"Ah! Is it you?"
I went forward to meet her. She was panting a little, fatigued perhaps
by the stairs. I made her sit down. I offered her a cup of cold tea
with a thin slice of lemon, a beverage that used to please her and that
had been prepared for me. She scarcely wet her lips, and handed it
back. Her eyes revealed her anxiety.
Finally she said timidly:
"So you are going?"
"Yes," I replied. "To-morrow morning, as you know."
Then followed a long interval of silence. Through the open windows
entered a delicious coolness; the rays of the full moon lit up the house
and garden; the choir of chirping crickets could be heard, like the
sharp and indefinitely distant sound of a flute.
She asked me in a changed voice:
"When will you return? Tell me frankly."
"_I do not know_," I answered.
There was a new pause. A light breeze came in from time to time, and
the curtains swelled; every breath carried into the room as far as us
the voluptuousness of that summer night.
"Are you deserting me?"
There was such profound distress in her voice that my studied coolness
suddenly gave way to regret and pity.
"No," I answered. "Don't be alarmed, Juliana. I need a little rest. I
can stand it no longer. I must have breathing room."
"You are right," she answered.
"I think I shall soon come back, as I promised. I will write to you.
You, too, will perhaps feel relief at not seeing me suffer."
"Relief," she said. "No, never."
A choking sob quivered in her voice. She added, immediately, in a tone
of heart-breaking anguish:
"Tullio, Tullio, tell me the truth! Do you hate me? Tell me the truth!"
Her eyes interrogated me, more agonized even than her words. For an
instant her very soul seemed fixed on me. And those poor eyes, wide
open, that pure-looking brow, that contracted mouth, that emaciated
chin, all that frail, unhappy face which contrasted with the lower
ignominious deformity, and those hands, those frail, sorrowful hands
that stretched toward me with such a supplicating gesture, pained me
more than ever, moved me to pity and sympathy.
"Believe me, Juliana; believe me once for all. I feel no resentment
toward you, and I never shall. I do not forget that I am your debtor; I
forget nothing. Have I not already proved it? Be reassured. Think now
of your _deliverance_. And, besides, who knows? But, in any case,
Juliana, I will not disappoint you. Let me go for the time being.
Perhaps a few days' absence will do me good. I shall be calmer when I
return. Calmness is very necessary for what is to follow. You will
need all my assistance."
She said:
"Thank you. Do with me what you will."
A human chant now came to us through the darkness, covering the shrill
sound of the rural concert--perhaps a choir of reapers in the moonlight
on some distant field.
"Do you hear?" I said.
We listened. We felt the breath of the breeze. All the voluptuousness
of the summer night filled my heart.
"Shall we go and sit down on the terrace?" I asked Juliana, gently.
She consented, and rose. We passed through an adjoining room, where
there was no other light than that of the full moon. A great white
wave, resembling immaterial milk, inundated the floor. As she preceded
me to go out on the terrace, I could see her deformed shadow outlined in
black in the light.
Ah! where was the slender and supple creature whom I had taken in my
arms? Where was the lover I had found once more beneath the flowering
lilacs, that April noon? In a second, my heart was invaded with every
regret, with every desire, with every despair.
Juliana sat down and leaned her head on the iron of the balustrade. Her
face, fully illuminated, was whiter than all its surroundings, whiter
than the wall. Her eyes were half-closed. The eyelids cast a shadow on
her cheek-bones that agitated me more than a look would have done.
How could I utter a word?
I turned toward the valley, and leaned on the balustrade, grasping the
cold iron with my fingers. I saw beneath me an enormous heap of
confused appearances, in which I noticed only the reflection of the
Assoro. The chant came to us or was interrupted, as the breeze rose or
fell, and, during the pauses, was again heard the shrill flute-sound,
indefinitely distant. Never had a night appeared to me so full of
sweetness and sorrow. From the extreme depth of my soul arose a cry,
piercing and yet not audible, towards the lost felicity.
*XXIV.*
Scarcely had I arrived in Rome, when I was sorry I had come. I found
the city burning hot, on fire, almost deserted; and that frightened me.
