Escape

by Anna Fienberg

  I tried to make it amusing, telling tales of boys stealing from our change jar or hoarding packets of biscuits, even though I hadn't found it amusing at all. As I talked, I sounded heartless, making entertainment out of something tragic, but I hurtled on just the same, like a great lumbering bus out of control. I told him about poor Johnny Walker, and then suddenly I stopped. Guido himself was an orphan boy!

  I felt myself blush scarlet. No wonder, way back in the conversation, he'd liked the idea of sons and daughters living with their parents until they were old. Parents would be really special if you didn't have any.

  But all he said was, 'I would not like to have strange boys in the house, touching my things. I would not like it at all.' He traced the wet circle on the table left by his glass. Round and round went his finger. No one had ever reacted to my story of the orphans this way. Not that I had told it to many. Never the real story. Just a few sketched outlines. I was used to people responding with awe, exclaiming at the kindness of my parents. I told Guido how when beds at the refuge were full, Dad brought home the most desperate boys and cared for them like a father. He gave everything of himself. As my mother said, there was no man with a bigger heart.

  'See, love is something that's always expanding,' I explained to Guido. 'The more you give, the more you're able to give. My mother says love is an endless fountain, a renewable source of energy.'

  Guido lit a cigarette. I didn't know if he thought love was an endless fountain or not. 'I would like to brush your 'air,' he said, leaning suddenly towards me. He kissed the spot just under my ear and a melting feeling spread through my body.

  'Is so beautiful, so free.' His fingers were threading through the mass of it at the back of my head, pressing lightly on my scalp. Through his hands I felt how heavy my hair was, a weighty fact to be considered. It seemed the only solid thing about me. He massaged my head, neck, running his hands all over. I felt very warm, almost too hot.

  'I would never cut your 'air,' Guido murmured. 'I would brush it like so . . .' His fingers combed through my scalp down to the curled ends lying on my breasts. 'And then I would bend you over,' he pushed gently at my neck and as I leant forward, responding to his pressure, he spread the hair down over my face, towards my lap, combing it from the back. When he tipped back my chin, I could feel my hair standing up, expanding with this sudden rush of attention.

  'You see,' he smiled, 'like wild fire.'

  I tried to slap it down but he caught my hands. 'Your 'air is the true expression of your character.'

  'You seem to know a lot about it.'

  He smiled. 'Is one of the things I remember about my mother. 'Ow she would brush 'er 'air.'

  This time I said nothing. The roots of my hair tingled where he had touched.

  *

  We had crème caramel for dessert. I really enjoyed it, especially as you didn't have to cook it. While we ate, we talked about magic and the theatre and travelling. I told him how much I'd loved watching him on stage – if I could, I said, I'd go to the theatre every day for as long as he was performing.

  He laughed. 'And you would get very bored!'

  'I wouldn't, ever – I get totally swept away. It's as if, I don't know, when the lights come down the old me vanishes and there's someone different in my place, spellbound. It seems so effortless for you up there, you move like a ballet dancer, or a . . . you must have a wonderful life, doing what you love.'

  Guido shrugged. 'You are kind,' he smiled. 'But sometimes we do well the things we do not love. Is a strange trick of nature. I find magic easy, is just the way I am done. Magic is all pretence. I am good at these things, at making illusions. It amuses people. I learn very early to do this.'

  I tried to concentrate on the words he was saying. It was hard because of the way he looked and his power and the feelings that were churning in my chest. I'm not good at doing two things at once. I frowned, giving myself time. All I really wanted to do was throw myself on that beautiful neck with the Adam's apple and have him hold me. 'So,' I said slowly, 'magic is not a choice of passion for you, but more like . . .'

  'A comfortable way to make money,' he said. 'Is pleasant, no? And gives people pleasure, I think.' He sighed. 'In this world we 'ave to do the things that come easy to us, that make us money. But often they are not our passions: these instead lie deeper. We are seduced away from them, from our true selves. We don even know what they are. We spend our lives searching.'

  For the first time I noticed that his face was weary, and there were shadows under his eyes. Was it really just a knack – raw and easy, as Guido said, practised and polished up to shine? It sounded empty suddenly, this kind of talent, a bit thin, like gold leaf or a packet of glitter. If you left it to the wind, it would blow away. I didn't like thinking of the powerful magician in front of me that way.

  Guido pushed back his hair. His hand ran across the two faint lines on his forehead. It was disturbing, this sense of emptiness inside the light. I wanted to return to total admiration, to being lost inside my awe. I rubbed at a wine spot on the table.

  He looked down at the spot and our eyes met. He smiled. It was a rueful, honest smile, and he spread his hands out wide on the table, smoothing his serviette. What humility he had – he was so young, he toured the world with his magic. And yet he wasn't proud or self-satisfied. How I would love to help him find what he was looking for. Imagine me, holding his hand, travelling with him on his journey. A man in his position, he could be so arrogant, so sure of himself. Instead he was restless, searching, profound. Thrilling!

  Guido squeezed my hand lightly, then dropped it. 'You wan to come back to my 'otel to take a coffee? There will be the dreadful little packets with 'ot water, but the coffee is bad in this place also. You want to come to see where I sleep?'

  I did. I couldn't wait. Everyone knew what coffee meant. To be wrapped up in Guido's arms warm and safe instead of here with the wrong words and our still-full plates groaning under my bad cooking would be such a relief. When you were kissing, silence was not a problem. You couldn't talk and kiss at the same time. And you didn't have to think about later. You didn't have to think. I just wanted to run, run, dissolve away inside Guido's skin. I could stop up my ears and not even hear my own heart beat.

  Guido's room was on the third floor, number 17. 'Ah, bene,' he smiled as we walked into the room. 'The maid has come.'

  In hotels the bed is the main event. It takes up most of the room, unless you're in one of those large incredibly expensive suites shown on TV. The corner of the blue satin coverlet was turned back to reveal a triangle of crisp white sheet. Two fresh towels lay with a cake of soap at the foot.

  I went into the bathroom. I didn't need to pee, I just wanted to have a peek. I absolutely love hotels. The best things are the pristine packets of toiletries that no one has ever used, like items from a doll's house. They are little personal gifts, just for you. It's suprising how most people don't seem to appreciate their special magic.

  I picked up the white plastic packet near the sink containing a shower cap. Then I opened the manicure set and comb, shampoo and moisturiser. I squirted a little of the smooth white cream on my hand. It smelled of chemical peach. Lovely.

  When Guido came up behind me I jumped. 'You know,' I said, 'there's an English writer who chose to live all her life in hotels so that every day when she returned from the outside world she would find the room like new, swept of any traces of herself.'

  'Beh, the English, they are like this. The women do not like to do domestic tasks. Their standards are low,' said Guido.

  'But you could imagine her starting afresh each day, couldn't you,' I went on in a flurry, 'as if she'd only just alighted on the planet, a weightless sort of being like a butterfly – it'd be wonderful, you'd have no history, no previous sins, not yet squashed. Just think, all through her life, no matter what mess she made, she could be sure it would vanish in the next twenty-four hours as if she'd never been there at all.'

  Our eyes met in the mir
ror.

  I saw him reach up from behind and put his hands on my breasts. He didn't rub or caress them, just stood holding them, as if acknowledging their weight and existence. He made no comment.

  I watched as he pulled up my blouse and undid my bra. God, there were my breasts, naked in the mirror. His hands cupped them. He traced the pale circles around my nipples, around and around, as he'd traced the wet lines left by the glass. His fingers were gentle, creating a silence, a kind of reticence, so that all the other places that weren't being touched yearned to be. I thought of those hands pulling lights out of nowhere, making fire, making cards disappear. He stood behind me, his chest against the bones of my spine. In each place his body touched mine there was a heat and pressure, as if he'd drawn magic shapes on the skin under my clothes.

