“There’s someone waiting for me outside,” I said as I got to my feet. “Here’s the money — pay for everything and go home. I’ll be there before you, but I won’t be alone.”
She looked at me in dismay and with a kind of remorse, I thought. But she did not say anything. I nodded good-bye and went out. The man was waiting in the street. I was hardly out of the place when he was on me, grasping my arm firmly. “Where shall we go?”
“To my place.”
So, after a few hours of anguish I gave up the unequal struggle against what appeared to be my fate. Indeed, I welcomed it with greater love, as one embraces a foe one cannot defeat; and I felt liberated. Some people may think it very easy to accept an ignoble but profitable fate rather than renounce it. But I have often wondered why misery and anger dwell in the hearts of those people who try to live according to certain precepts and to conform to certain ideals, when those who accept their own lives — which are, after all, emptiness, darkness and weakness — are so often gay and carefree. In such cases the individual does not obey any precepts but his own temperament, which then takes shape as his true and unique destiny. My temperament, as I have already said, was to be gay, kindly, serene, at all costs; and I accepted it.
3
I GAVE UP GIACOMO ALTOGETHER, deciding to think no more about him. I felt I loved him and if he were to return I would be happy and would love him more than ever. But I also knew I would never let myself be humiliated by him again. If he came back, I would stand there before him, enclosed in my own life as in a fortress, which would really be impregnable and unshaken until I left it of my own accord. “I’m a whore off the streets,” I would say to him, “nothing more — if you want me, you have to accept me for what I am.” I had realized that my strength lay not in my desire to be something I was not, but in my acceptance of what I was. My strength lay in my poverty, my profession, Mother, my ugly house, my simple clothes, my humble origin, my misfortunes, and more profoundly in the feeling that made me able to accept all these things, a feeling as deeply embedded in my soul as a precious stone in the bowels of the earth. But I was quite sure I would never see him again, and this certainty made me love him in a melancholy, helpless way quite new in my experience, which had its own sweetness; as we love the dead who never will return.
At this time, I broke off my relationship with Gino once and for all. As I have already said, I dislike sudden breaks and I prefer things to live their own lives and die their own deaths. My relations with Gino were a good example of this desire of mine. They ceased because the life in them ceased, not through my fault and not even, in a certain sense, through Gino’s. They ceased in such a way as to leave me no regrets.
I had continued to see him every now and again, two or three times a month. I did still like him, although I no longer respected him. One day he rang up and asked me to meet him at a café, and I told him I would be there.
The café was in my own neighborhood. Gino was waiting for me in the inner room, a windowless little place, the walls covered with majolica tiles. As I entered, I saw he was not alone. Someone was sitting beside him with his back toward me. I could see only that he was wearing a green raincoat and was blond, with a crew cut. I went up to them and Gino got to his feet, but his companion remained seated. “Let me introduce my friend Sonzogno,” said Gino. Then he stood up, too, and I held out my hand. But when he took it, I felt as though he were gripping me in a vise and a little cry of pain escaped me. He let go at once and I sat down smiling. “Do you know you hurt me?” I said. “Is that what you always do?”
He did not reply, did not even smile. His face was paper-white, his forehead hard and bulging, his eyes tiny and sky-blue in color; he was flat-nosed and had a mouth like a slit. His hair was bristly and colorless, cut short, his temples squashed in. But the lower part of his face was broad, his jaw heavy and ugly. He seemed always to be grinding his teeth, as though he were chewing something, and it looked as if one of the nerves under the skin of his cheek was twitching and trembling all the time. Gino’s attitude to him was one of admiring and respectful friendship.
“That’s nothing!” he said. “If you knew how strong he is! He’s got a killer’s punch.”
I thought Sonzogno regarded him with hostility.
“That’s a lie,” he said in a flat voice. “I haven’t got a killer’s punch.… I might have.”
“What’s a killer’s punch?” I asked.
“When you can kill a man with a single blow — then you’re forbidden to use your fists — it’s like using a gun.”
