Boredom - Alberto Moravia [60]
Suddenly I felt a pang at my heart, and I started violently so that my whole body shook. The thought that had pierced my heart was this: “I can think whatever I like, but in the meantime she hasn’t come,” and it aroused in me an almost physical feeling of the vanity of any sort of reflection in face of the reality of her absence. I looked at the clock and saw that more than half an hour had passed since I had woken up: certainly Cecilia would not be coming now. And I no longer had any desire to prove to myself that her absence left me indifferent.
I thought she might not be feeling well—the only reason that could explain her conduct without causing me to be suspicious of her—and I got up from the divan to go to the telephone. And then I recollected, with the feeling that I was making a discovery, that I had never, not even once, telephoned to Cecilia. It was she who had telephoned me, every day; I had never telephoned her because I had never felt the need of it. This lack of curiosity on my part seemed to me significant. I had never bothered to telephone Cecilia, in the same way that I had never sought to establish any real contact with her. And so our relationship had been nothing, and boredom had easily corroded it, and I, in the end, had made up my mind to break it.
After I had dialed the number Cecilia’s telephone went on ringing for a long time in a mysterious silence. To be more precise, I felt that the silence was mysterious inasmuch as Cecilia, who was in the background of this silence, had from the moment when she failed to arrive become mysterious to me, like an animal which had taken refuge in the depths of its lair. However, although it was mysterious, this silence was not entirely negative. In an insecure sort of way, like a gambler who after many losses still deceives himself into thinking he is going to win, I hoped that Cecilia’s voice would become audible. Instead of that a strange thing happened: the ringing stopped, someone took off the receiver but no one spoke; or rather I seemed to hear heavy breathing, or a kind of whispering, at the other end of the line. I called out: “Hello, hello,” and several times I asked: “Who is speaking?” Finally I realized that the receiver at the other end had been replaced. In a rage I dialed the number again, was again answered with silence and with that mysterious sound of breathing, and again, finally, the receiver was replaced. The third time, the telephone rang for a long time but nobody replied.
I left the telephone and went back and sat on the divan. For some time, in astonishment, I thought of nothing. The only thing that was clear to me was that, on the very day when I had decided to announce the ending of our relationship, Cecilia, for some reason I still did not know, had for the first time missed an appointment, had in effect—even if only in a provisional way—provoked the separation which I had had in mind to suggest to her. I had the disagreeable sensation of someone who, going down a steep staircase in the dark, expects another step and encounters instead the flat surface of a landing and then loses his balance just because the step is not there.
Deep in thought, I rose and went mechanically to the door, opened it and looked out into the corridor, toward the corner, almost hoping to see Cecilia appear there. I looked also in the opposite direction and my glance, traveling along the wall, came to a stop at the last door, which was that of Balestrieri’s studio. It occurred to me that Balestrieri himself must have put his head out into the corridor countless times to see if Cecilia, when she was late, might appear at the corner. I knew that his studio had not yet been let again; in fact it was said that his widow had the intention of going to live there herself. Now Cecilia on the day of our first meeting had left the key of the old painter’s studio on my table. She had never asked me for this key, and I had thrown