Contempt - Alberto Moravia [74]
“Because I know you.” She paused a moment and then sought to gloss over what she had said. “It’s always like that with film-scripts, anyhow...How many times have I known you declare that you wouldn’t do this or that job, and then you’ve done it! The difficulties in scripts always get smoothed out in the end.”
“That may be, but this time the difficulty is not in the script.”
“Where is it, then?”
“In myself.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Battista kissing you,” I should have liked to reply. But I restrained myself: our relationship had never been clarified right down to the bare truth, it had always been carried on by means of allusions. Before we reached the truth, there were so many other things that would have to be said. I bent forward slightly and declared with the greatest seriousness: “Emilia, you already know the reason; as I said at dinner, it’s because I’m tired of working for other people and want at last to work for myself.”
“And who’s preventing you?”
“You,” I said emphatically; then, seeing at once that she started to make a gesture of protest: “Not you directly...but your presence in my life...Our relations are unfortunately—what they are: don’t let’s speak of them...but all the same you are my wife, and I, as I’ve told you before, I take on these jobs mainly because of you. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t accept them. To put it briefly—you know it perfectly well and there’s no need for me to repeat it—we have a great many debts, we still have several installments to pay on the flat, even the car hasn’t yet been completely paid for...that’s why I do these film-scripts. Now, however, I want to make you a suggestion.”
“What?”
I imagined myself to be very calm, very lucid, very reasonable; and yet at the same time a faint feeling of uneasiness warned me that there was a certain falsity—a worse than falsity, an absurdity—in my calm, in my lucidity, in my reasonableness. After all, I had seen her in Battista’s arms: and that alone was what should have mattered. I went on, nevertheless: “The suggestion I want to make to you is as follows: that you yourself should decide whether I am to do this script or not. I promise you that if you tell me not to do it, I’ll go and tell Battista so, first thing tomorrow morning—and we’ll leave Capri by the first boat.”
She did not raise her head, but appeared to be meditating. “You’re very cunning,” she said at last.
“Why?”
“Because, if you regret it afterwards, you’ll always be able to say it was my fault!”
“I shan’t say anything of the kind...considering it’s I myself who am asking you to decide.”
She was now, obviously, reflecting upon the answer that she should give me. And I saw that her answer would provide an implicit corroboration of her feeling for me, whatever it might be. If she told me to do the script, it would mean that she now despised me to the point of considering that my work could continue, in spite of everything; if her answer, on the other hand, was in the negative, it would imply that she still retained some respect for me and did not want me to be dependent on her lover for my work. And so, after all, I came back again to the usual question: whether she despised me and why she despised me. At last she said: “These are things that one can’t allow other people to decide for one!”
“But I’m asking you to decide.”
“Then remember you insisted on my deciding,” she said all at once, with sudden solemnity.
“Yes, I shall remember.”
“Well, I think that, since you’ve taken on the job, you ought not to give it up. You yourself, in any case, have said that to me many times. Battista might be annoyed and never give you any more work. I think you should certainly do this job.”
I thought of that kiss, and said, in an almost hostile manner: “Very well then. But don’t tell me later on that you gave me this advice because you’d realized that, really and truly, I wanted to do the job...like that day when I had to sign the contract. Let it be quite clear that I don’t want to do it.”
“Ugh, you’ve exhausted me,