Contempt - Alberto Moravia [45]
As I spoke, I watched her carefully. Her first movement was one of surprise, and of consequent denial: it was as if my supposition seemed to her completely absurd. Then, as I saw clearly, a sudden idea made her change expression. She answered slowly: “Well, suppose it was that kiss. Now that you know, does it make you feel any better?”
At once I was absolutely certain that it had not been the kiss, as she was now insisting that I should believe. It was quite clear: at first Emilia had been downright astonished at my supposition, so remote was it from the truth; then, a sudden calculation had made her accept it. I could not but think that the true reason of her loss of love must be much more serious than that one kiss which had led to nothing. It was a reason, probably, that she did not wish to reveal because of some remaining regard for me. Emilia was not unkind, as I knew, and did not like hurting anyone. Evidently the real reason would be hurtful to me.
I said gently: “It’s not true, it wasn’t the kiss.”
She was astonished. “Why! But I’ve just told you it was.”
“No, it wasn’t the kiss...it was something else.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know perfectly well.”
“No, on my word of honor, I don’t know.”
“And I tell you you do know.”
She became impatient, almost like a mother with a child. “Why do you want to know so many things? It’s typical of you...Why do you want to pry into everything? What does it matter to you?”
“Because I prefer the truth, whatever it is, to lies. And above all, if you don’t tell me the truth, I might imagine anything...I might imagine something really nasty.”
She looked at me for a moment in silence, in a strange manner. “What does it matter to you?” she went on then. “You have a clear conscience, haven’t you?”
“Yes, certainly I have.”
“Then how can the rest matter to you?”
“It’s true, then,” I persisted. “It really is something nasty.”
“I didn’t say that. I only said that, if you have a clear conscience, all the rest ought not to matter to you.”
“It’s true that I have a clear conscience...but that doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes even one’s conscience deceives one.”
“But not yours, surely?” she said, with a faint irony that did not, however, escape me, and that seemed to me even more wounding than her indifference.
“Yes, even mine.”
“Well, well, I must go,” she said suddenly. “Have you anything else to say to me?”
“No, you shan’t go until you’ve told me the truth.”
“I’ve already told you the truth: I don’t love you.”
What an effect they had upon me, those four words! I turned pale, and implored her, miserably: “I asked you before not to say that again. It hurts too much!”
“It’s you who compel me to repeat it...It certainly doesn’t give me any pleasure to say it.”
“Why do you want to make me believe it’s because of that kiss that you’ve stopped loving me?” I pursued, following the train of my reflections. “A kiss is nothing at all. That girl was a perfectly ordinary little fool and I’ve never seen her since. You know and understand all that. No, the truth is that you’ve stopped loving me”—now I was not so much speaking as spelling out my words carefully in an attempt to express my own difficult and obscure intuition—“because something has happened...something that has changed your feelings towards me...something, in fact, that has perhaps changed, first and foremost, the idea you had of me, and consequently your feelings as well.”
“It must be admitted that you’re intelligent!” she said, in a tone of genuine surprise, almost of praise.
“It’s true, then?”
“I didn’t say it was true. I only said you were intelligent.”
I sought about in my mind, feeling that the truth was, so to speak, on the tip of my tongue.