Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter

Here I am, all alone. My husband has gone off to his office, without even saying goodbye, as he usually does. My son came and kissed and embraced me tenderly before going out with his fiancée to buy things for her trousseau. My daughter came in for a moment, paraded herself in front of me in a new dress and then went out with a girlfriend--or so she said. I am all alone and, strange to tell, as soon as I am alone I stop being the affectionate mother and wife, tireless, solicitous, bustling, anxious, never taking a moment's rest from family duties. I become instead a cold, cynical creature, clear-headed and wicked. It's a curious metamorphosis. It astonishes me and even frightens me a little. A short while ago at the table, I was worrying myself about the family's health. For instance I said to my daughter, who will not eat because she's dieting, "Eat; you're anemic; you must eat." To my son, who tends to drink too much, "Don't drink those cocktails and all that muck. It's bad for you; don't you know it's bad for you?" To my husband, who never walks (concluded on page 228)Spring(continued from page 119) but always goes by car, "For once, walk to the office; get a little exercise." Just a little while ago, I said all this with an anxious, affectionate expression on my face. Now I am lying on my bed, all alone and....

Let's begin with my husband. He inherited a number of apartments, and now all he does is collect the rents and manage the buildings in a dull, listless, stupid way, without taking any personal initiative, confining himself merely to being on the spot. My husband hasn't interested me for at least 20 years. If I had to describe him, I'd have to use that wonderful but threadbare word: nonentity. Yes, he is a nonentity; that is to say, an emptiness; that is, the shell of a man but with no man inside; that is, a plaster cast without the form on which it was modeled.

I remember vividly the day when I went to a clinic where he was going to have a minor operation. I told the nurse at the reception desk his name and she didn't recognize it. Finally, she exclaimed, "Oh, yes, yes, he's number 226!" Then, suddenly, I understood who my husband was. He could only be recognized as a number in a series. He was a little more than 225, but he wasn't quite 227. He was a perfect fit in the slot between. That was all. Other times, he would be, say, number 13 in the line at the counter in a bank; number 200 to pay the toll on an expressway; number 1,000,063 to get his car license plates; number 60 to go into a movie ... until, finally, he would be number 12 in the daily-newspaper obituaries. Does a progressive number really exist? In the abstract, yes; but in the purely emotive reality of memory, no. Now that I am alone and I've dropped my automatic affection as wife and mother, I say to myself: a nonentity. A perfect, absolute nonentity.

But enough of my husband. Let us go on to my daughter. Very beautiful, with a classic beauty, Greek or Roman; tall and shapely, with a face like a face on a medal, the nose in a straight line with the forehead, the eyes shaped like those of statues, the mouth formed to perfection. But--boring! Yes, indeed, boring; even thinking of her, I immediately feel bored. To say that my daughter is foolish would be paying her a compliment. My daughter is downright stupid. A freak in a fair. A monstrosity of nature. I don't know who it was who said that all intelligence has limits but that foolishness is infinite. He was right. The imbecility of my daughter is like the sea: boundless. But there is a method in her imbecility. For instance, my daughter never gets married, although she gets engaged at least once a year. She never makes a mistake, she never has an adventure, she never has an infatuation, she never has a weakness, she never has a feeling of bewilderment; she only has engagements. Her fiancés are, of course, lovers and her engagements are affairs or liaisons, whichever you like to call them; but my daughter treats her sentimental life as if it were a small business. This has now gone on for a long time. She's nearly 35 and she keeps on playing the part of the ingénue, introducing the man she loves to her parents and then, after a while, exhibiting him all round as her fiancé.

My own duplicity with her both astonishes and frightens me. A quarter of an hour ago, I said to her, "Darling, when are you and Piero thinking of getting married?" And now ... well, now I almost want to get up from the bed on which I am lying, take a piece of charcoal and on the white wall write a few nasty remarks about this everlasting, unchanging, placid, marmoreal fiancée.

Let us come, finally, to my son. He is neither a nonentity like my husband nor an idiot like my daughter; he is, to be frank, a stinker. I know for sure that he is, why he is and how he is. When he was 20, my son bragged one night at dinner that he seduced a poor young store clerk by promising to marry her. Of course, it wasn't a marriage but a one-night stand, as he took care to tell us. This was hardly a story to amuse his parents and his sister with, but he was so pleased with himself that he didn't stop to think of that. At the time, my automatic maternal behavior moved into action, as usual.

