XIII.
Now this individual was acting as a go-between, bringing Marcello’s epistles to Orsola’s house with his delivery of water from the Pescara, then descending with the pails empty and carrying her response in his pocket. Orsola when she heard him on the steps would turn pale; she sought pretexts for distancing Camilla, for being alone with the bringer of water and joy. Contacts were made rapidly by that subterfuge; between her and the go-between now passed those oblique looks intimating intentions, those fleeting signals by movements of facial muscles, those murmured monosyllables that are together the helpmeets of human cunning and which finally tie the intriguers to each other in common bondage. Little by little in Orsola’s love there penetrated something of the vileness of Lindoro; a kind of domestic familiarity was being established between the lover and the ambassador. If he arrived while Camilla was out, she pressed him with questions, accosted him so closely that he could feel her breath, sometimes inadvertently she placed her hand on his shoulder. Lindoro unleashed all curbs on his effusiveness, interpolating in it lowlife expressions, lewd reticence, sly intimations by a smile, ambiguous gestures, little explosions of the tongue and lips.
He played his game artfully, he knew exactly how to insinuate corruption into the soul of this Orsola, knew the way to slowly draw the prey to Marcello’s trap. And the virgin listened to him with eager attention, with a growing blaze in the depths of her eyes, with a mouth as dry as in an aftermath of some lascivious orgasm, listened, never interrupting him. Lindoro was instantly aware that he had aroused desire in the woman, and that figure leaning towards him and so visibly out of control suddenly woke the male in him, brought to life a temptation to pick the flower himself that he was readying for the delectation of another. But fear rising from the depths of his villainy kept him back and cooled his ardour.
And so at last Orsola had granted Marcello a meeting. They would come together in a remote house in the outskirts of that very suburb, at the bottom of a deserted lane where no one might spy on them; it would be on a Sunday in June when Camilla could be expected to remain long at church. Lindoro would keep watch.
In the days preceding the great event, Orsola was gripped by a virulent excitement, by a species of fever that at times caused her teeth to chatter and her face to flame, to feel a quivering at the roots of the down on the nape of her neck. She could not stay still, could not remain sitting, a frenzied need of movement possessed all her limbs. At lessons, in the middle of an even choiring of pupils, during the stylized, continuous repetition of those accursed syllables, a spirit of rebellion suddenly unsighted her as if she had been dazzled by a blinding light, and she would have gladly leapt up among those children, disordered all those carefully combed heads, overturned the blackboard, the lists, the benches, shouted something, broken things, forgot herself completely. Under Camilla’s cold and scrutinising eye, Orsola barely kept herself from fainting, from succumbing to the struggle, the bile, the immense interior effort to dissimulate. Then, when Camilla had gone out, she moved agitatedly about the rooms, shifted furniture, bit on a flower, drank at a draught a large glass of water, looked at herself in a mirror, looked out of the window, flung herself on the bed, vented in a thousand ways the restlessness, the vital exuberance of an aroused sensuality. All her body in the course of its late-fermenting virginity had become enriched and had filled out. Her face was not beautiful, it did not have the vigorous proportions, the splendid light-olive features of certain elements of the Abruzzo race, those pure lines of the nose and chin drawn Grecian on an ample Latin facial base. But she, unaware, beneath her graceless grey dress and its cascade of disordered folds had, hidden, a fine, delicate figure.
The first days of June had arrived: summer was surging up from spring like an aloe in a field of grass. Between the sea and the river all Pescara revelled in the salt breezes from the one and the fluvial coolness of the other: the town, it would seem, reaching out joyously with its arms to its natural extremities presented by the bitter waters and the sweet. The temperate days’ beguilements rose to Orsola’s window; shining insects struck the window-glass and bounced back like golden hail.
The virgin when alone gave way to her need to extend her limbs, to fling away her clothing, lie down and let her body gather through its skin that strange blandishment wavering in the air.
