The Woman of Rome (41 page)

There was a kind of sarcastic challenge in his voice; but no one took it up. The daughter looked through me, as if I were transparent and she were looking at some object behind me. The mother ordered the maid to change the plates, then, turning to Mino, asked him in an entirely unexpected fashion, “So, Signor Diodati, did you go to see that play?”

I almost burst into laughter at her clumsy way of changing the subject. Mino, however, remained unruffled. “Don’t mention it!” he exclaimed. “It was awful.”

“We’re going tomorrow. They do say the actors are excellent.”

Mino replied that the actors were not actually as good as the papers said; the lady was astonished that the papers should lie. Mino replied calmly that the papers were one lie from beginning to end; and from that moment the conversation dealt with similar matters. As soon as one of these themes of conversation was exhausted, Signora Medolaghi started on another, with poorly concealed haste.
Mino, who seemed highly amused, went along with the game and replied readily. They talked about actors, night life in Rome, cafés, movies, theaters, hotels, and so on. They were like two pingpong players, intent on returning the ball to one another without letting it drop. But while Mino did it out of that habitual spirit of comedy, which was so highly developed in him, Signora Medolaghi did it out of fear and disgust at me and anything connected with me. She seemed to imply by her extremely formal, completely conventional talk, “This is my way of telling you how indecent it is to marry a common girl, and in any case how indecent it is to bring her to the house of the widow of the civil servant Medolaghi.” The daughter hardly breathed; terrified, she seemed to be longing openly for the meal to come to an end and for me to be gone as quickly as possible.

For a while I found some amusement in following this conversational skirmish, but I soon got tired of it and let the sorrow that was eating at my heart invade me completely. I realized that Mino did not love me, and the knowledge was bitter. Besides, I had noted that Mino had made use of my confidences to improvise on our make-believe engagement, and I could not quite understand whether he had wanted to make a fool of me, of the two women, or of himself. Perhaps of all of us, but chiefly of himself. It was as if he, too, had nourished in his heart the same aspirations toward a normal, decent life as I had, and, for reasons different from mine, had given up all hope of being able to fulfill them. On the other hand, I understood that his praise of me as a girl of the people in no way flattered me or the common people — it had been nothing more than a means of making himself unpleasant to the two women. These observations brought home to me the truth of what he had been saying shortly before — that he was incapable of loving with his heart. Never had I understood so well as at that moment that everything is love, and that everything depends on love. And this love either was or was not. If there was love, then one loved not only one’s own lover but all people and all things, as I did; but if there was no love, one loved nobody and nothing, as in his case. And the absence of love, in the end, caused incapacity and impotence.

The table had been cleared by now and in the circle of light shed by the chandelier onto the tablecloth sprinkled with crumbs stood four coffee cups, a tulip-shaped terracotta ashtray, and a large, white, mottled hand, adorned with several cheap rings, which held a burning cigarette: Signora Medolaghi’s hand. My bosom suddenly swelled with impatience and I rose to my feet. “I’m sorry, Mino,” I said, deliberately exaggerating my Roman accent, “but I’m busy.… I’ve got to go.”

He crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray and got up as well. I said good evening in ringing, common tones, made a slight bow that Signora Medolaghi returned stiffly and the daughter ignored, and then I left. In the entrance I spoke to Mino. “I’m afraid Signora Medolaghi will ask you to find another room after this evening.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t think so. I pay her well, and very punctually.”

“I’m going,” I said. “This meal has made me unhappy.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m truly convinced that you’re incapable of love.”

I said this sadly, without looking at him. Then I raised my eyes, and I thought he looked grieved, but perhaps it was the shadow in the hall on his pale face. I suddenly felt full of remorse. “Are you offended?” I asked.

“No,” he said with an effort, “it’s the truth, after all.”

My heart overflowed with affection for him, I embraced him impulsively and said, “It isn’t true … I only said it out of spite. And anyway, I love you so much all the same.… Look — I brought you this tie,” I opened my purse, took out the tie, and offered it to him. He looked at it.

