Scent of a Woman

by Giovanni Arpino

  She shook her head no, that sad mysterious smile of hers back to contradict me.

  ‘Neither you nor anybody else. I’ve already told you. He’s incapable of having any friends. He can’t,’ she replied.

  ‘Still,’ was all I said.

  ‘What I mean is: you may be his friend, I don’t doubt it,’ she continued, treading carefully on every word, ‘but don’t you see that you too find yourself arguing with him, objecting, trying to reason with him? And with him there’s no reasoning, in his view two and two never equal four, maybe five, maybe three, but never four. You have to take him or leave him.’

  ‘You’re a woman and …’

  ‘I’m not a woman. If only I were. Or maybe not. What do I know?’ she said morosely. ‘What does being a woman or not mean? They say I’m in love with him. Everyone says that, even my mother, poor thing, and behind my back they laugh at me. Only behind my back though. But it’s not the foolish kind of love, the fainting and damaging kind that they imagine. I simply decided. I chose. Like a dog chooses to follow someone down the street, and only that someone. He waits. He waits and has no need to explain himself.’

  I couldn’t meet her eyes, which had become bold as the confession grew.

  I felt stupidly disarmed.

  ‘It’s not love,’ she said. ‘It’s faithfulness, it’s trust, it’s believing and waiting. Among other things. Call it, all of you, whatever you want.’

  ‘If you put it that way, there’s no use talking about it,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh? And why should I bother talking to you?’ She reacted violently, taking offence, her big eyes wide. ‘You show up, and I was just sitting here waiting to talk to you? At most you can tell me how the trip was, if he coughed a lot, whom he argued with and why. All that.’

  ‘Well. I have to go. The champagne.’

  ‘Please,’ she leaned over the table, suddenly limp, ‘one more minute. Just one. Don’t be angry with me. Tell me about the trip.’

  ‘Tiring. Non-stop. A mad dash. I feel like I’ve been everywhere and nowhere, I can’t explain it. My head is still going round and round.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ She laughed softly and nodded, ‘He’s possessed, possessed …’

  ‘Zoos, high masses, taxis. And you can imagine the insults he tosses around.’

  ‘He doesn’t insult, he condemns,’ she contradicted with assurance.

  ‘Bars. Drinking. I never saw anyone drink so much.’

  ‘When he drinks he’s a god. Don’t you think so? Once he said: “Raise those fine flags high …” ’

  ‘Et cetera, et cetera. I know. It’s typical of him when he’s dead drunk,’ I replied.

  ‘When he’s drunk he’s magnificent.’

  ‘Maybe because you remember him from your girlhood memories, but—’ I started.

  ‘I remember and I know,’ she said quickly, ‘I know everything. Whereas this world is made up of maggots. In school you study about Olympus, but what’s all around you later on? Maggots, which neither speak nor know nor understand.’

  Now even her forehead was bent over the book; I saw the tidy, pale parting of her hair, a strand or two lighter at the nape of her neck.

  ‘I’m not an optimist either,’ I said. ‘Life today is chaos, disaster, we all know it. For us young people …’

  ‘I believe in other worlds,’ she breathed, her face hidden. ‘They say if there were other worlds, they would have tried to communicate with us. Oh, really? What do you think? You, if you were from another world, would you have this desire to communicate? Tell me.’

  ‘I’d have to be crazy!’ I laughed.

  ‘Don’t you think we’re all going to die?’ she murmured again. ‘Everybody one on top of the other? Is that still living? Life can’t go on like this and call itself living. Nobody understands it, but he knows. He knows that we’re stupid, trivial, unfit, rotten. He’s understood that.’

  ‘May I say something?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said, resigned.

  I paused a moment to line up very carefully the words I needed and set them in the right tone.

  ‘You relate everything to him. You’ve formed an opinion and you won’t budge from it. Fine. But how can that help you? Okay, he’s special, very special, no one denies that, but so what? Just because he’s blind? There are millions of blind people.’

  ‘We said so before. Vincenzo is also blind. But he’s nothing, all air. He doesn’t even understand his fate. So he doesn’t deserve it.’ Stubbornly she shook her small head, which lay in the crook of her elbow.

