Pleasure

by Gabriele D'annunzio

  The third movement, executed with impeccable style, ended amid applause. Andrea stood up and approached Elena.

  —Oh, Ugenta, where have you been until now? the Princess of Ferentino asked him. —Au pays du Tendre?5

  —And that unknown woman, who’s she? Elena said to him, lightly, smelling a bunch of violets she had pulled out of her marten-fur muff.

  —She’s a great friend of my cousin’s: Donna Maria Ferres y Capdevila, wife of the new minister of Guatemala, Andrea answered, smoothly. —A lovely creature, very refined. She was at Francesca’s, at Schifanoja, in September.

  —And Francesca? Elena interrupted. —Don’t you know when she’ll be back?

  —I’ve heard from her recently, from San Remo. Ferdinando is getting better. But I’m afraid she’ll have to stay there for another month, maybe longer.

  —What a pity!

  The quartet was entering its last movement, which was very brief. Elena and the Princess of Ferentino had occupied two chairs at the back, along the wall, beneath the dim mirror that reflected the gloomy hall. Elena listened, her head bowed, running the ends of a shining marten-fur boa through her hands.

  —Come with us, she said to Sperelli, when the concert had ended.

  Climbing into the carriage after the Princess of Ferentino, she said:

  —Come, get in. We’ll drop Eva off at Palazzo Fiano. I’ll let you off wherever you like.

  —Thanks.

  Sperelli accepted. Driving out onto the Corso, the carriage was forced to proceed very slowly because the entire road was cluttered with rioting people. Much noise came from Piazza di Montecitorio and from Piazza Colonna, and it spread like a din made by waves, growing, receding, rising again, mingled with the blaring of military trumpets. The sedition was growing, in the ashen, cold evening; the horror of the distant massacre was making the masses yell; men were running, waving great bundles of paper, cutting through the crowd; above the racket, the name “Africa” could distinctly be heard.

  —All for four hundred brutes, who died brutally! Andrea murmured, drawing back after having looked out of the window.

  —But what are you saying? exclaimed the Princess of Ferentino.

  On the corner of Palazzo Chigi, the mayhem resembled a scuffle. The carriage was forced to come to a halt. Elena leaned to look out; her face, out of the shadow, was lit up in the reflection of the headlamp and in the twilight, she appeared to have an almost funereal pallor, a pallor that was frozen and slightly blue, which awoke in Andrea the vague memory of a head he had once seen—he could not say when or where—in a gallery, in a chapel.

  —Here we are, said the princess, since the carriage had finally reached Palazzo Fiano. —Good-bye, then. See you tonight at the Angelieris’. Good-bye, Ugenta. Will you come and have lunch at my place tomorrow? Elena and the Viti woman and my cousin will be there, too.

  —At what time?

  —Half past twelve.

  —All right. Thank you.

  The princess dismounted from the carriage. The servant awaited an order.

  —Where do you want me to take you? Elena asked Sperelli, who had already sat down next to her, in the place her friend had vacated.

  —Far, far away . . .6

  —Come on, tell me: to your house?

  And without waiting for an answer, she ordered:

  —Trinità de’ Monti, Palazzo Zuccari.

  The servant closed the door. The carriage moved forward at a trot and turned into Via Frattina, leaving behind it the crowd, the shouts, the noise.

  —Oh, Elena, after so long . . . Andrea burst out, leaning down to look at the desired woman, who had withdrawn into the shadows at the far end, as if avoiding any contact.

  The brightness of a shopwindow crossed the shadow, in passing; and he saw that Elena was smiling, very pale, an alluring smile.

  Still smiling in this way, she took the long marten-fur boa from her neck with an agile gesture and threw it around his neck like a lasso. It seemed that she was doing it as a game. But with that soft noose, scented with the same perfume that Andrea had smelled in the blue fox fur, she drew Andrea toward her; and offered him her lips, without speaking.

