Death is here and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere,
All around, within, beneath,
Above is death—and we are death.
Death has set his mark and seal
On all we are and all we feel
On all we know and all we fear,
First our pleasures die—and then
Our hopes, and then our fears—and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust—and we die too.
All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot—
Love itself would, did they not.3
Crossing over the threshold, she placed her arm beneath Andrea’s, and a small shiver ran through her.
A sense of solitude pervaded the cemetery. Several gardeners were watering the plants against the wall, tilting the watering cans this way and that with constant and regular movements, in silence. The funereal cypresses rose up straight and immobile in the air: only their tips, tinted gold by the sun, had a slight tremor. Between the rigid, greenish trunks, like travertine stone, emerged white tombs, square gravestones, broken columns, urns, arches. A mysterious shadow, a sense of religious peace and almost human gentleness descended from the dark bulk of the cypresses, the way limpid, beneficent water trickles down from hard rock. That even regularity of the arboreal shapes and that modest candor of the sepulchral marble gave the soul a sense of grave and sweet repose. But in the midst of the trunks aligned like the pipes of an organ, and amid those gravestones, the oleanders undulated with grace, blushing red with fresh bunches of blooms; the roses were losing their petals at every gust of wind, shedding their scented snow on the grass; the eucalyptuses inclined their pale coiffures, which glinted silver here and there; the willows cascaded their soft tears over the crosses and the wreaths; cactuses here and there displayed their magnificent white clusters resembling sleeping flocks of butterflies or bunches of unusual feathers. The silence was interrupted now and then by the cry of some scattered bird.
Andrea said, pointing to the summit of the hill:
—The poet’s tomb is up there, near the ruin, on the left, under the last tower.
Maria detached herself from him to walk up the narrow pathways, between the low myrtle hedges. She walked ahead and her lover followed. Her pace was somewhat tired; she stopped at frequent intervals; and at every interval she turned around to smile at her lover. She was wearing black; she wore a black veil over her face, which reached her top lip; and her faint smile trembled beneath the black edge, shaded as with a shadow of mourning. Her oval chin was whiter and purer than the roses she carried in her hand.
It happened that as she turned, a rose shed its petals. Andrea bent down to gather the petals from the path, before her feet. She looked at him. He knelt on the ground, saying:
—Beloved!
A memory rose up in her mind, as clear as a vision.
—Do you remember—she said—that morning, at Schifanoja, when I threw a fistful of petals at you from the penultimate terrace? You knelt on the step while I descended . . . Those days, I don’t know, they seem so near and so distant! It seems as if I lived through them yesterday, that I lived through them a century ago. But did I dream them, perhaps?
Walking through the low myrtle hedges, they reached the last tower on the left, where the tomb of the poet and of Trelawny was to be found. The jasmine that climbs over the ancient ruin was in flower, but of the violets nothing remained except their dense foliage. The tips of the cypresses reached the line of vision and trembled, illuminated more intensely by the extreme flush of the sun, setting behind the black cross on Monte Testaccio. A violet cloud edged with burning gold navigated on high, toward the Aventine.
“These are two friends whose lives were undivided. / So let their memory be now they have glided / Under the grave: let not their bones be parted / For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.”4
Maria repeated the last verse. Then she said to Andrea, moved by a sensitive thought:
—Loosen my veil.
And she drew close to him, throwing her head back slightly so that he could untie the knot at the nape of her neck. His fingers touched her hair, that wonderful hair that, when it was loose, seemed to come alive like a forest, with a deep, sweet life of its own; in its shadow he had savored many times the voluptuousness of his deception, and many times he had evoked a perfidious image. She said:
—Thank you.
And she removed her veil from her face, looking at Andrea with eyes that were slightly dazzled. She appeared very beautiful. The circles around her eye sockets were darker and hollower, but her pupils shone with a fire that was more penetrating. The dense locks of her hair adhered to her temples, like clusters of dark, slightly violet hyacinths. The center of her forehead, uncovered and free, shone by contrast with a whiteness that was almost like that of the moon. All her features had become more refined, had lost something of their materiality in the assiduous flame of love and pain.
She wrapped her black veil around the rose stems and knotted the ends with great care; then she breathed in their scent, almost burying her face in the bunch. And then she deposited them on the simple stone where the name of the poet was inscribed. Her gesture contained an indefinable expression that Andrea could not comprehend.
They walked on, searching for the grave of John Keats, the poet of Endymion.
Andrea asked her, stopping to look back toward the tower:
—Where did you get those roses?
She smiled at him again, but with damp eyes.
—They’re yours, the ones from the night it snowed; they flowered again last night. Don’t you believe me?
The evening wind was picking up; and the entire sky behind the hill was diffused with the color of gold, in the midst of which the cloud was dissolving as if consumed by a pyre. The cypresses standing in order on that field of light were more grandiose and more mystical, completely penetrated by rays, their sharp peaks vibrating. The statue of Psyche at the top of the middle avenue had taken on the pallor of flesh. The oleanders rose up in the background like mobile purple cupolas. The crescent moon rose above the Pyramid of Cestius, in a deep glaucous sky like the water of a calm gulf.
