Boredom - Alberto Moravia [36]
Slowly, and with an air of attaching no importance to what she was doing, she took the towel which she had been holding against her breast and threw it over her shoulders, finally wrapping it around her body. Then she came over to the divan, a timid, diffident look on her face, as though I had asked her to sit down upon it, whereas in reality I had said nothing, and placed herself at the extreme end of it, away from me. There was a moment’s silence; then, all at once, on her childish lips appeared the same smile that she used to bestow upon me when she met me in the corridor. Feeling embarrassed, I said: “Now you’ll think badly of me.”
She shook her head in denial, without speaking. She was gazing at me with her characteristically expressionless look; it was as if her eyes were two dark mirrors which reflected the outside world without understanding it and perhaps without even seeing it; and I felt my embarrassment increasing. It was clear that she did not intend to go away and that she was expecting me to start the second part, so to speak, of the program. As I searched my mind for a common subject of conversation, Balestrieri, naturally, occurred to me. “How long had you known Balestrieri?” I inquired.
“Two years.”
“How old are you?”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Tell me how you first met Balestrieri.”
“Why?”
“Because—” I thought about it for a moment, and then went on, speaking quite sincerely “—it interests me.”
“I met Balestrieri two years ago,” she said slowly. “In the house of a friend of mine.”
“Who was this friend of yours?”
“A girl called Elisa.”
“How old is Elisa?”
“Two years older than me.”
“What was Balestrieri doing at Elisa’s house?”
“He was giving her drawing lessons, as he did to me.”
“What does Elisa look like?”
“She’s fair,” she replied briefly.
I thought I could remember one of the many girls whom I had seen passing across the courtyard. “Fair, with blue eyes,” I asked, “with a long neck, and an oval face and tight, full lips?”
“Yes, that’s her. Do you know her?”
“No, but I’ve seen her going to Balestrieri’s studio a few times, a little before you started going there. Did Elisa have her drawing lessons at home or at the studio?”
“At home, and at the studio too; it depended on the days.”
“You haven’t told me what happened that day when you met Balestrieri at Elisa’s home.”
“Nothing happened.”
“I see, nothing happened. But then, in the end, Balestrieri gave drawing lessons to you as well. How did that come about?”
This time she looked at me and said nothing. “Did you hear what I said?” I persisted.
Finally she made up her mind to break her silence. “Why do you want to know these things?” she asked.
“Suppose I’m interested in you,” I said, with the consciousness not so much of lying as of telling a lie which, in the very moment in which I told it, became truth.
She looked up in the air, like a school girl on the point of reciting a lesson before an exacting master, and then said: “I saw Balestrieri again at Elisa’s because she and I were friends and I used to go there often. One day I asked him to give me drawing lessons too, but he said he couldn’t.”
I had always thought that Balestrieri ran after all the women he happened to come across; and now, here he was refusing the pretext which the girl offered him. “Why do you think Balestrieri refused?” I asked.
“I don’t know, he didn’t want to.”
“Perhaps he was in love with Elisa?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why didn’t he want to?”
Uncompromisingly she replied: “At first I thought it was Elisa who had persuaded him; then I found out that Elisa knew nothing about it. He didn’t want to, that was all. I thought he was annoyed at the idea of my coming to the studio and I suggested he should give me the lessons at my home, but he refused again. In fact, he didn’t want to.”
“But you, why were you so anxious for Balestrieri to give you lessons?”
She hesitated, and then I saw her pale face grow red, in an uneven way, in light patches that succeeded one another. “I had fallen in love with him,” she said. “Or rather, I thought I had.”
“And he paid