  ‘What fate? Being blind? It’s not like he was born that way,’ I suddenly said hotly. ‘It’s not a Greek tragedy, it’s a misfortune. He took it a certain way, given his temperament. It’s your fault, your stubbornness, if you want to see it as something else.’

  She laughed wearily inside her protective shell.

  ‘Hopeless. You want to probe, explain. You’ll never do it. All of you, if you saw an angel standing on a street corner, what would you do? I’ll tell you what: you’d count his feathers. To make sure, to verify. That’s the way you are.’

  She laughed again, but it was almost a sob.

  ‘Try playing this game. Put a blindfold over your eyes, and remain blindfolded in your room or in the park throughout the afternoon. And move around there, explore things, search …’

  ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘Me? What do I have to do with it!’ she denied sharply.

  ‘All right. I see. Let’s drop it.’ I gave in.

  ‘Yes. Drop it.’ She seemed to calm down.

  ‘Don’t take it so hard.’ I pulled myself together. ‘I’m not judging you. Nor would I ever make fun of you. Far from it. But maybe you don’t understand either. Maybe we’re both too young to understand.’

  She kept shaking her head in the crook of her elbow, in denial.

  ‘I too know that he’s different.’ I backed off.

  ‘It’s not enough to say he’s different. Too easy.’ She raised her face, her eyes now a sharp beam aimed elsewhere. ‘What about the butterfly this morning? Remember that?’

  ‘Oh. A nice dramatic gesture.’

  ‘A definitive one. I say this to help you understand some–thing.’ She scoffed at me from behind that wall of hers. ‘Only he is capable of definitive gestures. He thinks of them, he does them. Whoever he catches, he catches.’

  ‘What amazes me is that everybody lets him get away with it. We let him have his way in everything, all the time. Never an objection.’

  ‘He knows,’ she continued, her eyes half closed, ‘the world is destruction. And he carries this destruction inside him. You see him there, motionless, handsome, but instead, inside, he’s filled with devastation. While still showing regard for everything, because he’s courteous as well, and when he’s angelic no one can equal him.’

  ‘We can go on talking like this for hours. You on one side, me on the other, without reaching any conclusion.’

  She agreed with a nod, her gaze bleak, a vein in her neck throbbing rhythmically under the skin.

  ‘And women?’ she blurted out suddenly. ‘You have no reason to lie to me now. Tell me: did he look for other women during the trip? In Rome?’

  ‘No.’

  She took a breath, consoled but sombre.

  Then, in a fit of contempt: ‘Idiotic fools,’ she said. ‘They should be chasing after him by the thousands, if they had anything in those heads of theirs. If I were a real woman, the things I’d be able to come up with. For him, incredible things.’

  ‘He’s twenty years older than you.’

  She laughed. ‘Twenty-one. But what am I saying? Ten thousand. A million. And that too is lovely, it’s just fine.’

  ‘So then: it’s right?’

  ‘Right!’ she cried, elated.

  She quickly leafed through the book, then handed me a small photograph protected by a transparent sleeve.

  She blushed happily. ‘Look.’

  In
her schoolgirl’s white knee socks, she barely came up to his waist. They were walking into the sun, his right hand on her delicate shoulder, the bamboo cane nearly obliterated by its own motion. The child was laughing, her teeth gleaming. He, dazzling in white, with the dark splotches of his glasses, his tie, his gloved left hand, cancelled out the few other elements in the picture: a bench, a drab bush.

  ‘From many years ago,’ she explained tenderly, her voice a whisper. ‘It was my father who took it. But don’t tell him. He knows nothing about it. He must never know.’

  I suddenly felt discouraged and bewildered in that stifling dimness, with the sharp sting of the air freshener. The words slipped out only because of some obscure rage: ‘Tell me, have you ever seen him without his dark glasses?’

  The smile that appeared on her face was recognizable as a challenge.

  ‘Of course. Did you think I hadn’t, maybe?’ she retorted disdainfully. ‘But you asked rudely. What were you hoping to do? Scare me? You could never.’

