Cavalleria rusticana and Other Stories (19 page)

Erminia stared at her open-mouthed.

‘Listen, darling, you’re feverish.
Let’s make some tea.’

Two days later, to recover from the fever that Erminia had told her about, she told her, ‘I’m going with my husband to Brianza.
The fresh air, the oxygen, the peace and quiet, the song of the nightingales… A pity we don’t have children to rock off to sleep!’

‘Tell me a little more about your books and your outings on horseback,’ Erminia replied.
‘Tell your husband to keep you away from the chicken-run, or keep you company.’

One day, having no word from her Maria for a while and feeling slightly anxious, she set off, and went to pay her a visit.

‘Were you worried about me?’ she said.
‘Did you think I was in total despair, ready to do away with myself?’

‘No.
I thought you might be getting bored, cooped up here in this absolute wilderness, with only God or the Devil to turn to.
Come with me to the Villa d’Este.
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You won’t object, Rinaldi, will you, if I deprive you of her company?’

‘I want only for her to enjoy life and be happy.’

Signora Rinaldi was unaware that he, too, was there; and if, indeed, Polidori could have foreseen that she was coming to the Villa d’Este, he would have had the good manners to be elsewhere.
But by this time he had accepted the role of organizer for the boat races, and was unable to move without attracting people’s notice before the races had finished.
He explained all this in a few nicely turned phrases to Signora Rinaldi when they first came across one another in the salon, making obscure apologies to her, and skating unconcernedly over what had happened between them.
Once Maria had got over her initial shock, not only did she feel reassured but in a strange sort of way his self-contained demeanour stirred violent feelings of contempt within her.
He told her he would be leaving as soon as the races were over, because he had promised to join some friends of his in Piedmont for a big hunting party, and he was truly sorry to be leaving behind so many lovely ladies at the Villa d’Este.

‘Are you really?’ Signora Rinaldi asked, with a smile.
‘Which one do you like best?’

‘Oh… all of them,’ Polidori calmly replied.
‘Your friend Erminia, for instance.’

What a revelation!
The thought had never entered her head, but her friend Erminia must have turned many a gentleman’s head in her direction on account of that lively little face and the spirit of devilry she had about her.
She was so indifferent to the respect to which she was naturally entitled, being married to a marquis, and one of those marchionesses who wear their tiaras with pride, that there was no man on earth who would not die happily for her sake.

She and her friend Erminia were always together, whether boating on the lake, walking in the hills, sitting in the salon, or resting in the shade of the trees.
But now she observed her every move as if she was seeing her for the first time.
She studied her, copied her, and sometimes went so far as to envy her over something quite trivial.
Without wishing to, she had discovered that her friend Erminia, for all her regal airs, was
a bit of a flirt, the sort of flirt who never committed herself, but who nevertheless had all the men eating from the palm of her hand.
It was a serious business!
They could not go anywhere without running into Polidori, the handsome Polidori, pursued by all those society ladies, who was badly compromising her friend Erminia without appearing to know it.
But the worst of it was that she herself seemed equally unaware, and not everyone was convinced by the way she laughingly dismissed the whole thing.
But for the fact that the subject was so delicate, Signora Rinaldi would have had a word in her friend’s ear to impress upon her how falsely her denials always rang.

So she tried not to give her the slightest hint of the distress that all these manoeuvrings were causing her, being very concerned about Erminia’s welfare, naturally, whereas Polidori was of no importance to her.
He, after all, was a man, he was his own master, and besides, he was the kind of person who would always find comfort elsewhere.
Erminia, on the other hand, had everything to lose from playing this sort of game, with a husband like hers, who loved her and was truly the ideal husband.
What magic power did Polidori possess, then, for him to supplant a man like the Marquis Gandolfi in the affections of such a beautiful, intelligent and admired woman as Erminia?
Certain things defy logical explanation.

Nothing in the world would have made her want a living soul to notice what was happening, and she would have liked to close her eyes to everyone else, just as Erminia was doing; but quite frankly, one’s patience could only stretch so far.

