Part 27

"You see that scar beneath my chin?" went on Hippolyte. "My mother did that. My sister and I went to school, and we had very nice dresses that we had to take off on our return. One evening, on going home, I found on the table a foot-warmer, that I took to rewarm my frozen hands. My mother said to me: 'Go and undress!' I replied: 'I'm going,' and I continued to warm myself. She repeated: 'Go and undress!' I repeated: 'I'm going.' She had in her hand a large brush, and was brushing a dress. I lingered in the middle of the room with the foot-warmer. My mother repeated for the third time: 'Go and undress!' And I repeated: 'I'm going.' Furious, she threw the brush at me. It struck and broke the foot-warmer. A splinter of the handle struck me here, beneath the chin, and cut a vein. The blood flowed. My aunt ran to me quickly, but my mother neither moved nor looked at me. The blood flowed. By good fortune they soon found a surgeon who ligated the vein. My mother remained obstinately silent. When my father came home and saw me bandaged he asked what was the matter. My mother, without a word, looked at me fixedly. I replied: 'I fell down the staircase.' My mother said nothing. As a consequence, I have suffered considerably from that loss of blood. But how Adriana was beaten!--particularly on account of Giulio, my brother-in-law. I shall never forget a terrible scene."

She stopped. Perhaps she had just noticed on George's face some equivocal sign.

"I bore you, don't I, with all this gossip?"

"No, no. Continue, please. Don't you see I am listening?"

"We lived then in Ripetta, in the house of a family of the name of Angelini, with whom we became very friendly. Luigi Sergi, the brother of my brother-in-law, Giulio, occupied the lower floor with his wife, Eugenia. Luigi was a well-educated man, studious, modest. Eugenia was a woman of the worst kind. Although her husband made a good deal of money, she was always running him into debt, and no one knew in what manner she spent all the money. Gossip had it that it went to pay her lovers. She was very homely, so the story was generally believed. My sister had become attached to Eugenia, I do not know how, and she was forever going downstairs, on the pretext of taking lessons in French from Luigi. That displeased my mother, rendered suspicious by Angelina's sisters, old maids, who pretended to have friendship for the Sergis, but who, in reality, deserted them like _buzzurri_, and were happy to be able to slander them. 'Allowing Adriana to visit the house of an abandoned woman!' Hard words increased. But Eugenia always favored Giulio's and Adriana's amours. Giulio often came to Rome from Milan on business. And, one day, just as he was coming, my sister made great haste to go downstairs. My mother forbade her to move. My sister insisted. In the dispute my mother raised her hand. They seized each other by the hair. My sister went so far as to bite her arms, and escaped by the staircase. But as she knocked at the Sergi door my mother fell on her, and in the open landing place there was such a scene of violence as I shall never forget. Adriana was brought back home almost dead. She fell ill and had convulsions. My mother, repentant, surrounded her with care, became more gentle than she ever was before. A few days later, even before she was entirely cured, Adriana eloped with Giulio. But that, I believe, I have already told you."

And after all this innocent gossip, in which she forgot herself, without suspecting the effect produced on her lover by her commonplace recollections, she again took to her interrupted supper.

There was an interval of silence; then she added, smiling:

"You see what a terrible woman my mother is? You don't know, and you can never know, how much she has tortured me, when the struggle broke out against him. My God! What torture!"

She remained thoughtful for a few moments.