She began slowly to undress, with sluggish hands, delaying with her fingers around laces and buckles, listlessly shaking her arms out of sleeves, stopping half-way with her head bent back, her hair wavy and short, her head like a young boy’s. Slowly, wearily, with amorous tiredness, emerging from her shapeless clothing as from the residues of time an excavated statue is revealed, her body grew uncovered. Vile wool and linen lay in a heap at the feet of the maid thus purified, and from that heap she rose as if from a pedestal into the light, crowned by the circle of her arms above her head, while at its contact with the air a just-visible tremor passed faintly over her skin. In that momentary pose all the lines of her torso stretched and ascended to her encircled head; the slight curve of her belly, unmarred as yet by pregnancy, flattened; the ribs made an arcing design in relief. Then, suddenly, an insect entering the room, its winged buzzing and circling, intimating an interest in that nudity, dismayed Orsola; and there was now a scramble to defend herself from a dreaded sting, by serpentine movements, subcutaneous ripples of muscles, a fearful gathering-together of limbs, a twisting of faltering ankles that had never been strengthened in sports.
And become excited by movement and grown heated, she now had new cravings. Opening the door, she stopped, cautious, suspicious, and put out her head to look into the other room. It smelled empty, of that inanimate, sad abandonment that schools have without children. On square charts the great letters of the alphabet and groups of diphthongs and syllables dominated mutely the room’s space. Orsola went in, avoiding with her bare feet the junctures in the imperfectly paved floor, with the uncertain movements of one who walks barefoot for the first time on a not quite even surface, and of a woman who has stopped sensing about her legs the habitual impediment of a skirt. She went as far as the third room, where there was water. She dipped her hand and sprinkled some drops over herself, starting but submitting bravely to the cold lines drawn down her skin by the larger drops. She left the room, all bedewed, going now to the mirror of an old dresser.
The woodwork of the ancient piece still had here and there fragments of inlay. The mirror, forming the front of an attached higher cabinet, was also framed with gilt and variously-coloured fretwork, and had mounted on its top two headless putti. Drawn by an irresistible curiosity to see herself all naked, stretching herself on tiptoe Orsola, her figure still freshly beaded, rose in the dim reflection of the mirror as through a blue-green depth of seawater. She looked at herself, smiling widely; and that movement of her lips, and every excited muscle quavering the lines of her nude body, made the image in the mirror seem like some sunken statue discerned under trembling water. Then she began performing a kind of narcissistic mimicry, watching her gestures reproduced in the glass, opening her lips to display her teeth to herself, lifting her arms to uncover her armpits, presenting her curved spine and forced-back head to see herself from behind; until at last that spectacle provoked such a mad burst of hilarity that it shook all her body. Far away on a wall behind the woman the lists of alphabetical letters supplied in the mirror their distant background.
XIV.
Now it happened that at one of those moments Lindoro arrived at the top of the stairs with his pails and knocked on the door. Orsola cried:
‘Wait!’
And in furious haste, gathering her clothing from the floor, she dressed herself as best she could, then went to open the door.
It was six in the evening, a reflection of white light from the palazzo Brina had entered the room, the whole town of Pescara, anciently hospitable to swallows, sang.
The two stood in the middle of the room and talked of the imminent meeting. Lindoro with his usual loquaci
ty sought to win over the last hesitation of the maiden, for he had almost concluded the affair and only needed to lure it to an end. His artistry in persuasion enlivened his language, his eyes, his gestures. He had wine on his breath, and the recent passage of a razor over his face and temples had left red and violet spots. As he talked, he displayed a row of even and eminently healthy teeth, such a stronghold as often arms plebeian mouths, and the flashes of that singular feature appeared particularly active in the general turpitude of the man.
Orsola opposed her doubts and fears in an attempt to interrupt him; and in addition, as under the influence of wine the lewdness of the man’s insinuations grew gradually more impudent, she had begun to be apprehensive of the wretch. She had moved more and more towards a wall, until she felt it at her shoulder. In the gaps of her hastily donned clothing could be seen exposed portions of undergarments. Her throat was bare, she had not put on stockings, and her slippers hid only her toes.
