The Conformist by Alberto Moravia Read Free Book Online Page A

and mobile mass of sonorous leaves. But as he was leaning down to grab a handful of them, intending to throw them up in the air, he heard the taunting voices again: “Marcellina … Marcellina … show off your underpants,
mutandina
.”
    Then he was suddenly overtaken by an almost pleasureable desire to fight, which lit up his face with an aggressive excitement. He straightened back up and walked decisively over to his persecutors, saying, “Do you want to go away or not?”
    Instead of responding, all five of them jumped on top of him. Marcello had thought that he would act a little like the Horatios and Curatios in the anecdotes of the history books: take them on one at a time, running here and there and striking each of them some great blow, so that they would be convinced to abandon their undertaking. But right away he realized that this plan was impossible: prudently, all five of them had closed in on him at once and now they held him, one by the arms, another by the legs, and two by the middle of his body. The fifth, he saw, had meanwhile hurriedly opened a bundle and was now approaching him warily, holding a little girl’s skirt of dark blue cotton suspended from his hands. They all laughed now, still holding him firmly, and the one with the skirt said: “Come on, Marcellina … let us do this … we’ll put the little skirt on you and then we’ll let you go home to your mamma.”
    It was exactly the sort of joke Marcello had expected, suggested as usual by his insufficiently masculine mien. Red in the face, furious, he started to struggle with extreme violence; but the five were stronger than he was and, although he managed to scratch one on the face and punch another in the stomach, he felt that, gradually, his movements were being reduced. Finally, as he moaned, “Let go of me … idiots … let go of me,” a cry of triumph issued from the mouths of his persecutors: the skirt had slipped over his head and by now his protests were lost as if in a sack. He struggled on, but in vain. The boys easily slid the skirt down to his waist, and he felt them tie it on him with a knot at the back. Then, while they were yelling, “Pull it … give it to him … tighter,” he heard a tranquil voice ask, more in a tone of curiosity than of reproof: “Would you like to tell me what you’re doing?”
    The five boys let go of him immediately and ran away; he found himself alone, all disheveled and panting, the skirt tied around his waist. He raised his eyes and saw the man who had spoken standing before him. Dressed in a dark gray uniform, its collar tight under his throat, pale, gaunt, with deep-set eyes, a large, sad nose, scornful mouth, and crew-cut hair, he gave the impression at first of almost excessive austerity. But then, as Marcello noted after a second glance, some traits revealed themselves that were not at all austere, on the contrary: the anxious, ardent look in his eyes; something soft and almost overripe in his mouth; a general insecurity in his attitude. He bent down, gathered up the books that Marcello had let fall to the ground in his struggles, and said, holding them out to him: “But what did they want to do to you?”
    His voice, too, was severe, like his face, but not without a strangled sweetness of its own.
    Marcello answered irritably, “They’re always playing jokes on me … they’re really stupid.” Meanwhile he was trying to untie the waistband of the skirt from the back.
    “Wait,” said the man, leaning down and undoing the knot. The skirt fell to the ground and Marcello stepped out of it, stamping on it and then kicking it away, onto a heap of dead leaves. The man asked, with a kind of timidity, “Weren’t you, perhaps, on your way home?”
    “Yes,” answered Marcello, looking up at him.
    “Well, then,” said the man, “I’ll take you there in my car,” and he pointed out, not too far away, an automobile parked next to the curb. Marcello looked at it: it was