Alberto Moravia - Two Friends

The jeep came to an abrupt stop and the same coarse, breathless voice announced: “Via Bertoloni.” At that moment, without warning, all the excitement, desire, and love I had been feeling disappeared, as if a charm had been broken. I knew that in a moment I would be in Maurizio’s company, not only physically — not such an ominous prospect — but in the sense of our struggle, which would inevitably begin again. Our battle, which had been suspended for many years, would be fought even more ardently than before. I was excited, not by love or desire but rather by a pugnacious and troubling fear of not being up to the challenge. I felt that Nella’s flirtatiousness

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in the jeep had disarmed me and distracted me from my struggle with Maurizio and the means by which I meant to overcome him, and from the results I so desired. Suddenly, like a boy on his way to an exam who has been momentarily distracted by the traffic or the spectacle of nature and then is forced to come back to reality at the sight of the schoolyard, I felt almost a sense of panic. I tried to assemble in my mind all the points of contrast between Maurizio and myself: my membership in the Communist Party, his association with a class of people whom I considered doomed, my firm belief in the imminence of revolution, my desire to turn my inferiority complex into a lasting and powerful sense of superiority … As I went through this list in my mind, I tried to recover my earlier aggressive, decisive mood, which I considered more favorable to the execution of my plan. I could feel that my heart had begun to flutter and that I was out of breath. I saw a gate with the number sixty-four and whispered to Nella, “We’re here.”

It was a large gate with two pilasters topped by two massive pots filled with luxuriant ivy. I felt so overexcited that I decided to pause for a moment to look around before pressing the bell. We were on a pleasant street in an elegant, almost deserted neighborhood lined with gardens. Behind the garden walls, one could make out leafy trees and the aging façades of mansions and large houses. There were cars parked on both sides of the street, many of them luxury models. Many probably belonged to Maurizio’s guests. Nella peered at me, surprised by my hesitation. “What’s wrong? You look pale … Don’t you feel well?”

I answered steadily, “I’m fine.”

“Why don’t you ring the bell?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, pressing the brass button on the pilaster.

The gate opened, and a butler in a striped jacket

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appeared and invited us in. We followed him through the garden and to the door, which was set on one side of the house, protected by an old glass-and-iron roof. Ten years earlier I had often visited Maurizio’s house, and I suddenly realized that everything looked smaller, more modest, older, and less luxurious than I remembered it. In those now distant days, I had always felt an intimidating impression of luxury and wealth whenever I entered that house. Now I realized that this luxury and immense wealth had existed only in my imagination. Of course it was a large, comfortable house, I said to myself, looking around as we passed through the foyer and an anteroom leading to the main rooms of the ground floor, but nothing more. The décor was nothing special, without style or taste; one could even call it nondescript. Everything that had seemed so impressive ten years earlier was now revealed to be much less so to my cold, informed eye: the shabbiness of the furniture, which was old but not valuable, of the kind one finds at secondhand stores; the ugliness and excessive profusion of vases, firearms, and knickknacks distributed on every table and cabinet; the old-fashioned tapestries made out of simulated damask silk on the walls, and the dark, heavy curtains that obscured the windows. The house, I saw immediately, was poorly maintained; it was clear that an insufficient staff cleaned those vast, poorly lit sitting rooms, and did so only superficially. There was the sense of debris left in dark corners, of unwaxed floors hidden beneath ragged carpets, and of dust spreading like an impalpable veil over everything. I also saw that nothing had been replaced in the last ten years and that everything looked visibly worn: the velvet couches were stained and tatty, the damask on the walls was faded, the curtains were dusty and limp. This tired quality struck me as a concrete symbol of a moral condition: that house was, as they say, stale; nothing had been renovated or improved upon for many years, just as ideas, convictions, feelings, and taste grows old; in other words the entire inheritance of the family that lived in that house, and more generally of the social class to which this family belonged, was antiquated and tired. Needless to

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say, I felt almost a sense of victory as the decadence and modesty of Maurizio’s home were revealed to my eyes, as if I hoped to find the same qualities in him, a decadence and modesty which would render him less formidable. I hoped that he would no longer carry the air of superiority which in the past had so tormented me.

The first two rooms were empty, and the doors and windows were all open to let in the night air from the garden. We could hear music coming from a smaller drawing room at the rear of the villa; as we entered we saw that most of the guests were in this room, crowded around a bar near the far wall. There was a radio playing and some of the guests were dancing, both inside and also on the terrace outside. There were about thirty guests and they were exactly the kind of people I had expected to find: men and women belonging to the Roman bourgeoisie, many of the men in blue suits, neither young nor old, a bit corpulent, a bit bald, dressed to the nines with pomaded hair and clean-shaven cheeks, and wearing an expression, also typical of their class, that seemed to combine contentment, skepticism, and irony. The women were not terribly young, and I noticed that most of them were attractive and dressed with a kind of fussy elegance, with lots of bracelets and jewelry and a profusion of color; they seemed vivacious, excited, enthusiastic. In the small crowd, I could make out a few brown and green uniforms, and the stolid faces and blond hair of Allied officers. I also noticed that among these bejeweled ladies — who with their high heels and fancy clothes reminded me of festive statues of the Madonna — Nella looked like a little servant girl who had wandered in from the kitchen to ask the master a question. Her simple, ankle-length

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dress and low shoes made her look small, and the lack of jewels or décolleté added a modest air that made her look even smaller. Only her hair, which in the semi-darkness of the room was tinged with copper and gold from the light of the few lamps, looked precious. It seemed to reveal an equally precious moral quality, a naïveté, a purity, and a child-like simplicity.

No one there knew us, and we knew no one. Paying no heed to Nella, I navigated among the groups sitting and standing around the room, talking, laughing, and dancing. I was looking for Maurizio. Nella followed my footsteps with a tenacious fidelity that I found both irritating and touching, without leaving me for a moment, her steps matching my own. She seemed intimidated by the small crowd of elegant strangers and for some reason I became annoyed with her and whispered: “Don’t make that face.” “What face?” she asked, surprised. “Stop looking so bashful … Your toenail is worth more than all of them combined.” She stared at me again and said: “I don’t feel the least bit intimidated … It’s just that I don’t know anyone.” “I don’t either,” I said, “what of it?” We had reached the bar. I climbed onto one of the stools, feigning an awkward ease, and invited Nella to do the same. She obeyed, but perhaps because she was too petite, or because she was not accustomed to being perched on a stool, she slid off the first time and was able to climb back on only after pulling her dress up over her knee. Once again I felt annoyed by her awkwardness. Attempting to hide my ill humor, I asked if she wanted something to drink.