I’m seeking a blessing
I don’t know who has it
I don’t know what it is.
—CHERUBINO, THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO
So, with that kiss, I had again ruined our friendship; and this time irreparably.
After that fatal event, I had only to enter a room where she was (even if I didn’t say a word, even if I was there simply on my own business that had nothing to do with her)—it was enough for me to be in her presence!—and right away she lost all assurance and spontaneity. The natural pride of her behavior, which was combined so delicately with meekness, suddenly fell, overcome by a strange fear. That fear, I repeat, seemed of an unusual type, not the same she had displayed in the past, for example, in the presence of my father. If I had to invent an image for that new fear I could compare it only to a flame, which suddenly attacked her with its treacherous rosy light, and licked her limbs; and which she tried to flee in confused, reckless ways. A sudden blush, then her face turned pale; she walked around the kitchen, with trembling fingers picking up and putting down this or that object, to no purpose; then she sat down again near Carmine, and began singing her usual songs, in a timid, cold voice, as if she herself weren’t listening to the words. And those songs were a pretext, or even a small magic charm, to distract her from her own fear, and the burden of my presence. At times one would have said she was taking refuge behind Carmine’s basket, or holding him in her arms, to defend herself from a frightening intruder. And that was me, the intruder! But the strangest fact, which I still haven’t said, is this: that I myself, in her presence, was afraid!
I say afraid because at the time I wouldn’t have known a truer word to describe my distress. Although I had read books and novels, even about love, I was really still a half-barbaric boy; and maybe, too, my heart, unknown to me, took advantage of my immaturity and ignorance, to protect me from the truth? If I think back now on my whole history with N., from the beginning, I learn that the heart, in its competition with conscience, is as capricious, shrewd, and imaginative as a master costume designer. To create its masks, it needs almost nothing; sometimes, to disguise things, it simply replaces one word with another . . . And in that bizarre game conscience wanders around like a stranger at a masked ball, amid the fumes of the wine.
Since I’d kissed her, I couldn’t see her without a mortal pounding of my heart (which began as soon as the Casa dei Guaglioni came into view at the end of the street—closer at every step). Then, in her presence, that anxiety became anguish, a kind of bitterness at the injustice, and rage. The fact was this: that of all the innumerable minutes that made up our common past, I, seeing her, remembered only one: the one when I had kissed her. It seemed to me that my kiss had left a visitble mark on her whole body, ringing it with a kind of halo that was complicit, radiant, soft, sweet, and mine! And I wished to return there to take shelter, as if to my nest. As if she were now the enchanted prisoner of my kiss, and I had been summoned to share that loving prison with her. Now I couldn’t see her without feeling the vehement, irresistible need to embrace her and kiss her again. But how could I impose that necessary claim, in fact that right of mine, if she had become hostile to me precisely because of my kiss? And that single kiss of ours, which to me seemed a presence so luminous, for her had become, instead, a figure of threat and fear? I had the sensation that (so great was her fear) if I embraced and kissed her again I would kill her! One day, when she was cutting bread, and I was staring at her with the usual pounding heart, I met her gaze; and believed I read in her sweet, trembling face just these words: “Watch out, if you come near me I’ll stab myself with this knife and fall down dead here.”
Thus her fear became also my fear. And she and I, together in the same room, moved in confusion, as if through a surging roar that collided with us, brought us near, and separated us, forbidding us ever to meet. After a while, I went out without saying a word, incapable of expressing my bitter anguish and my revolt. Her rejection of my kisses seemed to me nothing other than a denial of our friendship and relationship: a condemnation, which would relegate me unjustly to solitude.
That injustice of which I accused my stepmother nevertheless shackled my will with a grave power and a mysterious prestige; but no scruple or awareness of guilt visited my mind. In my feelings toward her I saw no prohibition. And not even in my kiss! Kissing her, I had obeyed an impulse of happiness and glory, carefree and without remorse. Among my Absolute Certainties there was none that said: It’s a crime to kiss friends and relatives.
Of course, I wasn’t ignorant of the fact that not all kisses are the same. I had read, for example, the canto of Paolo and Francesca. Not to mention the dozens of songs I knew, which all talked about caresses and kisses of love. Also, I had had occasion, down at the port, to look at some illustrated movie magazines, with photographs of couples kissing (from the captions, I even learned the names of some of the stars) . . . But until then I had been too used to being considered a boy to put myself suddenly in the place of Paolo, the damned soul of a circle of Hell, or of the hero Clark Gable (who, among other things, was antipathetic to me, because he had a squashed face and, besides, was dark-haired). The love extolled in songs, books, and illustrated magazines remained a remote and mythical thing to me, outside of real life. As we know, the only woman in my thoughts had always been my mother: and if I had dreamed of kisses, they had always been the holy kisses of a mother for her son.
So now that N., precisely because of her fear of me, did me the greatest honor, the honor I had always longed for (treating me like a man, and not like a boy), I was unable to acknowledge that honor!
Yes! Now I’m good at asking myself if it wasn’t perhaps the cunning of my heart, which pretended not to recognize the obvious evidence, in order to exempt me from punishment. Now I can speculate and investigate better than a philosopher. And I say and I suppose: maybe, if I had manfully interrogated my conscience (which was not completely barbaric, however immature), it would have responded: “Don’t play tricks! You’re a liar and a seducer.” But in the clear calm days of that Procidan spring a kind of sparkling cloud had descended around me, infused with new, strange lights and obscure shapes, in which I lived enveloped like an outlaw, so I didn’t even remember that conscience existed, and at times was no longer even aware of being myself.
It may be that everyone at that time of life has felt something not very different.
I was again spending entire days out of the house, encountering N. as little as possible. And in those hours of separation, my mind itself, without any intervention of my will, broke away from the image of her. I never thought about her face or, still less, her body; one would have said that thought shunned the sight of my stepmother. But, even without looking at her, thought, like a blindfolded pilgrim, returned to her.
Here’s how. I should say (since I haven’t yet) that in the meantime the fatal kiss, in my capricious memory, had become more innocent than it really was (like music of which one remembers only the melody). Some of the bizarre, fierce violence I had felt in that kiss had been almost eliminated from recollection (and so the less likely it became that I might acknowledge my guilt in giving a kiss!). Another thing, however, I couldn’t forget: and that is that on that one occasion I had, for the first time, called N. by name (instead of saying as I usually did: Hey, you, or something similar). Owing to I don’t know what imaginary decree, it had the flavor of an infraction: that single thing! And now that flavor returned often to tempt me.
I don’t know how many times a day, even without thinking of her, I surprised myself repeating in a low voice, Nunziata, Nunziatella, savoring a delightful but audacious lightness, as if I were confiding a secret to a fellow traitor. Or I traced that name with my finger on a window, or on the sand, and right afterward erased it, as a criminal does the clues that might point to him. But suddenly the roar of the waves, the whistle of the steamers, all the sounds of the island and the sky seemed to cry together: Nunziata! Nunziatella! It was like an immense, intoxicating revolt against the notorious prohibition (which in truth I had invented myself) that had always denied me that name. And, at the same time, a profound condemnation of my transgression, which nearly overwhelmed me.
