"Clip" from Moravia's "The Conformist"



It was an indifference that denoted not only familiarity, but careless familiarity. In truth she had no name for normality, since she was in it up to her eyes, the way we believe that animals, if they talked, would give no name to nature, being an integral and undivided part of it. But he remained outside, and for him normality was called normality precisely because he was excluded from it and because he felt it to be in such contrast to his own abnormality. To be like Giulia, you had to be born that way, or.…

The door behind him opened and he turned around. Giulia stood before him in a wedding dress of white silk, holding the full veil falling from her head in both hands so that he could admire it.

She said exultantly, “Isn’t it beautiful? Look!”

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