The Bishop's Bedroom

by Chiara, Piero; Foulston, Jill;

  These were a boy’s fantasies, and they always came to me under some pretext in the hours before dawn. But the sun would flush them out and scatter them, since a breast is a breast—a bit of flesh and skin. Just like a foot is a foot, and nothing more.

  I was sitting on the bishop’s bed with the electric light on, not sure if I should lie down again, and looking around for something to read so I wouldn’t slip back into the excitement of those fantasies, when I heard a faint noise—a mouse gnawing at the corner of the door? I looked over and saw the knob turning silently, as if someone were trying it from outside.

  It’s her, I said to myself. And all at once I understood Matilde’s passion for the sailboat. Her protracted isolation had taken its toll: at the first appearance of a man, she’d lost all reserve, and after a dead calm of ten years her blood was roiling like a lake during a storm.

  I looked around. I always slept without pajamas, in a vest that stopped at my navel. I grabbed my trousers, stepped into them and went to the door. Someone had started up again, scratching the wood next to the lock.

  I’d got into the habit of locking the door when I went to bed. Cursing this useless precaution, I began turning the key slowly so as not to make any noise. Slowly, slowly I opened the door and waited. First a slipper came forward, then a leg.

  Alas! It was Orimbelli. I looked him in the face as he glided into the room, suddenly realizing that I didn’t know him at all. I wondered what thoughts and plans were hidden behind his high, Mongolian cheekbones, his deeply furrowed forehead.

  “Excuse me,” he whispered, “but I haven’t slept all night. From upstairs I heard you open up the balcony, so I came down to talk to you. It’s about something urgent and extremely important. I’ve been anxious since yesterday. I would have come just after midnight, but I thought the women might hear me. Right now they’re sound asleep and we have time for at least a couple of hours’ talk before we set out on our journey.”

  Curious to hear what he was about to tell me, I had him sit in the armchair next to the bed where I was lying down.

  He rested an arm on the bed and began. “When I came back here from Naples, I hardly remembered that my wife had Matilde in the house. I met her in thirty-three, when she was scarcely more than a teenager, at the time she got engaged to my brother-in-law. She was a skinny thing, and plain, but rich, an orphan from a very well-off family: the Scrosati. That was why my brother-in-law wanted to marry her. In thirty-six, I went to Africa voluntarily, but my brother-in-law, an engineer, was sent there against his will and put to work in the Genio regiment making roads and bridges for the war. He left here without having had time to post the banns, and he counted on coming back soon. Instead … may I count on your discretion as a man of honor? On your silence regarding what I’m about to say? You see, it’s a serious matter. Delicate.”

  “Of course you can!”

  “Good.” He continued. “It’s not true that my brotherin-law fell in a counterattack during the Battle of Ascianghi Lake. He was captured by an Ethiopian unit formed by the natives of Hollegga while he was finishing a road for armored cars with his colleagues. They were all killed apart from him, and he was taken away with them. Unfortunately, they cut off his … you understand. Which means, he’s no longer a man. And yet his life was saved.”

  “So then—he’s alive! And he might come back one day or another,” I said.

  “No, he’s not coming back. Apart from anything else, he doesn’t have the courage to turn up in front of Matilde or any other woman without his thingies. And besides, he’s also become Ras Naghèta’s right-hand man. He’s doing well and has stacks of money. He even managed to escape from prison in India during this war. Now he’s an Ethiopian citizen—with a passport, no less. I found out last year from an Abyssinian diplomat in Rome.”

  “But why haven’t you said as much to Matilde?”

  “I talked to him in forty-one, before I left Ethiopia for Naples. He told me everything and said that since he was a spadone, he wanted to stay in Africa for the rest of his life.”

  “What’s a spadone?”

