Later I would get up and return to my table, to my translation work. Nella would stay in bed a bit longer, dozing, or pick up a book and read, resting on one elbow. Every so often she would stop and say something, as if to reassure herself that I hadn’t forgotten her. It was difficult for her to resist coming over to kiss or caress me. After a while she could no longer hold back; she would come up behind me and ask: “Haven’t you finished yet?” in a sulky, unhappy voice. Or she would tiptoe up and kiss me hard, making my ear buzz for the next five minutes. “Don’t you know that you have to leave me in peace when I’m working?” I would say, roughly. “I’m sorry,” she would say, humbly, “but I couldn’t resist.” Then she would climb
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back onto the bed and read while I continued with my work. Later, she would get up and begin to carefully prepare her toilette. Finally, when her patience had run out, she would say, “I’m going down to the café,” and disappear. I breathed a sigh of relief — somewhat insincere, I knew — and worked for another half hour. Then I too went out.
I would meet her at the café, a squalid little back room at a neighborhood spot. Sometimes she would be there alone, sitting in front of an espresso, more often she was joined by friends and acquaintances, intellectuals and their girlfriends. They passed the time discussing, debating, and commenting on the day’s events, until dinnertime. In the evening at the trattoria, I felt the same anxiety and ill humor as I had earlier at lunchtime. We did not eat much in the evening, and sometimes we skipped dinner altogether and ate sandwiches and beer at the bar on our street. When I had money, Nella accompanied me to the movies, otherwise she would go home and I would go to the movies alone. I sat and watched the film with a growing sense of futility, frustration, and irritation: nine times out of ten the movie was a worthless waste of time. Even so, I had to write a review, if only to point out its shortcomings. I would run to the newspaper offices and quickly scribble a review on any available surface. Then I went home, where I would find Nella half-asleep on the bed with her thick mane of hair spread out over the pillow and her slender shoulders. I undressed quickly and climbed under the covers, and she immediately turned over and pressed herself against me with all the strength of her youthful, fresh body. That was the moment when I loved her the most, or rather gave myself most fully to my love. I was tired, worn out, disgusted with myself, more uncertain than ever about my future, and sickened by my work. These embraces were like a refuge and a consolation after an absurd, hopeless day. In the dark, I encircled her tightly in my arms, dug my face into the firm, feverish tenderness of her breasts; I bit her and caressed her with a feeling of sweetness mixed with rage. It felt as if by embracing her I became a child again and found a lingering trace of maternal consolation in her trembling, exposed flesh. Sometimes as I embraced her my eyes welled up with tears; I was thankful that the darkness concealed my weakness. With those tears I expressed the
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bitterness accumulated throughout the day. With a sort of sixth sense, Nella often asked me, tenderly: “Why are you crying? Why are you crying?” Then she would hold me tightly in her child-like arms, pressing my face against her soft, womanly breast. After a long pause, when she felt she had consoled me, she would turn around and press her hips against my groin; I would encircle her waist with one arm and her chest with the other, and penetrate her slowly in the dark. I remained inside of her, pacified, and fell asleep. We stayed there like this, locked in an embrace, until morning.
I have described in detail a day in my life in order to paint a picture of my daily existence at the time; every day was the same, and this monotony was one of the reasons for my unhappiness and my dissatisfaction. As I have mentioned, at the time I was waiting for something to change, even, if necessary, for the worse, but I did not know what, and I had the vague suspicion that nothing would change if I did not decide to take action. But why and how was I supposed to act? I did not have the answer, and so I waited. As I said before, my sense of expectation gave me a false impression of my life and hid its true, positive reality: Nella, my love for her, her love for me. I was fascinated by the mirage of a remote oasis where I would finally be able to drink from a bubbling but as yet unreal spring, and I did not realize that I was already standing in a corner of this oasis, with palm trees all around, surrounded by cool shade and with a spring at my feet, full of limpid, cool water.
[IV]
I had forgotten about Maurizio, or rather I never thought about him explicitly, but in the deepest corner of my consciousness I knew that our paths would cross sometime in the future and that the silent battle we had been fighting since childhood would continue.This certainty had become almost an unconfessed desire: the truth was that I wanted him to reappear and for our battle to resume. I felt that my membership in the Communist Party, which had been triggered mostly by feelings of inferiority, would reveal its
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true meaning only when I had achieved victory over Maurizio, or at least engaged in a confrontation with him. As I’ve said, I still felt impotent, mortified, aimless, and uncentered, despite my Party membership. And I had a sneaking feeling that this impotence, mortification, aimlessness, and uncenteredness would be dispelled if I found someone or something to fight against. In theory, this was true, and perhaps not only in theory. Even those who, like me, were not activists and whose political activities were limited to joining up and socializing with other Party members, even we imagined a world in which the conflict between Communist ideals and the various forces that opposed them was a question of life or death. But we do not live on ideals alone; in any case, I could not do so. I felt that this struggle must become something personal and compelling, something direct and specific, in order to be truly transformative and constructive. I also felt, for some reason, that Maurizio embodied everything I was struggling against in this dark, challenging moment we were living. Perhaps it was my own strange and very human rivalry with Maurizio that led me to believe this. We will never know what comes first, the idea or the human impulse; this question does not intrigue me. I felt the struggle to be real, powerfully so, and that was enough for me.
I did not seek him out. For some reason, I was sure that he would reappear, in the way that certain profound, important things in our life often do, at regular intervals. What was the basis for my certainty? The equally unspoken, hidden knowledge that without Maurizio I did not fully exist, that he was my other, negative and baleful half, without which everything that I considered positive and good for humanity could not exist, neither in myself nor in the world.
One evening after dinner Nella and I went out to a
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café where we usually met with our friends to engage in the same discussions until past midnight, night after night. But for some reason on that particular evening the café was empty; our friends had apparently made other plans. We stopped at two or three other cafés in the neighborhood, but they too were empty. I was in an especially surly mood — I can’t remember why — and Nella, who tended to react to my ill humor with tenderness and caresses, was getting on my nerves. Finally we sat down at a café with a few iron tables and chairs, illuminated with tubes of blinding neon light. We were the only people there. It was a small room with high ceilings, a dirty floor, and empty tables. After a mediocre coffee, I began to pick on Nella, as usual. The point of departure was always the same: for one reason or another, I would start talking about politics and the Communist Party, and my conviction that the Party would soon come to power. But instead of reacting enthusiastically to my revolutionary dreams, Nella received them, as usual, with innocent, uninformed indifference. I had convinced myself that a revolution was imminent. In my state of befuddlement, mortification, and impotence, this idea was the one source of light I could see for the country as well as for my own personal existence. It was practically impossible for me to accept that my conviction and sincere, almost mystical hope for change, inspired by my resentment toward the political leadership that had brought Fascism to power and forced Italy into war and catastrophe, was not shared by Nella. My noble ideals sailed right over her head, like a cannon shooting into the air. She, on the other hand, attached herself tenaciously to the only real thing that existed between us, our love, and, as was becoming increasingly clear, she could see nothing beyond this love. I tried to explain to her, with abundant ideological, psychological, moral, and political arguments, why revolution was inevitable and desirable, but I could see that she was distracted. Her attention was focused only on me, no matter what I said. If I had been discussing idle gossip rather than pouring out fervent arguments for revolution, it would have been exactly the same to her. I