in a strangled voice, “Give me those pictures, you wretched woman.” And I snatched them from her hand, having squeezed her wrist so hard that she fell with a cry onto a high-backed chair, virtually unconscious.
I was immediately at her side with some eau de Cologne. She soon recovered, although her arm and hand still hurt a little.
Ashamed of my brutal behavior, I murmured, “Forgive me. Forgive me.”
From the chest of drawers I took a watch that I had bought some days earlier, and I slipped the chain around her neck.
She carefully examined the watch, which was very small, and the chain, which was heavy, and continuing to examine them, completely appeased, she asked, “Are they gold?”
“Certainly.”
She looked up, gazing into my face with her gleaming black eyes. And she smiled. In her delight, her face had taken on a new expression, with the curve of her parted, coral lips framing the pure whiteness of her perfect teeth. In face she looked like Emilia.
“Do you forgive me?” I asked her.
She came rushing over and hugged me in her arms. Then she sat down on a low stool, stretching out her legs on the carpet, and laying her head on my lap. She tipped her head back: her hair, disheveled and half loose, served her as a pillow. And seated as I was in a big armchair, I bent over to look at her, and asked her to smile broadly.
To my great astonishment the wine I had drunk and the delicacies I had eaten (I should not be able to eat and drink as much again in a year) had no adverse effect on my stomach. But they had, of course, worked upon my imagination. I was not drunk, since I can recall today in exact detail the most minute particulars of that night. But I was in a strange state of moral and physical excitement that, without diminishing my memory, robbed me of responsibility for my actions. I could have killed a man with a fruit knife, just for fun.
The girl’s teeth fascinated me. “What are you looking at me like that?”
“I was looking at your teeth.”
“Do you like them?”
“What do you do to keep them so shiny?”
“I don’t do anything.”
They were all even, all set regularly, the upper ones a little larger and so thin they seemed transparent.
“A girlfriend of mine,” she added, “the one that came with me to dinner at the Rebecchino with those two men, had a rotten tooth. You should have seen what a lovely tooth she had it replaced with. And you couldn’t tell that it wasn’t natural. It cost a lot, though: twenty lire! You can imagine, there are some days when I’d sell one of mine for twenty lire.”
“Give me one for five hundred.”
“Of course! I’d have it replaced and keep four hundred and eighty lire! Of course! Of course!” And she clapped her hands. “But now tell me,” she went on, “why were you ready to practically kill me for those pictures of yours? I wasn’t going to eat them, you know.”
“Let’s not talk about it. It’s a sad story that upsets me.”
She looked abashed. She yawned, stretched her arms, settled her head more comfortably on my lap, and fell asleep.
Not wanting to wake the girl, I sat still and gradually became immersed in my painful cherished memories. Giorgetta, too, had frequently settled down to sleep on my lap, while her mother read to me in her clear voice an article from the newspaper, or a chapter of a novel. But my niece’s hair was as fair as a saint’s halo, her face like the face of an angel, and the breath that escaped her of the very purest, purer than the mountain breeze at sunrise. Occasionally, she would stir, talking in her dream to her doll. I would wait until she was sound asleep, and then very slowly I would get up, holding one arm under her back, supporting her little legs with the other, and I would carry her on tiptoe, followed by Emilia, to her beautiful golden cradle beneath the lace canopy her mother had embroidered. It was in that very same cot, which was so pretty, that Giorgetta died, choked by diphtheria. Before she was taken to heaven, she looked at us one by one—me, her mother, and old Maria—with those darling blue eyes of hers, and could not understand why we were weeping. Even the doctor was weeping.
The rings under Emilia’s eyes, which at the beginning were a delicate blue, turned to dark brown, and the soft rosiness of her cheeks changed to a pale ethereal shade of ivory. The sweetness of that gentle disposition, eager to do good, always forgetful of herself, innocent, kind, and wise, was being purified into the nature of an angel.
As the illness gradually gnawed away at her entrails, her spirit rose up to God. In the final hours, when racked with excruciating pains, she tried to conceal them from everyone with countless sublime stratagems. When I very gently raised her head and arranged her pillows more comfortably, she whispered to me in a faint voice, “I’m so sorry, Giorgio. You see how much trouble I am to you!” And she tried to squeeze my hand. And to Maria and everyone else, for however small a service, she never stopped repeating with a smile, “Thank you.”
Before she died, she seemed to feel better. She called me to her side and softly said to me, “Giorgio, we were born at the same time, and have lived together twenty-four years, almost without ever being apart, and you’ve always been so very good to me. God bless you. But if I’ve ever upset you, or been rude to you, if I’ve not always shown the great love I have for you, forgive me.” Two tears slowly fell from her eyes. “I’m sorry to die, I’m sorry for your sake. Your health is poor. You have need of a lot of loving care and”—after a long pause—“guidance.” With these words she died. I sat up all night, alone, in her room, while old Maria sobbed and prayed in the room next door.
Her black eyes were open. Her black hair framed her white face; in marked contrast to that lugubrious whiteness and that funereal blackness was the pinkness of her lips, slightly parted to show the poor dead girl’s teeth, which were even whiter than her brow.
A jolt to my leg roused me from my gloomy thoughts. I had a fever and my head was inflamed. I pressed the rigid blade of a fruit knife to my forehead, which was burning hot. The coolness of it felt good.
The girl reeked of the sour stench of wine. I leaned over to look at her: she was loathsome. She was sleeping with her mouth open. I then felt a sense of utter humiliation, acute remorse, and a kind of spirit of vendetta, at the same time raging and wary, stirred within my breast. I looked at the knife held in my hand, balancing it to find the point at which it would deliver its most telling blow. Then, with one finger I delicately raised the girl’s upper lip and gave a sharp tap with the tip of the blade to one of those pretty front teeth. The tooth broke, and more than half of it fell out.
The drunken hussy hardly stirred. I shoved some cushions under her head and went to open the window. Freezing fog entered the room like dense smoke. There was nothing to be seen, not even the streetlights. But from the entrance to the inn came the sound of trunks being loaded onto the omnibus. I was seized with an urgent desire to leave. The servant I called told me that this omnibus was just about to depart for the station, to catch the train to Turin, but there was no time to lose. I put a five hundred-lire note into a sealed envelope, which I handed the servant, saying, “Give this letter to the lady when she wakes, and send her home in a carriage. Then pack my bags with all that you find on the tables and in the drawers. Here are the keys. Send everything to my address in Turin. But first post me the bill, which I haven’t time to wait for now.”
I threw
