Don Giuseppe was no longer staring at his Christ. He had a different expression on his face: he looked frightened by some vision and at the same time drawn to it. He gazed at the ceiling with his eyes wide open, as though to see better, and also he had his mouth open with his lips protruding, as though to draw in something. He was whispering in a feeble voice, now full of terror, now full of relief, ‘Vade retro, satana. Lucifer. Beautiful, fair-haired and wicked woman, your hand is a burning pincer. Cover your feet and your bosom. Quiet! Your love, Don Giuseppe, I want your love. I’m your slave. A kiss … Get behind me, Lucifer. No, come, temptress, come into the midst of the flames. Let me embrace you. Give me your lips, let me suck them, I want to see whether you have coloured them with rouge. Look at me with those blue eyes of yours, let me examine the shadows beneath them to see whether they are the work of a brush or of lasciviousness. Saint and whore, rays of gold shine from your hair, brighter and more glorious than any nimbus or halo. Cover your head, for pity’s sake. I cannot look on your neck or breast: like the glaciers on the lofty peaks of my mountains in the light of the noon sun on a hot summer’s day, your neck and bosom blind me. Ah, don’t hold me so tightly in your soft, pink arms, you’re hurting me. Yes, hold me tight, suffocate me, crush me, quickly – see the flames leaping about us, already burning our feet, legs, hearts, heads …’
Signora Carlina strained to hear. Her cheeks were pink with shame and her eyes full of tears. She kept saying, ‘He, too! He, too!’ And she covered her face with both hands. To put a stop to his ravings that were breaking her heart, she raised the priest’s head, and cried, ‘Look at your Christ, Don Giuseppe.’
The delirious man’s gaze fell on the cross, which gradually had a calming influence on him. He quietened down. His lips began to whisper prayers, and his pale face cleared, becoming serene and gentle once more, regaining its innocent, almost ethereal expression. And Signora Carlina, reassured, exclaimed, ‘How beautiful you look, my good, kind Don Giuseppe, now heaven is mirrored in your face.’ And the priest began to breathe more freely, and already he was able to press in his own hand the hand of his artless nurse. Very slowly, she lowered her pure lips close to his pure brow. Don Giuseppe did not notice; smiling, he kept his eyes on his crucifix.
At that moment came a great crash at the front door, followed by the sound of an unsteady and heavy footfall making the wooden staircase creak, then the bedroom door flew back on its hinges as the drunken doctor burst into the room. The impact made the furniture shake. Then the Christ overbalanced and fell to the floor, shattering into countless pieces. The head rolled into a corner of the room, the arms, legs, and torso went scattering here and there, and red blood seemed to spurt from the dismembered limbs. The priest observed this destruction with staring eyes. Then, overcome with a mortal dread that contorted and disfigured him in a manner horrible to behold, he gave a shriek that ruptured his heart.
When the doctor, who reeked of brandy, reached his bedside, Don Giuseppe was dead.
THE GREY BLOTCH
This grey blotch clouding my vision may be the most common thing you know of as an ophthalmologist, but it bothers me greatly, and I would like to be cured of it. You can examine my cornea, pupils, retina etc. with your stylish equipment, when I arrive in two weeks’ time. Meanwhile, since you ask as a friend, I shall describe my new ailment to you as best I can.
In bright light my eyesight is as keen as a lynx’s. In the street during the day, at the theatre in the evening, I can see the beauty-patch on a woman’s cheek at a hundred yards’ distance. I can read a book printed in the tiniest English typeface for ten hours at a stretch without tiring. I have never needed glasses. Indeed, I can count myself amongst those ‘animals of such superior vision’ that, as Petrarch says, ‘they can look into the sun’. I have never loved the sun so much as during the last two months: as soon as dawn breaks, I open wide the windows and bless it.
I hate the dark. In the evening, as the light fades, a formless, ash-grey blotch before me, just where I settle my gaze, gradually intensifies. At twilight or when the moon is shining, it is very faint, almost invisible; but in the darkness it shows up very strongly. Sometimes it is still, so that the night sky, when I look up, appears to have a light, ragged-edged hole in it, like one of those paper hoops used in the circus, after the clown’s body has gone through it. And visible through the hole is what appears to be another, ugly sky beyond the stars.
