Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

ANTONIETTA
She was seventeen years old, her name was Antonietta. She
was beautiful, and good and she died. It was said she was consumed
by a deep love that she did not wish to disclose to me. At
least this is what the maid said in a torrent of words as she tidied
my room, the very morning on which Antonietta had been taken
away.
The girl resided on the top floor of the boarding house where I
had my lodging as a student. She lived with her mother, the widow
of a clerk, and they eked out a living from his small pension, combined
with the wages from her handiwork. I had never spoken to
the girl: I only remembered on occasion having seen on the stairs or
in the lobby, a pale oval face with lowered eyes and dark circles,
that I assumed to be the face of Antonietta. Upon learning that she
had departed this world never to return, breathlessness overtook
me, as if it were my own misfortune. Almost taken by the arm and
guided by an invisible hand, I went onto the landing, descended
the stairs, still smelling of rose water and wax, and I turned my
footsteps towards the city of the dead.
Once arrived there (I know not which sense, more subtle than
the other five made me certain of the way) I kept to the path that
lead to a broad field pierced with crosses, where there was a small
plot and above it fresh garlands of flowers. One might almost have
said, before the swelling of soil, that the earth itself was rising up so
as to avoid disturbing the virginal corpse that slumbered below,
and opening itself to return her to the sun. There I remained, transfixed,
watching the wilting flowers joined into wreaths, wreaths
which might each have awoken a smile in the once-living girl, and
I felt pearls of grief grow within the shells of my eyes. Wretched
Antonietta! Of all sorrows, the most agonizing is the poverty of
love! As in a dream I saw you, your suffering head bowed over
your embroidery hoop, your eyes darkened by a tearful labor without
respite, forever awaiting the kiss on the hollow of your neck
that would have made you happy and whole. But nothing: nothing,
and even hope— the dream of the waking—fades in you. Only
melancholy endures, that worm in the rosebud, devourer of your
cheeks, your breast, your heart, nor do you lack anything other
than to close your eyes, to make your death complete.
And here the thought arose in me, insinuating, insistent, that