Boredom by Alberto Moravia Page B

embarrassed. I had had no intention of lying to her, and now here she was suggesting an artifice which was doubly humiliating to me, partly because it was an artifice, partly because it was the last artifice I should have had recourse to—that of the painter who invites a pretty girl to his studio under the pretext of wanting to paint her; in a word, an artifice worthy of Balestrieri. I asked, rather scornfully: “Did Balestrieri invite you to his studio the first time under the pretext of painting you?”
    “No,” she replied seriously. “No, I went to him to take drawing lessons. Then he wanted to paint me, but that was later.”
    For her, then, the painting artifice was not an artifice at all but a serious thing. She went on: “I’ve nothing to do now. If you like, I could sit for you until dinner time.”
    I wondered whether I ought to explain to her that I was a painter who had given up painting; and that furthermore, during the time when I was painting, I had never painted figure studies. But in that case, I reflected, I should perhaps have to look for another excuse for inviting her to my studio, since it appeared that she required an excuse of some kind. One might as well accept the excuse of wanting to paint her. So I said, in a light, vague sort of manner: “Very well, let’s go to my studio.”
    “I used always to sit for Balestrieri at this time of day,” she told me, relieved and contented, taking up her bundle from the table. “He painted every day from four till seven.”
    “And in the morning too?”
    “Yes, in the morning too, from ten till one.”
    Meanwhile we had moved toward the door. I was aware that she was seeing, for the last time, the studio in which she had spent so large a part of her life, and I was expecting that, if only out of pity for the old painter who had loved her so much, she would say something or at least look back as she went out. But she merely asked me, with a glance at the walls: “Now that he’s dead, what will happen to the pictures?”
    I answered, again unkindly: “Why, I should think they’ll try and sell them. And then, when they see that no one wants them, they’ll put them away in some cellar or other.”
    “In a cellar?”
    “Yes, they’ll throw them away.”
    “He had a wife from whom he was separated. The pictures will go to her.”
    “All the more reason for her to throw them away.”
    Indifferent, reserved, she said nothing. Now she was walking in front of me along the corridor, and seen thus, from behind, carrying the big bundle in her arms and moving in that characteristic way which appeared so spontaneous and reluctant whereas it was really so strongly and sensually deliberate, she gave the impression of a mere house-moving. Yes, she was moving from Balestrieri’s studio to mine—that was all. I caught up with her, opened my door for her and said: “As you can see, this is a very different studio from Balestrieri’s.”
    She did not reply, just as though she found no great difference between my studio and that of her old lover. She simply went to the table, put down her bundle on it and then turned and asked: “Where is the bathroom?”
    “There, that door over there.”
    She went over to the bathroom and disappeared. I went over to the divan and rearranged the cushions upon which I had slept that afternoon; then I started collecting the numerous cigarette butts I had thrown on to the floor after smoking them. While I was doing these things I thought about the girl, wondering whether she attracted me and whether I wanted to do what she expected me to do, and I realized that I had no desire at all. In the end I said to myself that I would question her further about Balestrieri and her relations with him, about which I felt some curiosity, and that I would then send her away.
    I was so calm and so deeply absorbed in the consciousness of my calmness that I forgot the pretext of painting which the girl had suggested and which I had