by Sarah Dunant
He grinned. “Yeah. Hard to find, eh?”
The invitation to the joke lay between us like a damp firework. It wasn’t the morning for repartee.
“So, are you two going to move in together?”
He turned back to the toast. “We were.”
“ ‘Were’?”
His back gave an angry sigh. “Well, it depends on what happens here, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?” I finished my tea. “I don’t see how.”
“Oh, come on, Stella,” he said, turning to me more aggressively this time. “You must have thought about it.”
I took a breath. “No,” I lied, putting down the mug and staring into the bottom of it. In the olden days (so old I don’t remember them), women could study the leftover tea leaves to help them with the bits of life they didn’t understand. With the advent of the tea bag we have lost our ability to see into the future. Sad. “No, I haven’t.”
He frowned at me for a moment, then came over and sat down opposite, leaving the toast unbuttered, or unmargarined.
He shook his head. “Sorry.”
I gave him a “Hey, no need to apologize” gesture.
“I didn’t sleep that well either.”
“No.” We sat for a moment in silence. “You’re really good with her, Paul.”
He shrugged, but didn’t say anything.
“We’d cope,” I said at last. “Between us we’d cope. And she’d be okay. But we won’t have to, because it’s not going to come to that. I know it’s not.”
He glanced up at me and smiled. I smiled back.
“No. You’re right, it’s not.” He paused. “You can stay for a few days, right?”
“You know I can. I’ll stay for as long as it takes.”
He stopped. He was gearing up to something. You could feel it build. “I’m due to be in Scotland tomorrow for a meeting. First thing in the morning. It’s about a deal with a Scottish distributor. Quite important. I’ve tried to get hold of him to cancel, but I don’t have a home number.”
I nodded. “Well, of course you have to go.”
He still wasn’t looking at me. “I could take the first plane at six A.M. Or the sleeper—they’ve probably got some berths left.”
I paused. It was hard to know exactly what I was being told. “What were you planning to do—I mean, before this?”
He sighed. “I was going to go up this afternoon. Meet some colleagues this evening.”
I shrugged. “Then why don’t you do that?”
“What about you and Lily?”
What about me and Lily? What were we telling each other here? I realized I didn’t know. “We’ll be fine,” I said. “No problem.”
“You sure?” And this time he looked up at me, a man wanting to do the right thing, but needing a little space before he could work out exactly what that was. I, of all people, could hardly blame him for that.
I smiled. “Yes, I’m absolutely sure.”
He smiled back. “Thanks, Stella.”
Across the kitchen the bread popped out from the toaster. For a little while neither of us moved. Then I got up from the table.
“I’ll get the toast, then.”
Away—Sunday
NO SIGHT THIS time, only smells and sound. The chemicals were fresh now, sharp, pungent, acting like smelling salts kick-starting the brain back into consciousness. She could hear clattering, trays and bottles being moved around, water flowing, a tap like a fierce fountain hitting a metal sink underneath. The sound made her want to urinate. She remembered the time before when she had woken, desperate for the loo. How long had she been unconscious then? Seven, eight hours? Same drug, same sleep. Different kind of captivity. Her head was throbbing powerfully in time to her pulse now, no narcotic at work to soothe the ache. Nothing to smother the feelings. One thing was certain. She didn’t want to die anymore.
She opened her eyes to see how it would happen.
She was propped in an armchair, a blanket over her tucking her in, her head held upright by a set of pillows carefully placed. Apart from the throb she felt comfortable—cared for, almost. In front of her the cellar unfolded like a painting: Joseph Wright of Derby, a man who knew a few things about darkness and light. Along the far wall was the photographic stuff: a bank of washing and developing trays, a light box, and an enlarger slung from the ceiling. And above it all a clothesline strung with damp new prints, a woman’s body at the center of each, the borders glowing a mauvish white under the glare of the safe lamps. Outside of its reach the room was purple-black, alive with shadows and dark silhouettes. The only one moving was his.
He had his back to her, bent over the fixing tray, pulling a print to and fro between his fingers, lifting it out and holding it up to the light, then slipping it onto the line, droplets of chemical falling around him. She watched him carefully. There was something different to his movements, a certain grace and fluidity that she had never seen before, as if concentration had loosened up his joints, oiling away his tension and shyness. He was doing what he was good at. After all, everyone has a talent for something: his were photography and voyeurism. To which she could also add: violence and death.
She went back to the photos, bracing herself for more images of her own terror. Instead she got beauty: Paola in love with the camera if not the photographer, standing tall in a long white dress so sculpted onto her that it resembled snakeskin. The lighting played games with the glow of the material over her body, heavy breasts, the swell of her stomach against the silk, the outrageously rich curve of her ass. At a distance she was almost more landscape than body; erotic snow dunes, nature female down to the last wind-sculpted curve. On someone with less style the effect would be overblown. But this woman had the confidence to carry it off. She looked like the actress who played the actress in La Dolce Vita, a body ripe to the edge of rotting. Too much of a woman for any one man to hold. Especially this one.
