The Conformist by Alberto Moravia Page B

in some way, by this gesture, Lino wanted to show him that he had set aside his last scruples. Asif to confirm him in this fear, Lino opened the drawer of the bedside table and took out the much-desired pistol; and showing it to Marcello, he screamed: “See it? Well, you’ll never get it! You’ll have to do what I want you to do without presents, without pistols … for love or by force.”
    So it was true, thought Marcello, Lino wanted to cheat him, just as he had feared. He felt himself go white in the face from anger, and said, “Give me the gun or I’m going.”
    “Nothing, nothing … for love or by force!” Lino still brandished the pistol in one hand; with the other he grabbed Marcello by the arm and threw him onto the bed. Marcello fell to a sitting position so violently that he hit his head against the wall. Immediately Lino, passing suddenly from violence to sweetness and from command to supplication, fell to his knees before him. He circled the boy’s legs with one arm and placed his other hand, still gripping the pistol, on the cover of the bed. He moaned and invoked Marcello by name; then, still moaning, he embraced his knees with both arms. The pistol was abandoned on the bed now, black against the white coverlet. Marcello looked at Lino, down on his knees, who was alternately raising his pleading face to him, wet with tears and inflamed by desire, and lowering it to rub it against his legs the way certain devoted dogs do with their muzzles. He seized the pistol and, pushing himself up strongly, got to his feet. Immediately Lino, perhaps thinking he wished to return his embrace, opened his arms and let him go. Marcello stepped forward into the middle of the room and then turned.
    Later, thinking about what had happened, Marcello had to remember that just the contact of the cold butt of the gun had aroused in his soul a bloody and ruthless temptation; but in that moment all he was aware of was a sharp pain in his head where he had hit it against the wall and, at the same time, an irritation, an acute repugnance for Lino. The man had remained on his knees by the bed; but when he saw Marcello take a step backwards and point the pistol, he turned round completely without getting up and, throwing his arms wide in a theatrical gesture, cried out histrionically: “Shoot, Marcello … kill me … yes, kill me like a dog!”
    It seemed to Marcello that he had never hated him so much as at that moment, for his loathsome mixture of sensuality and austerity, repentance and lust; and, both terrified and self-aware, almost as if he must satisfy the man’s request, he pulled the trigger.
    The shot cracked out suddenly, echoing in the little room; and he saw Lino fall onto his side and then right himself, turning his back and clinging to the edge of the bed with both hands. Lino pulled himself up very slowly, fell onto his side on the bed, and remained motionless. Marcello approached him, placed the pistol on the bed, called out, “Lino,” in a low voice, and then, without waiting for an answer, went to the door. But it was locked and Lino, he recalled, had taken the key from the keyhole and put it into his pocket. He hesitated, revolted by the idea of rummaging through the dead man’s pockets; then his glance fell on the window and he remembered that he was on the ground floor. Climbing up onto the sill, he glanced around hurriedly, throwing a long, circumspect, fearful look at the clearing and the car sitting in front of the portico. He knew that if anyone came by at that moment, they would see him astride the windowsill; still, there was nothing else he could do. But no one was there and, beyond the sparse trees that surrounded the clearing, even the bare and hilly countryside appeared deserted as far as the eye could see. He clambered down from the sill, retrieved his bunch of books from the car seat, and began walking slowly toward the gate.
    And all the time, as he was walking, an image was reflected