Read an Excerpt

The Woman of Rome

A Novel

Steerforth Press

AT SIXTEEN YEARS OF AGE, I was a real beauty. I had a perfectly oval face, narrow at the temples and widening a little below; my eyes were large, gentle and elongated; my nose formed one straight line with my forehead; my mouth was large, with beautiful full, red lips, and when I laughed, I showed very white, regular teeth. It struck me that I resembled a certain movie star who was very popular at the time and I began to do my hair as she did. Mother said that although my face was beautiful, my body was a hundred times more so; she said that there was not a body like mine in all Rome.

In those days I did not trouble about my body; I thought a beautiful face was all that mattered. But today I must admit Mother was right. I had firm straight legs, curving hips, a long back, narrow waist and broad shoulders. My belly was rather prominent as it has always been, and my navel was so deeply hollowed in my flesh that it almost disappeared; but Mother said this was an additional beauty, because a woman's belly ought to be rather prominent and not flat as is the fashion today. My breasts, too, were well developed, but firm and resilient so that I did not have to wear a brassiere. When I used to complain that they were overdeveloped, Mother said that they were really splendid and that women's breasts nowadays were nonexistent. When I was naked, I seemed tall and well proportioned, modeled like a statue, they told me later on; but when fully clothed, I looked like a slim young girl, and no one could have guessed that I was built as I was. This, I was told by an artist for whom I first began to pose, was because of the proportion between the various parts of my body.

Mother discovered this painter for me. Before she married and became a shirtmaker, she had been a model; then one day an artist gave her some shirts to make and, remembering her old profession, she suggested I should pose for him. The first time I went to his studio Mother insisted on coming with me, although I protested that I could easily go alone. I felt ashamed, not so much at having to undress in front of a man for the first time in my life, as at the things I guessed my mother would say to persuade him to employ me. And, in fact, after she had helped me to slip my clothes over my head and had made me stand naked in the middle of the room, she began to talk enthusiastically to the artist. "Just look what breasts! What hips! Look at her legs! Where else will you find legs and hips and breasts like these?" And as she said these things, she kept on prodding me, just like they prod animals to persuade people to buy them in the market. The painter was laughing; I grew ashamed and since it was winter I felt very cold. But I realized Mother was not talking in this way out of spite but that she was proud of my beauty because she was my mother and, if I was beautiful, I owed it all to her. The artist, too, seemed to understand her feelings and laughed, not from an ulterior motive, but with genuine friendliness, so that I felt reassured and, overcoming my shyness, walked on tiptoe to the stove to warm myself.

The artist must have been about forty and was a stout man with a cheerful, easygoing manner. I felt that he looked at me without desiring me, as he would at an object, and this comforted me. Later on, when he knew me better, he always treated me with kindness and respect, as a human being and no longer as a mere object. I was attracted to him immediately, and I might even have fallen in love with him out of sheer gratitude, just because he was kindly and affectionate toward me. But he never let himself go with me, always behaving like an artist not like a man, and our relationship remained as correct and distant as it was on the first day I posed for him.

When Mother had come to an end of my praises, the painter, without saying a word, went over to a heap of papers piled up on a chair. After having looked through them, he pulled out a colored print and showed it to Mother. "There's your daughter," he said in an undertone. I moved over from the stove to look at the print. It showed a naked woman lying on a bed covered with rich fabrics. A velvet curtain hung behind the bed and two winged cherubs, like two little angels, floated in the air in the folds of the curtain. The woman really did resemble me; only, although she was naked, the textures and the rings she was wearing on her fingers showed clearly that she must have been a queen, or someone important, whereas I was only a common girl. At first Mother did not understand and stared in consternation at the print. Then suddenly she seemed to see the resemblance. "She's exactly like that! It's Adriana! You see how right I was? Who is this woman?" she exclaimed excitedly.

"It's Danae," replied the artist with a smile.

"Danae who?"

"Danae — a pagan goddess."

