"Of what are you thinking?"
"I am thinking that we should never have left here."
"You are right, Juliana."
At times the swallows almost brushed against us, with a cry, rapid and
glistening like winged arrows.
"How much I have longed for this day, Juliana! Ah! you will never know
how much I have longed for it!" I cried, prey to an emotion so strong
that my voice became almost unrecognizable. "Never, do you understand,
never have I felt an anxiety equal to that which devours me since the
day before yesterday, since the moment you consented to come here. Do
you remember the day when, for the first time, we saw each other in
secret, on the terrace of the Villa Oggeri, where we kissed each other?
I was mad with love for you, do you remember? Well, the expectation of
the last night was nothing in comparison. You do not believe me, and
you are right in misbelieving me, in doubting me. But I want to tell
you all, to recount my sufferings, my fears, my hope. Oh! I know, my
sufferings are doubtless little in comparison with those that I have
made you suffer. I know, I know; all my pains are not equal to your
pains, not worth your tears. I have not expiated my fault, and I am not
worthy of pardon. But tell me, tell me that I may hope that you will
pardon me. You do not believe me; but I wish to tell you all. It is
you, you only whom I have truly loved; it is you alone whom I love. I
know, I know; men will say these things in order to obtain pardon, and
you are right not to believe me. Yet see; if you think of our love of
long ago, if you think of our first three years of never-failing
tenderness, if you remember, if you recollect, you will see it is
impossible to refuse to believe me. Even in my lowest abasements, you
were to be for me unforgettable; and my soul ever longed to turn toward
you, to seek you, to regret you, always, do you understand? Always.
Did you not perceive it yourself? When you were as a sister to me, did
you not sometimes perceive that I was dying of sorrow? I swear to you
that, far away from you, I never felt sincere joy. I have never had one
hour of complete forgetfulness. Never, never; I swear it. You were my
constant, profound, secret adoration. The better part of myself has
always been yours, and there has been in me a hope that has never been
extinguished--that of being able to free myself from my malady and to
find intact my first, my only love... Ah! Juliana, tell me that I have
not hoped in vain!"
She walked with extreme slowness, no longer looking before her, her head
bent, excessively pale. A slight, painful contraction appeared at times
at the corner of her mouth. And, because she remained silent, I began to
feel a vague uneasiness arise within me. An oppressive feeling began to
be caused by the sun, the flowers, the cries of the swallows, by all the
joyfulness displayed by triumphant springtime.
"You do not answer me?" I continued, taking the hand that she let hang
by her side. "You do not believe me; you have lost all confidence in
me; you still fear that I deceive you; you do not dare to give yourself
up again because you are always thinking of _the last time_.... Yes, it
is true, that was the most brutal of all my infamies. I repent it as I
would a crime, and, even if you should pardon me, I shall never be able
to forgive myself. But did you not notice that I was ailing, that I was
losing my reason? A curse pursued me, and, since that day, I have not
had one minute's respite, I have not had a single lucid interval. Do you
not remember? Do you not remember? Surely you knew I was beside
myself, in a state of madness; for you looked at me as one does upon a
madman. How often have I surprised in your glances sad compassion,
curiosity, fear! Do you not remember what I had become? I was
unrecognizable. Well, I am cured; I saved myself for your sake. I have
succeeded in opening my eyes, I have succeeded in seeing the light. At
last it is light. It is you, you only whom I have truly loved all my
life, it is you only whom I love. Do you hear?"
I pronounced the last words in a firmer voice, and more slowly, as if to
impress them one by one upon this woman's soul, and I pressed firmly her
hand, which I already held in my own. She stopped with the manner of
one about to collapse, gasping. Later, only later, during the hours
that followed, I understood the excess of mortal anguish exhaled by this
panting. But, at that moment, I understood only this: "The recollection
of my horrible treason, evoked by me, revives her suffering. I have
touched wounds that are still open. Ah! if I could persuade her to
believe me! If I could conquer her distrust! Does not my voice convince
her that I am speaking the truth?"
We had come to the intersection of two paths. There was a bench there.
She murmured:
"Let us sit down a little."
We sat down. I do not know if she recognized the spot. Even I did not
recognize it at first, bewildered like a man who has had both his eyes
bandaged for some time. We both looked about us, then we looked at one
another, and in our eyes we had the same thought. A crowd of tender
recollections were connected with this old stone bench. My heart
swelled, not with regret, but with a restless covetousness, with a sort
of frenzy of living that, in a flash, gave me a chimerical, dazzling
vision of the future. "Ah! she is ignorant of what new tenderness I am
capable! In my soul there is a paradise for her." And the flaming up
of that ideal of love was so strong that I became exalted.
"Are you sad? But what creature in all the world was ever loved as I
love you? To what woman has it been given to obtain a proof of love
equal to that I give you? You said just now: 'We should never have left
here.' Without doubt, we should have been happy: you would not have
suffered a martyrdom, you would not have shed so many tears, you would
not have lost so many years of your life; but you would not have known
my love, all my love."
