Contempt - Alberto Moravia [28]
“But I offered to sleep with the shutters closed.”
“Well,” she hesitated, “must I also tell you, then, that when you’re asleep you’re not silent?”
“What do you mean?”
“You snore.” She smiled faintly and then went on: “You used to wake me up every night...That’s why I decided to sleep by myself.”
I was somewhat disconcerted at this detail of my snoring, of which I was ignorant and which, furthermore, I found it difficult to believe: I had slept with other women and none of them had ever told me that I snored. “And then,” I said, “I know you don’t love me because a wife who loves”—I hesitated, slightly shamefaced—“does not make love in the way you’ve been doing, for some time past, with me.”
She immediately protested, irritably and roughly: “Really I don’t know what it is you want. We make love every time you wish to. And have I ever refused you?”
I knew that of the two of us, in this kind of confidential talk, it was always I who was the modest, the shamefaced, the embarrassed one. Emilia, usually so reserved and proper, seemed, in intimacy, to lose all idea of modesty or embarrassment: in fact, in a way that vaguely astonished me every time and that I found attractive for some quality it had of natural innocence, she used to talk, before, during, and after our love-making, of that love-making itself, without the slightest veil of tenderness or reticence and with a disconcerting crudeness and freedom. “No, not refused,” I muttered; “no...but...”
She resumed, in a conclusive tone of voice: “Every single time you’ve wanted to make love, we’ve done so. And you’re not one to be contented with just the simple act...you’re good at making love, you know.”
“Do you think so?” I asked, almost flattered.
“Yes,” she said dryly, without looking at me, “but if I didn’t love you, the very fact of your being good at making love would irritate me, and I should try to avoid it...and a woman can always find excuses for refusing, can’t she?”
“All right,” I said, “you do it, you’ve never refused me... but the way in which you do it is not the way of a person who loves.”
“Why, in what way do I do it?”
I ought to have answered her: “You do it like a prostitute who submits to her client and wants only that the thing shall be quickly over...that’s how you do it!” But, out of respect for her and for myself too, I preferred to remain silent. And in any case, what would have been the use of it? She would have replied that it was not true, and—quite probably—she would have reminded me, with crude technical precision, of certain transports of sensuality on her own side, in which everything was included—skill, pursuit of pleasure, violent excitement, erotic fury—everything except tenderness and the indescribable abandonment of true surrender; and I should not have known what to say to this; and, into the bargain, I should have offended her with that insulting comparison and thus have put myself in the wrong. And so, in despair, realizing that the explanation I had wanted to bring about had now dissolved into thin air, I said: “Well anyhow, whatever the reason, I’m convinced you don’t love me any more—that’s all.”
Again, before either answering or moving, she looked at me as if to calculate, from the expression of my face, what would be the most suitable attitude for her to take towards me. I noticed then a peculiarity which I already knew: her beautiful, dark, serene face, so harmonious, so symmetrical, so compact, underwent, through the irresolution that cleft her mind, a process almost, as it were, of decay: one cheek seemed to have grown thinner (but not the other), her mouth was no longer exactly in the middle of her face, her eyes, bewildered and dim, seemed to be disintegrating within their sockets as though within a circle of dark wax. I said that I already knew this peculiarity of hers: this same thing did in fact happen every time she had to face a decision which she disliked or towards which she did not feel herself naturally drawn. And then, with a sudden impulse of her