Assignments

1.Find statements in the text you possibly agree or disagree with and give your reasons.

2.Write a summary of the text.

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Text 3

Poor Fish

By Alberto Moravia¹

People never know very much about who they are, nor about who is inferior to them and who superior. As for me, I went too far in the direction of thinking myself inferior to everybody. I used often to say to myself: now let’s run over our own qualities. Physical strength, then – nil: I am small, crooked, rickety, my arms and legs are like sticks, I’m like a spider. Intelligence - very little above nil, considering that I’ve never managed, out of all the jobs there are, to rise above that of dish-washer in a hotel. Looks – less than nil: I have a narrow, yellow face, eyes of an indefinite, dirty colour, and a nose that seems to have been made for a face twice as broad as mine; it is big and long, and looks as if it was going straight down, and then, at the tip, it turns up like a lizard raising its snout. Other qualities, such as courage, quickness, personal charm, likeableness – the less said about them the better.

Quite naturally, then, after coming to such conclusions, I was careful not to make advances to women. The only one I ever attempted to approach – a housemiad in the hotel – put me in my place with a very suitable word –“you poor fish,” she said. And so I became gradually convinced that I was worth nothing at all and that the best thing for me to do was to keep quiet, in a corner, so as not to get in anybody’s way.

But what a queer thing fate is: the last thing I should have expected was that, in that very hotel kitchen, I met Ida, the new scullery-maid. Ida, among women, was just what I was among men: a poor fish. Like me, she was small and twisted, scraggy, insignificant. But she was passionate, restless, gay, a devil. We quickly became friends, owing to the fact that we stood in front of the same dishes and the same greasy water; and then one thing leading to another, she prevailed upon me to invite her one Sunday to go to the cinema. I invited her out of politeness. When she came out, she explained to me that she had been noticing me for some time, from the very day that she had been taken on at the hotel. That, ever since then, she had done nothing but think about me.

It was the first time that a woman, even a woman like Ida, had said things like this to me, and I lost my head.

But I still felt profoundly astonished, and although she went on repeating that she was mad about me, I failed to be convinced. “Now do tell me, I should like to know what it is you see in me?” I asked her. “How do you manage to love me?” And would you believe it? Ida used to cling on to my arm with both hands, raise an adoring face towards me, and answer: “I love you because you have all the good qualities… for me you’re just living perfection.” And I would repeat: “All the good qualities? Well I never knew that before.” She said: “Yes, all… To begin with, you’re so good-looking.” I couldn’t lelp laughing. “Me good-looking?” She said: “Yes, good-looking, besides, you’re so intelligent.” I asked: “Me intelligent? Why, everybody says I’m an idiot.” She replied, “they say it out of envy, but you are intelligent, extremely intelligent… When you talk, I listen to you open-mouthed… You’re the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. And then you are strong… very, very strong. Besides, if you really want to know, you’ve got something about you that I just love.” So I asked her: “What is this ‘something’, I should like to know?” “I don’t quite know how to explain,” she replied, “it’s your voice, your expression, the way you move… Certainly nobody else has got what you have.”

Naturally, for some time I did not believe her; and I used to make her repeat these speeches to me. But, as the days went by, I began, I must admit, to get ideas into my mind. “Suppose it was really true?” I sometimes said to myself. Why shouldn’t somebody like me? I was neither a hunchback, a dwarf, an old man or a monster.

About this time Ida and I decided to go and see a circus. We were both of us feeling very cheerful; and, once inside the big tent, we took our places in the cheap seats, very close together, arm in arm. Beside me was a tall, fair woman, young and handsome, and with her, one seat farther on, a dark young man, big and strong too, a tough, athletic-looking type. I thought about them ‘a handsome pair’. And then I gave all my attention to the circus.

Four clowns came in, they cut capers and made jokes, slapping and kicking each other, and Ida laughed. And then came a family of trapezists, they clapped their hands and then, up a knotted rope they climbed, up and up, right to the roof of the tent. There they began to send the trapezes flying backwards and forwards, hanging on now with their hands and now with their feet. FIlled with admiration, I said to Ida: “How I should like to be a trapezist!”

Ida, in her usual way, answered in a tone of adoration: “It’s all a matter of practice… If you practised, you could do it too.”

The fair woman looked at us and whispered something to her companion, and they both started laughing.

After the trapezists came the lions. They entered a big nickelled cage in the middle of the arena, five of them, as well as the lioness who at once began to roar. Last of all came the lion-tamer, a ceremonious little man in a green coat, who at once started bowing to the public. Then he turned towards the lions and by poking them in the backside with the hook, forced them to climb up on to some little stools; two or three of them put out a paw in his direction, which he avoided with a pirouette. Then the trainer went up to one of the lions which was older than the rest and which looked three-quarter asleep and was not roaring, opened its mouth and put his head inside.

I said to Ida: “You won’t believe me… but I should just love to go into that cage and put my head in the lion’s mouth too.” Filled with admiration, she replied: “I know you’d be quite capable of it.” At these words, the fair young woman and the athletic young man burst out laughing, looking at us. Ida grew angry and muttered to me: “They are laughing at us… Why don’t you tell them how rude they are?” But at that moment a bell rang and everyone got up. The first part of the show was over.

Outside the big tent we could see the other two standing in front of the bear’s cage. I went straight up to the man and said in a firm voice: “Tell me… were you laughing at us?”

He turned slightly and answered without hesitation: “No, we were laughing at a frog pretending to be an ox.”

“The frog, I suppose, being me?”

“If the cap fits, wear it.”

The woman started to laugh, and Ida, hissing like a viper, broke in: “There is nothing to laugh at… instead of laughing, you’d better stop rubbing yourself up against my husband… I suppose you think I didn’t see you…”

I was astonished, because I hadn’t noticed it. The fair woman answered indignantly: “My dear girl, you are crazy, why do you think I should worry about a poor fish like your husband?”

And now, in turn, the man came up to me and said threateningly: “That’s enough… get along with you… better for you if you do.”

“Who says so?” I cried in exasperation, raising myself on tiptoe to be on a level with him.

The scene that followed I shall remember as long as I live. He made no reply to my remark, but, all of a sudden, took me under the arms and lifted me up in the air like a feather and suddenly dumped me down on the back of the elephant which was standing just behind us in a straw-covered space. What happened then, I don’t know, because I fainted, and when I came round I found myself at the First Aid post, with Ida sitting beside me holding my hand. Later we went home without seeing the second part of the show.

Next day I said to Ida: “That woman was perfectly right: I’m just a poor fish and nothing more.”

But Ida, taking me by the arm and gazing at me, said: “You were magnificent! He was frightened, and that was why he put you on to the elephant… And then, riding along on the elephant, you looked really splendid… It was a pity you fell off.”

So there was nothing to be done. For her I was one thing, for other people, another. But can you ever tell what women see, when they’re in love?