The Woman of Rome (Italia)

by Alberto Moravia

  “Who was he?” he asked, mechanically removing a piece of fluff from the lapels of his overcoat and looking himself over as if he were afraid he had spoiled his elegance by the violent effort he had made.

  “I never knew his last name. I only know him as Carlo,” I lied.

  “Carlo,” he replied with a snigger, shaking his head. Then he came up to me. I was standing in the window embrasure and was looking out through the panes of glass. He put his arm around my waist. “How are you?” he asked me, and his voice and expression were already quite different.

  “I’m well,” I said, without looking at him. He gazed at me and then pressed me to him, close, without speaking. I pushed him away gently. “You’ve been very kind to me,” I said. “I telephoned to ask you to do me another favor.”

  “Let’s hear it,” he said. He was still gazing at me and did not appear to be listening.

  “That young man you questioned —” I began.

  “Oh, yes,” he interrupted, making a face. “Always him.… He didn’t turn out to be very heroic.”

  I was curious to know the truth about Mino’s interview. “Why?” I asked. “Was he afraid?”

  Astarita shook his head. “I don’t know if he was afraid or not. I only know that at the first question I put to him he blurted out everything. If he had denied it, I couldn’t have done anything to him. There wasn’t any proof.”

  So it really had gone as Mino had said, I thought. It had been a kind of sudden absence, like a collapse, reasonless, unasked for and unprovoked. “Well,” I went on, “I suppose you wrote down what he said. I want you to destroy everything you wrote.”

  He smiled contemptuously. “He put you up to this, didn’t he?”

  “No, it’s my idea,” I replied. “May I be struck dead this moment if it’s not true,” I swore solemnly.

  “They all want the records to disappear,” he said. “The police archives are their uneasy consciences. When the record disappears, the remorse disappears.”

  “I wish that were true,” I said, remembering Mino, “but I’m afraid you’re wrong this time.”

  He drew me to him again, so that my belly was pressed against his. “What will you give me in exchange?” he stammered, trembling with desire.

  “Nothing,” I replied simply. “Nothing at all this time.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “You’d make me very unhappy because I love this man, and everything that happens to him is as if it were happening to me.”

  “But you told me you’d be nice to me.”

  “I did say so. But I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Because. There isn’t any reason.”

  He pressed me to him again and, stammering rapidly with his mouth to my ear, he began to beg me to yield, at least for one last time, to his desperate desire. I cannot repeat the things he said, because he mingled his supplications with atrocious things I could not write down, things men say to women like me, things women like me say to their lovers. He enumerated them in meticulous, abundant, and precise detail; not with the shameless gaiety that usually accompanies such outbursts, but with grim pleasure, as if he were obsessed. I once saw a homicidal maniac in the insane asylum describe to his nurse the tortures he would inflict upon him if he chanced to have him in his power, and he spoke with the same scrupulous, serious, balanced tone of voice with which Astarita whispered his obscenities to me. What he was really describing in this way was his love, both tragic and lustful, which to others might have seemed mere lechery, but which I, on the contrary, knew to be as deep, absolute, and, in its way, as pure as any love could be. I felt stirred to pity for him, as I always did, since underneath all those obscenities I could sense only his loneliness and his absolute incapacity to escape from it. I let him pour it all out, then said to him. “I didn’t want to tell you, but you force me to. Do what you like, but I can never again be what I was. I’m pregnant.”

  He was not astonished; he never deviated for one single moment from his fixed purpose. “Well — so what?”

  “So now I’m going to change my way of life. I’m getting married.”

  My main reason for telling him of my condition had been to console him for my refusal. But I realized as I spoke that I was saying what I really thought and that those words came from my heart. “When you first knew me I wanted to get married,” I added with a sigh. “And it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t.”

  His arm was still around my waist but he had loosened his hold. Now he drew away from me completely. “I curse the day I met you!” he said.

  “Why?”