I said apprehensively, "Be careful she doesn't blackmail you. She could have a child by someone else and then claim it's yours. There are plenty of adventuresses around." Afterward, though, as soon as I was alone, I thought again about his boasting and I suddenly said to myself, "Yes, a real stinker!" Since then, I've kept an eye on him; I have been watching him for more than ten years now and I'm convinced in the end that my first intuition was right. He's a stinker--an unintentional and unwitting one, but a total stinker just the same. At work, he smiles a lot and sucks up to his boss, but he's Mr. Big to the people who work for him. He's not very honest at the office; in fact, he lies to everybody he's involved with--and he's perfectly cynical about it. All of this under a mask that seems quite kind, affectionate, serious and respectable. Along with this, he gives the impression of being both a devout Catholic and a cultured man. The truth is that he doesn't believe in anything and he's a complete boor.

Well, just the other night at dinner, he announced that he's now engaged to a girl who's just as rich as she is ugly--and he told us this with the same delight in his own corruption that he'd shown about the girl ten years ago.

My old apprehension came back with a rush and, just as I had then, I said, "Be careful. It's a serious step to tie yourself for life to a woman you don't love. Besides, I wonder if it's true that she's really so rich." And as soon as I was alone, I knew I'd been convinced all over again. My son is an absolute stinker.

I think about these things all the time, but I can't quite understand myself. Why am I that way with my family? Why do I always--when I'm with them--fall into line, show them all that solidarity and support? Why do I keep attacking them so violently in my own mind when they are not here? I struggled with this question for a long time, but I never found an answer. Then, suddenly, the telephone rang and my instinctive reaction was, "It must be a friend." What a relief, what a good tiling it would be to involve myself in some gossip and get rid of all my black thoughts.

Oddly enough, though, the telephone lines had got crossed somehow. When I lifted the receiver, I heard two voices, remote in some unfathomable distance but perfectly clear. And what they were saying was very strange, too.

"Try to find out where they're coming from."

"God knows. Maybe from the kitchen sink. If so, nothing can be done. I can't possibly get rid of all the plumbing."

"Listen, I've got a suggestion. Before you go to bed, put a lot of insecticide around on the floor."

"It doesn't help much. The only thing to do is kill them by squashing them with a broom."

"So squash them with a broom."

"That sounds easy--but the trouble is that they aren't there when I'm there and they're there when I'm not there."

"Wait a minute--I don't get all that."

"Well, I mean that they're there when I'm asleep. Once in a while, I happen to come home about three in the morning and go into the kitchen. The floor is black, really black with them. Hundreds, thousands. Then, in the morning, there's not even one."

"Take my advice. Set your alarm clock for three A.M. When you wake up, grab the broom and start squashing. Kill the whole bunch. Don't leave a single one alive."

"Not a bad idea, but I hate to lose my sleep. It's pretty disgusting--to have to set the alarm for them. At that time in the morning, all I care about is sleep."

"So you'd rather have your sleep than get rid of them?"

"Of course. I wouldn't dream of waking up just for their sakes. Let them have a ball in the kitchen all night when I'm not there. I just don't want to see them. I don't want to remember that they exist."

I was born and brought up in a family of lawyers. My grandfather and my father were lawyers, and I myself married a lawyer. I should add that every one of them practiced criminal law. So I grew up in the midst of passions, or rather, among the consequences of passions: crimes, violence, intrigues, sorrows, loves and hatreds. I am a practical woman, without imagination, cool and self-controlled. Possibly this is a result of all the debates I've had with these stern, old-fashioned men who always thought of human nature as a volcano in constant eruption. Even so, I must have in me a secret taint of emotionalism. This showed itself in my enthusiasm for opera and in particular for the operas of Verdi. I have been going to the opera all my life and I haven't missed a single one of Verdi's operas. As a child and as a girl, I often used to go to the opera with my grandfather and father, who went there because it was the social thing to do; and later with my husband, who went in order to make me happy. In their speeches at the law courts, they could explain anything as a result of human passions, but my grandfather, my father and (continued on page 231)Summer(continued from page 120) my husband could hardly appreciate those same passions in the theater. I have seen all three of them asleep during most of a performance. Meanwhile, opera glasses to my eyes and ears straining, I would follow with rapt attention the heroic tumult bursting forth on the stage.

Then my husband died and I kept on going to the opera with my son, Gildo. To give you an idea of what opera meant to me, I need only say that I named my son in honor of Rigoletto, my favorite Verdi opera. I've always regretted that I didn't dare call him after the Duke of Mantua, with whom, believe it or not. I was truly and honestly in love for years. But that wonderful character, as you can confirm by reading the libretto, has no name. He is called the Duke of Mantua and that's that. So I fell back on Rigoletto's daughter and named my son Gildo.