Sometimes it moves, growing bigger and smaller, broader and longer, throwing out octopus-like tentacles, snail’s horns, or frog’s legs. It becomes monstrous. It circles round to the right, then to the left, spinning wildly before my eyes for hours at a time.
I use these images just to try to make myself understood, but it does not actually have any shape at all. In the month that I’ve had to put up with this unsightliness, I’ve never been able to identify it as any particular shape. Whenever I think I see a likeness to some animal or object, however fantastic, to something definable at least, that shape instantly mutates, and becomes bafflingly contorted. It is a gross, obscene thing. If you could smell it, it would stink. It’s like a big muddy stain, an animated blotch, a live, purulent sore. It’s horrible.
I’m not saying that I see it all the time. I see it every night, but for longer or shorter periods of time, depending on my own disposition, whether physical or mental I do not know. Often, thank God, it no sooner comes than goes.
The terrible thing is that it looms up in front of me unexpectedly, when I’m thinking of something completely different. I was holding the hand of a lovely young girl by the dying light of an oil-lamp, telling her things not to be repeated even to you doctors, and then all of a sudden there was the blotch staining her breast. I was horrified.
And during the day, if I go into a dimly lit church, for instance, I risk coming upon this obscenity lurking under the dense shadow of the organ, on the old smoke-blackened paintings, or in the dark grille of the confessional-box. The fear of seeing it makes me detect it all the sooner.
At night I never look with impunity upon the waters of a river or the sea. I went to Genoa some days ago. It was a lovely evening, a last vestige of summer. The sky was utterly calm, of the same scarcely unvarying shade of colour from east to west, tinged with a little yellow, green, purple, and yet, almost on the horizon, was an isolated area of thick cloud. A very narrow, bright strip of air shone between the cloud and the sea. The sun, which had remained hidden by those clouds for a while, dropped below their lower edge and dipped into the tranquil waves. At first, when all that you could see of it was the lower segment, it looked like a golden lamp suspended from the clouds; then the fiery orb’s circumference touched both clouds and sea for a minute, until it slowly sank into the water, its upper segment like the mouth of a huge oven revealing an incandescent blaze within.
I had dined very well with an old friend of mine. We took a boat and rowed out to sea. After the splendour of that sunset the twilight was of ineffable sweetness. We sang quietly, dreaming. Darkness fell. The dark green water glinted and glistened. Suddenly I saw my grey blotch floating a long way off in the distance. I fearfully withdrew my gaze to the confines of our boat, but my blotch pursued me among the oars and rowlocks. Chilled with horror, I had to endure its loathsome company all the way back to land.
(Don’t laugh, doctor), my retina must be damaged: there’s some kind of blind spot, a little area of paralysis, in other words, a scotoma.
I have read how, in the eyes of men condemned to death, the image of the objects on which’ they last gazed has been found on their retinas, after the poor wretches’ heads are cut off. So the image on the retina is not just a fleeting picture, but in some cases the image actually remains engraved upon it.
And bear in mind that when I close my eyes to sleep, I can feel my blotch inside me. And then it’s a different kind of torture. The blotch is no longer fixed to the same spot in its permutations – it wanders, and goes rushing about. It shoots up and in doing so p
ulls my pupil up after it, so that it feels as if my eyeball must be revolving in its socket. Then it shoots down, then from side to side, and the eyeball follows it, almost tearing the ligaments, and after a while my eyes are aching, really and truly aching. In the morning and after I’ve had a nap, they are sore and slightly swollen.
You doctors have the virtue of being curious. You want to find out what causes things, to trace them back to their origin. So I shall tell you the circumstances in which the ailment that you must cure first manifested itself. And be patient, because I shall do so in the most undiscriminating detail, for I know how you scientists can glean from one of these trifles that escape the layman’s attention the glimmer of understanding that sheds light on the most hidden truths.
