The Woman of Rome (24 page)

“Actually, that’s just what I was thinking,” she said, forcing a smile.

“I’m the nicest guy in the world, aren’t I, Giacomo?” he continued in a shrill voice, laughing uproariously. “I’m everything you could wish for. But you have to know how to take me, that’s all.… Come on — give me a kiss now.” He leaned forward and placed an arm around Gisella’s waist. She pulled her face back a little and said, “Wait.” She took a handkerchief out of her bag, wiped the lipstick off her mouth, then gave him a dry and demure kiss on the lips. While she was kissing him, he twisted his fingers convulsively, pretending to suffocate and turning it all to burlesque. They broke apart almost immediately and he started the car up again with emphatic gestures. “Here we go again! I swear I won’t give you any further reason to complain of me. I’ll be very serious, very well behaved, very distinguished. I’ll authorize you to hit me on the head if I don’t behave well.” The car set off again.

He went on talking and laughing aloud, even taking his hands off the steering wheel to gesticulate, to our imminent danger, all the rest of the way. My neighbor, on the contrary, after his brief intervention, had relapsed into silence in his dark corner. I now felt extremely attracted to him and curiously keyed up. As I think back, I now see that this was the moment when I fell in love with him, or at least, began to associate him with all the things I liked that so far I had never had. Love, after all, needs to be complete and not a merely physical satisfaction; and I was still seeking the perfection I had once thought I could say I had found in Gino. Perhaps it was the first time, not only since I had become a prostitute, but in all my life, that I had met anyone like him, with his manner and voice. The stout painter I had posed for in the beginning was like him in a way, of course, but was older and more self-possessed, and in any case I would have fallen in love with him, too, if he had wanted me. His voice and manner aroused the same sensation I had felt the first time I had gone to the villa of Gino’s employers, although in a different way.

Just as I had felt extraordinarily charmed by the orderliness, comfort, and cleanliness of the villa and had thought life did not
seem worth living if you could not live in a house like that — so now, his voice and kindly gestures, and all they implied about his character, attracted me passionately. At the same time my physical desire was aroused, so that I longed to be caressed by his hands and kissed by his lips; and I realized that the intense and ineffable mingling of old aspirations and present desire, which is the essence of love and its inevitable accompaniment, was already working in me. But I was also very much afraid he might not notice what I was feeling and might escape me. Driven by my fear, I stretched out my hand toward his in the hope that he would press it. But his hands were indifferent to the clumsy touch of my fingers that tried to entwine themselves in his. I was dreadfully embarrassed, because I did not want to pull my hand away, but at the same time I felt I ought to, since he gave no sign of life. Then as the car turned a corner sharply, we were thrown against one another and I pretended I had lost my balance and let myself fall with my head on his knees. He shuddered but did not move. The motion of the car was a delight; I shut my eyes and thrust my face between his hands to separate them, as a dog does, and kissed them and tried to make him stroke my face in an affectionate caress I could have hoped was spontaneous. I realized I had lost my head and was dimly astonished that a few kindly words could have provoked such turmoil in me. But he did not grant me the caress I so humbly begged for, and after a while withdrew his hands. The car came to a standstill almost immediately.

The blond leaped out and assisted Gisella with mock courtesy. We, too, got out; I opened the front door and we entered the courtyard. The blond led the way upstairs with Gisella. He was short and stocky; he looked as though he would burst out of his clothes, but he was not fat. Gisella was taller than he. Halfway up, he dropped a step behind and taking hold of Gisella’s dress by the hem he pulled it up, exposing her white thighs with the garters around them and her thin little buttocks. “The curtain’s going up!” he exclaimed, in a burst of laughter. Gisella merely pulled her dress down again with one hand. I thought my companion must dislike such coarse behavior, and I wanted him to know that I disliked it, too.

“Your friend’s very cheerful,” I said.

“Yes,” he replied shortly.

“Obviously things are going well for him.”

