Sometimes, in certain solitary beaches, the seawater is so limpid, so clear, and so transparent that, no matter how strong the desire is to immerse oneself in it, to enjoy its delightfully refreshing coolness, one feels an almost sacred restraint that inhibits one from disturbing it.
Nicolino Respi had always experienced this impression of limpidity and this feeling of restraint when approaching the soul of Donna Bicetta Daddi. This woman loved life with such a tranquil, attentive, and sweet love! Only in those three days spent in her villa near Perugia, having been overcome by a most passionate desire, had he violated that restraint and disturbed that limpidity, and he had been sternly rejected.
Now his agonizing doubt was that perhaps the anxiety he had caused her in those three days had not been lulled after his departure. Perhaps it had grown so great that her husband had become aware of it. One thing was certain: upon his arrival at the villa, Romeo Daddi had been calm and, within a few days of his departure, had gone mad.
“Let’s not speak nonsense! Concerning his wife?” burst out Nicolino Respi. “That, if anything, might have been the result, not the cause of his madness! Only a madman…”
“Right you are! Right you are!” shouted his friends. “A wife like Donna Bicetta!”
“Above suspicion! But, on the other hand…”
Nicolino Respi could no longer bear listening to those two. He was suffocating. He needed air. He needed to walk about in the open air, alone. He made some excuse and went away.
A torturesome doubt had insinuated itself into his mind, throwing it into confusion.
No one could know better than he that Donna Bicetta was above suspicion. For more than a year he had been declaring his love to her, besieging her with his courtship, without ever once obtaining anything more from her than a very sweet and compassionate smile for all his wasted efforts. With the serenity that comes from the staunchest feeling of self-assurance, without either taking offense at his impertinent overtures, or rebelling against them, she had made him understand that any insistence on his part would be useless, since she was just as much in love as he was, perhaps more so, but with her husband. If he really loved her, things being as they were, he had to understand that she could in no way violate her love for her husband. If he didn’t understand that, then that in itself was a sign that he really didn’t love her. And so?
Sometimes, in certain solitary beaches, the seawater is so limpid, so clear, and so transparent that, no matter how strong the desire is to immerse oneself in it, to enjoy its delightfully refreshing coolness, one feels an almost sacred restraint that inhibits one from disturbing it.
Nicolino Respi had always experienced this impression of limpidity and this feeling of restraint when approaching the soul of Donna Bicetta Daddi. This woman loved life with such a tranquil, attentive, and sweet love! Only in those three days spent in her villa near Perugia, having been overcome by a most passionate desire, had he violated that restraint and disturbed that limpidity, and he had been sternly rejected.
Now his agonizing doubt was that perhaps the anxiety he had caused her in those three days had not been lulled after his departure. Perhaps it had grown so great that her husband had become aware of it. One thing was certain: upon his arrival at the villa, Romeo Daddi had been calm and, within a few days of his departure, had gone mad.
So, then, was it because of him? So, then, had she been profoundly disturbed and overcome by his amorous assault?
Why, yes, yes, of course! How could he doubt it?
All night long Nicolino Respi tossed the question about in his mind. His restlessness made him writhe in agony. One moment he was torn from his feeling of remorse by an impetuous, wicked sense of joy, the next he was torn from this joy by a feeling of remorse.
The following morning, as soon as it seemed to him to be the most opportune moment, he ran off to Donna Bicetta Daddi’s house. He just had to see her. He just had to clear up that doubt of his at once, whatever the outcome might be. Perhaps she wouldn’t receive him. But, in any case, he wanted to present himself at her house, ready to confront or suffer all the consequences of the situation.
Donna Bicetta Daddi was not at home.
For the past hour she had been unintentionally and unwittingly inflicting the cruelest of tortures on her friend Gabriella Vanzi, the woman who for three months had been her guest at the villa.
