The Woman of Rome (Italia) Read online

  I walked straight to the living room, where I found Mother sewing at the center table. When she saw me, she put down her work at once and started to get up, probably imagining she would have to fix my supper as on other evenings.

  “Don’t get up,” I said. “I’ve already had my supper. I’ve got someone in the next room. Don’t come in on any account.”

  “Someone there?” she asked in astonishment.

  “Yes,” I answered quickly. “Not Gino — a gentleman.” Without waiting for her to question me further I left the living room.

  I returned to my own room and locked the door. Giacinti, red in the face and impatient, came to me in the middle of the room and took me in his arms. He was much shorter than I, and bent me back against the end of the bed in order to reach my face with his lips. I tried not to let him kiss me on the mouth, and by turning my face away as if I were shy and then throwing my head back as if in ecstasy, I succeeded in my intention. Giacinti made love exactly as he ate, greedily, without discrimination, beginning in one place, then another, afraid he was missing something, blinded by my body as he had been by the food at the restaurant. After he had embraced me, he seemed to want to undress me as we were, still standing up. He uncovered one of my arms and a shoulder, and then began to kiss me again, as if the sight of my bare flesh had put his head in a whirl. I was afraid his clumsy gestures would tear my dress and at last I said, “Come on, get your clothes off,” but without pushing him away.

  He left me at once and began to undress, sitting on the edge of the bed. I did the same on the other side.

  “Does your mother know?” he suddenly asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What does she say about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Does she disapprove?”

  These details were obviously nothing more to him than an additional spice to his adventure. This trait is common to all men. Few can resist the temptation of mingling physical pleasure with some other kind of interest or even pity. “She neither approves nor disapproves,” I said shortly, standing up and pulling my slip off over my head. “I’m free to do what I want.” When I was naked I put my clothes neatly on a chair and then stretched myself on the bed, flat on my back, one arm under my head and the other across my breasts to cover them. I do not know why, but I remembered this was the position of the pagan goddess who resembled me in the colored print the stout painter had given Mother; and suddenly I felt resentfully angry at the thought of the great change in my life since that day. Giacinti must have been astonished at the firm, shapely beauty of my body, which was not apparent when I was fully dressed, for he stopped taking his clothes off and stared at me in amazement, his mouth half open and his eyes bursting out of his head.

  “Hurry up,” I said. “I’m cold.”

  He finished undressing and threw himself on me. I have mentioned his way of making love already, it was exactly like him, and I think I have described him adequately. I need only add that he was one of those men who become fearfully exacting at the thought of the money they have spent or are going to spend, as if they are afraid of being cheated if they don’t take everything they think they have a right to. His aim, I soon realized, was to make our meeting last as long as he could and to get out of me all the enjoyment to which he thought he was entitled. With this in mind he labored over my body like someone over an instrument and urged me all the time to do the same with his. But although I obeyed him, I soon began to be bored and to watch him coldly, as if his obvious calculations had set a distance between us, and I were seeing not only him but also myself from a great way off, through a mirror of dislike and disgust. This was the very opposite of the feeling of affection I had tried instinctively to encourage at the beginning of the evening. Suddenly a wave of shameful remorse swept through me and I closed my eyes.

  In the end he grew tired and we lay beside one another on the bed.

  “You must admit,” he said in self-satisfied tones, “that although I’m not so young as I was, I’m an exceptional lover.”

  “Yes, you are,” I said indifferently.

  “All the women say so,” he went on, “and do you know what I think? Little bottles hold good wine — some men twice my size aren’t up to anything!”

  I began to feel cold and sitting up pulled a corner of the blanket over us both. He interpreted this as a sign of affection.

  “Good girl,” he said. “Now I’m going to have a little nap.” Then he curled up against me and dropped off.

  I kept still, lying on my back, his white head against my breast. The blanket covered us both to the waist and at first, as I looked at him, at his hairy chest with its flaccid folds of middle age, I felt once more that I was with an utter stranger. But he was asleep; and sleeping he no longer talked, looked, moved. Given his unlovable character, sleep revealed only the best of him; that is, he was just a man like any other, with no name or profession, no virtues or faults, simply a human being whose breast rose and fell as he breathed. It may seem odd, but as I looked at him and watched him trustfully sleeping beside me, I felt almost affectionate toward him, and this feeling was brought home to me by the care I took to avoid waking him by some movement. This was the impulse of sympathy I had been seeking in vain until that moment; the sight of his white head leaning heavily against my young breast aroused it in me. This sensation comforted me and almost made me feel less cold. For a moment, in fact, I experienced a kind of amorous exaltation that brought tears to my eyes. In reality my heart was full to the brim with affection — then as always — an affection that for lack of legitimate objects I poured out even on unworthy things and people, rather than leave it unused and unwanted.

  After twenty minutes or so he woke up. “Did I sleep long?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I feel great.” he said, getting out of bed and rubbing his hands together. “Really great! I feel at least twenty years younger!” He began to dress, exclaiming continually in his joy and relief. I dressed in silence.

  “I’d like to see you again, baby,” he said when he was ready. “What should I do?”

  “Phone Gisella,” I replied. “I see her every day.”

