Pleasure (3 page)

When his publisher suggested the line would offend patriotic sentiment, D'Annunzio reacted with apparent outrage: “That phrase is spoken by Andrea Sperelli and not by Gabriele D'Annunzio, and it fits well in the mouth of that monster.”

Sperelli was thus a perfect foil for D'Annunzio, a character he could both inhabit and disown as needed, hero and monster.

Perhaps with D'Annunzio in mind, Luigi Pirandello, a writer of a very different kind, wrote, “Life: either you live it or you write it. I have never lived it except by writing.” This was a division D'Annunzio did not accept: he lived writing and wrote living, a dynamic and explosive combination that lasted for about twenty years, until his public life crowded out his writing.

ALEXANDER STILLE

Pleasure

To Francesco Paolo Michetti

This book, composed in your house as a welcome guest, comes to you as an offering of thanks, as an
ex-voto.
¹

In the tiredness of the long and heavy exertion, your presence was as fortifying and consoling to me as the sea. In the disgust that follows the painful and captious contrivance of style, the limpid simplicity of your reasoning was an example and a correction for me. In the doubts that followed the effort of analysis, not infrequently was your profound judgment a source of light to me.

To you who study all the forms and all the mutations of the spirit as you study all the forms and all the mutations of things, to you who understand the laws that govern the internal life of man, the way you understand the laws of design and color, to you who are as much an acute connoisseur of souls as you are a great creator of paintings, I owe the exercise and the development of the noblest among the faculties of intellect: I owe the habit of observation, and I owe, especially, the method. I am now, like you, convinced that there is one sole object of study for us: Life.

We are, in truth, very far from the time in which, while you were in the Sciarra Gallery intent on penetrating the secrets of da Vinci and Titian, I was extending a salutation to you of nostalgic rhymes

to the Ideal that has no sunsets,

to Beauty which knows no pain!

However, an oath taken in that period was indeed fulfilled. We returned together to our sweet fatherland, to your “vast house.” There are no Medicean tapestries hanging on the walls, nor women assembled at our Decameronian gatherings; nor Paolo Veronese's
²
cupbearers or greyhounds strolling around the tables, nor supernatural fruits filling the crockery that Galeazzo Maria Sforza ordered from Maffeo di Clivate. Our desire is less presumptuous: and our lifestyle more primitive, perhaps also more Homeric and more heroic, if one may count the meals, worthy of Ajax,
³
taken alongside the resounding sea, interrupting the fasts of one's labors.

I smile when I think that this book where I examine, not without sadness, so much corruption and so much depravity and so much vain insidiousness and falseness and cruelty, has been written amid the simple, serene peace of your house, between the last starlings of the harvest and the first pastorals
⁴
of the snow, while my pages grew together with the precious life of your small son.

Certainly, if there is any human compassion and any goodness in my book, I render thanks to your son. Nothing inspires tenderness and uplifts one as much as the sight of life unfolding. Even the vision of dawn cedes its place to that wonder.

Here, then, is the volume. If, while reading it, your eye skips on ahead and you see Giorgio holding out his hands to you and smiling at you with his rounded face, as in Catullus's divine strophe,
semihiante labello,
⁵
you must interrupt your reading. And may the small rosy heels before you press down on the pages where all the misery of Pleasure is represented; and may that careless pressure be a symbol and an augur.

Hail, Giorgio. Friend and teacher, great thanks.

FROM THE CONVENT: JANUARY 9, 1889.
⁶

The year was ebbing away, very gently. The New Year's Eve sun radiated almost imperceptible veiled warmth, infinitely soft, golden, almost vernal, in the sky above Rome. All the roads were crowded, as on Sundays in May. On Piazza Barberini, on Piazza di Spagna, a multitude of carriages were rushing back and forth; and from the two squares the mingled and constant noise, rising up Trinità de' Monti to Via Sistina, reached the rooms of Palazzo Zuccari somewhat dulled.

