Boredom - Alberto Moravia [133]
Afterward, Cecilia lay supine, her legs apart, motionless and sated like a great snake that has swallowed an animal bigger than itself. I lay on top of her, no less motionless; and when I reflected upon our two separate stillnesses, I realized that mine was the stillness that can follow a futile, exhausting effort, while hers had the quality of full, rich satisfaction. I recalled the time when after painting for a whole day I would feel tired, not with an exhausted tiredness such as I felt now but with a satisfied tiredness like Cecilia’s; and I said to myself that in our relationship it was she, in reality, who possessed me and I who was possessed, although nature, for her own ends, deceived both Cecilia and me into thinking the opposite. As a man I was finished, I thought; not only would I never paint again, but I should also destroy myself in the pursuit of that species of mirage which seemed to rise up from Cecilia’s womb as from the sands of the desert; and in the end, like Balestrieri, I should sink into the darkness of mania.
I was drawn out of these reflections by Cecilia’s voice, saying: “At least you must admit that I’m not mercenary.”
I asked in surprise: “Why do you say that?”
“Any other woman, in my place, would have taken the money and then gone away just the same.”
“And what then?”
“Well, you must admit that in a way I’ve saved you a lot of money.”
“It’s not I who have saved it,” I said, hoping, almost, that Cecilia had thought better of it and was going to accept my proposal, “it’s you who have lost it.”
“Just as you like. Now I want to ask you a favor.”
“What is that?”
“You were ready to give me nearly half a million lire if I didn’t go away. Instead, lend me a small part of that amount, forty thousand.”
“But what d’you want it for?” I inquired stupidly.
“Luciani is out of a job, and we have very little money. It would be useful for our trip to Ponza.”
Before I realized what was happening, I had leaped forward and fastened my hands round Cecilia’s neck, shouting the first words of abuse that came into my head. They say that at certain moments of great intensity a man can think and act in contrary ways. In that second when I clasped Cecilia’s neck, my thought was that perhaps the only way of possessing her was by killing her. By killing her I could snatch her away from all the things that rendered her elusive, and could shut her up, once and for all, in the prison of death. And so, for one instant, I thought of strangling her, there on my mother’s bed, amongst the banknotes she had refused, in the house in which we should have lived together if we had got married. And I should certainly have done it if I had not realized, in that same lucid, lightning-like moment, that this crime, at least as far as my intended purpose was concerned, would be useless. Instead of achieving full possession of Cecilia and liberating myself from her, I should, in reality, merely succeed in establishing her complete and final independence; wrapped in a mystery doubly sealed by death, she would have then eluded me forever, irreparably. I relaxed my grip and said in a low voice: “Forgive me, for a moment you made me lose my head.”
She did not appear to have understood the danger in which she had been. “You hurt me,” she said. “Whatever put it into your head to get angry like that?”
“I don’t know. Again, please forgive me.”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
I raised myself slightly on my elbow, quickly collected some of the notes and handed them to her, saying: “Here’s seventy thousand lire; is that enough?”
“That’s too much, forty thousand would be enough.”
“Take them, they’ll come in useful.”
“Thank you.”
She kissed