Matilde Serao

“ Here, Diana! She’s as wet as a newly hatched chicken! Caterina, Caterina! Matteo, take care of the gun, it’s full of water! Caterina!”
“Here I am,” she said, leaning over the balustrade.
A big curly head and a green felt hat, then a herculean body, clothed in a velveteen jacket, leather breeches, and top-boots, appeared on the lower steps. With a great sound of clanking spur, and cracking whip, soaked from head to foot, but laughing heartily, Andrea seized his wife by the waist, and raised her like a child in his strong arms, while he kissed her eyes, lips, and throat, roughly and eagerly. ”

“ When there were no more of her own, she took back those she had given to Andrea; he tried to oppose her.
“No, no; away with it all, all,” said Lucia, harshly.
And she threw them away in bunches, closing her eyes. When her hands were empty, she made a gesture as if to let herself go after them.
“What are you doing?” he said, seizing her wrists. “Let us sit here, will you?”
“Not here. Let us find a secret place, that no one knows of; a beautiful green place that the sun cannot reach, where we cannot see the sky; I am afraid of all those things.” ”

“ Caterina, mercy, Caterina; have pity upon me; mercy, mercy, mercy! I am unfortunate. I am leaving with Andrea. I am a miserable creature; you will never see me again. I suffer. I am leaving. I am dying. Have pity!”
“Lucia.”
She read it over again, re-read it, and read it for the fourth time. She sat down by the writing-table, with the letter in her hands. She was stupefied.
“The carriage is at the door,” said Giulietta. Caterina’s head moved as if in reply. Then she rose to her feet, but she felt the floor give way beneath them. “If I move I shall fall,” she thought. ”

“ I belong to another man; you to another woman.”
“Then what have we come here for?” he whined like a child. “Why did you give me your scarf last night? Why did you make me love you? What am I to do now? Must I die? I cannot live without you, without kissing you. I cannot live if you are not mine. You are beautiful, and I love you; it is not my fault.”
“It is fate,” she concluded, funereally crossing both hands under her head, and closing her eyes as if awaiting death.
“Lucia,” broke in Andrea, in the tones of a melancholy child. ”

“ Then, without a word, Lucia offered the newspaper to Andrea, who unfolded it. While he pretended to read, he watched Lucia out of the corner of his eye. She was looking at him with so bewitching a smile, that again she appeared to him like a woman transformed—so placid and youthful in her white gown.
“Are you not bored, Signorina?”
“No; I am thinking.”
“Tell me what you are thinking of.”
“What can it matter to you? I am thinking of far-off things.”
“It is morbid to think too much. Sometimes, but not often, it happens to me, too, to think.” ”

“ Besides, if we think seriously on all things mundane, we shall perceive that human life needs these obscure sacrifices. Progress....”
“You are as odious as you are wicked. I cannot bear you; go away.”
She dropped his arm, as if in horror. Alberto sniggered at Andrea’s sudden discomfiture.
“Oh! poor Andrea, didn’t you know that Lucia was a humanitarian?”
“I did not know it,” he replied, gravely.
“Oh! my heart is full of love for the disinherited of life; for the poor, down-trodden ones; for the pariahs of this cruel world. I love them deeply, warmly; my heart burns with love for them.” ”

“ Caterina mia! For what you have done to me, may happiness be yours! May God’s hand be over your house! May love and joy abide within it! May Andrea ever love you more and more; may he adore thee as the Madonna is adored....”
Caterina signed to her to be silent, for the strain was getting too much for her; they kissed each other over and over again. When they entered the drawing-room, Lucia’s eyes were swollen. ”

“ When, with a brick-coloured flush on his yellow cheeks, Galimberti had left them, all three were conscious of a sense of discomfort.
“Poor devil!” exclaimed Andrea, at last.
“Yes, but he is a bore,” added Alberto.
“What’s to be done? These ladies, in their exquisite good-nature, forget that he is only a teacher; and he gets bewildered and forgets it too. He must suffer a good deal when he comes to his senses.”
“Oh! he is an unhappy creature; but when I am sick or sad, the poor thing becomes an incubus: I don’t know how to shake him off.” ”

“ For a whole week after the scene in the English Garden, their love had been so calm that it needed no expression; it was self-concentrated and subjective. They exchanged stolen glances without any agitation, they neither blushed nor turned pale, nor did they tremble at the touch of each other’s hands. Lucia had an absorbed air, as if she were immersed in the contemplation of her own mind; neither the outer world nor her lover could distract her from their state of contemplation. Andrea’s demeanour was that of a man who is secure of himself and of the future. ”

“ Rome is humane and maternal, ever smiling on those bridal couples who, under the shadow of her noble walls, under her canopy of heavenly blue, lead their loves through the maze of her uneven streets.
After a short halt at the Café du Parlement or the Café de Rome, then a short walk, and home to sleep. Andrea was tired, and had to rise early next morning. But often in those hours between luncheon and dinner, Caterina would beg him to leave her at home. She preferred staying there, in a tiny sitting-room that was next to her bedroom. Andrea would ask on his return what she had been doing. ”

“ The grand piano, littered with music, was a long business. When she passed the duster over the shining wood, she half closed her eyelids, as if she felt the caressing contact of satin; then she passed it over the keys, drawing from them a sort of formless, discordant music, in whose endless variations she revelled. Lucia neither played well, nor much; but when she met with a philharmonic friend, she would instal her at the piano, and herself in a Viennese rocking-chair, where she would close her eyes, beat time with her head and listen. ”

“ Besides, the place is full of people; there is no reason why I should not pass through it.”
“Stay here, you must be fond of flowers.”
“No; I don’t care for them. This atmosphere is heavy with perfume.”
“Do you think so? I don’t notice it.”
“Oh! it is overpowering. I don’t know how so many ladies can endure it.”
“I will exchange explanations with you, Signor Andrea. I adore these flowers and appreciate them. Look at this jasmin; it is a star-like Spanish flower of strong perfume—a creeper that will cling as tenaciously as humble, constant love.” ”

“ Then Andrea, what with the heat of the dining-room, its heavy atmosphere, laden with the odours of viands, preserved fruits, and the strong vinegar used in the preparation of the game, the warm rays reflected from the crystal on to the tablecloth, and Lucia’s flushed face—the lace tie showing her white throat—so near to his, Andrea was seized with a mad longing to kiss her; one kiss, only one, on the lips. Every now and then he drew nearer to her, hoping that the others would think him drunk; anything might be forgiven to a drunken man. ”

“ Besides, who is to go? They have killed me. Well, I am so weak, so mean, so vilely ridiculous, that, despite all, I feel that I still care for Lucia.... I care for her still—it’s no use denying it, for all her wickedness, her betrayal, and her perpetual deceit—I care for her, because I love her, ecco! I am so tied to her, so bound up in her, that the loss of her will kill me, if this hæmorrhage doesn’t. Oh! what a woman, what a woman it is! How she takes possession of you, and carries you away, and never loosens her hold on you...! ”

“ Then he burst out:
“Caterina, why did you behave so ridiculously? It is so unlike you to be eccentric—to make a laughing-stock of yourself?”
She kept her hands in her muff and her eyes cast down, and made no reply.
“You, a sensible little woman? Are we living in the Middle Ages? Perdio, to expose oneself to ridicule!”
Caterina turned pale and bit her lip; she would not cry, and had no voice left to answer with. Lucia leant against the door-post, listening.
“You are talking about the handkerchief, Signor Andrea?” she put in, slowly.
“Just so.... The handkerchief. A pretty conjugal amenity!” ”

“ Alberto, we are all straining after an impossible ideal. You, too, are among the multitude of dreamers.”
“I wish I could but meet my ideal,” he persisted, with the obstinacy of his weak, capricious nature.
“Seek,” said Lucia, raising her eyes to the ceiling.
“Lucia, do me a favour.”
“Tell me what it is...? I beg your pardon, Galimberti, would you pass me that peacock fan?”
“Do you feel the heat, Signorina Lucia?”
“It oppresses me; I think I am feverish. Do you know that peacock feathers are unlucky?” ”

“ Madonna, who hast not known human love, mercy on her who has learnt to know it, ardent, immense, devouring. O! Madonna, Thou who knowest not desire, mercy on her who has it within her, long, savage, insatiable. O! Madonna, do Thou tell me, shall I give myself to Andrea?”
But Lucia’s passionate eyes were turned in vain on the Madonna: the Virgin continued to consider Lucia who was praying earnestly, and a little woman who was reciting her rosary and beating her bosom, with the same compassionate gaze. Then Lucia recited half the rosary, on that lapis-lazuli fragment of hers. ”

“ Lucia, on the contrary, settled herself more comfortably in her rocking-chair; she had hidden her slippered foot under the Turkish gown, whose heavy folds completely enveloped her person.
“Will you give me that Bible, on the table, Signor Lieti?”
“Has the hour struck for prayer, Signorina?” he asked in a jesting tone.
“No,” replied Lucia; “for I am always praying. But when something unusual, something very unusual happens to me, then I open the Bible haphazard, and I read the first verse that meets my eye. There is always counsel, guidance, presentiment or a fatality in the words.” ”

