Boredom - Alberto Moravia [93]
This time she made no answer, replying to my words with a silence that was in no way hostile or offended, the silence, I couldn’t help thinking, of any animal. “Well, aren’t you going to say anything?” I insisted.
“I’ve nothing to say. You want to know what Luciani is like, and I can’t tell you anything, because I’ve never thought about it, and I don’t know. I only know that I like being with him.”
“I’m told he’s a very bad actor.”
“That may be so, I don’t known anything about it.”
“Where does Luciani come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“How old is he?”
“I’ve never asked him.”
“Is he younger or older than me?”
“Perhaps he may be younger.”
“Of course he is, at least ten years younger. Tell me—has he a father, a mother, brothers and sisters, a family, in fact?”
“We’ve never talked about it.”
“What do you talk about when you’re together?”
“All sorts of things.”
“What, for instance?”
“How can you expect me to remember? We talk, that’s all.”
“I remember almost all our conversations perfectly well.”
“I don’t; I don’t remember anything.”
“Well, tell me: if you had to describe Luciani, if you were forced to do so, if you couldn’t avoid it, how would you describe him?”
She hesitated, then answered quite simply: “No one is forcing me to, so I haven’t any need to describe him.”
“Then I’ll describe him to you: he’s tall, athletic, broad-shouldered, with black eyes and fair hair, small hands and feet, and a fatuous expression.”
“What does fatuous mean?”
“It means conceited.”
She was silent for a moment, then she remarked: “It’s true that he has small hands and feet. Now that you mention it, I remember.”
“So, if I hadn’t mentioned it, you wouldn’t have remembered?”
“I don’t look at people in detail, as you do. I only see if they’re nasty or nice. That’s enough for me.”
At this point it occurred to me, naturally, to wonder what Cecilia thought of me. I had it on the tip of my tongue to ask her: “And what do you think of me?”—but I could not make up my mind to put this question to her, fearing perhaps that she would answer, as in the case of Luciani, that she didn’t think anything. In the end, however, I did decide, one day, to ask her: “What do you think of me?”
Rather unexpectedly, she replied: “Oh, lots of things.”
I was much relieved, and went on: “Really? And What?”
“I don’t really know; lots of things.”
“Tell me one of them, anyhow.”
She appeared to be considering the matter scrupulously, and then she answered: “Perhaps it’s just because you want to know, but at the present moment I can’t think of anything.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that at the present moment I can’t seem to think anything.”
“Absolutely nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“But just now you said you thought lots of things.”
“Yes, I said so, but I see I was wrong.”
“But don’t you find it tiresome to think nothing, absolutely nothing, about the man you make love with?”
“No, why should I? What need is there to think anything?”
And so Cecilia did not merely remain elusive herself, but managed to confer an atmosphere of elusiveness upon everything that concerned her; she was like one of those characters in a fairy story who are not only invisible themselves but make everything they touch invisible.
And yet two or three times a week I possessed her, by which I mean that I went to bed with her. Anyone else, faced with the growing inadequacy of the physical relationship, would have sought elsewhere for the explanation of a thirst which increased in proportion as it was satisfied. But I was now set upon a course which I felt to be at the same time both fatal and mistaken; and so I made violent efforts to discover, in that physical possession which I yet knew to be illusory, the true possession I had so desperate a need for. As I threw myself upon Cecilia’s willing body, I felt that possibly I was making amends, in those tow hours of her delusive presence, for the other days of her absence. Possibly I was seeking, in her unalterable docility, a reason for boredom and thus for liberation. But Cecilia