Free The Empty Canvas by Alberto Moravia

the bed. Then I called to Rita to come in.
    She came in immediately, assured herself by a quick glance that I was on the bed, and then turned to close the door. I lay with my whole body quite still, except in that place to which desire sent a surge of excited blood: I stared fixedly at my belly, my chin glued to my chest, just as a corpse lying on a catafalque seems to be staring at its own body after it is laid out and ready to be carried to the cemetery. Rita, meanwhile, had come forward and was standing close against the bed; she appeared to be contemplating me, through her hypocritical glasses, as one contemplates an object which one has never seen before and which is worth studying. Then I put out my hand and took hold of her hand which was hanging at her side and pulled it forward in the way one pulls at the bridle of an animal that is not so much recalcitrant as timid; and I felt her whole body following the direction of her hand. I guided her hand towards the centre of my body. Rita was now standing quite still, bending a little forward, her arm stretched out over me, a lively red in her cheeks below the two dark circles of her glasses. Then she said, strangely, in a slow, contented voice: 'How disgusting!'; and I was surprised because those were the words I would have used myself if I had wanted to express the mingled feeling of repugnance and excitement that I had at that moment.
    I heaved a deep sigh and asked, finally, in a low voice and without looking at her: 'Why did you come here?'
    She shrugged her shoulders and said nothing; she seemed incapable of speaking.
    'To take the stain out of my trousers? Well then, go and do it; what are you waiting for?'
    I saw her give a start, as though I had hit her in the face, and then, reluctantly, open her fingers, one after the other; then she went out of my field of vision. I realized she had gone out of the room too, for after a moment I heard the sound of the door opening and shutting. As soon as I was sure she had gone, I jumped off the bed and went and opened the wardrobe. As I was hoping, beside the silk dressing-gown which, according to my mother's advice, I ought to be putting on, there was hanging, in its cellophane bag, the only suit I had not taken away with me when I had gone to live in the studio—my dinner-jacket and trousers. I took out the trousers and put them on. They fitted me pretty well, though perhaps a little big in the waist; I had been fatter ten years ago, for my mother's food was richer and more nourishing than that of the modest restaurants I had been frequenting recently. I looked at myself in the glass: with my brown linen jacket and black trousers I had the appearance of an unemployed waiter. Very slowly I opened the door and, seeing that there was no one there, ran hurriedly downstairs and, avoiding the reception rooms, went along the passage into the hall and so out of the front door.
    The two cars, the old and the new, were standing there side by side in front of the house. The cloudy sky, the trees, the villa were vaguely reflected in the clear glossiness of the new car's coachwork; the old car, on the other hand, looked dull and dim, with the same kind of dullness, I could not help saying to myself, with which boredom usually veiled the world all round me. I tore a page out of my pocket-book and wrote on it: 'Thank you, but I would rather keep my old car. Your most affectionate son, Dino.' This I inserted under the blade of the windscreen wiper, in the place where policemen put penalty tickets. Then I got into my car, started the engine and went away.
     

2
    In the same building in Via Margutta in which I lived, an elderly painter called Balestrieri had a studio three doors beyond mine along the ground floor corridor. I used often to meet him and had exchanged a few words with him, but was not in the habit of visiting him; like all men who think of nothing but women, Balestrieri behaved with extreme, almost insulting coldness towards