The name Nunziata, Nunziatella was transformed for me into a kind of abstract catchphrase: like a watchword among conspirators, which, adopted for devious plots, is stripped of its original meaning. Thus not even the sound of the name—now the symbol of an obscure, broken law!—led my mind to her face, to her physical person. Outside her presence, her person seemed to be hidden from me in a cloud; then, as soon as I returned to her presence, the cloud ripped apart to show me the harsh face of denial.
N. was absent even from my dreams. Or at least I don’t remember that she ever visited them, at the time.
I recall that, in that period, I had dreams from the Arabian Nights. I dreamed of flying! I dreamed of being a magnificent lord, who threw innumerable coins to the crowd. Or a great Arab king, who crossed a burning desert on horseback, and, as he passed, the coolest springs gushed up to the sky!
In reality, however, I seemed to have suddenly become the armed enemy of all things in existence.
I said that it was a strange time. The conflict between my stepmother and me was only one of the aspects of the great war that, rapidly, with the flowering of spring, seemed to have been unleashed between Arturo Gerace and all the rest of creation. The fact was that the return of summer that year was for me accompanied by what is called in good families the ungrateful age. I had never before felt myself so ugly: in my body, and in all that I did, I noticed a strange clumsiness, which began with my voice. My voice had become odious, neither soprano (as it had been before) nor, yet, tenor (as it was later): it seemed an out-of-tune instrument. And the rest was like my voice. My face was still quite round and smooth, but my body wasn’t. My clothes no longer fit, so that N., although hostile, had to adjust to my size some sailor pants that a shopkeeper friend of hers gave her on credit. And meanwhile I had the impression that I was growing without grace, in an ungainly way. My legs, for example, in a few weeks had become so long that they got in my way, and my hands were too big in comparison with my body, which was still lean and slender. When I closed them, I seemed to have the fists of an adult bandit, which I was not. And I didn’t know what to do with those murderer’s fists: I always felt like punching with them, anywhere, so that if pride hadn’t hindered me I would have quarreled with the first person I met, maybe with a goatherd, or a laborer, with anyone. Instead, I started neither conversation nor quarrel with anyone; and in fact, even more than before, if possible, I stayed away from people. Really, I felt like a character so out of place and cursed that I almost would have liked to shut myself up in some den, where I could be left to grow in peace until the day when, as I had been quite a good-looking boy, I would become quite a good-looking youth. But: to go and shut myself up! Yes! Easy to say! But how could I have endured being shut up, when I seemed to have in me a hellish spirit, which transformed me into a kind of wild animal, all day hunting some unknown prey? The gentleness of the season made my mood bitter: I would have been happier in winter storms. The springtime beauties of the island, which in other years I had so loved, inspired almost an angry mockery, while I climbed up and down those cliffs and fields with my long legs, like a chamois or a wolf, in a constant turmoil that found no outlet. Sometimes the triumphant joy of nature overpowered me, leading me to extraordinary exaltations. The fantastic flowers of the volcanoes, which invaded every piece of uncultivated land, seemed to spread out before me for the first time gorgeous patterns of form and color, inviting me to a joyous, changing celebration . . . But the usual desolate anger immediately possessed me again, intensified by shame at my futile rapture. I wasn’t a goat, or a sheep, to be satisfied with grass and flowers! And in revenge I destroyed the meadow, tearing up flowers, trampling them fiercely under my feet.
My desperation resembled hunger and thirst, although it was a different thing. And, after having so longed to reach an older age, I almost regretted my earlier age: What did I lack then? Nothing. I had a wish to eat: and I ate. I had a desire to drink: and I drank. I wanted to enjoy myself: I went out in the Torpedo Boat of the Antilles. And the island, for me, what had it been up to now? A land of adventure, a blessed garden! No, now it was a bewitched and sensual dwelling, in which, like wretched King Midas, I found nothing to satisfy me.
A desire for destruction took hold of me. I would have liked to be able to practice a brutal profession, for example stone breaker, to occupy my body from morning till night in a vain and violent action that would distract me in some way. All the pleasures of summer, which had once been enough for me, appeared insufficient, laughable; and there was no thing I did without a desire for aggression and ferocity. I dove into the sea belligerently, like a savage rushing at an adversary with a knife in his teeth; and, swimming, I would have liked to break, to devastate the sea! Then I jumped into my boat, rowing wildly toward the open water; and there, in the high sea, I began singing desperately in my tuneless voice, as if I were cursing.
Upon returning, I stretched out on the sunny sand, whose carnal warmth was like a beautiful silken body. I relaxed, as if rocked, into the light weariness of midday; and I would have liked to embrace the entire beach. At times, I spoke endearments to things, as if they were people. I began to say, for instance: “Oh, my lovely sand! My beach! My light!” and other more complicated endearments, really demented. But it was impossible to embrace the great body of the beach, whose countless glassy grains of sand slid between my fingers. Nearby, a pile of seaweed, soaked in the spring salt, gave out a sweet, fermenting odor, as of mold on grapes; and, like a cat, I took pleasure in biting the seaweed, furiously scattering it. Too great was my wish to play: with anyone, even the air! And I eyed the sky, blinking my eyelids hard. The pure blue spread over me seemed to approach, embroidered with stars like a firmament, igniting into a single great fire and then becoming as black as Hell . . . I turned over on the sand, laughing. The futility of these games embittered me.
I was seized by an almost fraternal pity for myself. I traced on the sand the name ARTURO GERACE, adding, IS ALONE, and then, afterward, ALWAYS ALONE.
And later, as I went back up toward the house with the certainty of finding there only an enemy, infernal desires often assailed me. I would grab my stepmother by the hair, throw her to the ground, and beat her with my big fists, shouting: “That’s enough of that goddamn behavior of yours! You’d better stop it!” But in her presence my sinister purposes vanished. I felt embarrassment and shame, as if there were no longer a place for me in that kitchen. The well-known bench, where once I loved to stretch out, had become too short for my height. My long legs, my unnatural voice, my hands got in the way more than ever. And a terrible, depressing sensation invaded me: that my present ugliness, and nothing else, was the reason that N. avoided me.
Later, when we’re old, I know, such tragedies are, more than anything, comic; and, if I like, now, at a distance, I, too, can laugh. But we should recognize that it’s not easy to cross the last frontiers of that terrible ungrateful age without having anyone to confide in: neither a friend nor a relative! Then, for the first time in my life, I truly felt the bitterness of being alone. I began to long desperately for my father. (He had now been gone for around two and a half months: an unexpectedly long interval after that period when, as I said, he was often on the island.) In my yearning I created a romantic portrait of him, which was not too lifelike, I should say. I absolutely forgot that between us there had never been any intimacy. And that certain things, to him especially, I couldn’t and wouldn’t ever have confided and wouldn’t have known how. I even forgot his behavior of recent times, which was certainly not encouraging to conversation.
I imagined W.G. as a sort of great affectionate angel, my only friend on earth: to him I could confess, perhaps, all my anguish, all that was unconfessable, and he would understand me, explain what I didn’t understand! Gradually, as that traitorous spring wore on in confusion and torment (and it was to be the last spring I spent on Procida!), I clung to the angelic vision of my father as the only refuge to be hoped for. Everything that made such a dream unlikely, utopian, I now hid from myself. Hope, at times, weakens awareness, like a defect.
