Boredom - Alberto Moravia [21]
Rita obediently turned back and held out the dish to me once again. Again I used only one hand, taking the fork to go around the dish picking up some meat and vegetables. Meanwhile I ran my other hand, which I had left dangling beside my chair, up Rita’s leg, right up to her thigh. Through her ample dress I could feel the muscles of her leg quiver beneath my hand, like those of a horse when its master strokes it. Nothing, however, was visible in the expression of her face, which now not merely looked, but certainly was, hypocritical. She turned away and I, catching—or anyhow so I thought—a fugitive glance of understanding behind her glasses, could not help reflecting that now, even before coming back to live in my mother’s house, I found myself in a situation worse than that of ten years before. At that time, whatever might have been my reasons for doing so, I would never have thought of laying my hands on a servant girl. My mother, in the meantime, had stopped treading on my shoe, just at the exact moment when I removed my hand from Rita’s leg and with an odd sort of synchronization, as though she had been acting in agreement with me. Resuming our interrupted conversation, I said: “So you work until one o’clock or later, every day?”
“Every day except Sunday.”
“On Sunday what do you do?”
“I go to Mass.”
“In which church?”
“San Sebastiano.”
“What do you do in church?”
“I do what everybody else does, I hear Mass.”
“And do you go to confession sometimes?”
“Certainly I do, of course. And I receive the Sacrament, too.”
“And when you’ve made your confession, does the priest give you absolution?”
“I never have very serious sins to confess,” said my mother with a touch of coquettishness. “You know, Don Luigi sometimes says to me: ‘Signora, you finish where other people only begin.’ Anyhow, what sins do you imagine I can commit, at my age?” And she looked at me, as much as to say, it’s a long time since I gave up the only thing that could make me commit sins.
I was silent for a moment, then I went on: “Let’s go back to your day. On weekdays, then, you work in the mornings, and then what do you do?”
“I have lunch.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, I always lunch alone. Sometimes, but rarely, I keep the lawyer to lunch; but that is only when we haven’t finished and have to go on working in the afternoon.”
“What lawyer is that? De Santis?”
“Yes, he’s still my lawyer.”
“And after lunch?”
“After lunch I go for a walk in the garden.”
“And then?”
“I go and rest.”
“You mean you go to sleep?”
“No, I don’t sleep, I take off my shoes and lie down on the bed fully dressed. But I don’t go to sleep, I give myself up to my thoughts.”
“What do you think about?”
She started laughing again, in a nervous, diffident way, like a young girl who is tempted to speak about a love affair. “That depends. Do you know what I think about at the present time?”
“No, what d’you think about?”
“I think about a house that is for sale on the Lungotevere Flaminio. A very good business proposition, if it was for the location alone. Alas, at the moment I can’t afford it, but I think about it all the same. At times I think about things that I can afford—this, for instance,” and she held out her hand and showed me a ring with a big emerald surrounded with diamonds; “I thought about it for a long time, weighing the pros and cons, and in the end I made up my mind and bought it.”
“And after your rest, what do you do?”
“Well really, why this cross-examination?”
“I’ve already told you, I want to reacclimatize myself.”
She spoke unwillingly. “There are plenty of things I do. For example I go and see friends.”
“Who do you go and see?”
“Oh, that depends. There’s always some reception or other, or a cocktail party, and besides, I have various women friends.”
“Have you many women friends?”
“I’ve kept nearly all the friends I had when I was at school,” said my mother, with a thoughtful