  My belly felt hollow. The emptiness was unbearable. In the mirror my nipples had swollen into crimson, aching to exist under his fingers. A moan rose up from the pit of me. I closed my eyes and the loneliness floated out through my lips, a dry, desert sound that made me squirm away from him, from the noise of me. But his fingers came down hard on my nipples. Oh such heaven, like a question answered. He squeezed and stroked, so sure of each movement, putting his face in my neck, a perfect fit, his lips sliding along the hollow to my shoulderblade while his fingers played over me, up and down my rib cage, beneath the waistband of my skirt, making me see how hungry I was, and I wanted him to go on forever.

  Then he turned me around and led me back into the room. We stood at the foot of the bed, near the neatly folded towels and packets of soap. He kissed my lips, opening my mouth with his tongue, and the groan in me was no longer a desert wind. I came alive and shining everywhere he put his hands. He reached around my waist and drew down my zip and my skirt slid to the floor, silky, like a puddle at my feet. His lips sucked at mine and his breath was inside my mouth. The curtains drawn against the street lamps webbed the light, trawling us in its net. He drew down my pants, lift ed off my blouse, took off his shirt and trousers all in one graceful flow of movement. The thought that he must be dangerously practised at this flashed at the corner of my mind. 'Practice, if only you 'ave the practice, you become good at anything!'

  We lay top to toe so that every part of us was touching. He held my waist, nothing else. I held my breath. He didn't pull me into the ocean but stayed on the shore. We studied each other in the grey light. His lashes grew close together, drawing a line under his eyes, thick as kohl pencil. Up close, his skin was smooth, his pores invisible. He was like a Chinese silk painting, and the little creases and fine hairs were the dark mysterious calligraphy moving over the surface. When he smiled, there was a light playing underneath. I felt a fierce determination that nothing should ever hurt this beautiful man, nothing should mar or scratch the surface of his sensitive soul ever again. Tears came to my eyes at the thought.

  'Why you 'ave lacrime?' He pointed to the corners of my eyes.

  'I want nothing to ever hurt you,' I mumbled.

  He smiled. 'There is nothing to do for the past.' But the way he smiled, I knew he felt warmed. I could tell that much. He took both my hands from the pillow. He didn't mention the future. Was it deliberate? Was he implying that I may play a part in it? He had looked at me with hope. I felt a swell of excitement. Even bravery.

  While we talked, murmuring at each other from our separate spaces, the thrill of his hands on my waist was an engine purring inside me; a deep, drilling ache. I imagined it like the sun, about to burn through clouds and dazzle the sea.

  But I always imagine more than I'm capable of. I felt frightened suddenly by the power of what I'd suggested, what I was about to undertake. In this waiting of his, the breath before the plunge, I had time to recede, back down into my shivering self. How could I keep him safe? I was a small cowering creature that couldn't possibly keep another being alive. But then he pushed back my hair and took hold of my thighs and the waiting was finished.

  Chapter 7

  No matter what happened afterwards, that first evening with Guido and the miracle of Clara's birth nine months later are two events I would never regret. Perhaps you can live out your whole life in the afterglow, the memory of one day. Perhaps that's what I have done.

  There are days that stick out like hooks in the wall and the rest of your life is just tacked up around them, falling in long shapeless folds. These kind of days are like plot turnings in a novel. If you're writing a book you might ask yourself: Is this the right path for my character to choose? What are the alternatives? When it's the first draft , you can go back and change it. When it's your life there's fuck all, as Maria might say, you can do about it.

  The first weeks with Guido were extraordinary – a gift for which I wasn't prepared at all. It was as if it were the first time I'd had sex. I loved the way his hands swept down to my hips, gentling over my thighs. I loved how he traced the map of me, from the back of my knees down to the arch of my feet. It was as if I were something precious, a new territory to be examined in detail, before the act of possession. The wetness between my legs lay like a secret country waiting to be discovered.