And I began again to wait for Wilhelm Gerace every day, as when I was a boy, although for different reasons. I was faithfully, stubbornly on the dock, at the arrival of every steamer from Naples: until, as was inevitable, one fine day he returned. He arrived on the second afternoon boat, which entered the port around six. It was the middle of May, the days were now long, and, at six, there was still full sun.
When I saw him appear on the upper deck, lanky and solitary, standing slightly behind the small group of arriving passengers, I began to call him from below, with uncontrollable joy. But I immediately realized, from his expression, that he was almost annoyed at finding me there. And when he got close he neglected to greet me but right away asked me to go home without him, he had to stay here and would come later, on his own. “I’ll see you soon, at home,” he said. Then, eyeing me, although distracted, he added: “Eh, what have you done, Arturo? How you’ve grown in these months!” In fact, as I stood facing him, I didn’t have to raise my eyes to look at him, as I used to; and in his surprise there was a note of coldness, as if I were so changed he didn’t recognize me.
That cold, hurried phrase was, in any case, the only sign of attention he gave me. At that moment his pupils seemed barely to see me. “So,” he repeated, “see you later.” And his disoriented, slightly feverish manner betrayed only impatience to be free of me.
Such a thing had never happened in similar circumstances in the past. Usually he was happy to have me go with him to the departing steamer, and even more content if he had the surprise of finding me on his arrival. That new, inexplicable wish of his struck me harder than a blow. In my wonder and chagrin, I was almost on the point of asking him, as a favor, to give me his suitcase to carry to the house; but immediately I was ashamed to the depths of my soul of such a servile temptation. I hadn’t come here to be his errand boy! And, without asking for an explanation of his behavior, without saying a word, I separated from him with an expression of indifference, a kind of sneer on my lips.
But I didn’t obey his order to go home: as if in defiance, I wanted, rather, to stay on the dock. And, having taken a few idle steps, I stopped a short distance away, near a pile of goods, which I leaned against sideways, in the attitude that delinquents have in certain comics about criminal life. At no cost did I want to show him my bitter humiliation. But, satisfied that he had been left alone, he didn’t bother to check if I had obeyed or not. He stayed near the gangplank, his suitcase at his feet, as if waiting for someone who was to disembark from the same steamer; and meanwhile he kept his eyelids disdainfully lowered, paying no attention to me or to anything around. Who, then, could be the delaying passenger he was waiting for? Maybe, this time, he hadn’t arrived on the island alone? Among these speculations, in a sign of arrogance, I kept my eyes on him; and I noticed how thin he had gotten. His jacket, still the same as in winter, was twice as large as he. Underneath, the unbuttoned shirt exposed his white skin: evidently, despite the beautiful warm season, he hadn’t been out in the sun yet this year.
He lighted a cigarette and immediately tossed it away. I realized then that his hands were trembling; and that the impassiveness of his bearing betrayed, in spite of himself, a strenuous resolution to drive out an extreme, disastrous, and childish anxiety. It was clear that the mysterious person who at this moment he was waiting for exercised a rare sovereignty over his thoughts. But, with a last claim of pride, he wanted to pretend to himself that his vigilant attention wasn’t too involved in this faithful and absorbing wait; and so he lowered his eyes to the ground, turning them fiercely away from that deck, from that gangplank, toward which his anxious nerves most yearned.
But who was he waiting for? By now, according to all evidence, the few passengers whose destination was Procida had disembarked, while those who were departing had already boarded; only the signal to cast off the moorings and set out was needed. “Maybe,” I thought sarcastically, “he’s waiting for some prisoner?” In fact, the last shift to disembark was reserved for the new guests of the penitentiary: after the movement of arrivals and departures ceased, and the small crowd on the dock had dispersed.
I had thought, “He must be waiting for a prisoner,” only out of a sarcastic deduction, never expecting that I was guessing the truth. I saw, at that point, that the truck from the prison, which I hadn’t noticed before, stood at the entrance to the square, and that a guard in a gray-green uniform, bayonet over his shoulder, was walking back and forth near the steamer. Sure signs, these, that on board there was some guest of the castle of Procida, still shut up in the security cabin near the hold, waiting for the two guards assigned to his escort to lead him out. Another brief wait followed, maybe a minute, during which my father, making an extreme demand on his will, seemed to achieve a cold and motionless apathy, as if he no longer cared about what was to happen, or any other human event. He was still looking down, when suddenly I saw him start, and his eyes, full of light, childish, blue, rose instinctively toward the upper deck of the boat. At that very instant the expected trio, now familiar to the inhabitants of the island, appeared on the deck, heading toward the gangplank. Then an unfamiliar, hellish, and terrible feeling surprised me.
Usually when such a trio made its appearance at the port, my heart went out immediately to the condemned man. He could even have an abject, atrocious appearance; it didn’t count. He was a prisoner: and therefore angelic. When I first saw him, I dreamed of brotherhood, of escapes; and while I averted my eyes as a sign of respect, I would have liked to shout my complicity. This time, instead, after barely a glimpse of the new prisoner, I felt a savage antipathy, which did not allow me to see his features clearly, and I immediately judged them to be horrendously ugly (a judgment contrary to the truth!). I can say, in other words, that from that first instant I vowed absolute hatred. Maliciously, I almost wished that prison regulations would order the guards—who escorted him, in fact, with an air of protectiveness—to drag him rudely along the dock instead, abusing him with the cruelest tortures.
What I was able to notice, with my hostile eyes, during his rapid passage, was, above all, that he was an extremely young condemned man: he seemed even younger than the minimum age that was surely required for a prisoner. On his face, and on his manacled hands, the almost gray pallor that dark skin acquires in prison stood out in the light; but not even that grim color could age him. Rather, it hardened the character of youthful plebeian brutality—common, but in him ostentatious—that was chiseled in his face, especially in the curve of his lips and the part of his black hair. That dark vitality, which was worse than impudence, and which to me appeared truly sinister, suddenly became, in my eyes, the very shape of him. The image was oblique and, because of his darkness, mysterious: inspiring in me, from the start, angry, contradictory feelings.
His face was bent toward his chest, in severe remorse, which in him, however, seemed merely an expression for the occasion, or maybe ironic. In fact the look on his face was contradicted by his body, which in movement and gait betrayed a fresh, aggressive, and playful adolescence. He was of medium height; but, much more vigorous than my father, he could seem, at first sight, as tall as him. And for the journey he had put on his best civilian clothes (well cut, brand-new, flashy): as sometimes in such circumstances, out of a kind of affectation, certain condemned men do, especially young, inexperienced ones; but in that awkward outfit his body moved as if it were in a puppet’s costume, with an untamable, vain, and happy freedom.
In his heart he seemed to be setting out on his sentence as if it were a boast, uniting the two most envied types of audacity: affirmation of oneself, and adventure. (Later I was able to come up with profane reasons to explain that bearing of his: since his flaunted conviction was to turn out to be somewhat laughable. And so his crime must be, too, I imagine . . . But at the time I considered that immature youth a murderer, a true condemned man! And I happened to attribute Promethean causes to his arrogance, as I will describe.)
