But after I met Guido, I suddenly felt braver. Or more in need. And Maria might teach me a few Italian words. I'm ashamed to admit it, but that was the real reason I invited her shopping.
Maria was enthusiastic about the idea. She encouraged me to choose a dress more stylish than usual, and more expensive. It was the kind of dress that looked as if you were trying. 'In Europe everyone tries,' she said confidently. 'They all dress up, even just to go and buy the bread. If you don't, you're a freak show.' She said the little black number suited me and showed off my figure. The neckline was low, plunging in a dramatic V. It was absolutely gorgeous for the theatre, she said, or passionate sex.
Afterward, I came straight home. I washed my hair and applied make-up. When you have practically no eyebrows and pale lashes like a rabbit, you need a lot of time for mascara and eyeliner. As I worked I remembered Guido saying bella, even though he had been standing very close. And that was comforting.
I caught the bus back into the city for the two o'clock matinee. It was so strange and exciting to sit by myself in the velvet armchairs, watching the dark coming down like evening. The sudden hush of the audience was reverent. When Guido strolled onto the stage, the world became his and no one else existed. Coins swam out of the dark into his hand, glasses floated past filled with wine that never ceased flowing. Treasure, scarves, cards, knives – they all appeared and disappeared like symbols in a dream. I let my mind wander among the starry phosphorescence on stage as if I were an explorer in an underwater jungle.
He performed the whole show without assistance. His wry, minimal commentary seemed a natural accompaniment to his act, his occasional expressions of humour sparkling as he pulled a burning cigar from the air or slipped his hands from linking rings. He didn't appear to be acting – he seemed entirely at one with the miracles he was performing on stage.
His concentration was extraordinary, like sunlight trained through glass. You couldn't look anywhere else; it was like being under the spell of a shaman, a wizard. As I watched him escape from the Table of Death, vanish in purple smoke from the Crystal Box, the knowledge that I would see him personally in one hour, in twenty minutes, ten, lay at the back of my mind like the magic props waiting their turn in the dark corners of the stage. I had only to think of him with his hand on my neck and something in my belly turned over.
Guido had given my name at the door, so after the show on Saturday I went backstage and knocked at his dressing-room. He kissed me on both cheeks before I'd even had a chance to say hello. I would learn that Italians always did this, even men kissing men. I liked this tradition because beginnings and endings are often awkward. His lips brushed dry on my cheeks. Then he held me away from himself and looked at me, his eyes travelling slowly over my new black dress.
'Is cut well, this dress. But a colour not so dramatic is suiting you better. This makes you too pale. If I am dressing you, I would choose emerald green which is good with your red 'air.'
I bit my lip. There had been green, and a pearly grey too, but I'd thought black was sophisticated and much more wicked. Trust you to get it wrong, said the voice.
Guido sat down at the dresser and began wiping the foundation from his face.
'So, when we met last time,' I began brightly, trying to overcome my disappointment, 'there were so many things I wanted to ask you. Like, whereabouts in Italy do you come from? I have this friend, Maria, whose dad comes from a village in Naples. Do you come from anywhere near there? It says on the poster that both you and Maurizio are from the same town.'
Guido frowned in the mirror. He rubbed his forehead where the two faint lines were, closing his eyes for a moment.
'Have you got a headache? I've got a Panadol in my bag.'
Guido shook his head. 'Is nothing. I am tired.' He turned around and smiled at me. It was like the sun coming out. 'I change now.' He pointed to the Japanese screen behind me. 'Maurizio said 'e would like to meet us for a drink at the Lobster Bar, is at the quay.' He shrugged, making a quizzical face.
While Guido changed, I looked around the room. The spotlights framing the mirror were dazzling, like those in old movies. On the dresser was a small sculpture of a boy, his thin arms reaching out as if to catch something he'd just lost. Next to the boy was a photo of an elderly woman with sharp black eyes.
'Who is the woman in the photo?' I heard a sigh from behind the screen. 'She's very . . . striking.'
