In Lucia's Eyes by Arthur Japin

Author:Arthur Japin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307279675
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

THE NEAPOLITAN GIFT for celebration is unmatched, and it was almost dawn by the time I returned home, drunk with success. Neither Ridolfino nor Filippo seemed repelled in the slightest by my disfigurement, perhaps because their work had accustomed them to the sight of damage. Nor were the brothers embarrassed by each other’s ardor. And so in their arms I knew a passion that might have frightened another girl my age. In truth, since my confinement, no man but the old count had looked upon me with desire, and before that my experiences had been limited to Giacomo’s sweetly timid touch. On that feast of San Gennaro I abandoned myself completely to my yearnings and exerted myself in ways not to be found even in Dom Bougres. I felt the pleasure not in my body but in my soul, where the sensation was all the more intense. My soul seemed—I don’t know how else to say it—elevated by my shamelessness to the point of having broken free from my body, free to look down from a great height at the contortions below. I was moved beyond all expectation by the feeling of being so hungrily wanted. Even then I knew it was possibly the only time I would ever arouse such great longing in two handsome young men, and to have satisfied them both produced a feeling of great contentment, an exalted peace of mind. And for a moment my imperfection was forgotten as I stopped thinking and only felt. After our play was over, there was not a thought in my head as I lay gazing at the relaxation and childish gratitude on the faces of the brothers, recovering from their exertions with their heads on my belly.

Zélide was asleep when I returned, but the oil lamp she had left burning still flickered on her writing table. Beside it lay the essay she had written while I was out dancing. I was so full of myself that I imagined she had left it there to be found as a mute reproach; in my drunkenness, I felt capable of waking her to have a row about her bloodless, joyless old spirit.

Fortunately, I set to reading the essay instead. It was full of echoes of our conversation in the basilica. Zélide elaborated her theory of the loss of intuitive knowledge with age, in a tone and with a force that made me feel banal and abject in the afterglow of lustful satiety. In every word, I recognized her painfully sensitive soul and its refusal to surrender to the inflexible regime of reason. She spoke from her heart, relying on her own experience, without referring to science or attempting a logical proof. It was one of her most inspired works. In a somewhat altered form, together with two later dissertations on the same subject, it would eventually be published in Nancy—under the pseudonym M. de M.—as De l’origine du savoir. I still have a copy. Another was added to the collection of

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