Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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“Oh God, oh God,” Moira kept repeating. In the enormous tumult her voice was small and, as it were, naked, utterly abject.
“But it’s too stupid to be frightened.” She remembered John’s voice, his brightly encouraging, superior manner. “The chances are thousands to one against your being struck. And anyhow, hiding your head won’t prevent the lightning from...”
How she hated him for being so reasonable and right! “Oh God!” There was another. “God, God, God...
And then suddenly a terrible thing happened; the light went out. Through her closed eyelids she saw no longer the red of translucent blood, but utter blackness. Uncovering her face, she opened her eyes and anxiously looked round — on blackness again. She fumbled for the switch by her bed, found it, turned and turned; the darkness remained impenetrable.
“Assunta!” she called.
And all at once the square of the window was a suddenly uncovered picture of the garden, seen against a background of mauve-white sky and shining, down-pouring rain.
“Assunta!” Her voice was drowned in a crash that seemed to have exploded in the very roof. “Assunta, Assunta!” In a panic she stumbled across the grave-dark room to the door. Another flash revealed the handle. She opened. “Assunta!”
Her voice was hollow above the black gulf of the stairs. The thunder exploded again above her. With a crash and a tinkle of broken glass one of the windows in her room burst open. A blast of cold wind lifted her hair. A flight of papers rose from her writing-table and whirled with crackling wings through the darkness. One touched her cheek like a living thing and was gone. She screamed aloud. The door slammed behind her. She ran down the stairs in terror, as though the fiend were at her heels. In the hall she met Assunta and the cook coming towards her, lighting matches as they came.
“Assunta, the lights!” She clutched the girl’s arm.
Only the thunder answered. When the noise subsided, Assunta explained that the fuses had all blown out and that there wasn’t a candle in the house. Not a single candle, and only one more box of matches.
“But then we shall be left in the dark,” said Moira hysterically.
Through the three blackly reflecting windows of the hall three separate pictures of the streaming garden revealed themselves and vanished. The old Venetian mirrors on the walls blinked for an instant into life, like dead eyes briefly opened.
“In the dark,” she repeated with an almost mad insistence.
“Aie!” cried Assunta, and dropped the match that had begun to burn her fingers. The thunder fell on them out of a darkness made denser and more hopeless by the loss of light.
When the telephone bell rang, Tonino was sitting in the managerial room of his hotel, playing cards with the proprietor’s two sons and another friend. “Some one to speak to you, Signor Tonino,” said the under-porter, looking in. “A lady.” He grinned significantly.
Tonino put on a dignified air and left the room. When he returned a few minutes later, he held his hat on one hand and was buttoning up his rain-coat with the other.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got to go out.”
“Go out?” exclaimed the others incredulously. Beyond the shuttered windows the storm roared like a cataract and savagely exploded. “But where?” they asked. “Why? Are you mad?”
Tonino shrugged his shoulders, as though it were nothing to go out into a tornado, as though he were used to it. The signora forestiera, he explained, hating them for their inquisitiveness; the Tarwin — she had asked him to go up to Bello Sguardo at once. The fuses... not a candle in the house... utterly in the dark... very agitated... nerves....
“But on a night like this.... But you’re not the electrician.” The two so ns of the proprietor spoke in chorus. They felt, indignantly, that Tonino was letting himself be exploited.
But the third young man leaned back in his chair and laughed. “Fini, caro, vai,” he said, and then, shaking his finger at Tonino knowingly, “Ma fatti pagare per il tuo lavoro,” he added. “Get yourself paid for your trouble.” Berto was notoriously the lady-killer, the tried specialist in amorous strategy, the acknowledged expert. “Take the opportunity.” The others joined in his rather unpleasant laughter. Tonino also grinned and nodded.
