The imperious waiter eyed the girl from head to toe with grand disdain, and began to lay the table—a small, oval table standing by the fire, which was very soon covered with all kinds of delicious things. My stomach was impatient: had it been cut open, as lambs’ stomachs are in order to extract the pepsin, a rare abundance of gastric juices would have been found inside me. My appetite, my need to eat, was so great that it seemed to me impossible that I would not be able to digest. And my shopgirl had almost made me forget this treat for my stomach, a treat that I had so long yearned for in vain. She had already removed her hat, and thrown her muff on a seat and her cloak on an armchair, and she was standing in front of the mirror rearranging her hair. Holding her arms in an arc raised to her head clearly revealed the contours of her body, scantily clad in a close-fitting dress that was so light it looked like a summer dress. I sat her down beside me, without even glancing at her, and we began to swallow large oysters, and to drink good amber-colored wine that put new life into me. The old, persistent, and intolerable pains in my intestines had gone. I breathed again, I rejoiced. Oh God! At last I could eat. I had already exhausted all possible remedies many months ago—even, to my shame, those in the classified advertisement sections of the newspapers. I had consulted distinguished doctors from Berlin and Paris. And yet I had to survive on diluted broth, milk, coffee, little bits of undercooked meat. Epicurus! Epicurus! And I thought of Emperor Tiberius, who gave his poet two hundred thousand sesterces for a dialogue in which mushrooms, the warbler, the oyster, and the thrush disputed preeminence.
For my part, I would have awarded preeminence to the pheasant with truffles that my love and I ate in religious silence, quenching our thirst with sips of a superb claret. The assortment of glasses—on whose facets every candle cast a streak of brightness, like little electric sparks—kept growing in number. Stemmed, mug-shaped, large-bowled, long-necked—there were glasses of every shape and size, as well as the big stately water glass, as yet unfilled. At every shake of the table, they vibrated and tinkled, scattering thousands of white sparks on the tablecloth. The wine was like liquefied precious stones: amethysts, rubies, topazes.
Having laid out the desserts on the table and uncorked the bottles of champagne, the waiter gave us a most respectful bow that was not without malice, and left the room.
“Would you not like anything else, my dear?”
“No, thank you, sir, I’m full.”
“A glass of champagne?”
“That, yes. I like it so much and I’ve drunk it only once in my life.”
“When?”
“One evening when two gentlemen took me to dinner at the Rebecchino. There was another girl there too.”
“And your husband?”
“What husband?”
“The one you were waiting for in the doorway this evening.”
“Ah, I’d forgotten about him. Damn him!”
“Don’t you love him?”
“Me? I met him ten days ago, and he’s married. I told you I was waiting for my husband so that you, being a gentleman, sir, as I thought, wouldn’t think badly of me.”
“Let’s drop the formality, shall we?”
“If you like.”
“Tell me, have you never been in love?”
“Let me see now. Once, I think, but only for a few days. He was a man of forty, with a black mustache. He used to beat me and wanted me to get money for him. Of course, men are all the same. Here, let me tell you what happened …”
I was not listening to her anymore. I was looking at her. She was ugly. Her trim figure was not bad, but she had coarse features, a rough complexion speckled with little yellow spots, green-colored eyes, and fine parallel lines scoring her brow.
I cut in as she continued to tell me her adventures in a raucous voice, and amused herself by mixing together the various-colored wines and then swilling down the foul concoction.
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
And she resumed her story in a desultory fashion. She got up; she examined with curiosity the heavy gilt frames of the mirrors; she lay back in the armchairs, and on the sofa; she threw herself on the bed; she came up behind me to caress me with her rough hands; then she ate some sugared almonds, filled her pockets with them, drained a glass of champagne, and examined with curiosity, one by one, the objects on the chests of drawers and small tables.
She seized upon some pictures of Emilia, crying, “Oh, I’ve found her, I’ve found her. She’s your sweetheart!”
A burning shame and anger went rushing to my head, and I leapt to my feet.
“Give me those pictures.”
“Your darling, your darling.”
“Give me those pictures at once,” I repeated in a fury.
And she went running around the room, climbing onto the armchairs and holding the portraits up in the air, and stupidly kept on chanting, “Your darling, your darling.”
Then I went into a blind rage. I chased after her, saying again and again in a strangled voice, “Give me those pictures, you wretched woman.” And I snatched them from her hand, having squeezed her wrist so hard that she fell with a cry onto a high-backed chair, virtually unconscious.
I was immediately at her side with some eau de Cologne. She soon recovered, although her arm and hand still hurt a little.
Ashamed of my brutal behavior, I murmured, “Forgive me. Forgive me.”
From the chest of drawers I took a watch that I had bought some days earlier, and I slipped the chain around her neck.
She carefully examined the watch, which was very small, and the chain, which was heavy, and continuing to examine them, completely appeased, she asked, “Are they gold?”
“Certainly.”
She looked up, gazing into my face with her gleaming black eyes. And she smiled. In her delight, her face had taken on a new expression, with the curve of her parted, coral lips framing the pure whiteness of her perfect teeth. In face she looked like Emilia.
“Do you forgive me?” I asked her.
She came rushing over and hugged me in her arms. Then she sat down on a low stool, stretching out her legs on the carpet, and laying her head on my lap. She tipped her head back: her hair, disheveled and half loose, served her as a pillow. And seated as I was in a big armchair, I bent over to look at her, and asked her to smile broadly.
To my great astonishment the wine I had drunk and the delicacies I had eaten (I should not be able to eat and drink as much again in a year) had no adverse effect on my stomach. But they had, of course, worked upon my imagination. I was not drunk, since I can recall today in exact detail the most minute particulars of that night. But I was in a strange state of moral and physical excitement that, without diminishing my memory, robbed me of responsibility for my actions. I could have killed a man with a fruit knife, just for fun.
The girl’s teeth fascinated me. “What are you looking at me like that?”
“I was looking at your teeth.”
“Do you like them?”
“What do you do to keep them so shiny?”
“I don’t do anything.”
They were all even, all set regularly, the upper ones a little larger and so thin they seemed transparent.
“A girlfriend of mine,” she added, “the one that came with me to dinner at the Rebecchino with those two men, had a rotten tooth. You should have seen what a lovely tooth she had it replaced with.