PARTISAN REVIEW
Giacomo looked in the direction at which she was pointing and
saw a solitary sail emerging from the mist that hung over the water.
"A boat," he said testily.
She started walking again, at
a
quickened pace, as if she
were afraid that he might try once more to embrace her. And as he
saw her escape him he had a recurrent feeling of impotence,
be–
cause he could not take immediate possession of his beloved.
"You won't do that to me tonight," he muttered between
clenched teeth as he caught up with her.
And she answered, lowering her head without looking around:
"It will be different tonight...."
It
was really hot, there was no doubt about that, and in the
heavy air around them there seemed to Giacomo to reside the same
obstacle, the same impossibility that bogged down his relationship with
his wife. The impossibility of a rainfall that would clear the air,
the impossibility of love. He had a sensation of something like panic,
when looking at her again he felt that his will to love was purely in–
tellectual and did not involve
his
senses. Her figure was outlined
quite precisely before him, but there was none of the halo around
it in which love usually envelops the loved one's person. Impulsively
he said:
"Perhaps you shouldn't have married me."
Simona seemed to accept this statement as a basis for discussion,
as if she had had the same thought without daring to come out with
it.
"Why?" she asked.
Giacomo wanted to answer: "Because we don't really love
each other," but although this was the thought in
his
mind, he
expressed it in an entirely different manner. Simona was a Com–
munist and had a job at Party headquarters. Giacomo was not a
Communist at all; he claimed to attach no importance to his wife's
political ideas, but they had a way of cropping up at the most
unexpected moments as underlying motives for disagreement. And
now he was astonished to hear himself say:
"Because there is too great a difference of ideas between us."
"What sort of ideas do you mean?"
"Political ideas."
He realized then why her standoffishness had caused
him
to
