The Empty Canvas (19 page)

I could not help thinking that these were more or less the words I had in mind to say to
her,
and it immediately flashed across my mind that Cecilia wanted to announce a decision similar to my own, that is, that she wanted to leave me. In the meantime she had gone and sat down on the divan. I went over and sat down beside her, saying in a loud, angry voice: 'No, first of all you've got to give me a kiss.'

Obediently she bent forward and gave me a quick peck on the cheek. Then, drawing back, she said: 'The thing I must tell you is that from now on we can't go on meeting every day, but only twice a week.'

'Why is that?'

'Keep calm, don't get angry,' she said, before answering my question. My voice had indeed been loud and harsh; but I became seriously angry as I heard myself say: 'I am calm and I am not angry. I merely want to know the reason for all this.'

'They're beginning to grumble at home because I see you every day.'

'But didn't you tell them you were taking drawing lessons?'

'Yes, but only twice a week. On the other days I always have to invent some excuse, and now they've found out.'

'It's not true, your people don't grumble. They didn't grumble, for instance, when you saw Balestrieri every day.'

'Balestrieri was sixty-five, not thirty-five like you; they weren't suspicious of
him.
Besides, they knew him.'

'Well, introduce me to them, then.'

'All right, I will. But meanwhile we must meet only twice a week.'

For a short time we sat silent. I was discovering now that not merely did I no longer want to part from Cecilia, but also that I could not bear to see her only twice in seven days. Then, all of a sudden, I understood. I was even prepared to reduce the number of our meetings; but I had to be mathematically certain that she was not lying to me and that her parents had really made trouble. Since, however, I was not certain, the idea that she was lying to me gave me a feeling of deep distress; as though she had escaped me at the very moment when, thanks to her untruthfulness, she was becoming real and desirable in my eyes. I took hold of her hand. 'Tell me the truth,' I said; 'you don't want to see me any more.'

She answered at once: 'That's not the point. I said that from now on we must meet only twice a week, that's all there is to it.'

I noticed that her tone of voice was completely neutral, equally distant from truthfulness and from falsehood. This was an observation that I had already made on other occasions; but only in order to note a trait in Cecilia's character without attaching any significance to it. In general, she appeared always to be saying simply the things that she was saying, neither more nor less, without the slightest undertone of feeling. The latter, as I knew, was perceptible during sexual intercourse, and only then. But it was absolutely necessary for me to know whether she was lying to me, because I still wished to break off relations with her and her lying to me would prevent this. So I insisted. 'What you really want is for us to part. But you haven't the courage to tell me and so you're trying to prepare me. Today you say twice a week, tomorrow you'll say twice a month, and then in the end you'll tell me the truth.'

'What truth?'

I had it on the tip of my tongue to say: 'That you have another man.' But I restrained myself: the connexion between her decision to reduce the number of our meetings and the encounter in the Piazza di Spagna was too obvious, and it humiliated me to accept it. Instead, I said brusquely: 'Very well then. Let it be as you wish; from now on we'll meet only twice a week. And now let's change the subject.'

'But what's the matter? Why are you so gloomy?'

'Let's change the subject. D'you know that I passed right under your nose today and you didn't see me?'

'Why, where?'

'In the Piazza di Spagna, near the steps.'

'At what time?'

'It must have been about four.'

I looked at her closely: her face had its usual uncertain, childish expression and she did not even start. 'Ah yes,' she said, 'I was with an actor called Luciani.'

Even then her voice revealed nothing in particular: it was expressionless, neutral, unrelated to innocence or guilt. I asked casually: 'Why has he put peroxide on his hair?'

'Because he had to play the part of a fair-haired man.'

'You seemed very intimate, judging, at least, from the way you walked.'

'What way?' she inquired, with genuine curiosity.

I felt that words were not adequate to depict the tenderness with which the actor had taken her by the arm. 'Get up!' I said.

'But why?'

'Get up!'

She obeyed. Then I took her by the arm and made her walk about the studio for a little, exactly as I had seen the actor do. 'There,' I said finally, letting her go again; 'that's the way.'

