She held her breath. That was what she was always doing, holding her breath so that the truth would never come out, at any time, not here with Stefano, and not in the hotel room with a lover who had asked questions about Stefano. She held her breath to choke the truth, made one more effort to be the very actress she denied being, to act the part she denied acting, to describe this trip she had not taken, to recreate the woman who had been away for eight days, so that the smile would not vanish from Stefano’s face, so that his trustingness and happiness would not be shattered.
During the brief suspense of her breathing she was able to make the transition. It was an actress who stood before Stefano now, reenacting the past eight days.
“The trip was tiring, but the play went well. I hated the role at first, as you know. But I began to feel for Madame Bovary, and the second night I played it well, I even understood her particular kind of voice and gestures. I changed myself completely. You know how tension makes the voice higher and thinner, and nervousness increases the number of gestures?”
“What an actress you are,” said Stefano. “You’re still doing it! You’ve entered into this woman’s part so thoroughly you can’t get out of it!
You’re actually making so many more gestures than you ever did, and your voice has changed. Why do you keep covering your mouth with your hand? As if you were holding back something you were strongly tempted to say?”
“Yes, that is what she was doing. I must stop. I’m so tired, so tired, and I can’t stop…can’t stop being her.”
“I want my own Serena back.”
Because Stefano had said this was a part she had been playing, because he had said this was not Serena, not the genuine one, the one he loved, Serena began to feel that the woman who had been away eight days, who had stayed at a small hotel with a lover, who had been disturbed by the instability of that other relationship, the strangeness of it, into a mounting anxiety expressed in multiple movements, wasted, unnecessary, like the tumult of wind or water, was indeed another woman, a part she had played on the road. The valise, the impermanency, the evanescent quality of the eight days were thus explained. Nothing that had happened had any connection with Serena herself, only with her profession. She had returned home intact, able to answer his loyalty with loyalty, his trust with trust, his single love with a single love.
“I want my own Serena back, not this woman with a new strange gesture she had never made before, of covering her face, her mouth with her hand as if she were about to say something she did not want to say or should not say.”
He asked more questions. And now that she was moving away from the description of the role she had played into descriptions of a town, a hotel and other people in the cast, she felt this secret, this anguishing constriction tightening her heart, an invisible flush of shame, invisible to others but burning in her like a fever.
It was this shame which dressed her suddenly, permeated her gestures, clouded her beauty, her eyes with a sudden opaqueness.
She experienced it as a loss of beauty, an absence of quality.
Every improvisation, every invention to Stefano was always followed not by any direct knowledge of this shame, but by a substitution: almost as soon as she had talked, she felt as if her dress had faded, her eyes dimmed, she felt unlovely, unlovable, not beautiful enough, not of a quality deserving to be loved. Why am I loved by him? Will he continue to love me? His love is for something I am not. I am not beautiful enough, I am not good, I am not good for him, he should not love me, I do not deserve it, shame shame shame for not being beautiful enough, there are other women so much more beautiful, with radiant faces and clear eyes. Stefano says my eyes are beautiful, but I cannot see them, to me they are lying eyes, my mouth lies, only a few hours ago it was kissed by another… He is kissing the mouth kissed by another, he is kissing eyes which adored another…shame…shame…shame…the lies, the lies… The clothes he is hanging up for me with such care were caressed and crushed by another, the other was so impatient he crushed and tore at my dress. I had no time to undress. It is this dress he is hanging up lovingly… Can I forget yesterday, forget the vertigo, this wildness, can I come home and stay home?
Sometimes I cannot bear the quick changes of scene, the quick transitions, I cannot make the changes smoothly, from one relationship to another. Some parts of me tear off like a fragment, fly here and there. I lose vital parts of myself, some part of me stays in that hotel room, a part of me is walking away from this place of haven, a part of me is following another as he walks down the street alone, or perhaps not alone: someone may take my place at his side while I am here, that will be my punishment, and someone will take my place here when I leave. I feel guilty for leaving each one alone, I feel responsible for their being alone, and I feel guilty twice over, towards both men. Wherever I am, I am in many pieces, not daring to bring them all together, anymore than I would dare to bring the two men together. Now I am here where I will not be hurt, for a few days at least I will not be hurt in any way, by any word or gesture…but I am not all of me here, only half ofme is being sheltered. Well, Serena, you failed as an actress.
You rejected the discipline, the routine, the monotony, the repetitions, any sustained effort, and now you have a role which must be changed every day, to protect one human being from sorrow. Wash your lying eyes and lying face, wear the clothes which stayed in the house, which are his, baptized by his hands, play the role of a whole woman, at least you have always wished to be that, it is not altogether a lie…