528
PARTISAN REVIEW
then by fine wisps of clouds, which she majestically allowed to
fall around her shoulders; and the traffic light meanwhile, always
there, on and off, on and off, throbbing with a false vitality, but
actually weary and enslaved.
He went back to see if the girl had admitted anything. Not on
your life: no admission from her. In fact, she wasn ' t now the one
who refused to admit; he was. The situation had changed com–
pletely, and it was she who kept saying to him: "Then you admit
it?" and he kept saying "No." A half hour went by like this. In the
end, he admitted, or she did; anyway, Marcovaldo saw them get up
and walk off, hand in hand.
He ran to the bench, flung himself on it; but meanwhile, in
his waiting, he had lost some of his propensity to feel the sweet–
ness he had been expecting to find there, and his bed at home, as
he now remembered it, wasn ' t as hard as it had been. But these
were minor points; his determination to enjoy the night in the
open air remained firm. He stuck his face in the pillow and pre–
pared for sleep, the kind of sleep to which he had long become un–
accustomed.
Now he had found the most comfortable position. He
wouldn't have shifted a fraction of an inch for anything in the
world. Too bad, though, that when he lay like this, his gaze didn't
fall on a prospect of trees and sky alone, so that in sleep his eyes
would close on a view of absolute natural serenity. Before him,
foreshortened, a tree was followed by the sword of a general from
the height of his monument, then another tree, a notice board,
a third tree, and then, a bit farther, that false, flashing
moon, the traffic light, still ticking off its yellow, yellow,
yellow.
It
must be said that Marcovaldo's nervous system had been in
such poor shape lately that even when he was dead tired a trifle
sufficed to keep him awake; he had only to think something was
annoying him, and sleep was out of the question. And now he was
annoyed by that traffic light blinking on and off.
It
was there in
the distance, a yellow eye, winking, alone.
It
was nothing
to
both–
er about, but Marcovaldo must have been suffering from nervous
exhaustion. He stared at that blinking and repeated to himself,
"How I would sleep if that thing wasn't there! How I would
sleep!'
He closed hi s eyes and seemed to feel, under his eyelids, that
