Boredom - Alberto Moravia [113]
I noticed that she did not appear surprised nor yet displeased at finding me in her husband’s studio. She introduced herself, saying in a warm, low voice, a regular peasant’s voice: “I am Signora Balestrieri.”
I hastened to offer my apologies. “Forgive me, I found the door open and came in to have a look at the pictures.”
She answered promptly: “Please, Professor, do come in here whenever you like. I know my poor husband was a great friend of yours.”
I dared not contradict her. Now she was looking at me and smiling; and in her smile there seemed to be a kind of affectionate indulgence which I did not understand. “I came to look for you in your studio, Professor,” she said, “because I must speak to you about something that may interest you. I found your door open, saw that you weren’t there, and then I thought you might be here.”
“Why did you think I was here?”
“Because I knew that you have the key of my husband’s studio.”
“Who told you that?”
“Why, the caretaker, Professor.”
“And you wanted to speak to me?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I looked for you the other day, but you weren’t there.” Then, changing the subject, she went on, with awkward, countrified tactlessness: “How d’you like these pictures, Professor?”
Embarrassed, I replied: “Your husband, as a painter, was full of quality.”
“They’re good, aren’t they?” she resumed, starting to walk around the studio and look at the canvases on the walls. “You know, Professor, that they’re all done from the same model?”
I said nothing. After a moment she went on, still in that same countrified manner, full of allusions and irony: “What a pretty girl, isn’t she, Professor? Look what a chest she has, what legs, what shoulders, what hips! She’s really what they call a lovely girl, Professor.”
“But you,” I said, seeking to turn the conversation, “didn’t your husband ever paint you?”
“Yes, many, many times in the old days. But there’s no picture of me here. When we separated, my husband took down all the paintings of me off the walls and sent them to where I lived. I have them all still. But I was not as pretty as this girl. Mine was a classical beauty, I was made like a statue. But this is a modern kind of beauty, half child and half woman; that’s what they like nowadays. Yes,” she reaffirmed with a sigh, “really a beautiful girl. Pity she’s not as good as she’s beautiful.”
I could not refrain from asking, not altogether ingenuously: “You know her, then?”
“Yes, of course I know her. How could I fail to know her? My poor husband died because of her, you might say.”
“So they say.”
“Yes,” she corrected with dignity, “I know what they say. The usual disgusting things. And indeed that may have happened, but it could have happened with any other woman just as well. No, I did not mean that. I meant that he died because of this girl from the heartbreak that she caused him.”
“In what way?”
“With her wickedness.”
“Is this girl so wicked?”
She answered with reason and moderation. “I don’t say she’s altogether wicked. Women, as everyone know, are good or bad according to whether they love or not. In any case she was wicked to my husband. With you, I daresay, she’s good.”
At last I understood the obscure allusiveness of her looks and words; she knew that Cecilia was my mistress. Pretending to be surprised, I said: “How do I come into it?”
She lifted her hand and slapped me on the shoulder, in a gesture of rustic sympathy. “Poor Professor—well, well, well, poor Professor!” Then she walked away from me and, pointing to the wall, asked suddenly: “D’you like that picture, Professor?”
I went up and looked at it. It was a singular picture inasmuch as Balestrieri, who generally limited himself to depicting Cecilia alone, in various attitudes, had here sketched in a kind of composition. Against the usual muddy, sticky looking background Cecilia was to be seen,