The Woman of Rome (Italia)

by Alberto Moravia

  But Mother had made elaborate plans for my future; I soon realized they were plans that put entirely out of the question any such arrangements as the one I desired most. Mother firmly believed that with my beauty I might aim at any kind of success, but not at becoming a married woman with a family like everyone else. We were extremely poor and she looked on my beauty as our only available capital and, as such, as belonging to her as well as to me; if for no other reason than that it was she who had given me birth. I was to draw on this capital as she decreed, without any consideration for appearances, in order to improve our situation. Probably the whole scheme was due chiefly to a lack of imagination. In a situation like ours, the idea of capitalizing on my beauty was the first to occur to her. Mother stopped short at this idea and did not delve any deeper.

  At that time I had a very imperfect understanding of what Mother’s plans were. But even later, when they were quite clear to me, I never dared to ask her why, with these ideas, she had been reduced to such poverty — she, the wife of a railwayman. I understood from various hints that I was the cause of Mother’s failure, since she had had me both unwillingly and unexpectedly. In other words, I was conceived by accident and Mother, who did not dare to prevent my birth (as she ought to have done, she said), had been obliged to marry my father and accept all the consequences of such a marriage. When she referred to my birth, she often used to say, “You were the ruin of me,” a phrase that at one time hurt me and was obscure, but whose meaning I understood fully later on. The phrase meant, “If it had not been for you, I would not have married that man, and by now I’d have had my own car.” Obviously, as she pondered over her own life in this way, she did not want her daughter, who was so much more handsome, to make the same mistakes and incur the same fate. Today, seeing things from a certain distance, I really cannot bring myself to say she was wrong. A family for Mother had meant poverty, slavery, and a few infrequent pleasures that came to an abrupt end with the death of her husband. Naturally, she considered a decent family life as a great misfortune, and was ever on the lookout to prevent me from being attracted by the same mirages that had led to her own downfall.

  In her own way Mother was very fond of me. As soon as I began to go the rounds of the studios, for instance, she made me a two-piece skirt and jacket and a dress. As a matter of fact, I would have preferred some underwear, because every time I had to undress I was ashamed of the coarse, threadbare, often soiled lingerie I displayed, but Mother said it did not matter if I wore rags underneath, what was important was to look presentable. She chose two cheap pieces of cloth of striking color and pattern, and cut out the dresses herself. But since she was a shirtmaker and had never made dresses before, she made them both up wrongly. The one-piece, I remember, pouched in front so that my breasts showed and I always had to pin it up. The jacket of the two-piece was too short and too tight, it pulled across my breasts and hips, and the sleeves did not cover my wrists; the skirt, on the other hand, was too wide and made creases in front. But I thought they were splendid because until then I had been dressed even worse, in blouses, short little skirts that showed my thighs, and skimpy little scarves. Mother bought me two pairs of silk stockings as well: I had always worn short socks and had bare knees before. These presents filled me with joy and pride; I never grew tired of looking at them and thinking about them, and used to walk self-consciously along the streets, holding myself upright, as if I were wearing a priceless dress made by some fashionable dressmaker, and not those poor rags.

  Mother was always thinking about my future and before long she began to be dissatisfied with my profession as a model. According to her, my earnings were too small; then, too, the artists and their friends were poor and there was little hope of making useful acquaintances in their studios. Mother suddenly conceived the idea that I might become a dancer. She was always full of ambitious ideas, while I, as I have said, thought of nothing more than a tranquil life, with a husband and some children. She got hold of this idea of dancing when a promoter of a variety company, who put on shows between movies, ordered some shirts from her. She did not think the profession of a dancer would prove to be very profitable in itself, but, as she so often said, “One thing leads to another, and by showing oneself on the stage, there was always the chance of meeting some gentleman.”