The house was silent as the tomb, and the familiar objects I knew so
well presented an unusual and strange aspect; and that also frightened
me. I felt a sensation of solitude, frightful solitude; and yet I did
not go in search of friends, I did not wish to remember or meet anyone.
But I began a search for the man whom I detested with an implacable
hate, the search for Filippo Arborio.
I hoped to meet him in some public place. I went to the restaurant
which I knew he frequented. I waited for him an entire evening,
premeditating the way in which I would provoke him. Each time I heard a
step of a new arrival, my heart gave a bound. But he did not come. I
questioned the waiters. They had not seen him for a long time.
I went to the salle d'armes. The rooms were empty, bathed in the
greenish shadow made by the closed blinds, filled with that peculiar
odor which rises from wooden floors when they are sprinkled. The
maestro, deserted by his pupils, greeted me with the greatest
demonstrations of amiability. I listened attentively to the minute
details of the last assault; then I asked him for news of several of my
friends who frequented the salle; finally I asked him about Filippo
Arborio.
"He has not been in Rome for four or five months," replied the maestro.
"I have heard that he has a very serious and almost incurable nervous
malady. I heard it from Galiffa. But that's all I know about it."
He added:
"In fact, he was very, very weak. He only took a few lessons from me.
He was afraid to fence; he could not bear to see the point of a sword
before his eyes."
"Is Galiffa still in Rome?"
"No, he is at Rimini."
Shortly after I went away.
This unexpected news startled me. "If it were only true," I thought.
And I took pleasure in imagining that it was one of those terrible
maladies of the spinal cord or of the cerebral substance that reduce a
man to the lowest degradations, to idiocy, to the most pitiful forms of
madness, and finally to death. The knowledge I had gained from
scientific books, the recollections of a visit I had paid to an insane
asylum, the images, still more precise, that I retained of a special
case of one of my friends, Spinelli, repassed through my memory in a
crowd. And once more I saw poor Spinelli seated in his big red-leather
arm-chair, the color of clay, every line of his face paralyzed, his
mouth drawn and gaping, full of saliva and stammering incomprehensibly;
again I saw the gesture he made every little while to receive in his
handkerchief that inexhaustible saliva that ran down the corners of his
mouth; again I saw the blond, thin, and sorrowful face of the sister
adjusting a napkin beneath the invalid's chin as on a baby, and
introducing into his stomach, with the pharyngeal sound, the nourishment
he was no longer capable of swallowing.
"So much the better," I thought. "If I had fought a duel with so
celebrated an adversary, if I had wounded him seriously, if I had killed
him, the fact would certainly not pass unnoticed; it would be in every
mouth, it would get into the papers, and perhaps the true cause of the
duel would also be found out. This providential malady, on the
contrary, spares me all danger, all annoyance, all gossip. I may well
renounce a sanguinary joy, a punishment inflicted by my own hand (and,
besides, am I sure of the result?), since I know that disease paralyzes
and saps the power of the man I detest. But is the news true? Perhaps
it is only a temporary illness?" A happy idea struck me. I jumped into
a cab and drove to the office of his publisher. During the drive I
mentally pictured to myself--with a sincere wish that he might be
stricken by them--the two cerebral diseases most terrible for a man of
letters, for an artist in language, for a stylist, aphasia and agraphia.
And an imaginary vision presented their symptoms to me.
I entered the office. At first I could distinguish nothing, my eyes
still blinded by the outer light. But I heard a nasal voice questioning
me in a strange tone:
"What can I do for signor?"
I perceived behind the desk a person of uncertain age, a dry, pallid,
fair man, a sort of an albino. I turned toward him, mentioned the
titles of several works. I bought a few, then I inquired for the last
novel by Filippo Arborio. The albino handed me _The Secret_. I feigned
to be a fanatical admirer of the novelist.
"Is this really his last?"
"Yes, signor. A month or two ago, we announced a new novel by him:
_Turris Eburnea_."
"_Turris Eburnea!_"
My heart throbbed.
