The Woman of Rome (47 page)

When I was alone once more I felt chilled to the bone and greatly troubled. I was not sleepy and I did not want to go to bed; but in that cold room where the chill of winter seemed to have been preserved for years as it is in churches and cellars, there was nothing else to do. I had never had to face this problem the other times I had come here — both the man accompanying me and I myself longed only to get beneath the sheets and warm one another; and although I felt no emotion toward those lovers picked up on the street, the act of love itself absorbed me and immersed me in its spell. It now seemed incredible to me that I had made love and had been made love to among such squalid furniture, in such a gelid atmosphere. The ardor of the senses surely created an illusion for me and my companions each time, making those absurdly alien objects both pleasant and familiar. It occurred to me that my life, if I were never to see Mino again, would be just like that room. Looking back at my life objectively, without illusions, I saw that it contained nothing really beautiful or intimate, that actually, it was entirely made up of ugly, worn, chilly things, just like Zelinda’s room. I shuddered and began to undress slowly.

The sheets were icy and clammy with dampness; to such an extent that I had the impression, when I stretched myself out in the bed, that I was imprinting the shape of my body on wet clay. For a long time I remained absorbed in thought while the sheets gradually grew warmer. I went off on a sidetrack thinking about Sonzogno and lost myself in analyzing the motives and consequences of that whole shadowy affair. Sonzogno certainly believed by now that I had betrayed him and there was no doubt that appearances were all against me. But only appearances? I remembered his phrase, “I have a feeling I’m being followed,” and I asked myself whether the priest had talked, after all. It did not seem likely, but so far there was nothing to prove that he had not.

Still thinking of Sonzogno, I began to imagine what must have happened at home after my flight. Sonzogno waiting, getting impatient, dressing, the entrance of the two policemen, Sonzogno pulling out his gun, shooting without warning, and running away. These imaginary visions of what had occurred gave me an obscure, insatiable pleasure, as when I had reconstructed Sonzogno’s crime. Time and time again I went over the scene of the shooting, dwelling lovingly on all the details; and there was no doubt that, in the struggle between Sonzogno and the police, I was heart and soul on Sonzogno’s side. I trembled with joy at seeing the wounded policeman fall to the ground; I heaved a sigh of relief when Sonzogno escaped; I followed him anxiously down the stairs; my peace of mind was restored only when I saw him disappear in the distant darkness of the main road. At last I grew tired of this kind of mental cinema, and turned off the light.

I had already noticed on other occasions that the bed stood against a door that communicated with the next room. As soon as I had turned out the light, I saw that the two halves of the door did not meet properly, so that a vertical ray of light shone through the gap. I pulled myself up onto the pillow on my elbows, slipped my head between the iron curls of the bedstead and put my eye to the crack. I did not do this out of curiosity, since I already knew what I would see and hear through that slit, but fear of my thoughts and loneliness drove me to seek companionship in the next room,
even if I could do so only by spying. But for a long time I could see no one at all — there was a round table in front of the crack in the door and the light from the lamp poured down onto the table, beyond which I caught a glimpse of a wardrobe mirror gleaming in deep shadow. But I could hear voices — the usual talk that was so familiar to me, about one’s hometown, one’s age and name. The woman’s voice was unemotional and reserved, the man’s urgent and excited. They were talking in some corner of the room, perhaps they were already in bed. I began to have a sharp pain in my neck from gazing so long without seeing anything and I was about to turn away when the woman appeared beyond the table, in front of the shadowed mirror. She was standing up straight with her back toward me, naked, but visible only from the waist up, since the table hindered my view. She must have been very young; her back, under a mane of curly hair, was thin, hard, without grace, and of an anemic whiteness. She looked as if she were not even twenty years old, but her breasts were flaccid; she may have already had a child. She must be one of those starved young girls, I thought, who hang around the municipal parks near the station, hatless and often coatless, badly madeup, and ragged, their feet thrust into enormous orthopedic shoes. When she laughed she must show her gums, I thought. All these things occurred to me quite spontaneously, without reflection, because the sight of that miserable, naked back comforted me and I felt I loved that girl and understood only too well the feelings she was experiencing at that moment while looking at herself in the mirror. But the man’s voice called out roughly, “Will you let me in on what you’re doing?” and she left the mirror. For a moment I saw her sideways, with her curved shoulders and scraggy chest, just as I had imagined her. Then she vanished and a second later the light was extinguished.