  Guido wiped clear my sad little history of fumblings with one wave of his wand. It was he who told me, actually, that 'wand' can also mean penis. I thought if I could eat him, I would. I loved taking him into my mouth, opening my throat so that my lips kissed the root of him. It was as easy as breathing. I loved what he did with his hands, and his mouth, and his eyes. It was a shock the way he touched me again right after, the way my flesh responded to his fingers, the way he turned to me in the night, his penis slipping into me from behind. There was the roundness of my bottom against his hard belly, the way he murmured and cried out. I'd never heard that before. It was as if he was wrenching something out of himself against his will, helpless. I kept trying to remind myself that this cry was with me, because we were together. When I looked at myself next to him in the mirror I heard that cry again. I saw him paying attention to my breasts, stroking my hair. I liked my face better when his was beside it. And the voice was quiet.

  In the mornings when I went to school I would look at other people on the bus, at the bank, the supermarket, and wonder: How did they manage to do normal things like shop or worry about their investments when there was this whole other world of sex and love? I couldn't help smiling and often people smiled back. I decided that everyone must know this secret. The smiling was like flashing your membership badge, certifying that you were human not vegetable, with love and nutrients flowing free without boundaries. At last I belonged to the human race.

  Sometimes I worried that after I'd slept with him in the webbed room, he would be too tired to perform at the theatre. I didn't know how he got through it. I drooped home after school, eyes closing on the bus, in a perpetual dream. How could he click into that other world, with its split-second timing and harsh lighting?

  But he never made a mistake with magic. He was so focused. When he walked onto the stage he went into another state of mind. He described it as an altered state of consciousness. I wondered what that would feel like – perhaps like falling in love was for me. Still, he must have got more sleep than I did, as he fell practically unconscious a heartbeat after we'd finished having sex. I envied him that ability, because I spent hours of the night picturing in my mind what we'd done and how it had felt and what we would do in the morning when it was light. I missed him as his eyes closed. It was like watching his magic act, the Door of Death – if he didn't escape in three minutes, the hinged door studded with knives would slam shut. When he slept, he travelled far away, at the speed of light, to an unreachable place.

  On Saturday evenings after his performance I met Guido and we toured the cafes in town. We drank retsina at Greek restaurants and ordered fat green olives, or perched on high stools at the Spanish Club, where we'd rest our elbows along the thick wooden slabs of bench, picking at tapas. I bought the old Corolla that Maria's brother was selling and began my research into Sydney. It was shameful; I wa
s like a tourist in the city in which I was born, so little had I ever explored it. As each new location was ticked off , with no major disasters, I grew more ambitious and began to explore destinations beyond the city: rivers and forests in the country, beaches north and south, places I'd never been. Soon I had quite a decent collection of maps. I looked at the overflowing wad of adventures folded into my glove box with amazement.

  'Good girl, Rachel,' I'd whisper to myself when, miraculously, I'd got us to a famous picnic spot in time for lunch. The whisper was compulsive, magical, like touching wood or crossing your fingers. The voice said nothing.

  The alimentari shops lay on the other side of the city. I'd heard about these 'streets of Italy' with foreign signs and sounds, but it had all seemed so far away, a fairytale landscape that had nothing, really, to do with me. But Guido's arrival was a major life event, like winning the lottery or witnessing a plane crash, and you couldn't help being forever changed.

  At the Italian food market I was entranced by the vast blocks of cheese hulking behind the glass. I bought fresh ricotta that trembled at the touch, and parmigiano reggiano, the best for grating, Guido said, because it had been cured for years in dark Italian cellars. A mustard wheel of it sat regally on the counter. I peered at the names printed on cards stuck deep into fat spicy sausages and salty meats. Mortadella, provolone, salsicce – I rolled the sounds around in my mouth, the saliva spurting.

  As Guido tasted a slice of salame, I listened to the Italian chatter playing like music, and hugged myself. It was hard to believe I was here, me, Rachel Lambert, who had always stayed where I was put. I followed him around like a puppy, peering at the shelves. I would have licked his hands if he'd let me. His long elegant fingers pointed to prosciutto, melanzane sott'olio, gesturing at a history I had never imagined. It was hard to concentrate on the names of things when I wanted to see again how his slim wrists went up under his sleeves, to have those arms hard around my ribs. I wanted that more than anything.