Pazzerella - 22

Pazzerella relaxed in the security of anticipation, while I laid my head in her lap where my undisciplined hair incubated that rapacious womb in a promising warmth.

A mushy autumnal temperature of vegetation dropping its seed invaded us from the garden. It impinged on every nerve in her sensitive body, become one with the earth, the air, the season. Her breathing languished and was wafted away to the most distant Podere. The richest of harvests ripened within her. I could feel the long prepared impassioned nest palpitate beheath my ear.

Tenderly I related my infancy, I had brought a photo of myself, still wearing a little skirt, in my pocketbook-- and before the rites of my showing it to her she sat with receptive eyes and folded hands. But when I told her of my mother's saintly consecrated gestures, sweetened by anaachronistic jealousy, she could not resist, and interrupted me-- "But don't you know, Geronimo, that I am your mother?"

"Now we come to it." I cried, leaping to my feet, "A lot you care about the future'. For you the child is a makeshift.

Pazzerella 0 24

one man to impose it upon another."

But still she clung to me, not able to withdraw herself
at once from her hallucination that a mystery was about to be con-
ceived.

"It is the hour," I concluded, liberating myself to
bow to her ceremoniously, "for me to take leave of you Signora,"
and I parted from all those empty circles-- the tea-cups-- the woman.

Six months later I passed Pazzerella on the street.
Without a greeting we both stopped for a while to observe each
other reciprocally, and then pursued our ways without exchanging our
impressions.

"Caro-- don't be discouraged if I don't seem to have died.
I have, really. Only the business of daily life necessitates
the continued functioning of the mere machine-- Excuse me!"

Such was the message I received the morning after our
meeting. Another interview was imminent.

I entered. She had aged. Her eyes had grown dull, and
her taut nerves distorted her face in a rigid resignation. She
moved as she walked towards me with an angularity that must have
irked her limbs. She looked so funny that I hugged her close to
me, to stifle my titters while covering her with sarcastic little

Pazzerella - 25

kisses, until I felt her tension relax.

"Oh no," I said, seeing her revive among the roses I had planted, "How goes love?"

"Not so badly, thanks to your having employed the wrong tactics."

"-- -- -- -- -- ?"

"All is clear to me-- Because I irritate you, you wish to do away with me. That is natural-- quite understandable. In your place I should feel the same. But you tried to destroy me through my pride, whereas I really loved you, and into love pride does not enter. If you are determined to succeed, there is only one way-- you must make me die of love. Do you get me?" she enquired with a flicker of hope.

"Your game is pretty strong," she continued, "The first stroke a whiz-- and so on, increasingly. But entirely miscalculated. You should have duped me long enough to inspire my confidence, and then, after some days of intimacy, when my love should feel secure-- ah, if you had left me then, who knows but that I really should have succumbed."

Pazzerella - 27

dignities, the fictitious value I could assume, the pretentious
gestures I could make in the luckless position of being-- what am I?"

"There seemed nothing to be hoped for, nothing to be done.
I could be unfaithful to you? A lot of impression that made on
you. Enhance my beauty? You are short-sighted. Lie? You could
do it better than I. Dishonestly Hew myself a niche in your animal
propensities? Not to be thought of-- you have yourself so
thoroughly in hand.

"You might suppose that I should have surrendered to
total discouragement. But no. In spite of all, I existed for you.
I, woman, irritated you for that very passivity you impose upon me.
I irritated you to such a degree that you could not keep your hands
off me! Have you not often confessed to me how utterly I irritate
you; to the point of wanting to conquer me?

"But you did not guess that if there are difficult con-
quests that inflame a man, and conquests so easy they rattle a man--
you did not guess, that I could image a conquest so easy that it
staggered the intellect itself. Do I irritate you?" She inquired.

"Sufficiently," I answered.

Pazzerella - 28

"Amore, caro," burbled Pazzerella, "Can't you see. If you had been an ordinary man, with no great intellect-- that irritation you feel whenever I come near you would have been love! You would have loved me at night to return in the daytime to see if I was still on earth. You would have taken me by the hand and together we should have run against the blowing wind to show how beautiful and how young we are. But as you are only an intellect---."

