Boredom - Alberto Moravia [123]
“You’re a rich man?”
“Yes, or rather my mother’s rich, and when we’re living with her, in her villa on the Via Appia, her money will be mine too—in fact ours.”
She said nothing. I went on: “We’ll get married with all the proper celebrations. Wedding in church, presents, flowers, wedding cake and refreshments, reception and so on. Then we’ll have a fine honeymoon; we can go north to Scandinavia or south to Egypt. When we come back, your whole life will change completely. You’ll be a married lady in Roman society, like the ladies you see in Via Veneto or Piazza di Spagna.”
Still she said nothing. In a growing frenzy, squeezing her two hands, I went on: “We’ll have children, because I want children. And you look capable of producing any number of them. I’ll see that you have two, four, six, eight—as many as you like.”
Her silence, nevertheless, made me uneasy. Quickly I asked: “Well, what do you think?”
At last she made up her mind to answer. “I can’t tell you, like this, all in a moment,” she said slowly. “I must think it over.”
“Yes, think it over. Will you give me an answer tomorrow, the day after tomorrow? Just as you like. In the meantime,” I suddenly added, “let’s go at once to my mother’s and I’ll introduce you as my fiancée.” It had occurred to me that Cecilia might be doubting my statement about my mother’s wealth and I wanted her to make certain of it with her own eyes. Besides, to introduce her as my fiancée meant compromising her and in a way forcing her to accept my proposal.
“Why go to your mother’s now?” she asked. “You can let me meet her some other day.”
“No, it’s better today; then you’ll know her and be able to see what it’s all about.”
“But you can’t introduce me as your fiancée; I’m not that, yet.”
“What does it matter? If we decide not to get married after all, I’ll tell my mother you changed your mind.”
“I’ll give you my answer today,” she said suddenly, in a strange manner, as though she had already taken the decision which she was to announce in a few hours’ time. “This evening.”
“Why this evening? Why not now?”
“No, this evening.”
I said nothing; I released the brake, started the engine and drove off. I now felt such a desire for her that the marriage I had offered her seemed to me an inadequate price, not for an eternity of love, but even for a single, fleeting embrace. To possess her just once, but really and truly, I would not only have married her but would have made a pact with the devil and damned my own soul. This is a mere phrase, it may be said, and a highly romantic one, into the bargain. Nevertheless, at that moment damnation was for me not a mere phrase but an actual fact which might take place, not in the other world in which I did not believe, but in this world, in which I knew I had to live. Strange to say, however, the sense of such a damnation was not unrelated to a very remote hope of liberation; of that particular liberation which I continually deceived myself into thinking I should attain on the day when I succeeded in possessing Cecilia.
By now it was almost sunset; and at last the cypresses and pines of the Via Appia came into view, black as ink, outlined against the background of a long red streak in the sky which looked like a chink of fire in the dark tumult of the clouds. I started driving slowly up the narrow Roman road, slackening speed where the ancient pavement showed through the surface of the asphalt, lingering now and then to look at the ruins, at the gates of villas, at the cars parked on the grassy shoulders. All the time I was reflecting upon the marriage proposal I had made to Cecilia, and I was conscious that I had made use of matrimony in perhaps too frivolous a way, as a mere means—one among many—of achieving a purpose which was not only foreign to it but actually contradicted it. I feared that I had exposed my own state of mind and my intentions and had thus failed to be convincing, in fact that I had given Cecilia the unpleasant feeling that I wished to marry her simply in order to get rid of her. After all, I thought,