I took him to the theater as soon as I could; he was seven years old when he saw his first opera, La Traviata. After the death of my husband, Gildo, who was 15, became my escort. Ordinarily, he wore the clothes all boys wear, narrow blue-cotton trousers, a sweater and a jacket; but for the opera, I had made for him a man's suit, dark blue, to be worn with black shoes, a white shirt and a dark tie. He was an obedient, respectful son; he was 15, but he looked older than that.

One evening, at the end of the season, we went to Rigoletto. While I was dressing, I thought about Verdi and said to myself that, for all his genius, he could not have written Rigoletto by himself. It's an opera of devilish cruelty, stinking of sulphur, a diabolical, hellish work. To have La Donna è Mobile sung in the distance at the very moment that Gilda--who's far from fickle, in fact, who is faithful unto death--sacrifices herself for her unworthy lover is fantastic. It's a tiling that you can succeed in writing only if you sell your soul to the Devil. Yes, indeed, the Devil had helped Verdi write Rigoletto, there could be no doubt about it.

In the midst of my reflections, overflowing with admiration for Verdi, I heard, all of a sudden, Gildo's detached and precise voice coming from the next room as he spoke on the telephone with a friend. "No, this evening I can't, I've got to go with my mother to the opera. What a bore! Papier-mâchè on the stage and mummies in the stalls."

I have already said that I've always suspected that my cold, practical character is only a mask for hidden passions. I had proof of it at that moment. All at once, the world crumbled inside me, just as though, instead of my son, I had heard a lover slandering me to a woman rival. I felt betrayed in the crudest, most ruthless way, a betrayal that devalued and destroyed not me alone but the things I lived for. At the same time, I realized, almost with astonishment, how much I loved my son. Oddly enough, I was realizing this at the very moment he was so brutally rejecting me.

I began to weep as I finished dressing. I was weeping with anger. It seemed to me that, without being aware of it, over the years I had shut myself up in a character very much like Rigoletto--the mother who lives for her son. And I wished to destroy this character as soon as possible, to get back my freedom. I took my opera glasses, called Gildo and we went down into the street. In the car, I took the wheel and drove to the opera.

Papier-mâché on the stage, mummies in the stalls. Seated in a red-velvet armchair in the stalls, among all the other mummies also seated in red-velvet armchairs, I fixed my eyes upon the stage in the hope that the usual enchantment would return, as it always had before. But I felt suddenly that my old relationship with the opera had been broken. It was true. Rigoletto, dressed in red and yellow stripes, gliding across the front of the enormous stage and shaking his scepter, with the bells on his cap, against the gilded background of a Renaissance hall, was an artificial character, with artificial sentiments and postures. But, by a strange contradiction, at the very moment when I became aware of this artificiality in Rigoletto, I recognized myself in him. I had always been a cold, practical woman fascinated by human passions because I believed I was free from them. Now I knew that I was, on the contrary, a passionate woman, just like Verdi's character. But, for that very reason, artificial.

I felt that I was in a state of frenzy. Like trees in a hurricane broken off and laid low one after another, all of the things I had loved were falling to the ground--my family, my world of affections, my son. Once upon a time, these things had made opera seem real to me. Now opera made these things look artificial.

Suddenly, halfway through the second act, I rose to my feet and whispered to Gildo, "Let's go," and I went out.

Gildo followed me in silence. But once we were in the car, he asked me quietly, as I drove away, "What's the matter, Mum?"

"The matter is that everything is finished between us, or, rather, everything ought to finish as soon as possible. It's time you thought seriously about yourself and your future. You're nearly sixteen. You can't stay tied to your mother's apron strings forever."

I expected him to be astonished, at the very least. But, with a sharp pain, I heard him answer at once in a perfectly reasonable tone, "You're right, Mum, I've often thought about this myself and I've come to the same conclusion as you."

I was aghast. Finally, I stammered, "There, you see what I mean. Well, I think you'd better stay with me for now, until the autumn. Then, in October, you might go and stay with my brother at Bologna. You can go on with your studies there and, at the same time, you can begin to learn something about the legal profession at your uncle's. After that, we'll see."

"No, Mum, my own ideas are different."

"What d'you mean?"

"I don't want to be a lawyer. I want to move to Milan, take an apartment there with some friends and set up as a photographer."

