'Leave a kiss on the first page of my story. . It'll bring me luck.'
She gave a laugh which was at the same time affectionate and forced; but both the affection and the effort seemed to me to be oddly sincere. And she went hastily into my study, exclaiming: 'How superstitious you are!. . How silly you are!. . But just as you like. . '
I turned on the light, but she had already found her way in the darkness to my desk. 'Which is the page?… Tell me which page it is I've got to kiss,' she kept repeating with a sort of feverish enthusiasm.
I went up to her and handed her the first page, on which I had typed nothing but the title: Conjugal Love. She seized hold of it, read out the title aloud, commenting upon it with a grimace which I could not understand, then raised the sheet of paper to her mouth and pressed her lips against it. 'Now are you content?' she said.
Just beneath the title, the page now bore the mark of her lips — two red semicircles, like two flower-petals. I looked at it for some time, with a feeling of satisfaction, and then I said softly: 'Thank you, my dear.'
She raised her hand and quickly stroked my cheek, then moved towards the door, saying hurriedly: 'Good luck with your work, then. . I'm going to go and sleep…. I really feel very tired. . Please don't knock at my door for any reason whatsoever…. I just want to sleep — that's all. . Till tomorrow, then. . '
'Very well… till tomorrow.'
She went out, almost running into the maid who was bringing in the coffee. When she too had gone, I lit a cigarette, sat down at my desk, drank two cups of coffee straight off, and finally took the cover off the typewriter. I was conscious of an extraordinary mental lucidity, as though, instead of the usual confused, unwieldy tangle of vague and contradictory thoughts, my head contained a clean, precise, perfectly adjusted mechanism like that of a weighing-machine or a clock. I felt that this mechanism excluded all vanity, pride, fear and ambition. It was the precision instrument, incorruptible, impersonal, by means of which I was preparing to gauge, to appraise, to perfect my work as I copied it out. A cigarette between my lips, my eyes fixed on my sheet of paper, I started typing, continuing the page which was already half done.
I typed, perhaps, four lines, and then I put down my cigarette in the ashtray, pushed the typewriter to one side, took up the manuscript and began to read it. As I have said, I was feeling exceptionally clear in the head; and now, as I typed the first four lines, I had become conscious of a feeling of falsity which was quite distinct and exactly like the dull sound of a cracked glass. In other words, it had flashed across my mind that the story not merely was not the masterpiece that I had imagined, but was actually bad. As I have already mentioned, I have a certain literary experience and, in given circumstances, am also capable of being a tolerable critic. I realized at that moment that, with my present extraordinary, and aggressive, mental lucidity, my whole critical faculty was brought into play, to an amazing degree, upon the page I held in my hand. The words were no longer mere words but fragments of a metal that I was gradually testing, with perfect certainty, by means of the touchstone of my own taste. I did not read it straight through because I did not wish to be caught up in the rhythm of the narrative; but I read pieces here and there, and the more I read the more disquieted I became. It seemed to me impossible that I was making a mistake now: the story was thoroughly bad, beyond any remedy. All of a sudden, seized by an almost scientific craze for objectivity, I took a sheet of blank paper, grasped my fountain pen and started jotting down my observations as they came into my mind, just as I did when I had a book to review.
At the top of the page I wrote, in a firm hand: 'Remarks upon the story Conjugal Love, by Silvio Baldeschi'; then I drew a line under it and began to make notes. I followed the method I usually adopted in composing my critical articles — that is, analysing the work disconnectedly in all its various aspects and then finally fusing all these detailed observations into one single, comprehensive verdict. Of course I had no intention of writing an article about myself; I merely wished to establish, to a certain extent, the reasons for that first feeling that the story was bad. Also, perhaps, to punish myself for having believed it a masterpiece. But, above all, to reach some clear and final conclusion about my own literary ambitions.