Pleasure (32 page)

—I'm fine, said Andrea, trying to overcome the convulsive trembling, drawing nearer to the fire.

The presence of the old man in that painful moment moved him in a singular way. It was an emotion partly similar to the weakness that overcomes men in the presence of a good person, before suicide. Never before, as he did now, had the old man stirred up thoughts of his father, memories of the dear dead man, sorrow for the great friend now lost. Never before, as he did now, had Andrea felt the need of familiar comfort, of the paternal voice and hand. What would his father have said if he had seen his son cast down in this horrible misery? How would he have consoled him? With what strength?

He thought about the dead man with immense regret. But within him there was not even the shadow of a suspicion that the distant cause of his misery was to be found in the early teachings of his father.

Terenzio brought the tea. Then he began to prepare the bed, slowly, with almost feminine care, emulating Jenny, forgetting nothing, seeming to want to ensure his master perfect repose, imperturbable sleep, until morning. Andrea watched him, noting every action with growing emotion, at the base of which there was also some indefinable sense of modesty. It pained him to see the goodness of that old man moving around the bed through which so many tainted love affairs had passed; it almost seemed to him that those senile hands were unconsciously stirring up all the impurities.

—Go to sleep, Terenzio, he said. —I don't need anything else.

He remained alone in front of the fireplace, alone with his soul, alone with his sadness. He got up, troubled by his inner torment, and began to pace around the room. He was pursued by the vision of Elena's head on the uncovered pillow on the bed. Each time, when he reached the window, he turned around, believing that he would see her; and he jumped. His nerves were so exhausted that they indulged every disorder of his imagination. The hallucination became more intense. He stopped and hid his face in his hands, to contain the agitation. Then he drew the cover up over the pillow and went to sit down again.

Another image rose up in his mind: Elena in the arms of her husband: yet again, with an inexorable precision.

He now knew this husband better. That same evening, at the theater, in a box, he had been introduced to him by Elena and had observed him attentively, in fine detail, with sharp inquiry, as if to achieve some revelation about him, as if to root out a secret from him. He still heard his voice, a voice with a notable timbre, somewhat shrill, with a questioning tone at the beginning of every sentence; and he still saw those pale eyes beneath the great convex forehead, those eyes that at times had the dead glints of glass or became animated with an indefinable gleam, somewhat similar to the eyes of a maniac. And he also saw those moist whitish hands, strewn with pale blond fuzz, which had something immodest in every movement, whether picking up his binoculars, unfolding his handkerchief, resting on the sill of the box, leafing through the libretto of the opera, in every movement: hands marked by vice,
sadistic
hands, because certain characters of the Marquis de Sade's must have hands like those.

He saw those hands touch Elena's nakedness, contaminating the beautiful body, attempting a curious lasciviousness . . . Oh, horror!

The torture was unbearable. He rose to his feet again; went to the window, opened it, shivered in the cold air, shook himself. The Trinità de' Monti shone in the azure light with clean lines, as if carved into marble ever so slightly tinged with rose. Rome, down below, had a crystalline glitter, like a city carved out of a glacier.

That frozen, precise quietness brought his mind back to reality and gave him true consciousness of his state. He closed the window again and went to sit down once more. The enigma of Elena still attracted him; questions arose in a tumult and harried him. But he had the strength to place them in order, to coordinate them, examine them one by one, with strange lucidity. The further he progressed in his analysis, the more lucidity he acquired; and he enjoyed that cruel psychology as he would a vendetta. At last, he seemed to have bared a soul, to have penetrated a mystery. It seemed to him, at last, to possess Elena deeper within than he ever had during the time of ecstasy.

Whoever was she?

She was an unbalanced spirit in a voluptuary body. Like all beings who are greedy for pleasure, she had at the base of her moral constitution a boundless egoism. Her chief skill, her intellectual
axis,
so to speak, was her imagination: a romantic imagination, nourished by diverse readings, deriving directly from her womb, constantly stimulated by hysteria. Possessing a certain intelligence and having been educated amid the luxury of a princely Roman household, in that papal luxury consisting of art and history, she had veiled herself with a vague aesthetic dusting, had acquired an elegant taste; and having also understood the nature of her beauty, she sought, with extremely subtle simulations and a masterly talent for mimicry, to increase its spirituality, radiating an insidious light of the ideal.

