Now that the man had finally touched her — the stranger was holding her hand with two fingers as if requesting the pleasure of a dance, while resting his head on his other hand — Teresa’s intuition told her that she was the stronger. The feeling surprised her. The stranger, to all appearances, was powerful and elegant despite having arrived in rags; what was more, he was older, much older than Teresa, and to cap it all he was famous, and every woman desperately wanted to see him. Teresa should have had every reason to be afraid of him. He had also promised to take her to Venice, and Teresa was afraid of promises, because people who made promises were known to lie: the only people really to have given her something were those who had not said anything about it beforehand. She didn’t even know what exactly the man wanted from her. For there had been those who had pinched her or patted her buttocks or wanted to kiss her or whispered lascivious words into her ear, many of which were coarse and crude, or begged her for favors or made loathsome offers, inviting her into their rooms after midnight, when everyone else had gone to bed. No, Teresa knew men, all right. But this one did not pinch her, extended no invitation, and said nothing crude. He simply gazed with an expression of close concentration on his slightly careworn face, like someone who was thinking furiously about something he had forgotten: a name, some memory, some important, life-enhancing idea.
“You’re not afraid,” the man muttered under his breath. With the gentlest, most courteous, almost solicitous, yet completely unambiguous gesture, he sat the girl on his knee. Teresa allowed herself to be seated. She sat in the stranger’s lap quite decorously, as if visiting another person’s house, prepared at any moment to run should someone ring a bell or call her. They were both solemn. They looked into each other’s eyes attentively, the man slightly squinting so as to see her better, as, with two fingers, he turned Teresa’s face to the light. The girl tolerated these movements exactly as if she were visiting the doctor: it was reasonable to grant reasonable requests. “It is sixteen months,” said the stranger calmly, “since I looked into a woman’s eyes. Yours have a nice color, Teresa, like the sky over Venice. I sometimes saw that sky from a window when they took me for exercise down the prison corridor. It was a blue sky, bluish gray to be precise, a slightly cold blue, as if somehow it were reflecting the sea. You have the color of eternity in your eyes,” he told her politely. “But you don’t understand this. Not that it matters whether you do or not. There is a sort of misunderstanding between us, an eternal misunderstanding as between all men and women, and I am always ashamed of myself when I am with a woman and babble on too long. Kiss me,” he said in a friendly and natural fashion.
And when the girl made no move but continued staring at him with that gray-blue, glassy gaze of hers, her head held stiff and straight, he repeated, “Kiss me. Don’t you understand?” in a slightly puzzled voice, but still friendly. Later Teresa recalled that it was the sort of voice in which he might have asked her for a glass of water, or told her to send in Balbi because he was bored. There was simplicity and ease in his request: “Kiss me.” But Teresa had never kissed a man like this, so she continued staring, her eyes still glassy, more empty than intelligent. The man took her waist with, it seemed, half a hand, and this too he succeeded in doing in an almost incidental fashion as if reaching for a book or comb, then, amiably, in a mildly inquiring manner, asked her what she felt.
“Nothing,” replied the girl.
“You don’t understand,” he said, a little annoyed. “You don’t understand my question. I am not asking you what you feel in general about life, about men or about love. Listen here, child. What I am asking is what you feel when I touch you, when I encompass that piece of your arm above your elbow with two fingers, what you feel when I touch your heart — like this — what you are feeling now, this very moment?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said the girl decorously, as she stood up, bobbed to the stranger, and with two hands, as she had sometimes seen others do in the restaurant, slightly raised the edge of her skirt. “But I feel nothing.”
Now the man, too, stood up. Legs apart, arms crossed, his head bowed, his voice dark and troubled.
“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.