tree avenue! The city lay dead, as if covered by the ash of an invisible volcano, silent and funereal like a city undone by pestilence, enormous, formless, dominated by the cupola that rose up from its lap like a cloud. Oh, sea! Oh, calm sea!
She felt her anxiety grow. An obscure threat came to her from these things. She was invaded by that same sense of fear that she had already experienced more than once. The thought of punishment flashed into her Christian mind.
And yet she shivered deep within her being at the thought that her lover was waiting for her; at the thought of the kisses, the caresses, the crazy words, she felt her blood inflame, her soul become languid. The shiver of passion superseded the shiver of divine fear. And she set off toward her lover’s house, anxious, upset, as if she were going to their first rendezvous.
—Oh, finally! exclaimed Andrea, gathering her into his arms, drinking in her breath from her breathless mouth.
Then, taking her hand and pressing it to his chest:
—Feel my heart. If you had delayed one more minute, it would have broken.
She placed her cheek where her hand had just been. He kissed the nape of her neck.
—Can you hear?
—Yes; it’s speaking to me.
—What’s it saying?
—That you don’t love me.
—What’s it saying to you? repeated the young man, biting her on the back of her neck, preventing her from straightening up.
She laughed.
—That you love me.
She took off her mantle, her hat, her gloves. She went to smell the white lilac flowers that filled the tall Florentine goblets; the ones in the Borghese tondo. On the carpets her steps were of an extraordinary lightness; and nothing was sweeter than the act with which she buried her face in the delicate blooms.
—Take it, she said, biting off a flower head and holding it in her mouth, outside her lips.
—No, I shall take another flower from your mouth, less white but more delicious . . .
They kissed, for a long, long time, amid the perfume.
He said, his voice slightly distorted, pulling her:
—Come, let’s go there.
—No, Andrea, it’s late. Not today. Let’s stay here. I will make tea for you; you will give me lots of sweet caresses.
She took his hands and entwined her fingers with his.
—I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel my heart so full of tenderness I could almost cry.
Her words trembled; her eyes grew wet.
—If only I didn’t have to leave you, if only I could stay all evening!
A deep sorrow in her was prompting tones of indefinable melancholy.
—To think that you will never know all of my love! To think that I will never know yours! Do you love me? Tell me, always tell me that you do, a hundred times, a thousand times, tirelessly! Do you love me?
—Don’t you know, perhaps?
—I don’t know.
She uttered these words in such a low voice that Andrea barely heard her.
—Maria!
She bent her head onto his chest, in silence; she rested her forehead on it, almost waiting for him to talk, to listen to him.
He looked at that poor head tilted under the burden of foreboding; he felt the light pressure of that noble and sad forehead on his breast, which was hardened by lies, bound in falseness. An anguished emotion constricted him; a sense of human mercy for that human suffering closed his throat. And that good sentiment of his soul converted itself into lying words, giving the tremor of sincerity to lying words.
—You don’t know! . . . You spoke softly; the breath died on your lips; something inside you rose up against what you were saying; all those memories of our love rose up against what you were saying. You don’t know that I love you! . . .
She remained bowed, listening, quivering intensely, recognizing, or believing that she recognized the real sound of passion in the young man’s emotional voice, that intoxicating sound that she believed was inimitable. And he spoke to her almost in her ear, in the silence of the room, exhaling his warm breath onto her neck, with pauses softer than words.
—To have one single assiduous thought, at all times, at all moments; . . . not to conceive of any other happiness than the superhuman one irradiated by your sole presence onto my being; . . . to live all day in restless raging, terrible expectation, for the moment in which I will see you again; . . . to nurture the image of your caresses, once you have left, and again to possess you in a shadow I have almost created; . . . to feel you, when I sleep, to feel you on my heart, alive, real, palpable, mingled with my blood, mingled with my life; . . . and to believe only in you, to pledge myself only to you, to place my faith, my strength, my pride, my entire world, everything I dream, and everything I hope for, only in you . . .