“Feel how strong he is!” insisted Gino excitedly, as if eager to ingratiate himself with Sonzogno. “Just feel. Let her touch your arm.”
I hesitated, but Gino was insistent and his friend also seemed to expect it. So I stretched my hand out, limply, to pinch his arm. He bent his forearm to flex his muscles, seriously, almost grimly. And then I felt beneath my fingers, through his sleeve, something that was like a bundle of iron cords, and I had a shock of surprise because he looked so slight. I withdrew my hand with an exclamation of mingled disgust and wonder. Sonzogno looked at me complacently, a slight smile playing on his lips.
“He’s an old friend of mine,” said Gino. “We’ve known each other quite a while, haven’t we, Primo? We’re almost brothers, you might say.” He patted Sonzogno on the shoulder, saying, “Good old Primo!”
Sonzogno shrugged his shoulders as if to shake Gino’s hand off. “We’re neither friends nor brothers,” he said. “We used to work together in the same garage, that’s all.”
Gino was not at all disconcerted. “Oh, I know you don’t want to be anyone’s friend — you’re always alone, on your own — no women, and no men.”
Sonzogno looked at him. He had a fixed stare, incredibly insistent and unblinking; Gino was obliged to turn his eyes away. “Who told you that crap?” asked Sonzogno. “I hang out with anyone I like — men or women.”
“I was only talking.” Gino’s cocksure air had vanished. “I’ve never seen you with anyone, that’s all.”
“You’ve never known anything about my affairs.”
“Well, I used to see you morning and evening every day —”
“What if you did see me every day?”
“Well,” said Gino disconcerted, “I’ve always seen you by yourself, and I thought you never hung out with anyone — if a man has a girl or a friend, you always get to know it.”
“Don’t be a moron,” said Sonzogno brutally.
“Now you’re even calling me a moron,” said Gino flushing, and feigning his usual bad temper. But he was obviously scared.
“Yes,” repeated Sonzogno. “Don’t be a moron or I’ll break your face.”
I suddenly realized he was not only quite capable of doing it, but that he actually intended to do it. Placing one hand on his arm, I intervened. “If you want to fight it out, please do it when I’m not here — I can’t stand violence.”
“Here I am, introducing a young lady, a friend of mine, to you,” said Gino sulkily, “and you frighten her, the way you act! She’ll think we’re enemies!”
Sonzogno turned to me and smiled for the first time. When he smiled he screwed up his eyes, wrinkled his forehead, and showed not only his little bad teeth but even his gums. “The young lady isn’t frightened, are you?” he asked.
“I’m not frightened at all,” I answered dryly, “but I don’t like violence, as I’ve told you.”
A long silence ensued. Sonzogno remained motionless, his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, the nerves in his jaw twitching as he stared at nothing; Gino was still smoking, with bent head, and the smoke crept up his face and ears that were still crimson. Then Sonzogno got up. “Well — I’m off,” he said.
Gino leaped eagerly to his feet. “No hard feelings, then, eh, Primo?” he said as he held out his hand.
“No hard feelings,” repeated Sonzogno through clenched teeth. He shook my hand, but without hurting me this time, and went away. He was s
light and short; and it was really impossible to see where all his strength came from.
“You may be friends and even brothers — but the way he talked to you!” I said jokingly to Gino as soon as he had gone.
Gino had recovered by now. “He’s made that way,” he said, shaking his head. “But he’s not bad. It suits me to stay on the right side of him. He’s useful to me sometimes.”
“In what way?”
I noticed Gino was excited, trembling from the desire to tell me something. His face had suddenly become wildly excited and eager.
“You remember my mistress’s compact?”
“Yes — well?”
Gino’s eyes shone with delight. “Well, I thought it over and didn’t give it back,” he said lowering his voice.
“You didn’t give it back?”
“No. After all, I thought, she’s rich and one compact more or less won’t make any difference to her — especially since the deed was already done,” he added with characteristic reserve, “and, after all, I wasn’t the thief.”
“I was the thief,” I said quietly.