  I kept silent, feeling rebuffed, without purpose. That obstinacy of hers had cleared my brain of any intention of being rational, leaving me even emptier.

  We stood up. She walked me to the door; from the street came a wall of heat. Loud cries and noises held us there in the doorway.

  ‘A hundred yards, the first one on your right. A posh wine shop,’ she explained. ‘You can mention the restaurant’s name; I’ve already phoned. Surprised? Why? I have a good imagination, you know. When it comes to him, I can imagine just about anything. I’ll bet he wants at least eight bottles.’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘You see? A gentleman besides.’ In the light of day she appeared very pale, the furrow between her brows delicate and deep-set like a dimple. ‘Maybe we might have a chance to talk a little more, the two of us.’

  ‘I’m leaving tomorrow night. Or at least I think so. I don’t know about him. He wouldn’t tell me anything, as usual.’

  ‘He’s always been that way.’

  ‘I know. I realized that too.’

  She clamped her hands under her armpits again, facing the street and its noises with a stern expression. For a moment she seemed anything but young.

  ‘I didn’t ask you about Turin. Silly me. Is it really as beautiful as they say? I’d like to go to university there. I’ll have to spend a whole year persuading and reconciling my mother to it, I know that, but in the end … I have a peculiar way, if I dig in my heels and push myself, I manage to win. Always.’

  ‘You’re very smart.’

  ‘Don’t call me smart,’ she protested curtly. Her hand waved off my remark. ‘I hate the smart girl everyone compliments. I’m determined. That’s all. And not a word about Turin. Swear.’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘Why didn’t he go out for a walk today?’

  ‘He didn’t want to.’

  ‘If he doesn’t walk, at least a little, he gets irritable. There’s still time before supper. When you come back, why don’t you suggest it to him? By now he may have changed his mind.’

  ‘If I say something, he’ll immediately say no. You can bet on it.’

  ‘True, true!’ She laughed, revelling in it, her torso swaying, her neck slightly tipped back. ‘That “no” of his. Magnificent! A rifle shot, aimed at everything.’

  ‘But I’ll suggest it to him anyway, okay?’

  She nodded, her teeth nervously pulling at, worrying her upper lip.

  ‘Just one thing,’ I ventured, ‘you, for four years … Writing to him was out, so did you phone him?’

  She immediately withdrew behind a glassy smile.

  ‘No,’ she replied, her voice strained, ‘not a word. That’s enough now: I’ve already said too much.’

  ‘But he …’

  ‘He’s at the house, he has to walk, has to eat. That’s all. Let’s leave things as they are.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Why, did he say anything to you maybe? About me?’ Her voice came out laboured, almost stifled.

  ‘No. Really …’

  ‘Not even a word, naturally.’ She made a face. ‘Now you should go. Take a nice walk, have a look at Naples: it’s still a noble city. And be happy.’

  ‘The tourist obeys.’ I tried to laugh.

  ‘Just one last thing,’ she ventured, overcoming her hesitation. ‘I have to trust you. I have no choice. So listen: tonight try not to stick to him constantly like a shadow. Please.’

  I felt myself blush. ‘It was him. He wouldn’t let me move yesterday. I swear I …’

  She nodded her head, her cheekbones reddened too.

  ‘I know, I know. You don’t have to explain. You’re not spiteful, I realize that. But tonight, as soon as you can, leave. Don’t say a word, just disappear on tiptoe. You too must have needs, every once in a while. Then, too, the house is big. Or you can cosy up to Ines. She’s a nice girl, she seems like a silly mischief-maker but she’s on the ball, modern. And she looks at you in a certain way. You must have noticed, right? Or doesn’t she interest you at all? Just one minute after all. All I need is one minute out of the entire evening. Okay? Tell me you’ll do it?’

  ‘I promise. But there’s no need for Ines. I mean, don’t drag her into it just for that. I can manage.’

  She smiled, looking the other way, then hugged herself as if she were cold.