Her head was bent on her bosom, her eyes half-closed, and she listened,
motionless. Her eyelashes threw on the upper part of her cheeks a
shadow that disturbed me more than a look would have done.
"And I myself would have had no knowledge of my love. Did I not believe
the first time I left you that all was at an end? I sought another
passion, another fever, another intoxication; I wished to embrace life
in one single clasp. You did not suffice me. And during all those
years I weakened myself by an atrocious life, oh! so atrocious that I
have a horror of it, as a convict has a horror of the prison in which he
has lived, _dying a little every day_. And I had to wander from
darkness into darkness, before light fell on my soul, before this great
truth appeared to me. I have loved only one woman, and you are she. You
alone, in all the world, are good and gentle; and you are the best and
most gentle creature I have ever dreamed of; you are the Unique. And
you were in my house, while I sought you afar off. Do you understand,
now? Do you understand? _You were in my house, while I sought you afar
off_. Ah, tell me, is not this confession worth all your tears? Do you
not wish you had shed more, much more, in order to purchase this
certitude?"
"Yes, still more," she said, so low that I scarcely heard her.
The words passed like a breath from her pallid lips. And the tears
gushed from between her eyelashes, rolled down her cheeks, wetted the
convulsed mouth, fell on that palpitating bosom.
"Juliana, my love! Oh, my love!" I cried, with a thrill of supreme
felicity, throwing myself on my knees before her.
And I threw my arms around her, I laid my head on her bosom, I felt
again in all my being that frenetic tension in which ends useless effort
to express by an action, by a gesture, by a caress, the inexpressible
internal passion. Her tears fell on my cheek. If the material effect of
these warm life-drops had equalled the sensations that I received from
them, I should carry an indelible mark on my skin.
"Oh! let me drink," I begged.
Raising myself, I placed my lips to her eyelids and I bathed them with
her tears, while my hands lavished on her distracted caresses. My limbs
had acquired an extraordinary flexibility, a sort of illusory fluidity
that prevented me from noticing the obstacle presented by the clothes.
It seemed to me that I had the power to enclose and envelop the entire
person of the loved one.
"Did you dream," I said, with the saline savor in my mouth that
impregnated me to the heart (later, during the hours that followed, I
was astonished at not having found an intolerable bitterness in these
tears), "did you dream you would be loved so much? Did you dream of
such happiness? It is I, look, it is I who speak to you like this; look
well: it is I. If you knew how strange that seems to me! If I could
tell you! I know that I do not know you from to-day, I know I do not
love you from to-day, I know that you are what you have always been.
And yet it seems to me that I only just found you a moment ago, when you
said: 'Yes, still more.' You said it, did you not? Only three words--a
breath. And I am reborn, and you are reborn, and we will be happy,
happy forever."
I told her these things in a voice that seemed to come from a distance,
broken, indefinable; in one of those tones whose intonations seem to
rise to our lips, not from our material organs, but from the deepest
depths of our soul. And she, who up to then had shed silent tears,
burst into sobs.
Violent, too violent were her sobs; not as when one succumbs to a
limitless joy, but when one gives vent to inconsolable despair. She
sobbed so violently that, for several seconds, I was seized by the
stupor caused by excessive manifestations, supreme paroxysms of human
emotions. Unconsciously I drew back a little; but, immediately, I
noticed the distance that now separated us; I at once noticed not only
that there was no longer a physical contact, but also that the sensation
of moral communion had become dissipated in the twinkling of an eye. We
were still two beings, distinct, separate, external to one another. The
very difference of our attitudes even accentuated this disunion. Sitting
back at her end of the bench and covering her face with her two hands,
she sobbed; and every one of her sobs shook her entire being, put in
evidence her fragility, so to speak. Without touching her, I was again
on my knees before her; and I looked at her, stupefied, and yet
strangely lucid, attentive to all that was passing within me, and yet
with every sense open to the perception of surrounding objects. I heard
both her sobs and the twittering of the swallows; I had an exact notion
of time and place. And those flowers, and those perfumes, and the
surrounding glory of the joyous springtime inspired me with a fright
that grew and grew, becoming a sort of panicky terror, an instinctive
and blind terror against which reason was powerless. And, like a
thunderbolt that lights up a bank of clouds, one thought flashed out
from the midst of this tumultuous fear, illuminated me, struck me to the
heart: "She is impure!"
Ah! why did I not fall then, struck dead by the blow? Why did not one of
my vital organs collapse? Why did I not expire at the feet of the woman
who, in a few short moments, had raised me to the height of happiness,
only to precipitate me into an abyss of misery?
"Answer!"
I seized her wrists, I uncovered her face, I spoke close to her; and my
voice was so low that I scarcely heard it myself in the tumult of my
brain.
"Answer! What do these tears signify?"
She ceased to sob, and looked at me; and her eyes, reddened by the
tears, became dilated with an expression of supreme anguish, as if they
had seen me dying. In fact, my face must have seemed lifeless.
