Contempt - Alberto Moravia [89]
“Yes, I do.”
“All right...then if you boil it, make some mayonnaise... and then a salad, or some kind of cooked vegetables—carrots or aubergines or french beans...whatever you can find. And fruit, plenty of fruit. Put the fruit on the ice as soon as you get back from your shopping, so that it will be very cool when it’s served.”
“And what shall we do about a first course?”
“Oh yes, there’s the first course too! Let’s have something quite simple for this evening. Buy some ham—but be sure you get the best quality...and let’s have some figs with it. There are figs to be got?”
“Yes, you can get figs.”
I don’t know why, but while I was listening to this domestic conversation, so quiet, so easily foreseeable, I suddenly remembered the last words I had exchanged with Rheingold. He had said that I aspired after a world like that of the Odyssey; and I had agreed with him; and then he had retorted that this aspiration of mine could never be satisfied, that the modern world was not the world of the Odyssey. And now I thought: “Yet here is a situation that might have occurred just as well thousands of years ago, in the days of Homer...the mistress talking to her servingmaid, giving her instructions for the evening meal.” This idea recalled to my mind the lovely afternoon light, radiant but soft, which filled the living-room, and, as though by enchantment, it seemed to me that Battista’s villa was the house in Ithaca, and that Emilia was Penelope, in the act of speaking to her servant. Yes, I was right; everything was, or might have been, as it was then; and yet everything was so bitterly different. With an effort, I put my head in at the door and said: “Emilia.”
She scarcely turned, asking: “What is it?”
“You know...I want to talk to you.”
“Go wait in the living-room...I’m not finished with Agnesina yet...I’ll be there in a minute.”
I went back into the living-room, sat down in an armchair and waited. I now had a feeling of remorse in anticipation of what I was going to do: Emilia, to all appearances, was expecting to stay a long time at the villa; and I, on the other hand, was about to announce our departure. I remembered, at this point, how she, not so many days before, had made up her mind to leave me; and, comparing her almost desperate attitude that day with her present serene bearing, I thought that after all she must have decided to live with me, even if she did despise me. In other words, she was still, at that time, rebelling against an intolerable situation, whereas now she accepted it. And yet this acceptance was far more offensive to me than any kind of rebellion; it indicated, in her, a decline, a collapse, as though now she despised not only me but her-self as well. This idea sufficed to banish the slight feeling of remorse from my mind. Yes indeed, both for my sake and for hers, we had to leave, and I had to announce our departure to her.
I waited a little longer; then Emilia came in, went and turned off the radio and sat down. “You said you wanted to talk to me.”
“Have you unpacked?” I asked in return.
“Yes, why?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but you’ll have to pack again. We’re going back to Rome tomorrow morning.”
She remained quite motionless for a moment, hesitating, as though she had not understood. Then, in a harsh voice, she asked: “What’s happened now?”
“What’s happened,” I replied, rising from my armchair and going over to shut the door that led into the passage, “is that I’ve decided not to do the script. I’m throwing up the whole thing. And so we’re going back to Rome.”
She seemed to be really exasperated by this piece of news. Frowning, she inquired: “And why have you decided to refuse this job?”
I answered, dryly: “I’m surprised that you should ask. It seems to me that, after what I saw through the window yesterday