We entered the house on tiptoe and I showed them straight into my room. Once the door was shut, we all four stood there for a moment, and since the room was small there seemed to be even more of us. The blond was the first to recover his self-possession. He sat down on the bed and began immediately to undress as if he were on his own. He was talking about hotel rooms and private rooms, and telling us of one of his recent adventures. “She says to me, ‘I’m a respectable lady — and I don’t want to go to a hotel.’ So I told her the hotels were full of respectable ladies. ‘But,’ she says, “I don’t want to have to give my name.’ ‘I’ll say you’re my wife,’ I say. ‘One more or less doesn’t matter.’ So we go to the hotel. I tell them she’s my wife, we go up to our room — but when I really get down to things, she starts coming up with excuses, says she’s changed her mind, doesn’t want to, she really is a lady.… So I lose my patience and try to force her. I wish I hadn’t! She opens the window, threatens she’ll throw herself out.
‘O.K.’
I say, ‘it’s my fault for bringing you here.’ Then she sits down on the bed and begins whimpering and telling a long, moving story, enough to break your heart. But if you wanted to know what it was all about, I couldn’t tell you; I’ve forgotten it. I only know that in the end I felt so good that I went down on my knees to ask her forgiveness for having taken her for something she wasn’t. ‘Now, we understand each other,’ I say, ‘we won’t do anything, we’ll just lie down and sleep each on our own.’ So that’s that and I fall asleep at once. But halfway through the night I wake up and look over to her side. She’s gone! Then I look at my clothes and see they’re all rumpled, so I hunt through my pockets and find my wallet gone too. She was a real, respectable lady!” His burst of laughter was so infectious that it made Gisella laugh and me smile. He had taken off his suit, his shirt, shoes and socks, and now stood there in a pair of dove-colored woolen long johns, skintight from the ankles to his throat, which made him look like a tightrope walker or a ballet dancer. His comical aspect was emphasized still further by this
garment, which is usually worn by older men, and at the sight I forgot his cruelty and almost felt attracted to him, because I have always been attracted to cheerful people and am more inclined to cheerfulness myself than to gloom. He began to strut, short and bouncing, about the room, as proud of his long johns as of a uniform. Then, from the corner where the chest of drawers stood, he suddenly leaped onto the bed, falling on top of Gisella, who squealed out in surprise, and threw her back as if to embrace her. But then, while still hovering on all fours over Gisella, he lifted his red, excited face with a comical gesture, as if struck by a thought, and looked back at the two of us, like a cat does before beginning to touch its food. “What are you two waiting for?” he asked. I looked at my companion. “Shall I take my clothes off?” I asked.

He was still wearing his coat collar turned up around his neck. “No, no,” he answered with a shudder. “After them.”

“Shall we go into the next room?”

“Yes.”

“Go for a ride in the car,” cried the blond, still hovering over Gisella. “The keys are still in it.” But his friend pretended he had not heard him and we left the room.

We went into the anteroom. I motioned to him to wait for me and entered the living room, where Mother was sitting at the table in the middle, playing patience. As soon as she saw me, she got up and went out into the kitchen, without even waiting for me to speak. So I peeped through the door and told the young man he could come in.

I shut the door and went to sit down on the sofa in the corner by the window. I wanted him to sit down beside me and cuddle me; the others always did. But he did not even look toward the sofa and began to pace up and down the living room, all around the table, his hands in his pockets. I thought that perhaps he was bored by waiting. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve only got one bedroom I can use.”

He stood still. “Did I say I wanted a room?” he asked me huffily but gently.

“No, but I thought —”

He took a few turns around the room. I could not control myself any longer. “Why don’t you come and sit down here beside me?” I asked, pointing to the sofa as I did so.

He looked at me, then appeared to make up his mind, and came to sit down. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Adriana.”

“I’m Giacomo,” he said and took my hand. This was unusual and again the idea flitted across my mind that he was shy. I let him hold my hand and smiled at him to encourage him.

“So we’re supposed to make love in a little while?” he said.

“Yes.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Then we won’t,” I replied lightly, thinking he was only joking.

“Very well,” he replied emphatically. “I don’t want to, I haven’t the slightest desire to.”