She lifted her face streaked with tears. He fell silent, stopping the warm drops on her cheeks with his lips. She wept and smiled, placing her tremulous fingers in his hair, lost, sobbing:
—My soul, my soul!
He made her sit down and knelt at her feet, without ceasing to kiss her on the eyelids. Suddenly, he experienced a jolt. He had felt her long lashes palpitate rapidly on his lips, like a restless wing. It was a strange caress that gave him unbearable pleasure; it was a caress that Elena had once used to make, laughing, again and again, forcing her lover to feel the small nervous spasm caused by tickling; and Maria had learned it from him, and often, under the effects of that caress, he could evoke the image of the other.
At his jolt, Maria smiled. And as she still had one glittering tear remaining on her lashes, she said:
—Drink this one, too!
And as he drank, she laughed, unaware.
She was emerging from her weeping almost happy, reassured, full of charm.
—I will make tea for you, she said.
—No, stay here, seated, with me.
He was becoming aroused, seeing her on the sofa among the cushions. A sudden image of Elena superimposed itself on his mind.
—Let me get up! Maria begged, freeing her upper body from his embrace. —I want you to drink my tea. You’ll see. The scent will go right into your soul.
She was talking about a precious tea that had arrived from Calcutta, which she had given to Andrea the day before.
She stood up and went to sit on a leather chair covered with Chimeras, where the saffron-pink color of the ancient dalmatic was still fading exquisitely. The fine Casteldurante majolica still shone on the small table.
In carrying out the task, she said many kind things, spreading her goodness and tenderness with complete abandon; she naively enjoyed that dear secret intimacy, in that tranquil room, amid that refined luxury. Behind her, as behind the Virgin in Sandro Botticelli’s tondo, the crystal cups could be seen, crowned by bunches of white lilacs; and her archangel hands moved between Luzio Dolci’s mythological scenes and Ovid’s hexameters.
—What are you thinking about? she asked Andrea, who was near her, seated on the carpet, his head leaning against an arm of the chair.
—I’m listening to you. Speak some more!
—No more.
—Speak! Tell me lots of things, so many things . . .
—What things?
—Things that only you know.
He was allowing her voice to lull the anguish he felt, which came to him from the other; he was making her voice bring to life the figure of the other.
—Can you smell it? exclaimed Maria, pouring the boiling water over the aromatic leaves.
An intense scent pervaded the air with the steam. Andrea breathed it in. Then he said, closing his eyes and leaning his head back:
—Kiss me.
And as soon as he felt the contact of her lips, he started so violently that Maria was surprised.
She poured the drink into a cup and offered it to him with a mysterious smile.
—Be careful. There is a potion in it.
He refused the offer.
—I don’t want to drink from that cup.
—Why?
—I want to drink—from you.
—But how?
—Like this. Take a sip and don’t swallow.
—It’s still too hot.
She laughed at this whim of her lover’s. He was slightly convulsed, extremely pale, with a strange look in his eyes. They waited for the tea to cool down. Every so often, Maria brought the cup to her lips to try it; then she laughed, with a small fresh laugh that did not seem hers.
—Now we can drink it, she announced.
—Now, take a big sip. Like this.
She kept her lips closed, to keep the liquid in her mouth; but her large eyes, which the recent tears had made more splendid, were laughing.
—Now, let it out, bit by bit.
He drank from the kiss, sucking in the entire mouthful of tea. When she felt herself running out of breath, she hurried the slow drinker on by squeezing his temples.
—My God! You wanted to suffocate me.
She lay back on the cushions, almost as if to rest, languid and happy.
—How did it taste? You even drank my soul. I’m all empty.
He remained pensive, staring into space.
—What are you thinking about? Maria asked him again, raising herself up suddenly, placing one finger in the middle of his forehead as if to stop his invisible thought.
—Nothing, he replied. —I was not thinking. I was following inside myself the effects of the potion . . .
Then she also wanted to try. She drank from him with delight. Then she exclaimed, placing her hand on her heart and letting out a long sigh:
—How I like it!
