“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because I am in love with a man who does not love me,” she said, with impudent sincerity.
“Who is he?”
“That man over there,” she said, looking at Maurizio. Suddenly, I forgot my desire to leave the party; such was the power of Maurizio’s name. With feigned coarseness, I asked: “What do you see in him? I know him well …”
“Really?”
“We went to school together … So what do you see in him? He’s a hollow, selfish, arid, vain, heartless man … a useless person.”
As I said this, she observed me with her round, bird-like eyes. Suddenly she said: “Do you know why you say those things?”
“Why?”
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“Out of envy.”
I blushed, knowing she was right. I said, violently, “And do you know why you say that?”
“Why?”
“Out of stupidity.”
She too blushed, but with anger. Pushing me away, she said: “Listen, I think we should stop dancing. I don’t feel like being insulted.” She began to walk down the path toward the little fountain. I ran after her, taking her arm: “Don’t be angry … I was just joking.”
“I don’t find that sort of thing amusing.”
“Come on … let’s dance.”
“I don’t feel like dancing anymore … It’s too hot … Let’s sit over there,” she said, no longer angry, but instead with a kind of flirtatiousness. She pointed at the bench where Maurizio and Nella had been sitting earlier.
We walked over to the bench, and the girl sat down. Fanning herself with a handkerchief, she said, “Tell me about yourself.”
For some reason, perhaps because of my drunken state, it occurred to me that she might be attracted to me and want to be alone with me. In an insinuating voice, I asked, “Why do you want to know?”
“No reason … because we’ve never been introduced.”
“It’s true … Well, my name is Sergio Maltese, and I’m a journalist and a film critic … and a Communist.”
This last word surprised her: “A Communist?”
“Yes.”
“Let me warn you that I can’t stand Communists.”
“Why is that?”
“Because they want to eliminate rich people.”
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“Are you rich?”
“No … but I like the idea that there are people out there who are.”
She said this with such an air of obtuseness and obstinate conviction that I could not help thinking, with equal conviction, “How stupid she is.” “Perhaps that is why you love Maurizio, because he’s rich,” I insinuated.
“That’s one of the reasons,” she said, with animal-like sincerity. “I don’t like poor people: they’re stingy and small-minded … You can tell Maurizio has always had money … Can’t you see how generous and gentlemanly he is?”
She was clearly a stupid woman. And yet it seemed to me that her vapid affirmations had more weight than all my well-formulated philosophical ideas about the coming revolution. With sudden aggression, I said, “People like you and Maurizio will soon be swept away … You won’t even have eyes to cry.”
She stared at me in complete bewilderment, eyes wide open. Only now did I realize that she too was quite drunk. Her round, sky-blue eyes seemed to wander and were filled with uncertainty. “What do you mean?”
“A revolution is coming,” I said, feeling twice as stupid as she, but unable to stop myself. “And all this,” I said, waving toward the house, the garden, and the young woman, “all this will be confiscated and placed at the service of the people.”
Something completely unexpected happened. The girl began to cry: “Oh no … please … please don’t hurt him,” she cried out, her head in her hands, “please don’t.”
And then, after a moment, she turned her anger toward me. “It’s all envy … People like you want a revolution because you’re envious … because you don’t have money and you prefer that nobody else have it if you can’t have it too … You’re just envious, that’s all.”
I felt defenseless, drunker than ever, and quite ridiculous. And yet I could not help defending myself: “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Oh yes, I do.”
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“No, you don’t … and this time I really mean it: you are a stupid woman.”
I had stood up, and she looked me up and down. “Get out of here,” she said, angrily.
“I’m leaving,” I said, flustered; “it was you who brought me here.”
“Go away … Can’t you see I want to be alone?”
I walked away without arguing. I was angry and flustered, and even more ashamed of the way I had behaved over the course of that terrible evening. What had I been thinking, talking about Communism and revolution with that silly girl who could think only of Maurizio and her feelings of rejection? I had reduced these profound issues in my life to mere bourgeois chitchat at a bourgeois party, and for this I was terribly ashamed. I knew that all this had happened because I was drunk; but what was this drunkenness but an expression of my feelings of inferiority and weakness? I did not like to drink, nor did I enjoy being drunk; I had drunk only in order to have something to do and to overcome a moment of awkwardness and embarrassment. No matter what I did, I returned to the same point of departure: when I had planned to go to the party my intention, like a piper, had been to force Maurizio to dance to my tune, but instead it was I who had been played.
Still unsteady, and drunker than ever, I returned to the terrace. Couples were dancing on the paving stones in the light of the lamps tucked into the hedges. Nella and Maurizio were no longer there. Vaguely, I thought, “Maurizio is courting Nella … He wants to steal her away from me,” but as before, this thought did not elicit any particular reaction. Where Maurizio was concerned, I noticed, I was neither jealous nor suspicious. I went inside; here too couples were dancing, while others crowded around the bar. I saw Maurizio dancing with a slight girl with puffy hair, and felt something like disappointment, as if I had hoped rather than feared to find him courting Nella. Despite my drunkenness and confusion, I tried to decipher the reason behind this sense of disappointment as I stepped into the next room, which was almost empty. Nella was there, sitting on a couch with a man I did not know. The man, who looked to be in
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his fifties, was large, with a wide chest, a big head of gray hair, and a striking, aristocratic face, with a pronounced nose, mouth, and chin, and sideburns down to the middle of his cheeks. When he stood up, however, he did not seem to grow any taller. In fact, he was quite short, with very short legs and tiny hands and feet. Drunkenly and without moving, Nella said: “This is Maurizio’s business partner … I’m sorry, what is your name?”
“Moroni,” he said, holding out his hand.
“He says I should be in the movies,” she said loudly; “he says I could make a lot of money … Isn’t that right, signor Moroni?”
“We would need to do a screen test,” he said, seriously, with a slight accent. “In truth, I’m not an expert, but at first blush I would say that the young lady is quite photogenic.”
“And I could make a lot of money, isn’t that right?” Nella asked loudly.
“Well of course, yes.”
“I could make lots of money and buy myself lots of clothes,” she said loudly, sounding very drunk. “Because we’re very poor, Signor Moroni … He can’t even buy me a pair of stockings … Just look at them,” she said, stretching out her leg and pulling up the hem of her dress to expose a white thigh; “look at how many times I’ve had to mend these stockings.”
Moroni, with a discretion for which I was quietly grateful, barely glanced at Nella’s shapely, tapered leg, though I could tell he would have liked to gaze at it for longer. “Yes, of course,” he said, with some embarrassment, “you could buy all the stockings you like.”