“Did you steal it?” he asked.

It was a joke and, as I thought later, probably revealed more fondness for me than the warmest thanks could have done. But at that moment it pierced me to the heart. My eyes filled with tears. “No, I bought it — in a shop just down below,” I stammered.

He realized my humiliation and hugged me. “Silly,” he said. “I was only joking. But anyway, I’d like it even if you had stolen it — maybe even more.”

“Wait, I’ll put it on for you,” I said, feeling slightly consoled. He lifted his chin and I undid his old tie, turned back his collar, and knotted the new one for him.

“I’m going to take this ugly worn-out tie away,” I said. “You mustn’t ever wear it again.” What I really wanted was to have some keepsake from him, something he had worn.

“I’ll see you soon, then,”-he said.

“When?”

“Tomorrow, after supper.”

“All right.” I took his hand to kiss it. He pulled it away, but was not in time to prevent me brushing it with my lips. Without looking back, I rushed away down the stairs.

7

A
FTER THAT DAY, I WENT ON
leading my usual life. I really loved Mino, and more than once I felt tempted to give up my profession, so complete a contrast to real love. But despite the fact that I had fallen in love, my condition remained unaltered, I was still at the same point: that is to say, I had no money and no possibility of earning any except in that way. I did not want to accept money from Mino; and in any case he had only a limited amount, since his family sent him barely enough to pay for his upkeep in town. Actually, I must admit at this point that I always felt an irresistible desire to pay the bill myself in all the places, cafés or restaurants, we frequented. He always refused my offers and every time I was disappointed and embittered. When he had no money, he took me to the public parks and we sat together on a bench talking and watching the passersby, like two poor people.

“But if you don’t have any money,” I said to him one day, “let’s got to a café anyway. I’ll pay … what difference does it make?”

“It’s out of the question.”

“Why? I want to go to a café and have a drink.”

“Go by yourself, then.”

In fact, what mattered to me was not so much going to a café as paying for him. I had a deep, obstinate, and painful desire to do so; and even more than paying for him, I would have liked to have handed all the money I earned straight over to him, as soon as I received it from my lovers. I thought that only in this way could I show him my love; but I also thought that by keeping him I would bind him to me with a bond stronger than that of simple affection. “I’d be so pleased to give you some money,” I said to him another time. “And I’m sure it would give you some pleasure to have it!”

He began to laugh. “Our relationship, at least as far as I’m concerned, isn’t based on pleasure!”

“On what, then?”

He hesitated. “On your desire to love me,” he then replied, “and on my weakness in the face of this desire; but that doesn’t mean my weakness has no limits.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s very simple,” he said coolly, “and I’ve explained it to you over and over again — we’re together because you wanted it this way. I, on the contrary, did not want it, and even now, in theory at least, I would rather not —”

“Stop, enough!” I interrupted, “let’s not talk about our love. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

Often since then, thinking about his character, I have come to the painful conclusion that he did not love me at all, and that I was only the object of some mysterious experiment of his. In reality, he was interested only in himself; but within these limits his character revealed itself to be extremely complicated. He was the son of a well-to-do provincial family, as I believe I have already said, delicate, intelligent, cultured, educated, serious. His family, as far as I could make out from the little he told me, for he was not fond of talking about it, was one of those families that I, in my unfulfilled dreams of normalcy, would have liked to have been born in to. It was a traditional family: his father was a doctor and landowner, his mother was still young and stayed at home most of the
time, thinking only of her husband and children; there were three younger sisters and an older brother. The father, it’s true, was a busybody and local authority, his mother extremely bigoted, his sisters rather frivolous, and his older brother absolutely dissolute, like his friend Giancarlo. But after all, these faults were all very tolerable and for me, who had been born among people whose way of life was so different in every way, they did not even seem to be defects. It was a closely united family, too, and all of them, parents and children alike, were devoted to Mino.

