Boredom - Alberto Moravia [55]
“You’ve no secrets,” I said, “because you know that I don’t want your money. If I did, you’d have plenty.”
“What nonsense,” she replied. “You’re my son, aren’t you?” And she went in front of me into the bathroom. This was a very large room, with the ostentatious, wasteful, useless spaciousness which, in the houses of the rich, is characteristic of places devoted to the care of the body. Between the bath and the wash-basin there were at least four yards of marble floor, and between the basin and the toilet as many of tiled wall. I watched my mother as she went over to the wall, took hold of one of those hooks that are used for hanging towels on, turned it from left to right and then pulled it toward her. Four white tiles opened like a small door, exposing the neat gray surface of a steel safe. “Now let’s see,” said my mother with school-teacher complacency, “let’s see you try and open it with the secret combination.”
My mother had taught me the combination of the safe, and I had learned it almost against my own will, perhaps merely because I had a good memory; but I was most unwilling to make use of it, especially in her presence—rather as one is unwilling to take part in the rites of a religion in which one does not believe. “Why?” I said. “You open it; what’s it got to do with me?”
“I wanted to see if you remembered it,” said my mother gaily. Rapidly, with her nervous white hand laden with massive rings, she turned some dials on the quadrant of the safe and then opened it. I had a glimpse of some rolls of stock certificates and a number of white and yellow envelopes lying in confusion inside the deep recess. My mother, changing suddenly from gaiety to suspiciousness, threw me a mistrustful glance. I lowered my eyes in embarrassment. I saw, lying stranded on the porcelain bowl of the toilet, a wad of cotton; I put out my hand and pressed down the lever, and the water came gushing out. When I looked up again, my mother had taken a bulging white envelope out of the safe and was pushing the white tiles back into place. Turning back into the room, she said: “I’ll give you fifty thousand lire for today. I’ve remembered that I need the other fifty thousand to pay a tradesman’s bill.”
Thus the sum I had asked for was again reduced. I had counted on giving Cecilia a present to the value of two hundred thousand lire; I had resigned myself to accepting a hundred thousand; but fifty thousand seemed to me really a very small amount to alleviate the pain of our parting. I protested firmly. “I need a hundred thousand lire today,” I said. “You can pay the tradesman some other time.”
“No, I can’t.” My mother went over to a tall, antique chest-of-drawers and, turning her back upon me, opened the envelope—as far as I could see—on the marble top. Without moving from the middle of the room, I said to her: “In that envelope there are certainly more than fifty thousand lire, perhaps more than three hundred thousand. In that envelope you probably have at least half a million, so why do you tell me all these stories?”
She answered hastily, without turning around: “No, there are only a hundred thousand lire in this envelope.”
“Let me see, then.”
She turned abruptly, with an unexpected movement, hiding the money with her shoulders and showing