“Who knows?” she mused.
“Pazzarella,” I burst out, “I am not a beast — I am MYSELF.”
“I know,” she acquiesced, kissing me tenderly.
“I only want what is best for you.”
“Then you give me a kiss.”
“That would be hardly relevant.”
“Good-bye,” I called out, “give yourself to the first man who chooses you. You’ll get your love.” With this I left Pazzarella safely behind the door and I could breathe in freedom again.
The same evening a note was brought to me by hand, and this is what was written in it— “Why must a lump of female flesh, separate me so completely from all that is dear to me in the world—”
On the morrow I left for Paris and the only news I received of the amorous experiment I had prescribed for her, were these two lines
“O Geronimo, save me from this man who has desire as a dog has thirst, who makes love with the address of an able surgeon.”
Never, have I been so offended, as by that spirited analysis. Not content with being unfaithful to me, she made light of her accomplice, and this attitude of hers so closely allied me with him, that I ceased to be clear as to whether it was my war or his I must henceforth wage upon her. Was he not my brother in arms? So obvious it was that a common enemy attacked the sacred and inalterable front of masculine solidarity.
I decided to pay her another visit on my return.
When I saw her again, she had greatly changed, having acquired in the short interval a certain audacity. Her eyes no longer sought for anything. Her clothes were extremely attractive, and she was even more beautiful than before, with that fixed and useless beauty some women assume out of mere contrariness when the longed-for fruits, rewards of beauty, have been withdrawn.
“But you,” I exclaimed ironically, “are getting on magnificently.”
“There is no denying it,” she laughed. “I have revived. I am exploiting my soul whereas formerly my soul exploited me.” Then with a profound moue, “Please, Geronimo, say—‘Woman has no soul.’ ”
“You are monstrous,” I cried. “A genuine cerebral masochist — does it give you such very great pleasure to have a man insult you?”
“We-ell, it does make it more difficult for him to impress me.”
The call to arms was sounding. Giving no sign that I was aware of it, I continued, “It is for that very reason that woman can so easily penetrate the soul of others.”
“You mean, that having none of her own, there is no obstacle,” she laughed once more.
“Yet nevertheless,” I said, my voice trembling with feigned emotion, “you were not able to penetrate mine. You could not understand that I in no way resemble other men, although it was for that you loved me, is it not so? You could not see that I loved you, nor understand that I, who am the man who overturns everything, must overturn even love itself.”
While I was saying this, I observed my prey with the utmost attention. Pazzarella’s face underwent an incredible evolution on my first sentimental inflection. The drama of a whole life took place in her eyes — birth, hope, happiness, disillusion, ire, shame, revenge, desperation, callousness, death — purification, and as I drew her slowly towards me, she attained, through this impassioned conflagration, to a virginity of spirit that in her ignorant maidenhood she could never have approached. A pitiful virginity offering its whitened pain to nothing.
“How could you bring yourself,” implored my shaken voice, “to betray me as you did?”
Pazzarella, petrified, listened to the useless echoes of her aspiration in my reproaches.
“I do not reproach you,” I went on. “You have taken vengeance on yourself — outraging your true nature in extremis. Poor child,” I whispered, taking her in my arms and stirring her with over-sensitive caresses to which her subtle sensuality responded automatically. “The touch of any hand but mine must martyrize your flesh—” And from between her white teeth and her underlip broke a single bead of blood.
“Incredulous monster!” I murmured in that fainting ear, “Had it never occurred to you that love, which flowers in beauty among promises and ecstasy, dies unassuaged and bruised under the blow of desertion?
“What, then, could be more logical for illuminated lovers than to let love be born lamenting, without any illusions whatsoever in the callous hour of abandonment? What could be easier after that than for love to mature, insured against all deception for the paradisiacal spasm on arrival at its goal— I thought I had detected between us of that sort of spontaneous affinity—” Here Pazzarella embraced me convulsively.
“Do not kiss me,” I begged her courteously. “I feel the breath of the thirsty dog.
“Oh, you ordinary woman,” I taunted her, “who conceives the lover as being of that species of idiot who, arriving with a bunch of roses and a gold bangle, after playing his messy little tricks, takes nostalgic leave and, on getting home, writes three pages of eulogy to begin all over again on the following day. You, with your conventional infidelity, have ruined the most promising love affair that ever
“On your recommendation.”
“The humblest beggar,” I retorted, “refuses advice.”
“God forgives,” began Pazzarella.
“And, doesn’t exist—”
“Only think,” I meditated aloud. “Once past the period of growing antipathy, of reciprocal lies — the physical repugnance of satiety, which in our case would have become steadily less—Think what a lover I should have made—”
“I know. . I know,” she burbled, brushing the palm of my hand with her lips.
“—exactly that ‘something’ you so long — so long had waited for. Think, if it turns your head when I treat you badly, what under heaven might have happened to you when the time came for me to grow fond.
“Think — in the theatre of the flesh, how endless a romance would have been ours according to my program which eliminated any possible denouement.
“Imagine the role you would have played under my—”
“Geronimo!” screamed Pazzarella, “If you don’t clear out, I shall murder you.”
It was some time since I had given a thought to Pazzarella when I met her one evening out in the rain. The lamplight shone on her extinguished eyes under their perfect eyebrows. Once more, on beholding her pale passivity, that insupportable sense of irritation tore at me until impalpable filaments floated out from my body, meeting nothing to attach to and which I could not cast off.
I offered her the shelter of my umbrella and, without speaking to me, she drew my hand that was free into her enormous muff and went on walking.
At last—
“Yesterday,” she confided to me, dreamily, “I wandered — wandered far out of the creaking city into the indelicate night, where, finding myself alone with nature, I asked her—‘Why Geronimo?’ ”
“And what did nature answer?”
“ ‘It’s useless addressing yourself to me,’ she grumbled. ‘I’m such a brute—’ ”
“As far as you are concerned she has every right to be.”
We had reached her house. Pazzarella closed the front door and, all tremulous in the shadows, held up her face to mine. Ah, the pleasure it would give me to suck away her entire life through those questing lips. It would be too acceptable an end for her. I threw her off.
“Your kisses are too sensitive.”
We entered the warm brightly lit room. I sank into an armchair, and Pazzarella perched herself on the arm.