George fixed upon the imprudent woman a look charged with hate and jealousy, suffering in that moment all his sufferings of the past two years. With the fragments with which she had had the imprudence to furnish him, he reconstructed Hippolyte's life in her own circle, not without attributing to it the meanest vulgarities, not without lowering it to the most dishonorable contacts. If the marriage of the sister took place under the auspices of a nymphomaniac, under what conditions, as a consequence of what circumstances, was that of Hippolyte concluded then? In what world had her early years been passed? By what intrigues had she fallen into the hands of the odious man whose name she bore? And he represented to himself the hidden and sordid life in certain little middle-class homes of old Rome--homes that exhaled at the same time a stench of cooking and the musty smell of a sacristy, that fermented with the double corruption of the family and the church. The prediction of Alphonso Exili returned to his memory: "Do you know who your probable successor is? It is Monti, the _mercante di campagna_. Monti has money." It appeared probable to him that Hippolyte would end in that way, by lucrative amours, and that she would have the tacit consent of her people, gradually allured by an easier existence, disembarrassed of domestic cares, surrounded once more by comforts far greater than those which the matrimonial state of their daughter had procured for them. "Could not I myself make an offer like that, propose that _position_ frankly to Hippolyte?" She said, the other day, that she had something in view for the winter, for the future. Very well! Could we not arrange it? I am sure that, after having seriously considered the offer, and the stability of the position, that sour old woman would not have much repugnance in accepting me as a substitute for the fugitive son-in-law. Perhaps we should even end by all becoming a happy family for the end of our days?" The sarcasm wrenched his heart with intolerable cruelty. Nervously he poured out some more wine and drank.

"Why are you drinking so much this evening?" asked Hippolyte, looking into his eyes.

"I am thirsty. You are not drinking, are you?"

Hippolyte's glass was empty.

"Drink!" said George, making a gesture as if about to fill her glass.

"No," she answered. "I prefer water, as usual. No wine pleases me, except champagne. Do you remember, at Albano, the astonishment of that good Pancrace when the cork would not pop, and he had to use a corkscrew?"

"There must be still several bottles below, in the case. I will go and find them."

And George rose quickly.

"No, no! Not this evening!"

She wanted to retain him. But, as he was preparing to descend, "I will go, too," she said.

Gayly, lightly, she descended with him into a room on the ground floor that served as a store-room.

Candia hastened to them with a lamp. They searched at the bottom of the case and recovered two bottles with silvered necks, the last.

"Here they are!" exclaimed Hippolyte, already excited sensually. "Here they are. Two more."

She lifted them up, brilliant, toward the lamp.

"Let us go."

She ran out laughing, ascended the stairs, placed the bottles on the table. For a few seconds she sat as if bewildered, panting somewhat. Then she shook her head.

"Look at Ortona!"

She stretched out her hand toward the distant town, beautiful in its gala dress, and which seemed to be wafting its joy as far as where she sat. A crimson glare was spread over the top of the hill as over an active crater; and from the lighted area kept rising innumerable balloons in the deep azure, drifting in vast circles, presenting a picture of an immense illuminated dome reflected by the sea.

On the table, rich in flowers, fruits, and sweetmeats, the night-moths were whirling. The froth from the generous wine splashed over the rush mats.

"I drink to our happiness!" she said, lifting her glass toward her lover.

"I drink to our peace!" he said, holding out his own.

The glasses clashed together so roughly that both were broken. The golden wine was spilled on the table, inundated a pile of fine, succulent peaches.

"A good omen! A good omen!" cried Hippolyte, more merry at this sprinkling than if she had drunk deeply.

And she placed her hand on the wet fruit piled before her. They were magnificent peaches, of a deep crimson on one side as if the rising sun had painted them on seeing them hanging ripe on the branch. That strange dew seemed to revivify them.

"What a marvel!" she said, taking the most luxurious one.

Without removing the skin, she bit it greedily. The juice ran from the corners of her mouth, yellow as liquid honey.

"You bite now!"

She held the streaming peach out to her lover, with the same gesture she had offered him the rest of the bread beneath the oak in the twilight of the first day.

That recollection awoke in George's memory; and he felt a desire to speak of it.

"Do you remember," he said, "do you remember the first evening, when you bit the bread fresh from the oven, and you gave it me all warm and humid? Do you remember? How good it seemed to me!"

"I remember everything. Can I forget the slightest incident of that day?"

She saw again, in imagination, the path all strewn with furze, the fresh and delicate homage shed on her path. For a few moments she remained silent, absorbed by that vision of poesy.

"The furze!" she murmured, with an unexpected smile of regret.