"You think perhaps I have done the worst I can to you? But if I have shown you an outrage on elemental womanhood, there still remains the civilized woman, whose death-rattle lasts much longer in an agony infinitely more complicated. I can extend the scope of your sensibility until it comprises a universe, and this universe being myself, can disappear from one moment to another. I can animate your latent voluble wit, nourish your vanity, and, when growing ever more beautiful, more debonaire you are sure you have arrived at a state of security, can unexpectedly remove your animation. I can play any tricks upon you I please while you will rest assured they are the natural working out of Destiny-- because I can give you what you want. In short, I will love you, if you feel equal to it?"

"I have only the strength of my longing for you."

Pazzerella - 29

"Take warning. There will be moments when you will look into my eyes and see your salvation-- moments in which my one pre-occupation is to enjoy you, as you enjoy me,-- in which defense, irony, paradox, disdain, suspicion have vanished. We shall exchange the limpid glances of new-born seraphim in a celestial innocence of mutual possession. You will have the illusion of all barriers overthrown, of the 'unknown' being revealed, inequalities being razed-- in that sweet and absolute union which is---- ephemeral.!!

"But beware of that moment following when you, suffused with the glow of my weakness from which, in a triumphant spasm, I have liberated myself. You will remember. I shall have forgotten.

"My regard scarcely recognizing you will be fixed anew in the eternal urge to know. This is the wound in woman which never heals, even in subsequent ecstasies. This is the knowledge the last mother to dwell on earth will not dare to impart to the ultimately sophisticated maiden when preparing her for the last honeymoon."

"How beautifully you talk."

"You haven't understood anything?"

"There are things a woman understands without accepting," replied Pazzerella, settling down in my arms with a smile of relief.

"You certainly have an indomitable courage."

Pazzerella - 30

"I feel so cozy with you."

"Now that I have taken theroad to Death," she continued.

"Which leads through felicity."

"Do you mean it," clapping her hands.

"Indeed, this is to be the happiest time of your life."

"Yes, I feel sure there is some elemental truth concealed
in woman's love that men do not suspect, but which will some day
make amends for our monotony. It is my ambition to dx reveal it
to you, and so be more to you than what you expect of me."

"My dear, I ask nothing better than to vary that monotony.
I give you carte blanche. I am here for a whole evening-- Let us
sample a little of this brimming secret reservoir in woman of
which we men disdain to take advantage. See, I, in my turn, am
passive. Profit by it!"

Pazzerella broke into a laugh of joyous discomfiture.

"I can't."

"Ha?"

"Forgive me if I fail you at this crucial moment-- it
has just occurred to me-- Womanhood cannot be consummated without
a collaborator."

Pazzerella - 31

"Pazzerella," I asked her, "do you feel like making a
little love this evening?"

"Actually, when one talks so much about love as we do,
one hardly thinks of it."

"Ah-- if one comes to think of it, it is such a comical
business."

"So it seems to me," she made friendly assent.

"Then for once we agree."

"Miraculous!"

"And yet," I pursued, "every now and then we shall find
ourselves invaded by this indefinable yearning."

"Fortunately," she sighed, closing her eyes then opening
them again. "Geronimo, you are delightful-- you look like a little
boy hiding in the corner with a lump of sugar."

When at last we let go of each other Pazzerella fell into
meditation. "How mysteriously designed is love-- Here are we, the
fundamental enemies whose dearest desire is to be rid of each
other-- yet when the flesh unites, how exquisite-- It really tempts
one to believe in a power above us."

Only some minutes later, a complete change had come over
her, so that eventually I was led to demand, "Why the depression?"

Prazzella - 32B

"Forgive me," I begged her with much solicitude, "is it possible I have failed you, that I have not rightly divined your faster? Tell me, my dearest, how many ways of making love have I taught you?"

"There is," murmured Pazzerella, counting on her fingers, "the one of the first time-- that of the sacred Tuesday then yours, then mine and then the other ones."

"And which do you prefer?"

"All of them," she replied without hesitation, "That is to say," her eyes catching mine fixed on her hypnotically, "All, up to a certain point. But there is a spiritual aspect of love; woman was not created uniquely to serve as man's--" I was looking at her still more intently, "created uniquely to enjoy herself," she caught herself up breathlessly. We have a higher mission. I feel an absolute necessity to save you."