The taxi rushed splashing through the wet deserted streets like a travelling fountain. Tonino sat in the darkness of the cab ruminating Berto’s advice. She was pretty, certainly. But somehow — why was it? — it had hardly occurred to him to think of her as a possible mistress. He had been politely gallant with her — on principle almost, and by force of habit — but without really wanting to succeed; and when she had shown herself unresponsive, he hadn’t cared. But perhaps he ought to have cared, perhaps he ought to have tried harder. In Berto’s world it was a sporting duty to do one’s best to seduce every woman one could. The most admirable man was the man with the greatest number of women to his credit. Really lovely, Tonino went on to himself, trying to work up an enthusiasm for the sport. It would be a triumph to be proud of. The more so as she was a foreigner. And very rich. He thought with inward satisfaction of that big car, of the house, the servants, the silver. “Certo,” he said to himself complacently, “mi vuol bene.” She lilted him; there was no doubt of it. Meditatively he stroked his smooth face; the muscles stirred a little under his fingers. He was smiling to himself in the darkness; naively, an ingenuous prostitute’s smile. “Moira,” he said aloud. “Moira. Strano, quel name. Piuttosto ridicolo.”
It was Moira who opened the door for him. She had been standing at the window, looking out, waiting and waiting.
“Tonino!” She held out both her hands to him; she had never felt so glad to see any one.
The sky went momentarily whitish-mauve behind him as he stood there in the open doorway. The skirts of his rain-coat fluttered in the wind; a wet gust blew past him, chilling her face. The sky went black again. He slammed the door behind him. They were in utter darkness.
“Tonino, it was too sweet of you to have come. Really too...”
The thunder that interrupted her was like the end of the world. Moira shuddered. “Oh God!” she whimpered; and then suddenly she was pressing her face against his waistcoat and crying, and Tonino was holding her and stroking her hair. The next flash showed him the position of the sofa. In the ensuing darkness he carried her across the room, sat down and began to kiss her tear-wet face. She lay quite still in his arms, relaxed, like a frightened child that has at last found comfort. Tonino held her, kissing her softly again and again. “Ti amo, Moira,” he whispered. And it was true. Holding her, touching her in the dark, he did love her. “Ti amo.” How profoundly! “Ti voglio un bene immenso,” he went on, with a passion, a deep warm tenderness born almost suddenly of darkness and soft blind contact. Heavy and warm with life, she lay pressed against him. Her body curved and was solid under his hands, her cheeks were rounded and cool, her eyelids round and tremulous and tear-wet, her mouth so soft, so soft under his touching lips. “Ti amo, ti amo.” He was breathless with love, and it was as though there were a hollowness at the centre of his being, a void of desiring tenderness that longed to be filled, that could only be filled by her, an emptiness that drew her towards him, into him, that drank her as an empty vessel eagerly drinks the water. Still, with closed eyes, quite still she lay there in his arms, suffering herself to be drunk up by his tenderness, to be drawn into the yearning vacancy of his heart, happy in being passive, in yielding herself to his soft insistent passion.
“Fatli pagan, fatti pagare.” The memory of Berto’s words transformed him suddenly from a lover into an amorous sportsman with a reputation to keep up and records to break. “Fatti pagare.” He risked a more intimate caress. But Moira winced so shudderingly at the touch that he desisted, ashamed of himself.
“Ebbene,” asked Berto when, an hour later, he returned, “did you mend the fuses?”
“Yes, I mended the fuses.”
“And did you get yourself paid?”
Tonino smiled an amorous
sportsman’s smile. “A little on account,” he answered, and at once disliked himself for having spoken the words, disliked the others for laughing at them. Why did he go out of his way to spoil something which had been so beautiful? Pretexting a headache, he went upstairs to his bedroom. The storm had passed on, the moon was shining now out of a clear sky. He opened the window and looked out. A river of ink and quick-silver, the Arno flowed whispering past. In the street below the puddles shone like living eyes. The ghost of Caruso was singing from a gramophone, far away on the other side of the water. “Stretti, stretti, nell’ estasi d’amor....” Tonino was profoundly moved.
