The Woman of Rome (Italia)

by Alberto Moravia

  We said nothing on the way downstairs or in the garden as we got into the car. Night had fallen some time since. And as soon as the car began to thread its way through the twisted streets of that fashionable district, I began to cry gently, as if I had been waiting only for that moment. I did not even know myself why I was crying, and yet I was filled with bitterness. I am not made to play disillusioned, angry parts, and the whole afternoon, although I had done my utmost to appear calm, disillusionment and anger had motivated many of my actions and words. Now for the first time, while I was still crying, I felt really resentful toward Gino, who, through his betrayal of me, had aroused emotions I found unpleasant and which did not suit my character. I thought how good and sweet I had always been and how perhaps I was not going to be so anymore from that moment, and the thought filled me with despair. I would have liked to ask Gino heartbrokenly, “Why did you do all this? How can I ever forget it and think no more about it?” But instead I said nothing, swallowed my tears and shook my head a little to make them run down my cheeks, as one shakes a branch to rid it of its ripest fruit. I hardly noticed that meanwhile we were driving right across the city. When the car stopped, I got out and held my hand out to Gino. “I’ll phone you,” I said, He looked at me with an expression of hope that changed to amazement when he saw my face bathed in tears. But he had not time to say a word, for I ran off with a wave of the hand and a forced smile.

  9

  A ND SO LIFE CONTINUED TO revolve for me, always in the same direction and with the same people, like the merry-go-rounds of Luna Park, where the flashing lights used to fill my heart with gaiety when I watched them from the windows of our apartment as a child.

  Merry-go-rounds, too, have very few figures and they are always the same. The swan, the cat, the car, the horse, the throne, the dragon, and the egg swing around time and time again to the sound of a wailing, strident, clashing music, to be followed once again by the swan, the cat, the car, the horse, the throne, the dragon, and the egg, the whole night through. The figures of my lovers began to revolve for me in just the same way; no matter whether they were men I had already met or newcomers, they were all alike.

  Giacinti returned from Milan with a pair of silk stockings as a gift, and I saw him every evening for some time. Then he went away again and I took up with Gino, seeing him once or twice a week. On other evenings I went with men I picked up in the street or whom Gisella introduced to me. There were young men, older men, and some quite old ones; some were charming and treated me kindly, others were unpleasant and regarded me merely as an object to be bought or sold; but, since I had made up my mind not to become attached to any of them, it was always the same in the end. We used to meet in the street or in a café, sometimes had supper together, then hurried back to my place. There we shut ourselves up in my room, made love, chatted a little; and then the man paid up and left, and I joined Mother in the room where she was waiting for me. If I was hungry I had a meal, and then went to bed.

  Very occasionally, if it was early, I slipped out again downtown to find another man. But days and days passed when I saw no one and stayed at home doing nothing. I had become very lazy; it was a sad, voluptuous idleness, in which I indulged the desire for rest and peace I shared with Mother and all the poor hardworking people around me. Sometimes the mere sight of the empty savings box was enough to drive me out into the streets in the heart of the city to seek company; but often my laziness triumphed and I preferred to borrow money from Gisella or send Mother to do her shopping on credit.

  And yet I really cannot say I disliked this way of life. I soon realized that my passion for Gino had not been anything particularly unique and that in my heart of hearts I liked all men, for one reason or another. I do not know whether this happens to all the women who take up my profession or whether it means that I had a special vocation for it; I only know that each time, I felt a thrill of curiosity and expectation that was rarely disappointed. I liked the long, slim, adolescent bodies of the young men, their clumsy gestures, their shyness, their sentimental glances, the coolness of their hair and lips; I liked the muscular arms, the broad chests, the indefinable weight and power in the shoulders, bellies, and legs of virile men in their prime; I even liked old men, because men are different from women in that they are not limited by age, and even in old age keep their charm or acquire a new one of a particular kind. The fact that I changed my lover every time helped me to notice qualities and defects at first sight, with that precise and keen observation that can only be obtained by experience. The human body, besides, was an inexhaustible source of mysterious, insatiable delight; and I often found myself gazing at the limbs of my companions of a single night, or touching them with my finger tips as if I yearned to reach beyond the superficial relationship between us and discover the meaning of their physical beauty and explain to myself why I felt so deeply attracted. But I tried to hide my attraction as much as possible because these men in their perpetual vanity might have mistaken it for love; whereas, actually, love, at least as they understood it, had nothing to do with my feelings, which were more like the reverent trepidation I used to feel when I performed certain religious duties in church.