‘My dear, I just don’t understand,’ said Erminia, laughing, coolly and collectedly, as if she had nothing to do with it.
‘What’s the matter?
I sometimes feel as though I’ve done you some terrible wrong without knowing it!’

Oh dear!
How could her poor Erminia remain so blind to what was happening?
It was a constant torment to see how she was becoming entangled so mindlessly in such a messy affair, or rather, allowing herself to become entangled, because that Polidori was winding her round his little finger with the cunning of the Devil.
The fellow must have done a great deal of wrong in his time, to have become such a master of deception.
He truly was a bad lot!

‘Maria, my dear!’ Erminia said one fine day, giving her a big kiss.
‘You seem to be filling up your head far too much with that Polidori.
You must be careful!
He’s too dangerous an individual for a child like you!’

‘Like me?’ she replied, utterly amazed.
‘Me…?’ She was struck dumb under Erminia’s penetrating gaze.

‘That’s good!
Good!
I was beginning to worry about you.
Good!’

Considering she was only a child, thought Maria, her friend Erminia should be taking more notice of how she was feeling.
Some things are so obvious!

For elegant suitors, fixed-hour Casanovas during the stroll in the garden or at evening concerts, or womanizers wearing chamois-leather gloves, Signora Rinaldi felt nothing but contempt.
Once, when Polidori allowed himself to make one or two polite remarks in his defence, she burst out laughing straight into his face.

He seemed to turn pale.
The fellow was finally turning pale!
If other women buzzed round Polidori like bees round a honeypot, they were the ones who should take the blame for spoiling him.

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she added.
‘It would make me feel very sorry.’

‘For whom?’

‘For you, for me… for the others.
For everyone.’

This time, refusing to let her sarcasm put him off his stride, he calmly replied, ‘I would only be sorry for you alone.’

She was just about to hit him between the eyes with another salvo of that pitiless, mordant wit of hers, but the laughter died on her lips because of the way those two words – you alone – altered his whole appearance.

‘You can insult me,’ he replied, ‘but you have no right to mistrust the feelings you have sown in my heart.’

Maria, overcome, lowered her head.

‘Have I not carried out your wishes to the full?
Have I ever asked you for an explanation?
Did I not foresee in advance what you wanted of me?
Have I not managed to pretend I had forgotten what no man on earth would be able to forget… coming from you?
And if I suffered on that account, did anyone on earth see that I was suffering?’

He spoke in a calm voice, in such a tranquil manner that the placatory words he uttered took on an air of irresistible eloquence.

‘So you…!’ Maria stammered.

‘I!’ Polidori replied.
‘I, who love you still, and would never ever have told you.’

She, who had paused to pluck leaves from the bushes, now took a few steps to distance herself from him, poor child!
Polidori took not a single one to follow her.

Signora Rinaldi suddenly took on a dreamlike, melancholy air.
She sat for hours on end with her book open at the same page, with her fingers wandering over the keyboard of the piano, or with her needlework draped over her knees, staring out at the water, the mountains, and the stars.
The surface of the lake reflected every trace of the indefinite thoughts running through her mind, and she experienced an exquisite delight as she sat there and listened to them echoing within her, completely engrossed and absorbed.
And so she stayed away from all the convivial gatherings, preferring to go alone by boat around the lake, when the mountains were casting deep green shadows over its surface, when the oars gleamed like swords of steel in the gathering gloom, and the magenta-coloured rays of the sun were disappearing sorrowfully into the dusk.
She drew the curtain across between herself and the boatmen, lay back on the cushions, and revelled in the feeling that she was cradled over the abyss, drawn into it almost, as she trailed a hand in the water and felt her whole body quiver with a mysterious sense of well-being.
She loved to stare out into the endless darkness, beyond the stars, and to imagine what some tiny distant light, flickering in the dark on the mountainside, was shining down upon.
She would set off in search of grass-lined, shady paths in the silence of the mysterious woods, or to delight in the spectacle of the lake at the time of day when the sun was shining down upon it as though on to a looking-glass, or of the hotel when all its shutters were still closed, and the dew glistened on the grass of the lawn, and thick shadows lay beneath the huge trees, and the crunching sound of the sand beneath her feet whispered into her ears, evoking magical daydreams.
She would often go and read or stroll by the lakeside, along remote paths of the Campi Elisi,
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when the moon sat gently above the lake and caressed her pale hands, or when the hotel windows pierced the gloom of the avenue with broad rectangular shafts of cold light, and the music coming from the salon stirred up
arcane visions within the mute and dormant shadows of the giant trees.
From beyond those strange shadows, behind those brightly lit windows, the veiled and deadened motion of the party inside took on a blend of outlines, colours, and sounds that gave it a strangely fascinating air, akin to something between an orgy and a dance of winged spirits.
There she remained, looking in and resting her forehead against the window-panes, a slight sensation of tingling at the roots of her hair.