She tried to swallow, but her throat felt coated with sand. She needed to drink. The cracks of her lips must have made a noise, because he had turned from the bench, hands cupped wet in the air, before she had time to close her eyes. She noticed an instant stiffness take hold of his limbs, a stand to attention almost, as if it was he who was scared of her. Ridiculous.
She glanced back at the woman. La Dolce Vita. Italian. A looser way with both the body and the tongue.
“Ciao, Andreas,” she said softly, then took her time while the thought connected to the lips. “Head” was what? And the word for “hurt”? She tried it softly. “My head hurts.”
He looked at her for a while, as if not sure what to do next. “What did you say?” And the language sounded better on him too, the words gentler, less manufactured.
This time it came out more clearly. “I said, my head hurts. I need some water.”
“There is water on the table. But you have to take it slowly. The drug will still be in your system.”
She reached over and took the glass, then sipped it slowly as he had instructed. It helped. It had been years since she had used her Italian for anything more than hotel bookings or chitchat on trains. But there had been one summer, when she was young and her fluency was still new and vibrant in her ear, when she had gorged on it, creating romance with a Tuscan boy she had thought she would love forever, but had in fact forgotten within a few years.
Coming back to Florence, she knew now, had been an attempt to rediscover that language in herself, to draw excitement from the present tense, to feel the pull of the future as well as the weight of the past. What a shame all it had led to was death.
“Who was she?” she said, gesturing to the woman on the clothesline.
He frowned. “I told you. She’s Paola. She’s my wife.”
Now, in his own language, there was no excuse for getting the tense wrong. She said nothing.
“You don’t believe me because you can’t imagine how she would want to marry someone like me. I know that. But you are wrong. She’s my wife.”
She took a
deep breath. “What about the others?”
“The others?”
“The others. Yes. Like me.”
He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “I see you don’t understand. There are no others. You are . . . you are . . .”
“The first?” she supplied softly, and because it couldn’t have been the word that caused him the trouble, she knew it had to be the feeling behind it.
“Yes.” And he said it so quietly that she almost didn’t hear it. “The first.”
“Oh. God.” The first. He probably didn’t even know what to do, how to do it. It would be messy and awful. “You’re right. I don’t understand. Why me? I don’t even look like her.”
“Not really, that’s true. But you sound like her.”
“Sound?”
“Your voice. I heard it that morning in the café on Via Guelfa. You were speaking in Italian to the waiter. ‘Can I have a glass of water and an espresso please.’ ” And this time he fashioned the Italian differently, her accent roughening it up at the edges. “So perfect. English and Italian together. If I closed my eyes you were her. You were Paola.”
Anna took another sip of the water. So he likes the sound of your voice in Italian. So keep on talking. “What happened between you?”
“You mean why did she marry me?”
Anna shrugged. “I didn’t—”
“No, you are right, of course. Why should she? She could have had many men. They were flies all over her. But I had something they didn’t have. I had money, you see. A lot of money. And I was very happy to give it to her. I didn’t care what she did with it. Only that she used it to make herself happy. She liked that. It was a good marriage. Better than many.”
“And the photos?”
“It was my hobby. She indulged me. It was not such a hardship for her.”
No, it didn’t look as if it had been. Even in the mirror photos there was no sense of doubt. People love each other for the strangest of reasons. Seven years ago she had been obsessed by a man simply because she couldn’t have him. There had almost been no cure for that one, either. She noticed he had moved, that he was leaning back against the workbench now, his arms crossed. If you didn’t know better you might say he was a man at ease with himself. The cleansing power of confession.
“But it didn’t last,” she said quietly, because of course how could it have?
He gave a little shrug. “Even money is boring when you have too much of it. I knew that long before she did.”
“She left you?”
His head moved down a little. It was possible to read the gesture as a nod.
“She left you and you followed her. Those were the pictures I saw in the living room, weren’t they? The ones with the other people cut out?”
“It was for her own good. With money and her looks. Men smell that kind of thing. She didn’t realize it. She didn’t know how strong the smell was. She thought they liked her. She couldn’t tell when they didn’t. She would have got hurt.”
“So you brought her home again.” She paused, thinking it through. “Like you brought me.”
He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. But he didn’t deny it, either.
“And then she . . . died.” Still he said nothing. It didn’t matter. They both knew it, anyway. It was why they were here in this basement, now, together. “Did you kill her, Andreas?”
“No.” And the word, the same in both languages, shot out in echo around the room. “No, I didn’t kill her. I would never kill her. She did it to herself. If she hadn’t gone so crazy in the car . . .”
She waited but no more words came. The car. “Was it the drug?” she said, remembering that moment in the night, the fear of flying and the terrible sense of falling. “The drug you gave her?”
He closed his eyes, hugging his arms tighter around his body, as if to give himself the comfort that no one else could. “I got the dose wrong. I gave her too little. She came awake in the car too soon. We were on the road to Casentino, up in the hills, drops everywhere. She went crazy. She would have crashed us both. So I gave her more—the whole syringe I had in the glove compartment. It was hard to judge because she was fighting me. . . .” He paused. “Then she stopped fighting and went to sleep. When we got back I carried her to the room. I sat with her every moment. But she didn’t wake up.”
