The Woman of Rome (48 page)

And so, almost immediately, my illusion of victory came to an end. After this, we said not one word more all the time we were making love; nevertheless from his actions I was able to guess dimly the true significance of his abandonment, which he later explained to me in detail. I understood that until that moment he had wanted not so much to ignore me as to ignore that part of himself that desired me; now, instead, he was giving this part of himself free rein, whereas before he had fought against it — that was all. I had nothing to do with it, and he loved me no more now than he had done before. It was all the same to him whether he had me or someone else, and, as before, I was nothing more than a means he adopted to punish or reward himself. I was not so much conscious of thinking these things while we lay in the dark
together, as of feeling them in my flesh and my blood, just as some time before I had sensed the fact that Sonzogno was a monster although I had known nothing of his crime. But I loved him; and my love was stronger than my knowledge.

Still, I was amazed at the violence and insatiability of his desire, which had once been so grudging. I had always thought that he restrained himself for reasons of health, since he was delicate. So, when he began all over again for the third time when he had just that moment taken his pleasure of me, I could not help whispering to him, “For me, go ahead … but watch out you don’t hurt yourself.”

I thought I heard him laugh and I heard his voice murmuring in my ear, “Nothing can ever hurt me now.”

That “ever” gave me a tragic feeling and so that the pleasure I felt in his embraces was almost destroyed, and I waited impatiently for the moment when I could talk to him and finally find out what had actually happened. After we had finished making love, he seemed to drop off but perhaps he did not really sleep. I waited for a reasonable length of time before speaking to him. “And now tell me what happened,” I said in a low voice, with an effort that made my heart miss a beat.

“Nothing happened.”

“But something must have happened.”

He was silent for a moment and then spoke as if to himself. “After all, I suppose you’ll have to know, too. Well, this is what happened. At eleven o’clock last night I became a traitor.”

An icy chill gripped me at these words, not so much on account of the words themselves as for the tone in which he uttered them. “A traitor?” I stammered. “Why?”

He replied in his cold and grimly humorous tone, “Signor Mino, among the comrades of his political faith, was known for the intransigence of his opinions and the violence of his resentments — Signor Mino was actually considered by them as their future leader — Signor Mino was so sure that he would do himself credit in any circumstances that he almost hoped he would be arrested and put to the test — because, you see, Signor Mino thought that
arrest, imprisonment, and other sufferings are essential to the life of a political man, just as long cruises, hurricanes, and shipwrecks form part of the life of a sailor. But instead, at the first heavy seas the sailor felt as sick as the basest, most stupid woman … Signor Mino no sooner found himself in the presence of an ordinary little policeman than he blurted everything out without even waiting to be threatened or tortured — in other words, he’s a traitor. So since yesterday Signor Mino said good-bye to his political career and entered upon that of — shall we say informer?”

“You were afraid!” I exclaimed.

“No,” he answered immediately. “Perhaps I wasn’t even afraid. Only the same thing happened to me as happened that evening I was with you — when you wanted me to explain my ideas to you. Suddenly nothing seemed to matter at all. I almost took a liking to the man who was questioning me. He wanted to know certain things; at the moment, I didn’t care about concealing them from him and I told him what he wanted to know. Quite simply, like I’m talking to you now, or,” he added after a moment of reflection, “not so simply … with solicitude, eagerness, with zeal, you might say. A little more, and he would have had to moderate my enthusiasm.”

I thought of Astarita and I found it strange that Mino should have taken a liking to him. “Who questioned you?” I asked.

“I don’t know him. A young man with a sallow face, bald head, black eyes, very well dressed. He must have been one of the high-ups.”

“And you liked him!” I could not help exclaiming, since I recognized Astarita from the description.

Mino began to laugh in the dark with his mouth on my ear. “Slow down … not him personally, but his position. You know — when you give up being what you know you ought to be, or don’t even know what you ought to be, what you really are comes to the surface. And am I the son of a rich landowner or not? And wasn’t that man actually protecting my interests, by doing his job? We recognized that we belonged to the same race, that we were united in the same cause. What did you think? That I liked him for himself? No, no. I liked his function — I realized that it was
I who was paying him; that it was he who defended me; I who stood behind him as a master, even as I stood facing him as the accused.”

