Contempt - Alberto Moravia [102]
As I dwelt with inexhaustible pleasure upon the details of my vision, it suddenly occurred to me to compare once again the time at which I had left the Piccola Marina in the boat with the time at which I had come out of the Red Grotto, and I was again struck with the great length of time that I must have spent at the far end of the cave, on the little subterranean beach: allowing three quarters of an hour for the journey from the Piccola Marina to the Grotto, it must have been more than an hour. As I have already said, I had attributed this length of time to a fainting fit, or at any rate to some kind of collapse or unconsciousness very like a fainting fit. But now, on re-examining my hallucinations, which had been so complete and at the same time had corresponded so obligingly with my most profound desires, I wondered whether I had not quite simply dreamed the whole thing. Whether, that is to say, I had not embarked from the bathing-beach alone and without any ghost on board, and whether I had not penetrated, still alone, into the grotto, and finally lain down on the little beach and gone to sleep. During my sleep—if this were so—I had dreamed that I had started off in the boat with Emilia sitting in the stern, that I had talked to her and she had answered me, that I had suggested making love, that we had gone together into the cave. And then I had also dreamed that I had put out my hand to help her out of the boat, that I had failed to find her, that I had been frightened, that I had thought I must have had a ghost with me on my boat excursion, and that I had finally thrown myself down on the beach and fainted.
This supposition now seemed to me to be probably true; but not more than probably. Now that it had been obscured, sidetracked and confused by my subsequent fancies, it seemed to me almost impossible to search out the dividing line between dream and actual reality, a dividing line that must be located in that moment when I lay down on the beach. What had really happened at the precise moment when I lay down on the little beach at the far end of the cave? Had I fallen asleep and dreamed that I had been with Emilia, the real Emilia of flesh and blood? Or had I fallen asleep and dreamed that I had been visited by Emilia’s ghost? Or again, had I fallen asleep and dreamed that I was asleep and dreaming one or the other of the aforesaid dreams? Like those Chinese boxes each one of which contains a smaller one, reality seemed to contain a dream which in its turn contained a reality which in its turn contained yet another dream, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, again and again, pausing and resting on my oars out at sea, I wondered if I had dreamed or had had a hallucination, or—more singularly—if a ghost had indeed appeared to me; and in the end I came to the conclusion that it was not possible for me to find out, and that, in all probability, I should never find out.
I rowed on and came at last to the beach-house. I dressed in great haste, went up again to the road, and was in time to board a bus which was on the point of leaving for the piazza. I was in a great hurry now to be home again: somehow, for a reason I could not explain, I felt convinced that when I reached the villa I should perhaps find the key to all these mysteries. I was in a hurry to get there also because I had still to have lunch and pack my bag and then catch the six o’clock boat; and I had wasted time. I left the piazza at once, almost at a run, by the usual path; in twenty minutes’ time I was at the villa.
I had no time, as I entered the deserted living-room, to succumb to the sadness of desolation and loneliness. On the