The Woman of Rome (Italia) by Moravia Alberto

Author:Moravia, Alberto [Moravia, Alberto]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781581952438
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2011-09-27T04:00:00+00:00

3

I GAVE UP GIACOMO ALTOGETHER, deciding to think no more about him. I felt I loved him and if he were to return I would be happy and would love him more than ever. But I also knew I would never let myself be humiliated by him again. If he came back, I would stand there before him, enclosed in my own life as in a fortress, which would really be impregnable and unshaken until I left it of my own accord. “I’m a whore off the streets,” I would say to him, “nothing more — if you want me, you have to accept me for what I am.” I had realized that my strength lay not in my desire to be something I was not, but in my acceptance of what I was. My strength lay in my poverty, my profession, Mother, my ugly house, my simple clothes, my humble origin, my misfortunes, and more profoundly in the feeling that made me able to accept all these things, a feeling as deeply embedded in my soul as a precious stone in the bowels of the earth. But I was quite sure I would never see him again, and this certainty made me love him in a melancholy, helpless way quite new in my experience, which had its own sweetness; as we love the dead who never will return.

At this time, I broke off my relationship with Gino once and for all. As I have already said, I dislike sudden breaks and I prefer things to live their own lives and die their own deaths. My relations with Gino were a good example of this desire of mine. They ceased because the life in them ceased, not through my fault and not even, in a certain sense, through Gino’s. They ceased in such a way as to leave me no regrets.

I had continued to see him every now and again, two or three times a month. I did still like him, although I no longer respected him. One day he rang up and asked me to meet him at a café, and I told him I would be there.

The café was in my own neighborhood. Gino was waiting for me in the inner room, a windowless little place, the walls covered with majolica tiles. As I entered, I saw he was not alone. Someone was sitting beside him with his back toward me. I could see only that he was wearing a green raincoat and was blond, with a crew cut. I went up to them and Gino got to his feet, but his companion remained seated. “Let me introduce my friend Sonzogno,” said Gino. Then he stood up, too, and I held out my hand. But when he took it, I felt as though he were gripping me in a vise and a little cry of pain escaped me. He let go at once and I sat down smiling. “Do you know you hurt me?” I said. “Is that what you always do?”

He did not reply, did not even smile.

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