  One day Mother told me she had had a talk with this producer and he had encouraged her to take me along to see him. One morning we went to the hotel where he lodged with the whole company. I remember the hotel was an enormous old palace near the station. It was nearly midday, but still quite dark in the corridors. The impression of sleep being wooed in a hundred rooms filled the air and took one’s breath away. We went along several corridors and at last reached a kind of murky antechamber where three girls and a musician were practicing in the sparse light as if they were on the stage. The piano was wedged into a corner near the opaque glass window of the bathroom; in the opposite corner stood a huge pile of dirty sheets. The musician, a broken-down old man, was playing from memory, as though he were thinking of something else or drowsing. The three dancers were young and had taken off their jackets; they stood in their skirts, their breasts and arms bare. They had their arms around each other’s waists, and, when the musician struck up an air, they all three advanced toward the pile of dirty sheets, kicking their legs high, waving them to the right and left, and finally turning their backs and waggling their behinds, with provocative movements that produced a most incongruous effect in such a dim and squalid setting. My heart stood still as I watched and saw how they beat time with their feet in a dull and heavy thudding on the floor. I knew that although I had long, muscular legs, I had no gift for dancing. I had already had some dancing lessons with two girlfriends at a dancing academy in our district. They knew how to keep time and kick their legs and swing their hips like two experienced dancers after the first few lessons, but I could only drag myself about, as if I were made of lead from the waist down. I didn’t seem to be built like other girls; there was something massive and heavy about me that even music was unable to dispel. Besides, feeling an arm round my waist had filled me with a kind of languorous abandon the few times I had danced, so that I dragged my legs rather than moved them. The artist, too, had said to me, “Adriana, you ought to have been born four centuries ago! They had women like you then. It’s fashionable nowadays to be thin, you’re a fish out of water. In four or five years’ time you’ll be a Juno.” He was mistaken there, though, because today, five years later, I am no stouter or more Junoesque than before. But he was right in saying that I was not made for these days of slim women. My clumsiness made me wretched and I would have given anything to be slim and able to dance like other girls. But although I ate little, I was always as solidly built as a statue, and when I danced I was quite incapable of grasping the rapid, jerky rhythms of modern music.

  I told Mother all this because I knew the interview with the producer of the variety show would only be a fiasco, and I was humiliated at the idea of being turned down. But Mother began shouting at once that I was far more beautiful than all the wretched girls who showed themselves off on the stage and the producer ought to thank Heaven if he could get me for his company, and so on. Mother knew nothing about modern beauty, and honestly believed that the more fully developed her breasts, and the rounder her hips, the more beautiful a woman must be.

  The producer was waiting in a room that led out of the antechamber; I suppose he watched his dancers’ rehearsals from that room through the open door. He was sitting in an armchair at the foot of the unmade bed. There was a tray on the bed and he was just finishing his breakfast. He was a stout old man, but the excessive elegance of his clothes, his brilliantine, his impeccable tidiness, made a strange effect against those tumbled sheets, in the low light of that stuffy room. His florid complexion looked painted to me, because unhealthy, dark, uneven patches showed beneath the rose flush on his cheeks. He was wearing a monocle and puffed and panted all the time, showing such extremely white
teeth that they were probably false. He was dressed very smartly, as I said. I still remember his bow tie of the same pattern and color as the handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. He was sitting with his belly sprawling forward and, as soon as he had finished eating, he wiped his mouth and said in a bored, complaining voice, “Come on, show me your legs.”

  “Show the gentleman your legs,” repeated Mother anxiously.

  I was no longer shy after the studios, so I pulled up my dress and showed him my legs, then stood still, holding my dress up and leaving my legs exposed. My legs are magnificent, long and straight, but just above the knees my thighs began to swell out round and solid, broadening gradually to my hips. The producer shook his head as he looked at me. “How old are you?” he asked,

  “She was eighteen in August,” replied Mother readily.

  He got up in silence, panting a little, and walked over to a phonograph standing on a table among a heap of papers and clothes. He wound it up, carefully chose a record, and put it on the phonograph.

  “Now try to dance to this music — but keep your dress up,” he said.

  “She’s only had a few dancing lessons,” said Mother. She realized that this would be the decisive moment and, knowing how clumsy I was, she feared the result.

