Contempt - Alberto Moravia [91]
“Nonsense—you know perfectly well.”
She had gone over to the window now, and her back was turned to me as she spoke. I clasped my head in my hands and gazed at her for a moment in despair. She had turned her back upon me not only physically but also, as it were, with the whole of her mind. She had no wish to explain herself, or perhaps, I suddenly thought, she was unable to do so. Clearly some reason for her contempt existed; but it was not so clear that she was able to indicate it precisely; and so she preferred to attribute her feeling of contempt to some original, innately despicable quality in me, a quality that was motiveless and therefore irremediable. All at once I remembered Rheingold’s interpretation of the relationship between Ulysses and Penelope, and a sudden enlightenment made me wonder: “Supposing Emilia had had the impression that during these last months I knew Battista was paying court to her, that I was trying to take advantage of it, and, in fact, that instead of expostulating, I was sanctioning Battista’s purposes for my own interest?” The impact of this idea left me breathless; even more so because I now recalled certain ambiguous episodes which might have confirmed her in such a suspicion; among others, my own lateness, the first evening we had gone out with Battista—due, in reality, to a taxi mishap, but which she might have attributed to a clever plan for leaving her alone with him. As if to corroborate my reflections, she suddenly said, without turning around: “A man who is really a man would not, for example, have behaved as you did yesterday evening, after seeing what you saw. But you came to me, as if butter would melt in your mouth, and asked me my opinion, pretending not to have seen anything, in the hope that I would advise you to go on with the script. And I gave you the advice you wanted and you accepted it. Then, today—goodness knows what happened with that German—you come and tell me you’re giving up the job for my sake, because I despise you and you don’t want me to despise you. But I know you by this time; and I can see that it’s not you who’ve given up the job but he who made you give it up. Anyhow it’s too late. I’ve made up my mind about you, and you can give up all the jobs in the world and I shan’t change it. So don’t make such a fuss about it now; accept the job and leave me in peace, once and for all.”
So here we were, back at the beginning again, I could not help thinking: she despised me but refused to tell me the reason. It was deeply repugnant to me to try to formulate the reason myself, both because the reason itself would inevitably be repugnant to me, and also because, in formulating it, I should feel I was in some way accepting its validity. However I intended to get to the bottom of this question, and there was nothing else to be done. I said, as calmly as I could: “Emilia, you despise me and you won’t tell me why...perhaps you don’t even know, yourself. But I have a right to know, so that I can explain to you that it isn’t true, and so that I can justify myself. Now listen: if I tell you the reason for your contempt, will you promise me that you’ll tell me whether it’s true or not?”
She was still standing in front of the window, with her back to me, and for a moment she said nothing. Then, in a tired, irritable voice, she said: “I don’t promise anything...oh, do leave me alone!”
“The reason is this,” I said very slowly, as though I were spelling it out. “You have imagined, on a basis of deceptive appearances, that I...that I knew about Battista, and that, for my own interest, I preferred to close my eyes—that, in fact, I actually tried to push you into his arms...isn’t that so?”
I raised my eyes in her direction, as she stood with her back towards me, and awaited her answer. But no answer came; she was gazing at something on the other side of the window-panes, and she did not speak. All at once I felt myself blushing right