Boredom - Alberto Moravia [124]
She said nothing, and I went on: “Getting married means becoming united for life. At any rate, I understand it that way: that’s why I want us to get married in church.”
Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, she asked: “Why in church?”
“Because,” I said complacently, “if we get married in church we’re truly united, without the possibility of ever parting again.”
“But you don’t believe in it,” she said.
“I would do it for your sake.”
“I don’t believe in it either.”
“You don’t believe in it? But you told me you’d been brought up by the nuns until you were twelve.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Even when I was with the nuns I didn’t believe in it.”
“What did you believe in?”
She appeared to reflect for a moment; then she replied, in a dry, precise, conscientious way: “In nothing. But I don’t mean I didn’t believe in it because I thought about it, and realized that I didn’t believe in it. I didn’t believe in it because I never thought about it. And even now I never think about it. I think about any sort of thing, but not about religion. If a person never thinks about a thing, it means that for him that thing doesn’t exist. With me, it isn’t that I like or dislike religion, it just doesn’t exist.”
Slowing down until I had almost stopped, I said: “You may never think about it now, but it’s not impossible that you may come to think about it some day.”
She sat in silence for a moment, then answered: “I don’t think so. I didn’t think about it when I was with the nuns, where there was nothing but religion; so why should I think about it outside the convent, with so many other things to think about? D’you know what I used to think about while I was reciting the prayers with the nuns?”
“What?”
“About the clock.”
“Why about the clock?”
“It had a pendulum and I used to watch it, and as I recited the prayers I counted the seconds and the minutes.”
“Were you so bored, saying these prayers?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because with lots of things, even if they’re extremely boring, you at least know that they serve some purpose. But prayer, for me at any rate, serves no purpose at all.”
“You never know. Some day perhaps you’ll find it does.”
“I don’t think so. I can’t imagine the day when I shall feel a need for religion. It’s a superfluous thing.”
“Superfluous?”
“Yes—how can I explain? If it exists, things go on in a certain way, and if it doesn’t exist, things still go on in the same way. Nothing changes: therefore it’s a superfluous thing.”
“That could be said of plenty of things in this world.”
“What things?”
“Well—art, for instance. Things, as you say, would go on in the same way even if art didn’t exist.”
“But art is enjoyable to the person who practices it. Balestrieri enjoyed himself. You enjoy yourself. Religion, on the other hand, is boring. At the convent I always had the impression that the nuns were bored, just as priests are bored and indeed all those people in general who are taken up with religion. In the churches, goodness knows how bored people are. You’ve only to look at them in church, and you can see there’s not a single one of them that isn’t bored to death.”
It was the first time Cecilia had spoken to me on the subject of boredom; my curiosity was aroused, and I could not refrain from asking her: “Are you ever bored?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“And what do you feel when you’re bored?”
“I feel boredom.”
“What is boredom?”
“How am I to explain that? Boredom is boredom.”
I wanted to say: “Boredom is the suspension of all relationship with reality. And I want to marry you so as to get bored with you, so as to stop suffering and to stop loving you, so as to bring it about, in short, that you cease to exist as far as I am concerned, just as for you religion and a great many other things don’t exist,