Contempt - Alberto Moravia [11]
“During these two years,” I persisted, “you’ve never once complained...I thought you’d got accustomed to it.”
She raised her head, pleased, it seemed to me, that I had taken up the point of the excuse she had made. “I’ve never got accustomed to it...I’ve always slept badly...recently, in fact, perhaps because my nerves are bad nowadays, I’ve hardly been sleeping at all...If we could only go to bed early; but, one way or another, we’re always late...and then...” She did not finish her sentence and made as if to move away towards the living-room. I went after her and said hastily: “Wait a minute. If you like, we can perfectly well give up sleeping with the shutters open. It’s all right—from now on we’ll sleep with them shut.”
I realized, as I spoke, that this proposal was not merely a demonstration of affectionate compliance; in reality, as I knew, I wanted to put her to the test. I saw her shake her head, and she answered, with a faint smile: “No, no...why should you sacrifice yourself? You’ve always said you feel suffocated with the shutters closed. It’s better for us to sleep apart.”
“I assure you, for me it will be a very slight sacrifice...I shall soon get used to it.”
She appeared to hesitate and then said, with unexpected firmness: “No, I don’t want any sacrifices—either great or small...I shall sleep in the other room.”
“And what if I say I don’t like it, and that I want you to sleep with me?”
She hesitated again. Then, in the good-natured tone which was usual to her: “Riccardo, that’s just like you. You didn’t want to make this sacrifice two years ago, when we got married; and now you want to make it, at all costs. What’s the matter with you? Plenty of married people sleep apart and are fond of each other just the same. And you’ll be freer in the mornings, too, when you have to go to work; you won’t wake me up any more.”
“But you’ve just said you always woke at dawn...I don’t leave the house at dawn!...”
“Oh, how pig-headed you are!” she exclaimed impatiently. And this time, without paying any more attention to me, she left the room.
Left alone, I sat down on the bed, which, despoiled of one of its pillows, already had about it a suggestion of separation and desertion, and so I remained for some moments in bewilderment, looking at the open door through which Emilia had disappeared. One question came into my mind: did Emilia not want to sleep with me any longer because the daylight really annoyed her, or simply because she did not want to go on sleeping with me? I was inclined to believe in the second of these alternatives, although I longed with all my heart to believe in the first. I felt, however, that if I had accepted Emilia’s explanation, there would always have been a doubt in my mind. I did not admit it to myself, but the final question, in reality, was, “Has Emilia perhaps ceased to love me?”
In the meantime, while, absorbed in these thoughts, I sat looking about the room, Emilia was coming and going, carrying into the living-room, after the pillow, a pair of folded sheets that she took from the cupboard, a blanket, a dressing-gown. It was the beginning of October, and the weather was still mild, and she was going about the flat in a gauzy, transparent chemise. I have not yet described Emilia, but I should like to do so now, if only in order to explain my feelings that night. She was perhaps not really a tall woman, but to me, owing to the feeling that I had for her, she seemed taller and, above all, more majestic than any woman I had ever known. I could not say whether this look of majesty was innate in her or whether it was my own ravished glances that attributed it to her; I only remember that, on the first night after our wedding, when she had taken off her high-heeled shoes, I went up to her in the middle of the room and embraced her, and was vaguely surprised when I noticed that her forehead barely came up to the top of my chest and that I was taller than her by head and shoulders. But later, when she was lying beside me