Boredom - Alberto Moravia [31]
As I meditated thus I became drowsy and fell heavily asleep, with a sensation of drowning rather than sleeping. I had a very vivid dream: I seemed to be standing in front of my easel, my palette in one hand and a brush in the other. On the easel stood the usual empty canvas, and beside the easel—a curious thing, because it was several years since I had done any figure painting—stood a model. She was a young woman with a sage, bespectacled face very reminiscent of Rita’s, and with a curiously flat, unsubstantial body against whose bloodless whiteness the twin dark spots on the breast, like big, dark coins, and the black public triangle, stood out startlingly, like those of a corpse. I was, supposedly, painting the model; and indeed my hand, armed with a brush, was moving and evidently painting on the invisible surface of the canvas. I went on painting with care, with concentration, with assurance; the picture was going well, the model did not breathe or move and would have seemed to be really dead if it had not been for the gleam of her spectacles and the faintly ironical smile that curled her lips. Finally, after a very long sitting, the picture was finished and I moved back a step or two so as to contemplate it at leisure. To my amazement, the canvas was empty, blank, clean; no female nude was visible upon it, either drawn or painted; I had certainly been working but I had done nothing. Frightened, I seized the first tube of color that came to hand, squeezed out a jet of paint on to the palette, dipped the brush in it and frantically flung myself upon the canvas again. Nothing: the canvas remained blank and meanwhile the girl was smiling more and more mockingly at my vain efforts, all the time retaining the sage, hypocritical expression imparted by her big tortoise-shell glasses. Then a hand was placed on my shoulder; Balestrieri—Balestrieri and none other—a fatherly smile upon his red face, took the brush and palette from me and planted himself in front of the canvas, turning his back toward me. He was wearing a sleeveless vest, and a pair of swimming trunks, and his get-up reminded me of Picasso, to whom I suddenly found he bore some resemblance. Now Balestrieri was painting and I was looking at the back of Balestrieri’s neck over which fell his thick, silvery hair and I was thinking that Balestrieri was painting whereas I had not succeeded in doing so. Then Balestrieri’s picture was finished; Balestrieri had gone; and I was standing in front of the picture. I did not know if it was good or bad, but anyhow it had been painted; the canvas was no longer blank and empty as it had been when I myself had finished painting, it was covered with marks and colors. Suddenly I was seized with an overwhelming rage; I snatched up the small knife that I always use for scraping colors and struck at the canvas violently and methodically, from the top to the bottom, in such a way as to cut it down its whole length. But I found to my horror that it was not the canvas I had been striking but the model; she was now bleeding from a large number of thin, vertical wounds, starting from the breast and going right down to the legs. Blood, red and abundant, was gushing from the wounds, secondary streams of it were forming and joining together, and now the entire body of the girl—who nevertheless went on smiling—was covered with a network of blood,