Guido was silent. Maybe he didn't hear. I looked down at my dress, smoothing it over my thighs. No man in my life had ever commented on what colour or style suited me. If I'd worn anything more formal than jeans when I went out with Michael Jeffries, who I'd dated in high school, he'd frown and ask what was the big occasion? Guido must care if he had taken the trouble to look at me so thoroughly. And he must know a lot about women.
When he emerged, he took my arm. His olive skin glowed against the pink fabric of his shirt. 'Maurizio will be waiting,' he said. 'We will talk later.' No Australian man I knew would dare to wear a pink shirt. A thin gold chain lay under it, glinting like a wink.
At the bar, Maurizio was waiting at a table with a view over the harbour. He looked entirely at home, his jacket slung over the back of the seat, his hand cradling a startling drink as he gazed out at the water. When he saw us he waved in greeting, inviting us to sit down. The water lapped against the seawall, the drink with its festive umbrella perched like a circus tent over the white tablecloth, the sun sparkled on the glass. Everything was so bright, you could almost hear the tinkle of light striking the earth. For just a moment I had that strange shiver of unreality again, as if I were the tourist in this city. Certainly I had never drunk at a bar like this. But maybe the shiver was happiness.
'Sit down, come, what will you have?' cried Maurizio, pulling out a chair for me.
'One of those, please,' I said, pointing at his vermilion drink.
'Campari and soda for the bella ragazza,' he told the waiter with a dazzling smile.
Guido asked for something I hadn't heard of and a bowl of olives. There was a silence after the flurry of ordering. I didn't know where to begin. All these bellas in the last week had an intoxicating effect. Guido looked out at the water. Maurizio leant across and put his hand on my arm. It was surprisingly warm and heavy.
'You know I met this young man just two years ago when I was on tour. He was performing in the piazza, for small coins. And look at him now!' He pinched Guido's cheek.
Maurizio didn't need much prodding to tell the story of his life. He liked to talk, he said, and to meet new people. That was one of the enjoyable things about touring. At the cafe where I'd first seen him, he'd seemed weak, ineffective – or possibly, too demanding, his over-eager shoulders leaning too far forward on the table. But within minutes I knew that he was fifteen years older than Guido, he'd lived in America for a decade, and every impression I'd previously had of him was wrong.
He was a big hairy man with fur sprouting from his cuffs and a beard as thick as a bathmat. When he threw an arm around me and laughed in my ear, I felt swamped and thrilled at the same time. After another Campari he called me carissima in a deep rich tone, as if he could hardly control himself – and I felt taller and a little bit magical beside him, as if I possessed secret powers myself inside my dress.
Maurizio had always worked six days a week during an engagement, and now for the first time in his career he had Guido performing matinees and Saturday evenings. He could afford to wander the Botanic Gardens, lie on the sand at Bondi with a book.
'And what luck for you,' I whispered to Guido as my plate of oysters arrived. I prodded one warily with my fork. Oysters had never appeared on the table at my parents' house. 'You're so young, after all,' I told him, 'and imagine, having the chance to be double-billed with a man like Maurizio, with his reputation and experience.'
A dark crease sprang up between Guido's eyebrows like a ruled margin. 'You must not talk of good luck,' he whispered. 'Is bad luck to do so.'
'What do yo
u mean, like tempting fate?'
Guido just shrugged, and pointed at a piece of parsley lodged between my two front teeth.
I fiddled, ashamed, behind my napkin. Suddenly I didn't feel very magical any more.
'So where did you two meet?' I asked, taking a swig of Campari. Everything was far too quiet.
'Assisi,' replied Maurizio, when Guido didn't. 'I was performing in a theatre near the church of San Francesco. Such a beautiful church, overlooking the piazza. There are frescoes of Giotto on the walls.'
'So it was Maurizio who introduced you to magic?' I asked Guido. 'But surely you've been practising for longer? You're too good!'
'Oh, yes, he has, but not professionally.' Maurizio glanced at Guido. 'It all began with your aunt, la zia Clara, wouldn't you say, Guido? She was good to you, eh? Completamente pazza, but good in her heart,' Maurizio smiled. 'I got to know her in Assisi, when I met Guido.'
