The Woman of Rome (Italia)

by Alberto Moravia

  He never talked to me about politics though, except for an occasional reference. Even today I have no idea what he was aiming at, what his ideas were, what party he belonged to. My ignorance is partly due to his secretiveness over this aspect of his life, and partly to the fact that I myself understood nothing about politics and my shyness and indifference prevented my asking him for all the explanations that might have enlightened me. I was wrong; and God knows I regretted it later on. But at the time I thought it was very convenient not to be involved in things I believed were no concern of mine, and to think only of love. I behaved, in fact, like so many other women, wives and mistressses, who sometimes do not even know how their men earn the money they bring home. Quite often I met his two companions, whom he used to see almost every day. But they did not mention politics in my presence; they either joked or talked of unimportant matters.

  And yet I was unable to shake off a constant feeling of apprehension because I could not forget that plotting against the government was dangerous. What I feared most was that Mino might be drawn into some act of violence; in my ignorance I was unable to separate the idea of a plot from that of weapons and blood. In this connection I remember something that shows to what extent I felt, however obscurely, that it was my duty to intervene in order to ward off the dangers that threatened him. I knew that the carrying of arms was illegal; and that a man might be sentenced to jail merely for carrying a weapon without a permit. Aside from this, it is extremely easy to lose one’s head at certain moments, and the use of arms has so often compromised people who otherwise would have been saved. For all these reasons I thought that the pistol Mino was so proud of was not only unnecessary, but positively dangerous, for he might be obliged to use it or it might simply be discovered on him. But I did not dare to mention it to him, since I realized it would have been useless. In the end I decided to act secretly. On one occasion he had explained to me how the weapon worked. One day while he was asleep, I took the pistol out of his trousers pocket, pulled out the cylinder, and removed the bullets. Then I put the pistol together again and replaced it in his pocket. I hid the bullets in a drawer underneath my lingerie. I did all this in an instant and then went to sleep again beside him. Two days later I put the bullets into my purse and went to throw them into the Tiber.

  One day Astarita came to see me. I had almost forgotten him; and as far as the matter of the maid went, I believed I had done my duty and I did not want to think anymore about it. Astarita told me the priest had delivered the compact to the police and that the owner, on the advice of the police themselves, had withdrawn her accusation, and the maid had been declared innocent and set free. I must admit that this news delighted me, especially since it dispelled the feeling of foreboding I had had ever since my last confession. I thought not of the maid, who was by now free, but of Mino, and told myself that now, since there was no further danger of the denunciation I had been so afraid of, I had nothing more to fear for either of us. In my delight I could not help embracing Astarita.

  “Was it so important to you to get that woman out of jail, then?” he asked me with a doubtful expression.

  “It may seem strange to you,” I lied, “who lightheartedly send who knows how many innocent people to jail every day, but it was real agony to me.”

  “I don’t send anyone to jail,” he stammered. “I only do my duty.”

  “Did you see the priest yourself?” I asked him.

  “No, I didn’t see him, I phoned. They told me the compact had, in fact, been given up by a priest, who had received it under the seal of the confessional. So then I recommended her release.”

  I remained pensive, I did not know why myself.

  “Do you really love me?” I asked him then.

  This question put him into turmoil immediately and he embraced me tightly. “Why do you ask me that?” he stammered. “You ought to know by now.”

  He wanted to kiss me but I avoided him. “I asked you,” I said, “because I want to know if you’ll always help me — every time I ask you — like you helped me this time.”

  “Always,” he replied, trembling all over. “But you’ll be kind to me?” he asked, putting his face up to mine.

  Now I had firmly decided, after Mino had returned to me, that I would not have anything more to do with Astarita. He was different from my usual paying lovers; and although I did not love him and indeed felt a positive aversion for him at times, perhaps for this very reason I felt that giving myself to him would be like betraying Mino. I was tempted to tell him the truth, “No, I shall never be kind to you again,” but then I suddenly changed my mind and controlled myself. I remembered what power he had, how Giacomo might be arrested at any time, and that if I wanted Astarita to intervene to free him it was unwise to offend him. I resigned myself and said quickly. “Yes, I’ll be kind to you.”

  “Tell me,”-he insisted, feeling emboldened, “tell me — do you love me a little?”

  “No, I don’t love you,” I said firmly, “and you know it — I’ve already told you that so many times.”

  “Won’t you ever love me?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But why?”

  “There isn’t any reason.”

  “You love someone else.”

  “That’s no business of yours.”

  “But I need your love,” he said in despair, looking at me with his bilious eyes. “Why, why won’t you love me a little?”

  That day I allowed him to remain with me until late into the night. He was inconsolable because of my inability to love him and seemed unconvinced of the truth of what I said. “But I’m no worse than other men,” he protested. “Why couldn’t you love me instead of someone else?” Really, I felt sorry for him; and since he insisted on questioning me about my feelings for him and on trying to find some fuel for his hopes in my replies, I felt almost tempted to lie to him, if only to give him the illusion he so longed for. I noticed that he was more mournful and sickened that night than he usually was. It was as though he wanted his gestures and attitudes to awaken in me, from without, the love my heart denied him.

