I fell asleep almost at once but during the night (what time was it?) I was awakened by the thump of a stone hitting my shutter. Cautiously I opened it. Against the grass of the cortile I could see Flora’s dark silhouette. The moon was out. “Giuliano, please, let me in quickly...,” she murmured. I rushed down, stifling my eagerness only enough to avoid making noise. Flora was standing at the door looking behind herself constantly as if she were being followed, and for a moment I expected to hear branches breaking or the familiar voice that had called her name with melancholy or desperate inflections.
In my room the lamplight quickly revealed the extreme disorder of her person, the earth and grass stains on her skirt, her wrinkled blouse, a glimmer of fear in her dark eyes. “Giuliano, let me stay here. Let me sleep in your house. I’m so tired, I’m all upset, I’m, I’m....” In no way could I find out what had happened to her. I didn’t allow myself to embrace her so she wouldn’t think I was taking advantage of the situation.
In a little while she calmed down, even began to laugh, looking in the mirror to inspect the streaks and smudges of mud on her legs. She was delighted at the idea of cleaning herself up in my room at night at the risk of waking Maddalena and having to invent some kind of fanciful justification for her presence. “Let’s hope we don’t wake her up, let’s be careful...,” she whispered and then had a sudden attack of laughter, which she stifled with a sheet or towel. She was once more her careless, adventurous, fun-loving self. I couldn’t even follow her chatter, scrambled as it was by a disordered crisscrossing of thoughts. She had the locket with the miniature around her neck. Every now and then she laughed anxiously. “Giuliano, I’m tired. Really tired you know! I’m laughing and joking but I’m really terribly tired....” If she wanted there was a bedroom next to mine.... “No, no, I don’t want to sleep alone. I want to stay with you.”
I couldn’t manage to think through how strange it was that she was there at that hour in my room. It merely seemed that what was happening was a series of imaginings strung together haphazardly by an inept mind. But I joined easily and eagerly in the unreality of it all. Maybe my entire past since the time I was born was simply a prelude to this event, so sure was I now that it had to happen sooner or later, somewhere or other. All things settled naturally into a grand design prepared to accommodate them, like the pieces of a wooden inlay.
Flora ordered me to blow out the light and a moment later I felt her shapely body next to mine. So soon did she begin moving impetuously against me, so quickly did her breathing become labored that she extinguished any impression I might have had that she merely wanted to repay me somehow for my kindness. It was as if she were an odd extravagant lady who had gone out incognito to meet a favorite of destiny in the house that had seen the revels of the Dane and so many other events outside any norm.
During a pause in our madness, in a lucid moment, I thought it wasn’t right, my not asking her anything about herself; it was like a sign of a lack of interest. Thus I tried to find out why she had run away from home, where her family was, who had followed her and what he represented for her. She gave me answers that were vague, fanciful and contradictory. She went from one subject to another as though it was all a game in which you couldn’t do anything else but make jokes. Her jollity provoked the same mood in me. I was falling asleep and so was she, or else she was pretending to, but after a while she woke me up by tickling me and wanted once more to try out her power over me. I embraced her and her body was again shaken by spasms and writhings in an excess of energy that she could neither contain nor control.
Finally I fell into a deep sleep and awakened only when it was broad daylight. Flora was gone. Something twisted in my chest, I felt the pain of something giving way. I had the impression that she herself was all I had lacked and it was her absence that had made me desire remote and chimerical things. All that was vague, all that refused to be explained or seized, all could be brought together in her little figure: she was a Gypsy lady, a little girl-woman, wild, free and without inhibitions. Perhaps Flora, who went to bed with boys she hardly knew, was one of those young girls whom the women of Ontàns, especially the old women with black kerchiefs on their heads, designated as whores, and talked about with frigid contempt. Well, if that was so, I had been right to believe instead that they were sweet and generous women like certain eccentric aristocrats. But how was it possible that my judgment was so different from everyone else’s? Maybe I was irreparably corrupt and immoral....
For the whole day I walked around with the same thought: when was she coming back; should I go to the Villa (instinct told me that Flora must wander often in that direction, that she was attracted to the Villa like a moth to the light), if it would be appropriate to ask the three wild sisters about her. My attention wouldn’t stay on what I was trying to read in my books, as I continued to prepare for exams, which, however, for the most part remained alien and improbable to me, like a hypothetical planet not yet observed by astronomers.
Maddalena didn’t even notice that Flora had been in our house, even though I hadn’t done much to conceal the signs of her passage. I didn’t care if she found out. I was even tempted to tell her and several times I was within a hair of doing so. On those occasions I realized how distracted Maddalena was. She even went as far as to pick up the comb Flora had used and hold it up to the light, wondering at finding it full of hair so different in color from her own.
While I was still anguishing over whether I would see her again, Flora returned. One evening I saw her reflection in the water of the stream, in a stagnant elbow that would form after the rains and remain for a while. A kind of pond. I was sitting on a stone trying out for the first time a rudimentary fishing pole I had put together. I turned around, incredulous. She was holding her shoes in her hand and wearing a flowered dress. My moment’s hesitation at seeing her was enough for the initiative to pass directly to her. She tore the fishing pole out of my hands and threw it in the bushes; thus my feeling of being piloted was confirmed and intensified to the point that I was brushed by a veil of disappointment.
