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Annie Vivanti
Marie Tarnowska
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066127305
Table of Contents
I
Ed or, che Dio mi tolga la memoria.
Contessa Lara.
The verdant landscape of Tuscany swung past the train that carried me southward. The looped vineyards—like slim, green dancers holding hands—fled backwards as we passed, and the rays of the March sun pursued us, beating hotly through the open windows on the dusty red velvet cushions of the carriage.
Soon the train was throbbing and panting out of Pisa, and the barefooted children of the Roman Campagna stood to gaze after us, with eyes soft and wild under their sullen hair.
Since leaving the station of Genoa I had seen nothing of the fleeting springtide landscape; my gaze and thoughts were riveted on the pages of a copy-book which lay open on my knee—a simple school copy-book with innocent blue-lined sheets originally intended to contain the carefully labored scrawls of some childish hand. A blue ornamental flourish decked the front; and under the printed title, “Program of Lessons,” the words “History,” “Geography,” “Arithmetic,” were followed by a series of blank spaces for the hours to be filled in. Alas, for the tragic pupil to whom this book belonged, in what school of horror had she learned the lesson traced on these pages by her slim, white hand—the fair patrician hand which had known the weight of many jewels, the thrill of many caresses, and was now held fast in the merciless grip of captivity.
I turned the page: before me lay a flow of pale penciled words in a sloping handwriting. At every turn the flourish of some strange seignorial name met my eye: long Russian names of prince, of lover or of murderer. On every page was the convulsion of death or the paroxysm of passion; wine and morphia, chloral and cocaine surged across the pallid sheets, like the wash of a nightmare sea.
From the midst of those turbid billows—like some ineffable modern Aphrodite—rose