Boredom - Alberto Moravia [121]
We walked on in silence through the tangled, sticky grass. Above our heads the mass of cloud, low and swollen like a pregnant belly, seemed to be unraveling itself into shreds of mist. The air was damp and warm and humming with insects. I watched Cecilia’s hips which, as we gradually drew nearer to the wood, appeared to assert the strength and monotony of their movement like a machine that has found its normal rhythm, and I reflected that there was no difference between this movement which she made as she walked and those she would soon be making as she lay on her back: Cecilia was always ready, so to speak, for the sexual act, just as a machine, nourished with the proper fuel, is always ready to function. She must have become aware of my gaze, for suddenly she turned and asked: “What’s the matter, why don’t you speak?”
“I want you too much to speak.”
“Do you want me always?”
“Do you mind?”
“No, I was just asking.”
We walked on for some distance; then the thick grass of the meadow began to be replaced by scantier, taller undergrowth and trees rose from the uneven ground, thinly scattered at first but growing steadily thicker. After a few more steps we found ourselves in a little ravine between two hills, with trees everywhere, and bushes and thickets covering the humps and hollows of the broken ground. I started looking for a suitable place where we could lie down, and finally I found what I wanted—a flat, mossy open space surrounded with tall ferns and big broom bushes. I was about to point it out to Cecilia, when she turned around and said lightly: “Oh, I forgot to tell you, it’s not possible for us to make love today.”
I felt as though I had put my foot into a trap. “Why?” I asked.
“I’m not well.”
“You’re not telling me the truth.”
She did not reply, but walked on among the ferns and the broom bushes with her usual slow, firm step and climbed up onto a small, round hillock; then she turned toward me, stooped down and, taking hold of the hem of her dress with both hands, pulled it up to her belly. I could see her straight things pressed close together, sheathed in their silk stockings, and, at the lowest point of her belly, where usually the transparent stuff of her slip allowed a glimpse of the dark groin, the pale, opaque patch of a wad of cotton. “Now d’you believe me?” she asked.
I answered angrily: “Yes, it’s true, with you it’s always true.”
She pulled down her dress in silence, and then asked: “Why do you say that? On other occasions I’ve never refused you.”
I felt that I was going mad; frustrated desire joined forces with my obsession of being unable to possess her, as though this day’s discomfiture were only one of the many impossibilities of a never-changing situation. “I wanted you so much,” I said, “and by coming with me and letting me think you were willing, you made my desire twice as great. Why didn’t you tell me at once that you weren’t well?”
She looked at me with indifference, like a shopkeeper who offers an article of inferior quality in place of another which is out of stock. “But we’re going to be together all day,” she answered.
“But I wanted to make love.”
“We’ll do that some other time, perhaps tomorrow.”
“But I wanted to do it today—now.”
“You’re like a child.”
Silence followed. Cecilia was walking among the bushes with bent head and appeared to be looking for something. Then she stooped, picked a blade of grass and put it between her teeth. I said furiously: “That’s why you suggested that we should spend the day together. Just because you knew you couldn’t make love with Luciani.”
“Luciani wanted to do it too, and I told him the same thing that I’ve told you.”
“But Luciani had you