Maria Fortuna, instead, was of a more bovine type, a Madame de Parabère,33 tending toward corpulence. Like the lovely mistress of the Regent, she possessed a white skin, of an opaque and profound whiteness, one of those untiring and insatiable bodies on which Hercules could have carried out his labor of love, his thirteenth task, without being asked for a respite. And her eyes swam, soft violets, in a shadow such as Tranquillo Cremona would have painted, and her mouth, always half open, displayed an indistinct mother-of-pearl gleam in a rosy shadow, like a half-opened seashell.
Sperelli found Giulia Arici very pleasing, with her golden coloring, from which gazed elongated velvet eyes, of a soft chestnut velvet that at times took on almost tawny glints. Her slightly fleshy nose and her swollen, fresh, bloodred, firm lips lent the lower part of her face an expression of overt wantonness, rendered even racier by the restlessness of her tongue. Her canine teeth, being too prominent, lifted the corners of her mouth; and as the corners lifted in this way became dry or perhaps caused her some slight irritation, every now and then she moistened them with the tip of her tongue. And each time one saw that tip run along the enclosure formed by her teeth, like the moistened petal of a plump rose along a row of small bare almonds.
—Julia34—said Andrea Sperelli, watching her mouth—San Bernardino35 has a wonderful epithet for you in one of his sermons. And you don’t know this, either!
The Arici woman began to laugh, a stupid but beautiful laugh, which revealed her gums slightly; and with the commotion of her hilarity, a stronger scent emanated from her, as when a bush is shaken.
—What would you give me—added Andrea—what would you give me as a reward if, extracting that sensual word from the saint’s sermon, like an aphrodisiac stone from a theological treasury, I offered it to you?
—I don’t know, answered the Arici woman, still laughing, holding between her rather long, fine fingers a glass of Chablis wine. —Whatever you want.
—The noun of the adjective.
—What are you saying?
—We’ll talk about it. The word is: linguatica.36 Mister Ludovico, add this epithet to your litany: “Rosa linguatica, glube nos.”37
—Pity—said Musèllaro—that you aren’t at the dining table of a sixteenth-century duke, between a Violante and an Imperia,38 with Giulio Romano, Pietro Aretino, and Marc Antony!
The conversation grew more and more inflamed with the wine, the aged French wines, fluid and ardent, which lend wings and flames to words. The majolica tableware was not made by Durantino, nor decorated by the cavalier Cipriano dei Piccolpasso; nor was the silverware from Milan, of Ludovico the Moor; but neither were they too common. In the center of the table a vase of pale blue crystal stood, containing a great bouquet of chrysanthemums—yellow, white, violet—gazed at by the melancholic eyes of Clara Green.
—Clara—inquired Ruggero Grimiti—are you sad? What are you thinking about?
—À ma chimère!39 answered the ex-lover of Adolphus Jeckyll, smiling; and she hid her sigh within a brimming glass of champagne.
That clear and sparkling wine, which has such an immediate and strange effect on women, was already beginning to excite the minds and wombs of those four dissimilar hetaerae40 in different ways, to reawaken and stimulate in them the small hysterical demon, and to cause it to run amok through their veins, spreading madness as it went. Bébé Silva was uttering horrendous witticisms, laughing a choked, convulsive, almost sobbing laugh, like a woman who is being tickled to death. Maria Fortuna was crushing fondants with her naked elbow and offering them for free, pressing her sweetened elbow onto Ruggero’s mouth. Giulia Arici, tyrannized by Sperelli’s madrigals, was blocking her ears with her lovely hands, leaning back against the chair; and her mouth, in that act, attracted bites like a juicy fruit.
—Have you ever eaten—Barbarisi was saying to Sperelli—certain sweetmeats from Constantinople, as soft as dough, made from bergamot, orange blossom, and roses, which perfume your breath for the rest of your life? Giulia’s mouth is an Oriental sweetmeat.
