Contempt - Alberto Moravia [14]
I was left breathless. Her tone was now utterly cold, I could not help noticing, and practical, without the faintest touch of feeling in it. For a moment I sat quite still on the bed, my hands clasped, my head bent. Then her voice reached me again: “Well then, if you really want to, let’s get on with it...shall we?”
Without raising my head, I said in a low voice: “Yes, I want to.” It was not true, for by this time I no longer desired her, but I wished to endure this new, curious sense of estrangement to the bitter end. I heard her say “all right,” and then I heard her walking about the room and moving around the bed behind me. All she had to do was to take off her chemise, I thought, and I recalled how in the past I had watched this simple act with enchanted eyes, like the brigand in the fairy-tale who, when the magic word had been uttered, saw the door of the cave slowly open, revealing the splendor of the marvelous treasures within. But this time I was unwilling to look, knowing that I should be looking with different eyes, eyes that were no longer childish and pure, even if desirous, but that had been, by her indifference, made cruel and unworthy both of her and of myself. I remained as I was, leaning forward, my hands in my lap, my head bowed. After a little I heard the springs of the bed creak gently; she had got on to the bed and was lying on top of the bed-clothes. There was again a slight rustling as though she were changing position, and then she said, still in that horrible new voice: “Well, come along then...what are you waiting for?”
I neither turned nor moved; but all of a sudden I wondered whether it had always been like that, in our relationship. Yes, I said to myself at once, it had always been like that, more or less; she had always undressed and lain down on the bed: how else could it have been? And yet, at the same time, everything had been different. Never until now had there been this mechanical docility, cold and detached, such as was apparent from the tone of her voice and even from the creaking of the bed-springs and the rustling of the pressed-down bed-covers. Formerly everything, on the contrary, had happened in a cloud of inspired haste, of intoxicated unconsciousness, of ravished complicity. It happens sometimes, when one’s mind is absorbed by some profound thought, that one puts down an object of some kind—a book, a brush, a shoe—somewhere or other, and then, when the fit of absorption is over, one looks for it in vain for hours and, in the end, finds it in some strange, almost unbelievable place, so that a physical effort is required to reach it—on top of a cupboard, in a hidden corner, inside a drawer. That is what had happened to me, hitherto, in relation to love-making. Everything had always run its course in a mood of swift, feverish, enchanted absorption, and I had always come to myself again in Emilia’s arms almost without being able to recollect how it had all happened and what I had done between the moment when we were sitting opposite each other, quiet and without desire, and that other moment in which we were joined together in the final embrace. This absorption was now entirely lacking in her and therefore in me also. Now, I could have observed her movements with a cold, even if excited, eye, just as she, no doubt, could have observed mine. All of a sudden, the feeling which was becoming clearer and clearer in my furious, disgusted mind took on the character of a precise image: I was no longer face to face with the wife I loved and who loved me, but with a rather impatient and inexpert prostitute who was preparing to submit passively to my embraces hoping only that they would be brief and not too tiring. I had this image right before my eyes for a moment, like an apparition, and then I felt that it went, so to speak, around behind my back and became one with Emilia lying behind me on the bed. At the same moment I rose to my feet, still without turning around, and said: “Never mind...I don’t want to, now...I’ll go and sleep in the other room; you stay here”; then, on