Boredom - Alberto Moravia [68]
And so, in a mysterious, unexpected way, Cecilia gave up the idea of reducing her visits to me. I was so surprised that I couldn’t go on thinking unkind things about her. It was clear now: Cecilia, in spite of her precocious experience, was a very young girl and afraid of her parents; this fear had prompted her to reduce the frequency of our meetings; in face of my sadness and suspicion, she had changed her mind again and was doing as I asked. So she was not being unfaithful to me, she was not lying to me; she was just a simple, unmysterious girl, torn between her subjection to her parents and her attachment to her lover. It seemed odd that I had not thought of this before; and all at once the way in which the actor had taken her by the arm became an unimportant detail. Perhaps he really did that with all women, whatever his relations with them might be. These reflections lasted only a moment. Then I became aware of a new fact: not merely was I not pleased that Cecilia had given up the idea of reducing her visits; but also I could see the old boredom reappearing on our horizon, like a tiny but decidedly dark cloud in an otherwise empty sky. “Thank you,” I said. “But, if you like, we could perhaps see each other, say four times a week instead of seven.”
“No, it doesn’t matter, I’ll find some excuse.”
She had gone back to the chair upon which she had placed her sweater and had started undressing again. I watched her as she put her two hands to the zipper at the side of her skirt and lowered it; I wondered whether the quick, graceful gestures that brought about the gradual fall of her clothes and the gradual unveiling of her body appeared to me, now that I was sure of not being betrayed, as boring and ridiculous as they had in the past; and, after a moment’s consideration, I was compelled to admit that it was so. As if, in fact, by a miracle in reverse—a miracle, that is, which instead of introducing something magical into reality had withdrawn it—Cecilia, who had seemed so desirable as long as I had suspected that she was betraying me, now that I was convinced of the contrary had gone back to being an insignificant object, present to the most superficial perception of my senses but not for that reason truly real. I reflected that the whole of her personality was in that action of lowering the zipper fastening, the whole of her, with no margin of independence or mystery, and that she was for that very reason non-existent; that she had been already possessed beforehand, even before sexual intercourse had given a superfluous confirmation to this possession by feeling; possessed and therefore boring. While I was thinking these things I was myself undressing, and that I could not help casting a glance at my sexual organ, almost afraid that it was not in a state of erection, as I might well have feared, judging from my reflections. But it was, and never so much as at that moment had I admired the force of nature which made me desire without any real desire. By this time I was naked. I lay down on my back on the divan, rather as a sick man lies on the doctor’s couch, and with the same sense of submitting to an unpleasant ordeal which anyhow was very far removed from love.
Then an unexpected thing happened. Cecilia, who had also finished undressing, went over on tiptoe, as usual, to draw the curtains across the big window, and then, with the joyous movement of one who gains his freedom and runs toward the sea, she rushed to the divan and threw herself on top of me, heavily, violently, and with an inarticulate cry of triumph. Then she raised herself up and sat astride me as I lay flat, and leaning heavily with her two hands on my shoulders, exclaimed: “Tell me the truth, you must confess that you believed just now that I was being unfaithful to you with Luciani?”
I looked at the excited face, red with pleasure, framed in the light, curly hair that had never seemed to me so alive, and I was suddenly convinced of the opposite of what I had hitherto been thinking: yes, Cecilia had lied to me; yes, she had been unfaithful