"You have comforted me a little. I thank you. You understand----"
And I added, masking my homicidal intention by a Christian hope:
"There is a Providence. Who knows? The day of deliverance will come,
perhaps. You understand me. Who knows? Pray to God."
It was a presage of death for the infant to be born; it was a wish.
And, by inducing Juliana to pray that it should come to pass, I was
preparing her for the funereal event, I obtained from her a sort of
moral complicity. I ended by thinking:
"If, as a result of my words, the suggestion of crime should come to
her, and, gradually, become strong enough to actuate her? Certainly it
is possible that she may convince herself of the dreadful necessity,
that she may elevate herself to the thought of my deliverance, that she
may experience a burst of savage energy, that she may accomplish the
supreme sacrifice. Did she not repeat just now that she was still ready
to die? But her death includes that of her child. Therefore, she is
not restrained by any religious prejudice, by the fear of sinning; since
she is ready to die, she is ready to commit a double crime, against
herself and against maternity. On the other hand, she is convinced that
her existence on earth is useful, even indispensable to the persons who
love her and whom she loves; and she is also convinced that the
existence of the son who is not mine will make an intolerable torture of
our lives. She knows, too, that we could draw closer together, that we
could, perhaps, in forgiveness and forgetfulness, regain some happiness,
that we could hope from time the cure of the wound, if between her and
me no intruder interposed. It suffices, then, that she should reflect
on all that to rapidly convert a useless desire and an inefficacious
prayer into a resolution and an act." I meditated; she also meditated
silently, her head lowered, without removing her hand from mine, while
deep in the shadows of the great motionless elms.
What were her thoughts? Her brow still retained the pallor of death.
With the fall of evening, was another shadow descending upon her, too?
I seemed to see Raymond. But no longer in the form of a perverse and
treacherous gray-eyed child; but with the form of a miserable little
body, soft and reddish, scarcely breathing, and which the slightest
pressure would kill.
The bell at the Badiola sounded the first strokes of the Angelus.
Juliana withdrew her hand from mine and made the sign of the cross.
*XXI.*
The fourth and fifth months passed and the gestation began to develop
rapidly. Juliana's person, slender, supple, and flexible, enlarged and
naturally conformed to her condition. She felt herself humiliated
before me as by a disgraceful infirmity. A poignant suffering appeared
on her face when she caught my eyes fixed on her heavy figure.
I felt overwhelmed, incapable of bearing any longer the weight of this
miserable existence. Every morning, when I opened my eyes after an
agitated slumber, I felt as if someone had given me a deep cup, saying:
"If you wish to drink, if you wish to live to-day, you must shed into
this cup the last drop of your heart's blood." At each awakening a
repugnance, a disgust, an indefinable repulsion assailed me in the most
secret recesses of my being. And yet I must live.
The days were cruelly long. Time scarcely passed: it fell drop by drop,
lazily and heavily. And I still had the summer before me, part of the
autumn, an eternity. I tried to imitate my brother, to aid him in the
extensive agricultural labors that he had undertaken, to become
enthusiastic with the fire of his faith. I remained on horseback for
whole days, like a _buttero_; I tired myself out with manual labor, at
some easy and monotonous employment; I sought to dull the point of my
conscience by a prolonged contact with the men of the soil, simple and
upright souls, those whom the moral precepts received from their
ancestors prompted to perform their functions just as naturally as the
corporeal organs performed theirs. Several times I went to visit
Giovanni di Scordio, the hermit saint; I wished to hear his voice, I
wished to interrogate him concerning his misfortunes, I wished to see
once more his sad eyes and his sweet smile. But he hardly spoke; he was
a little timid with me; he barely answered me by a few vague words; he
did not love to speak of himself, he did not care to complain, he did
not stop at the labor at which he was occupied. His hands, bony, dried,
and sunburnt, that seemed as if cast in living bronze, were never idle,
perhaps did not know fatigue. One day, I exclaimed:
"When will your hands ever rest?"
The good man looked down at his hands with a smile; he looked at the
backs and then at the palms, turned them over and over in the sunlight.