She hence brought very dangerous elements to the human comedy; and was cause for more devastation and pandemonium than if she had made a public profession of immodesty.

Beneath the ardor of her imagination, every whim of hers took on a sentimental appearance. She was a woman of sudden passions, unexpected conflagrations. She concealed the erotic needs of her flesh with ethereal flames and could transform a base appetite into high sentiment . . .

Thus, in this way, with this ferocity, Andrea judged the woman he had once adored. He proceeded in his ruthless examination without pausing at any of the most intense memories. At the base of every act, in every manifestation of Elena's love, he found cunning, design, skill, an admirable self-confidence in implementing a theme of fantasy, in acting a dramatic role, in arranging an extraordinary scene. He did not leave untouched any of the most memorable episodes: the first encounter at dinner at the Ateleta house, Cardinal Immenraet's auction, the ball at the French Embassy, her sudden surrender in the red room at Palazzo Barberini, nor the farewell on Via Nomentana in the March sunset. That magical wine which once had intoxicated him now seemed to him a perfidious potion.

All the same, in some respects, he was perplexed as if, penetrating into the woman's soul, he was penetrating into his own soul and recognizing his own falsity in her falsity; such was the affinity of their two natures. And little by little his scorn evolved into an ironic indulgence, because he
understood.
He understood everything that he found within himself.

Then, with cold clarity, he defined his comprehension.

All the details of the conversation that had taken place on New Year's Eve, more than a week before, all returned to his memory; and he took pleasure in reconstructing the scene, with a kind of cynical inner smile, without any more scorn, without any agitation, smiling at Elena, smiling at himself. Why had she come? She had come because that unexpected meeting with an old lover, in a familiar place, after two years, had seemed
unusual
to her, had tempted her spirit, which was avid for rare emotions, had tempted her fantasy and her curiosity. Now she wanted to see what new situations and new combinations of facts this singular game would bring her to. Perhaps she was drawn by the novelty of a platonic affair with the same person who had already been the object of a sensual passion. As always, she had given herself over to imagining such a sentiment with a certain ardor; and perhaps, too, she had believed she was being sincere, and from that imagined sincerity she had drawn those tones of profound tenderness and the sorrowful poses and the tears. A phenomenon was occurring in her that was very familiar to him. She went so far as to believe that a fictitious and fleeting movement of the soul was genuine and momentous; she had, so to say, a sentimental hallucination the way others have a physical hallucination. She lost consciousness of her lie; and she no longer knew whether the situation she was in was true or false, fictional or sincere.

Now, at this point, it was the same moral phenomenon that constantly repeated itself in him. In fairness, therefore, he could not point any fingers at her. But naturally, this discovery deprived him of all hope of any pleasure that was not carnal. By now, suspicion was impeding any pleasant abandon, any spiritual elation. Deceiving a good and faithful woman, warming oneself at a great flame stirred up with a fallacious dazzle, dominating a soul with trickery, possessing her completely and making her vibrate like a musical instrument,
habere non haberi,
may be a great delight. But to deceive knowing that one is being deceived is a foolish and sterile effort; it is a boring and futile game.

