Now he pretended to believe that this bond was forged by the unshakable duty assumed toward this woman who had lost her status and reputation for him, driven out by her husband while still blameless. Without a doubt he felt this responsibility; yet deep down he knew that it was not the only reason for his enslavement. Then what was the real reason? Perhaps the pity that he, sound of mind, and with a clear conscience that he had never given her any reason for jealousy, had to feel for that woman of doubtful mental stability? Oh, yes, the pity was real, just as the sense of duty was real. But more than a reason for his enslavement, wasn’t this pity perhaps an excuse, a noble excuse, to camouflage the burning need that dragged him back to that woman after a month or two of separation, during which time he had even pretended to believe that, at his age, after having given his best to her for so many years, he would no longer be able to take up life with any other woman? These considerations also were true, yes, very well founded, these considerations, but, weighing them on the scales buried in his innermost consciousness, he knew that his age and dignity were also excuses and not reasons. In fact, if another woman, unsought, had had the power to attract him, liberating him from his subjection to the one who had inspired such a deep and invincible loathing of every other embrace and had kept him in such a reclusive state that not only could he have no contact with another woman, but he couldn’t even think about it–then, yes, he certainly would have cared nothing about age, dignity, duty, pity, or anything else. So it came down to that–the real reason for his enslavement was this reclusive timidity brought about by Livia Frezzi’s bewitching power.
No one was able to understand how or why that woman had been able to exercise such a continuous, powerful fascination over Gueli, or rather such a fatal spell. Granted, Livia Frezzi was a beautiful woman, but her rigid bearing, her severe, hostile, incurious expression, her almost ostentatious disregard for any common courtesy, detracted from any natural grace and charm. It seemed, or rather it was obvious, that everything she did was calculated to displease. This was precisely the source of her fascination; and the only one who could understand it was the only one she wanted to please.
That which other beautiful women give to a man in private is so little compared to what they lavish on other men all day long, and this little is given with the same grace and pleasantries they shower on so many others; therefore these others, though not sharing in that intimacy, can easily imagine it. Thus, just by thinking about it, the joy of possessing those women vanishes.
Livia Frezzi had given Maurizio Gueli the joy of sole and total possession. No one could know her or imagine her the way he knew and saw her in moments of abandon. She belonged entirely to one man–was unapproachable to all men except one.
However, at the same time she wanted this one man to be everything for her: wrapped up in her forever, exclusively hers, not just sensually, but with his heart and mind–even his eyes. To look at another woman, even without the slightest ulterior motive, was almost a crime as far as she was concerned. She didn’t look at anyone, ever. Going beyond the bounds of the coolest courtesy was a crime. Displiceas aliis, sic ego tutus ero.2
Jealousy? What jealousy! Seriousness of purpose demanded such behavior, just as honesty did. She was serious and honest, not jealous. Everyone should behave as she did.
To make her happy, he had to force himself to live only for her, excluding himself entirely from the company of others. And even this wasn’t enough: if the others, though ignored and unseen–or perhaps because of it–showed the slightest interest or curiosity in a life so set apart, for a demeanor so unfriendly and haughty, she would be critical just of him, as if it were his fault when other people paid any kind of attention to him.
Maurizio Gueli was helpless to prevent this. No matter what he did, he was so well known that he could not pass unnoticed. The most he could do was not look, but how could he keep others from looking at him? He received invitations, letters, tributes from everywhere. He could never accept any of those invitations, and he never responded to the letters and tributes; but he also had to give an accounting to her of everything he received.
She realized that all this interest and curiosity was due to his fame as a writer; however, it was at this fame and at literature itself that her anger was most fiercely aimed, armed with bristling mockery. She harbored the most morbid and bitter hatred for it.
