her chin. She had been leaning over his shoulder, not quite touching it. He apologized. She smiled.
‘We’ll talk of it later,’ she said. ‘In the spring.’
She did not move, barring the path back to the hall.
‘I want you to do all my work, Svevo.’
Her eyes wandered over him. The new shoes attracted her. She smiled again. ‘How are they?’
‘Best I ever had.’
Still there was something else. Would he wait just a moment, until she thought of it? There was something – something – something – and she kept snapping her fingers and biting her lip thoughtfully. They went back through the narrow hallway. At the first door she stopped. Her hand fumbled at the knob. It was dim in the hall. She pushed the door open.
‘This is my room,’ she said.
He saw the pounding of her heart in her throat. Her face was gray, her eyes bright with quick shame. Her jeweled hand covered the fluttering in her throat. Over her shoulder he saw the room, the white bed, the dressing table, the chest of drawers. She entered the room, switched on the light, and made a circle in the middle of the carpet.
‘It’s a pleasant room, don’t you think?’
He watched her, not the room. He watched her, his eyes shifting to the bed and back to her again. He felt his mind warming, seeking the fruits of imagery; that woman and this room. She walked to the bed, her hips weaving like a cluster of serpents as she fell on the bed and lay there, her hand in an empty gesture.
‘It’s so pleasant here.’
A wanton gesture, careless as wine. The fragrance of the place fed his heartbeat. Her eyes were feverish, her lips parted in an agonized expression that showed her teeth. He could not be sure of himself. He squinted his eyes as he watched her. No – she could not mean it. This woman had too much money. Her wealth impeded the imagery. Such things did not happen.
She lay facing him, her head on her outstretched arm. The loose smile must have been painful, for it seemed to come with frightened uneasiness. His throat responded with a clamor of blood; he swallowed, and looked away, toward the door through the hall. What he had been thinking had best be forgotten. This woman was not interested in a poor man.
‘I think I better go now, Mrs Hildegarde.’
‘Fool,’ she smiled.
He grinned his confusion, the chaos of his blood and brain. The evening air would clear that up. He turned and walked down the hall to the front door.
‘You fool!’ he heard her say. ‘You ignorant peasant.’
Mannaggia! And she had not paid him, either. His lips screwed into a sneer. She could call Svevo Bandini a fool! She arose from the bed to meet him, her hands outstretched to embrace him. A moment later she was struggling to tear herself away. She winced in terrible joy as he stepped back, her ripped blouse streaming from his two fists.
He had torn her blouse away even as Maria had torn the flesh from his face. Remembering it now, that night in the Widow’s bedroom was even yet worth a great deal to him. No other living being was in that house, only himself and the woman against him, crying with ecstatic pain, weeping that he have mercy, her weeping a pretense, a beseechment for mercilessness. He laughed the triumph of his poverty and peasantry. This Widow! She with her wealth and deep plump warmth, slave and victim of her own challenge, sobbing in the joyful abandonment of her defeat, each gasp his victory. He could have done away with her had he desired, reduced her scream to a whisper, but he arose and walked into the room where the fireplace glowed lazily in the quick winter darkness, leaving her weeping and choking on the bed. Then she came to him there at the fireplace and fell on her knees before him, her face sodden with tears, and he smiled and lent himself once more to her delicious torment. And when he left her sobbing in her fulfillment, he walked down the road with deep content that came from the conviction he was master of the earth.
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