Contempt - Alberto Moravia [63]
Emilia threw me a glance which, at the time, I was quite unable to account for; then she answered slowly: “Very well, if you say so.” She turned with sudden decision, and adding “Let’s go, then” walked off with Battista, who still kept a tight grip on her arm, as if he feared she might escape. I was left standing in uncertainty beside my own car, gazing at Emilia and Battista as they moved away. Beside Battista, thickset and shorter than herself, she walked indolently, slowly, with an air of discontent that was yet full of an intense, mysterious sensuality. She seemed to me, at that moment, extremely beautiful; not the middle-class “fair signora” to whom Battista alluded, in that greedy, metallic voice of his; but truly very beautiful like some creature outside time or place, in harmony with the sparkling sea and the luminous sky against which her figure was outlined. And her beauty had about it a look of subjection, of reluctance, the cause of which I was at a loss to identify. Then, as I looked at her, I was struck by this thought: “Idiot...perhaps she wanted to be left alone with you...perhaps she wanted to talk to you, to explain things once and for all, to confide in you...perhaps she wanted to tell you that she loves you. And you forced her to go off with Battista.” This idea brought me a feeling of sharp regret, and I lifted my arm as though to call her. But by now it was too late: she was getting into Battista’s car and Battista was getting in beside her and Rheingold was walking towards me. So I got into my car, and Rheingold took the seat beside me. At that same moment Battista’s car went past us, grew rapidly smaller in the distance, and disappeared.
Perhaps Rheingold had become aware of the violent ill-humor that overcame me at that moment; for instead of resuming—at I feared he would—our conversation about the Odyssey, he pulled his cap down over his eyes, settled down into his seat and was very soon asleep. I drove on in silence, therefore, urging my far from powerful little car to its greatest possible speed; and all the time, in an uncontrollable, frantic manner, my ill-humor increased. The road had turned away from the sea, and was now crossing a prosperous countryside, golden in the sunshine. At any other time I should have rejoiced in these luxuriant trees which, here and there, met over my head, forming a living gallery of rustling leafy branches; in these gray olives scattered, as far as the eye could reach, over the red hillsides; in these orange groves laden with glossy, dark foliage in the midst of which shone the round, golden fruit; in these old, blackened farm buildings guarded by two or three tawny haystacks. But I saw nothing; I drove on and on, and as time passed my wretched ill-humor increased more and more. I did not try to discover the reason for it, which undoubtedly went far beyond simple regret at not having insisted upon taking Emilia with me; even if I had wished to do so, my mind was so obscured by anger that I should have been incapable of it. But, like some kind of uncontrollable nervous convulsion which lasts as long as it is due to last and then by successive phases, gradually dies down and ceases, leaving its victim all aching and dizzy, so my ill-humor gradually reached its highest point as we passed through fields and woods, plains and mountains, then decreased, and finally, as we came near Naples, vanished altogether. Now we were going swiftly down the hill towards the sea, in sight of the blue waters of the bay, amongst pines and magnolias; and I was feeling dull and torpid-like, an epileptic who has been shaken, body and soul, by a convulsion of irresistible violence.
13
BATTISTA’S VILLA, AS we learned on our arrival in Capri, was a long way from the main piazza, at a lonely point on the coast in the direction of the Sorrento peninsula. After we had accompanied Rheingold to his hotel,