In addition to certain transfigurations of romantic origin, in the very brief time that that scene lasted I was endowed with a sensitivity close to clairvoyance, which is found at times in women, or in animals. For example, I perceived immediately, with certainty, that my father knew that prisoner, not from today but from before; and the look he gave him will never be erased from my heart. His eyes (always the most beautiful in the world, to me), like two mirrors at the passing of a celestial body, had turned a clear and fabulous deep blue, with no trace of their usual murky shadow. And their expression might mean a faithful greeting, an imaginary understanding, a poor and desperate welcome; but above all it meant an entreaty. It seemed that Wilhelm Gerace was asking for an act of charity. But what in the world could he ask from that wretched man, to whom he wasn’t allowed even to say a word, to make a sign? A look, in response to his look of adoring friendship, was all that he could ask. And that unique pleaded-for thing, which the prisoner could have given to my father, he denied him. In fact, perhaps in spite of himself, having glanced at him deliberately as he passed close by, he composed his boyish face in an expression of boredom, impatience, the most insulting contempt for Wilhelm Gerace. And his extremely black eyes were turned elsewhere. All this lasted barely a few seconds: the time necessary for that unlucky trio to reach the prison truck. I saw my father leave his place and try, almost unconsciously, to follow the three, to be immediately repulsed by the policeman on guard. Only when he heard the door of the truck slam was he allowed to pass; and the truck was already in gear when he reached it. I saw him stop for an instant, as if uncertain, then run a few steps in the direction of the truck, with confused gestures, almost comic in their uselessness. Such as grief-stricken mothers have, when, finally, tearing themselves from the arms of those who are holding them back, with a cry of denial they run down the stairs and into the street. Where already the coffin bearers, with their small burden on their shoulders, have left the doorway and are hurrying away.
Then he stopped, standing there for a moment in an idle attitude, without remembering his suitcase, abandoned near the boat landing. A boy from the port came and tugged on his jacket, reminding him of what he had forgotten; and then with mechanical movements he went back to get the suitcase. He didn’t notice me, standing opposite, up against those crates of goods; and probably he hadn’t noticed me the whole time. I saw him walking with his suitcase through the square, alone, his shoulders slack and slightly bent. A few minutes later, with a feeling of laziness and inertia, I left the dock.
As far back as I could remember, this was my father’s longest sojourn on the island: he arrived, as I said, around the middle of May, and didn’t leave again until winter. During that interval, a steady, stupendous summer reigned, while in the Casa dei Guaglioni time wore on, obscure and inconstant, toward the final tempest . . . I will begin with the first important event that made that season memorable for me: it happened a few days after my father’s arrival, maybe in the third week of May.
Among N.’s acquaintances, there was one named Assunta, a widow of twenty-one. Although I saw her often, I had never noticed that she was prettier than the other neighbors who frequented our house: the only characteristic that had made me notice her among the others, and on account of which I was perhaps less rude to her, was that as a result of an illness she’d had as a girl she walked with a slight limp. To my skeptical, surly eyes that defect seemed, rather, an attraction: all the more since, with the vanity of a simple creature, she often liked to sit in the poses of a melancholy invalid, although now her body was flourishing with health and the vitality of youth. Her relatives, friends, and so on, to console her for the illness she’d suffered and then her widowhood, had always spoiled her with special kindnesses and caresses: and she had grown up with soft, defenseless ways, like the Oriental languors of a favorite cat.
Although she was short and small-boned, her body was well made, quite shapely; but of this, I repeat, I wasn’t aware. To me she looked like a bundle, just the same as the other women.
She had dark, rather olive skin, and long smooth black hair.
If you looked out the window of our kitchen toward the sloping countryside, a long, downhill lane could be seen that meandered like a river: and at the bottom the cottage where she lived with her relatives was visible. They were landowning farmers, and went to work every day on one of their properties on the other side of the island; but, because of her past illness, she was dismissed from the work in the fields, and so, not having children, she spent a great part of her time alone in the cottage, especially during the spring and summer. If I happened to pass by there, I would often see her sitting outside the door, picking over the greens for the family soup or combing her hair in front of a small mirror, wetting the comb in a basin. On seeing me she ducked behind her hair, smiling almost hesitantly, and tilted her head slightly toward her shoulder, as she waved farewell with her hand. Sometimes I responded with a hurried hello and other times I didn’t respond at all.
She had always been among N.’s friends; but, that spring, she went much more often to the Casa dei Guaglioni, where she was warmly welcomed, both by N. and by Carmine, who often played in her arms while N. took care of the kitchen. Almost every day, at around three or four in the afternoon, when I went home to get something to eat, I found her there; and when I entered she greeted me with her usual shy smile, which was faintly drawn on her closed, full lips, and put a velvety shadow in her almond-shaped black eyes. But I paid no attention to her smiles or to her; I had other things on my mind. As spring advanced, when I again began to desert the house for the entire day, my occasions for meeting this woman were very rare.
One afternoon a few days after my father’s arrival, I was wandering through the countryside in the grip of that wretched mood that had been tormenting me like a curse. Never had any summer declared itself so desolate and miserable; and my father’s presence on the island, instead of consoling me as I had dreamed, intensified even more the strange sensation that I had become a sort of graceless animal, hated by the universe. Wilhelm Gerace, on his return to Procida, persistently avoided my company, as he had never done in summers past. And, from the evening of his arrival, and my disappointment when he got off the boat, I suspected that his rejection might also be due to the changed aspect (for the worse) of my body. Every time his gaze rested on me I thought I read a critical, amazed, and negative judgment, as if he no longer recognized his son Arturo in such an ugly youth. And it seemed to me that his eyes, like two freezing ponds, reflected my ungainly features, describing them one by one: so that, unlike Narcissus, I fell out of love with myself in a furious manner. In the end I longed to return to the time when W.G. was pleased to say, at least: “Well, he’s not bad. Yes, not for nothing is he my son!” And after yearning for so many years to be as tall as he was, now, instead, near him, I felt my height as a hindrance, a shame. I had the impression that he considered it a kind of strange abuse, to be regarded with antipathy or distrust. And I would have liked to be a child again.
Of course, I didn’t relinquish my pride. I returned his coldness with coldness. And, preferring to avoid the insult of his looks voluntarily—or at least without leaving him the initiative—I behaved as if I avoided his company no less than he mine.
Here, then, is what my life was reduced to: that my father rejected me, my stepmother kept me distant as if I were more dangerous than a snake. Anything is better than pity: and I didn’t want to be pitied by anyone. At night, I returned home with an air of mystery and delinquency, as if I’d spent the day commanding gangs of thieves, pirate ships. Sometimes I would have liked to be a true monster of ugliness: for example, I imagined myself disguised as an albino, with fangs instead of teeth, and one eye concealed under a black patch. In this way, merely by appearing, I would horrify and strike fear into everyone.
It was an afternoon on one of these days when I was passing Assuntina’s house. I saw her as she greeted me from behind a window, and I think that I didn’t even respond; but as I was going off, I heard her small limping steps hurrying toward me, and her voice calling:
“Gerace! Gerace! Arturo!”