  I remember that at a certain moment he asked me to sit naked in an armchair. He knelt down in front of me and put his head in my lap, crushing his face against my belly and remaining motionless like this for a long time. Meanwhile I had to stroke his head again and again with a light, incessant caress. This was not the first time he had obliged me to perform a kind of mimicry of love; but he seemed more desperate that day than usual. He pressed his head violently into my lap as if he wanted to enter into me and be swallowed up, and he groaned occasionally. In those moments he no longer seemed like a lover, but a child seeking the warmth and darkness of his mother’s womb. And I thought that many men would like never to have been born; and that this gesture of his, perhaps unconsciously, expressed that dim longing to be engulfed once more in the shadowy womb from which he had been painfully expelled into the light.

  That night he remained kneeling so long that I became drowsy and fell asleep, with my head flung back against the chair, my hand resting on his head. I do not know how long I slept. At a certain moment I seemed to wake up and glimpse Astarita, no longer kneeling at my feet but seated in front of me, already dressed, gazing at me with his mournful, bilious eyes. But perhaps it was only a dream, or a hallucination. The fact is that I suddenly really woke up and found that Astarita had gone, leaving the usual sum of money in my lap where he had lain his face.

  About a fortnight passed, and these were among the happiest days in my life. I saw Mino almost every day and although there was no change in our relationship I contented myself with the kind of habit we had established, in which we seemed to have found by now some common ground. It was silently taken for granted between us that he did not love me, that he would never love me, and that in any case he preferred chastity to love. It was equally taken for granted that I loved him, that I always would love him despite his indifference to me, and that in any case I preferred a l
ove like that, incomplete and wavering though it might be, to no love at all. I am not made like Astarita; and having once resigned myself to the fact that I was not loved, I found much pleasure all the same in loving. I cannot swear that at the bottom of my heart I did not nurse a hope that my submissiveness, patience, and affection might one day make him love me. But I did nothing to encourage this hope; and it was, more than anything else, the slightly bitter spice to his uncertain, grudging caresses.

  But I certainly did all I could to enter unobtrusively into his life, and since I could not do so by the main door, I exercised my ingenuity in trying to enter by the back door. Despite his explicit and I believe genuine hatred of people, some curious contradiction gave him an irresistible impulse to preach and act in support of what he thought was for the good of humankind. And although this impulse was almost always checked by sudden regrets and sarcastic disgust, it was sincere.

  At that time he appeared to become passionately interested in what he ironically referred to as my education. As I have said, I tried to bind him to me and so I favored this inclination of his. This experiment ended almost immediately, however, in a way worth mentioning. He came to see me for several evenings running and brought some books of his with him. After he had explained briefly what the subject was, he began to read a passage here and there. He read well, with a great variety of expression in his voice according to the subject matter, and with a passion that made him flush and gave his features an unusual animation. But I was usually unable to understand what he read however hard I tried; and I soon gave up listening to him and contented myself with watching the different expressions that flitted across his face while he was reading, a pleasure I never tired of.

  During these readings he really abandoned himself completely, without any fear or irony, like someone in his own element who is no longer afraid of showing his sincerity. This fact struck me, because until then I had always thought that love, not literature, was the most favorable condition in which the human soul could blossom. Apparently in Mino’s case the opposite was true; certainly I never, not even in his rare moments of affection, saw such enthusiasm and candor in his face as there was when, raising his voice in curiously hollow tones or lowering it in a conversational way, he read me passages from his favorite authors. At such times he entirely lost his air of theatrical, burlesque artificiality, which never left him completely even in his most serious moments, and gave the impression that he was always acting a superficial, premeditated part. Quite often I even saw his eyes fill with tears. Then he would shut the book. “Did you like it?” he would ask me abruptly.

  I usually answered that I had liked it, without saying why. I could not be more specific because, from the very outset, as I have said, I gave up all effort to grasp the meaning of such obscure stuff. But one day he insisted. “Tell me why you liked it,” he said. “Explain why.”

  “To tell you the truth,” I replied after a moment’s hesitation, “I can’t explain anything because I didn’t understand anything.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t understand anything — or only a very little — of what you were reading.”

  “And you let me go on reading without warning me!”

  “I saw you enjoyed reading and I didn’t want to spoil your pleasure — anyway, I’m never bored — you’re very amusing to watch while you’re reading.”

  He leaped to his feet in a rage. “What the devil! You’re a fool, a cretin — and here I am, wasting my breath — you’re an idiot!” He pulled back the book as though he were going to fling it at my head, but controlled himself in time and continued to insult me this way for a while.

  I allowed him to let off steam for some time and then spoke. “You say you want to educate me,” I said, “but the first condition for my education would be to do something so I wouldn’t have to earn my living in the way you know I do — I certainly don’t need to read poetry or reflections on morality to pick up men. I could even not know how to read or write and they’d pay me just the same.”

