Boredom - Alberto Moravia [66]
I could not help thinking that these were more or less the words I had in mind to say to her; and it immediately flashed across my mind that Cecilia wanted to announce a decision similar to my own, that is, that she wanted to leave me. In the meantime she had gone and sat down on the divan. I went over and sat down beside her, saying in a loud, angry voice: “No, first of all you’ve got to give me a kiss.”
Obediently she bent forward and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. Then, drawing back, she said: “The thing I must tell you is that from now on we can’t go on meeting every day, but only twice a week.”
“Why is that?”
“Keep calm, don’t get angry,” she said, before answering my question. My voice had indeed been loud and harsh, but I became seriously angry as I heard myself say: “I am calm and I am not angry. I merely want to know the reason for all this.”
“They’re beginning to grumble at home because I see you every day.”
“But didn’t you tell them you were taking drawing lessons?”
“Yes, but only twice a week. On the other days I always have to invent some excuse, and now they’ve found out.”
“It’s not true, your people don’t grumble. They didn’t grumble, for instance, when you saw Balestrieri every day.”
“Balestrieri was sixty-five, not thirty-five like you: they weren’t suspicious of him. Besides, they knew him.”
“Well, introduce me to them, then.”
“All right, I will. But meanwhile we must meet only twice a week.”
For a short time we sat silent. I was discovering now that not merely did I no longer want to part from Cecilia, but also that I could not bear to see her only twice in seven days. Then, all of a sudden, I understood. I was even prepared to reduce the number of our meetings; but I had to be mathematically certain that she was not lying to me and that her parents had really made trouble. Since, however, I was not certain, the idea that she was lying to me gave me a feeling of deep distress, as though she had escaped me at the very moment when, thanks to her untruthfulness, she was becoming real and desirable in my eyes. I took hold of her hand. “Tell me the truth,” I said. “You don’t want to see me any more.”
She answered at once: “That’s not the point. I said that from now on we must meet only twice a week, that’s all there is to it.”
I noticed that her tone of voice was completely neutral, equally distant from truthfulness and from falsehood. This was an observation that I had already made on other occasions; but only in order to note a trait in Cecilia’s character without attaching any significance to it. In general, she appeared always to be saying simply the things that she was saying, neither more nor less, without the slightest undertone of feeling. The latter, as I knew, was perceptible during sexual intercourse, and only then. But it was absolutely necessary for me to know whether she was lying to me, because I still wished to break off relations with her and her lying to me would prevent this. So I insisted. “What you really want is for us to part. But you haven’t the courage to tell me and so you’re trying to prepare me. Today you say twice a week, tomorrow you’ll say twice a month, and then in the end you’ll tell me the truth.”
“What truth?”
I had it on the tip of my tongue to say: “That you have another man.” But I restrained myself: the connection between her decision to reduce the number of our meetings and the encounter in the Piazza di Spagna was too obvious, and it humiliated me to accept it. Instead, I said brusquely: “Very well then. Let it be as you wish; from now on we’ll meet only twice a week. And now let’s change the subject.”
“What’s the matter? Why are you so gloomy?”
“Let’s change the subject. Do you know that I passed right under your nose today and you didn’t see me?”
“Why, where?”
“In the Piazza di Spagna, near the steps.”
“At what time?”
“It must have been about