Boredom - Alberto Moravia [41]
“But why is it nothing?” She said this in a low, timid voice, as though more in recommendation of the glass than of herself.
I answered briefly: “To explain this thing fully would take me a long way off the point, and in any case it would be useless. Let’s say then that the glass is nothing to me because I have no relationship with it, of any kind.”
She objected, speaking this time in recommendation of herself. “But these relationships do come into existence, don’t you think? It happens constantly that one forms a relationship with people one didn’t even know before.”
“Do you see that canvas on the easel?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“It’s an empty canvas, a canvas on which I haven’t painted anything. Well, that’s the only canvas I can sign. Look.” I rose and went to the easel, took a pencil and signed my name in one corner of the canvas. She followed me with her eyes as I went over to the easel and again as I came back, but she said nothing. Sitting down again, I continued: “So the only relationship there can be between myself and a woman is nothing, that is, exactly the same relationship that there has been so far between you and me, or rather, that there has not been. I am not impotent, understand that; but in practice it’s as if I were, and anyhow you must imagine that I am.”
I had spoken in a sharp, determined fashion, in order to make her understand that there was nothing more to be said. But when I saw her still sitting there, silent and impassive, as though she still expected something, I added rather irritably: “If I feel nothing for you, that is, have no relationship with you, how could I make love? It would be a mechanical, impersonal act, utterly useless and utterly boring. And so...”
I did not finish, but looked at her meaningly, as much as to say: And so there’s nothing left for you but to go away. This time, at last, she appeared to understand, and very slowly, with regret, with hesitation, with reluctance, and almost, I think, with a lingering hope that I would stop her by taking her in my arms, she started to rise from the divan, though still appearing to remain seated—that is by gradually raising her hips and keeping her legs bent and the upper part of her body erect. But I did not take her in my arms, and finally she was on her feet in front of me. Humbly she said: “I’m sorry. But if at any time you want me as a model, you can telephone me. I’ll write down my telephone number.”
She went across to the table and, holding the towel to her chest with one hand, with the other wrote on a piece of paper. “I haven’t yet told you my name,” she said. “It’s Cecilia Rinaldi. I’ve written it down here, with my address and telephone number.”
She stood up again and walked over on tiptoe to the bathroom. She looked as if she were in evening dress, with the towel leaving her arms and shoulders bare, swathing her hips and forming a kind of train behind her. She disappeared, closing the door after her, and as she made this movement the towel slipped from her and I saw again for a moment the body which Balestrieri had painted so often and which it was impossible to divine underneath her clothes.
As soon as she disappeared I started thinking of Balestrieri. I recalled how the old painter had repulsed and avoided her for months, with a kind of animal-like fear or presentiment of what she was destined to be to him, and I wondered what would have happened if he had resisted her instead of yielding the day she presented herself in place of Elisa. Very probably Balestrieri would still be alive,