  “Someone without thingamies, but not without … you know. So although he’s not able to have kids, he can probably still have women. Some castrati have this facility, but most of them are out of the game. Anyway, he decided to disappear from his pre-Africa world. If he’s a spadone of those who … all the better for him: he won’t hurt for ‘madams’—that’s what they call women of color down there who get together with whites. Before he left, he made me swear not to tell anyone what had happened to him. ‘Lost’ or ‘dead’ was fine, he said, didn’t matter. ‘As long as they think I am no more.’”

  “But when you found out, couldn’t you have spoken to your sister-in-law when you came back home last year? She was still waiting for him.”

  “I swore. And besides, what would the point have been? The ten years have already passed, the marriage was invalid, and my wife was already talking about declaring her brother ‘presumed dead.’ Anyway, Matilde never loved him. The family wanted the wedding in order to marry off an orphan and also to join two considerable estates. Love never came into it. Love came afterward, for her and for me. Yes, my friend, that’s what I came to tell you. I love Matilde and I’m loved by her in return. It’s a tragedy, believe me, a real misfortune!”

  He bowed his head over the bed, almost at my feet, as if he wanted to cry.

  “It’s both my tragedy and my good luck,” he began again, raising his head. “My despair and my hope. Because at this point I’m living only for that woman. I’m crazy about her. Yesterday evening I had the impression that you were looking at her in a certain way … Maybe you were thinking that by recruiting her as your crew and taking her around, something would end up happening … and as far as women go, you’ve got credit with me. I can’t blame you if that’s what you were thinking; you couldn’t have imagined the truth. But Matilde is just waiting for a chance to be alone with me—like a prisoner awaits liberation. Because she loves me, and because it’s the first time in her life. That’s why she pretended to be into sailing. Yesterday in the boat, she was trembling with fear, and she said she’d never enjoyed herself so much. She finally saw some light, some happiness! For a year, we’ve only been able to speak to each other two or three times. We touch each other’s feet under the table, our arms brush against each other, and once we even managed a kiss on the stairs. But my wife never lets us out of her sight for a moment. She doesn’t trust us; she’s suspicious!”

  I was nonplussed, and had to acknowledge that if this was how it was, the two of them were perfect dissemblers. I was also a little disappointed, because it would have been worth a whole season of silly young things to be able to snare Matilde. What a devil! I should have expected a trick like this from Orimbelli.

  “I’m confiding in you as I would in a brother, or a friend,” he began again, “and because it’s better to say certain things at the outset, before there can be misunderstandings. I realize that everyone has the right to seduce a woman. Women belong to everyone. But I wanted to tell you that we have feelings for each other. It’s an overwhelming passion, and I don’t mind telling you I’d risk my life for it.”

  “You’ve done the right thing to talk about it,” I told him, “and not to mince words. I’ll be sure to respect your feelings.”

  He rose. “I didn’t doubt it. You’re a fine gentleman! A true friend!” He shook my hand warmly and tiptoed out, closing the door gently behind him.

  Daylight began creeping through the brocade drapery at the window. Soon the sun would flood the bishop’s bedroom, rendering it violet rather than red in the first light, and transforming it into a first-class mortuary with its canopy, the altar-like chest of drawers, the walnut wardrobe with large panels, the prayer stool and crucifix between two purple festoons.

  I stretched out on the bed, staring ahead to the wall where the door had opened and Orimbelli had gone out of the room. Reflections rose up from the lake, just
lit by the sun, in the form of luminous circles, moving up the wall to the ceiling, dissolving and changing shape like jellyfish. I traced those fleeting forms, so like the words Orimbelli had just uttered. A game of light: elusive, vague and improbable, yet nevertheless present, and perhaps a sign of other circles that would form and dissipate during the remainder of the summer.

  IX

  THE TINCA DEPARTED QUIETLY with its new cargo, but without an appearance from Signora Cleofe, even though it was already ten o’clock. Matilde had a genuine sailor’s bag and a big suitcase, as if she were going away from home for two weeks.