At a point, involuntarily, by that blind instinct which tells a woman she is in the presence of a predatory male, she hastily with one hand began reattaching the loosened hooks and eyes, to fasten her dress below her throat and over her breast. That act which recognised the man in the go-between, that unthinking act excited in the abased Lindoro a burst of masculine vanity. Ah, then, he himself could cause disquiet in a woman! And he thrust himself on her; and with the courage of drink animating him at that instant, no check to his vileness restrained the brute.
XV.
Orsola remained for long unmoving on the tiles, in the clothing about her and evident in all her figure the chaos of a violated woman.
But when she heard Camilla’s step on the stairs, from the depth of her torpor she found strength to lift herself on an elbow, to quickly pass her hand over her dishevelled clothes and gather words to tell her sister that she had suddenly fainted in the middle of the room.
Outside, night was falling. Over the town, from the Adriatic, spread the wide, blue-grey freshness of a June dusk. Voices and laughter filled the square; down along the casement the relieved inhabitants sang their joy to the Sabbath. From the landing above, Teodora La Jece shouted:
‘Sister Camilla, sister Orsola, are you coming out?’
Orsola followed Camilla without a word, without thinking. She had difficulty returning to herself, a sort of imprisoning hebetude had taken control of her memory. Teodora filled her ears with the chatter of a perennially ill-disposed and petulant female.
‘Have you heard, sisters: Rachela Catena’s daughter got married?’
‘Oh?’
‘She’s picked up Giovannino Speranza, that redhead who’s got the tavern at the fishery – he comes down with fits, God save us.’
‘Oh.’
Did you know, Checchina Madrigale has run off again to Francavilla? You remember her, sisters: that fat one at Gloria’s house; dark as an Arab; with a hooked nose… that one.’
Teodora had caught up with Orsola and walked beside her. Camilla had dropped a little behind and followed them, head bowed, not listening to the sin of slandering one’s neighbour being committed by the weaver’s tongue. Along the roads, people enjoyed the fresh air; groups of women went by in linen dresses, their arms bare to the elbow.
‘Look sisters, Graziella Potavigna, what a rag she’s wearing! There’s Rosa Zazzetta, with one sergeant in front and another behind… Ah, so you haven’t heard?’
And here came a story about dissolute lovers, replete with salacious hints whispered almost point blank into the ear. To interdict her own thoughts, Orsola immersed herself fully in that nonsense, with something almost amounting to convulsed fury, not allowing herself to consider what she was replying, asking Teodora questions, goading her into further chattering, frightened of any breaks in the noise and filling them herself with bursts of laughter. She almost savoured, bitterly, hearing of others’ shame.
‘O there’s Don Paolo!’
An octogenarian, still straight and verdant as a cypress tree, was coming towards them, Don Paolo Seccia in all his handsome imperturbability.
‘Come with us, Don Paolo, we’re on an outing.’
Along the road the butchers had hung fresh carcases over doors, and the smell of bloody beef drifting from open abdomens assaulted the nostrils. Further up, long strands of macaroni hung like yarn from a loom, white in the light of a moon that looked down from the top of the mast above the barracks. Groups of soldiers shouted and chattered around women selling fruit.
‘Let’s go to the Flagstaff,’ Teodora said, letting Don Paolo and Camilla go on in front.
Orsola walked through those noises and pervading smells in a state of stupor. A vague dismay was at last beginning to move in her depths, to ascend and affect her mouth, twisting her smiles, obstructing her tongue and speech. And certain twinges of physical pain also troubled her and recalled her to the reality of things. She could no longer escape from herself, her voice died between her teeth, anguish grated her throat, the phantom of the enormous and irremediable sin rose before her. She felt being undone by the effort of staying on her feet, of walking, was blustered by the pitiless animation of a street-life available to all, so extroverted and uncaring.
‘And so, dear sister, that squint-eyed inadequacy of a husband didn’t know a thing…’ Teodora was re-tying the strands of some interrupted story.
