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the sink; instead of the sun shining overhead, there was a lightbulb above the mirror; instead of a bubbling brook, the gurgling of pipes. But the feeling was the same: an irresistible, blind, full-bodied impulse, more animal than human. I remember that, as I penetrated her, holding her firmly and pushing up against her back, I pulled her hair and kissed her face and neck with an animal-like gratitude and tenderness, just as I imagine a horse licks its mare while mounting her. Afterward, we ended up in the street almost without knowing how we had arrived there, as if the cloud of desire that had overcome us had also borne us through the building’s thick walls and deposited us on the sidewalk, far from the place where our encounter had occurred.
I have described this first encounter in some detail, not in order to indulge in the questionable pleasure of describing such a scene, but to point out something, an aspect which subsequently became an important element of our relationship: contempt. Nella was shy, sweet, chaste, and lacking in vulgarity or impurity, and yet, mixed with my desire, I felt something for her that was very close to contempt. It was this contempt that led me to take her in this manner, in these circumstances, without consideration, respect, or even pity, as if wishing to hurt her rather than love her. Why did I feel this way? I did not know at the time, and have never been able to understand it fully. My contempt had no justification, either in her physical person or in her personality as I came to know it. This mysterious, inhuman, blind emotion, so profoundly unsympathetic, poisoned our relationship from the start and kept me from loving her with the same abandon with which she loved me. When all is said and done, the story I intend to tell is the story of this contempt.
[III]
I accompanied Nella to her room in a modest boardinghouse,
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and then returned to my own furnished room downtown. Once I was alone, I reflected on what had happened, but after only ten minutes, an impulse drove me to leave my bed and telephone Nella. Without hesitating I told her that since I had caused her to lose her job, it was only right for me to try to repair the damage. Why didn’t she come and stay with me, live with me? Timidly, hesitantly, she asked whether I wanted her to come right away. Not only had she accepted my offer, but I could tell that she feared I might change my mind. This humble, submissive, and anxious eagerness moved and excited me. As I stood in the hallway speaking to her on the telephone I felt the same powerful, animal-like desire that had led me to make love to her in the bathroom. I answered that yes, of course, this was what I desired, and that she should pack her clothes in a suitcase and come as soon as she could. “I’ll be right there,” she answered, her voice so happy that even her shyness seemed to evaporate. I went back to my room to wait for her, and as the minutes passed, my excitement and desire grew. After a wait that at times seemed almost unbearable, the door opened and Nella appeared wearing her wide-brimmed straw hat and carrying a fiberboard suitcase. I took her by the waist and threw her down on the bed. She struggled to remove the hat which, like a child’s bonnet, was attached with an elastic under the chin. But I simply couldn’t wait and took her again then and there, with her head arched back in the straw halo of her hat, like a modern saint. She entreated me quietly not to hurt her. I collapsed on top of her, my cheek against hers, and slowly removed the hat and spread her red hair on the pillow, kissing her ardently. She stared at me with her big brown eyes full of tenderness, and said nothing. Finally she broke free and began to put away her few belongings, coming and going quietly, diligently, in a way that was both childlike and domestic. Thus began our life together.
We were poor, so poor that after paying the rent
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or buying something to wear there was practically nothing left over for food. No matter how hard Nella looked for work as a typist, she found nothing, and I had to support both of us with the scarce income from my obscure journalistic efforts. In those tumultuous, miserable years, newspapers popped up and disappeared like mushrooms after the rain and I went from one publication to the next, always searching for work, indifferent to political affiliations. The deep division between the Communists and other political groups had not yet taken hold. I performed the most diverse tasks, from writing for the crime pages to correcting proofs or, most often, writing film reviews. I became the movie critic for a morning daily, which meant that I had to stay up late into the night writing reviews after a premiere. My life became more ordered, though this regularity felt false and unwelcome because I did not love my work and considered it merely temporary. But temporary in comparison to what? This was a question I could not answer; I did not realize at the time that my feeling of transience was an extension of my intellectual nature. And my work was not the only thing I considered temporary; so too my living conditions, my daily routine, and, more than anything, my relationship with Nella. The only thing that felt definitive was my Party affiliation, which was merely symbolic after all and had caused no real change in my life or even altered my manner of thinking or my anxieties in any way. I had expected more, perhaps a kind of complete renewal, but was forced to accept that everything had remained the same and, furthermore, seemed inalterable. This idea disillusioned and tormented me. I told myself that sooner or later I would have to do something to prove that I had become a real Communist, not only by affiliation, but also in spirit. But what? I had no answer,
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at least for the moment.
I said earlier that this was a difficult period in my life, but in truth it was probably the happiest time I had known up to that point. As is often the case I was quite unconscious of my happiness. In fact, I considered myself to be deeply unhappy. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can say that I was mistaken, and can even describe the source of my happiness, a happiness I have never felt since that period. Principally, it was a product of the very poverty that afflicted me, of the challenges in my daily life and the bitterness of my struggle. My happiness consisted in being in touch with myself, bound to myself in the way that soldiers are bound to one another in battle. Solidarity exists not only between two different people, but also within oneself. Well, in those days, I felt in full solidarity with myself. I was in touch with the essential and most intimate part of my being, the part that life, fortune, and comfort tend to lead us away from until we lose awareness of it completely. I lacked purpose and hoped that this purpose would be provided sooner or later by the Party and that one day, when I could clearly grasp the purpose of my life, I would find happiness. I didn’t realize that, quite to the contrary, the purpose of life is to be close to oneself, united and in touch with the truth about oneself, and that even the Party, with all its means, could not provide me, or anyone else for that matter, with another purpose than that. Accidentally, I had already attained my aim in life, but I did not know it.