We had arrived at home. I made him get out and he said he hoped I would have a nice drive. Then I started off at top speed to the Ostia motorway and I didn't stop until I was on the promenade overlooking the sea. It was a moonless night and the sea wasn't visible. On the large open space of the promenade, in the brilliant light from many lampposts, there was only my own car. I switched off the engine and turned on the radio. Immediately, of course, I heard Rigoletto, transmitted direct from the opera.

I had an intolerable feeling of anxiety. I no longer wished to be what I had been before and I did not know what to do. Finally, I opened the door and got out. At one side of the promenade, there was a staircase leading to the sea. I went down the steps; it was high tide and the bottom step was under water. I hesitated, then took off my shoes and stockings and went barefoot into the cold water. I was now thinking of drowning myself by walking into the sea until I could no longer touch the bottom. The time had come when I could no longer help being what I was. The only way to escape from my own character was to kill myself. I write about these things now with a certain logic. But at that moment, my mind was far more troubled than my body. I went forward calmly, step by step, and all the time the frenzy in my mind continued.

I had left the radio on full blast and Rigoletto could be heard very clearly, singing his despair as a father, the involuntary executioner of his own daughter. It was those inhuman howls that finally convinced me. I wasn't killing myself, I was killing the mother in myself, the ridiculous Rigoletto in my heart.

Then the opera came to an end and there was the applause. The water was already up to my chin. All of a sudden, I had the sensation that I was standing at the front of a stage, facing the dark theater beyond the footlights. I realized that the applause, which seemed to be coming from the sea, was not for Rigoletto but for me. As a suicide, I was truly the operatic mother, the mother who kills herself because her son is no longer there. Abruptly, the frenzy cleared from my mind. I turned round in the water and made my way back. There was still nobody on the promenade. Nobody saw a dripping middle-aged woman get into her car, take the wheel and vanish into the night.

It's almost time to leave. I still haven't dressed and I'm in the midst of a chaos of piled-up suitcases, wardrobes hanging open, drawers gutted, chairs full of clothes I've looked at and rejected. As usual, I have the impression that time is getting short. Still, I know for sure that I'll have everything done in time--an irritating contradiction. It's true that there are a thousand things left to finish: take a shower, put on my make-up, do my hair, choose a dress for the journey and, finally, even telephone to Benno. He's the young and extremely handsome German who's in love with me. I have to tell him to forget about me and to think of that affair of ours, three months ago, as a lucky (for him) adventure and nothing more.

One thing I especially have to tell him--I haven't time any longer. Loving needs time, and where can I find time for loving when I haven't even time to breathe? Now I'm over 40, and I have the responsibility, as the fashion magazines describe me, of being the seventh-best-dressed woman in the world. I only have time for things that I can plan in time, that is, fixed to an exact date. Invitations, journeys, receptions, safaris, (continued on page 270)Autumn(continued from page 121) balls, sports, cruises and what not. But, really, I haven't time for love, which is one of those free things you can't make into a planned program. Can you imagine anyone writing in an engagement book, "December 12-January 20: love"? Love is for people who have the time, and that means people who live outside time. D'you know the answer I gave to a society reporter who asked me whether love played an important part in my life? I told her, with my well-known, brilliant smile, "I live in airplanes. How can I think about love when I live in airplanes? Let's leave love to people who stay in one place."

So I sat down on the unmade bed, beside the tray with the tea that I still hadn't had time to drink, took my big engagement book crammed with addresses from all over the world, ran my finger down the column, looking for Benno's name, and was on the point of picking up the receiver. But suddenly, I stopped. My maid appeared and announced, "Your sister."

And immediately, my twin sister, Susanna, came into the room, with a singsong "Hello, Marianna."

They say that twin sisters have a kind of physiological identity. If one of them gets ill, the other feels the effects. Nonsense. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Susanna is a stranger to me, but in fact she is, almost. It's quite obvious that we are twins; we have the same enormous blue eyes, the same fair hair, the same pointed nose, the same big, red mouth, but the resemblance ends there. I am high-strung, crazy; Susanna is relaxed, languid, phlegmatic. My chief trait is nervous quickness, Susanna's is exasperating slowness.

These differences in temperament have given us different destinies. From the start, I wanted to be rich, and I've succeeded, even though it meant a mariage de convenance with an elderly man. Luckily, he very soon left me a widow. Susanna did not want anything; she just went on living. In fact, she achieved nothing at all. There she was, anyhow, and the very sight of her spoke for itself. She was dressed like a tramp, with a shapeless sweater and faded slacks and down-at-the-heel boots. Her naked face, with no make-up, was topped with a sort of peasant head scarf. I said, "So it's you! I've got to leave and I still have everything to do. Look, it'd really be better if you went away."