She had gone to see her so that they might figure out together, not the reason, no, unfortunately not the reason for that misfortune, but rather the circumstance, the occasion at least that had led to its happening there, at the time in which it first manifested itself, during that vacation, or more precisely, in the last days of it. But howsoever much she had taxed her memory, she hadn’t succeeded in coming up with anything.
For the past hour she had been stubbornly trying to recall, to reconstruct those last days, minute by minute.
“Do you remember this? Do you remember that in the morning he went down into the garden without taking his old cloth hat, and that he called up for it to be thrown down to him from the window, and then he came back up laughing with that bunch of roses? Do you remember that he wanted me to take a couple of those roses along on the trip, and then walked me to the gate and helped me into the car and asked me to bring him those books from Perugia? Wait… one was… Oh, I don’t recall exactly… but it was about sowing seeds… Do you remember? Do you remember?”
So disoriented was she by the exhausting reevocation of so many minute and insignificant details, that she did not notice her friend becoming increasingly more distressed and nervous.
Without the slightest indication of being upset, she had already relived in her mind the three days Nicolino Respi had spent in the villa, and she hadn’t paused for one moment to consider whether her husband might have been driven to madness by the innocuous courtship of that man. That was out of the question. It had been a laughing matter for the three of them, that courtship of Respi, after his departure for Milan. How could she even imagine that? Besides, after his departure, hadn’t her husband remained for more than two weeks as calm and peaceful as he had been before?
No, never! Not even the slightest hint of the most remote suspicion! In seven years of marriage, never once! How, where, could he ever have found a motive for suspicion? And yet, look, all of a sudden, there, in the peace and quiet of the countryside, without anything having happened…
“Oh, Gabriella, Gabriella, my dear, believe me, I’m going mad, I’m going mad, too!”
Suddenly, as she was recovering from this crisis of desperation, Donna Bicetta Daddi, raising her tear-filled eyes to look at her friend’s face, discovered that her friend had become as stiff and livid as a corpse. Her friend was obviously trying to control an unbearable spasm. She was panting through flared nostrils and was watching her with wicked eyes. Oh, God! Almost with the same eyes her husband had had those last days when he began staring at her.
She felt her blood curdle, and was almost seized with terror.
“Why?… You too?… Why?…” she stammered, quivering. “Why are you looking at me like that, too?”
Gabriella Vanzi made a tremendous effort to transform the facial expression she had unconsciously assumed into a benign smile of compassion.
“Me… I’m looking at you…? No… I was thinking… That’s it! I wanted to ask you… Yes, I know, you’re sure of yourself… but is there nothing that you… nothing at all… nothing that you can reproach yourself with?”
Donna Bicetta was dumbfounded. With dilated eyes and her hands over her cheeks, she shouted:
“How’s that?… are you now also repeating… his very words to me? How?… how can you?”
Gabriella Vanzi’s face took on a false expression, and her eyes turned glassy.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Oh, God… And now you’re becoming dazed just like him… What does it all mean? What does it all mean?”
No sooner had she stopped moaning these words, feeling herself gradual
ly becoming overwhelmed with emotion, than she found her friend in her arms, clinging to her bosom.
“Bice… Bice… do you suspect me?… You’ve come here because you suspected me, right?”
“No… no… I swear it, Gabriella… no… only now…”
“Now you do, right? Yes… but you’re wrong, you’re wrong, Bice… because you can’t understand…”
“What happened? Gabriella, come on, tell me, what happened?
“You can’t understand… You can’t understand… I know the reason why your husband went mad… I know it!”
“The reason? Which reason?”
“I know it, because I have it in me too, this reason for going mad… because of what happened to the two of us!”
“To the two of you?
“Yes… yes… to me and to your husband.”
“Aha, well?”