"Woman," I said, "Can you possibly suffer under the delusion that having followed the profession of literature for so many years, I had run into no female saviours. At least until now

Pazzerella - 33

you had not exhibited the doubtful taste of echoing too often my
other lady-loves."

"You must have patience. We have also, we others, our
traditions-- classical traditions. There are the women you pay and
the women who save you. Every decent woman tries to save at least
a couple. Up to now, none of the men I met seemed worth the trouble--
they needed saving-- so I was not interested. Men who require
help, you will agree with me, had better be left alone. Whereas
you who do not require any, are just my affair."

"Exactly. You want to 'save' me to save you."

"Oh," she reproved me, "Why won't you follow the rules
of the game-- leave things to me."

"Little one," I condoned with her, "You are pale, you are
under the influence of a physical reaction. Evidently it is for
the first time I observed with a certain amount of pride or you
would not take it so hard-- you're tired. If it relieves your body
to weigh upon my spirit, I am only too willing."

"No," she insisted, "You may laugh at me, spit upon me--
nothing will make any difference-- I am determined to save you."

Pazzerella - 34

Answer me. do you not feel by any chance that your soul is become
clouded, smirched with the pettiness of daily life? Have you ar-
rived perhaps at the turning point where it is difficult to dis-
tinguish clearly which path to follow? Do you not long to feel a
confident little hand in yours, to guide you?"

"Why such theatrical gestures when you're turning your
back on me?"

"I am invoking the ideal."

"Oh, I thought this harangue was addressed to me."

"There's nothing to prevent you listening if you feel like
it-- but how satisfied adresses must feel before a <u>whole</u> audience.
You, who have read all there is to read, wasn't there <u>anything</u> you
could not discover in that universe of volumes? Even in your own
colossal intellect, is there not lacking perhaps some other trifle?

"Trust in me-- I am your redempress. In all humility--"

"Murderess!"

"When one has exhausted everything else, one must turn to
the simpletons of this world. When the great man soils his soul,
even a prostitution may serve to cleanse it-- and this simpleton,"
her voice trembling with emotion, "this prostitute, is perhaps

Pazzerella - 37

"There it is, I see it again. Can't you come over <u>on my side</u> to look at it. Geronimo, I could describe it to you only you are over there on the <u>opposite side</u>. You can see nothing of how it appears from over here. I am in possession of a secret truth. Fate commands me to reveal it to you. I <u>will</u> tell you. LISTEN!

Geronimo-- Woman--- ."

"The riddle is solved, my poor child," I said, pressing her down by her shoulder. "I am your secret. Now lie in peace."

She let her heavy head drop on the pillow. A shadow spread across her face, enhancing in beauty the last spark of a life I had extinguished with my negations. Of every instinct that flowered towards me I had snapped off the stem. Every fire that warmed her I had put out. What a facile success!

Needing to stretch my legs after sitting so long by that inarticulate death bed, I took up a candle and moved about the room. Some unaccountable impulse stopped me before the mirror and I found myself staring, this time, into my own eyes. How queer, they returned my gaze without recognition. Those steely disks might have looked out of a stranger.

Wondering what had happened to them, I peered into their

Pazzerella - 39

"More than your own self?"

"Surely."

"Then, disappear now-- at once. I command you!"

"I should be delighted."

"Then what are your waiting for?"

"To put an end to my life."

"There's no need for you to wait."

"But my life?"

"Yes, your life."

"But my life? Where is it? You have confiscated it."

Where can you have tucked it away?" feverishly Pazzerella patted my
clothes, searched under my curls-- to fall back once more, ex-
tenuated upon the pillows. "Tell me what is there, what is there
about you that so satisfies me when I touch you?"

"May that is your life?"

"Therefore----- ?"

Her pulse had become imperceptible-- and I admired the
sensitive hollows under the cheek-bones, sculptured by the sophisticated
compromises
compromising of my lips.

Pazzerella - 40

"If you really cared for me, you would tell me what it
is sustains you in so miraculously remaining alive."