The vague affection I had felt for the girl while I could see her was extinguished, too, and I found myself all alone once more in the big, still, cold bed, in that darkness filled with cold, worn-out objects. I thought of the two of them there on the other side of the wall, how they would fall asleep together after a while. She would
lie at her companion’s back with her chin resting on his shoulder, her legs entwined in his, her arm around his waist, her hand on his groin, and her fingers lost languidly in the folds of his belly — like roots seeking life in the blackest earth. And suddenly I felt like an uprooted plant myself, thrown out on smooth stone where I would wither and die. I missed Mino, and if I stretched out my hand, I became conscious of an enormous, empty, frozen space that surrounded me on all sides, while I lay there huddled up in the middle without protection or companionship. I felt a strong and sorrowful desire to embrace him, but he was not there, and I felt myself to be a widow and began to weep, hugging sheets in my arms, pretending to myself that I was holding him. At last I fell asleep, I know not how.

I have always slept well and deeply. Sleep for me is like an appetite, easily satisfied without any particular effort or interruption. So when I woke up the next morning, I was almost surprised at first to find myself in Zelinda’s room, stretched out in that bed, in a ray of sunshine that had slipped through the shutters and fallen onto the pillow and the wall. I had hardly realized where I was when I heard the phone ring in the hallway. Zelinda answered, I heard her say my name, and then she knocked at the door. I leaped out of bed and ran to the door as I was, in my nightgown and bare feet.

The hall was empty, the receiver lay on a ledge, and Zelinda had gone back into the kitchen. I heard Mother’s voice at the other end of the line, asking:

“Is that you, Adriana?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you go away? Things have been happening here.… You might at least have warned me.… Oh, what a scare!”

“Yes, I know all about it,” I said hurriedly. “It’s no use talking about it.”

“I was so worried about you,” she went on, “and then there’s Signor Diodati.”

“Signor Diodati?”

“Yes, he came over very early this morning. He wants to see you urgently. He says he’ll wait here.”

“Tell him I’ll be there right away. Tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”

I hung up the phone, ran into my room, and dressed as quickly as I could. I had not even hoped for Mino to be set free so quickly, and I felt less happy than I would have if I had waited for his liberation for a few days or a week. I mistrusted such a speedy release, and could not help feeling vaguely apprehensive. Every fact has a meaning, and I was unable to grasp the meaning of that premature return to freedom. But I calmed down when I thought that possibly Astarita had managed to have him set free immediately as he had promised. In any case, I was impatient to see him again, and my impatience was a joyful sensation, although it was also painful.

I finished dressing, put the cigarettes, almond sweets, and candies, which I had not touched the evening before, into my purse so as not to hurt Zelinda’s feelings, and went into the kitchen to say good-bye to her.

“Feeling more cheerful?” she said. “Got over your bad mood?”

“I was tired. Good-bye, then.”

“Now, now! Do you think I didn’t hear you on the telephone? Signor Diodati, eh? Here, wait a minute — have a cup of coffee.” She was still talking when I was already out of the apartment.

Perched on the edge of the seat in the taxi, with my hands gripping my purse, I was ready to leap out as soon as it stopped; I was afraid I would find a crowd in front of the house on account of Sonzogno’s shoot-out. I even wondered whether it was wise to go home — Sonzogno might turn up to carry out his vendetta. But I realized I did not care. If Sonzogno wanted to take his revenge on me, he could. I longed to see Mino and was determined I would never hide myself again for something I had not done.

At home I met no one at the street door and no one on the stairs. I rushed into the living room and saw Mother sitting at the sewing machine by the window. The sun poured in through the dirty windowpanes, the cat was sitting on the table licking its paws. Mother stopped sewing immediately. “So here you are, back at last” she said. “You might at least have told me you’d gone out to get the police!”

