‘No, why?’ And after rubbing my eyes I swung my feet off the bed and sat on the edge. I looked at him.
The brim of a black derby hat shaded his forehead and his eyes. His gaze was false, and its velvety sheen was only skin-deep. He had a scar next to his lower lip, by his chin, and his full, too-red lips smiled in his white face. His overcoat was tailored too tight and showed off the shape of his little body.
I spoke to him brusquely:
‘What’s the time?’
‘Quarter to eleven.’
I stayed where I was, sleepy. I looked unhappily at my dull shoes, at the point where a few stitches had come loose after a repair, allowing one to see a patch of sock through the hole.
The young man meanwhile hung his hat on a hook and threw his leather gloves down onto a chair with a tired gesture. I went back to looking at him sidelong, but looked away because he saw me observing him.
He was well-dressed, and from his rigid starched collar all the way down to his patent leather boots with their cream-coloured spats, one could recognise him as a wealthy figure.
However, I don’t know why it occurred to me to think:
‘He must have dirty feet.’
Smiling a lying smile he turned his head and a lock of his carefully arranged hair fell down to one side, far enough to cover his earlobe. In a gentle voice, giving me a heavy sidelong glance, he said:
‘You seem tired, no?’
‘Yes, a little.’
He took off his overcoat, whose silk lining was rubbed shiny at the creases. A certain greasy smell came from his black clothes and I considered him with sudden unease; then, without thinking about what I was doing, I asked him:
‘Are your clothes dirty, then?’
He understood me immediately, but he answered tangentially:
‘Did I hurt you, waking you up like that?’
‘No, why would it hurt me?’
‘Well, kiddo. Some people get hurt like that. I had a friend in boarding school who had an epileptic fit if you woke him suddenly.’
‘Too sensitive.’
‘As sensitive as a woman, wouldn’t you say, kiddo, is that it?’
‘So you had a friend who was over-sensitive? Look, che, do me a favour and open the door, I’m suffocating in here. Let a bit of air in. It smells of dirty clothes in here.’
The intruder frowned a little… He went towards the door, but before he got there a number of postcards fell to the floor from his pocket.
He hurriedly bent down to pick them up, and I approached him.
Then I saw: they were all photographs of men and women, copulating in various positions.
The unknown man’s face was purple. He babbled:
‘I don’t know how they got there, they’re not mine, a friend…’
I didn’t reply.
Standing next to him, I was looking with terrible fixity at one of the group. He said something, I don’t know what. I wasn’t listening. I looked in shock at a terrible photograph. A woman lying prostrate before a rough man dressed as a porter, wearing only a cap with a rubber visor and a black band round his stomach.
I turned back to the degenerate.
He was pale now, with his eager pupils extremely dilated, and a tear shining at his blackened eyelids. His hand fell on my arm.
‘Let me stay, don’t throw me out.’
‘So you… you’re a…’
He dragged me to the edge of the bed and threw himself at my feet.
‘Yes, I’m one of them, at times.’
His hand fell on my knee.
‘At times.’
The boy’s voice was deep and bitter.
‘Yes, I’m one of them… at times.’ A fearful pain trembled in his voice. Then his hand took my hand and pulled it to his throat so that he could lean his chin on it. He spoke in a very low voice, almost like a sob.
‘Oh, if I’d only been born a woman! Why does life have to be like this?’
The veins in my temples throbbed terribly.
He spoke to me:
‘What’s your name?’
‘Silvio.’
‘Tell me, Silvio, don’t you despise me…? but no… you don’t have that kind of face… How old are you?’
I answered hoarsely:
‘Sixteen… But, are you trembling?’
‘Yes… it’s what you want… come on…’
Suddenly I saw him, yes, I saw him… His lips were smiling in his flushed face… his eyes were also smiling madly… and suddenly, as his clothes fell away rapidly, I saw the hanging tail of a dirty shirt cover the band of flesh which the women’s stockings he was wearing left exposed.
Slowly, as if it were a pattern displayed on a wall that the moon made white, I saw the image of the imploring girl next to the black fence pass before my eyes. A cold idea — if she knew what was happening to me at this precise moment — passed across my life.
I would remember this instant for ever.
I stepped back shyly and, looking directly at him, said slowly:
‘Go.’
‘What?’
I repeated in an even lower voice:
‘Go.’
‘But…’
‘Go, get out, you beast. What have you done with your life? What have you done with your life…’
‘No… don’t be like that…’
‘You beast… What have you done with your life?’ But I couldn’t bring myself in that moment to tell him all the significant things, all the precious and noble things I had in me, things that instinctively rejected this canker.
The degenerate stepped back. He drew back his lips to show his fangs, then dived into the bed, and while I climbed fully dressed into my bed he put his hands behind his head and began to sing:
Rice pudding, rice pudding
There’s going to be a wedding.
I looked at him sidelong and then, without any anger, but with a calm that surprised even me, said:
‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll break your nose.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll break your nose.’
Then he turned his face to the wall. A horrible awkward stress weighed down the trapped air. I felt the intensity with which his horrible thoughts made their way across the space between us. All I could see of him was the triangle of black hair that lay on his nape, and then his round, white, untempting neck.
He did not move, but I was crushed by the intensity of his thoughts… he was following my lead… and I stayed still, feeling a horror that was gradually turning into conformity. And every now and then I looked at him out of the corner of my eye.
Suddenly his blanket slipped away and I saw his shoulders, his milk-white shoulders that rose above the neatly sewn arc that the neckline of his shirt described over his clavicles…
A woman’s begging cry burst out in the corridor outside the room:
‘No… no… please…’ and the dull shock of a body being thrown against a wall made my soul arch from some primal fear, I hesitated a second, then leapt from my bed and opened the door at the exact moment that the door of the opposite room was closed.
I leant on the doorframe. No noise came from the room. I turned and, leaving the door open and, without looking at the other man, turned out the light and got into bed.
I now felt sure of myself. I lit a cigarette and asked my companion:
‘Che, who taught you this filthy stuff?’
‘I don’t want to talk to you… You’re not nice…’
I burst out laughing, then carried on speaking more seriously:
‘Seriously, che, you know you’re a weirdo? You’re really weird! What do they say about you in your family? And this place? Have you looked at this place?’
‘You’re not nice.’
‘You’re a saint, right?’