They continued to the Flagstaff Bastion. The bridge of boats spanned the river on their left. On the right, the dark and sombre mole extending from the bastion stood out in the moonlight. The old iron cannon, their muzzles planted deep into the ground, stretched in a row before them linked by anchor chains. Massive iron anchors encumbered the sides of the descending stairs. Under awnings belonging to boats moored by the embankment sailors sat eating and smoking, the canvas above their heads illuminated by deck-lamps and glowing blood-red in contrast to the pallid moonlight. Large stains of some shore-effluent swayed slowly around the vessels’ prows.
‘…and he sent off to get Don Neréo Memma, can you imagine!’ continued Teodora implacably.
‘Oh, what’s that about Doctor Dulcamara?’ asked Don Paolo. On hearing the name, he had turned, and his honest, laughing mouth revealed still-good teeth.
Orsola heard nothing more; she was as pale as the face of the moon. At first, all that great luminous peace flooding down from the sky upon the river and all those drifts of marine odours floating on the fresh air had given her relief, because before that spectacle of harmony the cherished phantasies of love, still alive deep inside her, had risen again and the summits of sentiment had re-emerged to glow under the lunar rays. A moment later, though, she was overtaken by a confused tumult in which she heard her arteries beating with a deafening whisper that seemed to dilate and to fill in one instant all the space about her. The ground under her feet felt unsteady, in her unstable apprehension the edges of the water grew indefinite, the river invaded the road and water, water, water flooded everywhere. Then, suddenly, a flash like lightning sparked in her eyes, she saw a growing tremor of fatuous little flames that collapsed, mixed together, grew distant, sank and were lost, weaving away snakelike into the darkness. In that initial moment of light the figure of Marcello appeared and disappeared with the speed and mutability of a dream. Then her vertigo stopped. Orsola recognised the reflections as moonlight on the placid river. She continued walking, stupefied, weak and near-fainting.
‘Tired, eh? Yes, you’ve been ill and not used to this. Lean on me, sister, take my arm,’ Teodora was urging. ‘That daughter of Donna Mentina Ussoria, the youngest one, with the pock-marks, she was standing right in front of the shop, you know, in the little square…’
They had arrived at the police barracks. Great heaps of carob pods sent forth a smell like tanned hides, and the road there all scattered with discarded oyster shells crunched underfoot. Two boats, just offshore and evidently with the moon propitious, were silently dragging a net for eels. The sea’s vast, sonorous hum filled the silence. Salt waves whelming lighter undula
tions of fresh water announced that the party had arrived at the river’s mouth.
‘Daughters, we should turn back,’ said Don Paolo, picking up a carob pod from a nearby heap.
Orsola let herself be conducted. She felt tired from controlling the anxiety in her breathing, because now she was confronted inescapably by the horror of her condition, driving away all the longing and tumults of sentiment aroused by the voluptuous lunar night. She saw in a moment of stillness in her thoughts the figure of Lindoro rise and become alive, she felt once more being held and fumbled over by those rough hands, suffocated by that breath hot with wine and desire, violated on the tiled floor of the room. But in the event, she was now aware, she had not resisted, had not cried out, had made no effort to fight back; she had let herself be overcome, weakly, not understanding anything, feeling… what if not a great joy mixed with dolour engulfing her to the last fibre? At that memory, loathing and languor alternated in mastering her body, chilling her, suffocating her. Numbed, she looked straight ahead, pale, her eyes grown big and darker.
‘Just listen to the wine singing over there!’ said Don Paolo, halting.
In the boats, the sailors lay about on cordage, surrounded by the smoke of Dalmatian tobacco, and their choired song was of beautiful women.
XVI.
Camilla was kneeling on the prie-dieu in their bedroom, praying in a low voice, her head bent and palms held tightly together. When she finished she lit for the night the votive lamp before the Virgin Mary and surrendered herself to sleep, holding in her last thoughts and under crossed palms between the withered flowers of her breasts the sacred heart of Jesus. Her sleep was religious, each breath might have been such as met the proffered sacred wafer on its silver paten. In the vaulted ceiling above, shadows moved according to the oscillations of the little oil-fed flame. The sounds of timbers expanding, of woodworms gnawing and the mysterious voices of old furniture broke occasionally the silence of a calm night.
Pescara Tales Page 4