  The money I earned in this way, however, was not as much as might be supposed. First of all, I was incapable of being as mercenary and greedy as Gisella. I wanted to be paid, of course, since I was not going with men for my own amusement; but my nature led me to give myself to them more out of physical exuberance than out of convenience and I did not think about the money until the time came to be paid, that is, when it it was too late. I always had a dim conviction that I was supplying men with goods that cost me nothing, something usually not paid for. I felt I received money as a gift rather than as dues. I felt love either should not be paid for or else could never be paid for enough; and between my modesty and my vanity I was unable to fix any price that did not seem purely arbitrary to me. Therefore, if they gave a lot, I thanked them too gratefully; if they gave me little, I could never persuade myself that I had been cheated and I did not protest. Only later, after much bitter experience, I decided to copy Gisella, who used to come to terms beforehand. But at first I always felt ashamed and could only mention payment in an undertone, so that often they failed to understand me and I had to repeat it.

  There was another reason why my earnings were insufficient. This was the fact that, since I was far less careful about what I spent than I had been before, and had spread myself thin buying a few dresses, some perfume, toiletries, and other things that I needed professionally, the money my lovers gave me never went very far, much like the money I had earned as a model and by helping Mother with her sewing. I seemed no better off than before, despite the sacrifice of my honor. There were days when there was not a penny in the house, just as before and even oftener than before. I was tormented by my anxiety at having no settled future, just as before and to an even greater degree. I am rather carefree and phlegmatic by nature, and my anxiety never became an obsession as it would in someone not so well balanced and indifferent as I. But the thought was always at the back of my mind, like a worm in a piece of old furniture, and it was always warning me that I possessed nothing and that I could neither forget my condition and rest, nor improve it once and for all by means of my chosen profession.

  Mother no longer felt at all anxious, or at least, if she did, she did not show it. I had told her right away that she need no longer ruin her sight by sewing all day long; and she immediately gave up most of her work, as if she had been waiting for this moment all her life — she kept only a few orders that she did when she felt like it, more as a pastime than a job. It was as if the effort she had made for so many years, beginning when she was a little girl, working as a maid in a clerk’s family, had suddenly failed without leaving any trace or possibility of recuperation, like old houses that crumble in on themselves, and leave no outside wall standing but only a pile of rubble. For someone like Mother money meant chiefly eating and resting to her heart’s content.
She had more to eat than before and allowed herself all those little comforts that to the mind distinguish the rich from the poor, such as getting up late, sleeping after lunch, going out for a walk on occasion. I must say that the effect of these innovations was the most unpleasant part of my new life.

  It is possible that people who are accustomed to slaving all their lives ought never to give it up; idleness and comfort ruin them even when their source is an accepted and legitimate one, as was not the case with us. As soon as our conditions improved, Mother began to put on weight, or rather, so rapidly did her anxious, breathless thinness vanish, she began to swell out unhealthily, in a way I felt was significant although I could not tell what it signified. Her bony hips put on flesh, her thin shoulders filled out, her cheeks, which had always seemed drawn in as though she were panting, became puffed and florid.

  But the saddest result of Mother’s weight gain was what happened to her eyes. In the past they had been large, wide open, with an ever alert and apprehensive expression; now they had become smaller and had an indefinable, ambiguous gleam. She had grown stouter, but was no handsomer or younger looking. She, rather than myself, seemed to bear the visible traces of our changed way of life in her face and figure, and I was unable to look at her without a painful feeling of remorse, pity, and disgust. She increased my embarrassment by letting herself go in manifestations of greedy, ecstatic satisfaction. The fact was, she could hardly believe she need no longer work her fingers to the bone, and her behavior was that of a person who has never eaten enough or slept enough in all her life.

  Of course, I did not let her have any inkling of my feelings. I did not want to upset her, and in any case, I realized that before reproaching her with anything I ought to reproach myself. But every now and again some expression of annoyance escaped me, and I seemed to love her less, now that she was fat, swollen, and walked with a waddle, than I had when she had shouted at me, rushed up and down moaning and groaning all day, and was thin and distraught. “I wonder if Mother would have grown fat in the same way if I had come into money through a good marriage?” I often asked myself. I believe she would, now I think of it; and I attribute the disgust her obesity aroused in me to the way I could not help looking at her, full of remorse and complicity.

  I did not conceal my new condition of life from Gino for very long. In fact I had to tell him almost immediately, the first time I saw him again, about ten days after we had made love at the villa.

  One morning Mother came to wake me, “Do you know who’s come and wants to speak to you?” she said in a hushed and conspiratorial voice. “Gino!”

  “Let him in,” I replied simply.

  A little disappointed by the brevity of my reply, she opened the window, and went out. A moment later Gino entered and I saw at once that he was angry and worried. He said nothing in greeting, walked around the bed, and came to a standstill in front of me where I was lying sleepily watching him.

  “Look here — you didn’t pick up anything from my mistress’s dressing table by mistake the other day, did you?” he asked.

  Now it’s coming! I thought. I noticed that I did not feel at all guilty. But Gino’s servility impressed me in the usual painful way.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “An extremely valuable powder compact has disappeared. A gold one with a ruby. The mistress has turned the house upside-down. Since I was in charge of the villa I know they suspect me, although they haven’t said anything. Luckily she only noticed it yesterday, a week after she got back, so it’s possible one of the maids stole it. Otherwise they’d have fired me already, or charged me, had me arrested, or something —”

  I was afraid some innocent person might have got into trouble through me. “They haven’t done anything to the maids?” I asked.

