We walked slowly, with the trees of the park on one side and, on the other, the grassy slope of the hill. We passed the farm buildings and reached a point just below the threshing-floor; then I raised my eyes towards the three stacks. One of them was complete, made of fresh straw, of a bright, shining yellow; another was brown, the straw older; of the third there remained only a section, shaped like a rudder, against the crooked pole which had supported it. The moonlight, falling upon the three stacks and outlining their masses sharply against the dark, empty background of the open countryside, seemed to isolate them upon their knolclass="underline" the way they were placed, which was obviously not by mere chance, their monumental aspect, made one forget their real nature and suggested the idea of some mysterious underlying purpose. I could not help thinking of the circles of enormous upright stones left by the Druids here and there on the plains of France and England. I said to my wife that the three stacks standing there in the brilliant light of the full moon reminded me of the dolmens of Brittany, and I went on to explain something of the pagan rites that were celebrated in those pre-historic temples. For an idea had come to me, or rather a desire — to climb up on to the threshing-floor with Leda and make love to her there, on the straw, on the ground, in the moonlight. In that way would I solemnize, in a worthy setting, the end of my work and, at the same time, our return to conjugal love. I do not say that certain literary memories did not enter into this desire; but, after all, I was a literary man, and it was right that literature, in me, should be fused with the deepest and most genuine impulses. In any case, I had a real longing for Leda, and the idea of making love to her in the open air, on a night of full moon, seemed to me absolutely natural and just such as might have occurred to a simpler, less cultivated man than myself.
11
I TOLD her that I wanted to climb up to the threshing-floor and look at the immensely wide view that could be obtained from there; she agreed and, still linked together, we scrambled up the steep slope, over the slippery grass. When we reached the threshing-floor we stood quite still for a moment gazing at the landscape. The whole wide plain stretched away as far as the eye could see, in the clear night, and the moonlight, falling upon that vast area of growing things, showed up the rows of fruit-trees, the hedges, the empty spaces of the fields, the vineyards. Here and there its brilliance was concentrated upon the front of some farmhouse, bathing it in silver. At the horizon, a row of black mountains made a clear line between the earth and the tranquil sky. A far-away murmur, as of a train running hidden amongst the cultivated fields, passed across the sleeping countryside and emphasized its vastness and its silence.
My wife gazed at this landscape almost in bewilderment, as though she wished to penetrate the secret of its serenity and its silence; and I, putting my arm round her waist again, began talking to her in a low voice, pointing out now one place, now another, in the plain below us, and exalting in the beauty of the night. Then, as we still conversed together, I made her turn round towards the mountain that rose behind us and pointed out the walls of the town upon its top. We had moved, as we talked, close to one of the straw-stacks: on the ground there was scattered straw where the farmer's children played in the daytime. Suddenly I embraced her, murmuring: 'Leda. . isn't it better here than in your room?' And, as I spoke, I tried to push her gently to the ground.
She looked at me, her shining blue eyes dilated by a sudden temptation. Then, resisting me, she said: 'No. . the straw isn't clean. . Besides, it's so prickly. . I should ruin my frock.'
'What does your frock matter?'
'Your work isn't finished yet,' she said all of a sudden, with a laugh that was unexpected and full of coquettishness;' the day you've really finished it, we'll come back here, at night… Is that all right?'
'No, it's not all right, there won't be any moon then. . Tonight.'
Softly, and as though she were still hesitating, she said: 'Let me go, Silvio'; and then, all at once, she freed herself and ran off, down the hill, laughing. It was a fresh, childish laugh, full of an affectionate nervousness in which there seemed still to be a tremor of the temptation that I had discerned, a moment before, in her eyes; and this seemed to recompense me for the way in which she repulsed me. Perhaps it was better that it should have happened like this, I thought, as I ran after her: a gentle refusal and a gracious laugh. She was running in front of me along the path between the park and the vineyards, but I caught her up easily and took her in my arms. But now I felt that that laugh had satisfied every desire of mine; and, after kissing her, I started walking along beside her, holding her hand tightly. The moonlight threw our two shadows in front of us — separate, but with the hands joined; and this chaste return of ours now appeared to me more truly loving than the embrace which she had evaded at the threshing-floor. We walked the whole length of the drive and reached the front of the house. The electric light had come on again in the meantime, and the french window of the drawing-room had a bright and welcoming look. We went into the house, and straight upstairs. She walked in front of me up the stairs and never had she looked so beautiful to me as in that soft, graceful movement of ascent which showed off the lines of her figure. On the landing she said again, in a characteristically jocular, and at the same time sensual, manner: 'Finish your work, then. . and we'll go together to the threshing-floor.' I kissed her hand and went to my room. Very soon afterwards I was asleep.
