Escape

by Anna Fienberg

  We walked for kilometres around the city. I learnt to hold my stomach in, to walk straight with my shoulders back and my chest out. Guido liked good posture, and proud breasts. My heart beat fast all the time, as if I were running for a bus, and sometimes I was uncomfortable because there was no calm place any more where I could just sit and let my stomach out and my shoulders droop.

  We went often to the Italian cafes on Sunday afternoons. I loved munching creamy cannoli, listening to the sound of Guido's voice. It was so lilting, the way the words slid into each other. Most Italian words ended with a vowel, Guido explained as he blew smoke over his shoulder. I thought vowels must be the most vulnerable and soft of sounds, like tiny animals with no bones. Consider 'e' I told him, how it clings to the end of English words such as 'little' and 'feeble', never making a sound. He looked at me blankly. When we were outside he wrote 'amore' on the dusty back window of a ute. He pronounced it amoray. Say it, he said. I did. Tu sei mio amore, you are my love. In Italian, the final 'e' was always sounded. For me 'e' became a private symbol of the different ways to love – you could be bold and generous, sounding out your feelings, or hide and stay silent. I preferred the Italian way, even if I found it hard to do myself.

  The Cafe Vesuvio near the Capitol Theatre remained my favourite. Each time I sat down at a table, I remembered the first time I'd been there and my transformation since then. No one would know the difference from the outside, except that perhaps I smiled more and my hair smelled of peach shampoo. Sometimes he would touch my sandalled foot under the table with his and we'd rock the flats of our feet back and forth in a silent companionable rhythm. We developed a joke, a kind of code, for telling each other about our days. A Door of Death was the worst on a scale of one to ten, and a mere Czechoslovakian Insane Muff (leather restraints on the wrists with an electric timer) was a five. I probably enjoyed this game more than Guido, although he played along charmingly. To him it was quite normal to use words like 'torture' and 'death by drowning' and 'penalty of failure'. For me it was stunningly exotic, triggering images of Dean and Jean and the spell of their magic in my childhood. Often I thought Guido was just like Dean, stepping right through the television.

  The coffee at Vesuvio lit a tingly path down my throat into my belly. I liked the bitterness and the way it heightened the starry, breathless feeling in my chest. When Guido smiled I glimpsed his teeth darkened by the thick black espresso. He sat there easily, silky as a groomed cat in his Versace jacket. He would have sat like this in Italy, I thought, in that other universe with all the famous paintings and history and cobbled pavements thousands of years old, and he would have worn that same slow smile, his teeth varnished by coffee. And now he was sitting here with me. Maybe he still had some of that Roman chariot dust in his nostrils, in the neat apricot shells of his ears. I would have gone anywhere with him then. Take me away, I wanted to say. Take me to your planet.

  Guido talked about ideas. The other boys I'd been out with had talked about things – things you could touch or possess or do. Back then I hadn't known what I thought about anything, so our conversations had never lift ed off . To me we seemed stolid creatures, hobbits as opposed to elves, scuttling around in a safe cul de sac. For this, as well as his beauty, Guido seemed larger to me than other people. His ideas flew him up above earth so that he seemed to hover over most of us, immortal. Sometimes he took me with him. When he talked, the moons of his nails clicked together, his fingers meeting in an arc of prayer.

  In his mouth, disparate facts connected in startling ways, forming ideas unimaginable to me before. He was reticent about himself but spell-binding on the subject of magic. He talked of its roots in Jewish history, how the Pharaoh allowed the Jews to flee, convinced by the sorcery of Aaron's rod; of Moses' brilliant misdirection with thunder and smoking mountains.

  With Guido's encouragement, magic became a popular science subject with my grade three. The class listened, absorbed, as I described one of the first conjuring tricks in history, in which the magician, Dedi, entertained the court of Ancient Egypt by chopping off the head of a goose and putting it back again under the cover of darkness. Dedi's magic, with all that chopping and camouflage, caused a fever of excited whooping in the classroom.

  In those early days it was perhaps Guido's strength that impressed me most. His beauty, of course, was continually overwhelming, but the way he looked seemed connected to some extraordinary inner fortitude. Weren't his fitness, his focus, the finely honed muscles under his shirt all the result of a supreme inner conviction, a faith of purpose?

  I admired the way Guido owned himself, didn't feel the need to explain to everyone what he was doing. He hadn't the faintest concern that someone might be able to stop him, that anyone could have power over him or the decisions he made. I thought it must be amazing to live like that. Like a grown-up, I suppose, instead of a guilty child.