I turned. “Hello,” she began, “what ever are you doing around here? I haven’t seen you for a long time . . .”
“Hello,” I answered. And, not knowing what else to say, I gave her a look from head to toe, with the dark, disdainful expression of a tiger who encounters a family of young lions in the jungle.
Her bare feet, on the dry dust of the earth, were muddy, as if they’d been walking in muck. And she immediately explained that she was intending to wash her feet, when she had seen me pass; and to reach me she had run out without drying them. As she explained, she lowered her gaze to her tiny feet, in an eloquent manner that was intended to signify: “Be indulgent toward that mud, in fact please accept it as a sign of my haste to reach you.”
Then her eyes, still half lowered, looked at me with a shy expression, between reproach and servitude. “I was getting ready to go up to your house . . .” she resumed, “but since I knew you’re never there, at this hour . . . In the past, at this hour I might happen to see you there sometimes, and now, instead, never! Not this hour or any other!”
Her singsong voice, in saying those words, seemed almost to be lamenting. And, with its notes of sweet frailty, it recalled sounds that bitches make, or small female donkeys, when they complain of wrongs you don’t understand.
“In my opinion,” she added after a silence, “you must have some girl, down in the town, who keeps you out of the house all day!”
“I don’t have any girl!” I declared, with surly pride.
“Really! You really don’t have a girl! . . . But I—I might not believe that . . .”
She dared to contradict me! Yet from a woman such an insult didn’t bring dishonor as it would from a man; and I confined myself to picking up a rock and throwing it, threateningly, without deigning to give her any other response.
“And if you really don’t have a girl, why do you stay away all day? A hundred times a person comes to your house, and a hundred times you’re not there. Not in the morning, or in the afternoon!”
“So what does it matter to you?”
“To me . . . well, now, you mustn’t be offended. If you’re offended, I’m ashamed, and I don’t know what else to say. But I don’t want to tell you a lie: it matters, yes, it matters a little to me. And the reason is my secret, Assuntina’s . . . that Assuntina could tell only to you, she couldn’t confide it to anyone else . . . Maybe, if you want to know, I’ll tell you this secret now; but if you don’t want to know, I won’t tell you.”
In response I curled my lip, meaning clearly: “Whether you tell me or not, I don’t really care. Do as you like.”
“And so? Should I speak or not? All right, I’ll speak, because I can’t stand this thorn in my throat anymore.” And she began to speak, lulling herself in her slow soprano voice.
“So here’s how it is: when I come to your house, with such pleasure (and I return every day, and I go up there morning and evening—and even with this lame leg!), I don’t come for just one reason . . . but for more than one reason. Of course, I come out of friendship for Nunziata; and then out of affection for your little brother, Carminiello. Of course. These are truths that everyone knows, but they’re not the principal truth. The principal truth is another (and this is my secret, which I was telling you . . .): that Assuntina comes up to your house principally in the hope of seeing you!”
At that my face turned bright red. I would never have believed that a woman could make such a bold declaration so naturally! But she wasn’t even blushing! In fact, looking at my cheeks, she broke into a sweet, sensual laugh. And I glimpsed her pink gums, bathed in a wetness that made her teeth shine.
“And so now my secret is yours: and no one else has to know it. Yes, it’s already been a while, since before Easter, I swear, that I’ve had that thought! You’ve seen that in the afternoon I’m always here alone: and so every day I start thinking to myself . . . and thinking again. You’re a man, of course, and you don’t think. The only idea of men is to always be going around: they go to the wine shops, to the taverns . . . They don’t think. Whereas women, they think!
“And when I saw you hurry by, like today, I always had this idea: ‘He could sit down once in a while in my house, and bring a little comfort to Assuntina, who’s here all alone!’ ”
There was a pause. With lowered eyes, she looked at me just fleetingly. “But later,” she added finally, “I thought maybe I’d better forget that idea. In fact, I seemed to hear a voice inside, like an old lady, who said to me: ‘Well, Assuntí . . . ! Maybe he’s running because he’s got an appointment with the girl. Who knows how many pretty girls that boy has? You aren’t so pretty (even without considering your injured leg). And then compared to him you’re practically an old woman.’ ”
After that, she was silent again, with an air of flaunting her sadness. She kept her eyes lowered, as if virtuously; and meanwhile her small dark hand was playing with a string of coral she wore around her neck.
Not knowing what to say, I exclaimed, with an aggressive, insolent vehemence:
“Those are pretty corals you have!”
“Oh, it’s true, yes, they’re quite nice,” she answered, rather pleased, but, still, a little sad, “and I don’t have just these corals, I also have some others. Matching this necklace I have earrings, a bracelet, and a pretty pin, the complete parure.” (She said just that French word, I remember it exactly.) “Of course, I can’t wear them all together, especially after mourning,” she observed, with some regret.
Then her voice took on a suspended, softened tone. “I keep them in the house,” she informed me, “up in my room . . . Well, if you like pretty corals, come in, some time or other, sit down, I’ll show them to you . . . When you want, some time or other . . .”
And she peeked at my face. I gave no sign of accepting or refusing that flattering invitation. Almost furtively she asked me:
“And from here, now, at this hour, where are you going?” and her face, dark in color, was suffused with a pink that did not resemble modesty or shame: rather, I would say, the opposite.
I didn’t know how to answer her question: I really didn’t know where I was going, or, to be precise, I wasn’t going anywhere. “Well, it’s hot at this hour,” she spoke again, “and everyone’s sleeping . . .” So saying, from under her oblong, thick-lashed eyelids, which seemed to weigh on her eyes, she gave me a look that spoke clearly: as if she were an odalisque and I the sultan!
And, taking me by the hand, with an important, mysterious smile, she drew me with her into the cottage. Here, before my eyes, she carefully finished washing her feet; then she took off the coral necklace, which she placed on the table near the bed; and then she loosened her smooth, neatly parted hair from the hairpins. (It was as if she were unlacing the ribbons of a jet-black cap.)
So that day I had my first lover. Every so often in the course of that famous hour, my eyes chanced to turn to the coral necklace lying there near the bed; and later the sight of coral always brought to mind my first impression of love, with a taste of blind and joyful violence, of early summer. It doesn’t matter if I had that first taste with someone I didn’t love. I liked it just the same, and I like it; and every so often at night I dream again about coral.
Toward the end of the afternoon Assunta advised me to leave, because her family would be home soon. Before saying goodbye, she offered me a mirror and a comb so that I could neaten my hair, and, seeing myself in the mirror, I noticed that on my lower lip I had a tiny wound, from which a drop of blood oozed. Then my mind recalled, with a shock, the cause of that new wound; that is, I remembered that a moment before, as I was making love with Assunta, I had had to bite my lip until it bled in order not to cry out another name: Nunziata!