"But I do not think we can publish it."
"Why not?"
"The author is very ill."
"Ill? What's the matter?"
"A progressive paralysis of the medulla oblongata," replied the albino,
separating the terrible words, with a certain scientific affectation.
"Oh! The same illness that Spinelli had! So it is serious?"
"Very serious," said the albino sententiously. "Signor knows that there
is no cure for that form of paralysis."
"But it is still only in its earliest stage?"
"Yes; but there is no doubt as to its nature. The last time he came
here I could already detect that he had difficulty in articulating
certain words."
"Ah! you heard him?"
"Yes, signor. His pronunciation was already indefinite, and
vacillating."
I encouraged the albino by the extreme and, so to speak, admiring
attention that I paid to him. I believe that he would voluntarily have
acquainted me with the words that had been pronounced with such
difficulty by the illustrious novelist.
"And where is he now?"
"He is at Naples. The doctors are treating him with electricity."
"Electric treatment!" I repeated with artless stupor, an affectation of
ignorance, so as to please the albino's vanity and thus prolong the
conversation.
It is true that in the shop, narrow and long like a corridor, there
flowed a draught of cool air that favored chatting. The place was
shaded. A clerk slept peacefully in a chair, his chin on his bosom, in
the shadow of a terrestrial globe. Nobody entered.
There was something ridiculous about the bookseller. His sallow face,
his shrivelled mouth, and nasal twang amused me, and in the quiet of the
bookshop it was very agreeable to hear the confirmation of the incurable
malady of a man abhorred.
"Have the doctors no hope of curing him?" I said, to stimulate the
albino.
"Impossible."
"Let us hope it is possible, for the sake of literature."
"Impossible."
"But it seems to me that, in progressive paralysis, there are cases that
have been cured."
"No, signor, no. He may live two, three, four years yet, but he cannot
be cured."
"It seems to me, however----"
I do not know from whence came this lightness of heart that made me make
sport of the narrator of this news, this curious complaisance to relish
the cruelty of my sentiment. But I certainly found pleasure in it. And
the albino, piqued by my contradictions, climbed, without further
argument, up a small wooden ladder leaning against the high shelves.
Thin as he was, he resembled one of those vagabond cats, fleshless and
hairless, that crouch on the edge of a roof. As he reached the top, his
head brushed against a cord stretched from one corner of the shop to the
other, and which served as a resting place for flies. A cloud of the
insects swarmed around his head with a furious buzzing. He came down,
holding a book in his hand--the authority which declared in favor of
death. The implacable flies descended with him.
He showed me the title. It was a special work on pathology.
"Signor will see."
He turned over the leaves. As the book was not cut, he separated the
leaves with his finger, and, lowering his whitish eyes, read inside:
"_The prognosis of progressive bulbar paralysis is unfavorable._" He
added:
"Is signor convinced now?"
"Yes, but what a misfortune! Such a talented man!"
The flies could not be quieted. They were buzzing in a provoking
manner. They attacked the albino, me, and the assistant who was
sleeping under the terrestrial globe.
"How old _was he_?" I asked, involuntarily erring about the tense of the
verb, as if I referred to a dead man.
"Who, signor?"
"Filippo Arborio."
"Thirty-five, I believe."
"So young!"
I felt a strange desire to laugh, a puerile desire to laugh in the
albino's face, and to leave him. It was a very singular excitation,
rather convulsive, never before felt, indefinable. My mind was shaken
by something similar to the strange and uncontrollable hilarity that
seizes one at times in the surprising incoherences of a dream. The book
was still open and lay on the bench, and I bent over it to examine a
vignette that represented a human face contorted by a grimace, atrocious
and grotesque: "_Hemiatrophy of the left face_." The implacable flies
still buzzed ceaselessly.
"Have you not received the manuscript of _Turris Eburnea_ yet?" I asked.
"No, signor. We have announced the book; but the title is all that
exists."
"Only the title?"
"Yes, signor. And, in fact, we have stopped announcing the book."
"Thank you. Please send these books to my house sometime to-day."