The Empty Canvas Read Free Page A

only subject he had seriously studied at school. As far as I could understand, my mother looked upon my father's 'dromomania' as a purely individual and therefore fundamentally insignificant characteristic; I, on the contrary, could not help feeling a kind of fraternal pity for that pathetic, faded figure, more and more faded as time went on, in whom I seemed to recognize—anyhow in respect of his relationship with my mother—certain features in common with myself. But these were external features, as I realized afterwards, on thinking the matter over: my father, it was true, had also suffered from boredom; but in him this suffering had been dissipated by happy wanderings in one country after another; his boredom, in other words, was the ordinary kind of boredom, in the sense in which the word is normally used, the boredom that asks no more than to be relieved by new and unusual sensations. My father, in fact, had believed in the reality of the world—in the world of geography, at any rate; whereas I could not manage to believe in the reality even of a tumbler.
    Anyhow, my mother did not indulge in any great subtleties; she believed she could recognize without any possible doubt, in my boredom, the superficial tedium which had previously made her relations with her husband difficult. 'Unfortunately you take after your father more than after me,' she finally said to me one day, in a brisk manner. 'I know that when this thing attacks you the only remedy is to send you away. So go away, go wherever you like, and when you've got over it you can come back.'
    I answered at once, with relief, that I had no intention of going away: travelling did not interest me in the least. I merely wanted to leave the house and set up on my own. My mother objected that it was absurd for me to go off and live on my own when I had the full use of a big villa like the one we lived in, where, into the bargain, I could do just as I pleased. But, having by this time determined to take advantage of the opportunity, I answered with some violence that I would leave next day, not a moment later. My mother then understood that I was serious. All she did was to repeat, with carefully studied bitterness, that my reply reminded her of my father, even to the tone of voice: I must therefore do whatever pleased me best, I must go and live wherever I liked.
    There remained the question of money. We were rich, as I have already said, and hitherto I had enjoyed a more or less unlimited credit: I drew upon my mother's bank account whenever I needed it. But now my mother, foreseeing that there would be a repetition, with me, of the experience she had already had with her husband, to whom she had always given enough money for him to run away but never enough to stay permanently away from her, informed me drily that from now on she would give me a monthly allowance. I replied that I asked nothing better; and when, with a kind of angry remorse, she announced the amount of the sum she intended to allow me, I told her at once that I would be satisfied with the half of it. My mother, who had been expecting an argument of the sort that she had formerly carried on with my father, to whom the money she offered had never been enough, was very much surprised at this unforeseen disinterestedness on my part. 'But you can't live on as little as that, Dino,' she exclaimed almost involuntarily. I replied that it was my affair; and in order to avoid giving myself the airs of an ascetic, I added that in any case I hoped soon to succeed in earning a living by my painting. My mother looked at me, I thought, with incredulity; as I knew, she did not believe in my artistic abilities. A few days later I found a studio in Via Margutta and moved there with my belongings.
    My change of dwelling, of course, caused no alteration in my state of mind. What I mean is that, once the initial relief due to any sort of change had worn off, I started to be bored again at intervals as in the past. I say,