That look, that smile, that sunlight, that gesture, conferred on those
great calloused hands a sovereign nobility. Hardened by the
agricultural instruments, sanctified by the good they had shed, by the
immense labor they had performed, those hands were now worthy of bearing
the palm.
The old man crossed them on his breast, according to the Christian
mortuary rites, and answered, without ceasing to smile:
"Very soon, signor, if it please God. When I am laid, in this fashion,
in the coffin. Amen!"
*XXII.*
Every remedy was tried in vain. Labor did not solace me, did not
console me, because it was excessive, unequal, irregular, feverish,
frequently interrupted by periods of unconquerable inertia and
depression.
My brother warned me:
"You are not following the proper rule. You spend in one week six
months' energy; then you let yourself fall back into indolence; then,
without moderation, you recommence to exhaust yourself with fatigue.
That is not what health demands. To be effective, your work must be
calm, concordant, harmonic. Do you understand? We must prescribe a
method for you. But you have the fault of all novices--excessive ardor.
Later on you will be calmer."
My brother said:
"You have not yet found your equilibrium. You do not yet feel _terra
firma_ beneath your feet. But have no fear. Sooner or later, you will
succeed in grasping the law. That will come to you unexpectedly, when
you least expect it."
He said also:
"This time, Juliana will surely give you an heir--Raymond. I have
already thought of the godfather. Giovanni di Scordio will hold your
son at the baptismal font. He is the worthiest godfather you could
possibly find for him. Giovanni will inspire him with goodness and
strength. When Raymond is old enough to understand, we will speak to him
of this noble old man. And your son will be what we could not have
been, what we have not been able to be."
He often returned to this subject, he often pronounced the name of
Raymond, he prayed for the child to be born his incarnate ideal of the
human type--the Model. He did not know that every one of his words was
for me like the thrust of a poniard which exasperated my hate, and
rendered my despair more violent.
Everyone conspired against me unknowingly, everyone was constantly
distressing me. When I approached one of my family, I felt anxious and
fearful, as if I were compelled to remain near a person who, holding
some terrible weapon, knew neither how to use it nor its danger. I was
in continual expectation of being wounded. To enjoy a short truce, I
was compelled to seek solitude and flee far from my own; but in solitude
I found myself face to face with my worst enemy, myself.
I felt that I was secretly going into a decline; it seemed to me that my
life was ebbing away through every pore. At times there were reproduced
in me conditions of soul that had belonged to the most obscure period of
my past, henceforth so distant. At times I preserved only the intimate
feeling of my own isolation amidst the inert phantoms of all things.
For long hours, I had no other sensation but that of the continuous and
crushing weight of life and of that of the slight throbbing of an artery
in my head.
Then survened ironies, sarcasms against myself, sudden furious desires
to rend and destroy, pitiless derisions, ferocious wickedness, an acute
fermentation of the most abject dregs. It seemed to me that I no longer
knew what indulgence, pity, tenderness, goodness meant. Every inner
source of good was obstructed, dried up like fountains stricken by a
malediction. And then I no longer saw in Juliana anything but the
brutal fact, the pregnancy; I no longer saw in myself anything but the
ridiculed person, the satirized husband, the stupid hero of the classic
farce. The inner sarcasm spared none of my actions, none of Juliana's
actions. The drama became metamorphosed for me into a bitter and
farcical comedy. Nothing restrained me longer; every bond broke; a
violent rupture took place. And I said to myself: "Why should I rest
here and play this odious role? I will go away, go back into society,
back to my early life, back to libertinism. I will close my eyes to
everything. I will lose myself. What does it matter? I do not wish to
be what I am, mire within mire. Phew!"
*XXIII.*
During one of these attacks I resolved to leave the Badiola, to depart
for Rome, to go I knew not where.
I had a pretext ready. As we had not anticipated so long an absence, we
had left the town house temporarily. It was urgent to regulate various
affairs and take measures that our absence might be prolonged
indefinitely.
I announced my departure. I persuaded my mother, brother, and Juliana
that it was necessary; I promised to hurry and return in a few days. I
made my preparations.
The evening before I left, late in the night, while I was strapping a
valise, I heard a knock at my door. I said:
"Come in!"