Contempt - Alberto Moravia [82]
But I could not remain in indefinite contemplation of this forbidden nakedness. I at last took a step forward and said clearly, amid the surrounding silence: “Emilia!”
She made a rapid, double movement. She threw off her hat, stretched out her hand and snatched a chemise from the pile of clothes, as if to cover herself with it; and at the same time sat up and twisted herself around to look behind her. But when I added: “It’s me, Riccardo,” she at last saw me, and then she dropped the chemise on the shingle. Meanwhile she remained twisted around in order to see me better. She was afraid first of all, I supposed, that I might be a stranger; but then, seeing that it was I, she judged it no longer necessary to cover herself—as though she were in the presence of someone who actually did not exist. I record this thought, fundamentally absurd though it was, so as to give an exact idea of my state of mind at that moment. It never entered my head that she did not cover herself merely because I was not a stranger but her husband. I was convinced that I no longer existed for her, at any rate from the sexual point of view, and in that ambiguous gesture of hers I naturally recognized a confirmation of my own non-existence. I said in a low voice: “I’ve been standing here looking at you for at least five minutes...do you know, I felt I was seeing you for the first time?”
She said nothing; all she did was to turn a little farther around so as to see me better, at the same time adjusting her dark glasses on her nose with a gesture of indifferent curiosity. I went on: “Do you mind my staying here, or would you rather I went away?”
I saw her considering me; then, with a calm movement, she stretched herself out in the sun again, saying: “Stay if you like, as far as I’m concerned...As long as you don’t take the sun off me!”
So she really did consider me to be non-existent—nothing but an opaque body that might put itself between the sun and her own, naked body, which, according to my desire, ought on the other hand to have felt itself in relationship with mine and have revealed this relationship in some way, whether by a show of modesty or of alarm. Her indifference disconcerted me in a most painful way; I felt my mouth grow suddenly dry, as though with fear; and I was aware that my face was assuming, against my will, an expression of uneasiness, of bewilderment, of false, distressing assurance. “It’s very pleasant here,” I said, “I shall take a sunbath too...” And, in order to put a good face on it, I sat down at a little distance from her, leaning my back against one of the great lumps of rock.
There followed a very long silence. Endless waves of golden light, gently burning and dazzling, enveloped me, and I could not help half-closing my eyes, with a deep sense of well-being and peace. But I could not pretend to myself that I was there simply for the sun; I felt I could never enjoy it fully unless Emilia loved me. Almost as if I were thinking aloud, I said: “This place seems purposely made for people who love each other.”
“Yes, doesn’t it!” she echoed, without stirring, from under the straw hat which hid her face.
“Not for us, who no longer love each other!”
This time she said nothing. And I remained with my eyes fixed upon her, feeling, at the sight of her, a return of all the desire that had troubled me shortly before, when I had emerged from