“What police? What do you mean?”

“I’d have gone with you — if you only knew how frightened I was.”

“But I didn’t go out to get the police,” I said irritably. “I went out, that’s all. The police were looking for someone else. That man must have had something on his conscience.”

“So you won’t even tell me,” she said, giving me a look of maternal reproach.

“Tell you what?”

“It’s not like I’ll go around talking about it — but you’ll never get me to believe you went out like that for nothing … and, in fact, the police came just a few minutes after you’d left.”

“But it isn’t true, I —”

“You were right to go, anyway. There are some terrible people around here. Do you know what one of the policemen said? ‘I’ve seen that face before,’ he said.”

I saw that there was no way of convincing her; she thought I had gone out to denounce Sonzogno and there was nothing I could do about it. “All right, all right,” I interrupted her brusquely. “What about the wounded man? How did they take him away?”

“What wounded man?”

“They told me a man was dying.…”

“No, no, they told you wrong. One of the policemen got his arm grazed by a bullet. I bandaged it up for him myself. But he went away on his own two legs. Still, if you’d heard the shots! They were shooting on the stairs. The whole house was in an uproar. Then they questioned me, but I said I didn’t know anything.”

“Where is Signor Diodati?”

“In your room.”

I had lingered with Mother for a little while because I now felt almost reluctant to go in to Mino, as though I anticipated some bad news. I left the living room and went toward my bedroom. It was plunged in utter darkness, but even before I put my hand out to the switch, I heard Mino’s voice say out of the dark, “I beg you not to turn the light on.”

The peculiar tone of his voice struck me; it did not sound at all cheerful. I shut the door, groped my way to the bed, sat down on
the edge of it. I could feel he was lying on his side close to where I was sitting. “Don’t you feel well?” I asked him.

“I feel fine.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“No, I’m not tired.”

I had expected quite a different kind of meeting. But it is a fact that joy and light are inseparable. In the dark like that my eyes seemed unable to sparkle, my voice was incapable of breaking into exclamations of joy, my hands could not reach out to recognize his beloved features. I waited for some time. “What do you want to do?” I asked him then as I bent toward him. “Do you want to go to sleep?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to go away?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to stay here beside you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to lie on the bed?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to make love?” I asked randomly.

“Yes.”

This reply was a surprise to me, because, as I have already said, he never really felt inclined to make love to me. I suddenly felt myself growing excited. “Do you like to make love with me?” I asked him in a soft, inviting tone.

“Yes.”

“Will you always like it from now on?”

“Yes.”

“And will we always be together?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you want me to turn the light on?”

“No.”

“I doesn’t matter; I’ll get undressed in the dark.”

I began to undress with the intoxicating sensation of having won a complete victory. I imagined that the night he had spent in prison had unexpectedly shown him that he loved me and
needed me. I was wrong, as I shall relate; and although I was right in thinking that there was a connection between his arrest and his sudden surrender, I did not understand that this change in his attitude held nothing complimentary or even encouraging in it for me. On the other hand, it would have been difficult to be so clear-sighted at that moment. My body urged me impetuously toward him, like a horse that has been curbed too long, and I was impatient to give him the ardent, joyous welcome his attitude and the darkness had prevented me giving him earlier.

But when I drew close to him and bent over the bed to stretch myself beside him, I suddenly felt him grip my knees with his arms and then bite me so savagely on the left hip that it bled. I felt an acute spasm of pain and at the same time the precise sensation that the bite expressed some indefinable despair he was experiencing. It was as though, rather than being two lovers about to make love, we were two of the damned driven by hatred, rage, and sorrow to bury our teeth in one another’s flesh in the depths of some new kind of hell. The bite seemed endless — it was really as though he wanted to tear out a piece of my flesh with his teeth. At last, although I half wanted him to bite me, liked him biting me, even sensing that there was little love in it, I could not stand the pain any longer and I pushed him away. “No, no,”-I said in a humble, broken voice, “what are you doing? You’re hurting me —”