Arturo's Island

by Elsa Morante

  “Say, that piece of paper I left, did you tear it up?”

  It somewhat surprised me to hear the sound of my voice, after the illness, because of certain rough low notes that hadn’t been there before. Her voice, however, was the same.

  “Yes, I tore it up . . .”

  “Did you read it? It said: Secrecy! Silence!!! You didn’t say anything?”

  “No. I didn’t say anything.”

  “Be careful, no one should know the truth. They should think that I didn’t mean it, that it was an accident, that’s all.”

  “That’s what they thought . . . But Artú, what did you do?”

  “And with my father, you’ve got to keep quiet. But if he should find out something you have to make him believe the same as other people!”

  “Yes, well, him, who does he speak to? He won’t find out anything from anyone!”

  “But in any case you mustn’t ever tell him the truth. He, especially, mustn’t ever know!”

  “I won’t ever tell him the . . . truth. But Artú, what did you do? What did you do?”

  At this point I realized that to reward her for her complicity in the secret, I owed her some explanation. Of course, I didn’t, at any cost, want to reveal that the suicide was a fraud, and that she was the reason for it all! And on the spot I couldn’t think of anything better than to improvise another explanation, just to give her an answer. Imagination spontaneously came to my rescue; and when one of the many thoughts I’d had that fatal morning flashed back to me, I said thoughtfully:

  “Well, to you I’ll tell the truth: I wanted to go past the Pillars of Hercules!”

  “The . . . Pillars of Hercules!”

  I turned over toward the pillow, to hide a half smile that came to my lips. Yet my inspiration pleased me. I knew from experience that my stepmother had faith in every invention of mine, even if it was unbelievable; and appearing to be bold never fails, with women. So, boldly and naturally, I followed my inspiration, assuming a fairy-tale and meditative tone, to which my still slightly labored breathing added majesty.

  “I say the Pillars of Hercules,” I began, “to make a comparison. You know the Strait of Gibraltar? In ancient times that was a point fantastically distant, because in those days you always traveled in a medium-sized boat with oars. And the passage through the strait was between two massive walls of rock, which looked like two gigantic pillars placed at a border. Every ship that sailed between them was lost, with all its crew, down to the last man, and never heard of again. And it was said that as soon as you came out into the open on the other side you were struck by a cloud and sank to the bottom in a stormy whirlpool: because there ended the earthly world and a mysterious eternity began. That was the idea of the first ancient populations; but then they discovered that their idea was a myth, because outside the strait began the great Atlantic; and advancing they found the new West Indies, full of living people, and buildings, mines . . . In other words, if you want to know, my comparison was this: that the fate of eternal death, where everyone ends up, could be another of the many fables. And that if instead of waiting, and getting trapped by fear like a low coward, one decided to explore, one might find the refutation . . . And so I decided. And I did it.”

  When I started this hoax of a speech, I had the vague idea of carrying it to the ultimate and most brilliant concluding lie. That is, of going so far as to assert that my strange crusade had resulted in a grand discovery, such as Columbus, da Gama, and others would envy. That, as soon as I passed beyond the limit of the tomb, I had found myself, for example, in sight of a kind of Atlantis or something similar, and had disembarked in a thousand-year-old port, crowded with gorgeous girls and ladies, pirates and captains, amid marvelous machines of gold and massive copper, etc., but when I got to the words I decided, the will to undertake this second part of my story failed me. After so many hours of illness and silence I had already talked too much, and I felt tired: besides, my voice, with those peculiar harsh notes, sounded out of tune to me and almost foreign. From N., intently listening to me there on her couch, came no questions or comments; maybe, although she was a little stupid, she wasn’t so stupid, I thought, as to give credence to such lies; and she hadn’t believed me. I felt some shame for my inventions; but, on the other hand, I didn’t intend to deny them. And then, almost to take revenge on myself, and answer her mute uncertainties in the cruelest way, I suddenly came out with this unpremeditated conclusion:

  “Well, and so I found the confirmation . . . You know what there is, in death: there’s NOTHING. Only blackness, with no memory. That’s what there is!”