On 24th October last, at nightfall, I was crossing the Ponte dei Re at Garbe to go to Vestone, on my usual after-dinner stroll (my morning walk used to take me to Vorbarno, when I did not prefer to go climbing up mountains, or to make a short excursion, also on foot, to Bagolino, Gardone, or the Tyrol). Of the two and a half months I spent in Val Sabbia, the first two weeks were all peace and quiet, the next two all excitement, and the remainder sadness and terror. In preference to the beauties of nature that everyone goes rushing to see, and everyone admires, I had opted for this poor modest valley, where the mountains have a certain wildness about them, and there is no danger of ever seeing the lean figure of an Englishman, or the black beard of an Italian mountaineer. I ate lovely pink trout from Lake Idro, tasty crayfish, mushrooms, wild birds, goat’s cheese, and lots of eggs, and polenta.
There’s a little inn at Idro with two small, clean, airy rooms. For anyone with a clear conscience, it’s a blissfully peaceful life there – without newspapers, coffeeshops, or gossip – spent gazing at the lake, at the youngsters rowing, at the fort of Rocca d’Anfo on the far side; exercising the legs more than the brain, in fact gradually growing dull with the blessed, cherished freedom of having absolutely nothing to think about and nothing whatsoever to do.
When clouds are sent racing across the sky by the wind this landscape becomes infinitely changeable in appearance. The mountains that crowd around, the rocks on which stand the ruined walls of castles or chapels with their white belfries, and the low hills crowned with pine trees undergo a transformation every minute. Sometimes the clouds cast the foreground into shadow, and the sun shines in the distance; at other times the sun shines in the foreground and it remains dark behind; and there are yet other occasions when this part or that in the centre shows up dark in the midst of light, or light in the midst of darkness, and countless splashes of extremely bright, varied colours are constantly bursting into view and disappearing.
The thing to do is to climb the rocky mountain opposite the chapel of San Gottardo, on the other side of the Chiese. It’s a vertical drop down the mountainside to the river. On that curious hill to the right stands the tall, thin church of Sabbio, and on the left, discernible in the distance, is the fort of Rocca di Nozza, of which only a few crumbling walls remain, while below, at your feet, yawns a deep abyss. You can hold on to the bushes with your hands and look down. The Chiese curves round, its swift-flowing waters breaking over the enormous rocks lying scattered on the riverbed. Low down, and a little to the right, is Garbe, and further away, much higher up on the mountain, is the bell-tower of Proviligio. Almost directly below, although on the opposite side of the very narrow valley, which becomes even narrower at this point, scarcely wide enough to hold the river and the postal road, is the chapel of San Gottardo, whose tower, seen from above, is so foreshortened that it looks dwarfish, and the arches of the small portico appear flattened.
The first time, I was all but overcome with dizziness. I tried to go up higher, where the almost sheer, bare rock offers virtually no footholds between its tight fissures. I looked round. The mountain behind me stood out as a shadowy mass against the blue sky.
It must have been about five in the evening, two weeks after my arrival in Garbe. The sun was beginning to sink behind the mountain. A fresh breeze was blowing through the neck of the valley and I had to hold on to my hat to keep it from falling into the precipice. But while I was using both hands to collect heaven knows what strange leaves, a sudden gust caught it in a spin, then sent it bouncing off, from one sharp, jutting rock to another. Assuming that I had seen the last of it, I continued my aesthetic study of plants bareheaded. Scarcely ten minutes had passed when all at once there appeared before me a mountain-girl, who with rustic charm and a little embarrassment handed me my poor hat. I thanked her warmly and scanned her face. She was probably about sixteen or seventeen. Her face was tanned but her fresh, pink colouring showed beneath her tan. Her remarkably white and even teeth sparkled in her small mouth. There was a certain element of reserve and curiosity in her eyes, a somewhat impertinent shyness.
‘Are you from Garbe, young lady?’
‘No, sir, I’m from Idro.’