He laughed, or rather, gave a coughing sort of laugh that grated horribly on my ears. I understood nothing except that something very tragic had happened and that my whole life was once more in question. “But perhaps I’m doing myself an injustice,” he added after a moment, “and I only talked because it didn’t matter to me not to talk — because everything suddenly seemed absurd and unimportant and I didn’t understand any of the things I ought to have believed in anymore.”

“You didn’t understand anything anymore?” I repeated mechanically.

“No, or rather, I only understood the words themselves, as I would understand them now, but not the facts underlying them. Now how can you suffer for words? Words are sounds; it would have been like going to prison for the braying of an ass or the creaking of a wheel. Words no longer had any value for me, they seemed all alike and all absurd. He wanted words and I gave them to him, as many as he wanted.”

“Well, then,” I could not help objecting, “since they were only words, what does it matter?”

“Yes, but unfortunately, as soon as I’d pronounced them, they ceased to be mere words and became facts.”

“Why?”

“Because I began to suffer. Because I was sorry I had said them. Because I realized, I felt, that in saying those words I had become myself that fact which is known by the word
traitor
.”

“But why did you say them, then?”

“Why do people talk in their sleep?” he said slowly. “Perhaps I was asleep. But now I’ve woken up.”

And so he went around and around but always returned to the same point. I felt cruelly pierced to the heart. “But maybe you’re mistaken,” I said with an effort. “Maybe you think you said all sorts of things, when actually you didn’t say a thing.”

“No, I’m not mistaken,” he said briefly.

I was silent for a moment. “What about your friends?” I asked him.

“What friends?”

“Tullio and Tommaso.”

“I don’t know anything about them,” he said, with a kind of ostentatious indifference. “They’ll be arrested.”

“No, they won’t be arrested!” I exclaimed. I thought Astarita certainly would not have taken advantage of Mino’s momentary weakness. But at the idea of his two friends being arrested, the gravity of the whole matter began to dawn on me.

“Why not?” he said. “I gave their names. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be arrested.”

“Oh, Mino,” I could not help exclaiming painfully. “Why did you do this?”

“That’s what I keep on asking myself.”

“But if they aren’t arrested,” I went on after a moment, clinging to the only hope I had left, “nothing is irreparable. They’ll never know that you —”

“Yes, but I know it!” he interrupted me. “I’ll always know it. I’ll always know that I’m not the same person as I was but someone else, someone I gave birth to the moment I talked as surely as a mother gives birth to her child. But unfortunately, it’s not a person I like, that’s the trouble. Some men kill their wives because they can’t bear to live with them. Now think what it’s like to be two people in one body, when one of them hates the other to death. Anyway, about my friends … they’ll arrest them for sure.”

I could not restrain myself any longer. “Even if you’d never spoken,” I said, “you’d have been released all the same. And your friends aren’t in any danger.” Then I hurriedly told him the story of my relationship with Astarita, my intervention on his behalf, and Astarita’s promise. He listened to me in silence. “Better and better!” he said at last. “So I don’t owe my release only to my zeal as an informer, but also to your love affair with a policeman.”

“Don’t talk like that, Mino!”

“But anyway,” he added after a moment, “I’m glad my friends will make out — at least I won’t have this other remorse on my conscience, too.”

“Look,” I said eagerly, “what’s the difference now between you and your friends? They owe their freedom to me, too, and to the fact that Astarita’s in love with me.”

“Pardon. There is a difference. They haven’t talked.”

“How do you know?”

“I hope not, for their sakes. But anyway in this case, sharing the burden doesn’t lighten the load.”

“But just act like nothing happened,” I insisted again. “Go back and see them, without saying anything. What does it matter to you? Anyone can have a moment’s weakness.”

“Yes,” he replied, “but not everyone can die and still go on living. Do you know what happened to me in that instant when I spoke? I died — just died. Died forever.”