  I watched in awe as Guido took what he wanted. His choices were firm, authentic. He didn't go round placating people; he was not sorry. I was always sorry. Without effort he retained his outline against the wash of other people's needs. He didn't show his injury like most of the people I knew, injuries that would weep for as long as they lived.

  It was such a pleasure to look at him, strong, talented, true. I never caught him wavering – in shops, in bed, at restaurants. He didn't say, 'I'm not sure, I don't know, maybe.' He said, 'It is so', rather than 'In my opinion.' He didn't say the food was good if it wasn't, assure me I looked great when I didn't, caress me when he didn't feel like it. He took what he wanted and expected me to do the same. 'You are a strong person, like me,' he said once. A faint pulse of alarm murmured at the back of my head – surely that meant he didn't know me at all? – but it hushed as soon as he held me in his arms. He made me feel like Wonder Woman. It was a relief, like being on holiday.

  This was how they made people in Italy, I thought, that place where people kiss when they meet, cry out, throw their arms around each other, take emotional risks like paragliding, swooping off cliff s with abandon, never even glimpsing the abyss of possible failure below.

  I wanted to do that too. Not be afraid. Or sorry.

  Later, years after we were married, I learnt – along with how to make pasta al dente and espresso coffee – that you can easily mistake insensitivity for strength.

  Guido didn't seem to want to talk about needs, or to indulge in long confessional talks. Even though I would have liked to, I didn't know where to begin. To say what you wanted had always seemed rude to me. 'I want' was so bald, like a swearword. At my place only the orphans ever said it. And then, only some of them. The orphans had shattering needs. 'There's a big difference between wants and needs, Rachel,' my mother explained. 'You may want a new skirt like Joanna's, but do you need it?'

  When I asked Guido about his early experiences, his answers were short and hard and concrete. If reflections on personal issues were translated into philosophy, though, particularly historical philosophy, he could be expansive, even loquacious. He'd studied at the liceo classico, after all; he could read Classical Greek, quote Euripides, Sophocles, Plato. When I talked about careers – the agonies of choosing, of balancing social responsibility with personal fulfilment, he quoted Seneca. The great Roman philosopher ('What do they teach you in Australian schools?') claimed that to live a healthy mental life, 'our first duty was to examine ourselves'. We should do this before choosing a career, Guido said, or thinking about how to live. Reflecting on one's own nature and desires was of first importance. 'Talent does not respond to force,' he quoted. 'Where nature is reluctant, labour is vain.'

  To follow Seneca's path, I thought, you'd first have to know what it was you liked to do. Really, I had no idea. I was a blank of a person, undefined by ordinary interests or the ability to choose one thing over another. Things usually chose me, and if the things made me uncomfortable, I just waited until they went away, or accepted them.

  When I started teaching and received a monthly salary, I wrote out
a list of charities to which I would contribute: World Vision, Amnesty International, Children with Cancer, the Spastic Centre. I liked the packages of information and reminders sent through the post, and felt soothed as I sat in the sunlight on the back porch, writing out cheques. It seemed a good mix of international and local charities, and I was doing 'what I could'. But sometimes, lying in bed at night, the enormity of what I really should be doing assailed me.

  As a child, I'd felt guilty watching the sad hungry people on TV: guilty about clean sheets, and good dinners, and being miserable when I had no right to be. I had a comfortable bed to lie on and a gleaming set of drawers of polished wood and a window cleaned so diligently by my mother that birds often flew straight at it.

  It was hard to sleep since meeting Guido, with ideas bursting like fireworks in my head. I clenched my toes in the dark, questioning long-held beliefs. If Guido and Seneca thought it was valid to examine your needs, to consider your self as well as your duty to the world, then perhaps it was.

  Guido had become the coloured glass I looked through or perhaps more the mould in which all my thoughts and visions were set. I would close my eyes and imagine being with him forever. It became a form of meditation, this imagining, a deep chant of possible happiness in which a multitude of utopian scenes replaced former worlds of devastation and misery in Africa, India, South America. Being with Guido began to feel synonymous with the possibility that I could start to be myself.

  I imagined having a baby with Guido. I had never thought about having a baby before, but I would study his face while he talked about Plato or the Galilean moons and think, I want a baby just like you. I imagined soft brown limbs tugging at my knees. The little person I had in mind would love me forever.

  I didn't mention this subject to Guido. It was a secret wish that I somehow sensed he wouldn't share. Later I wondered if the idea of having Guido's baby came to me so early because my body was already trying to prepare me.