Not at all. She came toward me with arms outstretched. I jumped backward, avoiding her embrace, because, to be frank about it, she smells. She wasn't upset, however, but looked around and remarked in that drawling, astonished tone of voice she has, "What a lot of lovely dresses! But what a lot of them! You certainly have plenty of clothes!"

I had taken off my dressing gown and was already at the door of the bathroom when it occurred to me that I might get rid of her by giving her something and then sending her to the Devil. I turned back, naked and nervous, and hurried around the room, collecting a pair of slacks I had never worn, a cashmere sweater, some perfectly new boots. All these I threw at her, saying, "Here you are; throw away those stinking clothes you've got on. You've got some presents now. Then please, please go away; I haven't time."

Slowly, very slowly, she took the clothes, looked them over lengthily, repeated several times a rather unconvincing, ironic-sounding "Thank you," and then, to my extreme irritation, said quietly, "Now I'll try them on."

"No, don't try them on, put them on and go away."

She did not listen to me. Very slowly, she pulled down the zipper of her slacks and slipped them off. Slowly, she took off her sweater. There she stood, in her brassiere and panties. They were riddled with holes, threadbare and filthy. I was furious. "You're dirty, you're foul," I cried. "Before you put on my clothes, you've got to be a lot cleaner. Come on, now, we'll take a shower together."

I tore off her rags and pushed her under the shower. She snuggled a little, protesting and groaning, but she gave in. We were now underneath the jet of hot water. I seized the soap and lathered Susanna from head to foot. While I was soaping her, I realized how different we really are. My body is all nerves and muscle, as if made for running. No one has ever looked at me or contemplated me for long, and I have never contemplated anybody else at length. Susanna, on the other hand, is tender and soft and smooth. I have a feeling that she has stood still all her life, slowly staring, and that she has always let other people slowly stare at her. I came out of the shower with her, wrapped her up in a towel, gave her a quick rub to dry her and then pushed her out again into the bedroom.

"Now you're clean and you can put on my clothes."

We dressed together. Susanna dressed so slowly that when she was just slipping her legs into the slacks, I was already sitting, completely dressed, in front of the table to put on my make-up. I watched her in the mirror as she finished. Then she began, in a plaintive, absent-minded tone of voice, "I come to see you only once or twice a year and you don't even ask me how the children are."

Now I was in for it. Three daughters by three different men, none of them her husband. I am not raising moral questions, but I don't have time to sort out all of her domestic complications. In a great hurry, I said, "Ah, yes, how are they, how are they? Are they all right--Isabella and Giannina and Lea?"

"They're all right, but they're growing, and with them, clothes are really a problem. I solved the problem by making 'growing' clothes, you might say, big overalls down to their feet, skirts down to their calves. But they hate that. They're ashamed, they're already just as particular as grown-up women."

I was touching up my eyes and was almost frightened to see how they glittered with anger. "D'you still live in that basement?" I asked.

"No, we've moved. We're in an attic. It's true there are only two rooms, but we have plenty of roof terraces. We're on the outskirts, almost in the country."

She was standing just behind me and now I could not see her, but I felt her presence and it annoyed me. From the dressing table I picked up, haphazardly, a long, glistening yellow-metal chain, studded with a lot of false stones, and held it out to her over my shoulder, saying, "Put this on, too. And go away."

I should never have done it. She took the chain in both hands, looked at it with silent, greedy astonishment, stone by stone. She is so extremely slow because she takes things in by degrees, through her senses, whereas I myself am extremely quick because I take things in all at once, with my mind. Finally, in a lazy and yet tempted voice, she said, "But I don't want to take it away from you. What a gorgeous thing! Are you really giving it to me? Don't you need it? Aren't you going to wear it for your trip?"

"I'm giving it to you. But it's not for wearing round the neck. It goes round the waist."

"Like this?"

I did not answer her this time. I finished doing my lips and then pressed the bell. The maid appeared. I said to her sharply, "Tell Vincenzo to come up and fetch my suitcases."

Now, for some reason, a strange recollection came back to me. Strange because it was so insignificant. Some time ago, I took a short walk in the garden and felt the warmth of the sun on my face, and I thought: How warm the sun is! It's really summer. I thought of this as I saw the look that Susanna gave the yellow-metal chain. And I reflected that during that walk in the garden, I discovered through my senses that it was summer, instead of learning the fact from, let us say, the little numbers on my calendar; in just the same way, Susanna, a short while ago, discovered, through her senses, the beauty of die chain I had given her. And I said to myself that it was years since I'd discovered anything that way. Alas, I never have time to stop and look and contemplate anything. But now Susanna was saying, "You've treated me like a beggar come to ask you for charity. It's true that I have something to ask you. But it isn't a question of clothes."