  Both their mouths remembered the old mingling, those terrible and sweet conjunctions that lasted until they were short of breath and that gave their hearts an illusory sensation, as of a soft, dewy fruit dissolving. To make it last longer, they held their breaths. From Via dei Due Macelli,7 the carriage rode up Via del Tritone,8 turned into Via Sistina, and stopped in front of Palazzo Zuccari.

  Rapidly, Elena pushed the young man away. She said to him, her voice a little husky:

  —Go, Andrea.

  —When will you come?

  —Who knows!

  The servant opened the door. Andrea descended. The carriage turned again, to drive back along Via Sistina. Andrea, still all aquiver, with his eyes still floating in a cloudy vapor, watched to see if Elena’s face appeared from behind the glass; but he saw nothing. The carriage drove away.

  Climbing the stairs again, he thought: At last, she is coming around! In his head, there was still something like a fog of euphoria; in his mouth, there was still the taste of the kiss; in his eyes, there was still the flash of the smile with which Elena had thrown that sort of shining, sweet-smelling snake around his neck. And Donna Maria? Most certainly, he owed this unexpected lust to the Sienese woman. Without any doubt, at the base of Elena’s strange and fantastic act, there was the stirring of jealousy. Fearing, perhaps, that he would escape her, she had wanted to bind him, to entice him, to once again ignite the thirst in him. Does she love me? Love me not? And what did it matter to him, to know it? What good did it do him? By now the enchantment was broken. No miracle could ever resuscitate even a small part of the extinct happiness. It was better that he occupy himself with flesh that was still divine.

  He considered the affair for a long time, with a sense of smugness. He was particularly satisfied with the elegant and unusual manner with which Elena had added spice to her whim. And the image of the boa aroused the image of Donna Maria’s braid, and aroused a flurry of all the amorous dreams that he had dreamed about that vast virgin mass of hair, which once had made schoolgirls at the Florentine convent swoon with love. Again, he mingled the two desires; he cherished the duplicity of pleasure; he could faintly perceive the third ideal Lover.

  He was entering into a reflective frame of mind. While dressing for dinner, he thought:—Yesterday, there was a great scene of passion, almost with tears; today a small mute scene of sensuality. And yesterday it seemed to me that my feeling was sincere, just as my sensation before that was sincere. Moreover, on this very day, an hour before Elena’s kiss, I had had another lyrical moment at the side of Donna Maria. Of all this, no trace remains. Tomorrow, certainly, I will begin again. I am chameleonic, chimeric, incoherent, inconsistent. Any effort I make to achieve unity will always be in vain. I must resign myself, by now. My law may be found in one word: NUNC.9 May the will of the law be done.

  He laughed at himself. And from that moment, the new phase of his moral destitution began.

  Without any regard, or any reserve, or any remorse, he threw himself completely into bringing his unwholesome imaginings into being. In order to induce Maria Ferres to surrender herself to him, he used the most subtle ploys, the most delicate entanglements, deceiving her in matters of the soul, in spirituality, in ideality, in the intimate life of the heart. In order to proceed with equal rapidity in the acquisition of his new lover, and the reacquisition of the old one, in order to benefit from every situation in each of his endeavors, he encountered a variety of setbacks, inconveniences, bizarre circumstances; and in order to extricate himself from these, he resorted to a variety of lies, contrivances, unkind expedients, degrading subterfuges, despicable tricks. Donna Maria’s goodness, her faith, her candor, did not subdue him. He had placed the verse
of a psalm at the basis of his seduction: “Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.”10 The poor creature believed she was saving a soul, redeeming an intelligence, purifying a tainted man with her purity; she still deeply believed the unforgettable words she had heard in the park, in that Epiphany of Love, in the presence of the sea, under those florid trees. And this faith of hers restored her and uplifted her in the midst of the Christian battles that constantly were being fought in her conscience; it freed her from suspicion and it intoxicated her with a kind of lustful mysticism in which she poured out rich quantities of tenderness, the whole wave of her concentrated languor, the sweetest flower of her life.