And Pazzerella murmured this incredible word in my ear.

"Hope."

"But my poor thing, what could you hope for? Even if I
had not already completely spoiled you, you so fine, so fragile--
you are not my type."

"Really?"

"Hadn't you realized it?"

"No. I thought it was just your way of amusing yourself."

"There is also a little of that," I laughed in answer to
this gleam of intelligence. But that alters nothing," I went on
decidedly. "So be it" and taking what I prayed should be her last
look at me, she arose from where she lay, and all tottering, gently
blindly left the room.

"What are you up to?" I called to her. "Can't you
understand that I shall never be able to die as long as you are
near me?" and so saying, she threw herself on the stone stairs
as if seeking a refuge unquestionably kinder than my adamant embraces.

Pazzerella - 42

creeping into it. She could not die at my side, yet had she not
once confessed to me that in my absence her love for me diminished.
If she was to die of love, there was still some danger that she
would not succeed even out there on the cold stairs. I was desperate,
fearing that at a few yards distance I lost some of my power over her.

However, the crying continued, and every outburst seemed
to blow up her being. What a catastrophic result of all my labors.
Could there not exist a more aesthetic conception of 'finishing off'
a woman? Was there perhaps something wrong with my method, when it
came to naught but a horrible noise?

As a painter, struck for the first time with a higher con-
ception of his art, regards his 'earlier' work with disparagement,
I contemplated my 'Pazzerella De La Scala Di Pietra' critically.
How could I have failed in such an academic manner? Such sticky
technique! This mixture of quivering mucous and clammy flesh running
with tears!

I seated myself beside her and began tracing with my fore-
finger the swelling festooned from the arch of her nose
across her hot wet face, leaving her bloodshot eyes in a purple pit.

Pazzerella, quieting under my touch, sank into a state of

Pizzerella - 43

coma, leaving me at liberty to investigate. I picked her up and carried her back to bed. Then I arranged myself in such a position as best to contemplate her.

After all, even if she loved me, she was still a human being. And in that propitious hour when she could neither talk nor cry nor appear so pitifully conscious of being inarticulate, I could consider her case at my leisure, impartially.

Set free by this state of coma, this female soul presented itself clearly, for closer observation, and with every star that vanished from the night the mysteries of her silence likewise vanished, one by one.

This female Buddha sensed my power over her better than I myself. This was the reason for her calm eye and her laisser aller. Her pardon before the act and her maternal irony. There was no possible doubt but that she had understood. She must have cogitated every possible means of escape-- theories of the laws and harmonies of sex, the rights of women which, once having been won, leave woman as solitarily woman as before. Pizzerella had known all along what she was-- woman aware of herself. This seductive creature who was

Pazzerella - 45

of mystery, I had found the solution-- a solution that lay in myself.
The secret of woman is that she does not yet exist. Being a creator,
I realized I can create woman. I decided to 'create' Pazzerella.

Until now she had nothing but her breath and the everlasting
attraction toward man, lacking an axis about which to revolve. I
am man and I shall be her axis. All this while she had lain at my
flank, weak for the want of 'a life' I could make for her, waiting
for me to impregnate her mind as I impregnate her body, to organize
that revolving chaos which is the source of variety among the in-
individuals of
DXXudyaXX begotten it. For she being identified with 'everything',
she partakes of that universal 'unity' sought by the mystic; with
this paradoxical result that if man is promiscuous physically, woman
is promiscuous spiritually.

But such reflections were powerless to deter me. I had
found a fresh instrument for my intellect, a raw material with which to
create; material so plastic in its untouched condition, that it
offered untold possibilities of formation.

Stirred with a new enthusiasm, all the passion I had
hitherto devoted to pen and paper welled up in my heart--.

Pazzerella - 2

being lost, had become fixed in patient expectation of clairvoyance,
neglecting the present to search for the unknown. There was some-
thing about her of a plant that has matured in a cellar as though
she had had to draw her alimentary light from an enduring twilight.

She spoke but little, replying to the remarks addressed
to her with a desperate finality as if for some inscrutable reason
she had been forbidden to speak.

