Boredom - Alberto Moravia [40]
She looked at me in a gentle, polite, but entirely unconvinced manner; much as a child looks at his mother when she scolds him before giving him a piece of candy, and waits patiently for the scolding, which matters nothing to him and which he does not understand, to be over, so that he can get the candy. She said, however: “Yes, it’s true, now that I think of it, I remember his telling me often that I was everything to him.”
“Well then, do you see?—Balestrieri, although he was an unhappy lover and a very bad painter, was in a way rather enviable.”
“Why?”
“Because he was able to say to someone: ‘You are everything to me.’”
She was silent again, as though uncertain of the meaning of my words, and anyhow not very interested in looking for it: it was the candy that she minded about, not the scolding. I resumed: “And now that’s enough of Balestrieri, let’s talk about you and me.”
She seemed delighted at this, in her own highly discreet, almost imperceptible way, making a slight forward movement with her face, as if to show solicitude and attentiveness, and an even slighter movement of her hips on the divan, as though to come even closer to me. “For at least three or four months,” I said, “we’ve been meeting in the corridor or the courtyard, and every time we meet you look at me and smile at me in a way which is, let us say, significant. Isn’t that so? If it’s not true, contradict me; it’ll mean I’ve had a wrong impression.”
She said nothing, she merely looked at me as if waiting for the end of my speech, and as if all that came in between had no interest for her. “You don’t answer,” I continued, “so I presume that I’m not making a mistake. Besides, what you want of me seems to me pretty clear. Forgive me, I know I’m being brutal: for four or five months you’ve been wanting to show me that you’re ready to do with me what you used to do with Balestrieri. At least, that’s what I’ve understood. Again, if I’m wrong, tell me.”
Once more there was silence; her face now expressed a kind of shy satisfaction at having been so well understood. “Balestrieri,” I went on, “told you that you were everything to him. And the word ‘everything’ meant, as far as I can see, really everything. Unfortunately I’m in the opposite position. To Balestrieri you were everything; to me you are nothing.”
I paused for a moment, looking at her, and could not but admire her impassivity. She said modestly, lowering her eyes: “We’ve only known each other for half an hour.”
I hastened to explain. “I don’t want to be misunderstood. It is in fact impossible for you to be everything, or even something, to me, in the sense which is usually given to that expression. It’s certainly true, as you pointed out, that we’ve known each other for barely half an hour. No, this is a question of something different. Do please try and follow me, even if these explanations don’t interest you. Well then: I asked you to come here to my studio under the pretext of painting you—isn’t that so?”
“Yes.”
“It really was a pretext; that is, a lie. Apart from the fact that I haven’t painted the human figure or other recognizable objects for years, I lied to you because I’m not a painter, or rather, I haven’t been a painter for some time. And I am no longer a painter because I have nothing to paint, that is, I have no relationship with anything real.”
She answered stubbornly: “But it doesn’t matter whether you paint a portrait of me.”
I could not help laughing. “I understand,” I said; “you don’t see the connection between the fact that I’ve given up painting and the thing that you seem to have so much at heart. But there is a connection. Now listen: I said you were nothing to me, but, I repeat, you must not attribute any sentimental significance to that remark. In other words, you are offering yourself to me in the same way as any object, of any kind. Let’s take a concrete example. That glass on the table