The Intruder

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

It was a cold, ingenious, incessant premeditation, that absorbed all my inner faculties. The fixed idea possessed me absolutely with inconceivable power and tenacity. All my being labored in a supreme crisis; and the fixed, clear, rigid idea directed me, without deviation, toward the goal as if I were gliding along over steel rails. My perspicacity seemed to be trebled. Nothing escaped me, within me or about me. There was not a single minute of relaxation in my circumspection. I said nothing, I did nothing, that could awaken suspicion or cause surprise. I simulated, I dissimulated, ceaselessly, and not only with my mother, my brother, and all the others who knew nothing, but even with Juliana.

With Juliana I affected resignation, appeasement, at times even a sort of forgetfulness. I studied to avoid the slightest allusions to the intruder. I sought by every means to encourage her, to inspire her with confidence, to cause her to observe the directions that must bring her back to health. I multiplied my zealous endeavors. I wanted to feel for her a tenderness so profound, so forgetful of the past, that it would permit her to again find the freshest and purest savor in life. I felt again the sensation that my being was becoming transfused into the body of the invalid, that I was communicating to her some of my strength, that I imparted an impulse to her exhausted heart. It was I, it seemed, who, from day to day, forced her to live and breathed into her an artificial vigor, while waiting the tragic and liberating hour. I repeated to myself: "To-morrow!" and to-morrow came, passed, disappeared, without the hour having sounded. I again repeated: "To-morrow!"

I was convinced that the mother's health depended on the child's death. I was convinced that, after the suppression of the intruder, she would be cured. I thought: "It would be impossible for her not to get well. She would resuscitate gradually, be regenerated with new blood. She would appear a new creature, freed from all impurity. We would both feel purified, worthy of each other, after so long and so painful an expiation. The illness, the convalescence, would relegate the sad memories to an indefinite distance. And I would try to efface from her soul even the shadow of the recollection; I would try to cause her perfect oblivion in love. After this great trial, every other human love would seem frivolous by comparison with ours." The vision of the future burned me with impatience; the incertitude became intolerable to me; the crime appeared to me exempt from horror. I bitterly reproached myself for the perplexities which an excess of prudence kept me in; but no light had yet illumined my brain. I had not succeeded in finding a sure means.

Raymond must appear to have died a natural death. The doctor himself must not have a glimmer of suspicion. Of the various methods I examined, not one seemed to me satisfactory, practicable. And yet, while I awaited the revealing flash, the divine inspiration, I felt myself attracted by a strange fascination toward the victim.

Frequently I unexpectedly entered the nurse's room with so strong a palpitation that I feared she would hear my heart-beats. Her name was Anna. She was a woman from Montegorgo Pausula, of a grand race of robust mountaineers. She was dressed after the fashion of her country—a red petticoat with a thousand straight and symmetrical folds, a black corsage embroidered with gold, with two long sleeves through which her arms were rarely passed. Her head arose bistre-like above her very white chemise; but the whiteness of her eyes and teeth exceeded in intensity the snowy whiteness of the fabric. Her eyes, brilliant like enamel, remained almost always motionless, without revery, without thought. The mouth was large, half-open, taciturn, illuminated by a row of even and well-set teeth. The hair, so black that it seemed to have a violet reflection, was parted on a low forehead, and terminated in two tresses that were rolled up behind the ears like the horns of a ram. She was almost constantly seated, with the nursing child in her arms, in a sculptured attitude, neither sad nor joyous.

I entered. Usually the room was dark. I saw the white spot made by Raymond's dresses on the arm of that bronzed and powerful woman, who fixed on me her eyes like those of an inanimate idol, without a word and without a smile.

Sometimes I stopped and watched the nursing infant sucking at the rounded breast, which was of a singularly light tone in comparison with the face, and crossed by blue veins. He sucked, sometimes gently, sometimes vigorously, sometimes without appetite, sometimes with sudden avidity. The soft cheek followed the movement of the lips, the throat palpitated with every aspiration, the nose almost disappeared beneath the pressure of the swollen breast. I imagined seeing the good spread through that tender body with that inflow of fresh, healthy, and substantial milk. I imagined that at every new swallow the vitality of the intruder became more tenacious, more resistant, more malefic. I felt a dull chagrin at noticing that he was growing and bore no indication of weakness, except those whitish crusts, light and inoffensive. I thought: "Have not all the agitations, all the sufferings of the mother, while she was bearing him, done him some harm? Or has he really some organic vice that is not yet manifest, but which, in the end, could develop and cause his death?"

One day, when I found him undressed in his cradle, I surmounted my repugnance; I felt him, I examined him from head to foot, I applied my ear to his chest to listen to his heart beat. He drew up his little limbs, then forcibly extended them; he waved his hands, all covered with dimples and folds; he buried in his mouth his fingers terminated by minute nails. Folds of flesh accumulated around the wrists, at the ankles, behind the knees, on the thighs, at the groins, on the lower abdomen.

Several times also I watched him while he slept. I looked at him for a long time, thinking and re-thinking of the means, made absent-minded by the inner vision of the little corpse in swaddling-clothes stretched in the coffin, amidst the wreaths of white chrysanthemums, between four lighted candles. He slept very peacefully; he lay on his back, his fist closed over his thumb. At times his moist lips made a movement as of sucking. If the innocence of that slumber went to my heart, if the unconscious act of those lips softened me, I said to myself, as if to make my resolution firm: "He must die!" And I represented to myself the sufferings already endured for him—the recent sufferings, those that were preparing—and how much affection he usurped to the detriment of my own children, and Juliana's agony, and all the menaces that the mysterious tempest suspended over our heads concealed. In that way I rekindled my homicidal will, I confirmed the sentence of the sleeper. In a corner, in the dark, the guardian was seated, the woman from Montegorgo, taciturn, motionless, like an idol; and the whiteness of her eyes, the whiteness of her teeth, rivalled in brilliancy the large golden circles in her ears.

XL.