Boredom - Alberto Moravia [35]
I answered, again unkindly: “Why, I should think they’ll try and sell them. And then, when they see that no one wants them, they’ll put them away in some cellar or other.”
“In a cellar?”
“Yes, they’ll throw them away.”
“He had a wife from whom he was separated. The pictures will go to her.”
“All the more reason for her to throw them away.”
Indifferent, reserved, she said nothing. Now she was walking in front of me along the corridor, and seen thus, from behind, carrying the big bundle in her arms and moving in that characteristic way which appeared so spontaneous and reluctant whereas it was really so strongly and sensually deliberate, she gave the impression of a mere house-moving. Yes, she was moving from Balestrieri’s studio to mine—that was all. I caught up with her, opened my door for her and said: “As you can see, this is a very different studio from Balestrieri’s.”
She did not reply, just as though she found no great difference between my studio and that of her old lover. She simply went to the table, put down her bundle on it and then turned and asked: “Where is the bathroom?”
“There, that door over there.”
She went over to the bathroom and disappeared. I went over to the divan and rearranged the cushions upon which I had slept that afternoon; then I started collecting the numerous cigarette butts I had thrown on to the floor after smoking them. While I was doing these things I thought about the girl, wondering whether she attracted me and whether I wanted to do what she expected me to do, and I realized that I had no desire at all. In the end I said to myself that I would question her further about Balestrieri and her relations with him, about which I felt some curiosity, and that I would then send her away.
I was so calm and so deeply absorbed in the consciousness of my calmness that I forgot the pretext of painting which the girl had suggested and which I had absent-mindedly accepted. I was startled when the door of the bathroom opened and the girl appeared on the threshold. She was naked, completely naked; she was holding a large towel with both hands against her chest and walking on tiptoe. I realized that Balestrieri had not exaggerated when he depicted her with the well-developed form which had aroused my incredulity. She had in fact a magnificent bosom, full, firm and brown, which did not, however, seem in harmony with her torso—the slender, thin torso of an adolescent girl—and had almost a look of being detached from it. Her waist also was that of a young girl, incredibly slim and supple; but the adult quality noticeable in her bosom was again apparent in her powerful, solid hips. As she walked she thrust forward her bosom and pulled back her belly, and her eyes were fixed almost greedily upon the easel that stood near the window; and when she arrived in front of the canvas she asked, without turning around, in her strangely expressionless, dry, precise voice: “Well, where shall I stand?”
I wondered whether there might be some hypocrisy in her attitude at that moment, and immediately had to admit that there was not. She had taken her position as a model quite seriously; even if she also perhaps suspected that it was only a pretext for a different sort of relationship. But in her mind, so it seemed to me, there must be a kind of incapacity to connect one thing with another; it was this that permitted her to be sincere. Quietly I said: “Don’t stand anywhere.”
She turned around in surprise. “Why?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” I explained, “but I accepted the excuse of painting you rather lightly. Actually I gave up painting some time ago. And when I did paint, I never painted models or any other object. I’m sorry.”
Without showing any offense, she said in a tone of indifference: “But you told me you wanted me to come and sit for you.”
“Yes, that’s true, but forget it.”