Livia Frezzi was firmly convinced that the literary profession was not a serious or honest business; that it was indeed the most ridiculous and dishonest of professions, as it consisted of always being in the limelight, trading on one’s vanity, begging for fatuous gratifications, yearning for the praise and delight of others. According to the way she saw it, only a foolish woman could take pride in the fame of the man she lived with, or would feel happy thinking that with all the admired and desired women available this man belonged, or was said to belong, to her alone. How could this man belong to just one woman if he wanted to please all men and women, if day and night he knocked himself out to be praised and admired, mixing with people to get as much pleasure as he could, continually calling attention to himself so he would be pointed out and talked about? If he continually exposed himself to temptation? With that irresistible desire to please others, how could he possibly resist those temptations?
Many times–in vain–Gueli had tried to convince her that a true artist (as he was or at least thought himself to be) didn’t go looking for silly satisfactions, nor did he yearn to receive pleasure from others, that he was not a clown bent on entertaining people and being admired by women, and that he only enjoyed the praise of the select few he recognized as capable of understanding him. However, overcome with enthusiasm for his defense, he often lost his case by just one point. As, for example, if he happened to add, as a general consideration, that it was only human (and anyway, there was nothing wrong with it) for anyone–not just a writer–to feel a certain satisfaction when his work was well received and valued by other people, whatever it might be. Oh, yes, other people! Other people! Other people! She had never had such a thought! He saw nothing wrong with this? Well, just what was wrongdoing, according to him? Who could ever see clearly into a literary man’s conscience, a man whose profession was a continual game of make-believe? Pretending, always pretending, to give the appearance of reality to unreal things! And all that austerity was undoubtedly a facade, all that dignified honesty he affected. Who knows how many skipped heartbeats and inner quaking thrills, shivers of excitement there were because of a mysterious glance, a tiny little laugh from a woman passing on the street! Age? Age has nothing to do with it! Does the heart of a literary man grow older? The older he gets, the more ridiculous he becomes.
At her incessant scorn and fierce denigration, Maurizio Gueli felt his guts twist and his heart turn over. Because at the same time he sensed the awful ridiculousness of his tragedy: to be the victim of a real madness, to suffer martyrdom for imaginary wrongs, for what were not wrongs at all and which, besides, he had been careful not to commit, even at the cost of seeming impolite, proud, and bad-tempered, in order not to arouse her slightest suspicion. Nevertheless it seemed that he committed them unknowingly, who knows when or where.
Obviously he was two people: one for himself, another for her. And this other person that she saw, slyly catching every look, every smile, every gesture, the sound of his voice itself, not just the meaning of his words, twisting and falsifying everything about him, in her own eyes this person came to life as a miserable phantom, the only one she knew. Gueli himself no longer existed. He existed only for the unworthy, inhuman torment of seeing himself living in that phantom, and only in it; he racked his brains without success for ways to destroy it. She no longer believed in him; she saw him only as that phantom and, as was reasonable, showed her hate and scorn for it.
So alive was this imaginary figure she had created, assuming such a solid, obvious substance in her sick imagination, that he could almost see it living his life, but undeservedly distorted. It had his thoughts,
but they were twisted. It had his every expression, word, every gesture. It was so alive for him that he almost reached the point of doubting himself, of thinking perhaps he really was that man. And by now he was so conscious of the alteration that his slightest movement would have undergone immediate appropriation by that other self, so that he almost seemed to be living with two souls, to be thinking with two heads at the same time, in one sense for himself and in another sense for that other being.
“Now, then,” he would suddenly realize, “if I say such and such, my words will assume another meaning for her.”
He was never wrong, because he knew perfectly well that the other self that lived in her and for her was as alive as he himself was alive. Perhaps it was even more alive, because whereas he lived only to suffer, that other lived in her mind to enjoy itself, to deceive, to pretend, to do all sorts of things, each more despicable than the other. He repressed every action, stifled even the most innocent desires, forbade himself everything, even smiling at a vision of art that might pass through his mind, even speaking or looking. But the other one (who knows how or when) found a way, with the insane inconsistency of an illusory phantom, to escape from that jail and run around the world making all kinds of trouble.