  I remembered again the horrible nausea of when I first awakened after falling; and I turned over in the bed with disgust. From the couch came a sigh; and I thought it was a sigh of bitterness. “Maybe,” I supposed, “she’s preparing to accuse me of blasphemy, and insist on speaking of eternal life and Paradise . . .” But I was wrong: it was a sigh of relief! and not of bitterness. I heard, after a short while, her voice: which, although still marked by anxiety, betrayed an undoubted sense of relief . . .

  “So,” she said, “now that you know . . .”

  She paused for an instant, and in a drawn-out tone I asked: “Know . . . what?” She drew another small sigh: this one, I would dare say, as if of perdition. Then, in a hurry, as if breaking, her voice concluded:

  “Now that you know, that there’s really nothing there, you won’t . . . try again! No?”

  I burst into a laugh so natural and joyous that in two seconds I felt perfectly healthy again. Truly, my luck was almost incredible: N., to safeguard my existence, went so far as to disavow her Paradise! This for me was even better than hitting Carmine. It was a truly extraordinary proof, beyond every hope. For a moment I was tempted to answer: “Well, who knows . . . ?” since an elementary shrewdness suggested that (if I wished, in the future, to take advantage of the success of my suicide) I should leave her in some doubt . . . But the memory of that terrible nausea still encumbered my mind. Death was too hateful: and the idea of treating its repulsive face as an accomplice (even if it was lying) filled me with horror. To pretend, on that subject, was impossible. “Oh, no, never again!” I said, with violent disgust.

  The Catastrophe

  That very evening, I wanted to get up for dinner. I was still a little unsteady on my legs, and I went down the stairs with some difficulty, but going up, after dinner, I already felt more solid; and the next morning I rose by myself, at dawn, full of impatience and hunger. My illness was over: only a kind of drunkenness remained, which gave my steps flair and a dancing sonority. The first sounds of day, echoing in the cool air outside, seemed to respond with a marvelous softness, as if they were the chords of an orchestra accompanying me. And when I came outside into the yard that lighthearted sensation was magnified, passing through the whole arc of the morning landscape! The great theater of my suicide seemed to welcome me with an exalted and gentle stupor, as if I had there performed a tragic pantomime, after which, healthy and gallant again, I reappeared on the stage. But then, as the sun rose, that famous pantomime seemed, gradually, to recede to an increasingly remote time, as if to a childhood of the world. Carmine’s joyful shrieks could be heard as he came down the stairs in her arms; and hearing them I didn’t even remember that, in prehistoric times, he had been my rival!

  I don’t know what sudden whim suggested, at that moment, that I hide behind the outside corner of the house. She must have been surprised to find the French door open and no one in the kitchen or the yard: and I heard her go back upstairs, leaving Carmine in the kitchen, surely to see if I really had gotten out of bed and gone out at that early hour. After a minute, she returned and came into the yard, uncertain. She didn’t think to look around the corner but went instead toward the descent to the beach, where she began to call without response: “Arturo! Artú!”

  She was wearing an old red dress, and was barefoot, out of a habit developed in caring for me in those days. In the yard, at that hour of
the morning, the shadow of the wall was still lengthening: the sun rising behind the house had reached only the last strip, where she was; and her bare legs, in that pink light, had an innocent color that oddly inspired me to laugh. She took a few steps looking here and there, with the worried air of a mother cat, her curls and clothes ruffled by the wind. Then she began to call me again from the top of the hill. With a sudden run I came up behind her and said: “I’m here.”

  In a start of surprise she turned happily and said reproachfully: “Where were you? You’re already out!”

  Then, perhaps confused by something aggressive in my behavior, she murmured, looking at me: “Artú, in these few days you’ve gotten taller . . .”

  At those words (whether, during my brief illness, I had actually grown a little, or whether, barefoot as she was, she seemed to me smaller than usual) I realized, for the first time, that I was now taller. That appeared to me the sign of an ancient, proud, and joyful power; and meanwhile she was moving imperceptibly away from me: as if to confess that her heart was pounding . . . All of a sudden I embraced her, kissing her on the mouth.

