Boredom - Alberto Moravia [16]
“Yes, of course, in the spring too. The car has a big luggage compartment. It’ll take three suitcases.”
My mother seemed now to be really satisfied; so much so that some of her “good form” had given way and it could be seen distinctly—which was most unusual—that she was content. As we walked across to the house my mother pointed to the left, to a long, straight path, narrow and flanked by tall laurel bushes, at the far end of which one caught a glimpse of a small, red, building. “Your studio,” she said. “It’s remained exactly as it was. Nothing has been touched. If you like, you can go and start painting there tomorrow.”
“But I’ve already told you I’ve decided to give up painting.”
She made no reply; perhaps she had pointed out the studio to me merely in order to make me repeat that I had in truth given up painting. By now we had arrived at the front door. My mother preceded me into the hall, saying in an authoritative tone of voice: “Now go and wash your hands, because lunch will be ready at once.”
She opened a small door which led into a passage to the kitchen. I went by another door to the cloakroom. Surrounded by the four blue walls of the bathroom, I automatically looked at myself in the mirror above the wash basin while my hands twisted and turned in the soapy lather, under the jet of warm water. Just at that moment the door behind me opened and I saw in the mirror the head, with its short, badly cut hair, of the maid who had greeted me on my arrival a short time before.
Looking at her reflection and without turning, I asked: “What’s your name?”
“Rita.”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“I’ve only been here a week.”
I bent down and vigorously soaped my face, although there was no need to do so: I felt I was dirty because of the thoughts that oppressed me. While I was washing, I heard Rita’s soft voice telling me: “I’ve put the towel here,” and I nodded my head. When I lifted my face, the girl had gone. I left the bathroom and, crossing the hall, went toward the drawing room, or rather toward the four or five sitting rooms, anterooms and drawing rooms that occupied the ground floor of the villa.
These rooms, used by my mother both for living in and for entertaining, communicated with each other by means of arches or doorways with no doors in them, so that they formed, almost, a single large room; and they were furnished in an entirely impersonal manner, with the opulent, tedious impersonality of furniture that has been chosen solely on account of its commercial value. You could be sure that in those rooms there was not a single object that was not the most expensive, or anyhow among the most expensive, in the category to which it belonged. My mother had neither taste, nor culture, nor curiosity, nor love of beauty; her one criterion in any sort of acquisition was always its price, and the higher the price the more completely was she persuaded that the object possessed the qualities of beauty and refinement and originality which otherwise she would have been incapable of recognizing. My mother, of course, did not throw money down the drain; on the contrary she was always extremely careful, and more than once I had heard her exclaim, in a shop: “No, it’s too dear, it’s not even to be thought of.” But I knew that this exclamation on her part referred to her own financial position and not to the real value of the object in question, about which she understood nothing and which, though out of reach of her purse, nevertheless remained desirable precisely because it was expensive.
The result of this criterion of choice was, as I have already said, a collection of furniture without character and without intimacy, but robust and imposing, for my mother laid great importance not merely on money value but also on solidity and size, these being two other qualities that she was capable of judging and appreciating. And so everything in these rooms—deep sofas, enormous armchairs, gigantic lamps, massive tables, heavy curtains, monumental fittings—conveyed the idea of a luxury that was substantial