Sandor Marai - Casanova in Bolzano

“That’s impossible,” he exclaimed, spluttering in his confusion. “It is impossible that you should feel nothing, while I… Wait, hang on a minute!” With a swift movement he embraced the girl, bent his head over her fresh young face, and stared deeply into the pale blue of her placid, maidenly, gently shimmering eyes.

“Not even now? Now that I have my arms around you? Can’t you feel my hot breath? The pressure of my hands on your ribs?… Can’t you feel how close I am to you? That in this mere moment we already know each other and that I am bringing you a miraculous gift, the gift of life and love?… You are seized by a peculiar trembling, are you not? A trembling that runs through you from your brow to the tip of your toes, a trembling you have never felt before, as if you had realized for the first time that you are alive, that this is the reason you have lived so far, the reason you came into the world?” And when he got no answer, he asked, “So what happens now?” Utterly lost, he let the girl go, allowed his hand to float to his brow, and looked about bewildered.

For the girl standing opposite him, only one step away from him, this little, slightly slatternly, raggedy, barefooted slip of a girl, the common plaything of every innkeeper, the kind of girl he knew so well — and, if he wanted to be honest with himself, the only kind of person he ever really knew — truly did feel nothing, as he could see perfectly well. He was so confused he began groaning. The fresh young body had not shuddered pleasantly at his expert touch: not even when he had held her waist had those clear, rather glassy eyes clouded up like a mountain lake when the storm gathers above it; nor had her heart, whose pulse he had felt through her canvas blouse as he touched her warm, maidenly skin, suddenly begun to race, not even when he pressed his hot hand against her breast more firmly. The girl continued breathing evenly and stood in front of him at arm’s length. He raised his arm but it stopped in midmovement, in midair. The resistance he occasionally met with in women had always encouraged him. Was there a more beautiful game, a more exciting struggle, than the duel with a woman who resisted, who slipped from his hands, who protested, and, haughtily or in panic, fended off her amorous opponent? It was at these times that he felt the full power of his humanity, when words tumbled from his mouth with the greatest ease: only at these times could he be at once bold yet submissive, demanding yet worshipping, daunted yet daring. For resistance was already a form of contact, a game half-won; resistance was a form of surrender: she who resisted knew why she resisted and already desired that from which she was escaping…. But this girl here, in the guest room of a hostelry in a strange town, this slim, not particularly well nourished servant girl, the first woman to whom he had opened his arms after sixteen months of prison, loneliness, misery, and obscurity — this girl wasn’t even defending herself. She was not resisting. Here she stood, perfectly calmly, as if he weren’t standing right opposite her, a sweet little rag doll facing a man who had not so long ago rented a palazzo in Murano for the most beautiful nun in all Venice and who, quite recently, had been taught how to pen amorous verses by a countess in Rome, at the home of a cardinal and patron…. Here she stood and there was nothing he could do with her because she was neither defending herself nor yielding to orders and demands; she stood like light before a shadow and no female instinct was telling her to flee. He took a deep breath and wiped his brow, covered in cold sweat.

What had happened? That which had never before happened. He looked wildly around the room as if searching for something and his eye fell on the dagger he had left on the mantelpiece the previous night. With a fluid movement he seized the dagger with both hands and began carelessly to flex the blade. He was no longer concerned with the girl but walked up and down the room with the dagger in his hand, talking quietly to himself: “Well then,” he mumbled. Then: “It’s impossible!” He felt truly awful. He felt like a great actor who had not appeared in public for years and who, when the time came for him to sing again, was confronted by an icy auditorium and silence in the stalls. He was not hissed off the stage, he hadn’t failed, but this icy silence, this unechoing indifference was more terrifying than failure. He felt like a singer who notices with horror that something has happened to his voice, and that however much he bawls or attempts those well-practiced florid musical phrases, the warm resonance of his voice, the individual attractive timbre that once made his listeners shiver with delight so that women’s eyes veiled and misted over and men stared solemnly at the ground in front of them, all paying close attention, as if the perfect moment for regret and judgment had finally arrived — was gone…. It was as if he had forgotten something, a voice, a pose, some secret faculty that had been his alone, which had been the secret of his success, of his very being, and he simply couldn’t understand why people no longer applauded the performance when only yesterday they were cheering it to the rafters, and he knew that despite his talent, despite his practice and experience, something had gone wrong: his effect on the audience was not what it used to be!… What could he do? Faced as he was by the icy indifference of the auditorium, he realized that he no longer possessed his old power of attraction. He found himself groaning and raising his hands to his throat in panic, wanting to emit some sound — an aaah! or aaiigh! — but failed to make any sound whatsoever. He stood there, dagger in hand, staring at the girl.