My own feeling was that he was very lucky in having been born into such a family. But he, on the contrary, felt an aversion, a dislike and disgust for them that I found quite incomprehensible. And he seemed to feel the same aversion, dislike, and disgust for himself, for what he was and what he did. But this self-hatred appeared to be only a reflection of his hatred for his whole family. In other words, he seemed to hate in himself all that part of him that had remained attached to his family or had in any way come under the influence of the family circle. I have said he was educated, cultured, intelligent, delicate, serious. But he despised his intelligence, manners, culture, delicacy, seriousness, merely because he suspected that he owed them to the milieu and the family into which he had been born and where he had grown up. “But really,” I said to him once, “What would you like to be? These are all fine qualities — you ought to thank your lucky stars that you have them.”

“Right,” he said, scarcely moving his lips. “A lot of good they do me — If I’d had my way, I’d rather have been like Sonzogno.”

He had been deeply impressed by the story of Sonzogno; I don’t know why. “What a horror!” I exclaimed. “He’s a monster, and you want to be like a monster!”

“Obviously I wouldn’t want to be like Sonzogno in every respect,” he explained. “I mentioned Sonzogno merely to make my meaning clear. Sonzogno is fit to live in this world, and I’m not.”

“Do you want to know what I would like to have been?” I then asked him.

“Let’s hear it.”

“I would have liked,” I said slowly, savoring the words in each of which one of my most cherished dreams seemed to be embodied, “to have been just what you are and what you are so unhappy at being. I would have liked to have been born into a family as rich as yours, which would have given me a good education. I would have liked to have lived in a lovely, clean house like yours. I would have liked to have had good teachers and foreign governesses, as you had. I would have liked to have spent the summer at the seaside or in the mountains, and to have had good clothes, and to be invited out and to receive guests. And then I would have liked to marry someone who loved me, a decent person who worked and was well-to-do, too, and I would have liked to live with him and bear his children.”

We were lying on the bed as we talked. Suddenly he leaped upon me, as was his way, clutching me and shaking me as he repeated, “Hurray, hurray, hurray! In fact, you’d have liked to have been like Signora Lobianco.”

“Who’s Signora Lobianco?” I asked, disconcerted and a little offended.

“A terrible harpy who often invites me to her parties in the hope that I’ll fall in love with one of her horrible daughters and marry her, because I’m what’s called, in wordly jargon, a good match.”

“But I wouldn’t like to be at all like Signora Lobianco!”

“But that’s what you’d certainly be if you had all the things you mentioned. Signora Lobianco, too, was born into a wealthy family who gave her an excellent education, with good teachers and foreign governesses, sent her to school and even to the university, I believe. She, too, grew up in a lovely, clean house; she, too, went to the seaside or the mountains every summer; she, too, had beautiful clothes and was invited out and gave parties — lots of invitations and lots of parties; she, too, married a decent man, Lobianco the engineer, who works and brings a great deal of money into the house. And she has had a number of children by this husband of hers — to whom I even believe she has been faithful — three daughters and a son to be exact, but despite all this, as I said, she’s a terrible harpy.”

“She must be a harpy quite independently of her surroundings!”

“No, she’s one like her friends and the friends of her friends.”

“Maybe,” I said, trying to break away from his sarcastic embrace, “but everyone’s got their own character. Maybe Signora Lobianco’s a harpy, but I’m sure that under those conditions I’d have turned out far better than I am.”

“You’d have turned out no less horrible than Signora Lobianco.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“But, look, do you think your family’s horrible, too?”

“Of course, loathsome.”

“And you’re horrible too?”

“Yes, in all the parts of me that come from my family.”

“But why? Tell me why.”

“Because.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the same answer Signora Lobianco would give you if you asked her certain questions,” he replied.

“What questions?”

“We needn’t mention them,” he said lightly. “Embarrassing questions — a ‘because’ said with conviction shuts the mouth of even the most curious person — ‘because,’ for no reason — ‘because’ —”