“ What had she done to him? She was sickly and full of fancies. The more reason for pitying her. She was an ill-cared-for, unloved creature who was losing her way in life.
“Why don’t you marry?” he said, suddenly.
“Why?” ... in astonishment.
“Why? ... yes. Girls ought to marry, it cures them of their vagaries.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Lucia, and she hid her face in her hands.
“Now I suppose I have said something stupid again? I will give you Caterina’s message and be gone, before you turn me out.”
“No, Signor Lieti. Who knows but what your bourgeois common sense is right.” ”

“ The impression produced by Caterina on Alberto was the negative one of absence of sex: she was neither beautiful nor ugly in his sight, nor a woman at all. In Caterina the instinct of health which recoils from disease, made him repellent to her. Then came the gloomy hours in which Lucia, in dumb despair, would betake herself to the sofa, where she would lie as rigid as the dead, her feet hidden under her skirts, her train hanging on the ground, with wreathed arms, and hands crossed behind her head, closed eyes and deathly pallor. ”

“ A hare rushed by at full speed, to Lucia’s great surprise.
“Ah!” cried Andrea, biting his forefinger, “if I had but a gun.”
“Wicked, cruel, how can you long for the death of an innocent animal?”
“Oh! it is rapture; you cannot understand the wild excitement of a man on the track of a hare. It is a combat of animal cunning; the man does not always get the best of it. But when he does hit his prey, and the animal falls in the death struggle, and the hot blood rushes out in floods....” ”

“ Does this Andrea love you?”
“I think so.”
“Do you love him?”
“I think I do.”
“Love is sorrow; marriage is an abomination, Caterina.”
“I hope not,” replied the other, with clasped hands and bowed head.
“I shall never marry, no, never,” added Lucia, drawing herself up and raising her eyes to heaven, in the pride of her mysticism.
The violet twilight deepened. ”

“ The branches of these trees look as if they had been trimmed with scissors. Oh! who will give me Nature—real great, omnipotent Nature?”
“When your voice falls in longing, it is enchanting,” said Andrea, with admiration in his eyes.
[Pg 130]
“Do not you long for real country?”
“Eh! it is not always poetic. Sometimes it is barren, at others it smells too much of lime. But I know where to find your ideal; the dark wood, the narrow paths, the lake hidden in the thicket....”
“Dio! ... You know where all that is, Andrea!” And she crossed her hands on her bosom, her voice trembling from desire. ”

“ He had neither the energy to go, nor the patience to stay in that close room.
“I am going away to sleep,” he said, as if he were about to accomplish a meritorious action.
“What are you embroidering to-day?” inquired Alberto of Lucia.
“A heart, pierced by a dagger.”
Once in his room, Andrea closed the shutters and threw himself on his bed, in a state of fatigue of which he had had no experience till now. He had been mastered in the struggle with circumstances. His impetuous nature, alien to compromise, was incapable of endurance: he could neither wait nor calculate. ”

“ Beatrice cried: 'Gesù Maria;’ and the axe felled the blonde head too. A pitiable spectacle and full of horror for those assembled! Yet none dared to proclaim the infamy of the mighty Filippo Maria Visconti. Thus it ever is in life, virtue is oppressed, and vice triumphs. Only before the Eternal Judge is justice, only before that God of mercy who has said: 'I am the resurrection and the life.’”
A profound silence ensued. The pupils were embarrassed, and looked furtively at each other. Caterina gazed at Lucia with frightened astonished eyes. ”

“ She sat in the shade behind Alberto, so that she might gaze her fill on Andrea, without attracting any observation.
Sometimes she opened her fan before her eyes, looking through its sticks. Now and then, when Alberto was away and Caterina bent over her sewing, Lucia’s great eyes flashed in Andrea’s face: the lids dropped immediately. All the evening Lucia maintained her air of melancholy, her tired voice and weary intonation. If for a moment she found herself alone with Andrea, she would rise, quivering with life, and cry, close to his face:
“I love you.” ”

“ Lucia’s boudoir was in great disorder. The little armchairs were turned upside down; the music on the piano was torn and dispersed, the empty work-basket was topsy-turvy, the reels rolling about the carpet, the wools entangled, and the coarse canvas at which Lucia used to work was lying like a rag on the ground; the writing-case was opened on the little writing-table, the drawers were empty, the letters littered the ground: a battlefield.
“The Signore made this havoc, he was like a madman,” explained the maid.
Leaving the darkened drawing-room to the right, they entered the bedroom. ”