They descended along the middle avenue until they reached the gate. The gardeners were still watering the plants at the base of the wall, moving the watering cans from side to side with a constant, regular movement, in silence. Two other men, holding a velvet-and-silver funeral pall by the corners, were shaking it hard; and the dust glittered as it dispersed. The sound of bells reached them from the Aventine.
Maria pressed herself against her lover’s arm, no longer able to bear the anguish, feeling the ground cede under her feet at every step, believing that she would be drained of all her blood on the way. And as soon as she was in the carriage, she burst into desperate tears, sobbing on her lover’s shoulder.
—I’m dying.
But she was not dying. And it would have been better for her if she had died.
Two days later, Andrea was lunching together with Galeazzo Secìnaro at a table in the Caffè di Roma. It was a warm morning. The caffè was almost deserted, immersed in shade and tedium. The waiters dozed amid the buzzing of flies.
—So—recounted the bearded prince—knowing that she likes to give herself in extraordinary, bizarre circumstances, I dared to . . .
He was crudely recounting the extremely audacious way in which he had managed to conquer Lady Heathfield; he recounted without scruples and without reticence, not leaving out any details, praising the attributes of his acquisition to the connoisseur. He interrupted himself, every now and then, to plunge his knife into a piece of steaming, succulent, rare meat, or to empty a glass of red wine. Health and strength emanated from all his gestures.
<
br /> Andrea Sperelli lit a cigarette. He was feeling the impulse to retch, and hence could not manage to swallow any food, or to overcome the revulsion of his stomach, which was in utter turmoil, beset by a horrible tremor. When Secìnaro poured wine for him, he drank it together with poison.
Secìnaro, at a certain point, although he was not at all insightful, began to have some doubts. He looked at Elena’s ex-lover. The latter was not showing, other than a lack of appetite, any outer sign of anxiety; he was calmly exhaling smoke into the air, and smiling his usual smile, slightly ironic, at the cheerful narrator.
The prince said:
—Today she is coming to me for the first time.
—Today? To your house?
—Yes.
—This is an excellent month, in Rome, for love. Between three and six in the afternoon, every buen retiro hides a couple . . .
—In fact—interrupted Galeazzo—she is coming at three.
Both looked at their watches. Andrea asked:
—Shall we go?
—Let’s go, replied Galeazzo, rising. —We’ll walk along Via Condotti together. I’m going to Via del Babuino for flowers. Tell me, you know these things: what flowers does she prefer?
Andrea began to laugh; and an atrocious witticism came to his lips. But he said, carelessly:
—Roses, once.
They separated in front of the Barcaccia Fountain.
Piazza di Spagna already had a deserted summer air to it, at that hour. Several workmen were restoring a water pipe; and a pile of earth, dried out by the sun, was being lifted in eddies of dust by the hot gusts of wind. The staircase of the Trinità shone white and deserted.
Andrea climbed the stairs, very slowly, pausing at every two or three steps as if he were dragging an enormous burden. He entered his house and remained in his room, on his bed, until a quarter to three. At a quarter to three, he went out. He took Via Sistina, continued past the Four Fountains, and went past Palazzo Barberini; he stopped just a little farther on, in front of the racks of a vendor of old books, waiting for three o’clock. The vendor, a tiny man all wrinkled and hairy, like a decrepit tortoise, offered him books. He was choosing his best volumes, one by one, and placing them in front of Andrea, talking with an unbearably monotonous nasal voice. It was only a few minutes to three. Andrea looked at the titles of the books and kept watch over the gates of the building, hearing the bookseller’s voice vaguely in the midst of the din caused by his veins.
A woman went out through the gates, walked down the sidewalk toward the square, mounted a public carriage, and disappeared down Via del Tritone.
Andrea walked down in the direction she had taken, once again took Via Sistina, and entered his house once again. He waited for Maria to arrive. He threw himself onto the bed and lay there so still it seemed he was no longer suffering.
Maria arrived at five.
She said, panting:
—Do you know what? I can stay with you, for the whole evening, and the whole night, until tomorrow morning.
She said:
—This will be our first and last night of love! I am leaving on Tuesday.
She sobbed on his mouth, trembling violently, pressing herself hard against his body:
—Let me not see tomorrow! Let me die!
Looking at his troubled face, she asked him:
—Are you suffering? Do you also . . . think we will never see each other again?
He had immense difficulty talking to her, answering her. His tongue was sluggish; he could not find words. He felt an instinctive need to hide his face, to escape from her gaze, to evade questions. He could not console her; he could not delude her. He answered in a choked, unrecognizable voice:
—Hush.
