Boredom - Alberto Moravia [91]
Finally I thought I would telephone to Luciani; I might possibly be able, by means of some sound or other, to detect Cecilia’s presence in the flat. Luckily the telephone in the bar was near the door, so that I would be able to make the call without interfering with my watch on the street door opposite. I went over and dialed the number, and heard the actor’s voice. My calculations were not entirely wrong; while the actor was repeating, “Hello, hello,” I could distinctly hear the sound of a dance tune, and this made my heart sink, for I knew that Cecilia liked to make love to the sound of music. The actor, after repeating “Hello” once again, added the single word “Idiot!” and hung up the receiver. If the dance music had given me some vague idea of the size and arrangement and look of the room in which it was being played, this insulting word, in which I seemed to detect not only irritation at being disturbed but also male vanity aroused by the nature of the thing which had been disturbed, gave me a glimpse of Cecilia and the actor as they were at that moment—he standing naked beside the little table with the telephone on it, fully visible with his big chest and broad, hairy shoulders, with his muscular belly, and his sexual organ still, perhaps, in a state of erection, with his athletic, over-developed loins and legs; she, naked too, lying languidly on the bed, her eyes turned to gaze with delight at the limbs of her lover. I hung up the receiver and sat in the window again.
I waited twenty minutes longer, and then had another proof of Cecilia’s presence in Luciani’s flat. The bar phone rang, the barman answered it, listened and then said, in a stupid sort of military voice: “Always at your service, Signor Luciani!” After a short time I saw the waiter, a red-faced youth, go out carrying a tray; on it were a bottle of beer, some sandwiches wrapped in a napkin and a large glass filled with orange juice. I knew that Cecilia, after making love, was in the habit of quenching her thirst with the juice of three or four oranges. I followed the waiter with my eyes, saw him go into the house opposite, and after not more than a minute come out again with the empty tray. The boy came back into the bar, and the barman said to him sardonically: “What’s the matter? What did you see? Bowled over, you look. How many times have I told you—what you see in people’s houses has nothing to do with you. Come on—get these glasses washed.” At that moment, as if propelled by a powerful spring—with the same kind of automatic jerk of the muscles as had caused me earlier to abandon my vigil in front of Cecilia’s flat—I put the money on the table, took my bottle of whisky and went out. I saw that to go away after waiting so long meant that all the efforts and sufferings of the afternoon would be thrown to the winds, but for this day, anyhow, I was not capable of waiting any longer. Perhaps, as I thought later, I really wanted to put off the moment when, being completely assured of Cecilia’s unfaithfulness, I should feel that I possessed her inasmuch as I was enabled to judge her, and was consequently set free from her and no longer loved her. In any case, the final proof of her unfaithfulness was deferred, and with it the devaluation of Cecilia and the reduction of her from a creature of mystery to an insignificant little adulteress.
I have sought to describe in detail the first day of my starting to spy upon Cecilia, because it was identical, or almost identical, with many others that followed it, of which therefore