He pretended not to have heard me. “Still, later on, there was the problem of selling it,” he continued. “It was a showy thing, easy to identify, and I didn’t dare. So I kept it in my pocket for a good while until at last I met Sonzogno, told him the whole story —”
“Did you even tell him about me?” I interrupted.
“No, not about you — I told him a girlfriend had given it to me, without mentioning any names, and he … Just think, in three days he sold it and brought me the cash — of course, he kept his share, like we agreed.” He was trembling with joy and after having looked around him, he pulled a bundle of notes out of his pocket.
I do not know why but at that moment I felt a deep aversion to him. It was not that I criticized what he had done — I had no right to do that at all — but his gloating irritated me. Besides, I guessed he was keeping something back and what he had not told me was certainly far worse. “You were right,” I said shortly.
“Here,” he said, undoing the roll of banknotes, “these are for you — I’ve counted them.”
“No,” I replied immediately, “I want nothing, absolutely nothing.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want anything.”
“You’re trying to insult me,” he said. A shade of doubt and distress flitted across his face, and I was afraid I really had offended him. I placed my hand on his. “If you hadn’t offered it to me,” I said with an effort, “I’d have been — well, not offended, perhaps, but surprised — but now it’s done it’s all right as it is. I don’t want it, because it’s over as far as I’m concerned, that’s all. I’m glad you’ve got it, though.”
He looked at me doubtfully, not understanding what I was saying, scrutinizing me as though he wanted to discover the hidden motive behind my words. I have realized since, when I have thought about him, that he was incapable of understanding me because he lived in a different world from mine, with different ideas and emotions. I do not know whether it was a worse world or a better one; I only know that some words did not have the same meaning for him as they did for me, and that most of the actions I criticized in him seemed to him both lawful and proper. He seemed to ascribe the utmost importance to intelligence, by which he meant cleverness. And in dividing humankind into two groups — those who were clever and those who were not — he always tried to place himself in the first category. But I am not at all clever myself, perhaps not even intelligent, and I have never been able to understand how a bad deed can be explained away, let alone admired, merely because it was cleverly done.
The doubt that was tormenting him suddenly seemed to dissolve. “I know what it is!” he exclaimed. “You don’t want to take the money because you’re afraid — you’re afraid the theft might be discovered. But you don’t have to worry. Everything’s come out all right.”
I was not afraid, but I did not trouble to deny it because I had not understood the second part of his sentence.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Everything’s come out all right.”
“Yes,” he replied. “Everything’s all right — you remember! I told you they suspected one of the maids, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Well — I’d had it with that maid because she gossiped about me behind my back.… A few days after the theft I could see things were looking bad for me — the police officer had been back twice, I thought I was under surveillance. Remember, they hadn’t searched the house yet.… So I got the idea of a second theft that would provoke a search, so that the blame for both thefts would fall on her.”
I remained silent, and after having glanced at me with wide-open, glittering eyes, as if to see whether I was admiring his cunning, he continued. “The mistress had some dollars in a drawer. I took them and hid them in the maid’s room in an old suitcase. When they did search the house, of course the dollars were found and she was arrested. She swears she’s innocent, naturally, but who’d believe it? They found the dollars in her bedroom.”
“Where is this woman now?”
“In prison, and she won’t confess. But do you know what the police officer told the mistress? ‘Don’t worry, ma’am,’ he said, ‘by hook or by crook, she’ll confess in the end.’ Know what they mean? By hook or by crook? They’ll beat her up.”
I looked at him and, seeing him so excited and proud of himself, I felt all chilled and confused. “What’s her name?” I asked casually.
“Luisa Fellini — she’s not so young, and she’s very stuck-up — to hear her talk, she’s a maid by mistake and no one is as honest as she is!” He smiled, highly amused.
I made an effort, like someone trying to take a deep breath. “Do you know you’re contemptible?” I said.
“What? Why?” he asked me in amazement.
Now that I had told him he was contemptible, I felt freer and more determined. My nostrils quivered with rage. “And you wanted me to take that money!” I continued. “But I could feel it was money I shouldn’t take.”