  He spat, turning his head to one side, then continued. “I curse the day I met you and I curse the day I was born.” He spoke quietly and did not seem to be giving vent to any violent emotion. He spoke calmly and surely. “Your friend has nothing to fear,” he added. “The interview wasn’t written down, and the information he gave wasn’t acted upon. He’s only noted in our archives as still being dangerous from the political standpoint. Good-bye, Adriana.”

  I remained by the window and returned his farewell, watching him from a distance as he went off. He picked up his hat from the table and left without turning around.

  The door leading into the kitchen opened immediately and Mino came in with his pistol in his hand. I gazed at him in astonishment, feeling empty and speechless.

  “I had made up my mind to kill Astarita,” he said with a smile. “Did you really think I cared whether the papers dealing with my case disappeared or not?”

  “Then why didn’t you do it?” I asked in a dazed voice.

  “He cursed the day he was born so deeply; let him go on cursing it for a year or two yet,” he said shaking his head.

  I felt that something was hurting me but however hard I tried I was unable to discover what it was. “In any case,” I said, “I got what I wanted. There’s nothing written down.”

  “I heard him, I heard him,” he interrupted me. “I heard everything. I was standing behind the door, and the door was ajar. I saw what he did, too. He’s brave,” he added carelessly, “your Astarita’s brave … pam pam! The way he slapped Sonzogno was really masterful! There are ways of doing these things, even slapping someone. He hit him like a superior hits an inferior, like a master hits a servant. And the way Sonzogno swallowed it! He didn’t say a word.” He laughed and put his pistol back into his pocket.

  I was rather disconcerted by this singular eulogy of Astarita. “What do you think Sonzogno will do?” I asked uncertainly.

  “Oh, who knows?”

  It was nearly night by now and the living room was immersed in deep shadow. He leaned over the table and switched on the central light, which was surrounded by darkness. Mother’s glasses and her patience cards lay on the table. Mino sat down, picked up the cards, and shuffled them. “Want to play a game of cards while we wait for supper?” he then said.

  “What an idea!” I exclaimed. “A game of cards?”

  “Yes, briscola. Come on.”

  I obeyed him, sat down, and mechanically took up the cards he dealt me. I was confused in my mind and my hands, I was not sure why, were trembling. I began to play. The figures on the cards seemed to me to possess a malicious, disturbing character of their own: the jack of clubs, black and sinister with his black eye and a black flower in his fist; the queen of hearts, lustful, excited, shapeless; the king of diamonds, paunchy, cold, impassive, inhuman. I felt we were playing for some immensely important stakes, but I did not know what. I was deathly sad and every now and then, even as I was playing, I sighed lightly to ascertain whether the weight that was oppressing me was still there. And I could feel that not only was it still there, but was becoming heavier.

  He won the first game and then the second. “What’s the matter?” he asked, shuffling the cards. “You’re playing so badly.”

  I threw the cards down. “Don’t torture me like this, Mino! I really don’t feel like playing at all.”

  “Why not?” />
  “I don’t know.”

  I got up and walked around the room, furtively wringing my hands. “Let’s go into the other room, do you want to?” I suggested.

  “Let’s go.”

  We went out into the hall and there in the dark he put his arm around my waist and kissed me on the neck. For perhaps the first time in my life, then, I looked at making love as he did; that is to say, as a means to numb oneself and drive out thought, no more pleasurable or important than any other. I gripped his head with my hands and kissed him violently. We went into my room clinging together. It was plunged in darkness but I did not notice. A glowing light as red as blood filled my eyes and every movement we made had the splendor of a flame leaping rapidly and unexpectedly out of the fire that consumed us. There are times when we seem to see with a sixth sense diffused throughout our bodies and the shadows become as familiar as the light of the sun. But it is a vision that goes no further than the bounds of physical contact; and all I could see were our two bodies projected against the night like the bodies of two drowned people cast up on the shore from some black eddy.