Another time she came up to me on the terrace without even the minutest creaking of the steps to announce her. She knew how to move with the lightness of a fly when she wanted to. She seemed to walk on things without touching them even though afterwards when we made love in my room or under a bramble bush she was as impetuous and out-of-control as a flood. When I was with her I always felt as if I had gone through the gate of a fable, had entered the world on the other side of the looking glass like Alice in Wonderland. When she came to see me she always flung aside whatever I had started, tearing the thin fabric of my projects — either short or long term — and taking their place with a dominating and feudal air.
If she stayed away for three or four days I would begin to be afraid some unforeseen event had taken her from me. For me she was a volatile creature, incapable of staying in one place, destined to be carried here and there by the caprices of events and of her character. Sometimes she would show up unexpectedly, even at midnight (I always left a window ajar with just that possibility in mind), would leap into my room with a whistle and set about shaking me until I was completely awake, vexed that I took a tenth of a second to re-establish contact with reality, to realize that she had returned. It seemed that for her there was no difference between day and night. She was capable of sleeping in my bed even with the room full of light while I stood there watching her and twisting my fingers in embarrassment, not wanting to send her away, but not wanting Maddalena to discover her either; finding a sleeping intruder like that she might even make a scene.
* * *
XVI
The Convent
Sometimes she was taken with a frenzy to dress up and would begin to put on my clothes or Maddalena’s. Or else she would arrive from outside already decked out as if she were going to a carnival masquerade. She would be wearing huge flowered hats or black veils that shaded her face and made her look like a remarkably young widow; she
would put on a bustle even though almost no one ever wore them any more and would stuff the front of her dress with some kind of odd materials in order to look more shapely. I would tear my hair thinking that she had crossed the fields or the magredi at night in that condition at the risk of being attacked by a peasant or a poacher and I told her she was crazy to go around looking like an actress in an operetta. “But I am one. I’m an actress and a cancan dancer....”
“What?”
“Well I mean...not really, but I want to be one. I practice my dancing a lot.”
She had red garters and certain lace garments that drove me wild when she undressed without the slightest shame. I never succeeded in finding out who she really was, if she had a job, where and with whom she lived. To hear her tell it, she at one time had stayed with an uncle, another time with a distant relative, a third time with a friend who was the mistress of a very rich man. She always talked about different places and people or things that she was doing or planned to do. It seemed impossible that all that she said could be true. On the other hand, I was certain she wasn’t lying, or at least that she didn’t mean to, because she was really convinced that she had done or wanted to do what she was saying. Without a doubt for a week or a day she had really intended to become a dancer and of course she had tried to dance the cancan in front of the mirror of her wardrobe, perhaps for hours and hours, until she fell exhausted on her bed.
Another time she told me (her enthusiasm was so impetuous that it would make her breathless) about her intention to dedicate herself to designing women’s clothes. Since I had evinced a certain perplexity about her attitude she began at once to look through the house for sewing materials, scissors, thread, a thimble, because she wanted to give me immediate proof of her ability. “For goodness sake, Flora, stop it, I believe you!”
“No you don’t believe me. I know you; you don’t give me credit for a thing. You’re the kind who think women don’t know how to do anything. I can see by your face that you’re lying!”
I lost track of her momentarily and when I noticed her again I saw that she was cutting up a sheet, on which she had outlined an evening dress with a piece of charcoal. My hair stood on end. Afterwards to avoid being cross-examined by Maddalena I had to sleep many nights with one sheet (I made the bed myself every morning), and when she decided to do the wash I myself put the dirty laundry in the tub and stood there watching her from a distance as she furiously racked her brains, trying to puzzle out where one sheet could have gone. I feigned the most complete ignorance of the matter. Furthermore, I pretended, by a series of clever charades, to be pained at my inability to solve the problem or help in any way. Flora too performed very well in her role as a casual acquaintance, considering that now she came to our house at all hours.
Flora’s vocations didn’t last. They burned out quickly, reducing themselves to tiny heaps of ashes and leaving her depressed and empty.
One day she dropped in while Maddalena and I were eating. She had gathered up her magnificent hair under a black bonnet in such a way as to look as though she had cut it. She had come to say good-bye to us, since she was leaving, going away.... “Going where?” asked Maddalena.
“Oh, away, far away,” she said with mysterious sadness. Then she asked if I would come out a moment with her, she had to tell me something in confidence. But first she kissed and hugged Maddalena, whom she had seen five or six times in all, because she had imagined a friendship and affection between them that had never existed. When we were alone she asked me how she looked with her hair hidden, because before long she would have to cut it. She had in fact decided to become a nun, since she now felt no more interest in the world — it was as desiccated as a pumice stone. She was no longer attracted by the theater, by dressmaking, nor by anything else. Among people she felt like a fish out of water. “It’s not that I have a strong vocation, this is true. Still I’ve always thought God was a very serious matter and I’ve always had a great respect for Him. Every time I think of Him I feel like kneeling down or at least making the sign of the cross....” Inside the white walls of the cloister, protected from the noise of the world, in silence and in prayer, she would rediscover herself and be able to see past her confusion....
