Contempt - Alberto Moravia [101]
No answer came to me. I repeated, in surprise: “Give me your hand, Emilia!” and for the second time leaned forward, holding out my hand. Then, since there was again no reply, I leaned still farther forward and, cautiously, so as not to strike the face of Emilia, I felt about for her in the darkness. But my hand met nothing but empty air, and when I lowered it I felt beneath my fingers, at the spot where they should have encountered Emilia’s seated figure, nothing but the smooth wood of the empty seat. My astonishment was mingled with a feeling of terror. “Emilia!” I cried, “Emilia!” The only answer was a thin, icy echo. In the meantime my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and could at last distinguish, in the thick gloom, the boat with its bow lying on the beach, the beach itself, of fine, black gravel, and the glimmering, dripping vault curving over my head. And then I saw that the boat was completely empty, with no one sitting in the stern, and that the beach was empty too, and that all round me there was no one, and that I was alone.
Looking towards the stern, I said, in astonishment: “Emilia!” but this time it was in a low voice. And I repeated again: “Emilia, where are you?”—and at that same moment I understood. Then I got out of the boat and threw myself down on the beach and buried my face in the moist pebbles and I think I fainted, for I remained motionless, almost without feeling, for a time that seemed endless.
Later I rose to my feet, automatically got into the boat again and pushed it out of the cave. At the mouth of the grotto the strong sunlight, reflected off the sea, smote me. I looked at the watch on my wrist and saw that it was two o’clock in the afternoon. I had been in the cave for more than an hour. And I remembered that noon was the hour for ghosts; and I realized that I had been talking and weeping in the presence of a ghost!
23
MY RETURN TO the beach-houses was slow; every now and then I stopped rowing and sat still, resting on my oars, my eyes fixed dreamily upon the blue, shining surface of the sea. It was clear that I had had a hallucination, of the same kind as I had had two days before, when Emilia was lying naked in the sun and I had imagined that I had bent over her and kissed her, whereas in reality I had not moved nor gone near her. This time the hallucination had been far more precise and articulate; but that it was in truth a hallucination and nothing more no further proof was needed than the conversation I had imagined myself to have had with Emilia’s ghost—a conversation during which I had made Emilia say all the things I wanted her to say, and assume exactly the attitudes I wished her to assume. Everything had begun and ended with myself; the only difference from what usually happens in such circumstances being that I had not confined myself to a wishful imagining of what I wanted to happen, but, from the sheer force of feeling that filled my heart, had deluded myself into thinking it really had happened. Strange to say, however, I was not in the least surprised at having had a hallucination of a kind that was not merely uncommon but perhaps unique. As though the hallucination were still continuing, I turned my attention, not so much to the question of its actual possibility, as to its details, reconstructing them one by one, dwelling with an almost sensual pleasure upon those which gave me most pleasure and comfort. How beautiful Emilia had been, sitting in the stern of my boat, no longer hostile but full of love; how sweet her words; how disturbing, how violent the feeling I had experienced when I told her I wanted to make love to her and she had answered me with that faint nod