by a veil of disappointment.
Another time she came up to me on the terrace without even the minutest creaking of the steps to announce her. She knew how to move with the lightness of a fly when she wanted to. She seemed to walk on things without touching them even though afterwards when we made love in my room or under a bramble bush she was as impetuous and out-of-control as a flood. When I was with her I always felt as if I had gone through the gate of a fable, had entered the world on the other side of the looking glass like Alice in Wonderland. When she came to see me she always flung aside whatever I had started, tearing the thin fabric of my projects — either short or long term — and taking their place with a dominating and feudal air.
If she stayed away for three or four days I would begin to be afraid some unforeseen event had taken her from me. For me she was a volatile creature, incapable of staying in one place, destined to be carried here and there by the caprices of events and of her character. Sometimes she would show up unexpectedly, even at midnight (I always left a window ajar with just that possibility in mind), would leap into my room with a whistle and set about shaking me until I was completely awake, vexed that I took a tenth of a second to re-establish contact with reality, to realize that she had returned. It seemed that for her there was no difference between day and night. She was capable of sleeping in my bed even with the room full of light while I stood there watching her and twisting my fingers in embarrassment, not wanting to send her away, but not wanting Maddalena to discover her either; finding a sleeping intruder like that she might even make a scene.
----
XVI
The Convent
Sometimes she was taken with a frenzy to dress up and would begin to put on my clothes or Maddalena’s. Or else she would arrive from outside already decked out as if she were going to a carnival masquerade. She would be wearing huge flowered hats or black veils that shaded her face and made her look like a remarkably young widow; she would put on a bustle even though almost no one ever wore them any more and would stuff the front of her dress with some kind of odd materials in order to look more shapely. I would tear my hair thinking that she had crossed the fields or the
magredi
at night in that condition at the risk of being attacked by a peasant or a poacher and I told her she was crazy to go around looking like an actress in an operetta. “But I am one. I’m an actress and a cancan dancer....”
“What?”
“Well I mean...not really, but I want to be one. I practice my dancing a lot.”
She had red garters and certain lace garments that drove me wild when she undressed without the slightest shame. I never succeeded in finding out who she really was, if she had a job, where and with whom she lived. To hear her tell it, she at one time had stayed with an uncle, another time with a distant relative, a third time with a friend who was the mistress of a very rich man. She always talked about different places and people or things that she was doing or planned to do. It seemed impossible that all that she said could be true. On the other hand, I was certain she wasn’t lying, or at least that she didn’t mean to, because she was really convinced that she had done or wanted to do what she was saying. Without a doubt for a week or a day she had really intended to become a dancer and of course she had tried to dance the cancan in front of the mirror of her wardrobe, perhaps for hours and hours, until she fell exhausted on her bed.
Another time she told me (her enthusiasm was so impetuous that it would make her breathless) about her intention to dedicate herself to designing women’s clothes. Since I had evinced a certain perplexity about her attitude she began at once to look through the house for sewing materials, scissors, thread, a thimble, because she wanted to give me immediate proof of her
Another time she came up to me on the terrace without even the minutest creaking of the steps to announce her. She knew how to move with the lightness of a fly when she wanted to. She seemed to walk on things without touching them even though afterwards when we made love in my room or under a bramble bush she was as impetuous and out-of-control as a flood. When I was with her I always felt as if I had gone through the gate of a fable, had entered the world on the other side of the looking glass like Alice in Wonderland. When she came to see me she always flung aside whatever I had started, tearing the thin fabric of my projects — either short or long term — and taking their place with a dominating and feudal air.
If she stayed away for three or four days I would begin to be afraid some unforeseen event had taken her from me. For me she was a volatile creature, incapable of staying in one place, destined to be carried here and there by the caprices of events and of her character. Sometimes she would show up unexpectedly, even at midnight (I always left a window ajar with just that possibility in mind), would leap into my room with a whistle and set about shaking me until I was completely awake, vexed that I took a tenth of a second to re-establish contact with reality, to realize that she had returned. It seemed that for her there was no difference between day and night. She was capable of sleeping in my bed even with the room full of light while I stood there watching her and twisting my fingers in embarrassment, not wanting to send her away, but not wanting Maddalena to discover her either; finding a sleeping intruder like that she might even make a scene.
----
XVI
The Convent
Sometimes she was taken with a frenzy to dress up and would begin to put on my clothes or Maddalena’s. Or else she would arrive from outside already decked out as if she were going to a carnival masquerade. She would be wearing huge flowered hats or black veils that shaded her face and made her look like a remarkably young widow; she would put on a bustle even though almost no one ever wore them any more and would stuff the front of her dress with some kind of odd materials in order to look more shapely. I would tear my hair thinking that she had crossed the fields or the
magredi
at night in that condition at the risk of being attacked by a peasant or a poacher and I told her she was crazy to go around looking like an actress in an operetta. “But I am one. I’m an actress and a cancan dancer....”
“What?”
“Well I mean...not really, but I want to be one. I practice my dancing a lot.”
She had red garters and certain lace garments that drove me wild when she undressed without the slightest shame. I never succeeded in finding out who she really was, if she had a job, where and with whom she lived. To hear her tell it, she at one time had stayed with an uncle, another time with a distant relative, a third time with a friend who was the mistress of a very rich man. She always talked about different places and people or things that she was doing or planned to do. It seemed impossible that all that she said could be true. On the other hand, I was certain she wasn’t lying, or at least that she didn’t mean to, because she was really convinced that she had done or wanted to do what she was saying. Without a doubt for a week or a day she had really intended to become a dancer and of course she had tried to dance the cancan in front of the mirror of her wardrobe, perhaps for hours and hours, until she fell exhausted on her bed.
Another time she told me (her enthusiasm was so impetuous that it would make her breathless) about her intention to dedicate herself to designing women’s clothes. Since I had evinced a certain perplexity about her attitude she began at once to look through the house for sewing materials, scissors, thread, a thimble, because she wanted to give me immediate proof of her
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