The rooms were slowly filling with the scent emanating from fresh flowers in vases. Thick, fat roses were immersed in certain crystal goblets that rose, slender, from a sort of gilded stem, widening into the shape of a diamond lily, similar to those that appear behind the Virgin in the tondo by Sandro Botticelli at the Galleria Borghese. No other form of goblet equals in elegance such a form: the flowers in that diaphanous prison seem almost to become spiritual, resembling rather a religious or loving offering.

Andrea Sperelli was awaiting a lover in his rooms. Everything around him revealed special loving care. Juniper wood burned in the fireplace and the small tea table was ready, set with majolica cups and saucers from Castel Durante decorated with mythological scenes by Luzio Dolci, ancient forms of inimitable grace, with Ovidian hexameters written in blue-black cobalt
¹
italic script below the figures. Light entered the room softened by curtains of red brocade with pomegranates, leaves, and mottos embossed in spun silver. As the afternoon sun struck the windowpanes, the flowered design of the lace curtains cast its shadow on the carpet.

The clock of Trinità de' Monti sounded three thirty. There was still half an hour to wait. Andrea Sperelli rose from the couch on which he had been lying and went to open one of the windows; then he walked around the apartment; then he opened a book, read a few lines, closed it again; then he looked around for something with a dubious expression. The anxiety of the wait stabbed him so acutely that he needed to move about, to engage in some activity, to distract his internal suffering with physical action. He bent toward the fireplace, took the tongs to revive the fire, and placed a new piece of juniper atop the burning pile. The pile collapsed; the coals rolled, scintillating, down to the metal plate that protected the carpet; the flames split into many small bluish tongues that vanished and reappeared; the embers emitted smoke.

Then a memory arose in the waiting man's mind. In front of that very fireplace Elena had once loved to bask before dressing, after an hour of intimacy. She possessed much skill in heaping great pieces of wood on the andirons. She would take the heavy tongs with both hands and lean her head back slightly, to avoid the sparks. Her body on the carpet, in this slightly difficult task, in the movements of her muscles and the flickering of the shadows, seemed to radiate beauty from every joint, every fold, every hollow, suffused with an amber pallor that brought to mind Correggio's
Danäe
. And indeed her limbs were somewhat Correggian, her hands and feet small and supple, almost, one could say, arboreal, as depicted in statues of Daphne at the very beginning of her fabled metamorphosis.

As soon as she had completed her task the wood would flame up and emit an immediate radiant glow. In the room, that warm russet light and the frozen dusk entering through the windows would vie with each other for a while. The aroma of the burnt juniper made one slightly dizzy. Elena seemed to be overcome by a sort of childish frenzy at the sight of the blaze. She had the slightly cruel habit of scattering the petals of all the flowers in the vases onto the carpet at the end of every tryst. When she returned to the room after having dressed, pulling on her gloves or closing her fan, she would smile in the midst of that devastation; and nothing could compare with the grace of the posture that she would assume every time, lifting her skirt slightly and putting forward first one foot and then the other, so that her lover, kneeling, could tie the laces of her shoe, which were still unfastened.

The place was almost completely unchanged. From every object that Elena had looked at or touched, flocks of memories arose, and the images of that distant time came tumultuously to life. After almost two years, Elena was about to cross that threshold again. Within half an hour, certainly, she would come, she would sit in that armchair, lifting her veil from her face, panting slightly, as she had once done; and she would talk. All those objects would once again hear her voice, maybe even her laugh, after an absence of two years.

The day of the great parting was precisely March 25, 1885, outside Porta Pia, in a carriage. The date had remained indelible in Andrea's memory. Now, waiting, he could evoke all the events of that day with infallible lucidity. The vision of the Nomentano landscape unfolded itself now before him in an ideal light, like one of those dreamscapes in which things seem to be visible from afar by virtue of a radiance that emanates from their shapes.