The indiscernable traces of agony predicted on her youthful
face provoked my ire-- I was spurred by a desire to see them de-
fined. Her unrevealing conversation filled me with a wild
necessity to silence her, once and for all.

Her fragile body, whose voluptuous frustration seemed to
evoke the couplings of butterflies and reptiles, rather than seduce
the full-blooded male, forbidding in advance any possible illusion
of satiety, congealed my veins in a glacial passion.

I approached her with the full intention of throwing
myself upon her, when in the nick of time I recovered my reason.
One possesses a woman out of desire; there is no known biological

Pazzerella - 3

law that forces a civilized man to exterminate a perfectly amiable
hostess for the sake of a couple of musical grimaces between two
cups of tea.

I launched myself on a philosophical argument to thaw my
arteries, which my companion punctuated with occasional gleams of
intelligence, and little by little I began to feel safe in my
superior acumen and the abvious appreciation of my audience.

My fantastic fury died down as I entrenched myself in my
lucidity. It seemed as if, after all, there were definite points
of contact between myself and this disquieting person. The butterfly-
 fluttered away, the reptile undulated into oblivion, and I was
beginning to feel quite at ease with her when, after apparently
listening to all I had to say, she suddenly exclaimed, "But
whatever *is* philosophy, and why do your eyes strike off such icy
green sparks?"

Ah, then there was no withholding myself, and I did throw
myself upon her. In a sadistic delirium of destruction I determined
to put an end to her. When I regained my calm, I found I had only
possessed her.

Pazzerella - 4

"I am so fond of you," she sighed.

"The worse for you."

"But My affection---"

"But are you mad?"

"I am a woman."

I lifted up her face to take a good look at it. The prognostics of sorrow were effaced, the resuscitated roses of her lips bloomed in a contemptible beatitude-- and God! how she chattered.

Evidently her impact with the male had shattered her silence. She flooded me with universal tripialities pouring from her cerebral confusion into an indefinite concept she reverently referred to as 'love.'

I rose to depart. But Pazzerella entreated me to stay, drawing me after her by my two hands, with the air of leading me on in some portentious expedition which made me sufficiently curious to let her have her way.

Graciously she led me through her apartment where an intrinsic sense of void produced an impression of vastness, and

Pazzerella - 5

solemnly she would stop before the door of each chamber, whose furniture seemed to haunt its pitiable emptiness, and on entering each one with me, embraced me ceremoniously as if she desired to obtain a 'fixation' of our presence 'together' in every desolate enclosure of her home.

This sort of procession intrigued me immensely. I could not catch its significance until all at once the Pascal Benediction recurred to my mind-- The Parish Priest accompanied by his accolyte visiting the houses of the devout at Eastertide to asperse their rooms with holy water. Was my passing intended to bless those vacuous leirs of my guide? Their solitude seemed hardly prepared for a blessing-- it must be for an exorcism that my services were required. An involuntary shudder ran through me-- how fearful must be the blank expanses of time shut into those charming rooms, that this living enigma had the pretension to be rid of in consecrating them to a man who had just raped her.

"I have waited so long-- so long--"

"Why?" John 2:11

"Just waiting," she murmured.

"For what," I insisted.

Pazzerella - 6

"Ah, if only I knew. Probably I shall never find out
what I am waiting for, nevertheless I can make my choice."

"Oh-- then you believe in the Libre Arbitre?"

"No-- I merely choose. That is quite a different thing,
for the confirmation of my choice is beyond my power."

"And may I ask what it is you have chosen?"

"You," she cooed quite contentedly, and her face fell
onto my waistcoat.

"Evidently the Libre Arbitre doesn't come in there."

"It is several years since I began to love you."

"But you didn't know me."

"I have never known you-- I shall never know you-- but
I have seen you."

"But-- ?"

"If you knew what countless numbers of my similars have
never even seen the man they love."

"You're only raking up a platitude 'In love with love'.
Where does a man come in?"

Pazzerella - 8

feminine eyes, but they told me nothing. They were beginning to
wander again.

"So you have not chosen me after all-- ."

"Decidedly not."

"Still, all the same-- when you-- isn't that what is
called possessing a woman?"

"Ah-- yes!"

"Why?"

