Boredom - Alberto Moravia [54]
“But why? It’s only the truth.”
“Yes, but it’s a truth that depresses me.”
“Why does it depress you? Think how many people would be happy to be in your place. My dear son, why must you be depressed by a thing that would make anyone else happy?”
My mother’s voice was truly distressed; and I could not help a sudden feeling of irritation and weariness. “There are some people,” I said, “who have an idiosyncrasy about strawberries; if they eat them, they break out all over in red spots. Well, I have one about money. And I blush at the idea of having it.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then my mother resumed, in a tone of good will: “All right, then: you’re a poor man. But you’re a poor man with a rich mother, at least you’ll admit that.”
“And what then?”
“Then your mother will lend you the money to go to the mountains—to Cortina d’Ampezzo, for instance.”
I was on the point of letting forth the howl of indignation to which my mother’s highly foreseeable and conventional advice usually prompted me—winter at Cortina d’Ampezzo, summer at the Lido and spring on the Riviera—when I suddenly realized that she had provided me with the excuse I was seeking for a final break with Cecilia. I would get her to give me the amount needed for a stay at Cortina; with this money I would buy a present for Cecilia; at the same time I would announce to her that I had to accompany my mother to the mountains. The present would soften the parting which, in any case, I would propose as temporary; later on I would write Cecilia a farewell letter. “All right,” I said in a submissive tone. “Cortina. Then you must give me the money.”
My mother evidently had not expected so rapid a surrender. She peered at me disconcertedly, and then asked: “Why, when do you want to leave?”
“At once. Today is the fifteenth; the eighteenth, for instance.”
“But you must reserve a room at a hotel.”
“I’ll telegraph.”
“And how long would you stay?”
“Two or three weeks.”
My mother appeared now to be positively regretting her offer; or rather—so it seemed to me—not so much regretting she had made it as that she had failed to make sure she was getting a bargain: the habit of business caution was so strong in her that it did not cease even in her dealings with me. In an irresolute, uncharitable tone of voice, she said: “Of course I’ll give you the money you need. I promised it and I shan’t go back on my word.”
“All right; then give it to me.”
“What a hurry you’re in! Besides, how much do you need?”
“Say twenty thousand lire a day. Let me have two hundred thousand lire, in the meantime.”
“Twenty thousand lire a day!”
“Am I or am I not rich, according to what you said? I won’t go to a first-class hotel. Twenty thousand lire a day is only just enough for an unpretentious place.”
“I haven’t got it here,” said my mother, making up her mind at last to oppose my request with a disguised refusal; “I never keep money here.”
“All right,” I said, rising to my feet, “then let’s go upstairs to your room.”
“I haven’t got it in my room either. I had to pay out money only this morning.”
“Then write me a check. You must certainly have your checkbook here.”
Oddly enough, she changed her mind at this perfectly reasonable suggestion. “No,” she said, “I’ll give it to you in cash after all, because I came to the end of my checkbook yesterday. Come upstairs.”
She rose and I followed her out of the study, wondering at the reason for this sudden change in the method of payment. I did not have long to wait to discover it. While we were going upstairs my mother, who was in front of me, said without turning around: “I’ll give you a first installment—a hundred thousand lire. The rest I’ll give you tomorrow. I can’t give you any more now because it’s all I have.”
So my mother had changed her mind because, while she could not have avoided making out a check for the whole amount, in cash she could give me only half, with the excuse that it was all she had. Why this sudden avarice? Probably,