The closed carriage rolled along with a steady sound, the horses moving at a trot: the walls of the ancient patrician villas passed before the windows, glowing white, almost oscillating with a constant and gentle movement. Now and then a great iron gate would appear, through which one could see a driveway flanked with high box hedges or a clump of greenery inhabited by Latinate statues or a long portico covered in foliage, through which the rays of sun glinted palely here and there.

Elena was silent, wrapped in her full otter-skin mantle, with a veil over her face and her hands enclosed in suede. He inhaled with delight the subtle odor of heliotrope that arose from her costly fur coat, feeling against his arm the shape of hers. Both believed themselves to be far from others, alone; but suddenly the black carriage of a prelate would pass by; or a herdsman on horseback, or a throng of purplish clerics, or a herd of cattle.

Half a kilometer from the bridge she said:

—Let us get out.

In the countryside the cold and clear air seemed like springwater; and as the trees were undulating in the wind it appeared, as with an optical illusion, that the undulation transmitted itself to all things.

She said, embracing him and stumbling on the harsh terrain:

—I am leaving this evening. This is the last time . . .

Then she remained quiet; then she spoke again, haltingly, about the necessity for her departure, about the need for the breakup, with a tone full of sadness. The furious wind tore the words from her lips. She carried on talking. He interrupted her, taking her hand and seeking with his fingers the flesh of her wrist through her buttons:

—No more! No more!

They walked on, struggling against the insistent gusts of wind. And he, near the woman, in that profound and grave solitude, suddenly felt enter into his soul, like the proud sentiment of a freer life, an excess of strength.

—Don't leave! Don't leave! I still want you, always!

He bared her wrist and pushed his fingers into her sleeve, tormenting her skin with an agitated movement that harbored the desire for greater possession.

She turned upon him one of those looks that inebriated him like glasses of wine. The bridge was nearby, red-hued, in the light of the sun. The river seemed immobile and metallic along its entire sinuous length. The rushes curved over on the banks, and the waters bumped up gently against several poles stuck into the clay, perhaps to hold fishing lines.

Then he began to goad her with memories. He spoke to her of their early days, of the ball at Palazzo Farnese, of the hunt in the countryside of Divine Love, of their morning trysts in Piazza di Spagna along the shopwindows of the goldsmiths or along Via Sistina, peaceful and elegant, when she came out of Palazzo Barberini followed by peasant women offering her roses from their baskets.

—Do you remember? Do you remember?

—Yes.

—And that evening, with the flowers, in the beginning; when I came with all those flowers . . . You were alone, near the window: you were reading. Do you remember?

—Yes, yes.

—I came in. You barely turned around; you greeted me with harshness. What was wrong with you? I don't know. I placed the bouquet on the little table and I waited. You started talking about futile things, unwillingly and without pleasure. I thought, disheartened:
Already she doesn't love me anymore!
But the scent was strong: the whole room was already full of it. I can still see you, when you grabbed the bouquet with both hands and buried your whole face in it, inhaling. Your face, when you lifted it again, was bloodless, and your eyes seemed strange as if from a kind of intoxication . . .

—Carry on, carry on! said Elena, with a faint voice, leaning over the parapet, spellbound by the fascination of the rushing waters.

—Then, on the couch: Do you remember? I covered your chest, your arms, your face with the flowers, oppressing you. You kept on coming up through them, offering me your mouth, your throat, your closed eyelids. Between your skin and my lips I felt the cold and damp petals. If I kissed your neck, you shivered throughout your body, and held out your hands to keep me away. Oh, then . . . You had your head pressed back in the cushions, your chest hidden by roses, your arms bare to the elbows; and nothing was more loving or sweeter than the slight tremor of your pale hands on my temples . . . Do you remember?

—Yes. Carry on!