'She was not mad. Not pazza.' Guido looked up. 'Just a little, 'ow do you say, original.'
'Eccentric?' I asked. 'Is she the woman in the photo in the dressing-room?'
'Yes.' Guido sighed.
'I liked her eyes. They're so alive.'
'She is dead.'
'Oh.' I spluttered on my wine. 'I'm so sorry.'
Guido waved his hand. 'I went to live with her. But that was later. After my father died I was sent to boarding school with the priests in the mountains.' He snorted. 'My father had already put my name down. I was not, 'ow do you call it, a good student. No one is knowing what else to do with me. In fact, there was no one else.'
'But what about your mother?'
'She passed away when I was six.'
'Oh!' I wanted to touch him, say something, but what? His face was blank, almost plastic.
'It is a difficult life with those priests.' Maurizio looked up, shaking his head. 'You wake at dawn to say prayers and study, go to classes, then you return to your room again at five in the afternoon for more study. I did the same for my last two years of school, up in Torino.'
Guido nodded. 'I was planning to run away, just before la zia arrived. I could not make the life those priests expect of me. I even packed the bag. I was going to escape.'
'Why didn't you?'
Guido lift ed his hands into the air. 'Where was I to go? In Italy, is not easy to live on the street. I 'ad little money. And la zia, she interested me. She was my only living relative, and she tells me is very very important that I change my life now. "Seventeen is a dangerous number," she says. "It 'as the devil in it, but if you use it well, you can turn the dark into light." She was persuasive. And see,' Guido flung out a hand in a gesture that embraced me, Maurizio and the lilting sea slapping against the sea wall, 'see 'ow my life 'as changed!'
When Guido started at the local school in Assisi, Clara introduced him to magic. She was drawn to the theatre of magic as well as its more secret mysteries and in his first month there, on his seventeenth birthday, she took him to a magic show in Perugia, the big university town near Assisi. She'd even bought him a magician's cape.
'La zia, she was so glad when the music came on,' Guido said. 'The coloured smoke, the 'andsome magicians with the oil on their 'air. Uffa, the smell of the oil was suffocating backstage. But Clara, she loved it all. She smiled from beginning to end, incantata. I think she forgot 'erself, where she was. She liked what she could not see in the magic, the little silence where she falls into 'er imagination. Beh, I learnt some magic tricks, just to make 'er smile – I put the cape on like so, and wave the wand, do tricks in the apartment. Next thing, she wants me to set up in the square, so I did this thing, just to see that smile of 'ers.'
'The pretty girls in the square smiled at you too, no?' Maurizio grinned at him. 'Once, you know, Rachel, I came to find him but it was impossible – the girls were crowded around so thick, like bees on honey!'
I looked at Guido. He was smiling too, and his face was soft , unguarded, his cheekbones losing their sharpness. I asked Guido about his first magic tricks, how did he know where to begin?
'There was a magician working in the piazza,' he said. 'Umberto. I used to watch 'im, and we became friends. Umberto 'ad a studio full of books about magic and 'e let me read them, experiment, you know. I was like an apprentice, I suppose,' he added, 'and Umberto was glad for the company.'
By the time Guido enrolled at the university in Perugia, he was good enough to take on magic shows for children during the holidays. He was able to give Clara a small stipendio, even though she said she didn't want it. She spent most of her days in the room she called the library, where the bookshelves were filled with copies of medieval texts. During bouts of bad weather, persistent illness or misfortune, she consulted them and often brewed strange assortments of herbs for colds and fever.
'She grew her own vegetables,' Maurizio put in. 'She didn't trust the local grocer because he once appeared in her dream as the devil.'
Guido gave a dismissive wave. 'Clara 'ad a garden, sì, and she liked to spend time there. But it made 'er knees ache so I did the weeding for 'er. But vedi, Rachel,' Guido leant back in his chair, his hands resting lightly on the table, 'Clara lived in another world. She read and meditated and made up 'er own stories about the laws of the universe.' He smiled, remembering. 'And strange things did occur in 'er life. She talked to 'er dead 'usband, Piero. She said 'is ghost came to sit at the edge of 'er bed at night. She believed in ghosts, they kept her company. She says they walked the cobblestones of Assisi, whispering in the wind. She 'ated black cats. She believed in the mortal curse.'