  “You’d like to have a beautiful house, a husband, children, clothes, a car, wouldn’t you?” he replied sarcastically. “The trouble is that not even the Lobianco women read — for different reasons from yours, but no less justifiable, from their point of view.”

  “I don’t know what I’d like,” I said, a little irritated, “but these books don’t suit my way of life. It’s like giving a beggar a priceless hat and expecting her to wear it with her usual rags.”

  “That may be,” he said, “but this is the last time I’ll ever read you a line.”

  I have mentioned this slight quarrel because it is so characteristic of his way of thinking and behaving. But I doubt whether he would have continued in his efforts to educate me, even if I had not confessed my inability to understand him. It was not so much his inconsistency that made me think this as his singular inability, which I would call physical, to persist in any effort that demanded sincere, sustained enthusiasm. He never spoke of it in so many words, but I realized that the burlesque quality of his words often corresponded in fact to a spiritual condition. He would get worked up, as it were, over any purpose and as long as the fire of this enthusiasm lasted he would see that purpose as something concrete and attainable. Then suddenly the fire would die out and he would feel only boredom, disgust, and above all, a sensation of utter absurdity. Then he would either abandon himself to a kind of dull, inert indifference, or act in a conventional and superficial way, as if the fire had never died out — in a word, pretend. I find it difficult to explain what happened to him at such times — it was probably a sharp interruption in his vitality, as if the very warmth of his blood had suddenly withdrawn from his mind, leaving only an arid void. It was an immediate interruption, unforeseeable and total, comparable to the interruption of an electric current, which plunges into sudden darkness a house only a moment before brilliantly illuminated; or to a motor when wheel after wheel, it ceases to move and stands still, when the power is cut off. This constant ebb and flow of his deepest vitality was first revealed to me by the frequent alternation in him of states of ardor and enthusiasm with others of apathy and inertia; but in the end it was shown to me fully by a curious incident to which I attributed little importance at the time, but which later appeared highly significant.

  “Would you like to do something for us?” he asked me one day, quite unexpectedly.

  “Us who?”

  “For our group. Help us distribute our leaflets, for instance?”

  I was always on the alert for anything that might bring me nearer to him and strengthen our connection.

  “Of course,” I replied eagerly, “tell me what I have to do and I’ll do it.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Why should I be? If you do it —”

  “Yes, but first I have to explain what it’s about,” he said. “First you have to understand the ideas for which you run such risks.”

  “Explain them, then.”

  “But you won’t be interested.”

  “Why? First of all, they’ll surely interest me, besides, everything you do interests me, if only because you do it.”

  He looked at me and suddenly his eyes sparkled and his cheeks grew unexpectedly flushed. “All right,” he said hurriedly, “it’s too late today — but I’ll explain everything tomorrow — myself, since books bore you. But remember, it’ll take a long time, and you’ll have to listen and follow me — even if you think you don’t understand sometimes.”

  “I’ll try to understand,” I said.

  “You ought to,” he replied, as if speaking to himself. And he left me.

  Next day I waited for him but he did not come. Two days later he arrived and as soon as he was in my room he sat down on the armchair at the foot of the bed without saying a word.

  “Well,” I said gaily, “I’m ready — I’m listening.”

  I had noticed his downcast expression, his opaque eyes, and his wilted, exha
usted manner, but I did not want to remark on it.

  “It’s no good listening,” he said at last, “because you won’t hear anything.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “Tell me the truth,” I protested. “You think I’m too stupid or too ignorant to understand certain things, don’t you? Thanks.”

  “No, you’re wrong,” he said seriously.

  “Why, then?”

  We continued like this for some time, with me insisting on knowing why and him refusing to explain. “Do you want to know why?” he said at last. “Because I wouldn’t know how to express those ideas to you myself today.”

  “Why not? — since you think about them all the time.”

  “I do think about them the whole time, I know. But since yesterday, and for who knows how much longer, those ideas aren’t clear to me anymore, in fact I don’t understand a thing.”

  “You can’t mean it.”

  “Try to understand me,” he said. “Two days ago, when I suggested that you should work for us, I’m sure that if I had explained our ideas to you, I’d not only have done it vigorously, clearly, and persuasively, but you’d have understood them perfectly. Today I might move my tongue and lips to utter certain words, but it would be something mechanical, in which I participated not at all. Today,” he repeated, emphasizing each syllable as he spoke, “I don’t understand a thing.”

  “You don’t understand a thing?”

  “No, I don’t understand a thing. Ideas, concepts, facts, memories, convictions, everything has been transformed into a kind of mush, a mush that fills my head —” he tapped his forehead with his finger “— my whole head — and disgusts me as if it were excrement.”

  I looked at him in puzzled suspense. A quiver of exasperation seemed to run through him at this.

  “Try to understand me,” he cried, “today everything seems incomprehensible. Not only ideas, but everything ever written or said or thought — it all seems absurd. For instance, do you know the Lord’s Prayer?”