  Her lips had a cold, March taste; and my first sensation didn’t seem very different from what you’d feel nibbling a blade of grass, or tasting seawater. My thought was: “So now I, too, know what a kiss is like! That is my first kiss!” And that thought, mixed with a slightly curious, surprised, and faintly discontented pride, almost distracted me from her. Although she didn’t respond to my kiss, at first she didn’t even try to escape, confused and helplessly dazed. I heard her murmur between my lips, “Artú,” as if she didn’t recognize me, and, strangely, clutch me, as if to ask for help; while I, in a kind of bold affirmation, held her more tightly, pressing my lips to hers.

  Around her softened eyelids a weak and astonished pallor appeared. Her lips had gone from cold to burning. And then I felt on my mouth a taste of bloody sweetness that in an instant destroyed all thoughts in my mind. Suddenly my voice said, “Nunziata! Nunziatè!” but at that same moment she tore herself away with ferocious disobedience and began to say no with her head, in a tender, bewildered, feverish way.

  For a moment she stood like that, a step from me, as if, in a dream, not yet aware, she were questioning a mystery; but her curly head (which had never appeared of such angelic beauty) persisted in that fierce negation, and her eyes avoided me, full of guilt and fear. My old ambition had been realized: to instill fear, no less than my father! But the difference between the two fears (although still mysterious, because of my ignorance) didn’t escape me.

  Her fear of my father, which remained in my memory, was an anguish, and seemed to turn her limbs to ice; while her present fear (a strange and new kind, never seen in her) seemed to be contradicted in herself, and to burn in that contradiction. At the very moment that her desperate will rejected my kiss, her body (which suddenly made itself known, as if I had seen it naked) begged me, contrarily, to kiss her again. That quivering and savage prayer traversed all her limbs, from her pink feet to her nipples, which stuck out sharply under the dress. And in her frightened eyes that damp, marvelous gaze seeped in, tinted with a blue vapor, which I had glimpsed just before I kissed her.

  I cried again, “Nunziata! Nunziatè!” and was about to run toward her. But she, at her own name called by my voice, answered with a diabolical and brutal cry, full of dismay. Then, covering her face, she exclaimed with pitiless certainty, as if she were uttering a sacred oath:

  “No! No, my God!”

  And, giving me a look of glassy, in fact unnatural severity, she fled from me, as from an enemy.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Fatal Kiss

  I’m seeking a blessing

  Outside of myself.

  I don’t know who has it

  I don’t know what it is.

  —CHERUBINO, THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO

  The Fatal Kiss

  So, with that kiss, I had again ruined our friendship; and this time irreparably.

  After that fatal event, I had only to enter a room where she was (even if I didn’t say a word, even if I was there simply on my own business that had nothing to do with her)—it was enough for me to be in her presence!—and right away she lost all assurance and spontaneity. The natural pride of her behavior, which was combined so delicately with meekness, suddenly fell, overcome by a strange fear. That fear, I repeat, seemed of an unusual type, not the same she had displayed in the past, for example, in the presence of my father. If I had to invent an image for that new fear I could compare it only to a flame, which suddenly attacked her with its treacherous rosy light, and licked her limbs; and which she tried to flee in confused, reckless ways. A sudden blush, then her face turned pale; she walked around the kitchen, with trembling fingers picking up and putting down this or that object, to no purpose; then she sat down again near Carmine, and began singing her usual songs, in a timid, cold voice, as if she herself weren’t listening to the words. And those songs were a pretext, or even a small magic charm, to distract her from her own fear, and the burden of my presence. At times one would have said she was taking refuge behind Carmine’s basket, or holding him in her arms, to defend herself from a frightening intruder. And that was me, the intruder! But the strangest fact, which I still haven’t said, is this: that I myself, in her presence, was afraid!

