Boredom - Alberto Moravia [92]
How many hours did I spend during those days, sitting in my car in front of the building where Cecilia lived! How many hours in that bar, at the little table in the window! In order to show the degree of obtuseness to which I had been brought by jealousy, all I need to say is that, after a week of exhausting vigils, I discovered by chance that it was useless to watch Cecilia’s block of flats because it had two doors, one on to the street where I had been mounting guard, and another on to a parallel, more important street along which the buses passed and where taxis could be found. Naturally Cecilia went out by the latter door, which was more convenient for her. This discovery appeared to me significant. I had become so stupid that it had taken me a week to notice a thing which I ought to have thought of from the very first moment.
After I had discovered this second door in Cecilia’s building, I believed that my investigations, now confined merely to the house where the actor lived, would become much easier. But again I was wrong. Apparently, among all the minutes in the day, I always chose those that were never visible on Cecilia’s little wrist watch. Time, for Cecilia and her lover, was not the same as for me. Theirs was the calm, sure, regular time of love; mine the furious, uneven time of jealousy. In all probability I took up my station in the bar when Cecilia had already gone into the actor’s house, and went away when she had not yet come out. The truth was that I could not manage to overcome my repugnance for the act of spying, which I felt to be both degrading and deceptive. This repugnance made me sluggish when I was preparing to go to the bar and impatient when my period of waiting was drawing to a close.
During this whole time, although I made the most determined efforts to entrap her, I never once saw Cecilia coming out of or going into Luciani’s house. This seemed to me an incredible thing, with something supernatural about it; so much so, that it sometimes occurred to me that Cecilia was downright invisible. And so she was, to me at least, with the kind of invisibility of things that are apparent to the senses yet elude the mind.
Cecilia’s elusiveness was confirmed not only by the failure of my surveillance but also by that of my investigations into her relationship with Luciani. Knowing well that I could not make a frontal attack upon her because she would be ready to lie to me and would thus become even more elusive than she already was, I tried sometimes to make her talk about the actor in a general way, so as to see if her answers gave a glimpse of a feeling that was more than friendly. Here is an example of how I questioned her.
“Do you often see Luciani now?”
“Yes, I see him sometimes.”
“You know him well by now, then.”
“Oh yes, I know him a little.”
“Then tell me what you think of him.”
“What d’you mean—what do I think of him?”
“Well, what do you think of him, what is your opinion of him?”
“I haven’t any opinion—why should I have?”
“No, I mean—what’s your idea about him, how do you find him?”
“He’s very nice.”
“Is that all?”
“What d’you mean—is that all?”
“Just—nice?”
“Well, yes, I think he’s nice—that’s all.”
“And you go out with him because he’s nice and that’s all.”
“Yes.”
“But I’m nice, you’re nice, your father’s nice; to say that someone is nice means practically nothing.”
“What ought I to say, then?”
“Defects, qualities, good, bad,