Mother, who had expected to hear the name of a real person, was rather disconcerted, and in order to hide her embarrassment began to explain to me that I had to do what the painter wanted — lie like the figure in the print, for instance, or stand or sit and keep still all the time he was working. He said laughingly that Mother knew more about it than he did, and Mother immediately began to talk of when she had been known all over Rome as one of the handsomest models and the harm she had done herself by marrying and giving up her career. Meanwhile the artist had made me lie down on a sofa at one end of the studio and take up a pose, arranging my arms and legs in the position he required. He did this with an abstracted, thoughtful gentleness, hardly touching me, as if he had already seen me in the attitude in which he wanted to paint me. Then, although Mother continued to chatter, he began to sketch in the preliminary outlines on a white canvas standing on an easel. Mother noticed he was no longer listening to her, since he was absorbed in drawing me.

"How much will you pay this daughter of mine an hour?" she asked.

Without lifting his eyes from the canvas, the painter named a sum. Mother picked up the clothes I had arranged on a chair and threw them at me.

"Come on! Get your clothes on — we'd better be going," she said to me.

"Now what's the matter?" asked the painter in astonishment, stopping his work.

"Nothing," answered Mother, pretending to be in a great hurry. "Come on, Adriana — we've got a lot to do."

"But, look here," said the painter, "if you want to come to terms, make an offer — what's the meaning of all this?"

Then Mother began to make a dreadful scene, shouting at the top of her voice that he was mad if he thought he could get away with paying me so little, that I was not one of those models nobody wants, that I was sixteen and was posing for the first time. When Mother wants something, she always starts shouting and pretends she is furiously angry. But she is not really angry at all and I, who know her through and through, know that she is as calm as oil underneath. But she shouts like the women in the market when a purchaser offers too little for their goods. She shouts most of all at well-mannered people, because she knows their manners will always make them yield to her.

And, in fact, even the artist gave way in the end. While Mother was creating a scene, he kept on smiling and making a gesture from time to time with one hand as if he wished to say something. At last Mother stopped to get her breath, and he asked her again how much she wanted. But she wouldn't say straight out. "I'd like to know just how much the painter who did that picture you showed me gave his model!" she shouted unexpectedly.

The artist began to laugh. "What's that got to do with it? Those were other days — he probably gave her a bottle of wine or a pair of gloves."

Mother seemed as much put out as she had been when he told her the print represented Danae. The artist was having a little quiet fun at her expense, without any malice, of course, but she did not realize it. She started shouting again, calling him mean and boasting about my beauty. Then suddenly she pretended to calm down and told him how much she wanted. The artist argued the point for a while, and at last they agreed on a sum that was only a little less than Mother had asked. The artist walked over to a table, opened a drawer, and paid her. She took the money, looking highly delighted, gave me a few more suggestions, and left. The artist shut the door and then returning to his easel, spoke to me.

"Does your mother always shout?"

"Mother loves me," I replied.

"I got the impression that she loves money more than anything else in the world," he said quietly, as he proceeded with his drawing.

"No, no, that's not true," I answered with vivacity. "She loves me best of all, but she's sorry I was born poor and she wants me to earn a good living."

I've related this matter of the artist in detail, first of all because this was the day when I began to work, although later on I chose another profession, and then because Mother's behavior on this occasion illuminates her character and the nature of her affection for me.

When my hour's sitting was over, I went to meet Mother in a café where she had told me to pick her up. She asked me how it had gone and made me tell every word of the conversation that the artist, who was rather a silent fellow, had carried on with me during the sitting. In the end she told me I would have to be very careful, perhaps this artist had no dishonorable intentions, but many of them employed models with the idea of making them their mistresses. I was to repel their advances at all costs. "They are all penniless," she explained, "and you can't expect to get anything out of them. With your looks you can aim much higher, much higher."

This was the first time Mother had ever spoken to me in this way. But she spoke decisively, as if she were saying things she had been pondering for some time.

"What do you mean?" I asked her in astonishment.

"Those people have plenty of talk but no money. A lovely girl like you ought to go with gentlemen," she answered rather vaguely.

"What gentlemen? I don't know any gentlemen!"

She looked at me. "You can be a model for the time being," she said even more vaguely, "then we'll see — one thing leads to another." But the reflective, grasping look on her face alarmed me. I asked her nothing more on that occasion.