Andrea trembled. Was that not the same tone as Elena’s, the night she first gave herself to him? Were those not the same words? He looked at her mouth.
—Say it again.
—What?
—The thing you said.
—Why?
—It’s such a sweet word, when you say it . . . You can’t understand . . . Say it again.
She smiled, unaware, slightly agitated by her lover’s strange, almost shy expression.
—Well, then, I like it!
—And me?
—What?
—Do you—me?
Perplexed, she looked at her lover, who was twisting at her feet, convulsed, waiting for the word he wanted to tear from her.
—And me?
—Ah! I . . . like you!
—Like that! Like that! Say it again! Again!
She did so, without knowing why. He felt an indefinable spasm and desire.
—Why are you closing your eyes? she asked, not suspiciously, but so that he would describe the sensations he was feeling to her.
—To die.
He leaned his head on her knees, remaining for a few minutes in that position, silent, obscure. She caressed his hair slowly, his temples, his forehead, where, below her caress, an evil thought was stirring. Around them the room was slowly being immersed in shadows; the intermingled scent of the flowers and the tea floated; forms were fusing into one single harmonious, rich appearance, without reality.
After a while, Maria said:
—Get up, love. I must leave you. It’s late.
He stood up, begging her:
—Stay with me for another moment, until the Hail Mary.
And he pulled her down again onto the couch, where the cushions glittered in the shadows. In the shadows he laid her down with a sudden movement, holding her head tightly, covering her face with kisses. His ardor was almost irate. He imagined himself to be holding the other’s head, and imagined that head tainted by her husband’s lips; and he felt not revulsion at it but, on the contrary, an even more savage desire. From the basest depths of his instinct, all the turbid sensations aroused in the presence of that man rose up again in his heart; all the obscenities and depravities rose to his heart, like a wave of mud that has been stirred up; and all those vile things passed through his kisses onto Maria’s cheeks, her forehead, her hair, her neck, her mouth.
—No, let me go! she shouted, freeing herself from his tight embrace with effort. And she ran toward the tea table to light the candles.
—Be good, she added, slightly out of breath, tidying herself with a gently vexatious air.
He had remained on the couch and was watching her, mute.
She went toward the wall, near the fireplace, where the small Mona Amorrosisca mirror hung. She put on her hat and veil in front of that clouded glass, which had the appearance of some murky, slightly greenish water.
—How sorry I am to leave you, this evening! . . . This evening more than other times . . . she murmured, oppressed by the melancholy of the hour.
In the room, the violet light of dusk grappled with the candlelight. The cup of tea was on the edge of the table, cold, diminished by two sips. Above the tall crystal vases the lilac flowers appeared whiter. The cushion of the armchair still retained the imprint of the body that had been pressed into it earlier.
The bell of Trinità de’ Monti began to peal.
—My God, how late it is! Help me put on my mantle, said the poor creature, turning toward Andrea.
He grasped her once again in his arms, laid her down and covered her with furious kisses, blindly, lost, with a devouring ardor, without speaking, suffocating her moans on her mouth, suffocating on her mouth an impulse that came to him, almost invincible, to shout out Elena’s name. And on the body of the unknowing woman, he consummated the horrible sacrilege.
They remained for a few minutes entwined together. She said, in an exhausted and elated voice:
—You are taking my very life!
That impassioned vehemence made her happy.
She said: —Soul, my soul, all, all mine!
She said, happy:
—I feel your heart beating . . . so strongly, so strongly!
Then she said, with a sigh:
—Let me get up. I must go.
Andrea was as white and agitated as a murderer.
—What is the matter? she asked him tenderly.
He forced himself to smile at her. He answered:
—I have never felt such a profound emotion. I thought I would die.
He turned to one of the vases, took out the bunch of flowers, and offered it to Maria, accompanying her to the door, almost urging her to leave, because every gesture, every look, every word of hers gave him an unbearable suffering.
—Good-bye, my love. Dream of me! said the poor creature from the doorway, with her supreme tenderness.