Among Women Only
AMONG WOMEN ONLY
Cesare Pavese
English translation of Tra donne sole, 1949, by R.W. Flint
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1
I arrived in Turin with the last January snow, like a street acrobat or a candy seller. I remembered it was carnival time when I saw the booths and the bright points of acetylene lamps under the porticoes, but it was not dark yet and I walked from the station to the hotel, peering out from under the arches and over the heads of the people. The sharp air was biting my legs and, tired as I was, I huddled in my fur and loitered in front of the shop windows, letting people bump into me. I thought how the days were getting longer, that before long a bit of sun would loosen the frozen muck and open up the spring.
That was how I saw Turin again, in the half light under the porticoes. When I entered the hotel, I thought of nothing but a hot bath, stretching out, and a long night. Especially since I had to stay in Turin for quite a while.
I telephoned no one and no one knew I was staying at that hotel. Not even a bunch of flowers was waiting for me. The maid running my bath talked to me, bent over the tub, while I was exploring the room. A man, a valet, wouldn't do such things. I asked her to go, saying that I would be all right alone. The girl babbled something, standing in front of me, wringing her hands. Then I asked where she came from. She reddened brightly and said she was Venetian. ''One can tell," I said. "And I am from Turin. You'd like to go home, I imagine?"
She nodded with a sly look.
"Then remember that I've just come home," I said. "Don't spoil the pleasure for me."
"Excuse me," she said. "May I go?"
When I was alone in the warm water, I closed my eyes; they ached from too much pointless talking. The more I convince myself that there's no point in talking, the more I seem to talk. Especially among women. But my tiredness and a slight feverishness soon dissolved in the water and I thought of the last time I had been in Turin, during the war, the day after a bombing raid. All the pipes were burst, no bath. I thought with pleasure: as long as life contains baths, living is worth the effort.
A bath and a cigarette. While I smoked, I compared the sloshing that comforted me now to the tense life I'd been leading, to the storm of words, my impatient desires, to the projects I'd always carried through, although this evening everything had come down to this tub and this pleasant warmth. Had I been ambitious? I saw the ambitious faces again: pale, marked, convulsed faces—did one of them ever relax for a peaceful hour? Not even when you are dying does that passion slow up. It seemed that I had never relaxed for a moment. Perhaps twenty years before, when I was a little girl playing in the streets and waiting excitedly for the season of confetti, booths, and masks, perhaps then I could let myself go. But in those years the carnival meant only merry-go-rounds, torrone, and cardboard noses. Later there was a fever to go out, to see Turin and run through it; there were my first adventures in the alleys with Carlotta and the other girls, when, hearts beating, we felt ourselves being followed for the first time: all that innocence had come to an end.
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