History by Elsa Morante, Lily Tuck, William Weaver Page A

unleashed in him, with a fi determination! ". . . fare amore! . . . FARE AMORE! . . ." he shouted, repeating in a boyish outburst an-

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    other two of the 4 Italian words that, in his foresight, he had made them teach him at the frontier. And without even taking off his uniform, ca nothing that she was old, he hurled himself on top of her, throwi her on that disheveled daybed, and raping her with rage as if he wanted to murder her.
    He felt her writhe horribly, but, unaware of her illness, he thought she was struggling against him, and he became the more obstinate for this reason, like all drunken soldiery. In reality, she had lost consciousness, in a temporary absence from him and from the situation, but he didn't realize this. And he was so charged with stern, repressed tensions that, at the moment of orgasm, he emitted a great scream above her. Then, in the following moment, he peeped at her in time to see her face, fi wi amazement, relax in a smile of ineff humility and sweetness.
    "Carina carina," he started saying to her ( this was the fourth and last Italian word he had learned ). And at the same time he began kissing her, with little kisses full of sweetness, on the dazed face that seemed to look at him and continued smiling at him with a kind of gratitude. Meanwhile, she was gradually coming to, abandoned beneath him. And in the state of relaxation and calm that always passed between the spell and conscious ness, she felt him again penetrating her, but slowly this time, with a heart rending and possessive movement, as if they were already kin and accus tomed to each other. She found again that sense of fulfi and repose she had known as a girl, at the end of an attack, when she was received once more by the affectionate room of her father and her mother; but that childish experience of hers was extended today, through her half-waking state, into the blissful sensation of returning to her own, complete body. That other body, greedy, harsh, and warm, which explored her in the center of her maternal sweetness \\·as, at once, all the hundred thousand fevers and coolnesses and adolescen t hungers that fl together from their jealous lands to fi to the brim her girlish river. It was all the hundred thousand young male animals, terrestrial and vulnerable, in a mad and merry dance, which struck into her lungs and to the roots of her hair, calling her in every language. Then it slumped clown becoming once more a sole imploring fl dissolving within her womb in a sweet, warm, in genuous surrender, which made her smile, moved, like the only gift of a poor man, or a child.
    It wasn't, for her, not even this time, a true erotic pleasure. It was an extraordinary happiness without orgasm, as sometimes happens in dreams, before puberty.
    The soldier, this time, in sating himself, let out a little moan, among light kisses, and letting his whole body sink on her, he promptly fell asleep.

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    Regaining consciousness, she felt his weight on her body, the rough uni form and the belt buckle pressing on her naked belly. And she found herself with her legs still apart, and his sex, now poor, helpless, and as if cut off resting gently against her own. The boy slept serenely, snoring; but as she moved to free herself, he clutched her instinctively against himself; and his features, even in his sleep, assumed a grimace of possession and jealousy, like a real lover.

She was so weakened that in separating from him she had the impres sion she was performing a mortal labor; but fi she managed to free herself, and she sank to the fl on her knees, among the pillows scattered beside the cot. She straightened up her clothes as best she could; but the effort produced in her a nausea that made her heart turn over; and she remained there, where she was, on her knees beside the daybed with the sleeping German. As always, when she ca to, only the shadow of a recollection was left her from her illness, no more than the