Alberto Moravia - Two Friends

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mainly to himself — that he still held some cards, perhaps the best ones. He felt that they were fighting a duel, though a hidden one, undertaken with non-lethal weapons. He could not shake off the shame of having lost the first round. For some reason, the fact that Lalla had chosen him over Maurizio and his flattering, seductive offer did not console Sergio in the least. In truth, Lalla was superfluous, insignificant to his struggle, which was not about love but about politics. In the realm of love, he was victorious, at least for now, but this victory meant nothing. In the realm of politics, he had been defeated, and he was unable to conceal the sting of this defeat.

His relations with Lalla had not improved; to the contrary, they had eroded even further. She still complained about their lack of money; in fact, her grumbling had become more bitter than ever. She seemed increasingly mortified and angered by their precarious financial condition. This real, concrete inability to satisfy his lover made him hate her at times, as if she had become the personification of his impotence and his inability to take control of the situation. When he had been drunk at Maurizio’s, he had imagined that he knew what would happen and felt that he held the strings, controlling his own destiny and that of others. Now he realized that he was just a poor wretch, incapable of making a living or of imposing his will on others. He had believed himself to be a maker of destinies, but instead he was simply a man without a job, though still a Communist. His political beliefs seemed to him the sole positive element in his life, but even this required some sort of proof, a victory, a confirmation of his self-esteem. In other words, even this positive could become a negative if he was unable to accomplish that which had become his constant obsession: Maurizio’s conversion to Communism.

He did not mention any of this to Lalla. She had never been privy to his innermost thoughts, and now less than ever. She knew that he wanted to convert Maurizio, but she did not know — nor did he want her to — just how important this conversion had become. It was a constant, vital, irrepressible need. Reflecting on how much he concealed from Lalla — and how little he revealed — he realized that in fact he considered her an inferior being and treated her accordingly; to him, she was a beautiful, lovable object. He knew that

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this was a cruel attitude, filled with contempt and indifference. Sergio could see this clearly, but it never occurred to him to modify his behavior by opening up to Lalla partly or even completely. The truth was that, while he made his plans to convince Maurizio and thus to control him, his relationship with Lalla, despite its one-sidedness, gave him a certain sense of power and superiority. But he did not know how to use this superiority, because it lay in the arena of love, which he considered unimportant and unworthy, rather than that of politics, the only arena that counted. And yet, it was still a kind of superiority.

As these thoughts went through his mind, he continued to live the same unhappy existence which was so repugnant to him. One morning, after eating at a simple trattoria in the neighborhood, Sergio and Lalla returned to their room. As she led him up the stairs, she asked, “What shall we do today?”

It was Sunday. Sergio hated Sundays, and was annoyed by his hatred for them. He hated the fact that the city was crowded with poor people ambling slowly down the streets, staring at the windows of the closed shops. But these were the very masses he was supposed to love, and so he did not like to admit his aversion, even to himself. “I’m staying in,” he said in an irritated tone.

“All day?” she asked, dubiously.

“Until the evening.”

Lalla did not seem unhappy at the idea. For some time, almost as if her renunciation of Maurizio had increased her love for Sergio, she had seemed happy whenever he planned to spend time with her. This attitude caused him a slight, insinuating irritation: “There you have it,” he thought, “women can think only of this animalistic emotion called love, and are not interested in anything else.” He was silent as they went up the stairs. When they reached the top, she stealthily took his hand and almost furtively brought it to her lips and kissed it. “Do you love me?” she asked softly, passionately.

“You know I love you,” he answered, with bittersweet sincerity.

She kissed his hand again and they went inside. They walked straight through to their room. Lalla closed the door and began to undress. She always did this, mainly to protect her clothes, but on that day Sergio felt that there was another reason, one that

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vaguely annoyed him, a kind of obscure erotic impulse. Silently, he sat down in the armchair next to the window. Lalla undressed completely and put on her dressing gown, which had once been Sergio’s.

She completed a few tasks, with a calm, serious air: she combed her hair, removed her lipstick with a handkerchief, pulled down a window shade, and smoothed the bedcovers, which were still messy from the morning. Then she came over to where he was sitting and asked, awkwardly, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

She did not notice his irritated tone and carefully sat on the armrest of his chair, with her legs across Sergio’s chest. The robe hung open, and Sergio could see her breasts pressing against the deep crease in her belly. It excited him but at the same time, for some reason, he felt irritated by his feeling of arousal. As she often did, Lalla began to touch his face with her large hand. She caressed his face slowly, pausing at the temples, and then, still slowly, ran her fingers through his hair. Then, with a graceful, hungry gesture, as if leaning down to take a bite of a piece of fruit dangling from a tree without pulling it off the branch, she kissed him on the mouth. They began to kiss, and Sergio felt the burning heat of her love melting the stingy, hard metal of his repulsion. He also noticed that her love diminished his feelings of frustration and impotence, and this too vexed him. But still, he responded to her kiss. Every so often she interrupted the long kiss and began to cover his face with tiny, dry kisses that tickled pleasantly and made him smile, almost despite himself. Then she would once again begin kissing him on the mouth, with the same inextinguishable avidity and quiet fervor. Their mouths continued to twist and overlap, passing in and out of each other, biting, rubbing, sucking, opening and closing. Their faces were bathed in saliva as their desire grew stronger. They had stopped speaking, and Lalla began to remove her lover’s clothes, with the clumsy eagerness typical of women in such

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moments. Now she was undoing his tie, unbuttoning his collar, and introducing her hand into his shirt, placing her palm against his chest. Now the hand moved downward, unfastening his belt, unbuttoning his trousers and his underwear. His clothes were completely undone from his neck to his groin; he sat, with his legs open, head tilted backward. Lalla kneeled on the floor and kissed his belly.

He did not know how much time passed. The room was silent and steeped in shadows as they embraced, switching positions every so often. Lalla sat on his knees, then on the ground with her head against his groin, then on an armrest, leaning sideways to kiss him, then on both armrests, then again on his knees, heavy and full of desire. Sergio realized that as time dissolved, so too did his anxieties: his sense of inferiority, his irritation, his repugnance, rage, feelings of impotence and frustration. But even though they dissolved almost magically beneath the prodigious caresses and tenderness of her powerful, indefatigable body, he realized that it was only an illusion: his anxieties did not disappear, they were simply pushed aside. As he thought this, he returned her kisses and caresses until he found himself lying naked on the bed with his lover. “I love you so much,” she whispered as she pressed herself against him. “What else matters if we love each other?”