Contempt - Alberto Moravia [80]
I took the same path as before, therefore, the path that runs around the island. It was still early, and I met scarcely anyone along the shady track—a few boys whose bare feet, in the surrounding silence, made a soft sound on the brick paving; a couple of little girls who walked along with arms round each other’s shoulders, chatting in low voices; two or three old ladies taking their dogs for a walk.
At the lowest point of the path I turned off down the narrow lane that winds along the loneliest and most precipitous part of the island. I walked a little farther and found myself confronted by a fork: a smaller path branched off from the lane, leading to a summer-house perched at the edge of a precipice. I turned into this path and, when I reached the summer-house, looked down. The sea, three hundred feet below, trembled and sparkled in the sun, shifting and changing color according to the wind, blue in one place, almost violet in another, green farther away. From this remote, silent sea the perpendicular rocks of the island seemed to be flying to meet me, to be coming upward in swarms, like arrows, their bare points flashing in the sun. Then, all at once, a kind of suicidal exaltation came over me, and I felt I had no further desire to live; and I said to myself that if at that moment I suddenly launched myself into that luminous immensity I should perhaps die in a manner not altogether unworthy of the better part of myself. Yes, I should be killing myself to attain, in death, the purity which in life I had failed to achieve.
The temptation to suicide was genuine, and perhaps, for a moment, my life was really in danger. Then, almost instinctively, I thought of Emilia, wondering how she would receive the news of my death, and suddenly I said to myself: “You wouldn’t be killing yourself because you’re tired of life; you’re not tired of life. You would be killing yourself for Emilia!” I was disconcerted by this idea, which, almost maliciously, it seemed, robbed my exaltation of all quality of disinterestedness. Then I went on to ask myself: “Because of Emilia or for the sake of Emilia? The distinction is important”; and immediately I answered my own question: “For the sake of Emilia. In order to regain her esteem, even in a posthumous way. In order to leave her with the remorse of having unjustly despised you.”
No sooner had I formulated this thought, then—as in a children’s puzzle, when a number of disordered pieces are put together to form a single design—the picture of my present situation was, in part, completed by this new idea: “You reacted to Rheingold’s theories in that violent manner because in reality it seemed to you that, when he was explaining the relations between Ulysses and Penelope, he was alluding, though he did not know it, to the relations between you and Emilia. When Rheingold spoke of Penelope’s contempt for Ulysses, you thought of Emilia’s contempt for you. The truth, in short, annoyed you, and it was against the truth that you protested.”
The picture was still not complete; but now a few more considerations put the last, final touches to it. “You thought of killing yourself because you’re not clear in your own mind. In reality, if you want to regain Emilia’s esteem, it’s not in the least necessary for you to kill yourself, much less than that will suffice. Rheingold indicated what you ought to do. Ulysses, in order to regain Penelope’s love, killed the suitors. In theory, you ought to kill Battista, but we live in a less violent and uncompromising world than that of the Odyssey. All you need to do is to throw up the script,