The sky was blue next morning, the sunlight glittered on the shiny leaves of the magnolia tree, the air was demurely windless. Sitting at her dressing-table, Moira looked out and wondered incredulously if such things as storms were possible. But the plants were broken and prostrate in their beds; the paths were strewn with scattered leaves and petals. In spite of the soft air and the sunlight, last night’s horrors had been more than a bad dream. Moira sighed and began to brush her hair. Set in its leather frame, John Tarwin’s profile confronted her, brightly focused on imaginary tumours. Her eyes fixed on it, Moira went on mechanically brushing her hair. Then, suddenly, interrupting the rhythm of her movements, she got up, took the leather frame and, walking across the room, threw it up, out of sight, on to the top of the high wardrobe. There! She returned to her seat and, filled with a kind of frightened elation, went on with her interrupted brushing.
When she was dressed, she drove down to the town and spent an hour at Settepassi’s, the jewellers. When she left, she was bowed out on to the Lungamo like a princess.
“No, don’t smoke those,” she said to Tonino that afternoon as he reached for a cigarette in the silver box that stood on the drawing-room mantelpiece. “I’ve got a few of those Egyptian ones you like. Got them specially for you.” And, smiling, she handed him a little parcel.
Tonino thanked her profusely — too profusely, as was his custom. But when he had stripped away the paper and saw the polished gold of a large cigarette-case, he could only look at her in an embarrassed and inquiring amazement.
“Don’t you think it’s rather pretty?” she asked.
“Marvellous! But is it...” He hesitated. “Is it for me?”
Moira laughed with pleasure at his embarrassment. She had never seen him embarrassed before. He was always the self-possessed young man of the world, secure and impregnable within his armour of Southern good manners. She admired that elegant carapace. But it amused her for once to take him without it, to see him at a loss, blushing and stammering like a little boy. It amused and it pleased her; she liked him all the more for being the little boy as well as the polished and socially competent young man.
“For me?” she mimicked, laughing. “Do you like it?” Her tone changed; she became grave. “I wanted you to have something to remind you of last night.” Tonino took her hands and silently kissed them. She had received him with such off-handed gaiety, so nonchalantly, as though nothing had happened, that the tender references to last night’s happenings (so carefully prepared as he walked up the hill) had remained unspoken. He had been afraid of saying the wrong thing and offending her. But now the spell was broken — and by Moira herself. “One oughtn’t to forget one’s good actions,” Moira went on, abandoning him her hands. “Each time you take a cigarette out of this case, will you remember how kind and good you were to a silly ridiculous little fool?”
Tonino had had time to recover his manners. “I shall remember the most adorable, the most beautiful...” Still holding her hands, he looked at her for a moment in silence, eloquently. Moira smiled back at him. “Moira!” And she was in his arms. She shut her eyes and was passive in the strong circle of his arms, soft and passive against his firm body. “I love you, Moira.” The breath of his whispering was warm on her cheek. “Ti amo.” And suddenly his lips were on hers again, violently, impatiently kissing. Between the kisses his whispered words came passionate to her ears. “Ti amopazzamente... piccina... tesoro... amort... cuore...” Uttered in Italian, his love seemed somehow specially strong and deep. Things described in a strange language themselves take on a certain strangeness. “Amami, Moira, amami. Mi am un po?” He was insistent. “A little, Moira — do you love me a little?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him. Then, with a quick movement, she took his face between her two hands, drew it down and kissed him on the mouth. “Yes,” she whispered, “I love you.” And then, gently, she pushed him away. Tonino wanted to kiss her again. But Moira shook her head and slipped away from him. “No, no,” she said with a kind of peremptory entreaty. “Don’t spoil it all now.”
The days passed, hot and golden. Summer approached. The nightingales sang unseen in the cool of the evening.