Her feelings were a chaotic succession in the midst of which she couldn’t succeed in orienting herself and she always ended up following one of them at random. I knew this and yet I was still alarmed at the prospect of the convent. “And what about me? Don’t you love me a little? You do? Well then how can you think about going into a convent?” These things apparently didn’t seem contradictory to her. It was probably an idea that just suddenly came to her, but which had already encased her from head to foot like a niche that she had been born to fit into. I took her in my arms. Flora let me, or rather, showed even more tenderness and delicacy than usual, almost as if she wanted now to give all at once that affection she would subsequently be forced to deny me.
I made no attempt at anything more, but she, with a sad face and an absent look, led me to our secret place, which could only be reached by crawling through a hole. I was going to refuse. When I accepted it was because I thought making love might induce her to abandon her ridiculous decision. But as I embraced her I had the distinct impression she was already far away, as though waving to me from a moving train, and that the fading of her presence had already lowered the level of that joy I always perceived in things around me.
The feeling lasted only for a moment. Then I shook it off. The idea of becoming a nun would evaporate like her other ideas. In fact Flora returned and began again to frequent my house without restraint. The affection she showed me was interpreted by Maddalena as an unspoken engagement. She displayed neither enthusiasm nor reserve toward my choice, evidently considering it entirely my affair, which I had to hasten to its proper conclusion myself.
* * *
XVII
A Profession
Perhaps partly because of Maddalena’s attitude I began to worry about something that hadn’t troubled me before — the choice I would one day have to make about what work I would do.
Until that time such a concern had seemed extremely remote and ill defined, something which could be put off for a long time yet. Certain of Maddalena’s remarks, for every now and then she tossed out a casual comment on the subject, had not, up to that point, created in me any sense that the matter was urgent or even the least bit current. It’s true that I was studying, preparing for exams, which I afterwards took more or less as adventures, trying to be as serious as possible when they had me write on the blackboard chemical formulas totally meaningless for me and which I succeeded in recalling only because of my phenomenal memory. Still I had never been able to convince myself that those same studies, in part abstruse and in part extraordinarily interesting, would ever provide what was needed to carve out a trade I could live on. I would forget for days and weeks that I was a student and my studies acquired substance again only when Maddalena came home all red in the face and waved under my nose a slip of paper with the imminent date of the exams.
Essentially I continued not to see clearly into my future. It attracted and enticed me, but remained formless. If by chance I tried to imagine it in a more definite way, it eluded my grasp and thus I would end up by trying to avoid even thinking about it because, if I did, it meant suddenly baring my lack of aptitude for any acceptable and specific job. I wasn’t always successful; of necessity I had to remember sometimes that I was neither fish nor fowl, from whatever angle I regarded myself. I was neither a peasant nor an artisan like other boys my age although I knew how to do many things, but just for fun. I had no property, no family because my folks were dead but I wasn’t a true orphan since I had Maddalena; nor was I a regular student since I wasn’t attending school and schooling didn’t seriously engage me. Who the devil was I then?
I myself didn’t know. But now it was urgent to emerge from this uncertainty.
I planned to marry Flora, to bring her to live in my hous
e permanently, among other reasons, so as to put an end to her constant wandering, to prevent her from treating me so capriciously — coming and going like a wild animal of the woods or the magredi. But to do this I had to think of a way to support both of us.
I tried to review a number of possible trades, at least those that held some appeal for me. In my musings there was one rather curious note, that is, while I was thinking about a job I continued at the same time to imagine my future as strangely free, as an unlimited vacation full of untouched possibilities. I desired that Flora should live with me and simultaneously I saw myself touring the world, going to the North Pole or to Siberia, traveling on ancient sailing ships of the kind that had fallen into disuse decades ago, through all the seas where whales flourished. As was true so many years before, the phrase “Call me Ishmael” still had an unequaled attraction for me, if not quite the same as when I had first read it, and it still seemed possible that in the future after having lived through the most complicated adventures, I would begin my memoirs with a phrase like that. Therefore I felt somewhat anxious because I thought that at my age and in my circumstances I ought to decide upon something, if only for Flora’s sake, and I didn’t know how to do it. In the interim until I managed to resolve things I followed what seemed to be the only possible course: for the moment I took my exams seriously. Even though, specifically because of Flora, I lacked the serenity to do so.
Sometimes she was extremely affectionate and appeared unable to live apart from me, while at other times she was distracted or troubled. She would look up at the slightest noise like a startled animal, then, in a disorganized way, resume talking to hide her agitation.
Every once in a while I got the impression that someone was hanging around our house and wondered if it was the youth who had been calling her the day we went to the Villa. I began to ask her again, insistently, who he was. “Some fool who has a lot of time to waste.”
The Wooden Throne Page 8