She went back and sat down on the divan and looked at me for a moment; then she said: 'He always does that'—a remark, I felt, that did not at all signify that she and the actor were not in love. 'Have you known this Luciani for long?' I asked.

'For a couple of months.'

'D'you, see him often?'

'We see each other now and again.'

She got up again and started pulling off her sweater over her head. 'You had an appointment with him to-day?' I asked.

'He wants me to work in the films, and we had to talk about that.'

I looked up at her: she had pulled up her sweater over her head, showing her white armpits with their few long, soft, brown hairs; but her breasts were still hidden, and only the thin, adolescent torso could be seen. Then, with a violent movement, she gave an upward pull and her breasts burst forth: all at once the torso was that of a grown woman, though it still retained a certain slenderness and immaturity. It crossed my mind that she was undressing in order to interrupt an embarrassing interrogation. 'Are you going to work in the films?' I asked her.

'I don't know yet.'

'And afterwards where did you go?'

'We went to the Pincio and had some coffee.'

She had seated herself on the divan again now, bare to the waist, as though to answer me better. Meanwhile she was carefully turning back the sleeves of her sweater. 'Yes,' I said, 'I saw you go up towards the Trinità dei Monti. Perhaps this actor lives close by in Via Sistina, does he?'

'No, he lives in the Parioli district, in Via Archimede.'

'And after your coffee what did you do?'

'We walked about in the Borghese gardens until a short time ago, when I left him to come here.'

I became conscious that I was looking at her with desire; and I realized that I desired her, not so much because she was naked, as because she was lying to me. She appeared to notice my look, and added, quite simply: 'Well then, d'you want to make love?'

The idea that she was proposing we should make love in order to conceal the fact that she was lying to me made me suddenly furious. I was certain that only a lover could press a woman's arm in the way Luciani had pressed hers. But now again I avoided mentioning the actor's name. 'No,' I shouted, 'I don't want to make love. I want to know the truth.'

'But what d'you mean, the truth?'

'The truth, whatever it is.'

'I don't understand you.'

'Yesterday you didn't come to our appointment and you didn't even let me know that you couldn't come. Today you want to reduce the number of your visits. I want to know the truth; I want to know what there is behind all this.'

'I've already told you: my parents are making trouble.'

Again I felt it on the tip of my tongue to say: 'It's not true, the truth is that you go to bed with Luciani'; but at the same time I felt that in no case would I be capable of saying it. So I remained silent and glum, staring at the floor. Then I felt her hand on my cheek and heard her say: 'Are you very sorry not to see me every day?'

'Yes.'

'Well then, forget what I said. We'll go on as before. Only we shall have to be more careful. We'll meet at different times, according to which day it is. In any case I'll telephone you in the morning to let you know, each day, what time we can meet. Are you content now?'

And so, in a mysterious, unexpected way, Cecilia gave up the idea of reducing her visits to me. I was so surprised that I couldn't go on thinking unkind things about her. It was clear now: Cecilia, in spite of her precocious experience, was a very young girl and afraid of her parents; this fear had prompted her to reduce the frequency of our meetings; in face of my sadness and suspicion, she had changed her mind again and was doing as I asked. So she was not being unfaithful to me, she was not lying to me; she was just a simple, unmysterious girl, torn between her subjection to her parents and her attachment to her lover. It seemed odd that I had not thought of this before; and all at once the way in which the actor had taken her by the arm became an unimportant detail; perhaps he really did that with all women, whatever his relations with them might be. These reflections lasted only a moment. Then I became aware of a new fact: not merely was I not pleased that Cecilia had given up the idea of reducing her visits; but also I could see, already, the old boredom reappearing on our horizon, like a tiny, but decidedly dark, cloud in an otherwise empty sky. 'Thank you,' I said, 'But, if you like, we could perhaps see each other, say four times a week instead of seven.'

'No, it doesn't matter, I'll find some excuse.'

