The Empty Canvas Read Online Free PDF

thing in my mother's otherwise completely prosaic life. It is true that, in her way, she loved me; and that she introduced an unbelievable passion into the management and the enlargement of our property. But, both in business matters and with me, the predominant influence was her own character, authoritative, unscrupulous, self-interested, mistrustful. Flowers and plants, on the other hand, she loved in an entirely disinterested way, with unrestrained enthusiasm and no ulterior motives. And my father, how had she loved him? As usual, the idea came back into my mind that my father and I resembled one another at least in this point: that we did not want to live with my mother. I asked her abruptly:
    'By the way, I should very much like to know why my father was always running away from you?'
    I saw her wrinkle up her nose, as she always did when I spoke to her about my father. 'Why by the way?' she said.
    'Never mind, answer my question.'
    'Your father wasn't running away from me,' she answered after a moment, with icy dignity; 'he liked travelling, that's all. But now, look at these roses, aren't they lovely?'
    I said peremptorily: 'I want you to tell me about my father. Why then, if it's true that he wasn't running 'away from you, didn't you go travelling with him?'
    'First and foremost, because somebody had to stay here in Rome to look after our interests.'
    'You mean your interests.'
    'The family interests. And then, I didn't like his way of travelling. I like to travel with every sort of convenience. To go to places where there are good hotels, and people that I know. For instance to Paris, London, Vienna. But he would have dragged me off to goodness knows where, Afghanistan or Bolivia. I can't bear discomfort and I can't bear out-of-the-way countries.'
    'But tell me,' I persisted, 'why did he run away from home, or why, as you say, did he travel? Why didn't he stay with you?'
    'Because he didn't like staying at home.'
    'And why didn't he like staying at home? Was he bored?'
    'I never took the trouble to find out. I only know that he used to become gloomy, and never say anything, and never go out. In the end it was I who gave him the money and said to him: Here you are, go away, it's better for you to go.'
    'Don't you think that, if he loved you, he would have stayed?'
    'Yes, exactly,' she answered, in a disagreeable voice that seemed to take pleasure in telling the truth, 'but he didn't love me.'
    'Then why did he marry you?'
    'It was I who wanted to marry him. He, perhaps, wouldn't have done it.'
    'He was poor, wasn't he? And you are rich?'
    'Yes, he had nothing at all. He came of a good family. But that was all.'
    'Don't you think he might have wanted to marry for money?'
    'Oh no. Your father wasn't mercenary. In that respect he was like you. It's true that he was always in need of money, but he didn't attach any importance to money.'
    'D'you know why I'm asking you all these questions about my father?'
    'No, indeed I don't.'
    'It's because it occurred to me that, in one respect anyhow, I'm like him. I'm always running away from you.'
    She stooped down and, with a little pair of scissors that I hadn't noticed before, neatly cut off a red flower. Then she straightened up again and asked: 'How is your work going?'
    At this question I was suddenly conscious of a tightening of the throat and of a feeling of grey, icy desolation spreading all round me, issuing from me in steadily widening waves, as happens in nature when a cloud comes between the sun and the earth. In a voice which, in spite of myself, sounded strangled, I replied: 'I'm not painting any more.'
    'What d'you mean, you're not painting any more?'
    'I've decided to give up painting.'
    My mother had never been in sympathy with my painting, in the first place because she understood nothing about it but disliked admitting this or hearing it said to her; but also because, not unjustly, she thought it had been my painting which had taken me away from her. But once