Then one evening, she suddenly turned up in the midst of the dancers like some captivating vision, paler and more lovely than ever.
There was something no one had ever seen about her eyes and her lips, and, overawed by her looks, everyone stood aside to let her through.
Erminia ran up to embrace her, and a swarm of handsome young men crowded round her to extract the promise of a waltz or a square dance.
She stopped for a moment to look around, with that same smile on her lips, her eyes shining out like fireflies in the avenue, and when she spotted Polidori she dropped her handkerchief at his feet.

‘God save the queen!’ Polidori exclaimed, bending his knee.

‘You see!’ Maria said to Erminia, brimming with high spirits.
‘I’m stealing your dancing partner.
I’m simply dying to take the floor myself, for a change.’

Polidori was one of those dancers the ladies compete for with sweet smiles and fan-rapping over the palms of their hands, when their smiles have been overdone.
He combined bodily strength with elegance, verve with tenderness, and no one could match his way of transporting you to your seventh heaven with a sharp tap of the back of his heel, setting you gently down on his right arm as if on a velvet cushion.
It was said that he alone possessed that exquisite skill of Strauss for taking away your breath and your sanity, knowing as he did how to charge his arm, his muscles, his whole body with passion, abandon, and ecstasy.

‘I don’t want you to dance any more.
I don’t want you to dance with anyone else,’ Maria told him as she came to a stop, breathless, misty-eyed and red in the face.
And that, for that evening, was that.

Ah!
how triumphant she felt, and how her heart pounded in her breast, as her envied dancing partner led her through the throng of her admirers, and thence, as she wrapped her black stole tightly round her shoulders, out into the avenue where the sounds of revelry grew weaker,
and vague, formless visions came longingly again into being!
It was as though she was suspended in a delicious dream, when the waltz gave way to a Mendelssohn nocturne, a nocturne that, like the waltz, flowed across her forehead, hair and shoulders like a fresh and fragrant velvet hand.
Without prior warning a dark figure interposed itself between herself and the window pouring its light on to the avenue; like a shadow her dream came suddenly to life before her eyes.
Startled, she stood up, dazed and bewildered, murmuring something or other that meant ‘No!
No!
No!’ and made her escape to the salon, taking refuge in the noise and the light.
She half closed her eyes in the dazzling light, and the noise, agreeably deafening to the ears, left her looking stunned, rather stiff and thoughtful, a smile hovering about her lips.
Erminia folded her in her arms like an adorable plaything.
The ladies agreed that she looked a real picture, surrounded as she was by all those adventure-hunters, elegant to a fault, with her back to the wall, like a fawn huddled against a steep cliff-face.
You would have said that the hint of a tear of surrender flickered in her eyes.

Polidori, like a hunter destined by fate to administer the
coup de grâce,
was one of the last to assail her, and seemed to be feeling pity for his victim, for he spoke very gravely to her about the weather, restricted his wooing to a minimum, and, showing much concern, asked her about things of no great importance, such as whether she had taken her trip by boat on the lake, and whether she would be going to the Campi Elisi next morning.
Without replying, she looked into his eyes.
He questioned her no further.