Boredom - Alberto Moravia [43]
3
AFTER THAT DAY Cecilia came to see me a couple of times a week, then every other day, and finally, after we had known one another for a month, almost every day. Cecilia’s visits took place always at the same time of day, lasted always for the same length of time, and were spent always in the same way; so that to describe one of them is to describe them all. Cecilia would announce her arrival with one single ring at the bell, a ring so brief that it often left me uncertain as to whether I had really heard it; but it was just this uncertainty that made me know it was she. I would go and open the door and Cecilia would throw her arms around my neck and we would kiss. I wish to say at this point that Cecilia, so expert in the sexual relationship, did not know how to kiss. It may be that the kiss is a symbolic contact, so to speak, in which the pleasure is more psychological than sensual, and psychology was not Cecilia’s strong point; or it may be, more simply, that Cecilia did not know how to kiss me, that is, that our relationship was not of the kind that can express itself with kisses. Certain it is that Cecilia’s lips were inert, cold and formless, like those of a little girl who has been running with the wind in her face and hastily embraces her father. Moreover Cecilia’s double nature, at the same time that of a child and of a grown woman, was revealed during the moment of the kiss. She offered me a mouth which was lacking both in eagerness and in abandonment, a mouth which failed to open in response to mine or to insinuate itself into mine, but at the same moment I would feel her straining against me with her body in a forward curve, and then, with her groin, dealing me a strong, sharp stroke that seemed to proclaim the urgent, inarticulate quality of her love. This first kiss lasted only a short time, since I found no pleasure in it and broke it off almost immediately. Cecilia would disengage herself from me, put down her bag and gloves on the table, walk over to the window and pull the cords of the curtains, and then undress, always in the same way and in the same place, between the divan and an armchair upon which she placed her clothes as she took them off.
I had met Cecilia in July, when she was wearing the summer clothes which I have already described—a light, puffy blouse and a wide, short skirt like a ballet skirt; later on, with the autumn, as soon as it began to be less warm, she wore a long, loose, green woolen sweater and a black skirt, very tight, which reached to her knees. Cecilia would slip this sweater over her head, pausing a moment with her arms raised and her head muffled and hidden, and then, with an energetic movement, always the same, she would pull off the sweater and throw it down inside out on the armchair. She was now in her skirt only, naked to the waist, because, indifferent to the rough contact of the wool against her skin, she wore nothing underneath her sweater. She used to say, with little trace of vanity and as though establishing an incontestable fact, that her breasts would stay up without any support; but I always thought she did this out of calculated coquettishness, with the intention that her magnificent bosom should appear, or rather burst forth, the moment she took off her sweater. The sight of her bosom did not in any case dispel the