Boredom - Alberto Moravia [82]
I noticed that she glanced at her wrist watch. Then she replied: “I’m expecting a telephone call.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“It depends on the telephone call whether I can come to the studio or not.”
“Who is going to telephone you?”
She considered me for a moment with an indefinable, thoughtful expression and then answered: “It’s a film producer, to make an appointment to see me. If the appointment is in a short time, I’m afraid I shall not be able to come.”
I was sure that she was lying. The thing that betrayed her was her tone of voice, which had the excessive naturalness achieved only when a person is lying. “Why not tell the truth?” I said. “It’s the actor who is going to telephone you.”
“What actor?”
“Luciani.”
“I saw him yesterday,” she said unexpectedly, seeking to foist a twenty-four-hour-old truth upon me, I decided, in order to conceal her lie of a moment earlier. “We went together to see a producer. I don’t have to see him every day.”
“Was it a producer you went to see yesterday, too?”
“It’s the same one. It was Luciani who gave me an introduction. The producer couldn’t see me yesterday and sent a message that he would telephone me today.”
I noticed how plausible it all was. And perhaps it was all true, even in detail, for I knew that Cecilia, on the occasions when she was forced to tell a lie, did so by building up an edifice of falsehood with the materials of truth. “Come on,” I insisted, “it is Luciani who is going to telephone you. Why shouldn’t you admit it?”
“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t, but it isn’t true.”
“Well then, if it’s not true, let me go and answer the telephone for you.”
“All right, if you like.”
Her willingness to agree made me think that there might be an arrangement between her and Luciani, as often happens between lovers: if it was she who answered, Luciani would declare himself for who he was; if somebody else, he would say he was the producer. With some bitterness, I said: “No, I don’t want to put you to the test. I only want you to understand one thing, just one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That I don’t want you to love me, I want you to tell me the truth. I would rather you told me you were going to see Luciani today, if it’s true that you are, than that you should tell me you’re not going to see him, just in order to please me.”
We looked at one another. Then, with a gesture that was almost tender, she stroked my cheek. “My truth,” she said, “is that I’m not seeing Luciani today. Would you rather I told you your truth—that I am seeing him?”
Thus Cecilia, without intending it, let it be seen that truth and falsehood were for her the same thing, and that fundamentally neither truth nor falsehood existed. Suddenly, from the passage, came the ringing of the telephone. Cecilia jumped off my knee, exclaiming: “The telephone!” and ran out of the room. I followed her.
The telephone was at the far end of the passage and at the darkest part of it, on a shelf. I saw Cecilia take off the receiver, place it to her ear and then immediately say: “Good day.” I stood beside her, and she, as though she wished to conceal and protect the black vulcanite instrument into which she was speaking and out of which someone was speaking to her, suddenly turned her back upon me. The conversation continued, but I noticed that Cecilia answered in monosyllables or in words even more insignificant—if that was possible—than those with which she usually expressed herself; and all at once I was convinced that it was the actor at the other end of the line, that he and Cecilia were arranging a meeting, and that Cecilia was unfaithful to me with him. At the same time I became aware that I felt a violent desire for her, lying to me as she was, and therefore evading me and therefore becoming real and attractive; as if, by having her there and then, in the passage, while she was talking to her lover, I might be able to possess her at the very moment when, by means of the telephone, she was