  But the producer motioned to her to be silent, set the record going, then with another gesture invited me to begin dancing. I did as he requested, holding my skirt up. Actually I only moved my legs, first left and then right, rather slowly and heavily, and I knew I was not keeping time. He was still standing by the phonograph, leaning his elbows on the table and looking in my direction. He suddenly stopped the phonograph and went to sit down again in the armchair, with an unmistakable gesture toward the door.

  “Won’t it do?” asked Mother anxiously, already on the warpath.

  “No, it won’t do,” he replied, without looking at her, while he felt about in his pockets for his cigarette case.

  I knew that when mother had a certain note in her voice she was going to make a scene and therefore I pulled her by the arm. But she jerked herself free and repeated in a louder voice, while she fixed the producer with gleaming eyes, “It won’t do, eh? And why not, if I may ask?”

  The producer, who had found his cigarette case, was now hunting for his matches. His stoutness made every movement a great effort.

  “It won’t do,” he replied calmly, but panting as he spoke, “because she’s got no gift for dancing and because she hasn’t the right figure for the job.”

  Just as I had feared, Mother began to shout out her usual arguments at the top of her lungs — that I was a real beauty, my face was like a Madonna’s, and just look at my breasts, my hips, my legs! He remained quite unmoved, lit his cigarette and went on smoking and watching her while he waited for her to finish.

  “Your daughter may make a good wet nurse in a year or two — but she’ll never be a dancer,” he pronounced in his bored and plaintive voice.

  He did not know the frenzy Mother was capable of; it so astonished him that he took his cigarette out of his mouth and stood gaping at her. He wanted to speak but she would not let him. Mother was thin and breathless and it was difficult to tell where all the noise came from. She said a number of insulting things about him personally and about the dancers whom we had seen in the corridor. At last, she snatched up some lengths of silk shirt cloth he had entrusted to her and threw them at him, exclaiming, “Get these shirts of yours made by anyone you like — maybe your dancing girls will do them for you — I wouldn’t touch them for all the gold in the world!” He was completely disconcerted by this unexpected conclusion and stood there, amazed and apoplectic, with his body enveloped in his shirt material. Meanwhile I kept pulling at mother’s sleeve and was almost crying with shame and humiliation. At last she yielded and, leaving the producer to extricate himself from his lengths of silk, we went out of the room.

  Next day I told the artist, who had become my confidant to some extent, all that had happened. He laughed a great deal at the producer’s phrase about my potentialities as a wet nurse, and then observed, “Poor Adriana — I’ve told you time and again! You ought not to have been born in the present age. You ought to have been born four centuries ago. What today is a fault was then considered an asset, and vice versa. The producer was quite right, from his own point of view. He knows the public wants fair, slim girls, with tiny breasts, tiny behinds and cunning, provocative little faces. But you’re full, without being exactly plump; you’re dark, with a beautiful, round bosom — ditto for your behind! And yours is a sweet and gentle face. What can you do about it? You’re absolutely what I want! Go on being a model — then one day you’ll get married and have a lot of dark, plump children just like yourself, with sweet and gentle faces.”

  “That’s exactly what I want,” I said emphatically.

  “Good!” he replied, “And now, lean over a little to one side — like that —” This artist was very fond of me in his way; and perhaps, if he had stayed in Rome and had gone on letting me confide in him, he might have given me some good advice and many things would not have happened. But he was always complaining that he could not sell his pictures, and at last took the occasion of an exhibition that was being organized in Milan to go and settle there permanently. I went on being a model, as he had advised me to do. But the other artists were not so kind and affectionate as he was, and I did not feel inclined to talk to them about my life — which was, after all, an imaginary life made up of dreams, aspirations, and hopes. Because at that time nothing ever happened to me.

