Alberto Moravia - Two Friends

“Good-bye, Maltese,” Maurizio’s father repeated, smiling affably.

“Good-bye, Maltese,” Marisa said. She squeezed his hand and as she let go, her fingers lingered on his with an air of complicity.

“Good-bye,” the governess echoed, hurrying after her mistress.

Maurizio asked Sergio, “Where are you off to now?”

Sergio realized that the girl was still there, walking slowly nearby. He called out to her, suddenly decisive: “ Signorina …”

“Yes?” she answered with a start.

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“Would you like … may I walk with you?”

“Yes, thank you,” she answered with complete frankness. Maurizio looked at her, then at Sergio, and said, “Call me after lunch. I’ll join you.”

“All right.”

“See you later,” Maurizio said, seemingly with some regret, before calmly joining his family, which was already some way off. Only after a little while, when he was already far away, did Sergio remember that Maurizio was supposed to leave early that afternoon. He felt a touch of surprise. The young woman asked, in her confident, trusting voice: “Where should we go?”

[V]

Under a burning sun, in the silent emptiness of the

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park, they slowly approached the main path. The sun seemed fixed at a point directly above them, beating down on their heads. Time stood still, as if events were taking place outside of time, like figures beyond an impenetrable pane of glass. “Here I am,” Sergio could not help but think as he gazed at the girl walking next to him and then at the path in the deserted park. “Here I am; all around, everything is disappearing, but I’m standing still … It’s 1943 and this mysterious girl is here next to me … Many years hence, if I survive this test, I’ll remember this insignificant moment of no historical importance more than anything else in this clamorous, crucial period.” It was true; he could feel that this moment, clearly delineated by his unhappy, fearful sensibility, was unique and would never be repeated, and that furthermore, it was important, though he couldn’t quite say why. He felt a sensation that was deep, pungent, and intense and at the same time completely ineffable and indefinite. A feeling that encompassed not only the girl and himself but everything, all of reality, as if suddenly the dam holding back this wave of feeling had opened and the emotion flowed freely into the outside world, becoming one with it and staining it in its own hue. His eyes welled with tears. “So then, could there really be something beyond these important events taking place all around us … and is it possible that we are not just spectators or actors in these events?” He could not fully answer either of these two questions. He tried to define what he was feeling and understood that it was something terribly vast, a cosmic compassion that encompassed both the Fascists and the anti-Fascists, Germans and Italians, as well as the sky, the sun, the trees, and both himself and the girl walking next to him. She must have noticed his agitation, because she turned and asked, in her childlike voice: “Are you crying? Why?” […]

She answered, firmly: “Please don’t ask me […]”

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“But why?”

“Please.”

“At least tell me why you left T.”

“I can’t tell you that either.”

“Why this mystery?” Sergio asked. “Don’t you trust me?”

“No,” she said, staring at him with a kind of desperation. “Please don’t ask any more questions, I beg you.”

For a moment he sat perplexed, a flurry of ideas streaming through his mind: perhaps she was a spy or an adventuress, or a thief, or some other kind of criminal. But it was enough just to look at her, to see her innocent, almost childlike face, in order to know that this was impossible. There were doubtless dishonorable people in the world, but most of them were innocent victims, forced into crime by the war. Even if the girl’s life was a mystery, it was sure to be a mystery in her image, innocent and simple. “Forgive me,” he said, sincerely, “I didn’t mean to be indiscreet.”

She responded brightly, her voice betraying the slightest trace of a local accent: “Please don’t apologize … it’s understandable. You found me in this park, alone … it’s normal for you to ask questions.”

After a short silence, he said, “My name is Sergio … I’m a journalist. And I’m from Rome.”

Again, she was silent, and after a moment he added, “Do you have a suitcase, or something else?”

“Yes, at the station.”

“All right then,” he said with some effort, “let’s go get a bite to eat and then we can go to the station and pick up your bag. We’ll take it to your room.”

“All right,” she said with a trusting docility that he

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found slightly jarring. “Let’s go.”

They got up from the bench and left the square, walking along a vast, empty avenue. Nella unexpectedly began to speak in a relaxed, trusting voice, as if they were old friends. Not only did she not attribute much importance to the war, but she did not seem to even understand its exact terms. After he asked whether she thought they had really been bombed that morning, she asked casually, “Were those German planes?”

Sergio stared at her in disbelief. “German planes? No … not yet … the Germans are our allies.”

She turned away and said in a serious voice: “I don’t understand any of it, you know … Germans, British, they’re all the same to me … Now that the Fascists are gone, I assumed it was the Germans bombing us because we got rid of the Fascists.”

“No,” Sergio explained, “those were English planes … that is, if there were planes at all.”

[…]

was not surprised by this request for a bathing suit.

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Nella looked at several different styles, measuring them with her eyes. The shopgirl stared out at the street rather than at Nella, and said: “This one is made of knitted fabric … This is a two piece … This is a one piece.” Sergio could not help asking: “Do you sell a lot of these despite the war?”

“Yes, of course,” she answered, “like every other year.”

Nella asked, “Can I try one on? This one?”

“Yes of course,” the young woman answered, picking up a bathing suit and taking it over to a folding screen. Now alone, Sergio looked around the shop nervously. For some reason he felt that he should pay for the bathing suit, and yet he wasn’t sure that he had enough money and was afraid of appearing stingy. He said to himself, “I met her just three hours ago … she’s nothing to me,” and realized once again that his feelings, almost like a lover’s, had no basis in reality. He was startled by Nella’s voice asking, in a pleased tone: “Do you think it suits me?”

He turned around.

“It suits me, don’t you think?” she repeated.

It was true: it fit her perfectly, Sergio thought, or rather, any bathing suit would have suited her. Without the red cotton dress that concealed and almost erased her shape, her body was revealed in all its luminous, firm beauty. Like her face, it was as appetizing as bread and as life itself. In her, nature seemed to express only candor, health, luminosity, and purity. He remembered a prostitute he had visited two weeks earlier, a young woman, dark-haired and ill-proportioned, dark-skinned and sweaty, and it seemed to him that this girl standing before him now was the exact opposite of that woman, as different from her as day from night. Nella’s shoulders were plump

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and wide, her waist slender. Rising from this waist, her bust sloped upward, like two large round fruits about to burst. Her breasts were round and firm, and the wool of the suit stretched across them, almost painfully. Nella’s hips were almost as wide as her shoulders, giving her body the singular appearance of a vessel, narrow in the middle and flaring outward at either end. Her legs touched, without the slightest space between them, and her thighs were full. The skin of her legs was hairless, amber-colored, and taut. Her legs were longer than he had imagined, and elegantly tapered. But most of all, the color, the healthy, innocent glow that her body emanated, made a deep impression: it was like the morning sunlight shining upon the objects in a room and the faces of those who have rested in a deep slumber and bathed in clear, fresh water. She had the sweet, limpid, healthy, and almost child-like flesh of a woman who had never known passionate love. But neither was she a virgin, he thought. Her virginity must have been taken almost by chance, perhaps in a single embrace by a fortuitous lover, an act of convenience, almost a means to release her vitality, so impetuous and fresh. Taken without pain and without love, as in nature, without a trace, without regret or shame, nor any other sentiment.