  ‘You feel you are his friend,’ she continued, worn-out though by the expenditure of so many words, ‘so don’t think that in that very minute, this very night, I plan to upset him with anything I say. I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘All right. Then too it shouldn’t matter to me. Leave me out of it,’ I objected, confused.

  ‘We’re all out of it, excluded by him. Some more, some less,’ she responded gravely. ‘Me like all the others, maybe more so than the others, who knows. But I won’t say anything that might upset him. You don’t have to worry.’

  ‘Okay, okay. It has nothing to do with me.’

  We stood looking at each other a moment longer, embarrassment growing between us.

  ‘Oh I apologize!’ She gave a shriek of laughter. ‘How rude of me! I didn’t even ask you your name. What’s your real name?’

  I told her my name, albeit reluctantly, by now almost annoyed.

  She quickly held out her hand and shook mine eagerly, but immediately pulled free.

  ‘And now I’m going in to face the angry protests of those three flour-coated goody-goodies in there.’ She laughed again. ‘Women in the kitchen, you have no idea. They all think they’re Joan of Arc. Either Joan or Madam Curie.’

  She pushed the glass door closed as she stepped back. It shut gently, without a sound, and as it did the pane reflected the frenzied street scene in bizarre overlapping perspectives.

  10

  ‘Vincenzo, Vincenzino, what’s come over you? Where are you? Did you have to disappear just now? How can we play if you’ve disappeared?’ the girls cried.

  But the lieutenant had dragged himself over to an armchair in the next room, done in by too much food and drink.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ he said.

  He moved his index finger towards the fanned out, upturned hands, began touching a palm.

  ‘No tickling!’ Michelina shrieked, shaking her hand and holding it out again.

  ‘Be still. Quiet, imbecile,’ the others protested, excited and very intent.

  The finger explored cautiously, lightly.

  ‘A charming mount of Venus: you’ll reduce men to ashes,’ he pronounced gravely.

  ‘Me, me!’ the others were already urging.

  ‘One more thing, please, the heartline,’ Michelina pleaded, focused on her palm, on the finger exploring it.

  Sara looked at me, she too with her hand outstretched, and a submissive smile that made her seem more tired. I withdrew to the table to station myself in the cross breeze from the two fans. The heat pressed down like a second skin: not a breath of fresh air from the terrace. Even the fans blew sultry currents of air.

/>   Minuscule residues of ice still floated in a soup tureen. Plates, bowls, cutlery, glasses were piled up in great disarray, covering every last inch of space; a measure or two of champagne, now lukewarm, stood in the bottom of the remaining bottles.

  The game continued amid the girls’ dazed, edgy laughter. They sat in a circle on the couch, while he, drunk, elbows propped up, indulged in the role of judge.

  ‘The heart line, mine too.’

  ‘And this double M, can you feel it? What does the double M mean?’ The breathing of the lieutenant in the other room lay heavily in the pauses, like a death-rattle.

  Earlier there had been a song contest while still at the table, after some moribund attempts to make a toast.

  ‘But not a whole song. God help us. Just a stanza. Something humorous. And if you don’t know one, forever hold your peace,’ he had decreed.

  Ines had quickly stood up reciting: ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.’

  ‘That doesn’t count. It’s a tongue twister, not a song.’ Candida and Michelina spitefully rejected it.

  ‘Who will win the chocolate medal?’ he continued, his fork playing a tune on the plates and glasses. ‘Come on, Ciccio, let’s hear you for once.’

  Certain of the effect, with my head buzzing, I belted out:

  Red is the ass of the ape,

  red are the flasks of wine,

  red is that sorry ass

  of the late Joseph Stalin …

  Through the howls of laughter the lieutenant’s husky voice could be heard from the head of the table. ‘You may be witty, but let’s not sink to indecencies …’

  ‘Keep quiet, Vincenzino, be good, is it or is it not a party?’ the girls retorted.

  ‘Don Vincenzo, don scamorza the wimp,’ he scolded him rudely.

  But no one could come up with anything more. Eyes bright, they tried to recapture buried shreds of memories, traces that quickly faded on their lips. And a vague awkwardness, distress, in the air.

  ‘Well then,’ he said impatiently.