Next morning, my feeling of exaltation, far from having evaporated, had perhaps reached its highest point. My wife was still asleep when I climbed into Angelo's trap and drove off with him towards the town. Angelo perhaps thought it his duty to talk to me of the state of affairs of the countryside; and I let him chatter away almost without listening to him, being absorbed in my thoughts, or rather in my feelings. The trap started off down the drive, where the first rays of the morning sun were already playing, skirted the old boundary wall and turned into the main road. The air was mild, and the soft splendour of autumn lay upon all things; I looked round over the countryside, already partly despoiled and weary-looking, and all about me, in the accurate light, so different from the devouring glare of summer, all things were clearly visible, each thing could be clearly distinguished, even to the finest detail and the subtlest shade of colour; and I could not have enough of looking. Here was a red leaf which, at a breath of wind, detached itself from the bough of a vine; there a changing network of light and faint shadow upon an old brown, green and grey wall; farther on a lark, rising from the road almost under the horse's hoofs, punctured space with brief flights and came to rest beside a clod of earth in a bare field, and the clod had been freshly turned and still had upon it the gloss of the spade. There were patches of verdigris, of a poisonous blue, upon the white walls of farm buildings; there was moss, yellow as gold, on the weathered roof-tiles of a little church that looked like a barn; there were big, pale green acorns amongst the darker leaves of a young oak that hung out over the road from the field beside it. I rejoiced in these and other similar minute details as though they had been rich with some ineffable meaning; and I was aware that I owed this new way of looking at things, as though I were in love with them, to my own happiness, which, also, was new and ineffable. After crossing part of the flat plain, the road attacked the mountain slope, rising gently but unceasingly. The trap proceeded at walking pace. I looked then for the first time at the ancient walls rising sheer on the mountain-top, brown but with edges glowing in the sunlight; and all at once I felt myself flooded with an uncontrollable rapture, as though those walls had been the goal, now at last visible, not of my brief morning expedition but of my whole life. The trap climbed slowly, and I, for a moment, as I looked at the walls, saw myself not as I was, a mass of confused and transient thoughts and feelings, but firmly established in time, wearing, like a mantle, the predestined, the mysteriously simple, character that history attributes to its heroes. Thus, beneath this same sun, on a morning like this, along just such a road, had moved those great men, the bringers of consolation, whom I admired; and in this certainty I seemed to find confirmation that I myself, perhaps, would one day become one of these men. I seemed to divine it in the intensity of that moment as I lived it; it seemed to me the clearest possible sign of my entry into greatness and into eternity. I was surprised to find myself murmuring: 'The twenty-seventh of October nineteen hundred and thirty-seven' over and over again, in time to the hard, insistent, regular beat of the horse's hoofs as it mounted the hill, and I had the feeling that the magic charm of that date, as I pronounced each of its syllables distinctly, already held in itself some sort of foreboding. Our slow progress had brought us by now to the town gate, which consists of enormous masses of Etruscan masonry surmounted by a slender medieval arch. It stood golden in the sunshine; peasants driving donkeys or carrying baskets went through it in front of us: and it was, in fact, a morning just like any other morning, on top of this mountain as elsewhere. After we had passed the gate, my mood of exaltation fell suddenly flat as the trap went up over the cobbles of a steep street, between two rows of old houses. When we reached the main square I got down, asking Angelo to meet me there in an hour's time, and I went off to look for the paper I needed. The shop that I had in mind was further on along the Corso, and I had little difficulty in finding it. But I discovered to my Surprise that the stationer kept no typewriting paper, only foolscap. I resigned myself disgustedly to buying a hundred of these double sheets, thinking that I could cut them up and make two sheets out of each. With my roll of paper under my arm I then went into the principal cafe and drank a vermouth, standing at the bar: it was an old-fashioned cafe, dark and dusty, with few bottles, of dubious aspect, upon the bar shelves, and no customers on the red divans round the walls. I left the cafe, returned to the square, went over to the newspaper kiosk and, after examining at length the four or five illustrated magazines and comic papers hung up there, I bought the morning paper and went and sat down on the stone seat in front of the Town Hall, beneath the convoluted coats-of-arms of extinct noble families and the iron rings for tying up horses. I was sorry now that I had told Angelo to come back in an hour's time, but consoled myself with the thought that he had things to do and that I should anyhow have had to wait for him. The irregular piazza, narrow, surrounded by medieval palaces, half in sunshine and half in shadow, was deserted, since it was not market-day: during the space of an hour and more that I remained there I could not have seen more than ten people or so go past, of whom at least half were priests. I read the newspaper right through and realized that I was not in the least disturbed at having to wait, since my work was so satisfactorily finished and I should not in any case have started the typing that morning. I felt calm and in a perfectly normal state of mind, and when I had finished the paper I started watching the numerous artisans who were at work in their shops all round the square. Meanwhile, the sun was climbing higher and the shadow of the Town Hall, with its severe outline, grew less as it retreated across the cobble-stones. From somewhere or other a bell — a convent-bell, perhaps — began to ring violently; and this was at once followed by the graver tones of the bells in the tower of the principal church. It was noon; the whole town seemed to re-awaken, and groups of people came into the piazza. I too, moved. I went slowly down the entire length of the Corso to the public gardens, a sunny meeting-place where I thought I might find Angelo. And there, in fact, he was, in the midst of a discussion with some country people. We started off at once on our homeward journey.