  Suddenly I found I was lying on the bed with the light from the lamp reflected on my naked belly. I squeezed my thighs together, I don’t know whether from cold or shame, and covered my sex with my two hands. Mino looked at me. “Now your belly will begin to swell,” he said, “more and more each month … and one day pain will make you open these legs you’re locking together so jealously now, and the baby’s head, already covered with hair, will pop out and you’ll thrust it out into the light of day and they’ll pick it up and put it in your arms, and you’ll be happy, and there’ll be another man in the world. Let’s hope he won’t end up saying what Astarita said.”

  “What did he say?”

  “ ‘I curse the day I was born.’ ”

  “Astarita’s a wretched man,” I said. “But I’m sure my son will be happy and lucky.”

  Then I wrapped myself up in the blanket and I believe I fell asleep. But Astarita’s name had reawakened in my heart the same feeling of anguish I had felt after his departure. Suddenly I heard an unknown voice shouting, “Pam, pam!” loudly in my ear, as if imitating the noise of two pistol shots; and I sat up sharply in bed in terror and anxiety. The lamp was still lit; I got out of bed quickly and went toward the door to make sure it was properly shut. But I ran into Mino who was standing fully dressed near the door smoking. Bewildered, I went back and sat down on the edge of the bed. “What do you think?” I asked him. “What will Sonzogno do?”

  “How should I know?” he replied, looking at me.

  “I know him,” I said, succeeding at last in finding words to express the anguish that oppressed me. “The fact that he let himself be pushed out of the room without protesting doesn’t mean anything. He’s capable of killing him. What do you think?”

  “Maybe. It’s very likely.”

  “Do you think he’ll kill him?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he did.”

  “I have to warn him,” I cried, getting up and beginning to dress myself swiftly. “I’m sure he’ll kill him. Oh, why didn’t I think of it before?”

  I dressed rapidly, continuing to talk about my fear and my presentiment. Mino said nothing; he was smoking and walking around. “I’m going to Astarita’s house,” I said at last. “He’s at home now. Wait here for me.”

  “I’m coming, too.”

  I did not insist. Truthfully, I was glad of his company, because I was so agitated that I was afraid I might be ill. “We must get a taxi at once,” I said as I put on my coat. Mino put on his coat, too, and we went out.

  I began to walk hurriedly along the street, almost running, and Mino lengthened his stride to keep pace with me, his arm in mine. After a while we found a taxi and I hurried into it, shouting out Astarita’s address. It was a street in the Prati neighborhood; I had never been there but I knew it was near the law courts.

  The taxi began to gather speed, and, as if I were crazy, I began to follow its route, leaning forward and watching the roads over the driver’s shoulder. At a certain moment I heard Mino behind me say softly, as if speaking to himself, “And what if he has? One serpent has devoured another,” but his words made no impression on me. As soon as we were outside the law courts, I stopped the taxi and got out and Mino paid the fare. We ran across the little formal gardens, following the gravel paths between the trees and benches. The street where Astarita lived unfolded itself suddenly before me, long and straight as a sword, illuminated as far as the eye could see by a row of large white lamps. It was a street of orderly, massively built houses, without any shops, and seemed deserted. From the number I guessed that Astarita’s house must be toward the end. The street was so peaceful that I said, “Perhaps it’s all my imagination.… Still, I had to come.”

  We passed three or four buildings and crosswalks and then Mino spoke. “Still, something must have happened,” he said calmly. “Look.” I raised my eyes and saw a black crowd gathered before one of the front doors, not far away. A row of people stood lined up on the opposite sidewalk, gazing up toward the dark sky. I was sure right away that that must be Astarita’s house, and I began to run, and it seemed to me that Mino was running, too. “What is it? What’s happened?” I panted to the first people in the crowd pressing around the doorway.

  “It’s not altogether clear,” said the person I had turned to, a young blond boy, hatless and coatless, who was holding a bicycle by the handlebars. “Someone threw himself down the stairwell. Or he was thrown down. The police have gone up onto the roof and are looking for someone else.”

