The Woman of Rome Read Online Free PDF Page B

mouth to reveal to me another sweetness I had never suspected. I did not know people could kiss in that way for so long, and I was soon breathless and half intoxicated. In the end, when we broke away from one another I was obliged to lean back against the seat with my eyes closed and my mind hazy, as if I were going to faint. And so I discovered there were other joys in the world than merely living peacefully in the bosom of one’s family. I did not dream that in my case, these joys were to exclude the more homely ones I had aspired to until then; and after Gino’s promise of an engagement, I felt sure that in the future I would be able to taste the delights of both, without sinning and without remorse.
    I was so convinced of the rightness and the lawfulness of my behavior that that very evening I told Mother everything, perhaps with too much trepidation and delight. I found her at her sewing machine by the window, sitting in the blinding light from an unshaded bulb.
    “Mother, I’m engaged,” I said, my cheeks burning as I did so.
    I saw her whole face screw up in an expression of annoyance as if a trickle of icy cold water were running down her back.
    “Who to?”
    “A young man I met recently.”
    “What is he?”
    “A chauffeur.”
    I wanted to continue, but had not the time. My mother stopped her machine, jumped off her chair, and seized me by the hair. “Engaged, did you say? — without telling me anything — and to a chauffeur! God help me — you’ll be the death of me!” She was trying to hit me as she said this. I protected myself as best I could with my hands and at last broke away from her, but she followed me. I rushed round the table in the middle of the room, but she was after me, shouting desperately. I was utterly terrified by her thin face thrust out toward me with an expression of agonized rage. “I’ll kill you!” she shouted. “I’ll kill you this time.” Every time she said “I’ll kill you,” her fury seemed to increase and the threat appeared more actual. I stayed at the end of the table and watched every movement she made, because I knew that just then she was out of control, and was really capable of hurting me with the first thing that she happened to pick up, even if she did not murder me. And, in fact, she suddenly began waving her dressmaking scissors, the large ones, and I was only just in time to dart aside as the scissors passed me and hit the wall. She was frightened herself at this and suddenly sat down at the table, her face buried in her hands, and burst into a nervous choking fit of crying, in which there seemed more anger than sorrow.
    “I had made so many plans for you,” she said between her sobs. “I wanted you to be rich, with all your good looks — and now your engaged to a beggar.”
    “He’s not a beggar!” I interrupted timidly.
    “A chauffeur!” she exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders. “A chauffeur.… You’re unlucky, and you’ll end up like me.” She said these words slowly as if to savor all their bitterness. Then she added after a moment, “He’ll marry you and you’ll become his servant, and then the servant of your children — that’ll be the end of it.”
    “We’ll get married when he has enough money to buy his own car,” I said, telling her one of Gino’s plans.
    “Don’t hold your breath! But don’t bring him here,” she suddenly shouted, raising her tear-stained face. “Don’t bring him here — I don’t want to see him. Do what you like, see him wherever you like — but don’t bring him here.”
    That evening I went to bed supperless, feeling very unhappy and depressed. But I told myself that Mother was carrying on in this way because she loved me and had made all sorts of plans for my future that were being upset by my engagement to Gino. Later on, even when I knew what these plans were, I could not really blame her. She had received in exchange for her honest, hardworking life nothing but bitterness, travail, and