It was in bed I learned it. I had been observing her for a while by then. I thought she was stowing the money away for her family. She had an extensive family, men and women, people at the back of beyond, trawling about in the depths of something very like history, at a depth I could comprehend with my mind but not in my heart, since my heart lacked the courage to explore secrets that lay that deep. I thought it might have been this mysterious, subterranean confederacy of relatives that had put Judit up to robbing me. Maybe they were all in debt. Maybe they were desperate to buy land … But you want to know why she never said anything? I asked myself that question. My immediate answer was that the reason she said nothing was because she was embarrassed by her poverty, because poverty, you know, is a kind of conspiracy, a secret society, an eternal, silently taken vow. It is not only a better life that the poor want: they want self-esteem too, the knowledge that they are the victims of a grave injustice and that the world honors them for that the way it honors heroes. And indeed they are heroes: now that I am getting old I can see that they are the only real heroes. All other forms of heroism are of the moment, or constrained, or come down to vanity. But sixty years of poverty, quietly fulfilling all the obligations family and society imposes on you while remaining human, dignified, perhaps even cheerful and gracious: that is true heroism.
I thought she was stealing for her family. But no, Judit wasn’t sentimental. She stole for herself, with no particular purpose, with the solemn diligence and circumspection of a thousand-year-old wisdom that tells you that seven fat years are not long, that masters are not to be relied on, that fortune’s wheel is forever turning, and if clownish good fortune has happily deposited you in the top seat at the table, it’s best to dig in, since you never know when the lean years will come calling. She stole for prudence’s sake, not out of generosity or compassion. If she had wanted to help her family, she had only to say the word to me. She knew that perfectly well. But Judit had an instinctive fear of the family, particularly now that she had set her foot elsewhere, on the master’s territory. Her embattled, acquisitive nature knew nothing of compassion.
And in the meantime she was watching me, her husband. What was I doing? Am I not getting bored of it all? Am I going to send her away? If I do, she must certainly stow away as much as she can, as quickly as she can. She watched me at table and she watched me in bed. And when I first noticed it, I blushed in embarrassment. The room was dark, and that might have been lucky for Judit. People don’t know their own limits. If I hadn’t kept a grip on myself I might have killed her. Might have. Pointless to talk about it.
It was a mere glance, all of it, in a tender, intimate moment, when I had closed my eyes and suddenly opened them again. I saw a face in the dim light, a familiar, doomed face that was very carefully, very subtly, smiling at me in mockery. Then I knew that this woman, with whom, now and at other times, before, I believed I was sharing moments of unconditional giving, for whom I had exiled myself from the realm of human and social contracts, this woman was actually watching me, just at such moments, with gentle but unmistakable mockery. It was as if she were observing me, examining me, saying: “What is the young gentleman up to now?” and “Ah, he’s gentry.” And then she served me. I realized that Judit, both in and out of bed, did not love me: she served me. Exactly as she did when she was a maid fresh to the household, cleaning my clothes and polishing my shoes. Exactly the way she later served me my food when I occasionally went to my mother’s for dinner. She served me because that was her role in respect of me, and one can’t change these great, fixed, human relationships by force. And when embarked on her strange battle against my wife and me, she never once believed, not for a moment, that this relationship, this role in life that drew us together yet kept us from each other, could really be dissolved or changed from within. She did not believe that she would ever have any other role in my life than to serve, to be the servant, to play the maid. And because she knew all this, not just in her mind but with her entire body, in her nerves, in her dreams, in her past, in her very genes, she never argued much, but simply did as the laws of her life dictated. I understand this now.
Did it hurt? you ask.
Terribly.
But I did not send her away. Not immediately. I was too vain. I didn’t want to acknowledge the pain she caused me. I let her serve me for a while, in bed and at table; I allowed her to carry on stealing. I never told her, not even later, that I knew about her sad, shady little dealings, nor did I mention that, in unguarded moments, I had caught her mocking, superior, curious eyes looking at me in bed.
There are certain affairs that must be seen right through to the end, right to the end when there is nothing else left — to the point of annihilation. I saw it through. Then, after a while, when I discovered something else, I quietly told her to leave. She went without complaint. There was no scene, no argument. She took her belongings — there were a considerable number of belongings by then, including the house and a great deal of jewelry — and left. She left as silently, as without comment, as she had arrived at the age of fifteen. She looked back from the threshold with the same silent, interrogatory, indifferent look she gave me that very first time in the hall.
The most beautiful thing about her was her eyes. Sometimes I still see them in my dreams.
Yes, that stocky fellow took her. I even fought a duel with him … these are such pathetic things, but sometimes there’s no other way.
Look here, old man, they want to throw us out.
Bill, please, waiter. It says … but no, don’t even think of it! This was my treat, if you please. No buts. You were my guest.
No, I don’t fancy going to Peru with you. Once somebody has grown as solitary as I have, what’s the point of going to Peru or anywhere else? You see, one day I realized that no one can help me. It is love people want … but there’s no one who can help with it, never. Once a man understands this, he becomes strong and solitary.
So this is what happened while you were in Peru.
Part III
What are you looking at, darling? Photographs? You carry on. At least you have something to do while I make the coffee.
Wait, let me put my housecoat on. What’s the time? Half-past three? I’ll just open the window for a moment. No, don’t get up, stay in bed. Look how bright the moon is. It’s quite full. The town is absolutely quiet at this time, fast asleep. In half an hour, at four, the trucks will start rumbling, bringing vegetables and milk and meat to market. But Rome is properly asleep now in the moonlight. I don’t tend to sleep at this time, because I have been waking at three with a pounding heart for a while now. What are you laughing at? I don’t mean a pounding heart as when we are making love. Stop laughing! The doctor says it is at this time the heart rate changes, you know, as when you change gear from first to second in the car. And another man — not a doctor — once told me that three in the morning is when the earth’s magnetic field changes. Have you any idea what that means? I don’t, either. He had read it in a Swiss book. Yes, it was him, the man whose photograph you are holding. He said it.
Don’t move, darling. If only you knew how beautiful you are when you lie in bed, your head propped on your arm, your hair falling over your eyes! You have to go to the museum to see men’s bodies as splendid as yours. And your face too, yes … what can I say? It’s the head of an artist. Why are you looking at me so suspiciously? You know I adore you. Because you are gorgeous. Because you’re an artist. Because you are my one and only. You’re a gift from God. Wait, don’t move, let me kiss you! No, just here, in the corner of your eye! And your brow! No, relax. You’re not cold? Shall I close the window? It’s mild out in the street, and those two orange trees under the window are shining in the moonlight. When you’re not here at night I often lean on the window-sill till dawn and watch the moonlit Via Liguria, this sweet and lovely street. See? There’s someone stealing along by the houses, just as in the Middle Ages. Do you know who it is? You mustn’t laugh at me. Just because I’m in love with you, just because I think you are the only one in the world for me forever, my dear, it doesn’t mean I’m silly. It’s old age slinking along the Via Liguria under my window, and not just here, but all over Rome and everywhere else, all over the world.