It was as if there, at that moment, before the small mirror, I had received an extraordinary revelation. That is, I believed that I understood only now what, in reality, I wanted from my stepmother: not friendship, not motherhood, but love, precisely what men and women do together when they are in love. As a result, I arrived at this great discovery: that, without a doubt, I was in love with N. Thus she really was the first love in my life, which is described in novels and poems! I loved Nunz, and surely, without knowing it, I had loved her from the afternoon of her arrival, maybe from the very moment she had appeared at the landing on the dock, with her shawl over her head and her elegant little high-heeled shoes. Now, with that certainty, I went back in memory over all the capricious troubles, conflicts, and sorrows that really had kept me at their mercy from that first distant afternoon until today: and everything that I hadn’t been able to explain before now appeared to be explained. I saw again, then, all those months passed as a mad, directionless crossing, through storms, chaos, and disorientation, until the Polar Star had appeared, to orient me. There, she was that, my Polar Star: she, Nunz, my first love! That discovery filled me with a radiant and unconscious exultation; but immediately I became aware of my desperate fate. Among all the women who existed in the world, if there was one more impossible for me than all others, forbidden to my love by a supreme prohibition, that one was N.: my stepmother, the wife of Wilhelm Gerace! Until a little earlier, when I still didn’t know I loved her, I could have dared to hope that I would become close to her again, again deserve her gentle friendship; but now, instead, no hope was permitted. In fact, I should have been grateful to the state of war that N. maintained between herself and me, since at least it avoided any occasion for my criminal temptations to manifest themselves. Not only: but, thanks to the war that divided us, I could, without too many dangers or regrets, stay on Procida, in the same house with my love, avoiding the unbearable punishment of not seeing her face anymore!
Thus I had again found a way of putting off a farewell that declared itself to me now as a necessary duty; and the summer season, as usual filling my days with richness and activity, helped me in this delay. Every afternoon, I returned to Assuntina’s cottage, where she was waiting for me; and there with her, in her room, I found some repose from my restlessness. She wondered that, although I was constantly making love to her, I never kissed her, not even the smallest, simplest kiss that one might give to a sister: and I answered that I didn’t like kisses, they seemed sappy. But the truth was different: it was that I could never forget my first, only kiss, given to N.; and it would have seemed to me that I was betraying N. if I kissed that other woman, whom I didn’t love.
Now my memory (rethinking some earlier delusions) filled the kiss I’d given N. with all the burning tastes of love: every sensual delight, the most passionate thoughts. It seemed to me that, in the very brief moment when I kissed her, I had known all the promises of paradise that belong to true love alone, and that I couldn’t know with Assuntina. Looking at her shameless poses, I thought again of N.’s ways, so modest, so pure, and my heart grieved with regret. Then, seeing my face darken, Assuntina asked me: “Well, what’s wrong?” “Leave me alone,” I said, “I’m sad.” “And I can’t console you?” “You can’t console me, and nobody else can, either. I’m a truly unhappy soul.”
Yet although I didn’t love Assuntina I was pleased to have a lover; and, above all, proud, so that I would have liked to let it be known to the entire population (apart from my father; with him I would have been ashamed—I don’t know why). Assuntina, naturally, insisted that it should be an absolute secret; and I submitted to that sacrifice, according to the proper rules of honor. But I found a way to let it be understood (with an attitude of fatuous superiority) that in my life there was something . . .
I would have liked one person, in particular, to know . . .
One day, I remember, I got the idea of going to buy (on credit, of course) several meters of lace, for example, or some women’s garters, from a shopkeeper friend of N.’s, warning her not to breathe a word of my purchase to anyone, and especially my stepmother: in such a way that the shopkeeper would understand clearly that there was a mysterious woman in my life! But unfortunately when I got to the door of the shop I lost confidence, and turned back without doing anything.
Here I would point out that in considering this failed undertaking, I didn’t delude myself about the discretion of the shopkeeper; in fact, I was convinced that she’d be unable to keep quiet with N. I say: I was convinced; but I should say: I counted on it.
Assuntina, even in her faithful and persistent friendship with Signora Gerace, kept her romance with her stepson Arturo carefully hidden. And so, thanks to her prudence, my stepmother was completely in the dark about it: no less than Carminiello could be. According to the highest moral logic, I should have comforted myself with that; but instead, inside, I was annoyed by it.
The ambition that tempted me—to display to the public my conquest (so that I would happily have printed the facts in the newspapers)—was aimed, I think, precisely at my stepmother. And at the thought that some gossip, for example, would go and whisper in her ear a hint, a tip, I would start laughing to myself involuntarily. Enough: my heart, which had no peace, would have enjoyed a kind of success if, one way or another, she had found out . . .
But why a success? What the hell sort of success was it? Undoubtedly, answering those questions would have been a profound problem. But I didn’t make many problems for myself when I had such fantasies.
And while I pretended to respect Assuntina’s prudence with N., I nurtured a contrary intention. That intention taught me devious and tortuous paths. Every so often, in N.’s presence, I let fall some half-revealing phrase, or cast ardent glances at Assuntina, or gave her small signs of understanding, pretending to believe that my stepmother wasn’t looking at us at that moment . . . The sly Assuntina immediately displayed the face of a saint; and later, in the cottage, reproached me: “Watch out, be more careful!” But in response I assured her: “Come on, don’t worry, my stepmother doesn’t understand anything about anything, she’s less intelligent than Carmine. Her thoughts are all Hail Marys and Our Fathers: other things she doesn’t see or understand. She, can you believe it?, if she were to look in at the door right now—she might think we’re lying here in bed just to sleep in peace, like a brother and sister.”
And on this point, at least (that my stepmother was too slow to understand), my words were not lies, in fact they corresponded to my thoughts.
Every day, toward the end of the afternoon, at the hour when I left the cottage, I began to insist, with various pretexts, that Assunta come with me along the lane toward my house. And during the walk, especially on the last stretch, I would suddenly embrace her, holding her tight around the waist. “Watch out, what are you doing!” she protested, trying to get free of me. “Not here, in the street! Someone might see us!” “Well, who would see us,” I answered her, “if it’s all deserted!” But, a moment before embracing her, I had in fact glimpsed a curly and fleeting shadow in the kitchen window of the Casa dei Guaglioni: which withdrew precipitately behind the grille as soon as the two of us, turning the last corner, emerged at the top of the path, just under the window.
In those days something unusual appeared in my stepmother’s behavior, which even a casual observer would surely have noted. She seemed to have fallen into a kind of absentmindedness, which gave her face a sad, almost livid pallor. She performed her tasks, her usual familiar activities, with a heavy inertia and, at times, a distracted confusion, as if her body were moving against her will, divided from her mind: and her meekness had given way to a nervousness, very close to irritability. I heard her scold Carmine; she even responded brusquely to my father; and her friends complained of finding her ill-tempered, contrary to every habit of hers.
One day, looking up, I surprised her staring at me. At the first instant, her gaze, meeting mine, instinctively remained on me, expressing a trembling, crude pain; but immediately it became conscious again, and withdrew beneath pale eyelids.
I don’t remember if what follows happened the afternoon of that same day, or another day. I went up the lane in the company of Assuntina, and every so often, as usual, I glanced furtively toward the window of the Casa dei Guaglioni; until I saw, not far away, that small familiar shadow hiding up there, behind the grille.
Then I rushed to embrace Assunta passionately; and all of a sudden, though I never kissed her, I gave her a big kiss right in the face.