"Because there's nothing in it."

In those intelligent eyes a reply began to twinkle, but
her lips grimly closed upon it.

"Tell me," I insisted.

"It is the coronation of masculinity," she prevaricated,
entirely taken up with interlacing her useless fingers with my unruly
hair.

"Good bye, Pazzerella."

"Forever?"

"Let us hope so."

"Who knows?" she mused.

Pazzerella - 11

out of mere contrariness when the longed-for fruits, rewards of
beauty, have been withdrawn.

"But you," I exclaimed ironically, "are getting on magnificently."

"There is no denying it," she laughed. "I have revived.
I am exploiting my soul whereas formerly my soul exploited me." Then
with a profound moue, "Please, Geronimo, say-- 'Woman has no soul.'"

"You are monstrous," I cried. "A genuine cerebral mass, a chist-- does it give you such very great pleasure to have a man insult you?"

"We--ell, it does make it more difficult for him to impress
me."

The call to arms was sounding. Giving no sign that I was
aware of it, I continued, "It is for that very reason that woman
can so easily penetrate the soul of others."

"You mean, that having none of her own, there is no obstacle,"
she laughed once more.

"Yet nevertheless," I said, my voice trembling with
feigned emotion, "you were not able to penetrate mine. You

Pazzerella - 12

could not understand that I, who in no way resemble other men, al-
though it was for that you loved me, is it not so? You could not
see that I loved you, nor understand that I, who am the man who
overturns everything, must overturn even love itself."

While I was saying this, I observed my prey with the
utmost attention. Pazzerella's face underwent an incredible
evolution on my first sentimental inflection. The drama of a
whole life took place in her eyes:- birth, hope, happiness,
disillusion, ire, shame, revenge, desperation, callousness, death--
purification, and as I drew her slowly towards me, she attained,
through this impassioned conflagration, to a virginity of spirit
that in her ignorant maidenhood she could never have approached. A
pitiful virginity offering its whitened pain to nothing.

"How could you bring yourself," implored my shaken voice,
"to betray me as you did?"

Pazzerella, petrified, listened to the useless echoes of
her aspiration in my reproaches.

"I do not reproach you." I went on. "You have taken
vengeance on yourself, outraging your true nature in the extremis.

Pazzerella 13

Poor child," I whispered, taking her in my arms and stirring her with
over-sensitive caresses to which her subtle sensuality responded
automatically. "The touch of any hand but mine must martyrize
your flesh--" And from between her white teeth and her underlip
broke a single bead of blood.

"Incredulous monster!" I murmured in that fainting ear,
"had it never occurred to you that love, which flowers in beauty
among promises and ecstasy dies inassuaged and bruised under the
blow of desertion.

"What, then, could be more logical for illuminated lovers
than to let love be born lamenting, without any illusions whatsoever
in the callous hour of abandonment. What could be easier after
that than for love to mature, insured against all deception for the
paradisaical spasm on arrival at its goal---. I though I had
detected between us of that sort of spontaneous affinity--" Here
Pazzerella embraced me convulsively.

"Do not kiss me," I begged her courteously, "I feel the
breath of the thirsty dog."

Pazzerella - 16

wandered far out of the creaking city into the indelicate night,
where, finding myself alone with Nature, I asked her-- 'Why
Geronimo?'"

"And what did Nature answer?"

"Its useless addressing yourself to me," she grumbled.
"I'm _such_ a brute--."

"As far as you are concerned she has every right to be."

We had reached her house. Pazzerella closed the front
door and, all tremulous in the shadows, held up her face to mine.
Ah, the pleasure it would give me to suck away her entire life
through those questing lips. It would be too acceptable an end
for her. I threw her off.

"Your kisses are too sensitive."

We entered the warm brightly lit room. I sank into an
armchair, and Pazzerella perched herself on the arm.

"Will you answer me one question frankly?"

"As far as frankness is concerned, I'm a fellow who
easily gets involved."

"Do try just this once."

"Well?"

Pazzerella - 20

She had right on her side-- but no money, that incubus
of desire who attaches herself to the male with all her pertinent
passion for reproduction, unable to attain her ends unaided, could
not do otherwise than take the affair seriously, even to the
length of begging for a subsidy.

