Boredom - Alberto Moravia [126]
“I swear I don’t remember.”
“And so everything you’ve told me about your past may also be untrue?”
“No, that’s not so. I’ve only told you lies when it was necessary.”
“When, for example?”
“I don’t remember now: when it was necessary.”
“And when is it necessary for you to tell lies?”
“How can I explain that? It’s necessary when it’s necessary.”
“Well, now we’ll go and see my mother. I’ll introduce you as my fiancée and in a month, at most, we’ll get married.”
We drove on in silence and very soon came to the well-known gate between the two pillars adorned with bits of Roman junk. It was not shut, as it usually was, but wide open; the two lanterns on top of the pillars were lit; and at that very moment three or four cars were on the point of entering. Disappointed, I said: “I’m afraid my mother must be receiving—in other words, giving a cocktail party. What shall we do?”
“Whatever you like.”
I reflected that, after all, for the purpose I had in mind, a party might come in useful: Cecilia would in this way be able to form an idea of the world into which I should introduce her if I married her. And if, as I hoped, she was ambitious, this idea could not but be favorable. I said carelessly: “Let’s go in, then. I’ll introduce you to my mother, you can have a drink and see the house and then we’ll go away; is that all right?”
“Yes, that’s all right.”
I drove up the drive behind the other cars and with some difficulty found a place to stop; the space in front of the house was already almost full. Cecilia got out and I followed her. As she walked toward the front door she put up her hands and lifted her hair from off her neck, arranging it on her shoulders, in a gesture which with her, as I knew, indicated that she felt a timidity which she was trying to overcome. I caught up with her and took her by the arm, whispering: “This is the house we’ll come and live in when we’re married. Do you like it?”
“Yes, it’s a fine house.”
We went into the hall and into the first of the four or five rooms that occupied the ground floor. There were already large numbers of guests, standing close together, glass in hand, talking into each other’s faces and leering at each other sideways, as always happens at cocktail parties. I thrust Cecilia forward by the arm, cleaving a passage through this haughty, conceited crowd, and as I looked at all these florid, glossy men and painted women dressed in the latest fashion; and as I saw that Cecilia seemed to mingle with the odious multitude to the point of appearing to be one of them; and as I reflected that, if this really happened as in fact it might happen after our marriage, I should not only be rid of her and of my love for her but should actually hate her, as I hated my mother’s guests—then I felt a kind of remorse at having planned to lose her among these horrible people, and almost a hope that she would not agree to marry me. I wanted to become bored with Cecilia, but I did not want to hate her. And anyhow I loved her too much to wish to be rid of her at the price of her transformation from a poor and charming girl into a moneyed harpy.
Thus reflecting, I went on pushing Cecilia through the crowd, from one group to another, from one circle of faces to another, through the cigarette smoke and the buzz of conversation, brushing against trays covered with glasses of various sizes and colors which were being handed around by waiters. It was an immensely crowded reception, and it was obvious that my mother was doing things on a grand scale, regardless of expense. But the money my mother had spent in order to receive her guests worthily was a mere nothing in comparison with the money—an almost incalculable total—represented by each one of those same guests. I remembered, for some reason, a question which, at a similar reception some years before, I had heard put, with an air of complacency and at the same time of almost scientific perplexity, by a fat, vigorous, cheerful old man to another old man who was thin and pale and melancholy: