Alberto Moravia - Two Friends

“No,” Sergio said, quietly, “you’re right.” He was struck by Maurizio’s inspired, sincere lyricism when he spoke of the Communist cause. He would have liked to sound like that.

“If I’m right,” Maurizio continued, now with a slight tremor in his voice, “then why do you hesitate?”

That was the long and short of it: he wanted Lalla, Sergio could not help thinking. His whole being was contaminated by this desire. Sergio abruptly got up. “That’s enough, I’m leaving. I’ll make a decision soon.”

“You’ll make a decision?”

“Yes,” he answered, with a hint of rage, “don’t I have to?”

“In a sense, yes,” Maurizio said.

“What do you mean ‘in a sense’?”

“Well, you don’t really have to.”

“What do you mean?” Sergio said, hopefully.

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“Well,” Maurizio said, quite deliberately, “you could ask Lalla what she wants.”

Sergio looked over at Maurizio. “Lalla isn’t a Communist … she doesn’t really believe in the cause … so it’s obvious what her answer would be.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that she would say no.”

“True. But if she were to say yes, then you would not be involved.”

“And?”

“And then it would be a matter between Lalla and me … and I wouldn’t have to join the Party. I would marry her, or she would simply become my lover.”

Sergio once again stood up. He was irritated. “In other words, you’ll only join the Party if I am the one who forces Lalla to sleep with you and she accepts out of love for me …”

“That’s right.”

“Well in that case you wouldn’t be signing up because you desire Lalla, but rather because you want to obtain her consent through my efforts … That’s a different matter altogether.” Satisfied with the subtlety of his reasoning, Sergio sat down again.

Maurizio seemed perfectly calm. “Perhaps I’m a degenerate … Perhaps I can only derive pleasure from obtaining Lalla through your efforts … What difference does it make?”

It appeared that Maurizio had an answer for everything. “But you’re not a degenerate,” Sergio retorted.

“How do you know? There are men who are attracted to little girls … Maybe I’m attracted to women who love Communists and give themselves out of love for their Communist lovers, in other words, out of love for Communism … so what?”

“That’s a very modern kind of perversion.”

“Precisely … Who says that love doesn’t change through time?”

Sergio got up again, intending to leave. “Good-bye,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Good-bye.”

After this meeting, Sergio sank into a kind of oblivion.

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It was like the theater, when the curtain falls at the end of an act, and the audience has no idea what is going on backstage. He was a spectator, watching himself from the outside. This feeling of oblivion distanced him from the darkest zones of his own conscience so that he had no idea what was going on there. At first he decided to discuss Maurizio’s proposal with Lalla, but then, for reasons he did not fully understand, the whole matter slipped from his mind. From time to time he sensed an encumbrance where before he had felt only emptiness; but this encumbrance, which was caused by the decision that loomed before him, remained obscure and unspoken, though at times he felt oppressed by it. But he continued to do the same things as before, aided by his feeling of oblivion.

They continued to see Maurizio; now that spring had arrived, he often picked them up in his car and they drove to Ostia or into the countryside for lunch. Deep down, what surprised Sergio was that Maurizio did not seem to remember his bold proposal. He was as courteous, irreproachably friendly, and thoughtful as ever, almost ceremonious in fact, and it seemed to Sergio that their rapport had returned to its previous ease, when neither he nor Lalla, nor even Maurizio, knew that both of them desired Lalla.

One day in March, Lalla told Sergio that she needed a new dress. She stood in front of the armoire in her bathrobe, pointing at the only summer dress she had from the previous year. Sergio could see that it was worn and threadbare, and discolored under the arms. But he had no money. “I can’t do anything about it … I won’t get paid until the end of the month.” Lalla said that she would rather stay at home in bed despite the increasingly sunny weather than go out in such a dress. Now in a bad mood, Sergio told her to do as she pleased, and went out.

As soon as he was in the street he thought of

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Maurizio and decided to ask his friend for a loan so he could buy Lalla a dress. On some level, he sensed that there was a connection between this decision and the one he still had to make regarding Lalla and Maurizio, but he refused to follow this line of thinking. He called Maurizio and told him that he wanted to meet, and Maurizio, in his usual polite manner, said Sergio could come over whenever he liked.

Sergio did not wait long in Maurizio’s sitting room. It looked shabbier than ever in the morning light, with the sun streaming in through the curtains. As soon as his friend appeared, he said: “Listen, I need to ask you a favor.”

“Please have a seat,” Maurizio said. “What can I do for you?”

After a pause, Sergio continued: “I’m broke … Lalla desperately needs a new dress … Could you please lend me the money? I’ll pay you back in a month.”

Maurizio betrayed no emotion. “How much do you need?” he asked, in a calm voice.

“Twenty thousand lire.”

“That will only buy a very modest dress,” Maurizio said, fixing him with his gaze.

“Well, we’re modest people,” Sergio said, almost angrily, “and we dress modestly.”

Maurizio reflected for a moment: “Modesty is fine of course … but if I may be frank, Lalla dresses like a beggar.”

Sergio pressed his lips together, offended. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s true,” Maurizio said, with a cruel calm. “She wears rags … shapeless skirts, worn-out shoes … Her gloves are dirty and full of holes … The other day she was wearing a blouse that was discolored under the arms from sweat … Her stockings are darned … Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but she looks like a beggar. If I were you I would be ashamed to go out with her.”

Sergio was so disconcerted by this attack that he did not respond immediately. His heart was heavy. After a long pause, Maurizio continued: “Listen, instead of twenty thousand, I’ll lend you two hundred thousand … It’s very little, even for a woman who dresses moderately well, and almost nothing for Lalla, who owns no clothes at all. At least she’ll be able to buy a dress, stockings, a blouse, some shoes, and maybe a few other things … like a slip or a camisole;

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I’m sure hers are in a terrible state, if she has them.”

As he calmly said these words, he pulled a checkbook and a pen out of his pocket. He wrote out the check, saying, “Don’t worry, you can pay me whenever you like.”

“But I …,” Sergio began, still taken aback.

“Don’t worry,” Maurizio said, holding up his hand, “and anyway, you can’t deny her these things that will make her so happy. It makes her deeply unhappy, as it would any woman, to go about dressed in rags.

After all,” he said, staring at Sergio, “I’m happy to give you this money … I’m very attached to Lalla, as you know, so it gives me pleasure.”

Without paying any more attention to Sergio, he finished writing the check. Sergio watched him, staring at the dark, shiny hair on his head, the head of a courteous, well-brought-up man bent over the checkbook at the small table. He wanted to protest, to stop him, but he knew that he would not, though he was not sure why. He had a strange feeling, a kind of gratitude mixed with humiliated attraction, and at the same time, a bitter sense of powerlessness, of irredeemable inferiority. Once again Maurizio had shown him up and was imposing his will; he towered over him with his money, as he had before with his intelligence. Sergio felt a violent desire for revenge, though he was not sure what form this revenge would take. He saw his hand reaching for the check, bathed in a ray of sunlight that came in through one of the windows. As in a dream, he heard himself say “Thank you.” He peered at the check. It was in his name, and suddenly it occurred to him: “He doesn’t want Lalla to know … This is between Maurizio and me … Either he really loves her, or he wants to humiliate me, or both.”