Giovanni Arpino - Scent of a Woman

Resorting to gestures, spreading my arms, moving my fingers, I tried to explain. But Sara, motionless, wasn’t even looking at me, riveted only on him.

When she decided to return my gesturing, she made a disconsolate, meaningless sign, then squatted on her heels, no longer daring to approach.

Incredibly long minutes went by, my eyes bewitched by the dizzying sweep of the second hand on my watch. A solitary cicada suddenly broke the silence, high up behind us.

He was breathing harshly, the grating of each breath of air like screeching on glass.

‘No excuse,’ he shuddered.

I had to hold him up before he lost his support against the tree; he recovered his position but without being aware of his muscles’ movement.

‘Feeling better, sir?’ I asked softly.

‘Oh, it’s you. Tell me I’m not here. Vanish: make me feel like I’m not here,’ he said through his teeth.

I saw Sara get up, tiptoe cautiously, gently to our tree, a finger to her lips, having overcome any uncertainty.

She sat down next to him.

The gentleness with which she managed to bend his shoulder, soften the remaining tension of his frame until she was able to cradle that head in her lap, made my heart almost painfully skip a beat. His right hand rose a moment to object, but quickly dropped back ineffectually.

‘No,’ he moaned, ‘no.’

‘Hush,’ Sara silenced him in a soft singsong voice. ‘Hush. Don’t think any more. Not a thought.’

She smoothed his hair with brief, fearful touches, brushing his forehead as if he were a sick child. Finally, very pale, she encircled his head in her arms.

I moved over on the grass to put some space between us.

‘No, not this,’ he was still moaning. ‘No.’

‘Hush,’ she whispered, her gaze lost in the distance. ‘Hush. Why suffer? No more. Not any more.’

And she rocked him gently.

‘Life is draining away. Feel it? Draining away.’ His broken words intermingled weakly with Sara’s hushes. ‘It hurts. But it’s right. Right… I’m a coward, a—’

‘Hush,’ she kept saying softly, prevailing over him. ‘You mustn’t think. You mustn’t.’

‘I was afraid…’

‘We’re all afraid, all of us. Hush. Rest, my angel,’ Sara went on. For a moment her dark eyes strayed to me, quickly passing over me like some annoying obstacle.

I was no longer moved now, just scared, helpless. I went back to the step in front of the house. The sun was already beating down fiercely.

They were a single pale spot, dappled with the gentle brush strokes of the tree’s shadow. And I was outside, driven away, overwhelmed by need.

Shortly afterwards I went back in to put on my uniform.

I sat on the edge of the tub in the bathroom. The water had run out: little more than a trickle, not even cool, dribbled slowly through my fingers.

My military trousers and shirt hung on me like the shabby clothes of a bum. I couldn’t find my tie or my belt. And I seemed to give off the sour, dead odour of spoiled rations.

Okay, so be it. I will not expect anything any more, attempt anything, I won’t make a move, I won’t think about it any more.

I rinsed my mouth with a shot of whisky; I started examining myself lazily in the tiny mirror over the sink. The dark stubble of my beard made me look even worse, my cheeks were a greasy grey membrane. Mortified, I started rinsing myself, cupping my hands under that trickle of water, one meagre splash at a time, my eyes hurting at the slightest pressure on my eyelids, the refreshing effect of those few drops quickly gone.

Maybe I was hungry too, or nauseous somehow. The bag of marzipan had been left somewhere, not to anyone’s taste. As in a very distant, very soft glow, I saw again the table laid the night before, Candida, Michelina, Ines exultant, vying to set out dish after dish, and at each plate his shouting, his laughter, the lieutenant’s gluttonous demands.

Ines: who knows how much talking she’s done by now.

They were still there, silent, Sara’s left hand placidly sweeping the air to interrupt the annoying flight of an insect. He sprawled limply as if asleep.

A cicada was singing. The weeds and grass seemed even more withered in the harsh light, the sky a painful blue. A double white stripe began streaking it swiftly, without any blurring or sounds: a jet plane, almost invisible, at a very high altitude.

Go ahead: unload it. Open your filthy holds and spew out those hundred or hundred thousand megatons that are in your belly. Blow us up and get it over with, there’s really nothing left to save. Amen. Why tomorrow, when it’s convenient for you? Why not now, right away?

But even this loss in me and of me, which I bore as it simultaneously demolished me and shaped me, was not true conviction; it was not an absolute desire to obliterate and be obliterated, but only a reflection of a lack of raison d’être, of life, which was elusive.

A reason for being, and a life that I could no longer make sense of, one distorted and poisoned by what had happened, the trip and him and his furious whirlwind of words, those two shots that still echoed, the lieutenant bloody in his chair, and now, worst of all, harshest of all, the image of the two of them out there: washed pale like a watercolour in the friendly shade of the tree, immersed, unreachable, enclosed in a serenity that was insult and scorn, even if it was only the paltry serenity of a performance.

Once again I realized that it wasn’t fear or even envy, but a frozen wall that had dropped down to isolate me from everything familiar or possible.

I toyed with the box of matches, and watched them. Amidst the greenery, the foliage, they seemed like a pale vanishing point, more and more uncertain and transparent.

Now they’ll vanish and with them the tree, this place, this time, I thought.

It was eleven o’clock.

I closed the window again, folded my clothes after sniffing the mysterious stain on my sleeve to no avail, and rummaged through my suitcase again, all the while knowing I would not find toothpaste or a razor there. They would have consoled me, emerging unexpectedly from that tangle of stuff.

‘Ciccio. Come on over. The bottle too,’ I heard him call me. They were smoking, sitting shoulder to shoulder. From the way he reached out his right hand for the whisky, I quickly guessed that he was more rested and in control. Sara’s eyes were alight with a new passion.

‘Sit down. Why did you disappear? Or were you sleeping?’ she asked.

She had recovered her normal voice, slower, with barely concealed exhaustion.

‘Here I am, sir.’

I squatted in the grass; the sun as it rose higher had reduced the circle of shade around the tree.

He reached out a hand to touch me, feeling the epaulette on my military shirt.

‘The stars already,’ he remarked. ‘We’re clearing out, then. Excellent.’ I was distracted by Sara.

With a smile that was naive rather than convinced, she nodded to make me understand: the crisis was over, everything was all right now.

‘You’re the ones who count, not me. All smoke and no fire, that’s me,’ he said sadly but without hesitation.

‘That’s where you’re wrong. The best part of the fire is the smoke, its scent,’ Sara tried to tell him.

He was worrying the grass with his hand, pulling up blade after blade, his forehead bowed, his hair in stringy tufts, his lips pale.

‘You should have been a philosopher, not a doctor,’ he replied mildly.

Some gnats darted about in the air in erratic zigzags, never straying from their chosen space.

‘I don’t want to get you in any trouble. That much at least, for God’s sake,’ he went on softly.

‘But if Vincenzo, on the other hand—’ the girl ventured.