But in any case, Mother's advice was unnecessary, because I was very serious even for my extreme youth. After this artist, I met others and soon became well enough known among the artists. I must say that they were usually tactful and respectful, although more than one showed me what his feelings were toward me. But I repelled them all so harshly that I soon had the reputation of being unapproachably virtuous. I have already said that most of the artists were nearly always respectful; this was probably because their aim was not to make love to me but to draw and paint me. They were accustomed to models, and my naked body, although it was young and fully developed, made as little impression upon them as upon a doctor. The artists' friends, on the other hand, often embarrassed me. They used to come in and begin to chat with the artist. But I soon noticed that, although they did their utmost to appear indifferent, they were unable to keep their eyes off me. Some were quite shameless and would begin wandering around the studio so that they could examine me from every angle. These glances, as well as Mother's veiled allusions, roused my sense of coquetry and made me conscious both of my beauty and of the advantages I might draw from it. At last I not only became accustomed to their tactlessness, but, after a while, I could not help feeling delighted when I saw how excited the visitors became, and disappointed when they were indifferent to me. And so, all unawares, my vanity led me to think that whenever I chose to, I could improve my situation by making use of my looks, just as Mother had said.

My chief aim at that time, however, was to get married. My senses were still dormant, and the men who watched me while I was posing aroused no emotion in me other than vanity. I used to give Mother all the money I earned and, when I was not posing, I stayed at home with her and helped her cut out and sew shirts, our only means of livelihood since my father, who had been a railwayman, had died. We lived in a small apartment on the second floor of a long, low building, erected specially for the railwaymen fifty years earlier. The house was situated on a suburban avenue pleasantly shaded by plane trees. On one side was a row of houses exactly like ours, all alike, with two floors, brick facades without any stucco, twelve windows, and a central door; on the other side, the city walls extended from tower to tower, intact at that point and smothered in greenery.

There was a gate in the city walls not far from our house. Near this gate, running along inside the walls, stretched the enclosed site of Luna Park, an amusement park whose illuminations and music enlivened the summer months. If I looked out sideways from my window, I could see festoons of colored lamps, the beflagged roofs of the various booths and the crowd packed round the entrance under the branches of the plane trees. I could hear the music quite clearly and I often stayed awake at night listening to it and half dreaming, with my eyes wide open. It seemed to come from a world out of reach, at least for me, and this feeling was heightened by the darkness and narrowness of my room. The whole population of the city seemed to have come together at Luna Park, and I was the only one left out. I longed to get out of bed and join them, but I did not move, and the music, which kept up an uninterrupted jangle of sound the whole night through, made me conscious of a definite loss, the consequence of some sin I did not even know I had committed. Sometimes while listening to the music I even began to cry, so bitter was it to be left out. I was very sentimental at this time and any little thing, a friend's snub, a reproach from Mother, a touching scene at the movies, made tears well up in my eyes. Perhaps I would not have been conscious of a forbidden, happy world if Mother had not refused to let me go to Luna Park or have any other amusement when I was a child. But her widowhood, her poverty, and above all her hostility to all the pleasures fate had denied her, made her refuse to let me go to Luna Park, or to any other place of entertainment, except much later, when I was a grown girl and my character was already formed. I owe to this, in all probability, the suspicion that has remained with me all my life through of somehow being shut out from the gay, brilliant world of happiness, a suspicion I am unable to shake off, even when I know for certain that I am happy.

I have already said that at this time I thought only of getting married, and I can also say how it was that this thought was first planted in my mind. The suburban avenue where our house stood led a little farther on to a more prosperous district. Instead of the long, low railwaymen's houses, which looked like so many dusty, worn-out old carriages, there were a number of little houses surrounded by gardens. They were not luxurious, clerks and small shopkeepers lived in them, but in comparison with our sordid dwelling they gave an impression of a gayer and easier life. First of all, each house was different; then, they were not all cracked and stained, with the plaster peeling off, as were our house and others like it, making them appear as though their inhabitants had long neglected them through sheer indifference. And finally, the narrow blossoming gardens that surrounded them created an impression of possessive intimacy, of remoteness from the confusion and promiscuity of the street. In the building where I lived, on the contrary, the street penetrated everywhere: into the huge hall that was like a warehouse, into the wide, bare, dirty staircase, even into the rooms, where the rickety, casual furniture was reminiscent of junkshops where the same sort of pieces are exhibited for sale on the pavements.

---

Excerpted from The Woman of Rome by Alberto Moravia, Lydia Holland, Tami Calliope. Copyright © 1999 R.C.S. Libri S.p.A. â" Milan. Excerpted by permission of Steerforth Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---