The Empty Canvas by Alberto Moravia

know, you really are very strange. It's getting on well, thanks to my efforts. Certainly, if it hadn't been for me, we shouldn't have a penny left by now.'
    'We're very rich, then, aren't we?'
    To this question my mother made no answer at all; all she did was to look at me with a wooden face and glassy eyes. Then she said: 'Rita, what are you doing standing there like that? Why don't you go and see if the second course is ready?' Rita shook herself as though she had been dreaming and went out. My mother immediately went on: 'I do beg of you, as I've always told you, not to speak of money affairs in front of the servants.'
    'Why not? I could understand, if I had spoken of something obscene. But money affairs? Perhaps money affairs are obscene, are they?'
    My mother shook her head, her eyes lowered, as though rejecting my argument without discussion. Then she said: 'They are poor, and it's not fair to flaunt riches in front of poor people.'
    'But you never want to talk about money affairs even when we're alone. You put on a certain face and anyone would think you were shocked, just as if I had started talking about sexual, instead of money, affairs.'
    Another shake of the head. 'No,' she said, 'I like to talk about them at the right time and place; in fact, since you're coming back to live here, we must talk about them. After lunch we'll go into the study and I'll provide you with all the information you want.'
    At that moment Rita came in again, carrying a long oval dish upon which, amongst little piles of various kinds of vegetables then in season, were arranged a number of slices of the veal which my mother had announced. Urged on by some kind of spiteful demon, I said lightly: 'Well, you haven't yet answered my question: are we very rich, or are we not?'
    This time she did not merely answer me with silence: I was suddenly aware of her foot seeking mine under the table and then pressing it strongly. Then she said to Rita: 'Serve Signor Dino, I don't want any meat.'
    The feeling of my mother's foot on mine filled me positively with despair. She was pressing my foot under the table in the way that lovers do; except that we were mother and son and the bond that united us was not love but money. Moreover I could not repudiate this bond, because to repudiate it would mean also repudiating the bond of blood which was implicit in it. So there was nothing to be done: willy-nilly, I was rich; to refuse to be rich was equivalent to accepting the fact of it.
    My despair, however, took an unexpected direction. Rita was handing me the oval dish of veal, bending towards me her well-formed bosom and her sly, freckled face with its pretty mouth the colour of a pale geranium: under cover of the dish, I turned back my hand as it lay on the edge of the table and took hold of her wrist, then ran my fingers up to her forearm. I finished helping myself with the other hand and, putting the fork back on the dish, once more persisted in asking my mother, coldly: 'Well then, are we rich or are we not?' For the second time I felt my mother's foot trampling upon mine. Then I said: 'One moment, Rita.'
    Rita obediently turned back and held out the dish to me once again. Again I used one hand, taking the fork to go round the dish picking up some meat and vegetables. Meanwhile I ran my other hand, which I had left dangling beside my chair, up Rita's leg, right up to her thigh. Through her ample dress I could feel the muscles of her leg quiver beneath my hand, like those of a horse when its master strokes it. Nothing, however, was visible in the expression of her face, which now not merely looked, but certainly was, hypocritical. Finally she went away; and I, catching—or anyhow so I thought—a fugitive glance of understanding behind her glasses, could not help reflecting that now already, even before coming back to live in my mother's house, I found myself in a situation worse than that of ten years before: then, whatever might have been my reason for