I said decisively, "Now, look, I haven't time; the car's waiting for me to go to the airport."

"I'll make it short, though really it's a very complicated and a very long story. You must know that--"

I was already at the door, on my way out. "I haven't time," I cried. "Do you or don't you understand that I haven't time?"

I went out. She rushed after me, to the stairs. "You must know that, a few months ago, a very good-looking young man came to see me and he fell in love with me."

"Sorry, but what does it matter to me?"

"Wait. He fell in love with me because he was in love with you."

"Extremely interesting."

"Just think a little. To him I am a--how shall I say?--a kind of stand-in for you. He says he had an affair with you and then you turned him down and so now he wants to make love to you through me, since I'm your twin sister and so much like you. And what does it matter? He's so good-looking. Besides, I don't know why, but I like the idea of having a man in common with you."

"Good for you! You've done well. Listen, I'll make a present of him to you, just as I made you a present of the chain. Take him and enjoy him."

"He's called Benno. He's a German."

I hadn't time. I threw my arms round her neck and embraced her. The car was there, waiting for me. Inside my head there was already the roar of the airplane that would be taking me away shortly. Quickly, I said to her, "Goodbye. And be happy with your Benno."

"You mean your Benno."

I turned away and got into the car. Perhaps I ought to have had some profound kind of thought. There might have been occasion for it. But I hadn't the time.

I took the vial of sleeping pills and emptied all of it into a glass of water on my bedside table. How many tablets were there? Several, more than enough to carry me on the long journey to paradise all in one go, with no stops on the way. I watched them as they melted: They formed a white heap at the bottom of the glass, and a lot of little air bubbles rose up through the water and burst at the surface. Just at that moment the telephone rang. I recognized the voice of Magda, my dear, plump friend. Immediately, I said to her, "You've telephoned just in time to say goodbye to me."

"Why?" she asked, with her incurious tone.

"Because I am just on the point of killing myself with barbiturates," I answered.

Magda is never surprised at anything. Perhaps that is why we're friends. I myself am always surprised at everything; what surprises me, fundamentally, is not so much actual things as that things exist at all. Faced, let's say, with a stone, I stop; I am stuck; I am astonished: How is it possible that a thing called a stone should exist? (continued on page 267)Winter(continued from page 122) To Magda, on the other hand, a stone is a stone, and that's that. Now she kept on just as if she hadn't heard what I'd said. "I'm telephoning to tell you that they're all here, in my flat, and are expecting you."

"Who's there?"

"Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci, Dante Alighieri, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Napoleon Bonaparte."

I pretended not to see the joke and answered: "All right, I'll get ready and come."

I put down the receiver and extracted myself with some trouble from the enveloping sheets in which I'd been wrapped for two days. As soon as I put my feet to the floor, my dachshund, Zen, started jumping round me. He hoped I was going to take him for a walk, poor beast, after 48 hours of darkness and immobility. "No, Zen," I said, "no, lie down, there's a good dog," and to keep him quiet, I gave him the last biscuit on the tray. For two days we had been living on tea and biscuits, Zen and I. He had eaten almost more than I, but I didn't feel the least bit ill, just the contrary. I went to the bathroom, turned on the shower and stood with closed eyes under the hot rushing water. Then, while it splashed on my back, I saw, as in a flash of lightning, the psychedelic design that I would paint on myself. I saw it in every detail, as if I had already painted it.

I turned off the shower, dried myself and, still naked, went to sit on the bed. I took the box of make-up pencils and began a design on my stomach. I painted my navel to look like an eye, with a blue pupil and a black eyebrow; then gradually I surrounded this eye with concentric, wavy arabesques in red, blue, green and yellow, all over my stomach. Behind the arabesques, as if behind the waves of a sea, I painted the face of an Indian saint, with that single navel-eye, a hooked nose with very wide nostrils, made by the fold in my belly, a pair of big black mustaches and a pointed beard, this being the triangle of my pubic hair. My belly finished, I went on to my thorax. With the black pencil, I made a number of stripes across my ribs, like those of the figure of death in the medieval danse macabre. Then to my chest. Although I'm supple and slim as a snake. I have, unfortunately, the big bosom of a wet nurse. Two breasts, solid as two big pumpkins. I decided, after reflection, that I hadn't the time to paint them. I'd have liked to put there two figures of Vishnu dancing, with numbers of arms and legs and with the nipples as the centers. All I did was paint my breasts in a fairly simple style, one green with a red nipple and one red with a green nipple. I tackled my arms then, making a number of blue and red loops on them. I painted a yellow exclamation mark on my left hand and a purple question mark on my right hand. I proceeded to my face. Grayish powder, no rouge, eyes sunken-looking with black rings round them. Luckily, I wear my hair long and loose; all that was needed was one or two strokes with the brush. At this point, the dachshund, poor little beast, who'd been gazing ecstatically at me during all this, came to me, holding in his mouth the leash I use when I take him for a walk. I took it and patted him; then I started dressing.

