Boredom - Alberto Moravia [115]
I pretended to be disconcerted. Then, slowly and firmly, I said: “Ah, so that’s the reason. Then you’re mistaken. That girl is nothing to me.”
She gave a little laugh of indulgent complicity. “Ah, Professor! Ah, Professor!” but I interrupted her, raising my voice in a conventional show of annoyance: “If I say a thing, I mean it!”
Again she withdrew into her shell, like a snail. But next moment she peeped out again with the remark: “I believe you, Professor. Well, you know what I say? For your sake, I’m glad.”
“Why?”
“I told you: that girl is beautiful but she isn’t good.”
“In what way?”
She sighed. “My husband could have told you better than I can,” she said. “But my husband is dead. I don’t know anything precise, you must understand. I know only one thing: my husband owned a five-room flat in the neighborhood of Piazza Bologna, worth several million lire. But when he died, it was discovered that he had sold the flat. However, the millions were not to be found. What was found was an account book in which my husband, who was an orderly man, noted down his expenses. On almost every page there was an entry: Cecilia, so much and so much.”
“You mean to say that this girl exploited your husband?”
“Exactly, Professor.” She sighed again and then went on in a low voice, very hurriedly: “She’s a deep one, that girl, Professor. Heartless, false, mercenary. And she was unfaithful to him, into the bargain; she took money from him and gave it to another man.”
“Gave the money to another man?” I could not help exclaiming.
“Certainly she did—a miserable creature that she went to see every evening after she’d been with my husband during the day.”
“But who was this man?”
“A saxophone player. He played in a night club. They spent my husband’s money together. He even bought a car.”
“Then your husband gave this girl a great deal of money?”
“Millions, Professor. It’s all noted down in the account book. But, do you know, Professor?”
“What?”
“Although we were separated, my husband and I remained friends, so to speak. Well, he used to come and see me sometimes and he always talked to me about this girl. It was too much for him, he couldn’t help it, and he took me into his confidence. And do you know? A man like him, who had had so many women, a man with his experience and intelligence—he used to cry.”
Recalling that Cecilia, too, had spoken to me of Balestrieri’s tears, I said: “But he cried easily, your husband.”
“Easily? Don’t you believe it. We were together for years and I never saw him shed a tear. He cried because this girl had reduced him to despair. D’you know what he used to say? That this girl would be the death of him. He had a presentiment about it.”
“What was the name of the saxophone player to whom Cec—to whom the girl gave the money?”
She understood that I was interested and she wished to make me understand that she had understood. She drew herself up with dignity. “Call her by her name, Professor, call her Cecilia,” she said. “The name of the saxophone player was Tony Proietti. He plays at the Canarino, a club in the neighborhood of Via Veneto. Well, Professor, I must go. Again, please excuse me. If the pictures interest you, you can always find me at home. I’m in the telephone book: Assunta Balestrieri. Or possibly you might even make your mother buy one—eh, Professor? Are you staying, or are you coming out with me?”
I did not stay, but said good-bye to her and went back to my own studio, where I threw myself on the divan and fell into deep meditation. The proofs of Cecilia’s venality were multiplying, but, strangely enough, these proofs did not prove anything. In fact, no sooner was her venality demonstrated than something came to light to contradict it: Balestrieri’s money, according to the widow, was passed on by her to her lover, to Tony Proietti. And the truth of this seemed to be borne out by the poverty of Cecilia’s wardrobe and by the fact that she did not possess even the smallest piece of jewelry. If she had not given it to Proietti, where had Balestrieri’s money gone?