  “No,” he replied nervously. “but a policeman came, and questioned us all. There’s been no peace in the place for a couple of days.”

  I hesitated a moment, then I said, “I took it.”

  He stared at me, twisting his face into a disagreeable expression. “You took it! And that’s how you tell me?”

  “How should I tell you?”

  “But that’s what’s called stealing.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at me and suddenly became furious. Perhaps he feared the consequences of my action or perhaps he guessed in some dim fashion that I considered him ultimately responsible for the theft.

  “So that’s it! What’s the matter with you?” he said. “So that’s why you wanted to go into the mistress’s bedroom! Now I get it! But I, my dear, don’t want to have a thing to do with it. If you want to steal, do it anywhere you want, I don’t give a damn, but not in the house where I work.… A thief! What a mess for me if I’d married you — I’d have married a thief.…”

  I watched him closely while he let off steam. I was amazed now that I could have thought him perfect for so long. He was anything but perfect. At last, when I thought he had come to an end of all he could say in reproach, I said, “Why are you so angry, Gino? They aren’t accusing you of having stolen it! They’ll talk about it for a day or two more and then the whole thing will die down. And God knows how many powder compacts your mistress has.”

  “But why did you steal it?” he asked. Obviously he wanted to force me to say what he dimly guessed.

  “Because,” I answered simply.

  “Because! That’s not an answer.”

  “If you really want to know, then,” I answered quietly, “I stole it, not because I wanted it or needed it, but because now I can even steal if I feel like it.”

  “What do you mean?” he began. But I did not let him continue. “At night now I go on the streets, I pick up a man, I bring him here, and afterward he pays me. If I do this I can steal, too, can’t I?”

  He understood and his reaction was typical of him. “So you do that, too … great … yes, I’d have been in big trouble if I’d married you!”

  “I wouldn’t have done it then,” I said. “I’ve done it since I found out you’ve got a wife and child.”

  He had been waiting for this statement all along and answered promptly. “No, my dear — don’t put the blame on me. No one has to be a whore and a thief if she doesn’t want to.”

  “Obviously I was one without knowing it, then,” I answered. “You gave me my chance to become it.”

  He realized from my lack of concern that there was nothing to be said, so he changed his tactics. “All right — what you are and what you do aren’t my business. But I’ve got to have that compact back. Otherwise sooner or later I’ll lose my job. You’ve got to give it back to me, and I’ll pretend I’ve found it in the garden or somewhere.”

  I answered immediately. “Why didn’t you say so before? If it’s so you won’t lose your job, take it. It’s in the first drawer of the closet.”

  He hurried over to the closet at once in his relief, opened the drawer, took out the powder compact, and put it in his pocket. Then he looked at me with a different expression in his eyes, a hint of shame and a desire for reconciliation. But I really could not face the embarrassing scene his look promised.

  “Have you got the car outside?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s late and you’d better not wait. We’ll talk it all over the next time we meet.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, I’m not mad at you.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  He sighed, bent over the bed, and I let him kiss me.

  “You’ll phone me?” he asked as he reached the door

  “Don’t worry.”

  And in this way Gino learned of my new way of life. But the next time we met we did not mention the compact or my profession; they were like uninteresting, commonplace matters, whose only importance had been their novelty. He behaved more or less like Mother, in fact, except that he did not appear to feel even for one moment the shock Mother had felt the first time I took Giacinti h
ome, and which, from time to time, I couldn’t help seeing beneath her satisfaction and even in the unhealthy, puffy look she had. Gino’s chief characteristic was a kind of dull and shortsighted cunning. I imagine that when he learned of the changes brought about in my life by his betrayal of me he simply shrugged his shoulders and said to himself, “Oh, well — two birds with one stone — this way, she can’t reproach me and I can go on being her lover all the same.” There are men who think themselves lucky if they can keep what they have, whether it is money or women or life itself, even at the expense of their own dignity. And Gino was one of them.

  I continued to see him because, as I have said, I still liked him despite everything and there was no one I liked more. And also because, although I believed everything was over between us, I was not anxious for an abrupt, unpleasant break. I have never liked sharp breaks or sudden interruptions. I think things in life die as they are born, by themselves, through boredom, through indifference or even through habit, which is in itself a kind of steady and faithful boredom; and I like to be conscious of them dying in this way, naturally, without it being my fault or anyone else’s, and slowly giving place to other things. After all, we never get clear, definite changes in life; and those who do make hurried changes risk seeing their old habits come to the fore once again, still alive and as deep-rooted as ever. I wanted to reach the stage where Gino’s caresses would leave me as indifferent to him as did his words, and I was afraid that, if I did not let things take their own time, he would continually keep cropping up in my life and oblige me, despite myself, to renew our old relationship.