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Read Ebook: The Intruder by D Annunzio Gabriele Hornblow Arthur Translator
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Ebook has 1999 lines and 93924 words, and 40 pages
"Tell me," she said to me one day with bitterness, "aren't you disgusted with me when you think of it? Oh, how horrible it is!"
And she made a gesture of repugnance at herself, frowned, then was silent.
Another day as I entered her room she cried:
"Go away, go away, Tullio! Please go away! You can come back when I'm better. If you stay here you'll hate me. I'm odious now, odious--don't look at me."
Sobs choked her. The same day, a few hours later, while I was standing by her bedside in silence, because I thought she was about to doze off, she let fall these obscure words, pronounced with the strange tone of someone speaking in his sleep:
"What are you saying, Juliana?"
She did not reply.
"What are you thinking of, Juliana?"
She replied only by a contraction of her mouth, which was meant to be a smile.
Ah! that is how she appeared to me, it was dying that I saw her, the morning when the doctors put her to sleep with chloroform; and she, feeling that she was slowly sinking into the insensibility of death, tried two or three times to stretch out her arms to me, tried to call me. I left the room, completely overcome. For two long hours, endless hours, I waited, exasperating my suffering by excessive imagination. And my man's being felt a pang of hopeless pity for that poor creature whom the surgeon's steel was violating, not only in her poor flesh, but in the most sacred recesses of her soul, in the most delicate sentiment that a woman can defend--pity for her, and also for the others, for all those tormented by indefinite aspirations towards the idealities of love, abused by the captious dream with which virile desire surrounds them, insensibly captivated with a higher life, but so weak, so sickly, so imperfect, irremediably equal to the females of the beasts by the laws of nature which impose on them the duties of the Species, afflict them with horrible maladies, leave them exposed to all kinds of degeneration. And then, shuddering in every fibre, I saw in them, I saw in all of them, with frightful lucidity the original wound...."
When I re?ntered Juliana's room she was still under the influence of the anaesthetic, unconscious, silent, still, like a dying woman. My mother was very pale and very much excited. But it seemed that the operation was a success. The doctors appeared pleased. The assistant surgeon was rolling a bandage. Things gradually began to be orderly and quiet again.
The invalid remained a long time unconscious, and a slight fever set in. In the night she was taken with spasms; laudanum did not quiet her. I was nearly frantic; the spectacle of these horrible sufferings made me think that she was going to die. I no longer know either what I said or what I did. I suffered with her.
The following day the condition of the patient improved; then, from day to day, the improvement continued. Her strength came back very slowly.
One day, in my presence, my mother said to Juliana:
"When you are up, when you can walk, we'll all go together to the Badiola; won't we, Tullio?"
Juliana looked at me.
"Yes, mother," I replied, without hesitation, without reflection. "But first, Juliana and I will go to the Lilacs."
And she looked at me again, and she smiled, an unexpected, indescribable smile, with an almost infantile expression of credulity. It looked like the smile of a sick baby to whom has been made a great promise which it did not hope for. And she lowered her eyelids; but she continued to smile, and her half-closed eyes seemed to contemplate something, far away, very far. And the smile faded away, faded away, without disappearing.
How she pleased me then! How I adored her at that moment! How I felt that nothing in the world equals the simple emotion of kindness!
Infinite kindness emanated from this creature, penetrated all my being, filled my heart. She was lying on the bed, supported by two or three pillows; her face, amid the mass of untied brown hair, seemed of extraordinarily delicate mould, a sort of visible immateriality. She had on a night-dress tightly closed at the neck, tight around the wrists, and her hands rested flat on the counterpane, so pale that they were only distinguishable from the linen by the blue of their veins.
I took one of these hands , and I said in a low tone:
"So we'll return there--to the Lilacs."
"Yes," replied the invalid.
And we became silent, to prolong our emotion, to preserve our illusion. We both knew the profound meaning concealed under these few whispered words. A sagacious instinct warned us not to insist, not to define anything, not to go too far. If we had said a word more we should have found ourselves face to face with the exclusive realities of the illusion on which our souls existed and in which, imperceptibly, they lost themselves with rapturous dreams.
One afternoon--we were almost always alone--we were reading, stopping every now and then, bent together over the same page, and following the same lines with our eyes. It was a volume of poetry, and we were giving to the verses an intensity of meaning which they did not possess. Silent ourselves, we spoke to each other by the mouth of the poet. I myself marked with my nail the lines which seemed to interpret to my thoughts:
Je veux, guid? par vous, beaux yeux aux flammes douces, Par toi conduit, ? main o? tremblera ma main, Marcher droit, que ce soit par des sentiers de mousses Ou que rocs et cailloux encombrent le chemin,
Oui, je veux marcher droit et calme dans la Vie ...
And she, after reading, sank back for an instant on her pillows, her eyes closed, and with an almost imperceptible smile on her lips pointed to the passage:
Toi la bont?, toi le sourire, N'es-tu pas le conseil aussi, Le bon conseil loyal et brave ...
