Boredom by Alberto Moravia Page A

model; he had given me a key, so I was able to get in.”
    I noticed her speech was completely devoid of any kind of accent that might make it possible to guess where she had been born or the social class to which she belonged. Her voice was colorless and neutral, with a preciseness and economy of tone that suggested a certain reserve. Not knowing how to go on, I asked casually: “Did you come and see Balestrieri often?”
    “Yes, almost every day.”
    “But when did he die?”
    “The evening of the day before yesterday.”
    “Were you there when he died?”
    She looked at me for a moment with her big dark eyes that seemed not so much to observe things as to reflect them without seeing them. “He was taken sick while I was sitting for him,” she said.
    “He was painting you?”
    “Yes.”
    I could not help exclaiming in surprise: “But where’s the canvas on which he was painting you?”
    “That’s the one,” she said, pointing to the easel.
    I turned, glanced quickly at the canvas and then, more lingeringly, at her. In the half-darkness that seemed to dissolve and absorb her contours, her figure appeared more than ever slender and childish, with the wide skirt hanging over the thin legs, the narrow torso and the pale face swallowed up by the great dark eyes. I asked incredulously: “Was it really you who sat for that picture?”
    She, in turn, appeared astonished at my astonishment. “Yes,” she said. “Why? Don’t you like the way he’s painted me?”
    “I don’t know whether I do or not, but it’s certainly not like you.”
    “He hasn’t drawn in my head because he always did that last. So how d’you know it isn’t like me?”
    “What I mean is that the figure drawn by Balestrieri doesn’t look like yours.”
    “You don’t think so? And yet it is mine.”
    I was aware of the utter futility and falseness of this pseudo-artistic discussion, over a picture of such a kind and on a question of resemblance, into the bargain. But even though I felt ashamed, just as if there had been a tacit collusion which I ought to reject, I could not refrain from answering in a lively fashion: “It’s not possible, I can’t believe it!”
    “You don’t think so?” she said again. “And yet my figure is like that.” She put down her bundle on the table, went to the easel, contemplated the canvas for a moment, and then turned and went on: “Perhaps there’s a little exaggeration, but on the whole I’m just like that.”
    For some reason, as I saw her standing beside the picture, I recalled my dream of that afternoon. I asked casually: “Is that the only picture Balestrieri did of you, or did he do others as well?”
    “Oh, he painted me over and over again.” She looked up at the walls and began counting, pointing as she went: “That’s me, and that too, and that one up there, and that one there too.” She added conclusively: “He was always painting me. He kept me posing for hours.”
    I was conscious of an obscure impulse to say something nasty about Balestrieri, perhaps in order to force her into a more personal, a more confidential key. I said unkindly: “A great deal of effort for a very poor result.”
    “Why?”
    “Because Balestrieri was an extremely bad painter, in fact he wasn’t a painter at all.”
    She did not react in any way; she merely said: “I don’t know anything about painting.”
    I persisted. “Actually Balestrieri was simply a man who liked women very much.”
    She agreed, with conviction. “Oh yes, there you’re right.”
    She had now taken up her bundle again and was looking at me with a questioning air, as much as to say: “Am I to go now—why don’t you do something to stop me?” With a sudden gentleness of tone, which surprised me because I had neither intended it nor foreseen it, I suggested: “Won’t you come to my studio for a moment?”
    Her face lit up with a prompt, naïve hopefulness. “D’you want me to sit for you?” she asked.
    I felt