  I say afraid because at the time I wouldn’t have known a truer word to describe my distress. Although I had read books and novels, even about love, I was really still a half-barbaric boy; and maybe, too, my heart, unknown to me, took advantage of my immaturity and ignorance, to protect me from the truth? If I think back now on my whole history with N., from the beginning, I learn that the heart, in its competition with conscience, is as capricious, shrewd, and imaginative as a master costume designer. To create its masks, it needs almost nothing; sometimes, to disguise things, it simply replaces one word with another . . . And in that bizarre game conscience wanders around like a stranger at a masked ball, amid the fumes of the wine.

  Since I’d kissed her, I couldn’t see her without a mortal pounding of my heart (which began as soon as the Casa dei Guaglioni came into view at the end of the street—closer at every step). Then, in her presence, that anxiety became anguish, a kind of bitterness at the injustice, and rage. The fact was this: that of all the innumerable minutes that made up our common past, I, seeing her, remembered only one: the one when I had kissed her. It seemed to me that my kiss had left a visitble mark on her whole body, ringing it with a kind of halo that was complicit, radiant, soft, sweet, and mine! And I wished to return there to take shelter, as if to my nest. As if she were now the enchanted prisoner of my kiss, and I had been summoned to share that loving prison with her. Now I couldn’t see her without feeling the vehement, irresistible need to embrace her and kiss her again. But how could I impose that necessary claim, in fact that right of mine, if she had become hostile to me precisely because of my kiss? And that single kiss of ours, which to me seemed a presence so luminous, for her had become, instead, a figure of threat and fear? I had the sensation that (so great was her fear) if I embraced and kissed her again I would kill her! One day, when she was cutting bread, and I was staring at her with the usual pounding heart, I met her gaze; and believed I read in her sweet, trembling face just these words: “Watch out, if you come near me I’ll stab myself with this knife and fall down dead here.”

  Thus her fear became also my fear. And she and I, together in the same room, moved in confusion, as if through a surging roar that collided with us, brought us near, and separated us, forbidding us ever to meet. After a while, I went out without saying a word, incapable of expressing my bitter anguish and my revolt. Her rejection of my kisses seemed to me nothing other than a denial of our friendship and relationship: a condemnation, which would relegate me unjustly to solitude.

  That injustice of which I accused my stepmother nevertheless shackled my will with a grave power and a mysterious prestige; but no scruple or awareness of guilt visited my mind. In
my feelings toward her I saw no prohibition. And not even in my kiss! Kissing her, I had obeyed an impulse of happiness and glory, carefree and without remorse. Among my Absolute Certainties there was none that said: It’s a crime to kiss friends and relatives.

  Of course, I wasn’t ignorant of the fact that not all kisses are the same. I had read, for example, the canto of Paolo and Francesca. Not to mention the dozens of songs I knew, which all talked about caresses and kisses of love. Also, I had had occasion, down at the port, to look at some illustrated movie magazines, with photographs of couples kissing (from the captions, I even learned the names of some of the stars) . . . But until then I had been too used to being considered a boy to put myself suddenly in the place of Paolo, the damned soul of a circle of Hell, or of the hero Clark Gable (who, among other things, was antipathetic to me, because he had a squashed face and, besides, was dark-haired). The love extolled in songs, books, and illustrated magazines remained a remote and mythical thing to me, outside of real life. As we know, the only woman in my thoughts had always been my mother: and if I had dreamed of kisses, they had always been the holy kisses of a mother for her son.

  So now that N., precisely because of her fear of me, did me the greatest honor, the honor I had always longed for (treating me like a man, and not like a boy), I was unable to acknowledge that honor!

  Forbidden

  Yes! Now I’m good at asking myself if it wasn’t perhaps the cunning of my heart, which pretended not to recognize the obvious evidence, in order to exempt me from punishment. Now I can speculate and investigate better than a philosopher. And I say and I suppose: maybe, if I had manfully interrogated my conscience (which was not completely barbaric, however immature), it would have responded: “Don’t play tricks! You’re a liar and a seducer.” But in the clear calm days of that Procidan spring a kind of sparkling cloud had descended around me, infused with new, strange lights and obscure shapes, in which I lived enveloped like an outlaw, so I didn’t even remember that conscience existed, and at times was no longer even aware of being myself.