There was also a mosquito humming around my face, most
likely another female who had no doubt some portentious plan for
the future to further, in inspiring an infinitesimal drop of my
life.

But to Pazzerella's request I must reply. To ignore it
would be too simple. Pazzerella herself would not be surprised if
I took no notice. War is all very well up to a certain point, but
tradition has after all lent a certain glamor to motherhood.

This was an occasion requiring an answer, in the negative,
that goes without saying, were it only for the question of economy.
A decisive reply was imperative, only it must be tender-- very tender.
Nor could it be confided to the postman. It would be more considerate to present my answer in person. However, the air was cool
up in the mountains, and it was late autumn when I eventually
decided to go to her.

Pazzerella - 21

This time Pazzerella looked a trifle faded, laid out
on a sofa lapped in her silk gown and propped up with cushions,
occupying herself as usual with her tea things which were set on
a low table. This body gradually dessicating for want of carresses,
this potential mother empty of fruit, must necessarily continue
throughout her steady undoing to distribute her circles of amber
and sugar gewgaws. A woman resigned, who, while her life was
ebbing from her, seemed ceaselessly to be pouring it out from a
silver pot for casual callers with hands that were livid with calm.
What else was she likely to offer to Death when it should come but
a cup of tea.

I kissed her reverently, assured that, in spite of the
cataclysm of my presence and the wounds with which I should
lacerate her in her conventional breeding, she would merely reply--
"Have another biscuit, caro?"

Certainly this was a day on which conversation was not
in order. Rather must I sustain a tacit expectancy of imminent
collaboration between us-- expression of eyes and inflection of
voice stressing the entente of accomplices.

Pazzerella - 22

Fenderly I related my infancy, I had brought a photo of myself, still wearing a little skirt. in my pocketbook-- and before the rites of my showing it to her she sat with receptive eyes and folded hands. But when I told her of my mother's saintly con-secrated gestures, sweetened by anachronistic jealousy, she could not resist, and interrupted me-- "But don't you know, Geronimo, that I am your mother?"

"Now we come to it," I cried, leaping to my feet, "A lot you care about the future! For you the child is a makeshift

Pazzerella 0 24

"It is the hour." I concluded, liberating myself to
bow to her ceremoniously, "for me to take leave of you Signora,"
and I parted from all those empty circles-- the tea-cups-- the woman.

"Caro-- con't be discouraged if I don't seem to have died.
I have, really. Only the business of daily life necessitates
the continued functioning of the mere machine-- Excuse me!"

Pazzerella - 25

"- - - - - - ?"

"Your game is pretty strong," she continued, "The first stroke a whiz-- and so on, increasingly. But entirely miscalculated. You should have duped me long enough to inspire my confidence, and then, after some days of intimacy, when my love should feel secure-- ah, if you had left me then, who knows but that I really should have succombed."

Pazzerella - 27

"There seemed nothing to be hoped for, nothing to be done.
I could be unfaithful to you? A lot of impression that made on
you. Enhance my beauty? You are short-sighted. Lie? You could
do it better than I. Dishonestly new myself a niche in your animal
propensities? Not to be thought of-- you have yourself so
thoroughly in hand.

"You might suppose that I should have surrendered to
total discouragement. But no. In spite of all, I existed for you.
I, woman, irritated you for that very passivity you impose upon me.
I irritated you to such a degree that you could not keep your hands
off me! Have you not often confessed to me how utterly I irritate
you to the point of wanting to conquer me?

"But you did not guess that if there are difficult con-
quests that inflame a man, and conquests so easy they rattle a man--
you did not guess, that I could image a conquest so easy that it
staggers the intellect itself. Do I irritate you?" She inquired.

"Sufficiently," I answered.

Pazzerella - 28

"You think perhaps I have done the worst I can to you? But if I have shown you an outrage on elemental womanhood, there still remains the civilized woman, whose death-rattle lasts much longer in an agony infinitely more complicated. I can extend the scope of your sensibility until it comprises a universe, and this universe being myself, can disappear from one moment to another. I can animate your latent voluble wit, nourish your vanity, and, when growing ever more beautiful, more debonaire you are sure you have KEMK arrived at a state of security, can unexpectedly remove your animation. I can play any tricks upon you I please while you will rest assured they are the natural working out of Destiny-- because I can give you what you want. In short, I will love you, if you feel equal to it?"