  I made my way through the crowd and elbowed myself into the entrance hall, which was spacious and well lit and crammed with people. A white stairway with an iron railing rose in a wide curve over the heads of the crowd. As I pushed ahead, almost lifted up by my own impetus, I was able to see, over all those heads and shoulders, an open space on the floor underneath the stairway. A round white marble column supported a naked, winged figure in gilded bronze, whose one upraised arm held a frosted glass torch with an electric bulb inside it. A human body covered with a sheet lay immediately underneath the column. Everyone was looking in the same direction, and I looked too, and then I saw that they were gazing at a foot in a black shoe that stuck out from under the sheet. At that moment a number of voices began to shout imperiously. “Get back, get back!” and I was pushed violently out with all the others into the street.

  “Mino, let’s go home,” I said faintly to someone just behind me, and I turned around. I saw an unknown face looking at me in astonishment. The people, after protesting loudly and hammering in vain on the shut door, began to disperse and make their comments on what had happened. Others kept running up from other directions; two cars and a number of cyclists had stopped for information. I began to wander through the crowd in a state of increasing anxiety, looking into each face one by one without daring to speak to anyone. Certain shoulders, certain necks seen from the back seemed like Mino’s; I would push my way impetuously into the groups of people only to find a number of unknown faces looking at me in surprise. The crowd was still at its densest around the doorway; they knew there was a body there and they still hoped to catch a glimpse of it. They were closely packed, with patient, serious faces; it was as though they were lining up outside a theater. I went on wandering around, but at a certain point I realized I had looked into every face and kept coming across the same ones. I thought I heard Astarita’s name mentioned in one of the groups and realized I no longer cared about him at all, and that all the anguish I felt was centered on Mino. At last I convinced myself that he was no longer there. He must have gone off when I pushed my way into the hall. It seemed to me, I don’t know why, that I should have foreseen his flight; and I was astonished at not having thought of it before. Pulling myself together with great effort, I dragged myself as far as the piazza, got into a taxi, and gave my home address. I thought that perhaps Mino had lost me and had gone home on his own
. But I was almost certain that this was not true.

  He was not at home and did not come back that evening or the day after. I shut myself up in my room, overwhelmed by such a strong feeling of uneasiness and anxiety that I could not prevent myself from trembling all over. I did not have a temperature, but I seemed to be living outside myself, in an abnormal, excessive atmosphere in which every sight, every noise, every contact hurt me and made me faint. Nothing could distract me from the thought of Mino, not even the detailed descriptions of the new crime Sonzogno had committed, which filled all the papers Mother brought me. This crime bore Sonzogno’s unmistakable imprint: perhaps they had struggled with one another on the landing outside Astarita’s front door for a moment, then Sonzogno had bent Astarita back against the railing and had lifted him up and thrown him down the stairwell. Such brutality was extremely expressive: only Sonzogno could have thought of murdering a man that way. But, as I have said, I had one thought only and was unable to take any interest even in the articles that told how Sonzogno had been shot dead later that night as he was escaping across the roofs like a cat. Any form of occupation, distraction, or even reflection unconnected with Mino filled me with a kind of nausea, and at the same time to think of Mino caused me unbearable anguish. Two or three times I happened to think of Astarita, and as I remembered his love for me and his melancholy, I experienced a strong feeling of helpless pity for him and told myself that if I had not been so anxious about Mino, I would surely have wept for him and prayed for his soul, which had never been gladdened by any light and which had been cut off from his body so barbarously and prematurely.

  This was how I passed all the first day and night and the whole of the day and night following. I lay on my bed, or sat in the armchair at the foot of the bed. In my hands, I clutched one of Mino’s jackets that I had found hanging up, and every now and then I kissed it passionately or bit it to calm my restlessness. Even when Mother forced me to eat something, I ate with one hand only and continued to grip the jacket convulsively in the other. Mother wanted to put me to bed on the second night and I let her undress me passively. But when she tried to take the jacket from me, I let out such a shrill scream that she was terrified. Mother did not know anything for certain, but she had more or less guessed that Mino’s absence had driven me to desperation.