Maurizio Gueli could do no more than he already had done to keep the peace: he had retired from life and had even renounced his art, not writing a line in more than ten years. But his sacrifice had been made for nothing. She couldn’t appreciate it. To her, art was a dishonest game, no activity for a responsible man. She hadn’t read even one page of his books, and she bragged about it. She was totally unaware of his mind’s life or his finer attributes. In him she only saw the man, a man so violated, so excluded from any other life, so deprived of any other satisfaction–because of all his renunciations, deprivations, and sacrifices–he was forced to seek in her that single compensation, that single outlet she alone could give. And this was the reason for that unhappy concept she had formed of him, that phantom that she had created out of him and that only she saw, not realizing in the least that he was that way just for her, because it was the only way he had found to be with her. Nor could Gueli point this out to her for fear of offending her by his too meticulous honesty. Often besieged and made indignant by her own continual suspicions, she denied him even that compensation; and then he would become even more exasperated at the cowardice of his slavery. At other times, when she became more pliable and he took advantage of it, a greater irritation would seize him, a shiver of indignation would shake him from the grim weariness of satiated sensual pleasure. He would see at what cost he obtained those sensual satisfactions from a woman who opposed all sensuality, and who brutalized him besides, not allowing him to live the life of the mind, and who condemned him to the perversity of that lascivious union. And if at those times she was so obtuse as to begin her mockery again, a fierce rebellion would break out.
It was precisely in these moments of weariness that the temporary separations would take place. Either he would go to Monteporzia and she would remain in Rome, or the other way around, both of them very resolved never to get back together again. But in Rome or away from it, he always provided for her, as she had no other means of support. Even though no longer as wealthy as his father had left him (he had been a senior partner in one of the biggest transoceanic travel agencies), Maurizio Gueli was still very well off.
Nevertheless, as soon as he was alone he felt disoriented in the life he had been excluded from for such a long time. He immediately felt his lack of roots and could in no way replant them, and not just because of his age. The idea that others had formed of him after so many years of Spartan seclusion weighed on him heavily, and vigilantly affected his behavior and habitual reserve. It condemned him to be what others believed and wanted him to be. The surprise he read in so many faces whenever he appeared in a place unusual for him, the sight of other people accustomed to living freely, and the notice covertly taken of his embarrassment and discomfort in facing the insolence of those fortunate people who never had to give an accounting of their time and actions, bothered him, disheartened and exasperated him. And he observed something else with a shudder, something downright monstrous: as soon as he was alone, he seemed to discover the other him in himself, truly alive in every step, every glance, every smile, every gesture, the one who lived in Livia Frezzi’s morbid imagination, that miserable, detested phantom making fun of him, saying:
“Look at you. Now you go where you want, now you look where you please, even at women. Now you smile and move and you think you are doing it innocently? Don’t you know that all of this is wicked, wicked, wicked? If she only knew! If she could see you now! You who have always denied it, you who have always told her you didn’t want to go anywhere, to any public gathering, you didn’t want to look at women, to smile… . But even if you don’t do it, she’ll always think you did. Well, then, you might as well do it. Go ahead and do it. It’s all the same!”
No, he couldn’t do it anymore; he didn’t know how, he felt blocked, exasperated, by the unfairness of that woman’s judgment. He saw the wrong in what he did–not for itself, but for her because she had for so many years accustomed him to thinking it wrong, things he had attributed to that other him, who, according to her, did it continually, even when he didn’t do it, even when he forbade himself to do it in order to keep peace, as though it were truly wrong.
