Boredom - Alberto Moravia [120]
As I drove the car out of the courtyard, I asked: “Why do you tell me this?”
“Because you once told me that you liked me to tell you these things.”
“Yes, that’s true. But I would far rather know that you belonged to me, not only underneath and on top, but inside as well.”
“Inside where?”
“Inside.”
She laughed with her rather childish laugh that lifted her lips above her eyeteeth. “Inside, I don’t belong to anybody,” she said. “Inside are one’s lungs and heart and liver and intestines. What would you do with them?”
She was gay, and I pointed this out to her. She said lightly: “I’m gay because I’m with you.”
“Thank you, that’s very nice of you.”
We crossed the Piazza del Popolo and the Tiber, went the whole length of Via Cola di Rienzo and after circling the sloping walls of the Vatican started off along the Via Aurielia, in the direction of Fregene. Cecilia sat quite still at my side, her head erect, the mass of her thick, curly hair falling about her round face, her hands in her lap. From time to time I cast a sideways glance at her and recognized yet again the characteristics which, in their enigmatic way, made her so desirable to me and at the same time so elusive: the childishness of her face, contradicted by the dry, fine lines that cut into the skin at the corners of her small mouth; the sharp slimness of her shoulders, which seemed belied by the full, heavy prominence of her bosom; the supple slenderness of her waist which did not match the rotundity of her hips and the solidity of her thigh. And, lying in her lap, her big, ugly hands, doubtfully white, yet attractive and even, perhaps, beautiful—if it is permissible to say that an ugly thing is beautiful. Never had I found her so pleasing; and that in a manner so very like herself, both irritating and evasive. As soon as we were outside Rome I began to think I should not be able to wait until six, when we would be returning to the studio. I had ten hours at my disposal, therefore I could make love twice; right now and again at night, after dinner. Now, in any convenient meadow; after dinner, at the studio.
The road went up and down among treeless hills covered with thick, luxuriant grass of an almost blue green, grass which had sprouted from the water-soaked earth after the abundant rains of the last two months. But the sky was still not clear: black clouds, which looked as if they were unable to rise due to the burden of rain they carried, hung in motionless layers above this spring-like green. I kept looking about for a suitable place, although I was driving fast, but failed to find one: either it was too near the road, or too exposed, or too close to a farm, or on too steep a slope. So I went on for some miles, still without speaking, and in the silence I became overburdened with the full force, the anger, almost, of my desire. At last, at the first side road, I turned off. “But aren’t we going to the sea?” Cecilia demanded.
“We’re going now to a quiet place to make love,” I answered, “and afterward we’ll go to the sea.”
She said nothing, and I drove on as fast as I could along the white, stony country road. After we had bumped along over loose rubble for about half a mile, the landscape, as I had hoped, began to change. No longer were there grassy, treeless hills, but wooded slopes rising behind small fields in which horses and sheep were grazing. It was just what I was looking for. I came to a sudden stop beside a fence and said to Cecilia: “Let’s get out.”
She obeyed, and stood aside to let me go ahead. I said, for no particular reason: “I’d rather you went in front.” She made no objection; and, after pushing open a rustic gate, started off down a path, or rather a track where the tall, thick grass had been trodden down, and then I realized why I had asked her to walk in front of me; I wanted to watch the powerful, indolent movement of her hips. I knew that this movement did not concern me, personally, any more than the sexual appeal of a woman of any kind concerns any particular man. Now if I had been walking