Читать книгу Tales of My Native Town - Gabriele D'Annunzio - Страница 14

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When, therefore, Don Giovanni Ussorio, after having heard from Rosa Catana of the departure of Violetta Kutufa, re-entered his widower’s house and heard his parrot humming the air of the butterfly and the bee, he was seized by a new and more profound discouragement.

In the entrance a girdle of sunlight penetrated boldly and through the iron grating one saw the tranquil garden full of heliotropes. His servant slept upon a bench with a straw hat pulled down over his face.

Don Giovanni did not wake the servant. He mounted the stairs with difficulty, his eyes fixed upon the steps, pausing every now and then to mutter: “Oh, what a thing to happen! Oh, oh, what luck!”

Having reached his room he threw himself upon the bed and with his mouth against the pillows, began again to weep. Later he arose; the silence was deep and the trees of the garden as tall as the window waved slightly in the stillness. There was nothing of the unusual in the things about him; he almost wondered at this.

He fell to thinking and remained a long time calling to mind the positions, the gestures, the words, the slightest motions of the deserter. He saw her form as clearly as if she were present. At every recollection his grief increased until at length a kind of dulness benumbed his mind. He remained sitting on the bed, almost motionless, his eyes red, his forehead blackened from the colouring matter of his hair mixed with perspiration, his face furrowed with wrinkles that had suddenly become more evident; he had aged ten years in an hour, a change both amusing and pathetic.

Don Grisostomo Troilo, who had heard the news, arrived. He was a man of advanced age, of short stature and with a round, swollen face from which spread out sharp, thin whiskers, well waxed and resembling the two wings of a bird. He said:

“Now, Giovà, what is the matter?”

Don Giovanni did not answer, but shook his shoulders as if to repel all sympathy. Don Grisostomo then began to reprove him benevolently, never speaking of Violetta Kutufa.

In came Don Cirillo d’Amelio with Don Nereo Pica. Both, on entering, showed almost an air of triumph.

“Now you have seen for yourself, Don Giovà! We told you so! We told you so!” they cried. Both had nasal voices and a cadence acquired from the habit of singing with the organ, because they belonged to the choir of the Holy Sacrament. They began to attack the character of Violetta without mercy. She did this and that and the other thing, they said.

Don Giovanni, outraged, made from time to time a motion as if he would not hear such slanders, but the two continued. Now, also, Don Pasquale Virgilio arrived, with Don Pompeo Nervi, Don Federico Sicoli, Don Tito de Sieri; almost all of the parasites came in a group. Supporting one another they became ferocious. Did he not know that Violetta Kutufa had abandoned herself to Tom, Dick and Harry … ? Indeed she had! Indeed! They laid bare the exact particulars, the exact places.

Now Don Giovanni heard with eyes afire, greedy to know, invaded by a terrible curiosity. These revelations instead of disgusting him, fed his desire. Violetta seemed to him more enticing, even more beautiful; and he felt himself inwardly bitten by a raging jealousy that blended with his grief. Presently the woman appeared in his mind’s eye associated with a certain soft relaxation. That picture made him giddy.

“Oh Dio! Oh Dio! Oh! Oh!” He commenced to weep again. Those present looked at one another and restrained their laughter. In truth the grief of that man; fleshy, bald, deformed, expressed itself so ridiculously that it seemed unreal.

“Go away now!” Don Giovanni blubbered through his tears.

Don Grisostomo Troilo set the example; the others followed him and chattered as they passed down the stairs.

Toward evening the prostrated man revived little by little. A woman’s voice called at his door: “May I come in, Don Giovanni?”

He recognised Rosa Catana’s voice and experienced suddenly an instinctive joy. He ran to let her in. Rosa Catana appeared in the dusk of the room.

“Come in! Come in!” he cried. He made her sit down beside him, had her talk to him, asked her a thousand questions. He seemed to suffer less on hearing that familiar voice in which, under the spell of an illusion, he found some quality of Violetta’s voice. He took her hands and cried:

“You helped her to dress! Did you not?”

He caressed those rugged hands, closing his eyes and wandering slightly in his mind on the subject of those abundant, unbound locks that so many times he had touched with his hands. Rosa at first did not understand. She believed this to be some sudden passion of Don Giovanni, and withdrew her hands gently, while she spoke in an ambiguous way and laughed. But Don Giovanni murmured:

“No, no! … Stay! You combed her, did you not? You bathed her, did you not?”

He fell to kissing Rosa’s hands, those hands that had combed, bathed and clothed Violetta. He stammered, while kissing them, composed verses so strange that Rosa could scarcely refrain from laughter. But at last she understood and with feminine perception forced herself to remain serious, while she summed up the advantages that might ensue from this foolish comedy. She grew docile, let him caress her, let him call her Violetta, made use of all that experience acquired from peeping through key-holes many times at her mistress’s door; she even sought to make her voice more sweet.

In the room one could scarcely see them. Through the open windows a red reflection entered and the trees in the garden, almost black, twisted and turned in the wind. From the sloughs around the arsenal came the hoarse croak of the frogs. The noises of the city street were indistinct.

Don Giovanni drew the woman to his knees, and, completely confused as if he had swallowed some very’ strong liquor, murmured a thousand childish nothings and babbled on without end, drawing her face close to his.

“Ah, darling little Violetta!” he whispered. “Sweetheart! Don’t go away, dear … ! If you go away your Nini will die, Poor Nini … ! Ban-ban-ban-bannn!”

Thus he continued stupidly, as he had done before with the opera-singer. Rosa Catana patiently offered him slight caresses, as if he were a very sick, perverted child; she took his head and pressed it against her shoulder, kissed his swollen, weeping eyes, stroked his bald crown, rearranged his oiled locks.