'Do you?'
A shadow came down over Guido's face like a curtain, shutting me out. He shrugged.
I could have kicked myself. Too direct, wasn't I, blurting without thinking. But I was so eager to know Guido. I couldn't wait to find out what was going on behind those shining black eyes. Fancy – mysterious great aunts, a medieval village, a mortal curse.
My childhood sat squarely between the solid brick veneer walls of 15 Cuthbert Street, where homework was done by 6 pm and there was roast lamb on Sundays. Where I came from people worked hard for conceivable rewards, and there was no such thing as luck or the spirit world. There was no conjuring at my house, either, although once, when I asked him to, Dad had a go at leaving cake out for Santa Claus.
'Zia Clara was an old woman,' Guido said after a while. 'Maybe a little pazza. But she 'ad a unique knowledge.' He pronounced unique as 'eunuch' and for a moment I was confused. Was eunuch knowledge like carnal knowledge? Surely no one kept eunuchs since the Roman emperors? Guido was smiling fondly, looking out across the harbour at the boats clinking on the tide. Don't be ridiculous, said the voice.
One of the first things Clara told Guido was to look out for black cats, of which there were many in Assisi. They slunk around the medieval alleyways, lurked in the shady corners of the squares. Black cats were engraved with dark hearts, Clara said, and must be avoided. They were the familiars of witches, and took part in black magic. On the morning of the day her husband, Piero, was struck down by lightning, a black cat had crossed his path.
'The only way to stop a curse from a black cat is to 'unt it down and find one white 'air on its back,' Guido said. 'You must pluck it out and burn it. Zia Clara told Piero to do this but 'e was late for 'is game of dominoes in the square, and 'e didn't listen. Piero was liking more that game, Zia Clara said, than the life itself.'
Maurizio laughed. 'Clara was medieval, no?' He threw back his head with a laugh. For the first time I saw beneath his bathmat beard where his white throat was exposed like something rude. I looked away.
'Always with her head stuck in an old book,' he went on. 'You remember her medicine book, her crazy remedies? What was that mixture she gave you for the headache that time?'
Guido scratched his chin. 'Some 'erbs, I don remember well.' He began to tap the table.
Maurizio spluttered and wiped his mouth. 'That's right. She cooked up a broth with garlic and holy water she stole from the church and said
a spell and a prayer over it before she poured it down your throat.'
Guido's smile grew strained. The tapping sounded like artillery.
Maurizio slung his arm around Guido. 'She loved you though, eh? Ti voleva bene davvero.'
I watched as Maurizio squeezed Guido's shoulder. The warmth in his smile looked like that of a father for a son, and suddenly I felt glad for Guido that an older man would look at him so fondly, one person in the world who shared a memory, a link with his childhood.
'So when did you decide to make this big trip together?' I asked, looking from one to the other.
Guido forked up a mouthful of his marinara.
'Not so long ago,' Maurizio grinned. 'I had been booked for more than a year to come here, but then I was ill, and wondering how I would manage, when I saw Guido performing. He was splendido – it came to me that we could work together. When you get to my age, Rachel, you don't have to hog the whole stage any more! So I asked him to make this great adventure with me and he said – no!'
'At first,' put in Guido.
'Yes, and then you disappeared—'
'I 'ad some business with the university in Rome—'
'Hmm, with all your studies.' Maurizio laughed and poked him in the ribs. 'And your politics.'
Guido frowned.
'Life in Italy has been what you'd call explosive, in this last decade,' Maurizio explained quickly. 'Student riots, union protests, police everywhere . . . And then, of course, the Brigate Rosse—'
'Who?'
'The Red Brigade – the left -wing terrorist organisation.'
'Not always the terroristi,' put in Guido. 'The Brigate Rosse 'ave been blamed for Mafia assassinations, CIA business, remember—'
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