All this profusion of private admonitions generated such disgust and revulsion, such spiteful cowardice, and such dull, sour, black sadness that he immediately withdrew from the contact and sight of others and, again excluded and insignificant, terribly alone, he fell into thinking that his misery was both tragic and ridiculous, with no hope of relief. He didn’t have the strength to lose himself in his work, the only thing that could save him. And then all those pretenses he used to rationalize his slavery would begin to resurface. They would come forward primarily because of instinctive need, made more and more urgent by his still strong virility, by the bewitching memory of her embraces.
And he would return to his chains.
2
He was just on the point of returning to her when Giustino Boggiolo came to invite him to their home, where Silvia–according to him–was anxiously waiting.
Maurizio Gueli lived in an old building on Via Ripetta, with a view of the river that he remembered flowing along its natural, steep banks, between oak trees; he also remembered the old wooden bridge thundering with every passing vehicle and, near the house, the wide stairs of the port and the Sicilian fishing boats full of wine that came to moor, and the songs that rose in the evenings from the floating taverns with lowered sails, the reflections of their long, red lights snaking through the black water. Now the steps and the wooden bridge, the natural banks, and those majestic oaks had disappeared: a large new neighborhood stood there alongside the river enclosed within gray embankments. And like the river within those embankments, like the area itself with those straight, long streets, still unhallowed by time, over twenty years his life had become constricted, colorless, impoverished, and turbid.
Through the two large windows of his spartan study, which seemed like a room in a library, without pictures or artifacts, the walls covered with tall bookshelves crammed with books, came the last dazzling violet of twilight, flaming behind the cypresses on Monte Mario.
Sunk into a large leather armchair next to the large, heavy old desk, Maurizio Gueli frowned glumly for some time as he studied the little man who nearly evaporated before him in the violet splendor, the little man who came so smiling and confident to hound the destiny of two lives.
Already on two occasions Gueli had shown Silvia Roncella his esteem and his interest in her work and talent, by participating in the banquet in her honor soon after her arrival in Rome and going to greet her at the station after the success of her play. He had written to her the first time at Cargiore and had visited her recently at her home on Via Plinio. All these displays of esteem and interest had to take place durin
g one separation or another from Livia Frezzi, and because of these expressions of regard he had more strongly felt his anxiety and impression of transgression and wrongdoing, for he had glimpsed in that young woman’s spirit (so like his, though still wild and uncultivated), something that could free him from Livia Frezzi’s influence. That is, if the wide age difference and her sense of duty–if not toward that unworthy husband, then certainly toward her son–hadn’t made him consider it a crime just to think about it. And yet, in that letter sent to her at Cargiore, he had allowed himself to say more than he should have, and recently, during his visit to her home, he had let her know more than he had said. He had read in her eyes the same horror that he had of his own situation, along with the same terror of getting away from it, and he had admired the strength with which she had suddenly managed to get a hold of herself in his presence, almost turning him out. Should he now believe what her husband was saying–that she was anxiously waiting for him? That meant, without a doubt, that she had made a violent, desperate resolution that she couldn’t go back on. And had she really sent her husband to invite him? No. That was too out of character. The invitation undoubtedly followed the note of congratulations that he had written after reading her story in Vita Italiana; and that impatience to see him was perhaps her husband’s invention.
Maurizio Gueli didn’t want to admit it, but he clearly recognized that he had been the initiator, twice: the first time with his visit and then with that note. And as she had dismissed the first encouragement, almost offending him, it was natural that now, after the note, she would invite him.
Should he go? He could refuse. He could make up an excuse. Oh, the continuous violence that gripped his life for twenty years and the continuous exasperation of his soul urged him, as soon as he was left on his own, to commit excessive, heedless acts, to compromise–and to compromise himself.
In fact, what was for him an excessive and heedless act, a serious compromise, would have been an innocuous, a very ordinary and inconsequential act for anyone else: a visit, a note of congratulations. He had to consider them crimes and, as such, to keep them deep in the monstrous conscience that that woman had made for him, for which even the simplest and most innocent acts weighed like lead: a look, a smile, a word… .
Her Husband Page 20