“L’usigmiolo,” Moira whispered softly to herself as she listened to the singing. “L’usignuolo.” Even the nightingales were subtly better in Italian. The sun had set. They were sitting in the little summer-house at the end of the garden, looking out over the darkening landscape. The white-walled farms and villas on the slope below stood out almost startlingly clear against the twilight of the olive trees, as though charged with some strange and novel significance. Moira sighed. “I’m so happy,” she said; Tonino took her hand. “Ridiculously happy.” For, after all, she was thinking, it was rather ridiculous to be so happy for no valid reason. John Tarwin had taught her to imagine that one could only be happy when one was doing something “interesting” (as he put it), or associating with people who were “worth while.” Tonino was nobody in particular, thank goodness! And going for picnics wasn’t exactly “interesting” in John’s sense of the word; nor was talking about the respective merits of different brands of car; nor teaching him to drive; nor going shopping; nor discussing the problem of new curtains for the drawing-room; nor, for that matter, sitting in the summer-house and saying nothing. In spite of which, or because of which, she was happy with an unprecedented happiness. “Ridiculously happy,” she repeated.
Tonino kissed her hand. “So am I,” he said. And he was not merely being polite. In his own way he was genuinely happy with her. People envied him sitting in that magnificent yellow car at her side. She was so pretty and elegant, so foreign too; he was proud to be seen about with her. And then the cigarette-case, the gold-mounted, agate-handled cane she had given him for his birthday.... Besides, he was really very fond of her, really, in an obscure way, in love with her. It was not for nothing that he had held and caressed her in the darkness of that night of thunder. Something of that deep and passionate tenderness, born suddenly of the night and their warm sightless contact, still remained in him — still remained even after the physical longings she then inspired had been vicariously satisfied. (And under Berto’s knowing guidance they had been satisfied, frequently.) If it hadn’t been for Berto’s satirical comments on the still platonic nature of his attachment, he would have been perfectly content.
“Alle donne,” Berto sententiously generalized, “place sempre la violenza. They long to be raped. You don’t know how to make love, my poor boy.” And he would hold up his own achievements as examples to be followed. For Berto, love was a kind of salacious vengeance on women for the crime of their purity.
Spurred on by his friend’s mockeries, Tonino made another attempt to exact full payment for his mending of the fuses on the night of the storm. But his face was so soundly slapped, and the tone in which Moira threatened never to see him again unless he behaved himself was so convincingly stern, that he did not renew his attack. He contented himself with looking sad and complaining of her cruelty. But in spite of his occasionally long face, he was happy with her. Happy like a fireside cat. The car, the house, her elegant foreign prettiness, the marvellous presents she gave him, kept him happily purring.
The days passed and the weeks. Moira would have liked life to flow on like this forever, a gay bright stream with occasional reaches of calm sentimentality but neve
r dangerously deep or turbulent, without fall or whirl or rapid. She wanted her existence to remain for ever what it was at this moment — a kind of game with a pleasant and emotionally exciting companion, a playing at living and loving. If only this happy play-time could last for ever!
It was John Tarwin who decreed that it should not. “ATTENDING CYTO LOGICAL CONGRESS ROME WILL STOP FEW DAYS ON WAY ARRIVING THURSDAY LOVE JOHN.” That was the text of the telegram Moira found awaiting her on her return to the villa one evening. She read it and felt suddenly depressed and apprehensive. Why did he want to come? He would spoil everything. The bright evening went dead before her eyes; the happiness with which she had been brimming when she returned with Tonino from that marvellous drive among the Apennines was drained out of her. Her gloom retrospectively darkened the blue and golden beauty of the mountains, put out the bright flowers, dimmed the day’s laughter and talk. “Why does he want to come?” Miserably and resentfully, she wondered. “And what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen?” She felt cold and rather breathless and almost sick with the questioning apprehension.
John’s face, when he saw her standing there at the station, lit up instantaneously with all its hundred-candle-power tenderness and charm.