“All right,” I said. But actually his refusal was something so new in my experience that I did not understand.

“You aren’t offended? Women don’t like to be turned down.”

At last I understood what he meant and shook my head, incapable of saying a single word. So he didn’t want me. I suddenly felt desperate, on the point of bursting into tears. “I’m not offended at all,” I stammered. “If you don’t want to — let’s wait until your friend’s done and then you can go.”

“I don’t know,” he protested. “I’m making you waste your time — you could have earned something with another man.”

I thought perhaps he could not, rather than would not. “If you don’t have the money,” I said, “it doesn’t matter. You can pay me another time.”

“You’re a good girl,” he said, “but I’ve got the money. In fact, look — I’ll pay you all the same, so it won’t seem as though you had wasted an evening.” He put his hand into his jacket pocket, took out a roll of notes that looked as though he had prepared them beforehand, and went to put them down on the table, away from me, with a clumsy yet strangely elegant and scornful gesture.

“No, no!” I protested. “Why should you? Don’t even think
about it.” But I said it weakly, because, actually, I was not at all sorry to accept his money — it was at least some kind of link with him, and by being in his debt I could always hope to pay him back. He took my wavering refusal as an acceptance, which in fact it was, and did not pick up the money that he had left on the table. He came and sat down on the sofa again, and I put out my hand to take his, although I felt it was an awkward, silly thing to do. We looked at one another for a moment. Then he suddenly twisted my little finger hard with his long, thin fingers. “Oh!” I said angrily. “What’s the matter with you now?”

“I’m sorry,” he replied. He looked so deeply embarrassed that I was sorry I had reproached him so harshly.

“You hurt me, you know,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. Seized by sudden agitation, he stood up again and began to walk up and down. Then he came to a standstill in front of me. “Shall we go out?” he asked. “This waiting around here really gets on my nerves.”

“Where shall we go?”

“I don’t know — shall we go for a ride in the car?”

I remembered the times I had been out with Gino in a car and replied hastily, “No, not in the car.”

“Let’s go to a café. There are some cafés around here, aren’t there?”

“Not around here, exactly — but I think there’s a place just outside the gates.”

“Let’s go there, then.”

I got up and we left the living room. On our way down I tried to joke with him. “Remember — that money you gave me gives you the right to come and see me any time you like … do you understand me?”

“I understand you.”

It was a mild, dark, damp winter night. It had been raining all day and the paved road was covered with large black puddles in which the unwavering lights of the rare street lamps were reflected. The sky was cloudless above the walls, but there was no moon and only a few stars shone dimly through the mist. From time to time,
unseen streetcars passed behind the walls, scattering vivid flashes from the electric lines, which for a brief moment lit up the sky, the ruined towers and the buttresses covered with greenery. When I was out in the street, I remembered I had not been in the direction of the amusement park for months. I usually turned right toward the square where Gino used to meet me. I had not gone in the direction of Luna Park, I remembered, since I was a young girl and used to go out for walks with Mother, when we climbed the wide road below the walls and went to enjoy the lights and the music, without daring to enter because we had no money. On that side, on the main road, stood the villa with the little tower through whose open windows I had had a glimpse of the family seated around the table; the villa that had first made me dream of marriage, a house, and a family life of my own. I felt drawn to talk to my companion about that time, my youth, my hopes, not only from a sentimental impulse, but also, I must confess, for interested motives. I did not want him to judge me from appearances. I wanted him to see me in a better light, which I believed to be a truer one. Some people put on their best clothes and fling open the finest rooms in their house in order to welcome honored visitors; the equivalent for me of those best clothes and guest rooms were the girl I had been, my dreams and ambitions. And I counted on my memories, although they were so poor and uninteresting, to make him change his mind and bring him nearer to me.

“No one ever walks on this part of the road,” I said as we walked along. “But in the summer everyone in the neighborhood goes for walks here. I used to — a long time ago now. It took you to bring me here again.”

He had taken my arm and was helping me along the flooded roadway.