“No, no! It’s not what you’re imagining! You can’t understand… Without intending to deceive anyone, without thinking about it or wanting it to happen… in an instant… A horrible thing that no one can blame himself for. Do you see how I talk to you about it? Why I can tell you about it? Because I’m not to blame! And neither is he! But it’s precisely for this very reason… Listen, listen, and when you’ve found out everything, maybe you’ll go mad too, just like I’m about to go mad, like he has gone mad… Listen! You’ve relived in your mind the day you left the villa to go to Perugia by car, right? The day he gave you a couple of roses and asked you to bring him back some books…”
“Yes.”
“Well, it was on that morning!”
“What was?”
“Everything that happened. Everything, and nothing… let me tell you, for heaven’s sake. It was quite hot, remember? After seeing you leave, he and I walked back through the garden… The sun was scorching, and the buzzing of the cicadas was deafening… We went back into the villa and sat down in the small living room, right by the entrance to the dining room. The blinds were drawn, the inside shutters pulled shut. It was almost dark in there, and the air was cool and motionless… (I’m giving you now my impression of it, the only one I could possibly have, the one I remember and shall always remember. Perhaps he, too, had the same impression of it, identical to mine… He must have, because otherwise I’d never be able to explain anything to myself!) It was that cool, motionless air, after all that sun and the deafening buzzing of the cicadas… In an instant, without thinking about it, I swear it! Never, never, neither he nor I, certainly not… as if by some irresistible attraction present in that bewildering void, in the delightful coolness of that semidarkness… Bice, Bice… it happened like that, I swear it! In an instant!…”
Donna Bicetta Daddi sprang to her feet, impelled by a sudden access of hatred and contempt.
“Oh, that’s why!” she hissed through her teeth, recoiling like a cat.
“No, that’s not why!” cried Gabriella Vanzi, stretching her arms towards her in a gesture of supplication and despair.
“That’s not why, that’s not why, Bice! Your husband went mad on your account, on your account, not because of me!”
“He went mad on my account? What do you mean? Out of remorse?”
“No! What remorse? There’s no reason to feel remorse when you haven’t willfully committed the sin. You can’t understand! Just as I wouldn’t have been able to understand it if, considering what’s now happened to your husband, I had not thought about my own! Yes, yes, I now understand your husband’s madness, because I think about my own husband, who would go mad in the same way, if what happened to your husband with me, ever happened to him! Without remorse! Without remorse! And precisely because it is without remorse… Do you understand? And this is the horrible thing about it! I don’t know how to make you understand! I understand it, I repeat, only if I think of my husband and see myself like this, without remorse for a sin I didn’t intend to commit. Do you see how I can speak to you about it without blushing? Because I don’t know, Bice, I really don’t know how your husband is, just as he certainly doesn’t know, he can’t know, how I am… It was like a whirlpool. Understand? Like a whirlpool that suddenly, without any forewarning, opened up between us and took hold of us, and in an instant swept us away. And then it immediately closed without leaving behind the slightest trace of itself! Immediately afterwards, his conscience and mine became clear, just like they were before. We no longer thought about what had occurred between us, not even for an instant. Our turmoil was only momentary. We rushed out of the room, he going in one direction, I in another. But as soon as we were alone — nothing. It was as if nothing at all had happened. Not only when we were in your presence after your return to the villa a short time later, but even when we were alone together. We could look into one another’s eyes and talk to one another, just as before, exactly as before, because no longer was there in us any vestige of what had been, I swear it. Nothing, nothing, not even the shadow of a memory, not even the shadow of a desire. Nothing! It was all over. It had disappeared. The secret of an instant, buried forever. Well, this is what made your husband go mad. Not the sin, which neither of us thought of committing! No, it was this: the thought that an honest woman who is in love with her husband can fall into the arms of another man instantly, unwillingly, as a result of a sudden surprise attack from the senses, because of a mysterious complicity of time and place; and that a moment later it would all be over forever. The whirlpool would be closed and the secret buried. There would be no remorse, no turmoil, no effort expended to lie to others or to one another. He waited one, two, three days. He felt no stirring within himself, neither in your presence nor in mine. He saw me go back to being as I was before, exactly as I was before, with you, with him. A little later he saw my husband return to the villa, remember? He saw how I welcomed him, with what concern, with what love… and so then the watery abyss in which our secret had sunk and disappeared forever without the slightest trace gradually began to attract his attention, until it ultimately destroyed his mind. He thought of you. He thought that perhaps you, too…”
“Me. too?”