God, how pleased he must have been to see me upright that next morning, she thought. “What does it do, this drug?” she said quietly.
He sighed. “It stops your muscles working. A kind of paralysis. You don’t feel anything. Until it wears off.”
She took another sip of the water. How much had he given her? How much did it take to kill her? What good would it do him if he did?
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, his eyes on the floor. “I only wanted to have you here with me for a while. I thought you would make things better. I knew it couldn’t be the same. But while I was watching you in Florence you seemed like . . . well, you seemed like you were looking for something—something different, something new. I don’t know.” He paused. “I didn’t know you had a child.”
And the way he said it caught her attention. She remembered his surprise that first evening in the car when she had told him about Lily. It had thrown him then, just as it still threw him now. She took another sip of the water and pulled herself upright. The flesh around her eye where he had hit her felt huge and spongy. It might leave a scar, but it wouldn’t kill her. Not on its own. Lily. Her absence filled the room. Lily. The reason she couldn’t indulge him with her death, however tired she might feel.
“Yes, I have a child,” she said slowly, and this time she spoke in English because there could be no room for mistakes now and because she needed him to be able to tell the difference between a dead wife and a living stranger. “I don’t know if I can explain to you what that means. You don’t love children in the same way you love adults. It’s a passion, yes, even an obsession, but it’s a benign one. One that brings out the best in you rather than the worst.” She paused. The distance between him and her seemed so immense, too great for words to bridge. But they were all she had. “My daughter is more beautiful than any lover I ever had. She’s more innocent, more knowing, more spiritual, more physical, more greedy, more giving, more loving, more manipulative than anyone I’ve ever known. She can’t help it. It’s just who she is. It’s as if there’s a light in her which she hasn’t found the control switch for yet, an energy which pulses out across other weaker signals, pulling them into her orbit. She’s not afraid of anything or anyone and I love her so much for that. In some way I’ve helped her to be that. My spirit, my courage. I think she drank it out of me when she was born. I didn’t used to mind. I assumed that it was just what happened, whether it should or not. But there have been times recently when I have wondered if there is anything of me left. Anything not connected with her.”
She stopped. He was not looking at her. She had no idea whether he was even listening. It didn’t matter.
“I think that’s why I came to Florence in the first place. To find out who I was without her. If I was without her. To see if I could do it alone. Maybe that’s what you smelled in me that day in the café: a woman worn out by worship. Just as you are worn out by worshiping her.”
From the clothesline behind his head, one of the prints broke free from its peg and flapped its way down to the floor near his feet. He stared at it, his fingers flexing automatically out toward it. A dead woman, still dictating his every move. No. He wasn’t listening anymore. But she would say it anyway. For herself, if not for him.
“That’s why I have to go home, you see. Because I understand it so much better now. I understand that I love her, but I also love myself, and that I can’t live my life through another person, however magnificent or overwhelming they may be.” She sighed. “And that’s also why you have to let me go. So you can do the same thing for yourself, can start your life again without her, just as you are letting me start mine.”
While she was talking he had picked up the print and was holding it in one hand, staring down at it. He can’t do it, she thought. He can’t let her go. Because if he did there’d be nothing left. Poor guy. She watched his right hand reach out for something on the desk nearby and in the glow of the safe light she caught the glint on the point of a needle.
He put down the photograph carefully and walked over to her, the syringe held down behind his back as if he was genuinely embarrassed by it.
She didn’t move. There was nowhere to go.
He stopped in front of her. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, in Italian. “That was never what I wanted to do.”
“No,” she said. “I know.”
As he lifted the syringe upward she noticed it was full.
Away—Sunday P.M.
SHE DIDN’T WAKE, and he didn’t wake her. When she finally opened her eyes the shutters were drawn and her watch read 3:40 P.M. As she pulled herself up in surprise she realized that the room felt different in other ways too: neater, the surfaces less filled with clutter. She went into the bathroom. By the side of the basin there was only her wash bag and her toothbrush. In the wardrobe her trousers hung next to a rail of empty hangers; by the door her new suitcase sat alone. She stood next to it for a moment, not quite able to take in what she was being told.
When she called downstairs, Reception told her he had booked out this morning, but that the room was paid for till tomorrow. She didn’t find the envelope until she put down the receiver. It was propped at the back of the table lamp, her name on the front in capital letters.
The letter was in black fountain pen. She couldn’t remember if she had ever seen his handwriting before, but as soon as she unfolded the page she knew it was his: big and bold with a touch of the italic about it. It reminded her of an architect lover she had once had, someone for whom the visual construction of the words was almost as important as their meaning. Both of them were men who aspired to beauty, in art, if not in life. I have absolutely no idea what you are going to say to me, she thought, as she started to read. Well done, Samuel/Marcus. You remain a surprise, right to the end.