After we made love we lay side by side, my arm still around her slender waist and her hand languidly resting on my groin. For a few moments, in the dark, it seemed that we were both remembering the events of
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the evening. In fact, after a few minutes, Nella began to speak; her tone was that of a person who is unsure of her interlocutor’s reaction: “You remember that man, Moroni, who said he would find work for me in the movies? He was serious … He’s Maurizio’s partner … After you left, I went back downstairs and the two of them looked after me and told me that soon they will arrange a screen test for me.”
“Well, I hope it goes well for you,” I mumbled in the dark, with a touch of sarcasm.
She thought I was jealous, and immediately embraced me and planted a kiss on my cheek, saying quickly: “I’ll always love you, and only you … even if I become a movie star and make lots of money … I’ll give it all to you … You can do what you like with it. I won’t keep even a penny for myself.”
“You want me to become a kept man,” I said, with the same sarcastic tone.
“Don’t say that … I want you not to have to work for money, so you can focus on your studies … They both like you very much and, you know, Maurizio told me that deep down he more or less agrees with your political ideas.”
She was clearly saying these things so that I would accept Maurizio’s favors, which, I suspected, were self-interested. She wanted to gain my consent. But I did not linger on Nella’s intentions. Instead I asked, eagerly, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that he too is a Communist, even if he’s not an actual Party member. Aren’t you glad?”
It was clear that she was attempting, with innocent feminine resolve, to render Maurizio more sympathetic to my eyes in order to convince me that the offer was an honorable one. Even with this knowledge, my mind had already set off in pursuit of yet another mirage. I asked Nella: “Are you sure that’s what he said?”
“He definitely said it … Maybe he was drunk, but I don’t think so.”
I was no longer listening. My mind was already lost
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in myriad reflections, like <a hunting dog> following a scent in the forest and through fields. This tangle of thoughts became more obscure and dense as I lost myself in its possibilities. Eventually, I fell into a deep sleep, lying next to Nella in silence as she continued to talk into the night.
[VI]
I awoke late the next morning with the firm intention of returning to Maurizio’s house to confront him man to man, without the distracting presence of guests or alcohol, and, I hoped, unburden myself of my feelings of inferiority. It was as if my mind had been hard at work through the night and had come to this decision without my knowledge. I had two new weapons, in addition to the ones I already knew of: his probable feelings for Nella — or at least his obvious interest in her — and his confessed sympathy for the Party. I would have to insert these new weapons or levers into a crack in his shield in order to destroy it completely. I intuited deep down that these were very powerful weapons, and, though I did not know exactly how I would use them, I had a feeling that I was on the right track and that if I was careful, I might finally attain my much-desired victory. It may seem strange, but the idea that Maurizio might also hold his own weapons, or even the same ones, did not occur to me. And yet I should have suspected that Nella and the Party could also be turned against me. But that is how we men are made: we see everything from our own point of view and have great difficulty imagining another perspective.
This time I did not want Nella to know about my visit, so I did not share my plans with her. She was still asleep when I snuck out of the room to use the telephone in the vestibule of the rooming house. After
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asking for my name and giving an ambiguous answer regarding Maurizio’s whereabouts, Maurizio’s butler went off to look for him. After a few minutes, I heard Maurizio’s voice on the line. I said drily that I wanted to see him, and he answered quickly that we could meet whenever and wherever I liked. We made an appointment for that afternoon at his house. Then I said impulsively, “Thank you for bringing Nella home last night.”
“You should thank Moroni,” he answered; “he was the one who took her home.”
“In that case, please thank him for me.”
“I will.”
Quietly, I returned to our room without awakening Nella, who was lost in a child-like slumber. I sat at my table and worked on my translation until almost two in the afternoon. Meanwhile, Nella had awoken. She said good morning as usual, coming up behind me and kissing me, taking me by surprise. She got dressed and we went to eat at the usual trattoria, where we paid on credit. Nella kept yawning and I too felt tired, but at the same time I was unnaturally awake, filled with nervous energy rather than physical vigor. When we returned home Nella threw herself on the bed. She said, “I’m going to sleep for a bit”; I had already picked up a book and was reading, stretched out on the armchair. She added, absentmindedly: “What are you going to do today?” For some reason I answered, “I’m going to see a producer … Maybe he’ll ask me to write a screenplay, who knows.” “That way we’ll both work in the movies,” she said, yawning. She fell asleep almost immediately. The appointment with Maurizio was not until the late afternoon, so I continued to read for a while longer. Then it occurred to me that it would be best not to show up at Maurizio’s tired and nervous, and I decided to take a nap. This again proved that I assigned a great importance to my meeting with Maurizio, yet another sign of my inferiority complex, which I was anxious to rid myself of at any cost. Ruminating on these thoughts, I stretched out on the bed, my feet against Nella’s shoulder and my face against her feet. I fell asleep almost immediately.
I awoke suddenly with a heavy head and a bitter
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taste in my mouth, as if I had not rested at all. As I sat up and looked around, I realized that Nella was no longer lying next to me, nor was she in the room. There was a piece of paper on the typewriter: “I had an appointment with Maurizio to discuss working in the movies … I’ll be home early, before dinner.” I was taken aback; Maurizio had said nothing about this and he was not in the habit of hiding things. Of course, it would have been useless to hide Nella’s visit since I too was supposed to see him that afternoon. I reasoned that Nella must have called him and that Maurizio had invited her to his house at the same time I was supposed to be there. But why hadn’t Nella waited for us to go together? With these questions circulating in my head I quickly got dressed and left the rooming house.
I was now in a rush to “surprise” Nella at Maurizio’s; this way, I reasoned, I would have yet another weapon to use against Maurizio. I could prove that he had hidden something from me, and this would be useful when I decided to confront him about his feelings for Nella. Deceptiveness and lying, whatever the reason, were signs of weakness, and I was glad that Maurizio had finally cracked. Reinvigorated by these thoughts, I decided to take a taxi to Maurizio’s house, and once there I did not hesitate to ring the bell; instead, I rang it with a kind of aggressive impatience.