Conjugal Love by Alberto Moravia Read Free Book Online Page A

she helped to carry me back into the atmosphere of everyday life - I mean that indulgent, calm, ordered atmosphere which permitted me to go forward with my work in security and tranquility. Every now and then I would interrupt my chatter with the barber and ask her how she was, or what book she was reading, or what she was doing. She would answer quietly, soberly, without raising her eyes and without breaking off her reading or the filing of her nails. The sun shone on her fair hair falling loose in two long waves on either side of her face; behind her bent head I could see, through the wide-open window, no less luminous, the trees in the garden and the blue sky. This same sunshine awakened tawny reflections in the furniture, darted blinding rays from Antonio's razor, and spread benignly from the window-sill to the most distant corners of the room, bringing to life the faded colours and dusty surfaces of the worn stuffs and the old tables and chairs. I was so happy that I thought, on one of those mornings: 'As long as I live, I shall remember this scene . . . myself lying back in the armchair, with Antonio shaving me . . . the window open, the room filled with sunshine and my wife sitting over there, in the sun.'
    One day my wife came in in a dressing-gown and told Antonio that she wanted him to dress her hair for her. All that was needed, she said, was a touch with the curling-iron; she had already washed it herself, that morning. She asked Antonio whether he knew how to wave hair, and when he said yes, she requested him, after he had finished with me, to go to her room. When my wife had gone out, I asked Antonio if he had ever been a ladies' hairdresser and he replied, not without vanity, that all the girls of the countryside came to him to have their hair done. I was surprised, and he confirmed that nowadays even the most rustic peasant-girls wanted permanent waves. 'They're more particular than town ladies,' he concluded with a smile; 'they're never satisfied . . . sometimes they're enough to drive you mad.' He shaved me with his usual slowness and precision. Then, after putting the razors all in order, he left me and went to my wife's room.
    After Antonio had gone, I sat down in the sun in the armchair in which my wife generally sat, a book in my hand. I remember that it was Tasso's Aminta, which I had started to re-read at that time. I was conscious of being in a particularly lucid and sensitive state of mind, and the charm of that graceful poem, which accorded so well with the luminous, gentle quality of the day, soon made me forget that I was waiting. Now and then, at a more than usually melodious line, I would raise my eyes to the window, repeating it in my mind; and each time I made this movement I seemed to become conscious of my happiness, like someone who moves about in a well-warmed bed and is conscious, each time he moves, of its comfort. Antonio's job with my wife took about three-quarters of an hour. Finally I heard him go out on to the drive, say good-bye to the maid in a quiet voice, and then I heard the crunch of the gravel under his bicycle wheels as he went further and further away. A few minutes later my wife came into the room.
    I rose to my feet in order to look at her. Antonio, so it seemed, had solved the problem by covering her whole head with curls and transforming the smooth, loose arrangement of her hair into a sort of eighteenth-century wig. All those curls piled one on top of another and sprouting out round her long, thin face gave her, at first sight, an odd appearance, like a smartly dressed peasant woman. This look of rusticity was enhanced by a little bunch of fresh flowers - I think they were red geraniums - pinned on just above her left temple.
    'Splendid!' I cried, with a burst of gaiety. 'Antonio's certainly a wizard. . . . Mario and Attilio in Rome can go and bury their heads, they're not worthy even to tie his shoes.. . . You look just like one of the little peasant girls from round