Boredom - Alberto Moravia [84]
She seemed astonished both by my words and my tone of voice. “Why?” she said, “aren’t you going with me?”
“Where to?”
“I’ve told you already, to that film producer’s.”
“Very well; come along.”
I did not speak during the whole journey. Fundamentally, what most exasperated me was not so much that Cecilia should make me drive her to an appointment with her lover, as that she should do so without malice and without cruel intent, in a vague sort of way, simply, it might be, because she was tired of taking the usual crowded bus, and there was I, ready and on the spot, with my car. I realized that this detached, childish lack of sensitiveness caused me far more pain than any self-indulgent perversity.
I stopped the car in front of the film company’s door and watched Cecilia as she disappeared into the darkness of the entrance hall, walking with her usual tired-looking, swaying step. Evidently the appointment with the film-producer was genuine; but either the actor was waiting for Cecilia in the office, or Cecilia was intending to join him at his own home after she had spoken with the producer. In both cases it would have been easy for me to ascertain the truth, either by following her immediately into the building, or by waiting until she came out. But I gave up the idea: I was still at the stage of jealousy when a surviving sense of dignity prevents one from spying upon the person one is jealous of. Nevertheless, as I went away I knew I had merely postponed the moment when I would start watching her. Next time, I thought, I should no longer be able to stand firm against circumstances which encouraged me, which indeed almost obliged me, to spy upon her.
7
THE EVENTS WHICH I am now going to relate may create the impression of a crisis of very ordinary jealousy; and indeed, if my behavior during that time had been observed by a spectator of little perspicacity it might well have appeared to be that of the stock victim of jealousy. But it was not like that. The jealous man suffers from an excessive sense of possessiveness; he suspects continually that some other man wishes to get possession of his woman, and this haunting suspicion gives rise to extravagant imaginings and may even lead him to crime. On the other hand, I suffered because I loved Cecilia (for it had now become a question of love); and my aim in spying upon her was to make certain that she was deceiving me, not indeed to punish her or in any way prevent her from continuing in her unfaithfulness, but in order to set myself free both from my love and from her. The jealous man tends, in spite of himself, to shackle himself in his own servitude; I, on the contrary, wished to release myself from this same servitude, and I saw no other means of attaining my object than by destroying Cecilia’s independence and mystery, thus reducing her, through a more exact knowledge of her treacherous conduct, to something well known and ordinary and insignificant.
My first thought was to make use of the telephone. As I have already mentioned, Cecilia used to telephone me every morning about ten o’clock. She had done this, at the beginning, merely in order to greet me. But now that her visits had become rarer (her promise to continue to see me every day had soon been proved unreliable), the telephone had become an essential element in our relationship. It was in fact by telephone that Cecilia now fixed the day and hour of our appointments each time, in an unaccountable, irregular manner. I noticed that the time of these telephone calls had changed recently from