Instead (Tito went on to himself) this delicious Maud talks about the first time as she would about her first communion, if that were worth talking about. She attaches no importance to that physical episode, that superficial incident, that harmless, simple, quiet event about which poets, moralists, judges at all times and in all ages have made such a fuss. That minor act of nervous release that had led to savage injustices and idiotic philosophical outpourings in the name of morality; that natural interplay of two bodies that appears so different depending on whether it happens before or after a carriage ride to the town hall, and is considered decent and honorable if it is done in one bed and wicked if it is done in another.
Maud describes with complete and honest simplicity what is called a guilty act (Tito went on), and with the simplicity of her story she emerges pure and uncontaminated from the bog of a rotten morality. The false valuation put upon that act — the contact of two bodies — has led to nothing but crime. On the day when a girl’s giving herself is no longer considered shameful, abortion and infanticide will cease, because a child will cease to be the fruit of sin and there will be no more need to hide it. The Jews would stone a girl who gave herself before marriage. The people themselves killed her. Perhaps the seducer was among those who threw the stones. Nowadays such a girl is forced to have an abortion, and if she’s found out she’s sent to prison. If she doesn’t have an abortion she has to kill the child, and if she doesn’t do that she and the child are thrown out.
If I had my way, in every case of abortion or infanticide it wouldn’t be the girl that was punished, but her father, mother, elder brothers, neighbors, and all those whose gossip, tittle-tattling, prejudices and good breeding caused her to believe it was a crime to be pregnant without giving advance notice to the town hall. Then at last we should have the satisfaction of seeing unmarried mothers in the street treated with the respect that is now reserved for archbishops and kings. And that would be more than justified. The unmarried mother is the only kind that deserves any kind of admiration. She volunteers for maternity. What is the merit of the others, the married ones? They know that having a child, or the prospect of having one, gives them a position in life, a family. They know there will be someone there to help them from the first morning sickness until forty days after everything has returned to its place. They know that midwife, surgeon, mother, mother-in-law, husband and nurse will do everything in their power to lessen the ordeal of confinement and its consequences and nursing; they know that the “happy event” will be celebrated like a beatification.
But a pregnant unmarried girl cannot count on any of that. On the contrary. The man turns his back on her, her parents despise and insult her, she has to look after the child herself, and she knows that one day the child will turn against her, reproaching her for having made him a bastard.
Nevertheless she faces all this, because of her love, because of her noble instinct. She, and only she, is the true mother. The others are the shopkeepers of maternity, and in comparison with them they have no merit. They produce children with every possible guarantee. They are like those who cheerfully face the prospect of a duel, knowing that their opponent’s pistol is loaded with chewed paper bullets.
By now it was five o’clock, and the square below started gradually filling with people. It was the best time of the day in Paris — de cinq à sept. They say Parisians are nocturnal animals. I think they’re dusk animals.
“Forgive me,” said Maud, coming back and putting a bare arm round Tito’s neck. “That Pierina is marvelous at packing but can’t unpack, but I —”
“Can’t pack or unpack. So what? When did you leave home?”
“Does that interest you? I met two or three men who were very kind to me. There was a magistrate who couldn’t stand priests, and a priest who didn’t have a good word to say for magistrates; and there was a landlord who let furnished rooms by the hour and spoke highly both of priests and of magistrates, because both were his best clients. Then I took up dancing and travelled all over Italy. In Naples I met an American who was the nephew of the owner of the Metropolitan Theater in New York.”
“In the course of my life I’ve already met twenty-five Americans of both sexes who said their uncle was the owner of the Metropolitan. That man’s brothers and sisters must be disastrously fertile. In America they must even have children by mass production.”
“But he really was the nephew of —”
“I believe you, I believe you. Having an uncle who owns a theater is a specialty of Americans abroad. The Russians you meet outside Russia always say they are friends of Maxim Gorki’s. The Spaniards are always on terms of intimacy with the Quintero brothers, and the Norwegians were always held at the baptismal font by Ibsen.”
A waiter and a porter came in obsequiously (hotel waiters are our obsequious enemies) to dismantle the bed and take away the bedstead.
“All I need is a palliasse and two mattresses,” Maud explained. “I’ll put some rugs and Turkish shawls on it and a chinchilla fur I brought from Italy.”
“Will you have dinner with me?” Tito asked, putting his watch back in his pocket.
“Thanks, but I’m tired. I’ll have something sent up to my room. Do go if you want to. When shall I see you again?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Not this evening?”
“I shall be back late.”
“Until tomorrow, then.”
“You’ll have to see your manager. When does the show begin?”
“In three day’s time.”
“I’ll show you round Paris in your spare time.”
Maud held out her hand to him and in doing so threw back her head. Tito kissed the hollow in her throat. Then he went back to his room.
While he was standing in front of the wardrobe mirror trying to decide between a black suit and a gray one, an express letter arrived for him.
That made him decide on the dinner jacket, because the letter summoned him to the house of Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady, who was feeling depressed and lonely. As usual, her car was waiting outside the hotel. Tito got in. A few moments later he made it stop at a florist’s in the Rue de Rivoli, where he had a gardenia put in his buttonhole before he got in again.
The delicate, untouchable petals of the gardenia preserved the voluptuous odor of the Côte d’Azur.
There are waves in the air that are not registered by laboratory apparatus but are apprehended by our nerves when we drive at dusk among the shadows of the Champs Elysées: waves of love and adultery. Here and there you see couples coming back. Where from? Perhaps from cafés, perhaps from tea rooms, perhaps from the art galleries of the Grand Palais, perhaps from the banks of the Seine. But in the way they walk, their faces, the atmosphere that surrounds them, there’s a trace of voluptuous exhaustion.
Couples…
Lovers.
Lovers. The most beautiful word in the world.
Lovers.
The car followed the rectilinear tracks made on the wet asphalt by thousands of other cars. At the end of the avenue the Arc de Triomphe stood out white in the night.
The arc lamps sizzled with blue.
The car entered the garden. Dripping leaves embraced it, leaving drops on the paint, which was as shiny as Japanese lacquer.