Free Boredom by Alberto Moravia

because,” she added at this point in a reasonable tone of voice, “partly because I should very much like you to help me in the management of our affairs and to gain experience and take my place in a number of ways. As you’ve given up painting, you’ll have plenty of time to do this.”
    I could not repress a shudder at these last words. How serenely, how complacently my mother had pronounced the phrase, “as you’ve given up painting”—without the least idea that, for me, it was equivalent to hearing someone say, “as you’ve given up living.” With an effort, but this time without any spiteful intent, I asked: “Well then, are we rich or are we not?”
    For a moment she sat silent, looking at me with a strange solemnity. Then, leaning toward me and lowering her voice, she said: “We are not rich, Dino, we are very rich. Thanks to your mother, you are a very rich man.”
    “What does ‘very rich’ mean?”
    “‘Very rich’ means something more than merely ‘rich.’”
    “But less than ‘extremely rich’?”
    “Yes, less than ‘extremely rich.’ ”
    My mother this time answered me a little absent-mindedly. She had put on a pair of nunlike spectacles, rimless and with gold arms, and was turning over the pages of her black ledger: “Anyhow,” she said, “there’s nothing better than figures to make you understand, and so...and so...where is it?...ah, here we are...to make you understand, as I was saying, what being very rich means.”
    I realized that she was on the point of providing me with the statement she had promised me, and all at once I was filled with an uncontrollable repugnance. “No, no, please,” I exclaimed eagerly, “I don’t in the least want to know what being very rich means. I’ll take your word for it.”
    My mother raised her eyes from the ledger, took off her spectacles and looked at me. “But you’ve got to know,” she said, “if only, as I said before, so that you can help me with the management of our property.”
    I was on the point of crying out violently: “But I don’t want to help you with the management,” when fortunately Rita came in with the coffee tray. My mother, at the sight of her, seemed to retreat into herself, like a priest at the approach of an unbeliever. She closed the ledger with a sharp snap and said: “You pour the coffee, Rita.” Then, while Rita, standing beside me, was pouring the coffee, I kept wondering how I could possibly escape this intolerable thing: the explanation of what it meant to be very rich. Rita was close to me again now and—whether on purpose or not, I did not understand—was lightly touching my knees with her leg. Then she turned toward me and held out my cup. Almost instinctively I jerked my arm. The cup upset in the saucer and the coffee slopped on my light-colored trousers so that I felt it warm and wet on my skin. Pretending to be alarmed, I exclaimed: “Oh hell, my trousers!”
    “Rita, why can’t you be more careful?” said my mother reprovingly, having neither seen nor understood anything of what had happened.
    “Rita had nothing to do with it,” I hastened to say, “it was my fault. But now my trousers are a mess.”
    “It’s nothing,” said Rita; “there was no sugar in it. I’ll bring some water and wash out the stain.”
    This solution did not please my mother, who at once protested authoritatively, in her most unpleasant voice: “Not at all, stains can’t be washed out of clothes when people are wearing them. Signor Dino must take off his trousers, then you can wash out the stain and iron the trousers.”
    I looked at Rita as she stood beside the table, her face set in an expression of obsequious patience. Then, in a serious voice, she asked: “Is Signor Dino going to take off his trousers at once, or am I to wait?”
    “Coffee leaves a mark,” said my mother; “better take them off at once, Dino.”
    “But I can’t take them off here, in this room.”
    I noticed that Rita turned