Then she added:

"Do you remember? The entire hill was clothed in yellow, and the perfume gave one vertigo."

"Drink!" said George, pouring the sparkling wine into the new glasses.

"I drink to the coming springtime of our love!" said Hippolyte.

And she drank to the last drop.

George immediately refilled her empty glass.

She put her fingers into a box of _loukoumes_, asking:

"Will you have amber or pink?"

They were Oriental confections sent to them by Adolpho Astorgi--a sort of elastic paste colored amber and pink, and powdered with pistache, and so perfumed that they gave to the mouth the illusion of a fleshy flower rich in honey.

"Who knows where the Don Juan is now?" said George, on receiving the sweetmeat from Hippolyte's fingers, white with sugar.

And over his soul passed the nostalgia of the distant isles, the isles embalmed by the mastic, and which at the very moment, perhaps, were sending all their nocturnal delights on the breeze to swell the great sail.

Hippolyte detected the note of regret in George's words: "So you prefer to be on board, away over there, with your friend, rather than here alone with me?" she said.

"Neither here nor there. Somewhere else!" he replied smiling, in a bantering tone.

And he rose to offer his lips to his companion.

She gave him a long kiss, with her mouth all sticky and covered with the sugar of the still unswallowed _bon-bon_, while the moths whirled round about them.

"You do not drink," he said after the kiss, his voice slightly changed.

She emptied the glass at a draught.

"It is almost warm," said she, as she laid it down. "Do you remember the iced champagne at Danieli's in Venice? Oh, how I love to see it flow slowly, slowly, in thick flakes!"

When she spoke of the things that pleased her or of the caresses that she preferred, she had in her voice a singular delicacy; to modulate the syllables, her lips moved in a manner that expressed profound sensuality. Now, in every one of these words, in each of these movements, George found a motif of the keenest suffering. That sensuality which he had himself aroused in her he believed had now come to the point where desire, untiring and tyrannical, could no longer support any bridle and claimed immediate satisfaction. Hippolyte appeared to him like a woman irresistibly addicted to pleasure in all its forms, no matter what degradation it might cost her. When he had gone away, or when she had tired of his "love," she would accept the most generous and most practical offer. Perhaps she would even succeed in raising the price very high. Where, in fact, could a rarer instrument of voluptuousness be found? She possessed at present every seduction and every science; she had that beauty which strikes men at sight, which disturbs them, which awakens in their blood implacable covetousness; she had feline elegance of person, refined taste in dress, exquisite art in colors and styles that harmonized with her grace; she had learned to modulate, in a voice suave and warm as the velvet of her eyes, the slow syllables that evoked dreams and lulled pain; she bore in the depths of her being a secret malady that seemed at times to mysteriously illumine her sensibility; she had, by turns, the languors of the malady and the vehemence of health; and, finally, she was barren. United in her, then, were the sovereign virtues that destine a woman to dominate the world by the scourge of her impure beauty. Passion had refined and complicated these virtues. She was now at the zenith of her power. If, all at once, she found herself free and untrammelled, what road would she choose in life? George had no longer the slightest doubt; he knew what that choice would be. He was confirmed in the certitude that his influence over her was bounded by the senses and by certain factitious attitudes of her mind. The plebeian foundation had persisted, impenetrable in its thickness. He was convinced that this plebeian foundation would permit her to adapt herself without compunction to the contact of a lover who would not be distinguished by any superior qualities, physical or moral: in short, a commonplace lover. And, while he filled her empty glass again with the wine she preferred, the wine that one uses to enliven secret suppers, to animate little modern orgies behind closed doors, he attributed, in imagination, attitudes of outrageous immodesty to "the pale and voracious Roman, incomparable in the art of tiring the loins of men."

"How your hand trembles," observed Hippolyte, looking at it.

"It's true," he said, with a convulsion that simulated gayety. "I think I've already had too much. Why don't you drink? That's not fair."

She laughed, and drank for the third time, filled with a childish joy at the thought of getting tipsy, at feeling her intelligence become gradually obscured. The fumes of the wine were already operating in her. The hysterical demon began to move her.