  As soon as we left the dock, I thought we’d head toward Cannero. I wanted to hurry away from the area around the villa and the gaze of its padrona, who was surely watching us from behind the shutters at one of the windows.

  Heading north, I found myself in front of the villa of Pasha Emanuele Zervudaki, a mysterious character who’d come to the lake from Turkey about twenty years before. Some said he was the son of a cook from Cannobio who’d gone into the Sultan’s service, while others took him for a real pasha with a harem. Still others thought he was a Greek from Salonica who’d made his fortune in the Balkan wars.

  Zervudaki was a tiny man somewhat resembling his contemporary, Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia, who shared one of his names. He was permanently irritated, as short people always are. I wished he’d show up on the balcony or in the garden as he had before, so I could insult him in return for his once having told me off for mooring at one of his buoys.

  I looked at the tall palazzo overlooking the lake and thought of the Sublime Porte, the seraglio, the eunuchs and, by association, the engineer Berlusconi. As I understood it, he lived in a small Abyssinian court at Lechemti, served and revered, but castrated —while his wife was starting to claim the natural rights denied her for so many years by the law and social mores.

  I found the wind too strong, so I turned into it, and in less than an hour we could see the gulf of Intra. But the strong tramontana was waiting for me in the central basin, having circled the Zeda mountains. I decided to turn my back on the islands; treacherous gusts would surely be swirling around them. Cutting across the lake at its widest point, I went to shelter in the small, sandy bay of Polidora behind Cerro point, a place to escape the storms at the center of the lake. I’d been shown it ten years before by Togn Fisinessi di Cerro, a great shipbuilder. His father, also a shipbuilder, had made the Cozia in 1890, and Prince Troubetskoy was still sailing it in ’35.

  At Polidora, I left the two of them in the boat as agreed with Orimbelli. I said I had to see to a business matter in Laveno, but would return before evening. Instead, however, after walking to Laveno, I took the train inland and traveled around for a couple of days. I spent one day at home and then I went to pick up Jolanda, called Landina, a young woman I’d met on my return from Switzerland. I harbored some feelings for her, but I’d left her in her village so I could play the field during the summer—one of the last, I thought, before I’d have to turn over a new leaf.

  I didn’t feel like being the third wheel with Orimbelli, or standing in for the emasculated Berlusconi, who lived in Ras Naghèta’s palaces and huts, lost to the world. Besides, I’d promised Landina the month of September, the best one for sailing, and we were now at the end of August.

  I returned to Polidora with Landina when Orimbelli and Matilde had already spent two nights there. It was afternoon, and the Tinca looked abandoned. It was floating at anchor and roped to a plant as I’d left it, but with no sign of life on board. I called out. No response. There was nothing for me to do but strip down and enter the water in order to get to the boat and climb aboard. But while I was taking off my shoes, Orimbelli emerged from the hatch on the prow.

  “We were sleeping,” he said. And he scowled at Landina.

  Once introductions were made, Matilde immediately attached herself to my friend. I’d told Landina the story of my boating companions during our train journey.

  When I was finally able to look comfortably at Matilde, I didn’t see the least sign of satisfaction or disappointment on her face. She seemed like any wife the day after the wedding: composed after an exhausting night, and wearing the mystery of encounters or clashes no one, apart from the protagonists, ever knows the truth about. I wished I could understand how things had gone, what kind of blaze there’d been after such a long wait—or if there wasn’t one, as can happen, what a bitter disillusionment it had been instead.

  But her face remained impassive, perhaps even studiedly so in order to show her indifference, her coolness. Orimbelli, on the other hand, seemed like a nesting blackbird. He was fully attentive to Matilde and treated her like an invalid—or someone he’d offended and from whom he now sought pardon for an abuse of power. It was his way of flaunting his achievement; things had surely gone well. But Matilde was trying to play it all down. She was irritated by her brother-inlaw’s attentions, spurning them when he overdid it, as if to demonstrate that they didn’t amount to anything memorable or out of the ordinary.

