Casanova in Bolzano by Sándor Marai Read Free Book Online Page B

might be brought back to life. Because the girl’s posture suggested someone lost and unconscious yet rescued. It is, as a matter of fact, how the girl herself felt at that moment: she felt like a would-be suicide who had plunged into the river but who had been rescued and was just now being carried to shore. Essentially, she was adjusting herself to her new situation.
    Being in the arms of a strange man was both a new and yet a painfully, joyously, and frighteningly familiar situation. It is, after all, a most desirable thing for a person to be embraced by another. Teresa vaguely recalled her mother—a woman as freckled as a turkey’s egg and as short and round as a Tuscany barrel—and how she once had held her in her arms like this. Yes, this new situation was familiar, as familiar as life to a newborn baby; there was nothing particularly difficult or clever to do, no need to argue: one had only to accept and to allow events to carry one along, to resign oneself, to let the two bodies discover their own equilibrium as they engaged under the pressure of his arms but according to attractions and powers beyond such pressure. And it was right, it was absolutely in order, that this man, unknown to Teresa until yesterday, who talked a great deal, waved his dagger about, and had emerged from bed that morning with down in his tousled hair, a man who slept with his legs spread and with a furious twisted expression on his face, should now have his arms locked about Teresa, and that she should only have to make a slight adjustment in the position of her head so that it rested more comfortably, to leave her mouth softly and gently open and to close her eyes, and otherwise do nothing at all, for her to feel that everything was as it should be, as was right and proper. So much she understood. And now that she knew and understood everything she smiled, her eyes still closed, and her breathing became lighter and faster.
    They stood before the window in the fierce, cold light. The man had his back to the window and was watching the girl’s powerfully lit face: he watched the woman in his arms as he moved in a peculiarly encouraging and threatening manner that suggested both rescue and assault, the movements precise and appropriate to the moment. He too found the situation reassuringly familiar. He was no longer afraid that lonely, empty months of damp and solitude had led him to lose his voice. He was aware that every word, every movement of his, found favor with the audience. He looked at the girl contentedly, being in no hurry, having plenty of time to spare. The face, that heart-shaped face, whose every feature, every subtle shade of color, was amplified by the strong light, was simply the face of a woman, that was all—which did not mean that he was lying when he said he would recognize it among a thousand women’s faces, even under a mask. One woman’s face was as a hundred women’s faces, faces he had bent over in similar situations with just such tender and solemn solicitude, as if each were a puzzle he had to solve, an arcane script, a word written in signs taken from the cabala or some other realm of magic, each a word that added some meaning to life. He watched the face patiently, solemnly. Because these signs on a woman’s face, the slightly upturned, delicately freckled nose, the mouth which was raw like the cut flesh of a plump fruit, the golden down above the upper lip, and the chin, that childish little chin set among curves, the brilliant fine-drawn line of the closed eyes, the ample blonde swell of the eyelashes, and, next to the nose and the mouth, the two harsh lines that life had left as its legacy of fear and suspicion and which now, touched by light and by a strange pair of arms, seemed to soften and melt; all this was the rune, the secret script whose meaning he had to decipher. The two faces—the serious male face, gazing, and the girl’s face with its closed eyes, its relaxation, its faint smile, and air