He crouched down at her feet; he remained for a long time with his head on her lap, without talking. She held her hands on his temples, feeling the pulsing of his arteries, irregular and violent, feeling him suffer. And she herself was no longer suffering her own pain, but was suffering his, only his.
He rose to his feet; he took her hands; he drew her into the other room. She obeyed.
In bed, bewildered, frightened, in the presence of his dark demented ardor, she shouted:
—But what is wrong with you? What is wrong?
She wanted to look him in the eyes and understand that madness; and he hid his face, lost, in her breast, in her neck, in her hair, in the pillows.
Suddenly, she freed herself from his arms, with a terrible expression of horror manifest in her entire body, whiter than the pillows, more disfigured than if she had just leaped from the arms of Death.
That name! That name! She had heard that name!
Great silence emptied her soul. One of those abysses opened up inside her, into which the entire world seems to disappear under the blow of a single thought. She heard nothing else; she heard nothing more. Andrea shouted, begged, despaired in vain.
She did not hear. A kind of instinct guided her movements. She found her clothes and dressed.
Andrea sobbed on the bed, unhinged. He realized that she was leaving the room.
—Maria! Maria!
He listened.
—Maria!
He heard the sound of the door closing.
CHAPTER III
On the morning of June 20, Monday, at ten o’clock, the public sale began of the soft furnishings and movable fittings that had belonged to His Excellency the plenipotentiary minister of Guatemala.
It was a burning hot morning. Summer was already blazing in Rome. Trams ran up and down along Via Nazionale, constantly, drawn by horses that wore certain strange white hoods as protection against the sun. Long lines of laden carts cluttered the streetcar lines. In the stark light, between the walls plastered with multicolored notices, like leprosy, the blasts of horns mingled with the cracking of whips and the yells of the carters.
Before deciding to cross the threshold of that house, Andrea wandered along the sidewalks at random for a long time, feeling horrible tiredness, tiredness so void and desperate that it almost seemed like a physical need to die.
When he saw a porter come out of the door onto the street with a piece of furniture on his shoulder, he made up his mind. He entered the house and climbed the stairs rapidly. He heard, from the landing, the voice of the auctioneer.
—Do I hear . . . ?
The auction table was in the largest room, in the room containing the Buddha. All around, buyers were thronging. For the most part they were traders, secondhand furniture sellers, junk dealers: common people. As there were no connoisseurs around in summer, the dealers were rushing there, sure of acquiring precious objects at low prices. A bad odor spread through the warm air, emanating from those impure men.
—Do I hear . . . ?
Andrea was suffocating. He wandered through the other rooms, where only the wallpaper remained on the walls, and the curtains and the door curtains, since almost all the furnishings were gathered in the auction area. Although he was walking on a thick carpet, he heard his footsteps resound, distinctly, as if the vaulted ceilings were full of echoes.
He found a semicircular room. The walls were a deep red, scattered with sparkling flashes of gold. It resembled a temple or a sepulcher; it looked like a sad, mystical shelter, made for praying in and dying in. From the open windows the stark light entered, like a violation; the trees of Villa Aldobrandini could be seen.
He returned to the room where the auctioneer was. He again smelled the stench. Turning, he saw the Princess of Ferentino in a corner with Barbarella Viti. He approached them and said hello.
—Well, Ugenta, have you bought anything?
—Nothing.
—Nothing? I thought, rather, that you had bought everything.
—Whatever for?
—It was a . . . romantic idea I had.
The princess bega
n to laugh. Barbarella imitated her.
—We’re going. It’s not possible to remain here, with this scent. Good-bye, Ugenta. Console yourself.
Andrea approached the table. The auctioneer recognized him.
—Would the Lord Count like something?
He answered:
—I’ll see.
The sale was proceeding rapidly. He looked at the faces of the dealers around him; felt himself being touched by those elbows, those feet; he felt those breaths skimming him. Nausea choked his throat.
—Going once, twice, third and final call: SOLD!
The thud of the gavel resounded in his heart and gave him a painful jolt at his temples.
He bought the Buddha, a large armoire, some majolica, some fabrics. At a certain point he heard the sound of voices and feminine laughter, a rustle of feminine dresses, near the door. He turned. He saw Galeazzo Secìnaro entering with the Marchioness of Mount Edgcumbe, and then the Countess of Lùcoli, Gino Bommìnaco, Giovanella Daddi. Those gentlemen and ladies were talking and laughing loudly.
He tried to hide, to make himself smaller, amid the crowd that besieged the table. He trembled at the thought of being discovered. The voices and the laughter reached him above the sweating foreheads of the crowd in the suffocating heat. Luckily, after a few minutes, the cheerful visitors departed.
He opened up a passage for himself among the crowded bodies, overcoming his revulsion, making an enormous effort not to faint. In his mouth he had the sensation of an indescribably bitter and nauseating taste, which was surging up inside him from the dissolving of his heart. It seemed that he was leaving that place infected with obscure and immedicable ills, from the contact with all those strangers. Physical torture and moral anguish mingled in him.
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