Pleasure by Gabriele D'Annunzio Read Free Book Online Page A

embattled dreams, the unrealized wishes, all those turbid elements that constituted her inner life now roiled within her and assailed her.
    She was silent, absorbed within herself. While her heart was nearly overflowing, it pleased her to increase its commotion even more with silence. By speaking, she would disperse it.
    The water in the pot started slowly to come to a boil.
    Andrea, seated on the low chair, with his elbow supported on his knee and his chin on the palm of his hand, now gazed at the beautiful being with such intensity that she, even not turning toward him, could feel that persistence on her person and it gave her almost a vague physical unease. Andrea, watching her, thought:
I once possessed this woman
. He repeated this affirmation to himself, to convince himself; and made, to convince himself, a mental effort to recall to his memory some pose of hers during the act of pleasure, attempting to see her again in his arms. The certainty of possession was escaping him. Elena seemed to him to be a new woman, never enjoyed, never embraced.
    She was, in truth, even more desirable than she had once been. The almost plastic enigma of her beauty was even more obscure and alluring. Her head with its narrow forehead, straight nose, arched eyebrows, of such a pure design, so firm, so classic, that it seemed to have emerged from a Syracusan medal, had about the eyes and mouth a singular contrast in its expression: that passionate, intense, ambiguous, superhuman expression that only some modern spirit, impregnated with all the profound corruption of art, has been able to infuse into types of immortal women such as the
Mona Lisa
or Nelly O’Brien. 7
    Others possess her now,
Andrea thought, watching her.
Other hands touch her; other lips kiss her.
And, while he could not manage to form in his imagination the image of his union with her, he saw once again with implacable precision the other image. And an acute frenzy invaded him, to know, to discover, to interrogate.
    Elena had leaned over the table because steam was now escaping through the joint of the lid from the boiling pot. She poured a small amount of water onto the tea; she put two cubes of sugar into one cup; she poured some more water onto the tea; then she extinguished the blue flame. She did all this with almost tender care, but without ever turning toward Andrea. Her internal tumult was now becoming such a soft tenderness that she felt her throat close up and her eyes moisten; and she could not resist it. So many contrary thoughts, so many contrary anguishes and alterations of her soul gathered now together into a tear.
    With a movement of her hand she knocked over her silver cardholder, which fell onto the carpet. Andrea picked it up and looked at the two linked garters. Each bore a sentimental motto:
From Dreamland—A stranger hither
. 8
    When he lifted his eyes to her, Elena offered him the steaming cup with a smile slightly veiled by tears.
    He saw that veil; and at that unexpected sign of tenderness was invaded by such an impetus of love and gratefulness that he put down his cup, knelt, took Elena’s hand, and placed his mouth on it.
    â€”Elena! Elena!
    He spoke to her in a low voice, kneeling, so close that it seemed he wanted to drink in her breath. His ardor was sincere, while his words sometimes lied. “He loved her, he had always loved her, he had never ever ever been able to forget her! He had felt, meeting her again, all his passion rising up with such violence that he had almost been terrified of it: a type of anxious terror, as if he had glimpsed, in a flash, the overturning of his entire life.”
    â€”Hush! Hush! Elena said, with her face drawn in pain, extremely pale.
    Andrea went on speaking, still kneeling, becoming more impassioned in the imagination of his sentiment. “He had felt the greatest and best part of himself dragged away by her in that sudden flight. Afterward, he could not tell her about all the misery of his