Читать книгу The Intruder - Gabriele D'Annunzio - Страница 5

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My first recollection is as follows:

By this, when I began this narrative, I meant: "Among my recollections this is the first in any way connected with the frightful thing."

It was, therefore, in April. We had been at the Badiola for several days.

"Ah! my children," my mother had said, with her unceremonious candor, "how pale you both look! Oh! that Rome, that Rome. To put some color in your cheeks you must stay in the country with me for a long, long time."

"Yes," Juliana had answered, with a smile; "yes, mother, we will stay as long as you wish."

That smile often appeared on Juliana's lips when my mother was by. And, although her eyes invariably retained their melancholy, that smile was so sweet, so profoundly kind, that I permitted even myself to be deceived by it. I dared now to entertain some hope.

During the first few days my mother could not tear herself away from her dear visitors; one might have thought she wished to surfeit them with tenderness. I saw her two or three times under the influence of some indefinable emotion, I saw her caress Juliana's hair with her blessed hand, I heard her ask her:

"Is he as kind to you as ever?"

"Yes, poor Tullio!" replied the other voice.

"So it is not true..."

"What?"

"I was told that..."

"What were you told?"

"Nothing, nothing ... I thought that Tullio had caused you some unhappiness."

They spoke in the embrasure of a window, behind waving curtains, while outside the wind sighed through the elm-trees. I came up to them before they were aware of my presence, and raising a portière, showed myself.

"Ah! Tullio!" cried my mother.

They exchanged a look, a little embarrassed.

"We were speaking of you," said my mother.

"Of me? Bad or good?" I asked lightly.

"Good," replied Juliana, quickly.

I detected in her voice the evident intention to reassure me.

The April sun shone on the window-sill, lit up my mother's gray hair, lightly touched Juliana's temples. The very white curtains were waving to and fro, reflected in the luminous window-panes. The lofty elms on the lawn, covered with young leaves, produced a murmur, at times loud, at times soft, on which the shadows, more or less stationary, regulated their swing. From the wall of the house, covered with thousands of bunches of violets, arose a paschal odor, like an invisible vapor of incense.

"How penetrating that odor is!" murmured Juliana, passing her hand over her brow and half-closing her eyes. "It makes one dizzy!"

I was between her and my mother, a little in the rear. A desire seized me to put my arms around both and lean out of the window. In that familiar and simple act I wished to put all the tenderness that swelled my heart, and make Juliana understand a multitude of inexpressible things and, by that one gesture, reconquer her entirely. But I was restrained by an almost infantile feeling of timidity.

"Look, Juliana," said my mother, pointing to the top of the hill, "look at your dear Lilacs. Can you see them?"

"Yes, yes."

And, shading her eyes from the sun with her hand, she made an effort to see better. I, who was watching her, remarked a slight trembling of her lower lip.

"Can you see the cypress?" I asked her, with the intention of increasing her agitation by this suggestive question.

And I saw once more, in imagination, the venerable old cypress, whose trunk rose amid a rose-bush, and whose top sheltered a nest of nightingales.

"Yes, yes; I see it, but with difficulty."

The Lilacs stood out white against its background of foliage half-way up the slope. The chain of hills rolled away in the distance in a noble, peaceful, undulating line, and the olive-tree plantations on their sides appeared of extraordinary lightness, like a kind of greenish fog piled up in motionless shapes. The trees in blossom, dotted here and there with bouquets of red and white, broke the uniformity. The sky seemed to pale from minute to minute as if a stream of milk were being continually spread in and mixed with its fluid atmosphere.

"We will go to the Lilacs after Easter; everything there will be in flower," I said, trying to revive in that soul the dream which I had so brutally shattered.

I dared to draw closer to her, and put my arms around Juliana and my mother, and lean out of the window, advancing my head between theirs in such a manner that the hair of each brushed me. The spring, the purity of the air, the nobleness of the country, the peaceful transfiguration of every creature by the season's maternal influence, and that sky, that sky of divine paleness, more divine in measure as it became paler—all awoke in me such a new sentiment of life that I thought, with an internal tremor: "Can it be possible? Can it be possible? After all that has happened, after all that I have suffered, after so many transgressions, can I still find enjoyment in life? Can I, then, still hope? Can I still have a presentiment of happiness? From whence does this blessing come to me?" It seemed to me that all my being was relieved, became expanded, became dilated beyond its limits, with a subtle, rapid, and continuous vibration. Nothing can convey an idea of the feeling developed in me by the imperceptible sensation of a hair grazing my cheek.

We remained several minutes in this attitude, without speaking. The elms moaned. The constant thrill of the thousands of yellow and violet flowers that carpeted the wall beneath our window enchanted my eyes. A heavy and warm perfume arose in the sunshine with the rhythm of a breath.

All at once Juliana drew back, and grew pale. Her eyes looked troubled, her mouth was contracted as if with nausea. She said:

"That odor is terrible. It makes one giddy. Are you not affected by it too, mother?"

She turned round, tottered a few steps, and left the room hastily. My mother followed her.

I watched them as they passed through the corridors, still dominated by what rested of my former sensations, lost in the dream.