Conjugal Love Read Free Page B

of our happiness still lay in our love life, which was a thing apart from the tastes that we now shared.
    I have said already that her beauty, disturbed as it sometimes was by ugly grimaces and contortions, was never unworthy of itself while we were making love. Let me add that the enjoyment of that beauty had now become the central point around which circled the whirlpool of my life, once black and threatening, now luminous, pleasantly slow, regular. How often, as I lay beside her in bed, did I contemplate her naked body and feel almost frightened at seeing it so beautiful, yet at the same time with a beauty which, even under my persevering gaze, defied all definition! How often, as she lay there, flat on her back, her head sunk in the pillow, did I disarrange and rearrange those long, soft, fair tresses of hers, seeking in vain to understand the mysterious feeling of movement- which gave them that fluttering, evasive look! How often did I gaze at those enormous blue eyes of hers and wonder where lay the secret of their sweet, troubled expression! How often, after kissing her long and furiously, did I analyse the sensation that my lips still retained, comparing it with the exact shape of her lips and hoping to penetrate the significance of that faint smile of almost archaic form which, after the kiss, became visible again at the corners of her big, sinuous mouth - precisely the smile that is to be seen in the earliest Greek statues. I had, in fact, found a mystery as great - or so it seemed to me - as the mysteries of religion: a mystery after my own heart, in which my eyes and my mind, well used to the examination of beauty, could lose themselves at last and find peace, as though in an enchanting, unlimited spaciousness. She appeared to understand all the importance that this kind of adoration acquired for me, and allowed herself to be loved with the same untiring docility, the same intelligent complacency with which she allowed herself to be taught.
    Perhaps I ought to have been put on my guard, in the midst of a happiness so complete, by one particular aspect of my wife's attitude, which, anyhow, I think I have already mentioned - her goodwill. In her, clearly, love was not so spontaneous as in me; and there was discernible in her manner towards me an undoubted though mysterious desire to please me, to satisfy me, sometimes even to flatter me - exactly, in fact, what is generally, and not without a trace of contempt, called goodwill. Now it is difficult for goodwill not to conceal something which, if it were by chance revealed, would contradict it and endanger its effects; something that may range from the mere presence of different, hidden preoccupations to actual duplicity and treachery. But I accepted this goodwill as a proof of her love for me and did not worry, at the time, to investigate what it might conceal, or what the meaning of it might be. I was, in fact, too happy not to be selfish. I knew that, for the first time in my life I was in love and, with my usual, rather indiscreet enthusiasm, I attributed to her also the feeling that occupied my own mind.
     
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    I HAD never spoken to my wife about my literary ambitions because I felt that she would not be able to understand them, and also because I was ashamed to have to confess that they were no more than ambitions, or rather, vain attempts which had never so far been crowned with any success. That year we spent the summer at the seaside, and towards the middle of September we began to discuss our plans for the autumn and winter. I don't know how it came about that I then alluded to my barren efforts; perhaps I may have referred to the long period of idleness into which marriage had led me. 'But Silvio, you never told me about it,' she exclaimed at once. I answered that I had never spoken of it because, up till that moment, anyhow, I had never succeeded in writing anything that was worth talking about. But she, with her usual affectionate eagerness, merely