—Please, Ludovico—said Sperelli—let me try her. Seduce Clara Green for me and give me Giulia for a week. Clara also has a novel flavor: a julep of Parma violets between two Peek Frean41 vanilla biscuits . . .
—Watch, gentlemen! shouted Bébé Silva, taking a fondant.
She had seen the attention Maria Fortuna was attracting, and had made a gymnastic bet that she could eat a fondant from her own elbow by pulling it toward her lips. To accomplish the feat, she uncovered her arm: a thin and pale arm, covered with a dark down; she stuck the fondant on her sharp bone; and taking her right forearm with her left hand and pressing on it hard, managed to win the bet, with the ability of a clown, amid applause.
—And that’s nothing, she said, covering her spectral nudity. —Chica pero guapa; not so, Musèllaro?
And she lit her tenth cigarette.
The odor of the tobacco was so delicious that everyone wanted to smoke some. The Silva woman’s cigarette case was passed from hand to hand. Maria Fortuna read aloud from the engraved enameled silver of the case:
—“Quia nominor Bébé.”42
Then everyone wanted a saying, a motto to place on their handkerchiefs, their notepaper, their shirts. It seemed to them to be a very aristocratic, supremely elegant thing.
—Who will find me a motto? exclaimed Carlo de Souza’s ex-lover. —I want it in Latin.
—I will, said Andrea Sperelli. —Here it is: “Semper parata.”43
—No.
—“Diu saepe fortiter.”44
—What does it mean?
—What do you care what it means? It just has to be Latin. Here’s another one, a magnificent one: “Non timeo dona ferentes.”45
—I don’t like it much. It’s not new to me . . .
—All right then, this one: “Rarae nates cum gurgite vasto.”46
—It’s too common. I read it so often in the newspaper columns.
Ludovico, Giulio, Ruggero laughed in chorus, loudly. The smoke of their cigarettes wafted over their heads forming light pale-bluish clouds. Every now and then, a wave of sound drifted over in the hot air from the theater orchestra; and it made Bébé hum. Clara Green was shredding petals from chrysanthemums into her plate, in silence, because the light white wine had been converted in her veins to a dismal listlessness. For those who already knew her, such Bacchic sentimentalism was not new; and the Duke of Grimiti was amusing himself by provoking it even more. She did not reply, continuing to tear off chrysanthemum petals and pressing her lips together, almost to stop herself from crying. Since Andrea Sperelli was paying little attention to her and had thrown himself into a crazy jollity of actions and words, amazing even his own companions in pleasure, she said with a pleading voice, amid the chorus of the other voices:
—Love me tonight, Andrew!47
And from then on, almost at regular intervals, lifting her blue gaze from her plate, she began languidly to beseech:
—Love me tonight, Andrew!
—Oh, what a drag, said Maria Fortuna. —But whatever does it mean? Does she feel ill?
Bébé Silva smoked, drank small glasses of vieux cognac, and said outrageous things with artificial vivacity. But she had, every now and then, very peculiar moments of tiredness, of prostration, in which it seemed as if something dropped from her face, and that her audacious and obscene form was occupied by some small, sad, miserable, sick, pensive, older figure, the oldness of a consumptive monkey that withdraws to the back of its cage to cough after having made people laugh. They were fleeting moments. She would shake herself out of it to take another sip or to make another outrageous comment.
And Clara Green continued to repeat:
—Love me tonight, Andrew!
CHAPTER II
Thus, with a bound, Andrea Sperelli dived back into Pleasure.
For two weeks he was kept occupied by Giulia
Arici and Clara Green. Then he left for Paris and London, together with Musèllaro. He returned to Rome toward mid-December; found winter life already very active; and was immediately absorbed back into the great social circle.
