3) Version C1, typescript pages 229, 158–160, 242
[In this variant, the meeting takes place in the offices of the Allied radio services. The female character appears quite different from the one who will later go by the name of “Nella.”]
I’ve spoken enough about the first important event
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that took place in my life during the period following the end of the war. It’s time for me to touch upon the second. Until that point, I had not experienced a great love; instead I had had brief, casual relations with several young women whom I did not love. But as soon as I returned to Rome, when half the country was still occupied by the Germans and the front line still lay near Florence, during that terrible, dark, anxious time, I met a woman whom I thought I loved and who surely loved me. Her name was Nella, and she was more or less my age; I was twenty-seven years old and she was twenty-five. She was tall, taller than I, with a thin, ardent, lean face and two flaming black eyes, a pointy nose, and fleshy lips. In profile, there was something almost animal-like and thirsty about her expression. Her body was also thin and equally ardent, lean, and highly strung. This ardor
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and muscular slenderness were her principal characteristics; she reminded me of a gamecock with long, muscular legs, alive with nervous energy, veins filled with dense blood flowing at a temperature much higher than that of most people. She had a small head atop a muscular, stiff neck, an almost flat chest, and large, coarse hands and feet. Her legs were also coarsely shaped, not fat but strong and muscular and inelegant, with thick ankles and knees. Everything about her denoted rough origins, though she did not seem to be of peasant stock, for country folk often have a sweetness and grace about them. Her roughness was more typical of the petite bourgeoisie, or shop class, and in fact she came from a family of merchants in a small town in Lazio, Anagni I think, where they sold pots and pans.
I met Lalla in the offices of the Allied radio services, where I had gone seeking work. I had been involved in radio before the war, and now that I had no work, I had been told I might be able to find something there. She was a secretary in one of the offices. After I introduced myself, she said: “Please take a seat … I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a while.” I was struck by the frank, direct, almost aggressive tone of her voice and the look that accompanied her words, which I can only describe as provocative. It was Lalla’s normal expression, which she used with all men, but I did not yet know this; I assumed that it was meant for me and only for me. After I took a seat, as she suggested, I began to talk to her. She was very relaxed and forthright and had no problem telling me her name and age, and she soon began to tell me about the town where she was born and about her parents. We were alone in the office, a small room facing a courtyard. She sat at her desk, and every so often she would return to her work and type a few lines very quickly, after which she would again pause to answer my questions. She spoke sarcastically about her superiors who were American and British officers. Finally, as if resigning herself to the fact that she would get no more work done while I was there, she turned toward me on her chair and crossed her legs. I remember that I noticed for the first time how heavy and strong her legs were, like the rest of her body. With her large, coarse, and somewhat impure hands she opened a pitiful, threadbare purse, pulled out an American cigarette, and lit it. When she
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noticed that I was staring at her legs, she pulled the hem of her skirt down below her knees. We continued to talk; I can’t quite remember what we discussed, nothing in particular. It was the kind of conversation dictated by desire, roughly equivalent to certain kinds of birdsong or animal calls. The substance was not important, and perhaps she did not even hear what I said, but my tone of voice came through and she must have felt it beating down on her like a ray of sun through a window. Finally she stood up. “I’ll go find out if the major can see you,” she said. As she walked across the room, I stared at her again and confirmed my first impressions of her. I could not help thinking that she was a woman of the people, down to her fingertips: provocative, vulgar, coarse. She was wearing ugly shoes with heels that were too high, an ugly, stretched-out skirt, and a loose sweater over a worn blouse. But in those threadbare clothes, the animal-like, aggressive quality of her beauty was almost more powerful. Her clothes surrounded her without touching her, it seemed; they were meant to be torn off, violently, in the fury of an amorous passion. As soon as she returned, saying “Not yet, you’ll have to wait a bit longer,” I grabbed her by the skirt, baring her thigh as I pulled her toward me. She did not pull away, and instead twisted her head to one side, rubbing her lips against mine, hard. Then she said, softly, “Let go … not here.” Her lips were covered in a dense, thick lipstick, and this was what got us into trouble. At that very moment, the door opened and the British major looked out. He saw me sitting, my mouth covered in lipstick, and Lalla standing in front of me, her skirt still in my hand and slightly raised, exposing part of her leg. Calmly, he said: “Signorina, your services are no longer required.” He said the words in an objective tone, without reproach, as if dismissal were the automatic result of the lipstick on my lips. Then he closed the door. Lalla was upset, I suppose, but showed it for only a brief moment as she stood facing the door with a surprised expression. Then she shrugged. “Well, let’s go,” she said, heading straight for the coatrack, from which she took her hat and a small umbrella the size of a fan. Somewhat dejected, but still feeling excited and stimulated by her proud, aggressive attitude, I followed her silently as
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she gathered her things, picked up her bag, and put on her jacket. “Sooner or later I was going to have to leave this dump,” she said, almost as if to console me and diminish my sense of guilt. When she was ready she opened the door. But before leaving, she took one final look at the office and said, “Good riddance.” We walked out into the hallway. I was still following her, feeling guilty and embarrassed, but also darkly aware that there was something strange, abnormal going on inside of me. She turned to look at me and began to laugh, almost ostentatiously, arching her shoulders and pushing her belly forward, in an almost provocative gesture. “Where do you think you’re going looking like that?” she asked. The hallway was empty, and the door that led to the bathroom was ajar. She opened it, pulled me inside, and closed it behind her, pushing me against the mirror. I saw then that my mouth and cheek were still covered in lipstick; it looked like a kind of ridiculous, obscene red mustache. “Were you planning to walk around the city like that?” she added, laughing. Now she was near me, and I could not help grabbing her skirt once again, pulling her toward me as I had earlier in the office. This time she did not protest. She stretched out her hand and shut the door, locking it from the inside. With her other hand she assisted me, unzipping her skirt, shimmying out of it and leaning forward, lifting her hips and opening her legs, grabbing hold of the edge of the sink and lowering her head, as if to rinse her hair with water. I took her like this, from behind and standing up, like a bull taking a cow or a stallion a mare, except that we were not standing in a field of flowers but rather in a narrow bathroom, in front of a mirror and a sink. There was no whispering brook, only the gurgle of pipes. But the sensation was the same, that of a concrete, sensual impulse, a physical communion so perfect that it transcended the limits of blood and the senses and touched our souls. I remember that even as I stood there, still holding her firmly, I kissed her face humbly, full of gratitude, and she did the same. Later, we walked in the street, and it felt as if we did not really know how we had ended up there, as if we had been walking in a dream or had flown out of the window.