Boredom (22 page)

I stood aside, and she took from the shelf a brush that had lost most of its bristles and a dirty comb from which several teeth were missing, and began energetically doing her hair. I said casually: “Your father is really very ill; I’m afraid the doctors are right.”

“What d’you mean?”

“That he hasn’t long to live.”

“Yes, I know.”

“How will you manage?”

“How will we manage what?”

“When he’s dead.”

“In what sense?”

“What will you live on?”

She answered hurriedly, passing a lipstick over her mouth: “We’ll manage as we’ve always done.”

“And how have you managed?”

“We have a shop. That’s what we live on.”

“A shop? You never told me.”

“You never asked.”

“What do you sell in the shop?”

“Umbrellas, suitcases, bags, leather goods.”

“And who is there in the shop?”

“My mother and my aunt.”

“Does this shop pay well?”

She finished painting her lips, then answered conclusively: “No, it pays very little.”

I put my arm around her waist and pressed myself against her, my belly close against her back. She threw me a brief glance, whether of understanding or of surprise I could not tell; then she took a black pencil and began touching up her eyebrows. “D’you ever think of death?” I asked her.

I was clasping her tightly and she started moving her hips, slowly and vigorously, from right to left. “No,” she said, “I never think about it.”

“Not even when you see your father in such a bad state?”

“No.”

“Surely anyone in your position would think about it.”

“I’m quite well; why should I think about death?”

“But there are other people.”

“So they say.”

“Why, aren’t you sure?”

“No, I was only talking.”

“And your father—do you imagine he thinks about death?”

“Yes, he does.”

“Is your father afraid of dying?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Does he know he’s going to die?”

“No, he doesn’t know.”

“And do you never think about his dying?”

“As long as he’s alive, even if he’s sick, I don’t think about his death. I’ll think about it on the day he dies. All I think about now is that he’s sick.”

Abruptly I let go of her, saying: “Do you know, I want you?”

“Yes, I realized that.”

She finished touching up her eyebrows, put the pencil back on the shelf and pushed me toward the door. “Come on,” she said, “Mother must be back by now.”

And in fact she had come back. As we came out into the passage, a shrill, discordant voice, like the tinkle of chimes let loose when you open the door of a shop, started shouting: “Cecilia! Cecilia!”

Cecilia started off in the direction of this voice and I followed her. The kitchen door was open, and her mother, still wearing her coat and hat, was standing in front of the stove, spoon in hand, stirring a pot. The kitchen was dark and smoky and of an unusual, triangular shape: the stove stood on the longest side, underneath a hood; the sharp point of the triangle ended in a high, narrow window, a half-window, actually, and obscured by clothes hung up to dry. The room was dirty and extremely untidy, with peelings scattered on the floor, the marble table covered with parcels and paper bags, and piles of dirty plates heaped up in a jumble in the sink near the window. Without turning around, Cecilia’s mother said: “The dishes, the dishes have got to be washed.”

“I’ll wash the whole lot this evening,” replied Cecilia, “today’s and yesterday’s as well.”

“And the day before yesterday’s too,” said her mother. “That’s what you say every day and soon we won’t have any plates left. I washed the breakfast dishes this morning, but you’ll have to wash the dinner dishes because I have to go to the shop.”

“Let me introduce Dino, Mother.”

“Oh, Professor, excuse me, it’s a pleasure, a pleasure, excuse me, excuse me, it’s a pleasure.” The clanging sound of her voice went on for some time, chiming the words “pleasure” and “excuse me” while I was shaking her hand. I looked at her. She was a woman of small stature, with a minute, wasted face which seemed, however, to have blossomed belatedly into a kind of uproarious youthfulness. Her eyes, black, unsophisticated, and surrounded with fine wrinkles, shone with a reckless light; her cheeks were enlivened by a hectic coloring, whether natural or artificial I could not tell; her mouth, painted and very large, opened in a brilliant smile. She resembled Cecilia, I noticed, especially in the childish look of her brow which jutted out over her wide open eyes, and in the round shape of her face. In her loud, cracked voice she cried: “I didn’t know the Professor was here. Cecilia, take the Professor into the living room. I’ll see to the cooking.”

In the passage I said to Cecilia: “You introduced me to your father as your drawing teacher, and to your mother as Dino. Couldn’t you remember my surname?”