I could no longer bear the anguish that wrung my heart and I burst into tears. “Why are you crying?” he asked.

“Because of what you’re saying,” I answered, sobbing harder than ever. “That you’re dead. I’m so frightened.”

“Don’t you like being with a dead man?” he asked jokingly. “It’s not as dreadful as it seems. In fact, it isn’t dreadful at all. I died in a very special way. My body’s still very much alive. Feel if I’m not alive,” and he took my hand and made me touch his body. “You can feel I’m alive.” He pulled on my hand, forcing me to press it against him, and finally pulled it down to his groin and crushed it against his penis. “I’m alive all over … as far as you’re concerned as you can see for yourself, I’m more alive than ever-.-.-. don’t worry, if we didn’t make love much while I was still alive, we’ll make up for it thoroughly now that I’m dead.”

He flung my limp hand away from him with a kind of angry disdain. I put both hands to my face and gave way noisily to my misery and pain. I wanted to cry forever, to go on crying endlessly, because I was afraid of the moment when I would stop weeping and would be left empty, dazed, and still confronted by the unchanged situation that had provoked my outburst. The moment
came, however, and I dried my wet face with the sheet and stared into the darkness with wide-open eyes. Then I heard him ask me in a gentle, affectionate voice. “Let’s see what you think I ought to do,” he asked.

I turned around violently, clung to him as hard as I could, and spoke with my mouth on his. “Don’t think about it anymore. Don’t worry about it anymore. What’s done is done. That’s what you ought to do.”

“And then?”

“And then begin studying again. Get your degree. And after that go back to your own hometown. I don’t mind if I don’t see you again, as long as I know you’re happy. Get a job, and when the time comes, marry a girl from that part of the world, a girl who loves you, a girl of your own class. What have you got to do with politics? You weren’t made for politics, you were wrong ever to take it up. It was a mistake, but everyone makes mistakes. One day you’ll think it strange that you ever thought about it at all. I really do love you, Mino. Another woman in my place wouldn’t want you to leave, but if it’s necessary, go away tomorrow. If you think it’s best, we’ll never see each other again. As long as you’re happy —”

“But I’ll never be happy again,” he said in a clear, very deep voice. “I’m an informer.”

“It’s not true!” I answered in exasperation. “You’re not an informer at all. And even if you were, you could be happy all the same! There are people who have committed actual crimes and are still perfectly happy. Take me, for example. When people say ‘whore,’ who knows what they imagine. But I’m a woman like any other, and I’m often even happy. I was so happy these past few days,” I added bitterly.

“You were happy?”

“Yes, very. But I knew it couldn’t last. And, in fact —” at these words I felt like crying again, but I controlled myself — “you imagined yourself to be someone completely different from who you really are. And then we know what happened. Now you must accept yourself as you really are, and everything will fall into place. What’s making you so unhappy over what happened is the fact
that you feel ashamed, and are afraid of what other people, your friends, will think. Give up seeing them then, see other people; the world’s a big place! If they aren’t fond enough of you to understand it was only a moment’s weakness, stay with me. I love you and understand you and I don’t judge you — really,” I exclaimed forcefully at this stage, “even if you had done something a thousand time worse, you’d still be my Mino.”

He kept silent. “I’m only a poor, ignorant girl, I know,” I went on, “but I understand some things better than your friends and better even than you. I’ve had just the same feeling as you have now. The first time we met and you didn’t touch me, I got it into my head that it was because you despised me, and I felt so unhappy, I suddenly lost all desire to go on living. I wanted to be someone else and at the same time I realized that was impossible and that I’d have to go on being what I was. I felt a sticky, burning kind of shame, a despair, a heartsickness. I felt shriveled, frozen, bound hand and foot. I even thought I wanted to die.… Then one day I went out with Mother and we happened to go into a church and there, as I prayed, I felt I understood that I had nothing to be ashamed of after all. That if I was made as I was, it meant it was the will of God; that I ought not to rebel against my fate but accept it submissively and trustfully, and that if you despised me it was your fault and not mine. In fact, I thought a great many things and at last my humiliation passed and I felt gay and lighthearted again.”