Contempt - Alberto Moravia [99]
I obeyed this unspoken advice and, in silence, more dead than alive, deeply troubled, my heart in a tumult, mechanically took the hand which the attendant held out to me and jumped into the boat. The attendant came into the water up to his knees, slipped the oars into the oarlocks and pushed the boat off. I sat down, took hold of the oars and started rowing with my head down, in the burning sun, towards the promontory that enclosed the little bay. I rowed with energy and in about ten minutes reached the promontory, still in silence and still without looking at Emilia. I felt a kind of restraint at the thought of talking to her as long as the beach, with its huts and its bathers, was still in sight. I wanted solitude around myself and her, as I had wanted it in the villa, as I always wanted it when I wished to say certain things to her.
But, as I rowed, I became aware that, in a sudden overflowing of bitterness mingled with a new, strange joy, tears had started flowing from my eyes. I rowed on and felt my eyes burning with tears and my face burning each time one of these tears detached itself from my eyes and slid down my cheek. When I was opposite the end of the promontory, I rowed more strongly so as to make headway against the current, which at that point made the water rough and boisterous. On my right was a small black rock with a jagged crest sticking up out of the water, on my left the high, rocky wall of the promontory; I thrust the bow of the boat into this passage, rowed vigorously through the swirling water and thus passed the end of the point. The rock, where it plunged into the sea, was white with salt, and each time the water ebbed one could see green beards of seaweed, brilliant in the sun, and here and there a red fruit like a sea tomato. Beyond the promontory appeared a huge amphitheater of fallen rock, backed by the perpendicular mountain wall, and here and there, between one mass of rock and the next, little beaches of white shingle, completely deserted. The sea, too, was deserted, with neither boats nor bathers; and the water, in this inlet, was of a thick, oily blue that appeared to indicate great depth. Farther off, other promontories were outlined one behind the other upon the flat, sun-filled sea, like the wings of some fantastic natural theater.
I slowed down at last and lifted my face towards Emilia. And as though she too had been waiting to speak until we had rounded the promontory, she smiled at me and asked in a gentle voice: “Why are you crying?”
“I’m crying for joy at seeing you,” I replied.
“You’re glad to see me?”
“Very, very glad...I was sure you had gone away...but after all you haven’t!”
She lowered her eyes and said: “I had made up my mind to go away...and I went down to the harbor this morning with Battista...Then at the last moment I thought better of it and stayed.”
“And what have you been doing all this time?”
“I wandered about down by the harbor...I sat in a café... Then I went up to the village in the funicular and telephoned to the villa...I was told you had gone out...Then I thought perhaps you’d gone to the Piccola Marina, so I came here...I undressed and waited for you...I saw you asking the attendant to get you a boat...I was lying in the sun and you passed quite close to me without seeing me...Then, while you were undressing, I got into the boat.”
For some moments I said nothing. We were now halfway between the promontory we had passed and another point which enclosed the inlet. Beyond that point, I knew, was the Green Grotto, in which, in the first place, it had been my intention to bathe. Finally I asked, in a low voice: “Why didn’t you go away with Battista, as you had decided? Why did you stay?”
“Because this morning, on thinking it over, I saw I had been mistaken about you...and that the whole thing had been a