“Oh, Bice, no doubt it’s never happened to you. That I believe, Bice, my dear! But we, that is, he and I, know from experience that it can happen, and that, since it was possible in our case, without our wanting it, it can be possible for anyone at all! He probably thought that there were times when, returning home, he found you alone in the living room with some friend of his, and that what happened to me and to him could in an instant and in exactly the same way have happened to you and to that friend. And he probably thought that you could have been able to shut up inside yourself without leaving a trace, and hide without lying, that same secret that I shut up inside myself and hid from my husband without lying. And as soon as this thought entered his mind, a subtle, sharp, burning sensation began to gnaw away at his brain, in seeing you so detached, so happy, so loving with him, just as I was with my husband, my husband whom I love, I swear it, more than myself, more than anything in the world! He began thinking: And yet, this woman, who is behaving like this towards her husband, was for a moment in my arms! So then maybe my wife too, in a moment… Who knows?… Who can ever know?… And he went mad. Oh! Quiet, Bice, keep quiet, for heaven’s sake!” Gabriella Vanzi got up. She was trembling and extremely pale. She had heard the door open out there in the entrance hall. Her husband had just returned home.
Donna Bicetta Daddi, seeing her friend suddenly recompose herself — her face regaining its color, her eyes turning limpid, and her lips forcing a smile as she moved towards her husband — stood there almost thunderstruck.
Nothing. Yes, it was true: no more anxiety, no remorse, no hint of anything…
And Donna Bicetta understood perfectly well why her husband, Romeo Daddi, had gone mad.
The Reality of the Dream
It seemed that everything he said had the same indisputable to ascendency as his good looks. Since there could be no question about the fact that he was an exceedingly handsome man — really h
andsome in all respects — it was as if likewise there could never be any question about anything he said.
And yet he understood nothing. He really understood nothing about what was happening within her!
In hearing the explanations he gave with such self-confidence about certain instinctive impulses of hers, certain perhaps unfair dislikes of hers, certain feelings of hers, she was tempted scratch, slap, and bite him.
She felt this way also because, with that same coolness and self-confidence, and that pride that came to him from being a handsome young man, he would fail her in certain other moments when he approached her to satisfy a need. In those moments he was timid, humble, suppliant; in a word, just the opposite of how she would have liked him to be. Hence, even then she had another reason to feel irritated, and so much so that, though inclined to submit to him, she became reluctant to do so, and would freeze up. The recollection of every submission, poisoned at the crucial moment by that feeling of irritation, would transform itself into rancor.
He maintained that the awkwardness, the embarrassment she said she felt in the presence of all men was a fixation.
“You feel these things, my dear, because you think about them,” he continued obstinately to repeat to her.
“I think about them, my dear, because I feel them,” she would retort. “A fixation? Certainly not! I feel them. That’s the way it is, and I have my father to thank for them, because of the fine way he brought me up! Do you want to question that, too?”
Oh dear, at least not that, hopefully. He himself had experienced the problem during their engagement. In the four months preceding their marriage, there, in the small town where she was born, he had not even been allowed to exchange a couple of affectionate, softly-spoken words with her, let alone hold her hand.
More jealous than a tiger, her father had instilled a real fear of men in her, ever since her childhood. He had never allowed a man — not a single man — ever to enter their home. Furthermore, he kept all the windows shut, and the extremely rare times he had brought her outdoors, he had made her walk with her head bowed like the nuns, and with her eyes fixed on the ground as if she were counting the cobblestones in the pavement.
Tales of Madness Page 11