“Impossible!” he said once more, louder this time. “You feel nothing, nothing at all? No fear? No trembling? No desire to run away?…” He was almost begging her to say something. He was aware what a pitiful figure he must cut, with a dagger in his hand and this imploring note in his voice. “Why don’t you look me in the eye?” he asked more quietly, slightly hoarsely, the voice quite melancholy now. Noticing his tone, the girl looked up and slowly turned to face the stranger, allowing her own eyes to be explored by the solemn, piercing pair of the man before her. “Ah, you see,” the man sighed with relief, shifting position as if ready to fence or to leap. “My voice has touched you,” he rejoiced, the voice quieter and more tender now. “I want you to feel that I am talking to you personally. Because I know you, I would know you now among a thousand women, even at a masked ball. See, you are responding, your eyes answer mine. I knew it. How could it be otherwise?” He gave a low whistle in his joy, then resumed in the warm, deep, sad voice he seemed to deploy like a conjuror his apparatus. “For that is the only secret, my dear, that is all: there is no trick, no catch, it’s always this simple. It’s like touching a person. You touched me when you stepped into the room, and sometimes I think that is the most mysterious form of contact. Sometimes I think it is the cause, the very meaning, of life. Is your heart beating a little faster?… Are you blushing?… You know perfectly well that you can’t go now. Come closer, return to where you were before.”

And when the girl drew closer he addressed her in his calmest, most straightforward manner:

“Don’t you remember? I asked you to kiss me.”

Slowly, with a sure and leisurely movement, he held out his arms, gently took the girl by the shoulder, and watched tenderly as she leaned her head against his arm.

A nd now, on the third day after his escape from the notorious Leads where he had spent sixteen months, he finally kissed the maid in a room of The Stag, in Bolzano. What was it like? To begin with he simply kissed the girl’s cracked lips which met the male mouth, softly, helplessly, without responding before the two mouths parted. They stayed like that a long time. He watched her eyes, catching her glance, the startled clear look of another living being, then blinked as if blinded by the strong light. Both of them shut their eyes for a moment. This was a situation both recognized, in their different ways. It was as if it were the single most natural, most sensible position in human existence, and it was impossible to understand why they had ever bothered with anything else or with any other position, having prepared themselves a long time for precisely this moment, bending every effort and every desire, awake or asleep, to this end. The girl shifted in the strange man’s arms, her expression serious and relaxed. She was like someone who, after a long search and hours of puzzling, had finally sighed and declared, “Oh, I see! So this is what it was about!” Suddenly everything fell into place. She shifted her weight in the man’s arms, quite carefully, with delicate, small movements, shy yet certain, feeling that every adjustment of her body had a meaning; and so the great wordless dialogue started, one established a long time ago by man and woman, the dialogue that is continued by every pair of lovers the moment one embraces the other. It was the right position she sought. To be accurate, she was not even moving but simply allowed her body to settle on his knee into the position prepared for her by the median route between resistance and attraction. She leaned her head against his arm and her youthful body readily bent back, his strong, relaxed arms supporting her without effort, taking the alien weight, almost appearing to lift it slightly as if disobeying, if only for a few moments, the force of gravity. The girl’s precise position at that point might be described as collapsing in the stranger’s arms, on tiptoe, head bent back, slightly off balance, keeling over to one side. Had anybody been observing them through the keyhole, he or she might have thought that the girl had fainted or had just been dragged from some invisible stream and was languishing unconscious in the arms of the person who had saved her, soon to be deposited on the bed or the floor where she would have her arms raised and her heart massaged so she might be brought back to life. Because the girl’s posture suggested someone lost and unconscious yet rescued. It is, as a matter of fact, how the girl herself felt at that moment: she felt like a would-be suicide who had plunged into the river but who had been rescued and was just now being carried to shore. Essentially, she was adjusting herself to her new situation.