"See how sunburnt my arms are!" she cried, drawing her large sleeves up to the elbows. "Just look at my wrists!"

Although she was a carnation brunette, of a warm, dull-gold color, the skin at her wrists was extremely transparent and of a strange pallor. The sun had burnt the parts exposed; but on the under side the wrists had remained pale. And on that fine skin, through that pallor, the veins shone through, subtle, and yet very visible, of an intense azure slightly approaching a violet. George had often repeated the words of Cleopatra to the messenger from Italy: "Here are my bluest veins to kiss."

Hippolyte held out her wrists to him and said:

"Kiss them!"

He seized one, and made a motion with his knife as if about to cut it off.

She dared him to.

"Cut, if you want to. I won't move."

During the gesture he looked fixedly at the delicate blue network on her skin, so clearly defined that it seemed to belong to another body, to the body of a blond woman. And that singularity attracted him, tempted him aesthetically by the suggestion of a tragic image of beauty.

"It is your vulnerable spot," he said with a smile. "It is a sure indication. You will die from cut veins. Give me the other hand."

He placed the two wrists together, and again made a gesture as to cut them off with a single blow. The complete image arose in his imagination. On the marble threshold of a door, full of shadow and expectation, the woman who was about to die appeared, extending her naked arms; and at the extremities of the arms, from the slashed veins, spouted and palpitated two red fountains. And, between these red fountains, the face slowly assumed a supernatural pallor, the cavities of the eyes were filled with an infinite mystery, the phantom of an inexpressible word was outlined on the closed mouth. All at once the double jet ceased to flow. The exsanguined body fell backwards like a mass, in the shadow.

"Tell me your dream!" begged Hippolyte, seeing him absorbed.

He described the image to her.

"Very beautiful," said she, with admiration, as if before an engraving.

And she lit a cigarette. She puffed a wave of smoke from between her lips against the lamp around which the night-moths were whirling. She watched for a moment the agitation of the little variegated wings between the moving veils of the cloud. Then she turned toward Ortona, which scintillated with fire. She arose and raised her eyes to the stars.

"How warm the night is!" she said, breathing heavily. "Aren't you warm too?"

She threw away her cigarette. Again she uncovered her arms. She came close to him; she suddenly threw his head back; she enveloped him in a long caress; her mouth glided over all his face, languishing and ardent, in a multiple kiss. Feline-like, she clung to him, entwined him, and with an almost inexplicable movement, agile and furtive, she seated herself on his knees, intoxicating him with the perfume of her skin, that perfume, at once irritating and delicious, that always had the same exhilarating effect on him as the scent of the tuberose.

Every fibre of his being trembled, like a few moments before when she had clasped him ardently in the room filled with the last shadows of twilight. She noticed his emotion and it aroused desire in her. Her hands became bold.

"No, no; let me be!" he stammered, repulsing her. "We shall be seen."

She tore herself away. She tottered slightly, and appeared really influenced by the wine. It seemed as though a mist, passing over her eyes and into her brain, obscured her sight and thought. She put her hands to her forehead and burning cheeks.

"How warm it is!" she sighed. "I wish I had nothing on."

Possessed from now on by that one fixed idea, George repeated to himself: "Must I die alone?" As the fatal hour drew nearer, the deed of violence seemed more necessary. Behind him, in the shadow in the bedroom, he heard the ticktack of the clock; he heard the rhythmic blows of a flax-brake on a distant field. These two sounds, cadenced and dissimilar, intensified in him the sensation of the flight of time, gave him a sort of anxious terror.

"Look at Ortona aflame!" cried Hippolyte. "What a number of rockets!"

The festive city illuminated the sky. Innumerable sky-rockets, parting from a central point, spread out in the sky like a broad golden fan, that slowly, from top to bottom, dissolved into a shower of scattered sparks, and, suddenly, in the midst of the golden rain, a new fan was formed, entire and splendid, to dissolve again and reform again, while the waters reflected the changing picture. One heard a low crepitation, like a distant fusilade, interspersed with deeper reports that followed the explosions of multi-colored bombs in the heights of the sky. And at every report the city, the port, the great stretched-out mole, appeared in a different light, fantastically transfigured.