But on her breast I saw the batiste follow the rhythm of respiration with an easy grace which began to disturb as also the feeble perfume of iris which was exhaled by bedclothes and pillows. I hoped and I expected that seized by a sudden languor, she would put her arm around my neck and put her cheek to mine, so close that I could feel myself touched by the corner of her mouth. She laid her slender thumb on the book, and with her nail made a mark on the margin, guiding my emotion:
La voix vous fut connue , Mais, ? present, elle est voil?e Comme une veuve d?sol?e...
Elle dit, la voix reconnue, Que la bont?, c'est notre vie...
Elle parle aussi de la gloire, D'?tre simple sans plus attendre,
Et de noces d'or, et du tendre Bonheur d'une paix sans victoire.
Acceuillez la voix qui persiste Dans son na?f ?pithalame. Allez, rien n'est meilleur ? l'?me Que de faire une ?me moins triste!
I seized her wrist, and, slowly, I lowered my head until I touched with my lips the hollow of her hand; and I murmured:
"Could you--forget?"
She closed my mouth and uttered her great word:
"Silence!"
At that moment my mother came in to announce the visit of Signora Talice. I noticed Juliana's impatient little gesture, and I felt irritated myself against the importunate visitor. Juliana sighed:
"Tell her that Juliana is sleeping," I suggested to my mother in an almost supplicating tone.
She made me a sign that the visitor was waiting in the adjoining room. We must see her.
This Signora Talice was a spiteful and fastidious gossip. Every few moments she glanced at me with curiosity. In the course of conversation, my mother happened to say that I had sat with the invalid all day almost without interruption, and Signora Talice, looking fixedly at me, said in a tone of manifest irony:
"What an ideal husband!"
I left the house. On the steps I met Maria and Natalia coming in with their governess. As usual they assailed me with an infinity of caresses, and Maria, the elder, handed me several letters that the janitor had given her. Among them I suddenly recognized the letter of the Absent. And then I escaped from their caresses with a sort of impatience. As soon as I was in the street I stopped to read.
It was a short letter, but full of passion, with two or three of those singularly incisive phrases that Teresa knew how to write when she wished to disturb me. She announced her return to Florence on the twentieth to the twenty-sixth of that month, and said she hoped to meet me as before. She promised to furnish me with more precise particulars concerning the rendezvous.
In a second all the phantoms of the recent illusions and emotions became detached from my mind like the flowers of a tree shaken by a gust of wind. And, as the fallen flowers are forever lost to the tree, so these things of the soul were lost to me. They became foreign to my being. I made an effort, I tried to regain possession of myself; I did not succeed. I began to walk through the streets, aimlessly; I entered the shop of a confectioner, I entered a book-shop; I bought bonbons and books, mechanically. Twilight fell; the street lamps were lighted; the pavements were crowded; two or three ladies bowed to me from their carriages; one of my friends passed quickly, laughing and talking with his mistress, who held a bunch of roses in her hand. The maleficent breath of fashionable life penetrated me, awakened my curiosity, my desires, my jealousies. My blood seemed suddenly aflame. Certain images, extraordinarily distinct, passed before my mind like a lightning flash. The Absent regained possession of me merely by certain "expressions" of her letter, and all my desires went out towards her, madly.
But when the first tumult was appeased, while I was re-ascending the steps of my house, I understood the gravity of what had taken place, of what I had done; I understood that, a few hours before, I had effectively tightened the bond, I had pledged my faith, I had given a promise, a tacit but solemn promise, to a creature still weak and ill. I could not break my word without infamy, and I was conscious of it. Then I was sorry I had not mistrusted this deceitful compassion; I was sorry I had dwelt too long on this sentimental languor! And I examined minutely my acts, my words, of that day, with the cold subtilty of a dishonest tradesman who seeks a quarrel in order to avoid the obligations of a contract he has made. My last words had been too serious. That "Could you forget?" pronounced in that tone, after the reading of those verses, had had the value of a definite understanding. And that "Silence!" of Juliana had been the seal of the contract.
"But," I thought, "was she really convinced, this time, of my repentance? Has she not always been a little sceptical concerning my good impulses?" And I saw once more that weak and unbelieving smile that, on former occasions, I had already noticed on her lips. "If in the secret recesses of her heart she had not believed, or, again, if her illusion had suddenly faded away, then perhaps my retraction would be less serious, would not greatly wound her or offend her. There would merely have been an episode without consequence, and I should resume my former liberty. The Lilacs would still be a dream to her." But then I saw the other smile, that new, unexpected, credulous smile which had appeared on her lips at the mention of the Lilacs. What could I do? What should I decide? What attitude should I take? Teresa Raffo's letter had the same effect on me as a severe burn.
"Wherever have you been?" she asked, laughing.
"Signora Talice drove me away," I replied.
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