"_It is too late, perhaps? Is it too late?_" I added, revealing my
terrible thought by this obscure question.
"No, no, Tullio! No--it is--nothing. What could you have thought? No,
no. I am so weak, you see. I am no longer what I was formerly. I have
no strength. I am ill, you know; I am so ill! I have not had the force
to resist your words. You understand. This crisis has come to me so
unexpectedly. It is my nervousness--a sort of convulsion. When one has
a spasm like this, one cannot distinguish whether it is from joy or
sorrow. Oh! my God! See, it is passing. Rise, Tullio; come here, by my
side."
She spoke to me in a voice still choked by tears, still broken with
sobs; she looked at me with an expression that was well known to me, the
expression that she had already often had at the sight of my suffering.
At one time, she could not bear to see me suffer. Her sensibility to
this was so exaggerated that I could obtain anything from her by showing
her that I was sad. She would have done anything to free me from pain,
even the slightest. Often at that time I feigned pain, in jest, to make
her uneasy, so as to be consoled like a child, to obtain certain
caresses that pleased me, to call forth certain graceful gestures that I
adored. Was it not the same tender yet alarmed expression that
reappeared now in her eyes?
"Come here, by my side; sit down. Or would you prefer to continue our
walk in the garden? We have seen nothing yet. Let us go toward the
fountain. I would like to bathe my eyes. Why do you look at me so? Of
what are you thinking? Are we not happy? See, I begin to feel well
again, very well. But I must bathe my eyes, my face. What time is it?
Noon, perhaps? Federico will be back at about six o'clock. We have
plenty of time. Will you come?"
She spoke in a broken and still somewhat convulsive voice, and with a
manifest effort, as if trying to collect herself, to regain command of
her nervousness, to dissipate in me the shadow of an apprehension, to
appear to me confiding and happy. The smile that trembled in her still
humid and somewhat reddened eyes had a troubled gentleness that awakened
my sympathy. I felt in her words, in her attitude, in all her person
that gentleness that softened me, that made me languish with a
half-sensual languor, is impossible for me to define the delicate
seduction that, emanating from this creature, insinuated itself in my
senses and in my mind, favored by the indefinable and confused state of
my soul. She seemed to be silently saying to me: "It is impossible for
me to be more adorable. Take me, then, since you love me; take me in
your arms, but carefully, without hurting me, without clasping me too
hard. Oh! I burn with desire to receive your caresses! But I believe
they would kill me." This thought aided me a little to counteract the
effect her smile produced upon me.
I looked at her mouth at the moment she asked me: "Why do you look at me
like that?" and at the moment when she asked: "Are we not happy?" I felt
the blind desire of an awakened sensation in which died away the uneasy
feeling which my recent passion had left in me. When she arose, I
seized her impetuously in my arms, and fastened my lips to hers.
It was a lover's kiss that I gave her, a kiss long and deep, that
stirred all the essence of our two beings. She sank back on the bench,
exhausted.
"Oh! no, no, Tullio; I beg of you! Enough, enough! Let me regain a
little strength," she begged, stretching her hands out to push me away.
"Otherwise, I shall be unable to keep on my feet. See, I am half dead."
But there had sprung up in me extraordinary phenomena. That sensation
had had the same effect on my mind as an impetuous wave that sweeps away
all obstacles, effaces every imprint, and leaves the sand smooth.
Everything was instantly levelled; and, suddenly, I found myself in anew
state determined by the immediate influence of circumstances, by the
pressure of the blood which began to tingle. I no longer knew but one
thing. I had there before me the woman whom I desired, trembling,
overwhelmed by my kiss--in short, mine entirely; around us blossomed a
garden, filled with memories, filled with secrets; a deserted house
awaits us behind the flowering bushes guarded by the familiar swallows.
"Do you think I am not strong enough to carry you?" I said to her,
seizing her hands, interlacing my fingers in hers. "You used to be as
light as a feather. Now you must be still lighter. Let us try!"
A dark shadow passed in her eyes. For a second, she seemed absorbed in
thought, as when one deliberates and takes a rapid resolution. Then she
shook her head, and throwing herself back, hanging to me by her
outstretched arms, laughing with a laugh that revealed a little of her
bloodless gum:
"Very well! Lift me," she said.
Scarcely had she risen than she fell against my breast; and then it was
she who kissed me first, with a sort of convulsive furor, as if a prey
to a sudden frenzy, as if she wished at one stroke to appease an
atrociously painful thirst.
"Ah! It is killing me!" she repeated, when our lips had parted.
And that humid mouth, somewhat projecting, half-open, that had become
redder, animated by languor, in that face so pale and frail, really gave
me the indefinable impression that, of all that body similar to a
corpse, the lips only were alive.
She murmured, dreamily, raising her closed eyes, the long lashes of
which trembled as if a slight smile had filtered out from beneath the
lids:
"Are you happy?"