  Polidora is close to Ceresolo, a hamlet abandoned last century after a plague and now inhabited only along the road that cuts across the end of the promontory. The church, blocked up since the plague, was perhaps full of skeletons. It faced the lake and the small grassy square in front of it; the only shadow cast across it is that of the campanile, now silent. The houses near the church, long since abandoned, are empty, their plaster crumbling. A quiet spot, and for the next two days it became our parlor. We lay on the grass or sat like Turks, chatting and sipping cups of tea. For hours, I taught Orimbelli how to tie sailors’ knots with odds and ends of rope, while the two women exchanged confidences. At night, we slept in the boat, Matilde and Landina in the couchettes, us two on the bridge. We had to let the strong tramontana blow itself out, which usually takes three days.

  On the third day, when the winds resumed their normal patterns, we hoisted the sails to go toward the top of the lake.

  As soon as she began to feel hot, Landina went below deck and reappeared in a black two-piece swimsuit. She was thin but nicely shaped. Orimbelli didn’t fail to give her the onceover, but he suddenly panicked when he saw Matilde sitting on the bench completely clothed, with only her forearms bare.

  “Why don’t you put on your swimsuit, too?” Landina asked her.

  Matilde blushed but didn’t move.

  Orimbelli, at the helm, was terribly embarrassed. He wanted to show off the riches in his possession, especially to me, but all the same, it irritated him to allow me even a glance.

  “She doesn’t have one with her,” he said.

  “No, no!” Matilde retorted. “I brought two with me.”

  Orimbelli exploded. “Then get undressed and enjoy the sun!”

  Matilde went below deck and a short time later reappeared in a slightly outdated yellow swimsuit. It covered her up almost completely, leaving only her legs and arms exposed, but revealing the beauty of her body, which was of a milky whiteness, firm and round as an egg. When I saw her from behind, bending over to pick something up, I understood what in a woman is called “the power of the hips.” In that area of her back which narrowed like the middle of a cello, I detected the strength of a whale’s tail. She had little room for maneuver, but in that small space she could have wiped out Orimbelli and the entire Somalian troop of Aimone Cat to which he’d belonged.

  That afternoon, while we docked at the abandoned jetty in Maccagno, it was time for everyone to go swimming. Matilde swam slowly, gliding through the water without making a splash. When she returned to the boat and stretched out on deck beside me to dry off, Landina and Orimbelli were still out in the lake, busy swimming a large expanse of water. Matilde’s thin jersey suit stuck to her wet body like a second skin. Now transparent, it revealed a dark triangle as wide as a hand and two chocolate-colored aureolas surrounding her nipples, whose points had turned as rigid as the tip of an umbrella in the cold water.

  I tried not to look at her, or at leas
t not to show myself too curious, so as not to embarrass her. But I couldn’t take my eyes off her body, which seemed to have have me locked in a fight to the death.

  When Orimbelli climbed back into the boat and saw the effect of the wet swimsuit on his sister-in-law, he couldn’t restrain himself. “If you have two suits, go and change! Don’t you see what you’re revealing?”

  Matilde looked at herself, then went into the cabin. She took two linen handkerchiefs and slipped them under the suit where her breasts were; the two points and the aureolas that had so alarmed Orimbelli disappeared. She returned to the deck and lay down in the sun.

  That evening while I was preparing the boat for the night in the nearby port, I found myself alone with her for an hour. Orimbelli had gone to the old Osteria della Gabella to order supper, and after he left, Landina decided to have her hair cut at one of the village salons.

  There was a long silence, during which each of us looked around for something to do. Matilde, with her back to me, was pretending to lace the cover to the mainsail. “I’d like to know what you think of me.”

  “I think you’re dangerous because you’re beautiful, but also because of your intelligence and your future.”

  “But what do you mean!” She was astounded. “You can see into my future?”