Giovanni Arpino - Scent of a Woman

‘You relate everything to him. You’ve formed an opinion and you won’t budge from it. Fine. But how can that help you? Okay, he’s special, very special, no one denies that, but so what? Just because he’s blind? There are millions of blind people.’

‘We said so before. Vincenzo is also blind. But he’s nothing, all air. He doesn’t even understand his fate. So he doesn’t deserve it.’ Stubbornly she shook her small head, which lay in the crook of her elbow.

‘What fate? Being blind? It’s not like he was born that way,’ I suddenly said hotly. ‘It’s not a Greek tragedy, it’s a misfortune. He took it a certain way, given his temperament. It’s your fault, your stubbornness, if you want to see it as something else.’

She laughed wearily inside her protective shell.

‘Hopeless. You want to probe, explain. You’ll never do it. All of you, if you saw an angel standing on a street corner, what would you do? I’ll tell you what: you’d count his feathers. To make sure, to verify. That’s the way you are.’

She laughed again, but it was almost a sob.

‘Try playing this game. Put a blindfold over your eyes, and remain blindfolded in your room or in the park throughout the afternoon. And move around there, explore things, search…’

‘Is that what you did?’

‘Me? What do I have to do with it!’ she denied sharply.

‘All right. I see. Let’s drop it.’ I gave in.

‘Yes. Drop it.’ She seemed to calm down.

‘Don’t take it so hard.’ I pulled myself together. ‘I’m not judging you. Nor would I ever make fun of you. Far from it. But maybe you don’t understand either. Maybe we’re both too young to understand.’

She kept shaking her head in the crook of her elbow, in denial.

‘I too know that he’s different.’ I backed off.

‘It’s not enough to say he’s different. Too easy.’ She raised her face, her eyes now a sharp beam aimed elsewhere. ‘What about the butterfly this morning? Remember that?’

‘Oh. A nice dramatic gesture.’

‘A definitive one. I say this to help you understand some–thing.’ She scoffed at me from behind that wall of hers. ‘Only he is capable of definitive gestures. He thinks of them, he does them. Whoever he catches, he catches.’

‘What amazes me is that everybody lets him get away with it. We let him have his way in everything, all the time. Never an objection.’

‘He knows,’ she continued, her eyes half closed, ‘the world is destruction. And he carries this destruction inside him. You see him there, motionless, handsome, but instead, inside, he’s filled with devastation. While still showing regard for everything, because he’s courteous as well, and when he’s angelic no one can equal him.’

‘We can go on talking like this for hours. You on one side, me on the other, without reaching any conclusion.’

She agreed with a nod, her gaze bleak, a vein in her neck throbbing rhythmically under the skin.

‘And women?’ she blurted out suddenly. ‘You have no reason to lie to me now. Tell me: did he look for other women during the trip? In Rome?’

‘No.’

She took a breath, consoled but sombre.

Then, in a fit of contempt: ‘Idiotic fools,’ she said. ‘They should be chasing after him by the thousands, if they had anything in those heads of theirs. If I were a real woman, the things I’d be able to come up with. For him, incredible things.’

‘He’s twenty years older than you.’

She laughed. ‘Twenty-one. But what am I saying? Ten thousand. A million. And that too is lovely, it’s just fine.’

‘So then: it’s right?’

‘Right!’ she cried, elated.

She quickly leafed through the book, then handed me a small photograph protected by a transparent sleeve.

She blushed happily. ‘Look.’

In her schoolgirl’s white knee socks, she barely came up to his waist. They were walking into the sun, his right hand on her delicate shoulder, the bamboo cane nearly obliterated by its own motion. The child was laughing, her teeth gleaming. He, dazzling in white, with the dark splotches of his glasses, his tie, his gloved left hand, cancelled out the few other elements in the picture: a bench, a drab bush.

‘From many years ago,’ she explained tenderly, her voice a whisper. ‘It was my father who took it. But don’t tell him. He knows nothing about it. He must never know.’

I suddenly felt discouraged and bewildered in that stifling dimness, with the sharp sting of the air freshener. The words slipped out only because of some obscure rage: ‘Tell me, have you ever seen him without his dark glasses?’

The smile that appeared on her face was recognizable as a challenge.

‘Of course. Did you think I hadn’t, maybe?’ she retorted disdainfully. ‘But you asked rudely. What were you hoping to do? Scare me? You could never.’

I kept silent, feeling rebuffed, without purpose. That obstinacy of hers had cleared my brain of any intention of being rational, leaving me even emptier.

We stood up. She walked me to the door; from the street came a wall of heat. Loud cries and noises held us there in the doorway.

‘A hundred yards, the first one on your right. A posh wine shop,’ she explained. ‘You can mention the restaurant’s name; I’ve already phoned. Surprised? Why? I have a good imagination, you know. When it comes to him, I can imagine just about anything. I’ll bet he wants at least eight bottles.’

‘Ten.’

‘You see? A gentleman besides.’ In the light of day she appeared very pale, the furrow between her brows delicate and deep-set like a dimple. ‘Maybe we might have a chance to talk a little more, the two of us.’

‘I’m leaving tomorrow night. Or at least I think so. I don’t know about him. He wouldn’t tell me anything, as usual.’

‘He’s always been that way.’

‘I know. I realized that too.’

She clamped her hands under her armpits again, facing the street and its noises with a stern expression. For a moment she seemed anything but young.

‘I didn’t ask you about Turin. Silly me. Is it really as beautiful as they say? I’d like to go to university there. I’ll have to spend a whole year persuading and reconciling my mother to it, I know that, but in the end… I have a peculiar way, if I dig in my heels and push myself, I manage to win. Always.’

‘You’re very smart.’

‘Don’t call me smart,’ she protested curtly. Her hand waved off my remark. ‘I hate the smart girl everyone compliments. I’m determined. That’s all. And not a word about Turin. Swear.’

‘I swear.’

‘Why didn’t he go out for a walk today?’

‘He didn’t want to.’

‘If he doesn’t walk, at least a little, he gets irritable. There’s still time before supper. When you come back, why don’t you suggest it to him? By now he may have changed his mind.’

‘If I say something, he’ll immediately say no. You can bet on it.’

‘True, true!’ She laughed, revelling in it, her torso swaying, her neck slightly tipped back. ‘That “no” of his. Magnificent! A rifle shot, aimed at everything.’

‘But I’ll suggest it to him anyway, okay?’

She nodded, her teeth nervously pulling at, worrying her upper lip.

‘Just one thing,’ I ventured, ‘you, for four years… Writing to him was out, so did you phone him?’

She immediately withdrew behind a glassy smile.

‘No,’ she replied, her voice strained, ‘not a word. That’s enough now: I’ve already said too much.’

‘But he…’

‘He’s at the house, he has to walk, has to eat. That’s all. Let’s leave things as they are.’

‘All right.’

‘Why, did he say anything to you maybe? About me?’ Her voice came out laboured, almost stifled.