Boredom - Alberto Moravia [79]
We took our seats at the table, and Cecilia’s mother, apologizing for not having a servant, carried around a tureen full of pasta. As I looked at the tangle of red, greasy spaghetti in the china tureen, it occurred to me that even the food had something about it that resembled the flat; something old, something neglected. I ate this bad pasta with repugnance, using a fork with an unsteady, yellow bone handle and envying the other three, especially Cecilia, who were all devouring their food with appetite. Cecilia’s mother poured me some wine which I judged, at the first sip, to have gone sour, and then, when I asked for some cold water, she filled my other glass with mineral water which was also stale; warm and without sparkle. The unpleasantness of the food was, however, surpassed by the unpleasantness of the conversation which Cecilia’s mother, the only one who spoke, stubbornly persisted in carrying on with me. Quite logically she had come to the conclusion that, apart from the usual remarks about the weather, the theaters and other things of the kind, the only subject that she and I had in common was Balestrieri, since he was my predecessor in giving drawing lessons to Cecilia. Halfway through lunch, when following the bad pasta I was eating a piece of tough, overcooked meat with vegetables cooked in poor quality oil, she attacked me in her shrill voice: “Professor, you knew Professor Balestrieri, didn’t you?”
I glanced at Cecilia before replying. She glanced back at me, but seemed not to see me, so absent-minded and vague was her look. I said dryly: “Yes, I knew him slightly.”
“Such a good man, so charming and so intelligent. A real artist. You can’t imagine how upset I was at his death.”
“Yes, yes,” I said casually, “and he wasn’t so very old.”
“Barely sixty-five, and he looked fifty. We had known him for only two years, and yet I seemed to have known him always. He was part of the family, so to speak. And he had such a great affection for Cecilia! He said he looked upon her almost as a daughter.”
“He ought to have said,” I corrected without smiling, “he ought to have said as a granddaughter.”
“Yes indeed, a granddaughter,” she approved mechanically. “And just imagine, he wouldn’t even be paid for his lessons. ‘Art cannot be paid for,’ he used to say. How true that is!”
“Perhaps,” I remarked, with an attempt at archness, “perhaps you mean to suggest that I ought to give Cecilia lessons for nothing, too.”
“No, I only meant that Balestrieri was very fond of Cecilia. For you, it’s different. But Balestrieri—really you might almost say he was dying of love for Cecilia!”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say: “In fact he did die of it.” But instead I asked: “Did you see him often?”
“Often? Why, almost every day. He was like one of the family. There was always a place for him at table. But you mustn’t think he was inconsiderate—quite the contrary.”
“How do you mean?”
“Oh well, he always tried to pay us back. He helped with the shopping, he used to buy this or that. And then he would send cakes, wine, flowers. ‘I’ve no family of my own,’ he used to say, ‘this is my family now. You must look upon me as a relation.’ Poor man, he was separated from his wife and lived alone.”
Cecilia at this point said: “Professor, give me your plate. Give me yours, Mother, and yours, Dad.” She put the four plates and the four bowls one on top of the other and left the room. As soon as Cecilia had disappeared, her father, who, during the funeral oration upon Balestrieri delivered by his wife, had merely looked from one to the other of us with his frightened, imploring eyes, made as though to speak in my direction. I leaned forward a little and the invalid opened his mouth and made a vigorous attempt to say something, which I did not understand. His wife got up, went to the sideboard without saying a word and fetched a notebook and pencil which she placed on the table beside her husband, saying: “Write it down, the Professor doesn’t understand you.”
But, with