  2

  SO I CONTINUED BEING A MODEL, although Mother complained because she felt I earned too little. At that time Mother was almost always in a bad mood; she had counted on my beauty to bring me unimaginable success and wealth. As far as she was concerned, the job of being a model had never been more than a first step after which, as she used to say, one thing would come of another. Seeing I was still nothing more than a model, she grew embittered and irritated toward me, as if lack of ambition had cheated her of certain gain. Of course, she never put her thoughts into words, but allowed her hints, her rudeness, her sighs, the long faces she pulled and all the rest of her transparent play-acting to speak for her. It was a kind of never-ending blackmail; and I understood then why many girls, who are constantly badgered in this way by ambitious, disappointed mothers, end up by running away from home and giving themselves to the first man they meet, if only to escape from such an unbearable state of things. Naturally, Mother behaved like this because she loved me, but it was the kind of love the housewife feels for a laying hen: if it stops laying, she begins to examine it, weigh it in her hand, and reckon whether she would not do better to wring its neck.

  How patient and ignorant we are when we are very young! I was leading a wretched life at this time and really never noticed it. I used to give Mother all the money I earned by posing for long, wearisome, boring hours in the studios; and the rest of the time, when I was not naked, stiff, and aching from allowing myself to be drawn and painted, I sat bent over the sewing machine, never lifting my eyes from the needle, in order to help Mother in her work. Far into the night I would still be sewing and in the morning I would rise at daybreak, because the studios were a long way off and the sittings started very early. But before I went to work I made my bed and helped Mother clean up the apartment. I was really indefatigable, docile, and patient, and at the same time serene, cheerful, and even-tempered. Envy, bitterness, and jealousy had no place in my heart; rather I was filled with the gentle, unceasing gratitude that blossoms so spontaneously in youth. And I never noticed the squalor of our apartment.

  One huge, bare room served as our workroom; it was furnished with a large table in the middle, always covered with pieces of cloth, while other rags hung from nails in the dark walls where the plaster was peeling off, and a few broken straw-bottomed chairs. There was a bedroom where I slept with Mother in her double bed, immediately above which a huge patch of damp stained the ce
iling, and in bad weather the rain used to drip down on us. Also a dark little kitchen cluttered up with the plates and saucepans that Mother, being shiftless, never managed to wash up properly. I never noticed what a sacrifice my life really was, with no amusements, love, or affection. When I think of the girl I was, and remember my goodness and innocence, I cannot help feeling deeply sorry for myself, in a powerless, poignant sort of way, as you do when you read of some charming person’s misfortunes in a book and would like to be able to ward them off, but know you cannot. But there you are! Men have no use for goodness and innocence; and perhaps this is not the least of life’s mysteries — that the qualities praised by everyone, of which nature is so prodigal, in point of fact serve only to increase the sum of unhappiness.

  I imagined at that time that my longing to get married and set up a family life would one day be satisfied. Every morning I used to take the streetcar in the square not far from our house, where among a number of newly erected buildings, I noticed one long, low structure against the city walls that was used as a garage. At that hour there was always a young man about the place, either washing or cleaning his car, who used to stare at me pointedly. His face was dark, thin, and perfectly shaped, with a straight nose, black eyes, a marvelous mouth, and white teeth. He closely resembled an American movie star much in vogue in those days, and that is why I noticed him and, in fact, why I took him at first for something different from what he was. He wore good clothes and had the air of being well educated and decently behaved. I imagined that the car must be his and that he was well-to-do, one of the gentlemen Mother talked so much about. I rather liked him, but I only thought of him when I saw him; then on the way to the studios he slipped out of my memory. But, without realizing it, his looks alone must have seduced me, because one morning while I was waiting for the streetcar, I heard someone obviously trying to attract my attention by making the sort of noise people make to call a cat, so I turned around. When I saw him beckoning to me from the car, I did not hesitate at all, but, with a thoughtless docility that astonished me, walked over to him. He opened the door and as I got in I saw that his hand on the open car window was coarse and roughened, with black, broken nails and the first finger tobacco-stained, like the hands of manual workers. But I said nothing and got in all the same. “Where would you like me to take you?” he asked as he shut the door.