“What’s all the fuss?” he said, trying to regain his composure. “She won’t confess — and then they’ll let her go.”
“But you’ve just said yourself that they’ll keep her in prison and beat her up!”
“I was just talking.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ve sent an innocent woman to jail — and then you have the gall to come and tell me about it! You’re contemptible.”
He suddenly grew furious, the blood left his face. He gripped my hand. “You just stop calling me contemptible.”
“Why? I think you’re contemptible and I’ll say so.”
He lost his head and made a curiously violent gesture. He twisted my hand in his as if he wanted to crush it and then suddenly bent his head and bit my hand hard. I freed myself with a jerk and stood up. “Are you crazy?” I exclaimed. “What’s got into you now? Biting? It’s no good — you’re scum and you’ll always be scum.” He did not reply but sunk his head on his hands as if he wanted to tear his hair out.
I called the waiter and paid for all the drinks, mine, his, and Sonzogno’s. “I’m going,” I said. “And I’m telling you — everything’s over between us. Don’t show up again, don’t look for me, don’t come — I don’t know you anymore.” He said nothing, but kept his head lowered. I left.
The café was at the top of the main road not far from the house where I lived. I began to walk slowly along on the side opposite the city walls. It was night, the sky was covered with clouds and a fine rain was falling like watery dust through the mild, unstirring air. The walls were in darkness as usual, except for an occasional rarely spaced streetlamp. But I immediately noticed a man slip away from one of the streetlamps as I left the café and begin to follow along the walls at my pace in the direction I was going. I recognized Sonzogno, with his raincoat nipped in at the waist and his blond, shaven head. He looked small there beneath the walls, disappeared every now and ag
ain in the shadows, then reappeared in the gleam of a streetlamp. For the first time I felt sick of men, all men, always after my skirt, like a bunch of dogs following a bitch. I was still trembling with rage; and as I thought of the woman Gino had sent to jail I could not help being filled with remorse, because, after all, I had been the one to steal the compact. But perhaps what I felt were revolt and irritation rather than remorse. Although I rebelled against injustice and hated Gino, yet I hated hating him and knowing injustice had been done. I am not really made for such things; I felt terribly distressed and not at all myself. I walked hurriedly, wanting to reach home before Sonzogno approached me, as he apparently intended doing. Then I heard Gino’s voice calling me desperately from behind. “Adriana! Adriana!”
I pretended I had not heard and hastened on. He took me by the arm. “Adriana! We’ve always been together — we can’t leave each other like this —”
I freed myself with a jerk and went on walking. The clear-cut little figure of Sonzogno shot out of the darkness into the circle of light shed by a streetlamp on the other side of the road beneath the walls. “But I love you, Adriana,” Gino continued as he hurried along beside me.
I felt both pity and hatred for him, and this mixture of emotions was indescribably distasteful to me. I tried to think about something else. I suddenly had a kind of illumination, I don’t know why. I remembered Astarita and how he had always offered me his assistance, and I thought he would almost certainly be able to have the poor woman released. This idea revived my spirits immediately; my heart was freed of its load and I even felt as if I did not hate Gino anymore and was only sorry for him. I stood still and addressed him calmly. “Gino,” I said, “why don’t you go away?”
“But I love you.”
“I loved you, too — but it’s all over. Go away now, it’ll be better for both of us.”
We were standing in a dark stretch of the road where there were no shops or streetlamps. He took hold of me around the waist and tried to kiss me. I could have broken free easily enough because I am very strong and no one can kiss a woman if she doesn’t want it. But some malicious whim put it into my head to call Sonzogno, who was standing motionless on the other side of the road under the walls, watching us, his hands in the pockets of his raincoat. I suppose I called him because now that I had discovered a way of remedying the harm Gino’s action had done, my curiosity and coquetry were aroused once more. “Sonzogno! Sonzogno!” I cried out twice, and he immediately crossed the road. Gino was disconcerted and let me go.
The Woman of Rome (Italia) Page 23