He wanted, therefore, to persuade Elena to give up the idea of fraternizing with him and to return to his arms, where she once had been. He had to regain the material possession of the beautiful woman, to extract from her beauty the greatest possible enjoyment, and hence, by sating himself on it, to free himself from it forever. But in this task it was necessary to exercise prudence and patience. Already in their first conversation, his violent ardor had proved to be a bad move. It seemed clear that she founded her project of impeccability on the famous phrase “Would you tolerate sharing my body with others?” The great Platonic mechanism was driven by this saintly horror of promiscuity. It was also possible that deep down, this horror was sincere. Almost all women who have led an amorous life, if they succeed in marrying, affect in the early days of marriage a ferocious purity and cast themselves in the role of chaste wives with good intentions. It was also therefore possible that Elena was subject to this common scruple. There could hence be nothing worse than confronting her head-on and openly jarring her newfound virtue. Rather, it would be better to support her in her spiritual aspirations, accept her as “the dearest sister, the sweetest friend,” exalt her with ideals, Platonizing with shrewdness; and little by little to lure her from a chaste sisterly relationship to a sensuous friendship, and from a sensuous friendship to the total surrender of the body. Probably, these transitions would be extremely rapid. Everything depended on circumstance . . .

Thus cogitated Andrea Sperelli, seated in front of the fireplace that had cast its light upon his naked lover Elena, wrapped in the zodiacal quilt, laughing amid the scattered roses. And he was pervaded by an immense tiredness, a tiredness that did not demand sleep, a tiredness so empty and disconsolate that it almost seemed a need to die; while the fire dwindled on the andiron and his drink grew cold in the cup.

Over the following days, he waited in vain for the promised note. “I will send you a note to tell you when I can see you.” Elena therefore intended to arrange a new rendezvous. But where? At Palazzo Zuccari again? Would she commit a second reckless act? The uncertainty gave him unspeakable torment. He spent all his time thinking up some way to meet her, to see her. More than once he went to the Albergo del Quirinale, hoping to be received, but never found her home. He saw her one evening with her husband, Mumps, as she called him, again at the theater. Speaking of trivial things, music, singers, ladies, he injected a pleading sadness into his expression. She displayed much concern about her apartment: she was returning to Palazzo Barberini, to her old quarters, which had now been amplified; she spent all her time with decorators, giving orders and organizing.

—Will you be staying in Rome for a while? Andrea asked her.

—Yes, she answered. —Rome will be our winter residence.

Shortly after that, she added:

—You, truly, could give us some advice about the décor. Come to the palazzo one of these mornings. I'm always there between ten and noon.

He took advantage of a moment in which Lord Heathfield was talking to Giulio Musèllaro, who had just then arrived at the theater box; and he asked her, looking her in the eyes:

—Tomorrow?

She answered, simply, as if she had not heeded the tone of the question:

—So much the better.

The following morning, toward eleven, he walked along Via Sistina, through Piazza Barberini, and up the hill. It was a well-known walk. He seemed to be feeling the same sensations he had once felt; he had a momentary illusion: his heart lifted. The Bernini Fountain was sparkling in the sun in a most particular way, as if the dolphins, the scallop shells, and the Triton had become more translucent, neither stone nor crystal, as if by some interrupted metamorphosis. The industrious activity of new Rome filled the entire square and nearby roads with noise. Small boys from Ciociaria
⁴
darted among the carts and the horses, offering violets for sale.

When he passed through the gate and entered the garden, feeling a tremor seize him, he thought:—But do I still
love her
? Do I still
dream
about
her
?—It seemed to him that the tremor was the one he used to feel in the past. He looked at the great luminous building and his spirit flew to the time when that residence, in certain cold misty dawns, took on an air of enchantment for him. It was at the very beginning of the happy time: he would leave warm with kisses, filled with recent joy; the bells of Trinità de' Monti, of Sant'Isidoro, of the Capuchins
⁵
were tolling the
Angelus
in the dusk, indistinctly, as if they were much farther away; at the corner of the road, fires burned red around the asphalt boilers; a flock of goats stood along the grubby white wall, next to a silent house; the weak shouts of the liqueur hawkers
⁶
disappeared into the mist . . .

He felt those forgotten sensations rise up again from deep down; for a moment, he felt a wave of the old love pass through his soul; for a moment, he tried to imagine that Elena was the Elena of old and that the sad things were not real and that the happiness was continuing. All this deceptive turmoil fell away as soon as he crossed the threshold and saw the Marquis of Mount Edgcumbe coming toward him, smiling that shrewd, slightly ambiguous smile of his.