But he had never found himself to be in such a restless, uncertain, confused state of mind. He had never experienced a more irritating sense of discontent, a more inconvenient malaise. Neither had he ever felt toward himself crueler impulses of anger and feelings of disgust. Sometimes, in some tired solitary moment, he felt bitterness rise up from his deepest innards, like sudden nausea; and he sat there mulling over it, troubled, without the strength to expel it, with a kind of dull resignation, like a sick person who has lost all faith in being healed and is inclined to live with his illness, to withdraw into his suffering, to sink down into his mortal misery. It seemed to him that once again the old leprosy was spreading through his soul and once again his heart was emptying out, never to fill up again, like a leather water sac that has been irreparably pierced. The sense of this emptiness, the certainty of this irreparability, sometimes moved him to a sort of desperate anger, and then to a crazy scorn of himself, of his willpower, of his last hopes, his last dreams. He had reached a terrible time, pursued by the inexorability of life, by the implacable passion of life; he had reached the supreme moment of salvation or of perdition, the decisive moment in which great hearts reveal all their strength and small hearts all their cowardice. He allowed himself to be overcome; he did not have the courage to save himself with any voluntary act; despite being in the grip of pain, he was afraid of a more virile pain; despite being tormented by disgust, he was afraid of giving up whatever disgusted him; even though he had the intense and ruthless instinct to detach himself from the things that most appeared to attract him, he was afraid to distance himself from such things. He allowed himself to be beaten down; he abdicated his will, his energy, his inner dignity, entirely and forever; he sacrificed forever whatever remained to him of faith and idealism. He threw himself into life, as into a great pointless adventure, seeking out pleasure, the opportunity, the moment of happiness, entrusting himself to destiny, to chance, to the fortuitous confusion of cause. However, while he believed with this kind of cynical fatalism that he was putting a check on suffering and achieving, if not calm, at least dullness, his sensitivity to pain became more acute, his ability to suffer multiplied; his needs and his disgusts increased without end. He was now experiencing the profound truth of the words he had said one day to Maria Ferres, in a moment of sentimental intimacy and melancholy: “Others are unhappier; but I don’t know if there has been a man less happy than I, in the world.” He was now experiencing the truth of those words said in a very sweet moment, when the illusion of a second youth and the prescience of a new life were illuminating his soul.
And yet, that day, talking to that person, he had been sincere as never before; he had expressed his thought with naiveté and candor, as never before. Why, in a flash, had everything dispersed, had everything vanished? Why had he not known how to nurture that flame in his heart? Why had he not been able to safeguard that memory and keep that faith? His law was hence mutability; his spirit had the inconsistency of fluid; everything in him was transforming and deforming, without respite; moral strength was completely lacking in him; his moral being was composed of contradictions; unity, simplicity, and spontaneity evaded him; through the tumult, the voice of duty no longer reached him; the voice of will was overpowered by that of the instincts; his conscience, like a star without any light of its own, at every stage was eclipsing itself.
It had always been so; it would always be so. Why, therefore, should he fight against himself? Cui bono?1
But this precise struggle was a necessity of his life; this precise restlessness was an essential condition of his existence; this precise suffering was a punishment from which he would never, ever be able to extract himself.
Any attempt at analyzing himself resulted in greater uncertainty, in greater obscurity. As he was completely unequipped with the ability to synthesize, his analysis became a cruel destructive game. And after an hour of reflection upon himself, he emerged confused, undone, desperate, lost.
When, on the morning of December 30, in Via de’ Condotti, he unexpectedly encountered Elena Muti, he was filled with an inexpressible emotion, as if he were seeing some wondrous destiny come to pass, as if the reappearance of that woman in that exceedingly sad moment of his life occurred by virtue of predestination and she had been sent to him as a last aid, or to cause the final damage in his mysterious shipwreck. The first impulse of his soul was to join himself to her, to retake her, reconquer her, to repossess her entirely, as he had once done; to revive the old passion with all its elations and all its splendors. His first impulse was one of jubilation and hope. Then, without hesitation, diffidence, doubt, and jealousy arose; without hesitation, he was invaded by the certainty that no miracle would ever be able to resuscitate even a minimum part of the happiness that had died, or reproduce even one spark of the joy that had been extinguished, or even one shadow of the illusion that had vanished.