Pazzerella - 29

"Take warning. There will be moments when you will look into my eyes and see your salvation-- moments in which my one pre-occupation is to enjoy you, as you enjoy me,-- in which defense, irony, paradox, disdain, suspicion have vanished. We shall exchange the limpid glances of new-born seraphin in a celestial innocence of mutual possession. You will have the illusion of all barriers over-thrown, of the 'unknown' being revealed, inequalities being razed-- in that sweet and absolute union which is--- ephemeral. !"

"But beware of that moment following when you, suffused with the glow of my weakness from which, in a triumphant spasm, I have liberated myself. You will remember. I shall have forgotten."

"How beautifully you talk."

Pazzerella - 31

"Then for once we agree."

"Miraculous!"

Prazzella - 32 B

"Forgive me," I begged her with much solicitude, "is it possible I have failed you, that I have not rightly divined your tastes faster? Tell me, my dearest, how many ways of making love have I taught you?"

"And which do you prefer?"

Pazzerella - 34

Answer me. Do you not feel by any chance that your soul is become
clouded, smirched with the pettiness of daily life? Have you ar-
rived perhaps at the turning point where it is difficult to dis-
tinguish clearly which path to follow? Do you not long to feel a
confident little hand in yours, to guide you?

"I am invoking the ideal."

"There's nothing to prevent you listening if you feel like
it-- but how satisfied addresses must feel before a whole audience.

You, who have read all there is to read, wasn't there anything you
could not discover in that universe of volumes? Even in your own
colossal intellect, is there not lacking perhaps some other trifle?

"Trust in me-- I am your redemptress. In all humility--"

"Murderess!"

"When one has exhausted everything else, one must turn to
the simplest one of this world. When the great man soils his soul,
even a prostitute may serve to cleanse it-- and this simpleton,"
her voice trembling with emotion, "this prostitute, is perhaps

Pazzerella - 39

"More than your own self?"

"Surely."

"I should be delighted."

"To put an end to my life."

"But my life?"

"Yes, your life."

Where *can* you have tucked it away?" feverishly Pazzerella patted my
clothes, searched under my curls-- to fall back once more, ex-
tenuated upon the pillows. "Tell me what is there, what is there
about you that so satisfies me when I touch you?"

"May that is your life?"

"Therefore----- ?"

Her pulse had become imperceptible-- and I admired the
sensitive hollows under the cheek-bones, sculptured by the sophisticated
compromising of my lips.

Pazzerella - 41

I settled down comfortably and lit a cigarette. What peace. The bed, scarcely disarranged by its lethargic occupant, was a razed plane, clear of all insoluble enigmas, and the primitive monkey seemed to look at me in quite brotherly fashion from the Japanese stuff.

But this peaceful interlude did not last long, for all at once, the silence, my obedient and compatible silence, so unlike the gravid, disquieting silence of woman, was broken by a supreme sob-- an irruption of cardiac blood and boiling tears-- it was Pazzerella. She was crying at last; for the first time, outside on the stairs whether she had retired to vomit her soul on sordid blocks of granite.

"I don't care for that noise," I cried.

"I don't care for it myself," she spluttered. "I feel like the heroine of a melodrama. Couldn't you have found anything better to do with me? This business of dying is so extremely usual any charwoman goes through with it-- it's not at all as you 'literateurs' seem to believe, an agony reserved for their mistresses."

I was thoroughly frightened. The contrariness of woman! Her voice was actually growing stronger-- a shade of enmity was

Pazzerella - 43

This female Buddha sensed my power over her better than I myself. This was the reason for her calm eye and her laisser aller. Her pardon before the act and her maternal irony. There was no possible doubt but that she had understood. She must have cogitated every possible means of escape-- theories of the laws and harmonies of sex, the rights of women which, once having been won, leave woman as helplessly ( ) as a solitarily woman as before. Pazzerella had known all along what she was-- woman aware of herself. This seductive creature who was