...of eluding questions

I should have liked her to ask: "What was I, and what am I now?" And then I should have answered: "You were an honest girl and now you're a whore." At the same time her question would have indicated a need on her part to be well-considered, esteemed, appreciated by me. But I was disappointed in my hope: Cecilia did not open her mouth, and I saw that silence was the only answer I could expect from her. This silence meant that lying and unfaithfulness were, for her, words devoid of significance, not so much because she did not understand them as because they did not denote anything particular in her life. I felt she was eluding me again, and I seized her by her arms and shook her, crying out in a rage: " Why don't you speak, say something, why don't you answer?"

She announced, quite sincerely: "I have nothing to say."

[Boredom, Moravia, A.]

...of throat cancer

Cecelia's father rose with an effort from the armchair in which he was sitting listening to the radio and held out his hand to me without speaking, at the same time pointing to his throat as if to warn me that, owing to the disease, he was unable to talk. I recalled the strange whispering, breathing sound that I had heard on the telephone some days before and realised that it had been he who had answered me. I looked at him as he fell back into his old leather armchair that was all blackened and worn, and then as he bent forward and turned down the volume of the radio. He must have been what is generally called a handsome man, with that slightly vulgar kind of handsomeness that is to be found in some over-symmetrical faces. Of that handsomeness there was now nothing left. Disease had ravaged his face, causing it to swell in some places and contract in others, reddening it here and whitening it there. And there was death already, it seemed to me, in his black hair, which lay flat and lifeless and glued down by an unhealthy sweat upon his brow and temples; in the purplish colour of his lips; and above all, in his round eyes, with their expression of intense dismay. These eyes seemed to say things which his mouth, even if it had not been speechless, would have passed over in silence; and they brought to mind, not merely by the dumbness produced by his disease, but, even more, the kind of forced helplessness of one who has been bound and gagged and left, alone and defenceless, to face a deadly peril.

[Boredom, Moravia, A.]

...of a tight-lipped nature

Cecelia, as I think I have made clear, was not talkative, in fact her natural inclination was to keep silence; but even when she spoke she managed to be silent at the same time, thanks to the disconcertingly brief, impersonal quality of her manner. Words, in her mouth, seemed to lose all real significance, and were reduced to abstract sounds as though they were words in a foreign language that I did not know. The lack of any kind of accent or dialect and of any inflection of social class, the complete absence of revealing commonplaces, the reduction of conversation to pure and simple declarations of incontrovertible facts such as "It's hot today" - all these confirmed the impression of abstractness. I would ask her, for example, what she had done on the evening of the day before; and she would answer: "I had dinner at home and then went out with Mother and we went to the pictures together." Now these words, as I immediately noticed - "home," "dinner," "mother," "pictures" - which in another mouth would have meant what they usually mean, and consequently, according to how they were uttered, would have made me see whether she was lying or telling the truth - these same words, in Cecelia's mouth, seemed to be nothing more than abstract sounds, behind which it was impossible to imagine the reality either of truth or of falsehood. I have often wondered how it was that Cecelia contrived to speak and at the same time give the impression of being silent. And I came to the conclusion that she had only one means of expression, the sexual one, which however was obviously impossible to interpret even though original and powerful; and that with her mouth she said nothing, not even things concerned with sex, because her mouth was so to speak, a false orifice, without depth or resonance, that did not communicate with anything inside her. So much so that often, looking at her as she lay beside me on the divan after our intercourse, flat on her back with her legs open, I could not help comparing the horizontal cleft of her mouth with the vertical cleft of her sex and remarking, with surprise, how much more expressive the latter was than the former - and with the same purely psychological quality as those features of the face by which a person's nature is revealed.

[Boredom, Moravia, A.]

...of a mysterious telephone call

After I had dialled the number Cecelia's telephone went on ringing for a long time in a mysterious silence. To be more precise, I felt the silence was mysterious inasmuch as Cecelia who was in the background of this silence, had from the moment when she failed to arrive become mysterious to me, like an animal which had taken refuge in the depths of its lair. However, although it was mysterious, this silence was not entirely negative. In an insecure sort of way, like a gambler who after many losses still deceives himself into thinking he is going to win, I hoped that Cecelia's voice would become audible. Instead of that a strange thing happened: the ringing stopped, someone took off the receiver but no one spoke; or rather I seemed to hear heavy breathing, or a kind of whispering, at the other end of the line. I called out: "Hello, hello," and several times I asked: "Who is speaking?" Finally I realised that the receiver at the other end had been replaced. In a rage I dialled the number again, was again answered with the same silence and with that mysterious sound of breathing, and again, finally, the receiver was replaced. The third time, the telephone rang for a long time but nobody replied.

[Boredom, Moravia, A.]

...of humility

This time she did the exact contrary of what the cat had done, in those far-off days of my childhood. The cat had spoken, in a human, reasonable, and I might almost say Christian, way; the pain I had inflicted upon it had raised it to human status. Cecilia, faced with the same cruelty, made a gesture of animal-like humility, at the same time both mute and touching. Instead of getting up as I had commanded, she nestled still more closely against me, hiding her face between my shoulder and ear, entwining her arms and legs about me and as it were imploring me, in silence, like an animal that cannot speak, not to go on tormenting her, whatever the reason for it might be or the satisfaction I might derive from it. This sad, humiliated, suppliant embrace, just as instinctively animal-like as the cat's mewing had been human and reasonable, produced the same effect. Suddenly I was ashamed of my cruelty, which was seeking an evidence of reality in the suffering of another person, and without persisting any longer in in my ridiculous requests I returned her embrace. Immediately I felt her body, which seemed to have been waiting only for this signal, clasp itself to mine in a different manner, no longer imploring now, but eager; and she dealt me the usual strong, impatient push with her groin, as if to notify me that she was ready. And thus, I thought to myself with more amusement than boredom, her meal was beginning.

[Boredom, Moravia, A.]

...of a black room

He was now feeling completely wide awake, and for a moment was afraid that hours of sleeplessness lay ahead of him. Then the silence began to act as a drug, soaking into his nerves, and he lost consciousness. When he woke up, his throat was dry. He went to the refrigerator and found a carafe of pineapple juice. He drank direct from the container, delighted by its coldness and astringency. The watch showed three fifteen. He went back to bed trying to remember a dream about a waterfall made of pink water. His head felt heavy and confused, his thoughts running on with a life of their own, like a radio set picking up several stations at once. But he slept as soon as he lay down. When he woke, he knew had had been asleep for a long time; he felt the heaviness and dullness that comes after too much sleep. His mouth was dry again. The silence and the darkness brought on a sense of timelessness and unreality. The natural tendency on awaking is to look at the time, at the weather, to think ahead to what has to be done. This timeless silence frustrated the sense of expectation.

[The Black Room, Wilson, C.]

- submitted by Pearce, M. A.

...of post-natal

The small square room was white, impersonal, undecorated, a cell, a little sterile box with a wide door on one side. And in its centre stood a high hospital bed and bedside table with a glass of water and a glass straw. And the room was muffled and silent, secret and cut off from every world.

Mordeen lay in the bed, her hair spread over the pillow, and a bundle, silent and covered, was beside her. Her face was masked with gauze and she lay very still, but her breathing was hoarse and her chest rose fiercely, struggling to bring a rush of pure air to her lungs. Then slowly her head turned from side to side and she muttered and moaned, fighting her way up from drugged unconsciousness.

[Burning Bright, Steinbeck, J.]