The Woman of Rome by Alberto Moravia Page B

liked the warm, sharp taste of it and, in my state of intoxication, did not feel at all drunk, but able to go on drinking indefinitely. Astarita, serious and absorbed, went on holding my hand and I now let him. I told myself that, after all, this was the least I could do. There was an oleograph stuck over the door, of a man and woman dressed in the fashion of fifty years earlier, who were embracing one another in an artificial, awkward way on a rose-covered balcony. Gisella noticed it and said she could not imagine how they could possibly kiss one another in that position. “Let’s try,” she said to Riccardo, “let’s see if we can copy them.”
    Riccardo stood up, laughing, and assumed the attitude of the man in the oleograph, while Gisella, giggling too, leaned against the table in the same position as the woman in the picture against the rose-bedecked side of the balcony. With a tremendous effort they managed to bring their lips together, but almost at the very moment they lost their balance and toppled over together onto the table.
    “Now, it’s your turn!” said Gisella, excited by the fun.
    “Why?” I asked, apprehensive. “What’s it got to do with me?”
    “Go on, try.”
    I felt Astarita put his arm around my waist and tried to free myself. “I don’t want to,” I said.
    “Oh, what a spoilsport you are!” said Gisella. “It’s only a joke.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    Riccardo was laughing and urging on Astarita to make me kiss him. “If you don’t kiss her, Astarita, I’ll never look you in the faceagain.” But Astarita was in earnest and almost frightened me: for him, this was obviously something more than a joke.
    “Let me alone,” I said, turning from him.
    He looked at me, then glanced at Gisella with a query in his eyes as if he expected her to encourage him. “Go on, Astarita!” exclaimed Gisella. She seemed far more determined than he was, in a way I could vaguely sense was cruel and merciless.
    Astarita held me still more tightly by the waist, pulling me toward him. Now it was no longer a joke and he wanted to kiss me at all costs. Without saying a word, I tried to free myself from his grasp, but he was very strong, and the more I pushed with my hands against his chest, the closer I could feel his face gradually approaching mine. But perhaps he would not have succeeded in kissing me, if Gisella had not come to his aid. Suddenly, with a triumphant squeal, she got up, ran behind me, grasped my arms, and pulled them backward. I did not see her but I felt her dogged determination in the way her nails buried themselves in my flesh and in her voice, which kept on repeating between bursts of laughter, in an excited, cruel and jerky way, “Quick, quick, Astarita! Now’s your chance!” Astarita was now upon me. I did my best to turn my face away, the only movement I could make, but with one hand he took hold of my chin and forced my face toward his, then he kissed me hard and long on my mouth.
    “Done!” said Gisella triumphantly, and went back to her place, delighted.
    Astarita let go of me. “I’ll never come out with the lot of you again,” I said, feeling annoyed and hurt.
    “Oh, Adriana!” said Riccardo, making fun of me. “And all for a single kiss!”
    “Astarita’s covered with lipstick!” exclaimed Gisella ecstatically. “What would Gino say if he came in now?”
    Astarita’s mouth really was covered with my lipstick, and even to me he looked ridiculous with a scarlet streak like that across his gloomy, sallow face. “Come on,” said Gisella, “make up, you two — rub off his lipstick with your handkerchief. Whatever will the waiter think when he comes in, if you don’t?”
    I had to put a good face on the matter and, wetting a corner of my handkerchief with my tongue, I gradually wiped the lipstick off Astarita’s sullen face. I was wrong, though, in showing how yielding I was, because immediately, as soon as I had put my handkerchief away, he put his arm