When I saw Maria this time this feeling of pride was almost completely eradicated by a
sense of guilt and shame caused by the memory of the awkward incident in my studio, by
my stupid, cruel, and even vulgar, accusation of “deceiving a blind man.” I felt my legs
weakening, and a cold paleness spread over my face. Feeling like that in the presence of
these people! And not being able to throw myself humbly at Maria to ask her forgiveness
to calm the horror and the disgust I felt for myself!
Maria, though, didn’t seem to loose control, and I immediately began to be filled again
with the vague sadness that had possessed me before.
She greeted me with a very neutral expression, as if she were trying to show the two
cousins that there was nothing more between us than a simple friendship. I remembered,
with a feeling of contempt, the way I had treated her a few days before. In one of my
moments of desperation I told her that some day at dusk, I would like to go and look at
the towers of San Gemignano from the hilltop. She looked at me with enthusiasm and
said: “Oh, that would be great, Juan Pablo!” But when I suggested we could slip away
that evening, she was disturbed and looked at me somberly, saying: “We have no right to
think we’re alone here. This situation is very complicated.” When I asked her what she
meant by that, she answered in an even more serious tone of voice: “Happiness is
surrounded by pain.” Then I left her abruptly, without saying goodbye. More than ever I
felt that I could never be completely one with her, and that I would have to resign myself
to have fragile moments of communion which were as wistfully elusive as the memory of
certain dreams, or the happiness of some musical passages.
And now she appeared completely controlled, calculating every word, and each
expression on her face. She was even capable of smiling at that other woman!
She asked me if I had brought the drawings.
“What drawings?” I exclaimed with anger, knowing I was spoiling some complicated
maneuver, even if it was in our favor…
“The drawings of the harbor you promised to show me,” she answered calmly.
I looked at her hatefully, but she accepted my glower calmly, and for just the tenth of a
second her eyes softened, and she seemed to ask me: “Have pity on me for all of this.”
Dear, dear Maria! How I suffered in that moment of her request, and my humiliation!
Then I looked at her with tenderness, and I answered:
“Of course I brought them. I have them in my bedroom.”
“I would like very much to see them,” she said, once again with the coldness of before.
“We could see them right now,” I said, figuring out what she was trying to do.
I trembled with the thought that Mimi might join us. But Maria knew her better than I,
and right away she added something that would hamper any intention of joining us:
“We’ll be right back.” she said.
After she said that she took firmly me by the arm and led me toward the house. I
looked back at those who remained there, and I seemed to notice a sense of purpose in the
way that Mimi looked at Hunter.
XXVII
It had been my original intention to spend several nights at the farm, but as it turned
out, I only spent one night. The very next day, the sun had just begun to come out when I
slipped out of the house, carrying my suitcase and my box. This fact might seem like
madness, but it will soon be clear that this action was justified.
Right after we left Hunter and Mimi and went inside, we went upstairs to look for the
supposed drawings. Shortly after that we came back down with my box of paintings, and
a folder that supposedly contained the drawings. This trick was Maria’s idea.
When we arrived the cousins had disappeared. After that Maria seemed to be in very
good humor, and while we walked through the woods toward the coast, she was quite
enthusiastic. She was a different woman from the one I had known before that moment
of sadness in the city; she was now more energetic, more full of vitality. She seemed to
have a sensitivity I had never seen before, a sensitivity for colors, and smells. She was
strangely enthusiastic (strangely for me, since I have an introspective sensitivity, almost
purely imaginary) about the color of a tree trunk, of a dry leaf, of some little bugs, and
the fragrance of the eucalyptus mixed with the odor of the sea. And far from making me
happy, it made me sad and desperate, because I felt that this aspect of Maria was almost
totally unknown to me, and that it must have something to do with Hunter and Mimi, or
someone else.
That sadness gradually increased; perhaps also because of the sound of the waves that
was more and more audible. When we came out of the woods and I saw the sky above
the sea coast, I felt like the sadness was unavoidable; it was the same as always with
beauty, or at least with a certain type of beauty. Is everyone like that, or is it just another
defect of my unfortunate state of mind?
We sat down on some rocks and, for a long time we were silent, listening to the loud
breaking of the waves, and feeling the drops of foam that occasionally flew all the way to
the top of the cliff and landed on our faces. The stormy sky reminded me of the work of
Tintoretto in The Rescue of a Saracen.
“How many times I have dreamed of sharing the view of this sky and the sea with
you,” Maria said.
After a while she added:
“Sometimes it seems like we had always seen this view together. When I saw that
solitary woman in the window of your painting, I felt you were like me and that you were
also looking blindly for someone, some sort of silent interlocutor. Since that day, I
thought about you constantly; I dreamed about you being here, in this same place where I
have spent so much of my life. Once, I even thought about looking for you to tell you
about it. But I was afraid of being mistaken, like I had been mistaken before, so I waited
with the hope that it would be you who looked for me. But I did everything I could to
make that happen, I called for you every night and I became so sure of meeting you that,
when it happened in front of the elevator, I was paralyzed with fear and could not say
more than something stupid. When you left because you thought it was something else, I
ran after you like a madwoman. Then, there were those moments in San Martin Plaza
when you thought it was necessary to explain everything, and I tried to lead you astray,
wavering between the anxiety of loosing you forever, and the fear of hurting you. I tried
to discourage you, however, to make you think that I didn’t understand what you were
trying to say.”
I didn’t say anything. Beautiful feelings and somber ideas circled around in my mind,
as I listened to her voice, her wonderful voice. I was plunging into a sort of enchantment.
The setting sun was lighting up a gigantic expanse between the clouds in the west. I felt