  “Are you always free?”

  “Always.”

  “Long live freedom!”

  Then, taking out his wallet, he asked me. “How much do you want?”

  “You decide,” I answered. “If you give me a lot you’ll be doing a good deed; I need it,” I added sincerely.

  “If I give you a lot,” he retorted, “it won’t be to do a good deed — but because you’re a beautiful girl and have given me a nice evening’s entertainment.”

  “As you like,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  “Everything’s got its own price and should be paid for according to its worth,” he continued, taking the money from his wallet. “Good deeds don’t exist. You’ve supplied me with certain things of a better quality than Gisella, for instance, would have supplied. And it’s only fair that you should get more than Gisella. Good deeds have nothing to do with it. Here’s a piece of advice — don’t ever say, ‘You decide.’ … Leave that to the street vendors. If anyone says, ‘You decide,’ I’m always tempted to give them less than they deserve.” He made an expressive face and held out the money.

  As Gisella had said, he was generous, and the money was far more than I had expected. Once more as I took it I had the same powerful feeling of sensual complicity that Astarita’s money had aroused in me during the Viterbo trip. I thought this must mean I had a vocation and was really born for my new profession even if I longed for something different in my heart of hearts. “Thanks,” I said, and before realizing what I was doing, a grateful impulse made me kiss him on the cheek.

  “Thanks to you,” he replied, getting ready to go. I took his hand and led him in the dark through the hall to the front door. For a moment, when the bedroom door was shut and the front door not yet open, we were completely in the dark. And then some almost physical instinct t
old me that Mother must be hiding in a corner of the hall, in the dark where I was wandering with Giacinti. She must be squatting behind the door or in the other corner between the sideboard and the wall, and was waiting for Giacinti to leave. I remembered the other time, the night I returned late after being with Gino in his employers’ villa; and I became very nervous at the idea that as soon as Giacinti had gone she might jump at me, seize me by the hair, drag me to the sofa, and start to beat me. I could feel she was there in the dark. I felt as if I could almost see her, and had a kind of shrinking sensation behind me, as if her hands were hovering over my head, ready to grip me by the hair. I had Giacinti by one hand and the money in the other. I decided that as soon as she sprang at me I would put the money in her hand. This would be a silent way of reminding her that she had been the one to urge me the whole time to earn money in this way; and it would also be an attempt to shut her mouth by appealing to the passionate love of money ever uppermost in her soul. Meantime I had opened the door.

  “Bye-bye, then,” said Giacinti. “I’ll phone Gisella.”

  I watched him go downstairs, broad-shouldered, his white hair standing straight up on his head, waving his hand in farewell without turning around. And I shut the door. Immediately, as I had foreseen, Mother was upon me. She did not seize me by the hair as I had feared, but tried in a clumsy way I did not understand at first to embrace me. Faithful to my plan; I sought her hand and thrust the money into it. But she pushed it away and it fell to the ground. I found it on the floor next morning when I left my room. All this happened breathlessly, but without a word said on either side.

  We went into the living room and I sat down sideways at the table. Mother sat in front of me and looked at me. She seemed worried and I felt awkward.

  “Do you know, while you were in there, I suddenly felt scared for a moment?” she said unexpectedly.

  “Scared of what?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “First of all I felt lonely. I felt cold all over — not myself at all, everything was spinning around me, like when you’ve had too much to drink — everything seemed strange. I found myself thinking, That’s the table, that’s the chair, that’s the sewing machine — but I couldn’t really believe they were the table, the chair, the sewing machine. I didn’t even seem to be myself. I said to myself, ‘I’m an old seamstress, I’ve a daughter called Adriana.’ … But I wasn’t sure. I started to go over the past to convince myself, to think what I had been, when I was a girl, when I was your age, when I got married, when you were born. And I was afraid, because it all flashed past as a single day and I had suddenly grown old from being young as I was, and I hadn’t noticed the change.… And when I’m dead, it’ll all be as though I had never been born,” she said with an effort, looking at me.

  “Why are you thinking these things?” I said slowly. “You’re still young. What’s death got to do with it?”

  She did not appear to have heard me and continued in her emphatic speech, which I found painful and artificial. “I tell you, I was afraid. And I thought, suppose someone didn’t want to go on living, would they have to all the same? … I don’t say you ought to kill yourself, you need courage to do that, but suppose you didn’t want to live anymore, like you don’t want to eat or walk, maybe.… Well, I swear by your dead father.… I don’t want to go on living.”

  Her eyes were full of tears and her lips trembled. I felt like crying, too, and I got up and put my arms around her and went to sit on the sofa with her at the end of the room. We stayed there, holding one another close, both crying. I felt bewildered, because I was very tired and Mother’s talk, with its disconnected and troubled logic, increased my bewilderment. But I was the first to pull myself together because, after all, I was only crying out of sympathy for her. I had given up crying about myself long since.

  “Now, now,” I said, patting her on the shoulder.

