The Woman of Rome Read Online Free PDF Page A

said.
    “No, it’s not,” I retorted sharply, “and please take me back to town at once.”
    “Why? Are you cross with me because I told you I was in business?”
    I really was cross with him at that moment. I didn’t know why; it was as though I could not help it.
    “Don’t talk about it anymore — take me back.”
    “It was only a joke. Why not? Can’t we even joke anymore?”
    “I don’t like that kind of joke.”
    “Oh what a nasty character; I was only thinking: this young lady may even be a princess — if she finds out I’m only a poor chauffeur, she won’t even look at me — so I’ll tell her I’m in business.”
    These words were very clever because they flattered me and at the same time showed me what his feelings were toward me. In any case, he said them with a kind of grace that quite won me over.
    “I’m not a princess — I work as a model, like you do as a chauffeur, to earn my living,” I answered.
    “What do you mean, a model?”
    “I go to artists’ studios, take off my clothes, and they paint or draw me.”
    “Haven’t you got a mother?” he asked pointedly.
    “Of course I have! Why?”
    “And your mother lets you pose naked in front of men?”
    It had never crossed my mind that there was anything to be ashamed of in my occupation, and indeed there was not; but I was glad he felt like that about it. It showed he had a serious moral sense. As I have already said, I was thirsting for a normal way of life, and in his astuteness he had guessed (even now I don’t know how) what were the right things to say to me. Any other man, I could not help thinking, would have made fun of me or would have shown an indelicate kind of excitement at the idea of my being naked. So, unconsciously, I modified the first impression his lying had given me and thought that after all he must be a decent, honest young man, just the man I had imagined for a husband in my dreams.
    “Mother found me the work herself,” I answered simply.
    “That means she doesn’t love you.”
    “No, it doesn’t,” I protested. “She loves me — but she was a model herself when she was a girl, and really, there’s nothing wrong in it; lots of girls like me model and are decent girls.”
    He shook his head, unconvinced, and then, placing a hand over mine, said, “Do you know — I’m glad I’ve met you. Really glad.”
    “So am I,” I said ingenuously.
    At that moment I felt a kind of impulse toward him and I almost expected him to kiss me. Certainly if he had kissed me then, I would not have protested. But instead he said in an earnest voice, protectively, “If I had anything to say about it, you wouldn’t be a model.”
    I felt I was a victim, and a feeling of gratitude swept over me. “A girl like you,” he continued, “ought to stay at home and work if she likes, but at some decent job that doesn’t expose her to the risk of losing her honor — a girl like you ought to be married, have a home and children of her own and stay with her husband.”
    That was exactly my way of thinking, and I cannot say how happy I was to find that he thought or appeared to think as I did.
    “You’re right — but all the same you mustn’t think badly of Mother. She wanted to make a model of me because she loves me,” I said.
    “No one would say so,” he answered earnestly, with indignant pity.
    “Yes, she loves me — it’s just that she doesn’t understand certain things.”
    We went on talking like this, seated behind the windshield in the closed car. It was May, I remember, the air was soft, the shadows of the plane trees were playing on the surface of the road as far as the eye could see. No one passed us except an occasional car at high speed, and the green, sunny countryside all around us was deserted, too. At last he looked at his watch and said he would take me back to town. In all that time he had not done anything but touch my hand once. I had expected him to try to kiss me at least, and was both