He continued, his tenderness growing. Drunk on his own words, he almost lost consciousness of what he was saying. Elena, with her back to the light, was leaning toward her lover. Both could feel through their clothes the indecisive contact of their bodies. Beneath them, the waters of the river moved, slow and cold to the eye; the great slender rushes, like thatches of hair, curved themselves into it at every gust and floated with ample movements.

Then they spoke no more; but, looking at each other, they heard a constant sound that persisted indefinitely, taking with it a part of their being, as if something sonorous was escaping from the intimate recesses of their brains and expanding to fill all the surrounding countryside.

Elena, straightening up, said:

—Let's go. I'm thirsty. Where can one ask for some water?

They headed then toward the Romanesque inn on the other side of the bridge. Some carters were unfastening their packhorses, swearing loudly. The light of the setting sun struck the human and equine group with intense force.

The entry of the two aroused no sign of wonder among the people in the inn. Three or four feverish men, taciturn and yellowish, stood around a square brazier. A ruddy-skinned cowherd slumbered in a corner, still gripping his extinguished pipe between his teeth. Two scrawny and squinting youths played cards, glaring at each other during the intervals with an expression of brutal fervor. And the innkeeper, a plump woman, held a baby in her arms, rocking it ponderously.

While Elena drank the water in the glass, the woman showed her the baby, lamenting.

—Look, my lady! Look, my lady!

All the limbs of the poor creature were miserably thin; its purplish lips were covered in whitish spots; the inside of its mouth was covered with what seemed to be milky clots. It seemed almost as if life were already fleeing from that small body, leaving some matter upon which mold now grew.

—Feel, my lady, how cold his hands are. He can't drink anymore; he can't swallow; he can't sleep anymore . . .

The woman sobbed. The feverish men looked on with eyes full of immense exhaustion. At the sound of her sobs the two youths made a gesture of impatience.

—Come, come! Andrea said to Elena, taking her arm after having left a coin on the table. And he drew her outside.

Together they returned toward the bridge. The Aniene River flowed on, lit now by the fiery sunset. A scintillating line passed through the arch; and in the distance the waters took on a brown but glossier color, as if slicks of oil or tar were floating on its surface. The rugged countryside, like an immense ruin, was tinted all with violet. Near the Eternal City the sky grew increasingly red.

—Poor creature! murmured Elena with a profound tone of compassion, hugging herself tightly to Andrea's arm.

The wind grew enraged. A flock of crows flew past high up in the enflamed air, cawing.

Then, suddenly, a kind of sentimental exaltation filled the souls of the couple, in the presence of solitude. It was as if something tragic and heroic entered their passion. The highest point of their sentiment blazed under the influence of the tumultuous sunset. Elena stopped.

—I can't go on anymore, she said, panting.

The carriage was still far off, immobile, where they had left it.

—Just a little farther, Elena! A little farther! Do you want me to carry you?

Andrea, taken by an unstoppable lyrical impetus, abandoned himself to words.

“Why did she want to leave? Why did she want to break the enchantment? Weren't their
destinies
bound together, by now, forever? He needed her in order to live, her eyes, her voice, her thoughts . . . He was completely penetrated by that love; all his blood was adulterated as if by poison, with no remedy. Why did she want to flee? He would wind himself around her, he would first suffocate her against his chest. No, it could not be. Never! Never!”

Elena listened, her head bent, struggling against the wind, without answering. After a while, she lifted her arm to make a sign to the coachman to approach. The horses pawed the ground.

—Stop at Porta Pia, the lady cried, mounting the carriage together with her lover.

And with a sudden movement she offered herself to his desire. He kissed her mouth, her forehead, her hair, her eyes, her throat, avidly, rapidly, without breathing any longer.

—Elena! Elena!

A fiery scarlet glow entered the carriage, reflected by the brick-colored houses. The trotting sound of many horses came closer.

Elena, leaning on the shoulder of her lover with immensely sweet submission, said:

—Farewell, love! Farewell! Farewell!