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and he suspected that her prolonged ill humor, mingled with an ap–
parent physical repulsion, was connected not so much with the
place as with his own person. She was complaining about Anacapri
because she was not aware that her fundamental dissatisfaction
was with her husband. Theirs was a love match, to be sure, but
one based rather on the will to love than on genuine feeling. There
was good reason for his presentiment of trouble when, as he slipped
the ring on her finger, he had read a flicker of regret and embarrass–
ment on her face, for on their first night at Anacapri she had begged
off, on the plea of fatigue and seasickness, from giving herself to
him. On this, the second day of their marriage, she was just as
much of a virgin as she had been before.
As
she trudged wearily along, with a bag slung over one
shoulder, between the dusty hedges, Giacomo looked at her with
almost sorrowful intensity, hoping to take possession of her with
a single piercing glance, as he had so often done with other women.
But, as he realized right away, the piercing quality was lacking; his
eyes fell with analytical affection upon her, but there was in them
none of the transfiguring power of real passion. Although Simona
was not tall, she had childishly long legs with slender thighs, rising
to an indentation, almost a cleft at either side, visible under her
shorts, where they were joined to the body. The whiteness of her
legs was chaste, shiny and cold, she had a narrow waist and
hips
and her only womanly feature, revealed when she turned around
to speak to him, was the fullness of her low-swung breasts, which
seemed like extraneous and burdensome weights, unsuited to her
delicate frame. Similarly her thick, blond hair, although
it
was
cut short, hung heavily over her neck. All of a sudden, as
if
she
felt that she was being watched, she wheeled around and asked:
"Why do you make me walk ahead of you?"
Giacomo saw the childishly innocent expression of her big blue
eyes, her small, tilted nose and equally childishly rolled-back upper
lip. Her face, too, he thought to himself, was a stranger to him, un–
touched by love.
"I'll go ahead, if you like," he said with resignation.
And he went by her, deliberately brushing her breast with his
elbow to test his own desire. Then they went on walking, he ahead
and she behind. The path wound about the summit of Monte Solaro,
