“Why do you think it’s silly? I can say that since I’m not a Communist, the conflict does not present itself. I don’t have to choose.”
“There are other factors that might force you to choose.” Sergio wanted to discuss the matter further: “For example, I don’t know, your fortune, your inheritance.”
“Money means nothing to me … I wouldn’t give a square inch of a woman I love for all the wealth in the world.”
“Your freedom, then.”
Maurizio laughed. “Don’t you see that, not being a Communist, the question simply doesn’t apply, unless I was a coward or a miser or some other despicable being? Unless Communism is the prize, one simply is what one is by not giving up Lalla, even for a good cause … You Communists have invented the reason for giving her up, it is a reason created by you Communists over the course of the last fifty or one hundred years … or at least that is what you believe, and what you have convinced yourselves of. By which I mean a reason that does not put those who adopt it in an unfavorable light.”
“What you’re saying is that it would not be judged unfavorably,” Sergio said bitterly, “if I were to say to Lalla: spread your legs and let Maurizio have his way with you.”
Maurizio laughed. “Why do you have to put it
102
that way? But no, you would not be judged unfavorably … at least not by me.”
There was a long silence. Maurizio observed Sergio with his bright, alluring eyes. Finally, he said: “I want you to know that I understand … listen … Are you listening to me?”
“Yes.”
“All right, listen … You yourself said that bringing even a single person to the cause is an important achievement. Especially if that person is worthy of respect, staunch, and mature … So, on the one hand you have nothing less than Communism, the greatest dream of freedom and happiness man has ever conceived, a dream that the Communists are dedicated to realizing, in order to ensure the well-being of millions of human beings, the betterment of their lives, to give them the capacity to express themselves, to free their minds and fulfill their destinies. And on the other hand? Not much … a woman, like so many others, an ordinary woman, who has the misfortune of being desired by me … a human body that I desire … and yes, I want, as you said, for her to open her legs, as all women do, for love, stupidity, money, and for millions of other reasons … There is no comparison between these two things … Tell me if I’m wrong.”
“No,” Sergio said, quietly, “you’re right.” He was struck by Maurizio’s inspired, sincere lyricism when he spoke of the Communist cause. He would have liked to sound like that.
“If I’m right,” Maurizio continued, now with a slight tremor in his voice, “then why do you hesitate?”
That was the long and short of it: he wanted Lalla, Sergio could not help thinking. His whole being was contaminated by this desire. Sergio abruptly got up. “That’s enough, I’m leaving. I’ll make a decision soon.”
“You’ll make a decision?”
“Yes,” he answered, with a hint of rage, “don’t I have to?”
“In a sense, yes,” Maurizio said.
“What do you mean ‘in a sense’?”
“Well, you don’t really have to.”
“What do you mean?” Sergio said, hopefully.
103
“Well,” Maurizio said, quite deliberately, “you could ask Lalla what she wants.”
Sergio looked over at Maurizio. “Lalla isn’t a Communist … she doesn’t really believe in the cause … so it’s obvious what her answer would be.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that she would say no.”
“True. But if she were to say yes, then you would not be involved.”
“And?”
“And then it would be a matter between Lalla and me … and I wouldn’t have to join the Party. I would marry her, or she would simply become my lover.”
Sergio once again stood up. He was irritated. “In other words, you’ll only join the Party if I am the one who forces Lalla to sleep with you and she accepts out of love for me …”
“That’s right.”
“Well in that case you wouldn’t be signing up because you desire Lalla, but rather because you want to obtain her consent through my efforts … That’s a different matter altogether.” Satisfied with the subtlety of his reasoning, Sergio sat down again.
Maurizio seemed perfectly calm. “Perhaps I’m a degenerate … Perhaps I can only derive pleasure from obtaining Lalla through your efforts … What difference does it make?”
It appeared that Maurizio had an answer for everything. “But you’re not a degenerate,” Sergio retorted.
“How do you know? There are men who are attracted to little girls … Maybe I’m attracted to women who love Communists and give themselves out of love for their Communist lovers, in other words, out of love for Communism … so what?”
“That’s a very modern kind of perversion.”
“Precisely … Who says that love doesn’t change through time?”
Sergio got up again, intending to leave. “Good-bye,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Good-bye.”
After this meeting, Sergio sank into a kind of oblivion.
104
It was like the theater, when the curtain falls at the end of an act, and the audience has no idea what is going on backstage. He was a spectator, watching himself from the outside. This feeling of oblivion distanced him from the darkest zones of his own conscience so that he had no idea what was going on there. At first he decided to discuss Maurizio’s proposal with Lalla, but then, for reasons he did not fully understand, the whole matter slipped from his mind. From time to time he sensed an encumbrance where before he had felt only emptiness; but this encumbrance, which was caused by the decision that loomed before him, remained obscure and unspoken, though at times he felt oppressed by it. But he continued to do the same things as before, aided by his feeling of oblivion.
They continued to see Maurizio; now that spring had arrived, he often picked them up in his car and they drove to Ostia or into the countryside for lunch. Deep down, what surprised Sergio was that Maurizio did not seem to remember his bold proposal. He was as courteous, irreproachably friendly, and thoughtful as ever, almost ceremonious in fact, and it seemed to Sergio that their rapport had returned to its previous ease, when neither he nor Lalla, nor even Maurizio, knew that both of them desired Lalla.
One day in March, Lalla told Sergio that she needed a new dress. She stood in front of the armoire in her bathrobe, pointing at the only summer dress she had from the previous year. Sergio could see that it was worn and threadbare, and discolored under the arms. But he had no money. “I can’t do anything about it … I won’t get paid until the end of the month.” Lalla said that she would rather stay at home in bed despite the increasingly sunny weather than go out in such a dress. Now in a bad mood, Sergio told her to do as she pleased, and went out.
As soon as he was in the street he thought of
105
Maurizio and decided to ask his friend for a loan so he could buy Lalla a dress. On some level, he sensed that there was a connection between this decision and the one he still had to make regarding Lalla and Maurizio, but he refused to follow this line of thinking. He called Maurizio and told him that he wanted to meet, and Maurizio, in his usual polite manner, said Sergio could come over whenever he liked.
Sergio did not wait long in Maurizio’s sitting room. It looked shabbier than ever in the morning light, with the sun streaming in through the curtains. As soon as his friend appeared, he said: “Listen, I need to ask you a favor.”
“Please have a seat,” Maurizio said. “What can I do for you?”