At a certain point the next morning, approaching the little beach from the sea, I had the thought of going home for a moment, I don’t know if to get a new oar for the boat or some other such motive. And as I entered the yard I was surprised by fierce women’s cries coming from the kitchen, mixed with Carmine’s crying. When I got to the French door, I found myself facing an unusual scene. In the kitchen, besides my stepbrother, who was crying desperately in his basket, were my stepmother and Assunta; and the first, overcome with fury, was shouting at the second, as if she wanted to tear her to pieces.
Assuntina, who seemed startled and confused, at my entrance burst into tears, and summoned me as a witness, saying that she didn’t understand it. She explained that she had come in a little earlier, to say hello to Nunziata, as usual; and had picked up Carmine from his basket, to cuddle him, as she had done many times. But my stepmother, at that point, had rushed at her like a wild beast, tearing Carmine out of her arms, and then (since, at that brutal move, the boy had started to cry) unjustly started to rail against her, Assunta, accusing her of that sin: of having made the boy cry! And so, still shouting, she had ordered her to beware of picking him up from now on, because he, that child, hated her, Assunta, like smoke in his eyes, and would start crying if she merely touched him! There, just then I had arrived, Assunta concluded between her tears; and I could take note, as a witness, of that sworn testimony of hers: that it wasn’t her fault if my little brother was wailing! She couldn’t understand being treated so rudely: as if it had become a crime to pick up an infant in her arms!
At Assunta’s justifications, my stepmother, instead of being soothed, became even angrier, until, in an instant, her face was transfigured, like a Fury’s.
Suddenly she burst out, shouting at her friend, “You must never be seen in this house again!”
She shook her head violently, in the atavistic manner of quarreling women in squalid alleys: “I don’t want you here! In this house I am the mistress!” she continued, really beside herself. And suddenly she made as if to rush at the other.
Fortunately, I intervened in time to prevent her, and, grabbing her wrists, pushed her forcefully against the wall.
Pinned to the wall, she, out of pride, did not even try to struggle. But, through her wrists, I felt all her muscles tremble, developing a desperate ferocity; and her eyes resembled the fires of two wretched and sublime stars, lost in a storm. Beneath the disheveled curls pasted to her forehead by sweat her face was white, and she twisted it away from me, leaning toward her adversary. “Get out!” she shouted at her, almost transported by hatred. And she added: “Get out, segnata da Dio!”
That phrase segnato da Dio is a saying of contemptible vulgarity, used in our towns by the cruel to insult cripples, the lame, and other unfortunates. At that spiteful allusion poor Assunta broke into sobs and headed toward the door with her short, limping steps. And I, indignant, left my brutalized stepmother and went out, too, to walk a little distance along the road with her, as it seemed to me was my duty.
Although she was demonstrably grateful for this chivalrous attention, still, as soon as we were alone, she began to reproach me for my carelessness: “If you had been cautious, as I urged you, your stepmother would never have suspected anything, because she’s not malicious. And instead, look, here’s the result: that she, in my opinion, has discovered everything! In fact, although in front of her I pretended to believe that excuse of Carminiello, I’m not so ignorant that I don’t understand it was only an excuse, in order not to speak the truth to my face. Besides, now that I think back, she’s been giving me mean looks for several days. The truth is this, if you want to listen to Assunta: that, because of you, because you’re so careless, she realized that we two are meeting. And according to her thinking what we do is an evil sin; and a woman, like me, who does it is an immoral woman, without honor. So she, being honest, is disgusted by my friendship, and doesn’t want anything to do with it. And all right: let it be as she wants! But she’s not right: because I’m not a girl, I’m a widow, and a widow, if she meets with someone, doesn’t sin like a girl—much less! Well: I already knew she’s hypocritical . . . but I didn’t know so bitter! Who would have expected that such a sweet woman, who seemed like a mother hen, could become such a fierce, ugly eagle!”
Amid these outbursts from Assunta, we had descended a good way along the path: then, having distinguished at a distance one of her relatives heading toward the cottage, she urged me to leave, in order not to encourage new malicious suspicions. And without discussion I separated from her, heading off on another street.
I was grateful for this chance to be alone for a while, and to surrender without witnesses to my deep, unreasonable exultation.
The truth is I should have felt not exultation but remorse. Assunta couldn’t imagine how guilty I was: she accused me of behaving carelessly, unable to guess the worst—and that is that my incautious behavior was not only heedless but also intentional! Yet, although aware of my guilt, in my heart I felt no remorse but, rather, an intimate, triumphant joy, which made me walk as lightly as if my feet weren’t touching the ground.
Almost without realizing it, I had taken the road home. It was around midday; in the kitchen Carminiello was sleeping placidly in his basket, and my stepmother was standing at the table. On the table were the usual preparations for the pasta, which had been interrupted by the earlier scene; and her hands were moving weakly on the sheet of dough, as if they were eager to be occupied but hadn’t the strength to keep going. Her face was so white, set, and dazed that it made you think of a grave illness.
I asked if my father had come down from his room; and, not finding the energy to speak, she moved her eyelids a little, to answer no; but even that small movement seemed to cost her such an effort that her whole face, and especially her lips, began to tremble.
Then, frightened by her appearance, I asked: “What’s wrong? Do you feel ill?” (Ever since she had kept me distant because of that kiss, I had initiated this new thing: to use the more formal voi when I spoke to her, rather than tu. And I couldn’t say if that was intended to imply a deliberate respect or, rather, sulkiness.)
She looked at me, eyes trembling, without answering; but, as if my pity had taken away her last power of resistance, suddenly she fell to her knees, and, hiding her face on a chair, broke into terrible, dry sobs. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Tell me what’s wrong!” I felt a gentle desire to caress her, to caress at least her hair. But her forehead, her small work-ruined hands, appeared so pale that I didn’t dare touch her: I was afraid she would die. Meanwhile, amid those sobs, in an adult, lacerating tone of voice that didn’t seem hers, she began to speak: “Oh, I’m damned. I’m damned. God . . . won’t forgive me . . . ever . . .”
Phrases of instinctive adoration thronged to my lips: I would have liked to say, “You’re my blessed of Paradise! You’re my angel,” but I understood that I would have frightened her. “At this moment,” I thought, “it will be better if I speak as if I were her father or something like that.” And I said (but in a voice that, in spite of myself, expressed only a joyous, bold passion, not the severity of a father): “What do you mean, damned? Come on, stop it, don’t be silly!”
Finally those cruel sobs found an outlet in tears; and her voice became recognizable again, although ravaged by a new torment. “And how could I,” she accused herself, as she wept, “say such a vile word to that poor woman? It’s not her fault, if she has an infirmity. Oh, to say a word like that is worse than murder! I’m ashamed to exist! And what can I do now, what can I do? I should go to that woman and ask her to forgive me, to forget the words I said, to come back here to my house as before . . . Oh, no, I can’t! I can’t!” and, as if frightened of herself, she hid her mouth behind the palms of her hands, while her eyes, at the thought of Assuntina, grew large with savage hatred.