She had gone back towards the chair upon which she had placed her sweater and had started undressing again. I watched her as she put her two hands to the zip fastening of her skirt at her side, and then as she lowered it; I wondered whether the quick, graceful gestures that brought about the gradual fall of her clothes and the gradual unveiling of her body appeared to me, now that I was sure of not being betrayed, as boring and ridiculous as they had in the past; and, after a moment's consideration, I was compelled to admit that it was so. As if, in fact, by a miracle in reverse—a miracle, that is, which instead of introducing something magical into reality had withdrawn it—Cecilia, who had seemed to me so desirable as long as I had suspected that she was betraying me, now that I was convinced of the contrary had gone back to being an insignificant object, present, perhaps, to the most superficial perception of my senses but not for that reason truly real. I reflected that the whole of her personality was in that action of lowering the zip fastening, the whole of her, with no margin of independence or mystery, and that she was, for that very reason, non-existent; that she had been already possessed beforehand, even before sexual intercourse gave a superfluous confirmation to this possession by feeling; possessed and therefore boring. I recall that, while I was thinking these things, I was myself undressing; and that I could not help casting a glance at my sexual organ, almost afraid that it was not in a state of erection, as I might well have feared, judging from my reflections. But it was; and never so much as at that moment had I admired the force of nature which made me desire, so to speak, without any real desire. By this time I was naked. I lay down on my back on the divan, rather as a sick man lies down on the doctor's couch, and with the same sense of submitting to an unpleasant ordeal which anyhow was very far removed from love.

Then an unexpected thing happened. Cecilia, who had also finished undressing, went over on tiptoe, as usual, to draw the curtains across the big window, and then, with the joyous movement of one who gains his freedom and runs towards the sea, she rushed towards the divan and fell on top of me, heavily, violently, and with an inarticulate cry of triumph. Then she raised herself up and sat astride me as I lay flat; and, leaning heavily with her two hands on my shoulders, exclaimed: 'Now tell me the truth, you must confess that you believed just now that I was being unfaithful to you with Luciani?'

I looked at the excited face, red with pleasure, framed in the light, curly hair that had never seemed to me so alive, and I was suddenly convinced of the opposite of what I had hitherto been thinking: yes, Cecilia
had
lied to me; yes, she
had
been unfaithful to me with the actor. There was proof of this, if nowhere else, in her triumphant voice, which, in its irresistible artlessness, resembled that of a little girl who, after a successful joke, calls out to her companion: 'Now admit it, you were caught!'

At the same time I saw her afresh, more real than ever and therefore desirable, with her full, brown, womanly breasts hanging forward from her thin, white adolescent body; with her slim waist; with her compact, powerful hips; and it seemed to me that she appeared real and desirable precisely because she was evading me through her lying and treachery. This thought filled me with anxious, vindictive rage; I seized her by the hair with such force that I heard her groan, threw her off me and hurled myself upon her. Physical possession, usually, was no more than the repetition of a preceding mental possession, that is, it merely confirmed the boredom which made Cecilia unreal and absurd to me. But this time, as I immediately felt, possession appeared to confirm, on the contrary, my inability truly to possess her: however roughly I treated her, however much I squeezed her and bit her and penetrated her, I failed to possess Cecilia and she was elsewhere, God knows where. Finally I fell back exhausted but still angry, withdrawing from her sex as from a useless wound; and it seemed to me that Cecilia, who was now lying beside me with closed eyes, had an expression of irony on her face even in the midst of the composed serenity that follows the satisfaction of carnal appetite. The expression, I said to myself, of reality itself, the reality that evaded me and receded at the very moment when I imagined I had seized hold of it.

I looked at her intently. She must have felt my eyes upon her, for she opened hers and gazed back at me. Then she said:

'D'you know, it was wonderful today?'

'Isn't it always wonderful in the same way?'

'Oh no, it's always different. There are days when it's not so good, but today it was very good.'

'Why was it so good?'

'It's a thing one can't explain. A woman feels, you know, when it's good and when it isn't so good. D'you know how many times, today?'