  “Adriana, I mean it.… I don’t want to go on living,” she repeated through her tears. I patted her shoulder and let her cry to her heart’s content without speaking. Meanwhile I could not help thinking that her tears were a sure sign of her remorse. She had always lectured me, saying I ought to follow Gisella’s example and sell myself as best I could, that’s true. But there is a great difference between saying and doing. And when she saw me bringing a man home, felt me put the money in her hand, it must have been a heavy blow to her. Now she saw the result of her lectures before her eyes, and she could not help being horrified. But at the same time she must have been incapable, somehow, of recognizing that she had been mistaken, and perhaps she felt a bitter kind of complacency at the uselessness now of any such recognition. And so, instead of telling me straight out, “You’ve done wrong — don’t do it again,” she preferred to talk to me of things that did not concern me, her life and her desire to die. I have noticed that many people, in the very instant when they perform some action they know to be wrong, try to cover themselves and restore their position by talking of higher things, which show them to themselves and to others in a disinterested, noble light that is in no way connected with what they are doing or allowing to be done. This is how it was in Mother’s case — except that the majority act in this way quite consciously, while Mother, poor dear, did it all unawares, as her heart and circumstances taught her.

  But her phrase about her wish to die rang true to me. I supposed that I, too, had not wanted to live after I had discovered Gino’s deception. Only, my body went on living on its own, unconcerned with my will. My breasts, my legs, my hips, which gave men such pleasure, went on living; my hidden sex between my thighs went on living and made me desire love even when my will opposed it. It was no use stretching myself out on the bed determined to live no longer, not to wake in the morning — while I was asleep my body went on living, the blood flowed in my veins, my stomach and intestines went on digesting, the hair grew again under my arms where I had cut it, my nails grew, my skin was bathed in sweat, my strength renewed; and at a certain time in the morning my eyelids would open, without my conscious will, and my eyes would once more light upon the reality they hated, and I would realize that despite my desire to die I was still alive and had to go on living. So I might as well make the best of life and not think anymore about it, I concluded.

  But I said nothing of all this to Mother because I realized such thoughts were just as sad as her own and would not have cheered her up at all. Instead, when she seemed to stop crying I left her side, saying, “I’m hungry.” It was true, because in my nervousness I had hardly touched anything at the restaurant.

  “There’s your supper,” said Mother, glad I was suggesting something commonplace and useful she could do. “I’ll go and get it ready for you.” She went out and I was left alone.

  I sat down at the table in my usual place and waited for her to return. My head was empty and nothing was left of all that had happened except the sickly sweet odor of sex on my fingers and the salty streak of dry tears on my cheeks. I kept still and watched the shadows flung on the long bare walls of the living room by the hanging lamp. Then Mother returned with a plate of meat and vegetables.

  “I haven’t warmed up the soup, it wouldn’t be good by now — and there wasn’t much of it.”

  “It doesn’t matter, this will do.”

  She poured me out a glass of wine full to the brim and stood as usual in front of me, motionless and attentive, while I ate.

  “Is the steak all right?” she asked anxiously after a while.

  “Yes, it’s good.”

  “I told the butcher specially he was to give me a tender one.” She seemed herself again and everything was exactly like it was on other evenings. I ate slowly and when I had finished I stretched my arms, yawning. I suddenly felt splendid, and this movement gave me a sense of pleasure because my body felt young, strong, satisfied.

  “I’m very sleepy,” I said.

  “Wait, I’ll go and make up the bed,” said Mother eagerly, and started to go out. But I stopped her. “I’ll d
o it myself,” I said.

  I got up and Mother picked up the empty plate. “Let me sleep, tomorrow morning,” I said. “I’ll wake myself.”

  She replied that she would do as I wanted, and when I had said good-night and kissed her, I went into my room. The bed was still as Giacinti and I had left it. I simply pulled the pillows and the blanket into place, then got undressed and slipped into bed. I lay there with my eyes wide open in the dark for a while, my mind a blank.

  “I’m a whore,” I said aloud at last, to see what effect the words would have on me. They did not seem to have any effect, so shutting my eyes I fell asleep almost immediately.

  8

  I SAW GIACINTI EVERY EVENING during the next few days. He phoned Gisella the next morning and, as soon as she met me in the afternoon, she gave me his message. Giacinti had to leave for Milan the evening before the day I had arranged to meet Gino and this was why I agreed to see him every evening. Otherwise I would have refused, because I had vowed to myself that I did not want ever again to have a settled relationship with any one man. I thought it was better, if I was taking up this profession, to do it in earnest, with a different lover each time, rather than deceive myself into thinking I was not taking it up by letting one man keep me; with the added danger of growing fond of him or he of me, and thereby losing not only my physical liberty but my emotional freedom as well.

  In any case, my ideas about normal married life had remained unchanged; and I thought that if I were to marry, it would never be to a lover who had kept me and in the end had decided to make a business relationship legal, if not moral; but rather to a young man who would love me and whom I would love in return, someone of my own class, with similar tastes and ideas. What I wanted, in fact, was to keep the profession I had chosen completely separate from my earlier ambitions, without any contacts or compromises, since I felt I was equally well cut out to be a good wife and a good whore, but was quite incapable of maintaining a cautious and hypocritical middle way between the two. It was also true that there was probably more to be made out of the scruples of many men than out of the generosity of one man alone.