‘And are you staying here?’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow with my father, who’s down there in the scrub with our goats. Do you see him? Look hard, over there.’ And she pointed to the place, but I could only just discern a man with a white beard, in the distance.
‘Where do you live in Idro?’
‘About two miles outside the village, on the road to Mount Pinello.’
‘And what’s your name, pretty lass?’
‘Terese, if you please, sir.’
We went on talking. I besieged her with questions, and kept staring at her. Embarrassed by my scrutiny, her eyes wandered here and there, occasionally meeting my gaze – indeed, going straight to my heart. I had never thought of marriage. I would laugh and swear with wide-eyed sincerity that I didn’t know what love was.
She said that she had no one in the world but her father, who adored her, and not for one day had he ever left her on her own since she was born. But now the good old man had to go to Gardegno for two weeks, to establish his claim to the legacy of a brother who had died with considerable assets but no offspring. Formerly a corporal under the Austrians, the old man could read and write as well as any lawyer, and was a person of some standing; he was, besides, more agile, more energetic, and more plucky than a young man of twenty. While her father was away, the young girl was to remain in Idro, entrusted to the care of her seventy-year-old godmother.
Doctor, as you can imagine, I went and stayed for two weeks in that clean, isolated little inn at Idro. Every morning and evening I climbed the steep, winding path strewn with sharp stones that led to Mount Pinello, and I would stop at the kind mountain-girl’s house. For two days she said no. Then there wasn’t a grassy nook on those precipitous slopes where she would not lie talking: in the daytime, seeking out the coolest shade beside a little stream, or in some natural cave, or in the spacious crevices among the huge boulders that had come hurtling down from the mountain-peaks, heaven knows when; and in the evening, during the early hours of darkness, seeking out some soft turf beneath the starry sky.
Terese was not of course like city girls: her skin was rough, her passion almost feral. For the first few days there were three things that she loved: her father, her goats, and me. After a week she did not speak any more of her father, and no longer looked after her goats. She would be waiting for me at the cottage door as soon as it was dawn. Often she came as far as Idro to meet me. She would drag me along, and use me with violence, and throw me to the ground as though she would tear me to pieces. Sometimes her body had a bitter, heady smell of wild herbs, and sometimes a foul smell of goats, and not infrequently a stench of mucky hay. In short, I longed for the old man’s return.
The day before his arrival I tried to prepare Terese for my departure. I told her I had to go to Brescia and Milan, but I hastily added that I would be back soon, in two weeks’ time at most, perhaps a week. She did not cry. She trembled all over, and turned the colour of lead. She kept saying in a choked voice, ‘I know you won’t come back, I know you won’t come back.’ I promised, I swore that I wou
ld, but she continued to stare at me dry-eyed, and with the clear-sightedness of passion she insisted, ‘You won’t come back. I sense, here in my heart, that you won’t come back.’ I couldn’t get any other words out of her.
Instead of going to Brescia and Milan, I returned to Garbe. Remorse gnawed at my soul: there were so many times when I felt pricked by conscience to go running back to Idro, to Terese’s cottage. Then her wild, desperate embraces would scare me, and yet I couldn’t think of anything else but her. I didn’t know whether I loved her, although her image haunted me the whole time. Finally, after some four weeks, my conscience triumphed, and perhaps my curiosity. I went to Idro, making my way across poor meadows, clambering over rocks, and climbing up a dry riverbed, until I found myself in front of the cottage, on the other side of the path. I was hidden by trees and bushes.
The young girl was sitting in the doorway, not moving, unprotected from the rays of the sun. At first I did not recognize her: her complexion had turned dark red, while her matted hair fell over her forehead and shoulders in rattails; her face looked strangely long and thin, and her lower lip hung loosely; her lustreless eyes stared, unseeing, in front of her. I don’t know why, I felt that I was in the presence of a withered corpse. At that moment a man’s voice called out from inside the cottage, sounding so suppressed and sinister it seemed to come from a tomb: Terese, Terese. The girl gave no sign of having heard, and that dismal, harrowing voice kept calling: ‘Terese, Terese.’
Senso (And Other Stories) Page 16