She replied, in an absent-minded sort of way: “You may not believe it, but I still don’t know it. I’ve known you as Dino, and I’ve never thought of asking you your other name. What
is
your other name, then?”

“Well,” I said, “if you still don’t know it, you might as well go on not knowing it. I’ll tell you another time.” Suddenly I felt myself to be unnamable, perhaps simply because Cecilia seemed to prefer me without a name.

“Just as you like.”

We went into the living room, and I said to Cecilia: “Your mother is very like you, physically. But what sort of character has she?”

“What d’you mean?”

“What is she like—good or bad, calm or nervous, generous or mean?”

“I really don’t know, I’ve never thought about it. She has an ordinary sort of character. To me, she’s my mother and that’s that.”

“And he?” I asked, indicating her father sitting in the armchair beside the radio; “what sort of character has he, in your opinion?”

This time she did not answer me at all; she merely shrugged her shoulders, in a strange way, as though I had asked an entirely senseless question. Seized by a sudden irritation, I took hold of her by the arm and, speaking right into her ear, asked her: “What’s that black hole up there in the ceiling?”

She looked up at the hole as though she were seeing it for the first time. “It’s a hole; it’s been there for some time.”

“Ah then, you can see the hole.”

“Why shouldn’t I be able to see it?”

“Then how is it that you can’t see your father’s and mother’s characters?”

“You can see a hole, you can’t see a character. My father and mother are people just like lots of other people, that’s all there is to it.”

We were now close to her father, who was listening, motionless, to the radio. I sat down on a chair opposite him and shouted: “How do you feel today?”

He jumped in his armchair and looked at me in dismay. Then he said something I did not understand. “He says there’s no need to shout, he’s not deaf,” explained Cecilia who, it appeared, understood her father’s whispering sounds perfectly.

She was right, and goodness knows why I had thought that, because he was almost dumb, he was also deaf. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I was asking you how you felt.” He pointed to the windows and said something which Cecilia interpreted: “There’s a
scirocco
blowing, and on
scirocco
days he never feels very well.”

“Why don’t you go to your shop?” I asked. “It would be a distraction for you, don’t you think?”

He made a gesture of humble denial and then answered in a more detailed way, pointing to his throat and face. Cecilia said: “He says he can’t go there because customers would be discouraged at seeing him so changed, and sales would suffer. He says he’ll go as soon as he’s better.”

“Are you having treatment?”

Again he spoke and again his daughter interpreted: “He’s having X-ray treatment. He hopes to be well again in a year’s time.” I looked at Cecilia now to see what was the effect upon her of these pathetic illusions on the part of her father; as usual, nothing was perceptible on her round face, in her expressionless eyes. I reflected that not merely did she not realize that her father was dying, but not even—contrary to what she had affirmed—that he was ill. Or rather, she did realize it, she was conscious of it, but in the same way that she was conscious of the black hole in the sitting-room ceiling: the hole was a hole, her father’s illness was an illness. Behind us, her mother’s voice clanged: “It’s ready, please come and sit down.”

We took our seats at the table, and Cecilia’s mother, apologizing for not having a servant, carried around a tureen full of pasta. As I looked at the tangle of red, greasy spaghetti in the china tureen, it occurred to me that even the food had something about it that resembled the flat; something old, something neglected. I ate this bad pasta with repugnance, using a fork with an unsteady, yellow bone handle and envying the other three, especially Cecilia, who were all devouring their food with appetite. Cecilia’s mother poured me some wine which I judged, at the first sip, to have gone sour, and then, when I asked for some cold water, she filled my other glass with mineral water which was also stale; warm and without sparkle. The unpleasantness of the food was, however, surpassed by the unpleasantness of the conversation which Cecilia’s mother, the only one who spoke, stubbornly persisted in carrying on with me. Quite logically she had come to the conclusion that, apart from the usual remarks about the weather, the theaters and other things of the kind, the only subject that she and I had in common was Balestrieri, since he was my predecessor in giving drawing lessons to Cecilia. Halfway through lunch, when following the bad pasta I was eating a piece of tough, overcooked meat with vegetables cooked in poor quality oil, she attacked me in her shrill voice: “Professor, you knew Professor Balestrieri, didn’t you?”