I put on a pair of black-velvet trousers with very wide bell-bottoms and a very low waist, so that my painted stomach could be seen. I put on a yellow-leather belt with a big purple buckle. Then a transparent blouse, black, embroidered with gold stars, which I tied below my bosom. Under it my green breast and my red breast exploded with a fine effect. Round my neck I hung five necklaces of small money value but great philosophical significance. They came from a big village below the Himalayas. They were brought to me by a boy who had spent two months there and had caught hepatitis. I slipped on my famous rings, three to each finger. One had an oval pink stone with iridescent green reflections. Finally, over the blouse, I put on a mauve-velvet cloak.

But there was the problem of the dog. I did not want to take him with me; there's never any knowing how an evening may end up, especially at Magda's, and I might even lose him. Now he was walking with me toward the door, wagging his tail, and I said, "No, Zen, be a good dog, stay here and don't bark." It was a waste of breath. No sooner was I in the hall of the pension than I heard him howling furiously.

The owner of the house, a disagreeable man, bald as a coot, with the face of a sexton and the thick neck of a policeman, popped out from I don't know where and said to me, "Signorina, this really won't do. It's one o'clock in the morning and your dog is waking the whole place up. Go stop him, or else--"

Hurriedly, I waved my hand at him. "It's all right, it's all right.... Now please call me a taxi." And I went back upstairs. I opened the door and there was the dog, in the middle of the room, gazing at me with imploring eyes. I took a saucer, poured into it most of the water in which I had dissolved the barbiturates, then added a little milk and three packets of sugar. The dog, hungry and trusting, immediately rushed to drink from the saucer and I got out again quickly. I said to the landlord: "You'll see, he won't bark anymore now."

I jumped into the taxi, threw myself down onto the seat, feeling exhausted. I said, "Let's go to Magda's."

The taxi driver asked, "Who's Magda?"

I answered impatiently, "What d'you mean, who is she? Are we still at that stage? There's no one in the world who is anybody. Well, if you want to know, she's my best friend." I give everyone the familiar tu, except the landlord of the pension, but there are men who mistake it for the tu of lovemaking, and the taxi driver was one of those.

He looked at me with a glance of surprise, and of a certain slyness, too, saying, "Well, where does she live?"

I was exasperated; I waved my hand at him and said, "Go on, drive straight on and in the end, you'll come across Magda." The fact was that I had forgotten her address and, if a thing has been forgotten, what can you do to recall it? The driver, a dark young man, not at all bad-looking, was now gazing at me perplexed, as though really wondering where Magda lived. Then he started the engine quickly, put it into gear and we were off.

As the taxi hurtled onward, throwing me from side to side at every bend in the road, I was trying to recall the reasons I had wanted to kill myself an hour ago. I couldn't decide. The chief reason seemed to be that, three days before, I'd told Magda that I wanted to do it. But I had entirely forgotten any other reasons. Evidently they were of a philosophical kind; nowadays you live, and thus you also die, from philosophical motives. It didn't matter. I would go to Magda's; I would dance, say, until five in the morning and then I would go back to the pension and take the barbiturates. My suicide had been merely postponed.

The taxi stopped with a jerk and I looked out and saw that we were in the country: no lampposts, a hedge, some trees, a winding lane that looked white in the car's headlights. The driver got out, opened the back door, sat down beside me and threw himself onto me with rape in mind. He seized hold of my transparent blouse with the gold stars and tore it from my breasts; at the same time, he was trying to undo the buckle of my belt. I fought back and struggled and, in the end, I managed to knee him in the stomach and throw him back against the side of the taxi. Then I spoke calmly. I told him that, if he liked, once we arrived at Magda's, he could go up with me and have a drink and dance and stay with us. Later on, Cecilia, who had no home of her own and who was always available, would go with him and make love, provided he'd give her a place to sleep. If not Cecilia, it would be somebody else. When I said this, he gave me a really ugly look, like a bull ready to charge. Then he did charge. He grabbed me by the hair, threw me out of the taxi, jumped in again behind the wheel and drove off at full speed.