  For the first time, perhaps, Andrea Sperelli found himself in the face of a real passion; for the first time, he found himself before one of those great, feminine, extremely rare sentiments that illuminate the gray and changeable sky of human loves with a beautiful, terrible flash. He himself was grooming it. He became the ruthless executioner of himself and of the poor creature.

  Every day there was a deception, a base act.

  On Thursday, February 3, according to the agreement they had made at the concert, he met her in Piazza di Spagna in front of an exhibition of antique gold jewelry, with Delfina. As soon as she heard his greeting, she turned around; and a flame tinged her paleness. Together they examined the eighteenth-century jewels, the buckles and tiaras made of rhinestone, the enameled brooches and watches, the snuffboxes made of gold, ivory, tortoiseshell; all those trifles from a bygone century, which in that clear morning light created a harmonious sumptuousness. All about, flower sellers were offering up for sale their baskets of yellow and white jonquils, double violets, long almond-tree branches. A breath of spring pervaded the air. The slender Column of the Immaculate Conception rose up to the sun, like a flower stalk, with the Rosa mystica11 at its summit; the Barcaccia Fountain was laden with diamonds; the Trinità widened its flights of stairs in delight toward the church of Carlo VIII, rising up with its two towers into a blue sky ennobled by clouds, an ancient sky reminiscent of Piranesi.12

  —How marvelous! Donna Maria exclaimed. —You are right to be so in love with Rome.

  —Oh, you don’t know it yet! Andrea said to her. —I would like to be your dux . . .13

  She smiled.

  —. . . to carry out beside you, this spring, a sentimental Virgilian expedition.14

  She was smiling, her entire figure appearing less sad, less serious. Her morning apparel had a sober elegance, but revealed the stylish refinement of one whose tastes had been educated through art, through the delicacy of color. Her crossover jacket, in the form of a shawl, was of a gray fabric that tended slightly toward green; and a strip of otter fur decorated its edges; and the fur was embroidered with silken cord. And the jacket parted over an undercoat, also of otter fur. The outfit was cut superbly, and, together with the combination of the two tones, that indescribable gray and that opulent tawny shade, it was a delight to behold.

  She asked:

  —Where were you yesterday evening?

  —I left the concert a few minutes after you. I went home; and I stayed there, because it seemed to me that your spirit was present. I reflected a lot. Did you not feel my thoughts?

  —No, I did not feel them. My evening was gloomy, I don’t know why. It seemed that I was so alone!

  The Countess of Lùcoli passed by in a dogcart, driving a roan. Giulia Moceto walked by, accompanied by Giulio Musèllaro. Donna Isotta Cellesi went by.

  Andrea greeted each of them. Donna Maria asked him the names of the ladies: Giulia Moceto’s was not new to her. She remembered the day when it was spoken by Francesca, in front of the archangel Michael painted by Perugino,15 when Andrea was paging through his drawings in the sitting room at Schifanoja; and she watched her beloved’s ex-lover as she walked along. She was gripped by anxiety. Everything that tied Andrea to his previous life cast a shadow over her. She would have liked that life, unknown to her, never to have taken place; she would have liked to delete it completely from the memory of the one who had immersed himself in it with such avidness, and had emerged from it with so much fatigue, so much loss, so many ills. “To live uniquely in you and for you, without any tomorrow, without any yesterday, without any other bond, without any other preference, out of the world . . .” These were his words. Oh dream!

  And Andrea was clutched by a different anxiety. Time was drawing near for the lunch to which he had been invited by the Princess of Ferentino.

  —Where are you heading? he asked her.

  —Delfina and I had tea and sandwiches at the Caffè Nazzarri,16 with the intention of enjoying the sun. We’re going up the Pincio and maybe we will visit Villa Medici. If you’d like to accompany us . . .