“Oh, what will I do with myself? What should I do?” she murmured. And with these questions she turned to me a tearful, lost gaze, which seemed to ask for help, or advice, as if I were God. But her eyes had become so beautiful at that moment that I paid no more attention to their suffering: in the depths of their blackness, I seemed to make out, as within two enchanted mirrors, distant places of light, of absolute happiness! And I exclaimed impetuously:
“You know what you should do? You should leave Procida, with me. Then you’ll never have to see Assunta, if she’s so hateful to you. We’ll run away together, you and I and Carminiello. Anyway,” I added bitterly, “my father doesn’t care about us, he won’t even notice, he’ll manage, if we leave. We’ll go, all three of us together, to live in some magnificent land, far from Procida, I’ll choose it. And there I’ll make sure you live better than a queen.”
As I spoke, she made a sudden move to cover her face with her hands; but still the violent blush that invaded it, to her neck and her bare arms, was visible. For a moment she couldn’t answer me: her irregular breaths, coming through her throat, were transformed into a bitter, wild lament. Finally she said:
“Artú! . . . Since you’re still a boy, God will forgive the bad things you say, the evil . . .”
Maybe she was about to say the evil you do, but it must have seemed a word too harsh against me, and she didn’t say it. And, instead of feeling remorse at her reproach, I was transported with joy, which made me even more thoughtless and mad: in truth, her voice, from behind the mask of her hands, had reached me as a fabulous sound, which betrayed irreparably—even more than the indulgence—the anguish of a renunciation and, at the same time, a kind of restoration of gentle gratitude. I exclaimed, coming close to her:
“Oh, please, look into my face, look into my eyes!” and, armed with sweetness and power, I pushed her palms away. For a second, her troubled face flashed before me still sweet, still pink from the earlier blush; but already she had jumped to her feet, with a pallor that almost disfigured her. And she began to speak, backing up against the wall:
“No! No! What are you doing? Go away . . . Artú . . . don’t come any closer, if you don’t want me to . . .” And, turning her head slightly, she leaned her forehead against the wall, scowling hard, as if in her weakness, which nearly caused her to slide to the floor, she were collecting all her nerves in a gigantic and desperate act of will.
And without looking at me she again turned her face, now unrecognizable, toward me: furrowed, dull, with the thick black eyebrows joined on her forehead, it seemed the image of some obscure, soulless barbarian goddess, of a truly wicked stepmother.
“Artú,” she said in a small, toneless voice, which could have belonged to a woman of forty. “First I loved you . . . like a son. But now . . . I don’t love you anymore.”
Here her voice had a kind of suffocated convulsion; and then she resumed blindly, with a more acute, jarring, and almost hysterical sound:
“And so the less we see each other, and the less you talk to me, the better it will be. Imagine that I had always remained a stranger to you; because our kinship is forever dead. And I ask you to stay away from me, because when you’re near me I feel disgust!”
I suppose that in my place someone more experienced than I would not have doubted that she was lying. And maybe he would have said: “Shame on you, you wicked liar, or at least learn to pretend with more skill! Because you don’t have the heart for the outrageous lies you’re telling, and you have to lean against the wall, as if you expected to be struck by lightning. And you’re shivering so much that I can see, at this distance, how even the skin on your arms is shuddering!”
Instead, listening to her, I had not exactly the certainty but the suspicion that her words were a true representation of her feelings! And this suspicion was enough to hurl me into an icy sadness, as if I’d been condemned to end my existence in a polar night. I was tempted, impulsively, to say, “If what you say is true, swear to it!” but I didn’t dare: I was too afraid that she really would swear, thus giving me a conclusive certainty. What hurt me most was that word disgust: and I imagined that the palpable shiver, which had made her skin pucker as she spoke, was, precisely, a natural effect of horror toward me. Now I was almost driven to persuade myself that Assuntina wasn’t wrong, attributing to a moral contempt the scene she had made! And to think that I’d almost flattered myself at having been present at a scene of jealousy: even feeling a secret satisfaction at the idea that two women had risked fighting for me, right before my eyes! Nothing was sadder than having to give up such sweet, enchanted foolishness for the ugliness of a cold, serious reality.
So painfully did she wound me with those words that, silenced, I didn’t reply. It was at that point that, perhaps, Carmine woke up or my father arrived: I no longer remember; certainly our dialogue ended on those words of hers.
And from then on her attitude toward me remained the same, fixed. Never, as the days passed, did she show me any expression except that sort of inanimate, barbarian image, eyes opaque, eyebrows joined to form a dark cross with the line on her forehead. Oh, I would have much preferred if she had treated me like the wickedest stepmother of novels. I would have preferred to see her transformed into a murderous wolf rather than that statue.
Among other things, in the hope of being forgiven, I formed a plan for abandoning Assuntina in a spectacular way (assuming that for N. we shared the same moral failing!). But immediately it occurred to me that, in reality, her hatred for me had begun before I’d been with Assunta: it had begun the morning of that fatal kiss. No, even leaving Assuntina would be of no use to me. There was no remedy: N. abhorred me, without forgiveness.
I felt such a need to open myself to someone, to be consoled, that sometimes I was tempted to confide everything to Assunta: my secret love for N., my despair, and so on. But I always held back in time, mainly out of this fear: that Assunta, sooner or later, would report my confidences to N. Certainly, N.’s horror of me would reach the limits if she learned that I loved her! Such a revelation would confirm the idea that she perhaps already had: and that is that I was a tremendous monster of evil, a true incarnation of Satan. That thought was enough to stifle any desire to confide. And so, luckily, Assunta never learned certain truths.
Following these events, my lover appeared less charming to me: even her lame leg, which before had seemed something so sweet, now sometimes bothered me. The wish to boast about this woman no longer tempted me; and I felt less pleasure in being with her. Yet I continued to see her every day, since that cottage, one might say, was the only refuge that remained to me. Assunta in fact said, with satisfaction, that I had become more passionate than before! Maybe because the desperate flames that I hid in my heart in the end flared up wherever they could.
Besides, even though I didn’t love Assunta, sometimes a feeling of pity was kindled toward her that burned almost like love. The mere thought that I didn’t love her, and that she wasn’t attractive to me, or even that I was bored with her, inspired pity! So small and naked on the corn mattress, with her olive-colored breasts and their geranium-colored nipples, slightly slack and elongated, to make one think of a goat, and with that loose, smooth hair, she seemed to me, at times, a being from another land, maybe an Indian slave. And I was her leader and did with her what I wanted! Then N., up in the Casa dei Guaglioni, appeared to me in the guise of a great white mistress, shining with contempt; and to chase away that captivating, painful image I exploded with Assuntina, practically abusing her with my sudden ardor.
Kisses, however, I never gave Assuntina; my kisses seemed forever consecrated to N. by a kind of holy decree, which couldn’t be violated without offending that love.
Later, around sunset, when I left the cottage, I was ashamed of having been with a wretched slave, as of a new indignity toward N. I delayed, solitary, in the nearby fields, over which loomed the massive, crumbling pink-colored walls of the Casa dei Guaglioni, and I no longer looked up at that famous window, knowing already that I would see it deserted. There, behind those walls, amid her grim prohibitions, my chatelaine N. lived, sublime and inaccessible. In the distance her height became greater than it really was; and it seemed to me that all the male and female angels of her imagination, like flocks of shining owls, storks, and seagulls, flew around her, urging her day and night to abhor me.