Bruised, dusty, limping, I got up and hurried down the lane to the main road. I sat on a fence and decided to calm down by making an effort at contemplation and identifying with some ordinary object, the first that I happened to see. There, on the edge of a ditch, was a common flower, a kind of yellow daisy. I stared at it, isolating myself and concentrating my mind so much that the whole world became remote and extraneous to me. At first, the flower resisted. In a mean, bourgeois way, it asserted its own personality as being distinct from mine. It defended the color of its petals, the shape of its leaves, the length of its root as individual characteristics that, according to the flower, would prevent it from being merged with me. I tried harder. I encircled it with my love; and then, though very slowly, the daisy yielded. Gradually, I felt that I was becoming the flower and the flower was becoming me. In the end, the identification was so profound that I barely noticed the drivers who stopped to ask me the usual idiotic questions: "Well, shall we go?" or "How much d'you want?" or "What's the tariff?" and so on.

By now, it was day. The sun shone behind a row of trees, clear and bright as a jewel, and I realized that I was numb with cold. So I decided to break off my contemplative identification. I "withdrew" from the flower and the flower withdrew from me.

I was now just an ordinary girl sitting on a fence; the flower was now just an ordinary flower growing on the side of a ditch. I rose with an effort, feeling battered and stiff, and raised my arm to try to get a ride.

At once, a car stopped with a screech of brakes. At the wheel sat a middle-aged nun; another nun, an elderly woman, was sitting beside her. On the back seat was a younger nun, in fact, a mere girl, with a white, clean face and pale-blue eyes. I climbed in beside her and the car drove on. The elderly nun asked me my address and then, without moving or turning round, added, "What were you doing, my daughter, sitting on that fence, at seven in the morning?"

"I was identifying myself with a daisy, Mother."

When I said this, the face of the young nun beside me expanded and reddened, as if she were trying to stifle her laughter. The elderly one inquired, "And why are you got up in that way?"

"In what way?"

"Why, half-naked and with those colors."

"To go and see Magda."

"Who is Magda?"

Suddenly I got impatient and shouted, "Magda, I, that flower, you three--we're all the same thing. What a lot of silly questions! Are you still at that stage?"

"In any case, you're giving offense to God by exposing yourself in public like that," said the old nun.

The young nun, at this point, took hold of the edge of my cloak and made as if to draw it over my stomach and my chest, which were, indeed, half-naked. But I stopped her, crying, "It's not I who should cover myself, it's you who should uncover yourself. Show your breasts, your belly, your behind. Throw away those black veils. Show yourself naked. Are flowers covered, trees, horses, mountains? You talk about God and then you hide yourself from His sight. Now I'm going to uncover you, yes, I'm going to tear off all those ugly black veils."

And so, all at once, a kind of fight broke out between the nun and me. I was trying to undress her and she was resisting. She was very strong, much stronger than I, so soon she got the better of me. I gave up and laid my head in her lap. Then I became drowsy and, half-asleep, I felt her light hand caressing my brow and smoothing back my hair. Finally, I felt the car stop and the young nun helped me get out while the two others pretended not to see me. All at once, I found myself on the pavement among a crowd, in front of the door of the pension. I went in, got into the elevator and started going up.

I reached the long, dark, evil-smelling corridor of the pension. When I opened the door of my room, the first thing I saw was the dachshund lying on his side on the floor, motionless, with eyes closed, beside his empty saucer. I thought he was asleep. I threw myself onto the bed, wrapping myself up in the bedclothes, just as I was, and I fell asleep immediately. I had a strange dream: I was in the lane where I had been last night, holding the dachshund on the leash; I was walking toward the sun as it was rising behind a row of trees. The sun rose completely, the sky was filled with light. The dachshund said to me: "Untie me, let me go. The moment has come for us to part. I must go to paradise." Then I bent down and undid the leash and immediately, like a flash of lightning, the dog ran off in front of me and vanished. I was left alone and I burst into tears. Weeping bitterly, I awoke.

I looked down at the dachshund. He was still there, stretched out motionless beside his saucer, his eyes closed. But I noticed that his lips were slightly parted and that his teeth could be seen. I rose, and the first thing I did was to stoop and touch his nose. It was cool--a good sign. But when I stroked him, I found that his body was colder than his nose. I understood then that the dog was dead. But I could not weep; I had already wept in my dream. At that moment, somebody knocked at the door and a terrible voice cried: "Telegram!"