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By Root 725 0

near the window. I reflected that the canvas was blank because I did not succeed in getting possession of any kind of reality, in the same way that my own mind was blank when confronted with a Cecilia who eluded me and whom I could not succeed in possessing. And the physical act, by which I often had the illusion of possessing her, was equivalent to the pornographic painting of Balestrieri—that is, it was not possession, just as the other was not painting. And in the same way as, with Cecilia, I oscillated between boredom and sexual mania, so, in art, I oscillated between bad painting and no painting at all. And now I had turned to the Agenzia Falco in order to find out something certain about Cecilia, but it was as though in order to paint I had read a scientific treatise on the nature and composition of matter. The canvas was empty, I went on thinking confusedly, because Cecilia eluded me; my mind was empty because reality eluded me. Reality and Cecilia were the two words that echoed more and more feebly in my head; evoking two different operations which I felt, nevertheless, to be connected by an undoubted link. It seemed clear to me that this link was the mania to possess, and that both operations were wrecked by the impossibility of doing so. As I thought over these things, more and more wearily, I fell asleep.

I had scarcely fallen asleep when I woke up again. The studio was almost in darkness, and when I turned on the light I realized that in reality I had slept for about an hour; it was half past five, and I had come back from the agency at about half past four. This sleep, so profound as to give me the feeling of not having slept at all, had rested me: I felt unusually clear-headed and, as had sometimes happened to me in the past when I was getting ready to paint, full of precise and conscious creative energy. I looked up at the canvas and thought, almost involuntarily, that it was a pity I had given up painting; this was the state of mind one needed for working. But immediately afterward, in an automatic sort of way, I jumped off the divan and rushed out of the studio. I was sure that Cecilia was in the actor’s flat, and I wanted to catch her at the moment when she came out on her way to visit me.

Before this I had set out to watch Cecilia every day except those days on which we saw each other, thinking for some reason or other that she would not go to bed with me and with the actor on the same afternoon. But Cecilia had told me on the telephone that morning that she could not see me before six, and I understood why she had given me an appointment for that time: she was due to visit Luciani before she came to visit me. And so, while I could not know at what time she went to see Luciani on other days, nor at what time she left him, today, I at least knew for certain at what time she would be leaving him, because that was the time when she was coming to see me. It astonished me that I had never before thought of a thing that was so simple and, in addition, so completely in conformity with Cecilia’s innocently cruel psychology. It was characteristic of her to go straight from the arms of the actor into mine, in the space of barely half an hour; to give herself to me with the same flattering abandonment with which she had given herself to him; to mingle the seed of both of us, with animal-like greed, in her own belly. Why in the world had I never thought of it before?

Fifteen minutes later I was at the house where the actor lived. I found room for the car almost in front of the entrance door, and stayed in it. It was not worth while taking up my position in the bar; according to my calculations, Cecilia ought to be coming out in five minutes at most. I lit a cigarette, never taking my eyes off the ground-floor shutters, through which a light showed. These were the shutters of Luciani’s flat, and probably, at that moment, Cecilia was dressing hastily, telling the actor the same childish lie that she generally told me: “I must go, Mother’s expecting me.” I had a feeling of nausea as I looked at those shutters, and