She had come! She had come! She had returned to the place where everything conserved a memory for her, and had said: “I am no longer yours; I can never be yours again.” She had cried out at him: “Would you tolerate sharing my body with others?” She had really dared to shout those words at him, in that place, in front of all those things!
An atrocious, enormous pain, consisting of a thousand stings, each distinct from the other, and each more acute than the other, possessed him for some time and exasperated him. Passion enveloped him with a thousand fires, provoking an inextinguishable carnal ardor in him for that woman who was no longer his, reawakening in his memory all the tiniest details of those remote pleasures, the images of all the caresses and all her postures during pleasure, all the mad couplings that never sated or slaked their craving, which was constantly being reborn. And yet always, in all his imaginings, that strange difficulty persisted in matching up the Elena from then with the Elena of now. While the memories of possession inflamed and tortured him, the certainty of possession eluded him: the Elena of now seemed to him to be a new woman, never enjoyed, never held. His desire gave him such spasms of pain that he thought he would die of them. Impurity infected him like a toxin.
Impurity, which then the winged flame of the soul had veiled with a sacred veil, and surrounded with an almost divine mystery, now appeared without the veil, without the mystery of the flame, like an entirely carnal lust, like a base libido. And he felt that that ardor of his was not Love, and that it no longer had anything in common with Love. It was not Love. She had shouted at him: “Would you tolerate sharing my body with others?” Well, yes, he would have tolerated it!
He would have taken her, without repugnance, just as she came to him, contaminated by the embrace of another; he would have placed his caress on top of another man’s caress; he would have pressed his kiss over another man’s kiss.
Nothing more, nothing, therefore, remained intact in him. Even the memory of that great passion was becoming miserably corrupted, soiled, degraded, within him. The last flicker of hope had been dampened. Finally, he was touching the bottom, never to raise himself up again.
But now a terrible frenzy invaded him, to cast down the idol that yet remained before him, lofty and enigmatic. With a cynical cruelty he began to undermine it, to obscure it, to corrode it. This destructive analysis, which he had already experimented on himself, he now used on Elena. To all the doubting questions he had once wished to evade, he now sought an answer; of all the suspicions that had once appeared and dissipated without leaving a trace, he now studied the source, found justifications, and obtained confirmation. He believed he found relief in this wretched exercise of demolition; and increased his suffering, irritated his malaise, enlarged his blemishes.
What had been the real reason for Elena’s departure, in March 1885? There had been many rumors in that period an
d at the time of her marriage to Humphrey Heathfield. There was only one truth. He had heard it from Giulio Musèllaro one evening, by chance, amid irrelevant chitchat, while coming out of the theater; and he did not doubt it. Donna Elena Muti had left for financial reasons, in order to conclude a “transaction” that would extract her from very serious pecuniary difficulties caused by her excessive extravagance. Marriage with Lord Heathfield had saved her from ruin. This Heathfield, Marquis of Mount Edgcumbe and Count of Bradford, possessed considerable wealth and was allied with the highest British nobility. Donna Elena had managed to settle her affairs with great acumen; she had been able to remove herself from peril with extraordinary skill. Certainly, her three years of widowhood did not appear to have been a chaste interval preparatory to her second marriage. Neither chaste nor cautious. But, without doubt, Donna Elena was a great woman . . .
—Ah, my dear chap, a great woman! repeated Giulio Musèllaro. —And you know it well.
Andrea remained silent.
—But I don’t advise you to approach her again, added his friend, throwing away his cigarette, which had gone out between one piece of gossip and another. —Relighting a love affair is like relighting a cigarette. The tobacco becomes bitter; love, too. Shall we go and have a cup of tea with the Moceto woman? She told me that one can drop by after the theater: it is never too late.
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