Free Contempt by Alberto Moravia Page A

when Battista telephoned, I should not be in a position, honestly, to tell him whether I agreed to discuss his proposition or not. Now, amongst all the many absurd things in my life, one of the most absurd would be, I felt, to negotiate a deal and then back out of it. At this thought I was assailed by an almost hysterical impulse of rage and repugnance, and all at once I stopped the elevator and then pressed the button to go down again to the ground floor. It was better, I said to myself, far better not to let Battista find me at home when he telephoned. Later on, that same evening, I would have my explanation with Emilia; and next day I would give the producer an answer in accordance with its result. In the meantime the elevator was going down and I was looking at all those floors going past one after another, behind the ground glass doors, with the desperate eye of a fish seeing the level of the water rapidly descending inside the tank in which it lives. At last the car stopped and I was on the point of opening the doors. But then, suddenly, a new idea made me pause: it was true that my decision about the new job with Battista depended upon my explanation with Emilia; but if it should happen that Emilia, that same evening, made me a fresh avowal of her love, should I not be taking the risk of annoying Battista by not being at home when he telephoned, and thereby losing the job? Producers, as I knew from experience, were as capricious as so many petty tyrants; a hitch of this kind might be enough to make Battista change his mind, and might induce him to choose another script-writer. These reflections pursued one another swiftly through my aching head, producing in me an obscure feeling of acute wretchedness: truly I was an unfortunate creature, I said to myself, torn between egotism and affection, incapable of choice or decision. And I do not know how much longer I should have stayed there, hesitating and bewildered, inside the lift, if a young lady, her arms laden with parcels, had not suddenly thrown open the doors. She uttered a cry of fright on discovering me standing there, stock still, in front of her; then, recovering herself, she too came into the car and asked me which floor I wanted to go to. I told her. “I go to the second,” she announced, and pressed the button. The elevator started to ascend again.
    Once on my own landing, I had a sense of profound relief; and at the same time it occurred to me: “What sort of a state am I in, to be behaving like this? How can I have descended so low? What point have I reached?” With these thoughts in my head I went into the flat, closed the door and went through into the living-room. And there, lying on the sofa, in a dressing-gown, reading a magazine. I saw Emilia. Beside the sofa was a small table upon which could be seen plates and the remains of lunch: Emilia had not gone out, she had not lunched with her mother; in short, she had lied to me.
    I must have had a troubled expression on my face, for she, after looking at me, asked: “What’s the matter? What’s happened to you?”
    “Weren’t you going to have lunch with your mother?” I said in a stifled voice; “how on earth do you come to be at home? You told me you were out for lunch!”
    “My mother telephoned afterwards to say that she couldn’t,” she replied placidly.
    “But why didn’t you let me know?”
    “My mother rang up at the last moment. I thought you’d have left the Pasettis’.”
    Suddenly—why, I could not tell—I was certain she was lying. But, being incapable of producing any proof of it, not merely to her but even to myself, I was silent, and I too sat down on the sofa. After a moment, turning over the pages of the magazine, she asked without looking at me: “And you—what did you do?”
    “The Pasettis asked me to stay.”
    At that moment the telephone rang. I thought: “It’s Battista. Now I shall tell him I’m not going to do any more scripts. To hell with everything.