Boredom - Alberto Moravia [114]
“You know who the man on all fours is?” asked the widow, going up to the picture and looking at it with vindictive intentness. “It’s hard to tell because the face isn’t clear; but I know. It’s he himself, my husband. You may think that by painting himself in that way he intended to show that the girl trampled him, so to speak, underfoot. Not at all. He did it quite seriously.”
“But what did he mean?”
“He used to go down on all fours, and she climbed on his back and he jumped about all over the studio. Like little boys playing at horses. And then, believe it or not, he would rear up and throw her on the floor with her legs in the air. I saw them one day, with my own eyes, through the window. Oh, they were enjoying themselves all right!” For a moment she was silent as she continued to look at the picture. Then she added: “If you like that picture, Professor, I’ll sell it to you.”
So little was I expecting such a proposal that for a moment I did not know what to say; then I understood: the widow knew of my passion for Cecilia and wished to speculate upon it. All of a sudden I had a feeling of shame, like someone with a vice which he thinks he has kept secret and who then finds himself being offered, in the street, a packet of obscene photographs portraying precisely that same vice. I asked, in irritation: “Why the devil should I buy that picture?”
Serenely, she answered: “I asked in case it might interest you. In a few days’ time I have to take away the pictures, because I have managed to sublet the studio and the new tenant does not want them. He says they’re too daring. So I thought you might like to have one of them as a souvenir.”
“A souvenir of what? Of whom? Of your husband? We scarcely knew each other.”
Again she made a gesture of roguish compassion, slapping me on the shoulder and shaking her head. “Professor, Professor, let’s try and understand one another,” she said. “Why don’t you want to be honest with me? My hair is white, now”—and she indicated her raven-black hair, combed back in two smooth bands to a bun on the back of her neck, in which a few white threads were visible—“and I could easily be that girl’s mother; why won’t you be honest with me?”
I now sat down at the table, on which was the telephone; and I made a sign to the widow to sit down too; and then, pretending not to have heard her appeal to my honesty, I said to her solemnly and at the same time rather threateningly: “Signora Balestrieri, kindly tell me exactly what this is all about. You have made certain allusions which I do not understand. I should like you to explain them to me.”
Slightly intimidated, she took refuge, like a true peasant woman, in a tone of lamentation. “My husband, alas, did not leave me at all well off. I thought that you, as a painter yourself, would really understand my husband’s pictures, and might possibly buy at least one of them. I’ve tried to sell them but people don’t understand them.”
“But I haven’t any money,” I replied. “I’m just a painter, and a painter who doesn’t paint, into the bargain.”
She was genuinely astonished. “How strange,” she said; “I’ve been told that your mother’s so rich.”
“My mother is, but I’m not.”
“Then forget about it, Professor, forget about it.”
“One moment,” I insisted; “just now you made a certain allusion. Why, in point of fact, should I acquire this picture as a souvenir? A souvenir of whom?”
She opened her fine black eyes very wide and stared at me. “Of that model, of course,” she said.
“And why?”
“Professor, you know why.”
“Signora Balestrieri, I don’t understand you.”
“Well, Professor, you know what people say? That that girl is your mistress.”
“Who says so?”
“Everyone....