“ He did not try to justify himself by the discovery of any imaginary defect in Caterina, nor wrongs nor shortcomings which would have made it excusable to bestow his love elsewhere. His conscience could not have endured the pretexts that might serve to lessen the consciousness of wrong-doing in a viler soul. They sinned and betrayed, because they loved elsewhere; that was all. Love is no fatality; love is itself, stronger than aught besides. So he suffered in not being free to love in the light of day, with the loyalty of a brave heart that has the courage of its errors. ”

“ Don’t you think so? It is composed of the most delicate and youthful-looking of exotics: the heart of the bouquet of minute fragrant mignonette; then a broad band of heliotrope, contrasting the pale lilac of its lace-like blossoms with the green of the mignonette, and over all cloud-like sprays of heather which give an effect of distance to the whole. Heather is a northern flower, lacking perfume and brilliancy, but reposeful and grateful.... Here at least is a group of pure and innocuous flowers.”
Yet Andrea felt ill at ease while inhaling the delicate fragrance of mignonette and heliotrope. ”

“ A deep sigh escaped Lucia Altimare.
“What ails thee?” queried Caterina Spaccapietra, under her breath.
“I suffer, I suffer,” murmured the other dreamily. “This preacher saddens me. He does not understand, he does not feel, Our Lady.” And the black pupils of her eyes, set in bluish white, dilated as in a vision. Caterina did not reply. The Directress intoned the Rosary in a solemn voice, with a strong Tuscan accent. She read the Mystery alone. Then all the voices in chorus, shrill and low, accompanied her in the Gloria Patri, and in the Pater. ”

“ He threw them on the grass, near to his hat and the parasol. When he as gently stroked her arm through the transparent sleeve, Lucia drew it away, but without smile or anger; she was looking at the Venus Anadyomene, through the green screen of the willow. Then she slowly unfastened the black lace scarf that fastened her bonnet under the chin and cast the ends behind her: she drew out the hammer-headed pins and stuck them in the turf, as if it were a pincushion, and, taking off her bonnet, sent it to join the gloves and parasol. ”

“ Lucia placed the lamp so that it did not shine in his eyes—the dear soul was full of these delicate attentions—opened her desk, drew out a ream of paper, and sat with her head in her hand, buried in deepest thought. Then she would stoop over her writing, without pausing, for a long time. At times, under the influence of her inspiration, she rose, and paced up and down the room in great agitation, wringing her hands.
“Like a poet, who under the spell of his inspiration cannot light upon a rhyme. ”

“ Oh, how full of meaning are all these things for me!”
“She sees things that people like us never see,” said Alberto, as if to himself. “Tell me, Signor Andrea, is it true that the lives of the hemp-spinners are as wretched as those of the unfortunate peasants who work in the rice plantations?”
“Not quite so bad, but nearly, Signora Lucia. Hemp-netting is done at midsummer, in the dog-days; a kind of heat that causes the exhalation of miasma. The water in which the hemp lies becomes putrid and poisons the atmosphere.” ”

“ She opened her eyes, gazed at the persons round her, but closing them again, in a kind of horror, uttered a piercing cry, and fell into fresh convulsions; struggling, and insensible to the vinegar, the water, and the perfumes with which they drenched her face. Caterina called her, Alberto called her; no answer. When Andrea called her, her face became more livid, and the convulsions redoubled in intensity. With her lace tie torn away from her throat, her dress torn at the bosom, with dishevelled hair, and livid marks on her wrists, she inspired love and terror. ”

“ To weave fancies on God, the Madonna, the affections, on everything; to barter the realities of life for the unreality of a dream; to be master of the fantasy that endows the eye with seductive charm, the voice with voluptuous melody, the smile with fascination that makes the kiss irresistible; to feed one’s nerves on the torments of others, bringing about the enacting of the drama that is artificial for oneself, and terribly earnest for everybody else. ”

“ In one corner, in a thin streak of light under the dome of her white, red-lined sunshade, sat Lucia, on a rustic bench. She was alone, and sat with her face turned away from him. Andrea thought he would turn back; yet Caterina could not be far off. So he approached rather shyly, intimidated by the white figure, crowned with blonde rays, their radiance playing on her cheeks and on the rustic background. Lucia did not hear his steps, despite the rustle in the dry leaves. She uttered a cry when he appeared before her.
“Oh! how easily you are frightened!” ”

“ Lucia’s train fell at her feet in a fluffy heap of silk and lace, just allowing a glimpse of a tiny foot shod in white, silver-worked leather; she fanned herself, for it was very hot. From time to time Andrea bent down to speak to her, and she raised her eyes as if to answer him in low tones, while a smile raised the corners of her lips and showed her teeth. Alberto, who was at a loss for a seat, was soon bored and wearied; he had a presentiment of a lengthy ceremony. Caterina, who had been elected a member of the jury for needlework, in the Didactic section, was somewhat preoccupied. ”