Upright against the parapet, Hippolyte admired the spectacle, and saluted the brighter splendors with exclamations of delight. From time to time it spread over her person like the reflection of a fire.

"She is overexcited, a little inebriated, ready for any madness," thought George as he watched her. "I could suggest a walk, which she has often wanted to take: to go through one of the tunnels by the light of a torch. I would go down to the Trabocco to get a torch. She could wait for me at the end of the bridge. I would lead her then to the tunnel by a path that I know. I would manage that the train should come upon us while we were in the tunnel--foolhardiness, accident."

The idea seemed to him easy of realization: it had presented itself to his imagination with extraordinary clearness, as if it had formed an integral part of his consciousness since that first day when, before the shining rails, he received the first confused glimmer from them. "She must die, too." His resolution became strengthened, immutable. He heard behind him the ticking of the clock. He felt a feeling of intense anxiety he could not master. It was getting late. Perhaps there was scarcely time for them to go down. He must act without delay, assure himself immediately as to the precise time indicated by the clock. But it seemed impossible for him to rise from his chair; it seemed to him that if he spoke to her carelessly, his speech would fail him.

He started to his feet as he heard in the distance the well-known rumbling. Too late! And his heart beat so fast that he believed he would die of anguish as he heard the rumbling and whistling draw nearer.

Hippolyte turned.

"The train!" she said. "Come and see!"

He went; and she encircled his neck with her bare arm, leaning on his shoulder.

"It is entering the tunnel," she said again, prompted by the difference in sound.

In George's ears the rumbling increased in a frightful manner. He saw, as in a hallucination, his mistress and himself beneath the dark roof, the rapid approach of the headlight in the dark, the short struggle on the rails, the simultaneous fall, the bodies crushed by the horrible violence; and, at the same time, he felt the contact of the supple woman, caressing, always triumphant. And, added to the physical horror of this barbarous destruction, he felt an exasperated rancor against her who seemed to escape his hate.

Both leaning against the parapet, they watched the deafening train, rapid and sinister, that shook the house to its very foundations, and even imparted the shock to them.

"At night," said Hippolyte, pressing still closer to him, "I'm afraid when the train shakes the house as it passes. Aren't you, too? I have often felt you tremble."

He did not hear her. An immense tumult stirred his whole being; it was the rudest and most obscure agitation that his soul had ever experienced. Incoherent thoughts and images whirled in his brain, and his heart writhed beneath a thousand cruel punctures. But one fixed image dominated all the others, invaded the centre of his soul. What was he doing at this hour five years before? He was holding vigil over a cadaver; he was contemplating a face hidden beneath a black veil, a long, pale hand----

Hippolyte's restless hands touched him, crept into his hair, tickled his neck. On his neck, on his ear, he felt a warm mouth. With an instinctive motion that he could not repress, he drew aside, walked away. She laughed that singular laugh, ironical and immodest, which burst out and resounded from between her teeth whenever her lover refused himself to her. And under this obsession he heard once more the slow and limpid syllables: "For fear of my kisses!"

A low crepitation, mingled with the distinct reports, still came from the festive town. The fireworks were beginning again.

Hippolyte turned toward the spectacle.

"Look! One would think that Ortona were on fire."

A vast crimson glare lit up the heavens and was reflected in the waters, and in the midst of the light the profile of the flaming town was outlined. The rockets burst overhead like splendid large roses.

"Shall I live through this night? Shall I recommence to live to-morrow? And how long?" A disgust, bitter as a nausea, an almost savage hate, arose from his heart at the thought that the following night he would again have that woman near him on the same pillow, that he would again hear the breathing of the sleeping woman, that he would again smell the odor and feel the contact of that heated skin, and then that the day would break again and pass by in the usual idleness, amidst the torture of perpetual alternatives.