  He wavered, painfully. The Pincio, Villa Medici, on a February afternoon, with her! But he could not miss the lunch invitation; and he was also tormented by the curiosity of encountering Elena after the episode of the evening before, since, although he had gone to the Angelieri house, she had not made an appearance. He said, with a desolate air:

  —How unfortunate! I need to be at a luncheon, in a quarter of an hour. I accepted the invitation last week. But if I had known, I would have been able to free myself of any obligation. What a pity!

  —Go; don’t waste time. Don’t keep them waiting . . .

  He looked at his watch.

  —I can still walk a little farther with you.

  —Mommy—Delfina begged—let’s go up the stairs. I went up them yesterday with Miss Dorothy. If you could only see!

  As they were in the vicinity of Via del Babuino, they turned in order to cross the square. A boy followed them, persistently trying to sell them a large almond-tree branch, which Andrea bought and gave to Delfina. Blond ladies were emerging from hotels carrying red Baedeker books; heavy two-horsed carriages rode past each other, with metallic glints on their old-fashioned trimmings; flower sellers were lifting their full baskets toward foreign ladies and calling out to them, vying with one another for trade.

  —Promise me—Andrea said to Donna Maria, placing his foot on the first step—promise me that you won’t go to Villa Medici without me. Please don’t go today; I beseech you.

  She appeared preoccupied by a sad thought. She said:

  —I won’t go.

  —Thank you.

  The flight of stairs ahead of them rose up in triumph, emanating gentle warmth from the sun-heated stone; and the stone was the color of ancient silverware, similar to that of the fountains at Schifanoja. Delfina ran ahead of them, holding her flowered branch, and as she ran, some fragile rose-colored petals took off like butterflies in the breeze she generated.

  Acute regret pierced the young man’s heart. All the sweet pleasures of a sentimental walk along Medicean pathways appeared to him, beneath the mute boxwoods, in that early hour of the afternoon.

  —Whose house are you going to?—Donna Maria asked him after a pause.

  —To the old Princess Alberoni, answered Andrea. —A Catholic table.

  He lied once more, because instinct warned him that perhaps the name of the Princess of Ferentino would arouse some suspicions in Donna Maria.

  —Good-bye, then, she added, holding her hand out to him.

  —No; I’ll come as far as the square. My carriage is waiting for me there. Look: that is my house.

  He pointed out Palazzo Zuccari, the buen retiro, drenched in sunlight and resembling a strange greenhouse that has become opaque and dark with time.

  Donna Maria looked at it.

  —Now that you know where it is, won’t you—sometime . . . in spirit?

  —In spirit, always.

  —Won’t I see you before Saturday evening?

  —It will be difficult.

  They said good-bye. With Delfina, she began walking up the tree-lined avenue. He mounted his carriage and drove away do
wn Via Gregoriana.

  He arrived at the Ferentino house a few minutes late. He apologized. Elena was there with her husband.

  Lunch was served in a cheerful room decorated with tapestries from the Barberini factory,17 which depicted Bambocciata18 scenes in the style of Pieter van Laer. In the midst of that lovely grotesque seventeenth-century setting, a blaze of marvelous backbiting began to scintillate and crackle. All three women had a gay and ready wit. Barbarella Viti was laughing her strong masculine laugh, throwing back her lovely boyish head slightly; and her black eyes met and mingled too often with the green eyes of the princess. Elena was making witticisms with extraordinary vivacity; and she seemed so distant, so estranged, so indifferent to Andrea, that he almost feared: Was last night a dream? Ludovico Barbarisi and the Prince of Ferentino were indulging the ladies. The Marquis of Mount Edgcumbe was taking care to bore his young friend asking him for news about the impending auctions and talking to him about a very rare edition of Apuleius’s novel, Metamorphoses, that he had acquired a few days earlier for 1,520 lire:—ROMA, 1469, in folio.—Every now and then he interrupted himself to follow one of Barbarella’s gestures; and the look of a maniac came into his eyes, and a singular tremor began in his odious hands.