I glanced at Cecilia before replying. She glanced back at me, but seemed not to see me, so absent-minded and vague was her look. I said dryly: “Yes, I knew him slightly.”

“Such a good man, so charming and so intelligent. A real artist. You can’t imagine how upset I was at his death.”

“Yes, yes,” I said casually, “and he wasn’t so very old.”

“Barely sixty-five, and he looked fifty. We had known him for only two years, and yet I seemed to have known him always. He was part of the family, so to speak. And he had such a great affection for Cecilia! He said he looked upon her almost as a daughter.”

“He ought to have said,” I corrected without smiling, “he ought to have said as a granddaughter.”

“Yes indeed, a granddaughter,” she approved mechanically. “And just imagine, he wouldn’t even be paid for his lessons. ‘Art cannot be paid for,’ he used to say. How true that is!”

“Perhaps,” I remarked, with an attempt at archness, “perhaps you mean to suggest that
I
ought to give Cecilia lessons for nothing, too.”

“No, I only meant that Balestrieri was very fond of Cecilia. For you, it’s different. But Balestrieri—really you might almost say he was dying of love for Cecilia!”

It was on the tip of my tongue to say: “In fact he did die of it.” But instead I asked: “Did you see him often?”

“Often? Why, almost every day. He was like one of the family. There was always a place for him at table. But you mustn’t think he was inconsiderate—quite the contrary.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh well, he always tried to pay us back. He helped with the shopping, he used to buy this or that. And then he would send cakes, wine, flowers. ‘I’ve no family of my own,’ he used to say, ‘this is my family now. You must look upon me as a relation.’ Poor man, he was separated from his wife and lived alone.”

Cecilia at this point said: “Professor, give me your plate. Give me yours, Mother, and yours, Dad.” She put the four plates and the four bowls one on top of the other and left the room. As soon as Cecilia had disappeared, her father, who, during the funeral oration upon Balestrieri delivered by his wife, had merely looked from one to the other of us with his frightened, imploring eyes, made as though to speak in my direction. I leaned forward a little and the invalid opened his mouth and made a vigorous attempt to say something, which I did not understand. His wife got up, went to the sideboard without saying a word and fetched a notebook and pencil which she placed on the table beside her husband, saying: “Write it down, the Professor doesn’t understand you.”

But, with a violent gesture, he swept the notebook and pencil to the floor. His wife said: “We understand him, but strangers hardly ever do. We’ve told him so many times to write things down, but he won’t. He says he’s not dumb. He’s not, but if other people don’t understand him it would be better for him to write things down, don’t you think?”

Her husband shot a furious glance at her and then started speaking to me again. In a sad, resigned voice, his wife said: “He says he didn’t like Balestrieri.” She shook her head in genuine pity and distress, and then added: “Goodness knows what poor Balestrieri did to him!”

Her husband again said something, in a forcible manner. His wife interpreted: “He says that Balestrieri bossed him in his own house.”

Her husband was now staring at her with a positively anguished look in his eyes. Then, in the desperately emphatic way of a dumb man who cannot make himself understood, he opened his mouth wide and once more blew his incomprehensible noises into my face. Cecilia had now come into the room again, and I saw her raise her eyes and look at me. Her mother went on: “My husband says ridiculous things. Did you understand what he was saying?”

“No,” I said.

I had the impression that she hesitated for a moment; then she explained: “He says Balestrieri tried to make love to me.” She uttered these words with an air of anxiety, looking not at me but at her husband, eyeing him with an intensity in which sadness, entreaty and reproof appeared to be mingled. I turned toward him and saw that, in a way, his wife’s glance had had its effect. He now appeared crushed and mortified like a dog that has been kicked. Looking already more relieved, his wife said: “Balestrieri liked to pay me compliments—oh yes, indeed, and to have a joke with me too, to flirt a little, in fact. But that was all. That was really all. No, Professor,” she went on, speaking of her husband as if he had not been present or had been an inanimate object, rather as Cecilia had done a little earlier, “my husband is a very good, fine man, but his brain goes on working and working all the time—you’ve only to look at his eyes. It’s the thoughts that he turns round and round in his head all day. His brain goes on working and working and working, and then he comes out with something ridiculous.”