The Conformist by Alberto Moravia Read Free Book Online

had never known how to execute it, but this did not keep the boys from respecting him the way they respected Avanzini. Marcello understood that he had to either flaunt the possession of an object like the gloves or think up some feat like Japanese wrestling. But he also understood that he was not as shallow and amateur as his schoolmates; that he belonged, whether he liked it or not, to the race of those who take life and its responsibilities seriously; and that, in Avanzini’s place, he would have broken his adversary’s nose and that, in Pugliese’s place, he would have broken his neck. This incapacity of his for rhetoric and superficiality inspired in him an obscure diffidence directed toward himself, so that, while he wanted to provide his companions with the proof of strength they seemed to require in exchange for their esteem, he was at the same time dimly frightened.
    One day he became aware that some of the boys, among them his fiercest tormentors, were whispering together, and he understood from their glances that they were hatching some new plot against him. Still, the lesson hour proceded without incident: only looks and whispers confirmed his suspicions. The bell rang for dismissal and Marcello, without looking around him, began to walk home. This was in the first days of November; the air was stormy yet mild, and the last warmth and perfume of the summer, already dead, seemed mixed together with the first, uncertain rigors of autumn. Marcello felt vaguely excited by this atmosphere of stripping bare and natural havoc, in which he perceived a yearning for destruction and death very similar to that which, months ago, had made him behead the flowers and murder the lizards. Summerwas a motionless, full, perfect season under the serene sky, trees laden with leaves and branches crowded with birds. Now he watched with delight as the autumn wind lacerated and destroyed that perfection, that fullness, that immobility, driving dark, torn clouds across the sky, ripping the leaves from the trees and whirling them to earth, chasing away the birds, which, in fact, could be glimpsed between the leaves and the clouds, migrating in black, orderly flocks. At a bend in the road Marcello became aware that a group of five boys was following him — there was no doubt that they were following him, since two of them lived in the opposite direction — but, immersed in his autumnal sensations, he paid them no heed. Now he was in a hurry to reach a broad avenue planted with plane trees from which, by way of a cross street, he could arrive at his own house. He knew that the dead leaves in that avenue were piled up in the thousands on the sidewalks, yellow and crackling, and he was looking forward to dragging his feet through the piles, kicking them around and making them rustle. Meanwhile, almost in fun, he was trying to shake off his followers, now slipping into a doorway, now losing himself in the crowd. But the five boys, as he soon realized after a moment of uncertainty, always found him again. By now the avenue was close, and Marcello was ashamed to be seen amusing himself with the dead leaves. So he decided to confront them; turning around suddenly, he asked: “Why are you following me?”
    One of the five, the little blond with the sharp face and the shaved head, answered quickly, “We’re not following you, the street belongs to everyone, doesn’t it?”
    Marcello said nothing and began to walk again.
    Here was the avenue, between the two rows of bare, gigantic plane trees, with the houses full of windows lined up behind them; here were the dead leaves, as yellow as gold, scattered on the black asphalt and heaped up in the ditches. He could no longer see the five boys — maybe they had stopped following him and he was alone on the wide street and deserted sidewalks. Without haste he set his feet into the foliage scattered on the pavement and began to walk slowly forward, enjoying sinking his legs up to the knee in thatlight