  I didn't talk about babies or the idea of married bliss but I did long to withdraw into an intimate world with Guido. He made it difficult, though: his silence often enveloped a whole afternoon. Sometimes he'd get up, take his cigarettes and go off for a walk or open a window when he was tired of a subject. His periods of gloom, I began to think, probably had nothing to do with me, but I only realised this after having picked over each of my sentences, searching for offence I may have given, insensitive remarks I might have made. Maybe on those quiet afternoons he was merely bored. The thing was, even if his gloom was not my fault, wasn't it my fault if I couldn't help? What was the use of me if I made absolutely no difference to his state of mind?

  When he came down with the flu, something changed. It was four weeks to the day after we met. I had brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate in his room and we drank it in our underwear in bed with the pillows fluff ed up behind us. Guido grimaced a good deal as he swallowed and said I should not call this fizzy white wine champagne, as that was a region in France where the grapes undergo a special fermenting process. The taste was sharp and acidic and afterwards, actually, I had a headache. When I woke during the night, dreaming of being caught in a fire, I found Guido hot and sweaty beside me and wondered if the false champagne had poisoned him.

  I felt his forehead against my palm. It was burning. I wanted to take his temperature but we had no thermometer so I found a handtowel and soaked it in cool water, laying it across his forehead. Every ten minutes I went back to the bathroom to run cold water over it. He said to bring a bucket near the bed because he thought he might be sick. There were no buckets so I brought the wastepaper basket.

  'Do you think the champagne made you sick?' I asked.

  He said no, he had a sore throat as well and it was probably l'influenza. 'I jus need to sleep,' he added.

  But I couldn't. I lay, alert, next to him, wondering what else I should do. What if I fell asleep and his heart stopped during the night? If his temperature climbed too high, he could have a seizure. Or was that only in children?

  The following night I wasn't able to see Guido. It was my father's birthday and my mother insisted I stay home. 'You've got black circles under your eyes,' she said reprovingly. 'We never see you. And how do you manage grade three with no sleep?' Uncle Nathan and Auntie Ruth were coming over for dinner. 'When was the last time you had a conversation with your family?' I sat through the meal wondering if Guido was eating his.

  When I spoke to him the next morning on the phone his voice was gravelly. But he said 'the show must go on'. He gave a short bark of a laugh which turned into a hacking cough. I had to hold the phone inches away from my ear. Finally he put the phone down. When I rang in the early evening, he told me not to come, that he would just sleep.

  I went to bed late and tried to read. But nothing penetrated past my eyes. I went out into the kitchen to make some hot milk. I had to feel my way along the wall of the corridor in the dark. The light of the fridge was loud like an alarm. As I poured the milk and turned on the stove I kept thinking about Guido lying alone in his bed. He knew practically no one in Australia, and he was ill. What would it feel like to be sick and vulnerable in a foreign language? How could he let anyone know if he fell unconscious? The thought of that lunar atmosphere in hotels where your existence makes no impression at all was becoming scary now, rather than liberating.

  I drank the milk but it didn't soothe me. Did he know about Panadol and how it can lower your temperature? What about tepid baths? He often left the glass door wide open to get the breeze. He shouldn't do that tonight, the chill could make his flu worse. He didn't know about December nights in Sydney, how they could turn into the sharpness of spring.

  I went back to bed and wriggled about, not able to get comfortable. A panicky feeling was rising in my chest. Could we be like twins – was he too writhing about in bed, frightened, delirious, and I was sensing his feelings?

  I took the torch next to my bed and padded back out to the kitchen. I went to the telephone and rang the hotel and told the sleepy girl at the desk that I wanted room number 17 and that it was an emergency. I was breathing so hard I could hardly speak. The girl said was I sure, that it was three o'clock in the morning. Yes, I said, not wanting to say that I was never sure about anything.

  He answered after fifteen rings. 'How are you?' I asked into the silence.

  Guido was furious. He said I'd woken him up and he started shouting something in Italian. I went red, staring into the dark of the kitchen. His voice was raw and loud. When he returned to English I understood that not only had I woken him from the first sound sleep he'd had in days but he hated people checking up on him. It was 'invasive' and brutto, ugly.

  'What you think I am doing at three in the morning, Rachel? You think I 'ave a girl in 'ere? Why you are suspicious like this? You drive me crazy!' He slammed the phone down.

  Suspicious? What girl? I hadn't even thought of that. Maybe he was feeling suffocated by me. I used to wonder about that, when boyfriends didn't last. Could they have felt the cling? Maybe I'd squeezed the breath out of them. I wondered if they'd been trying to keep themselves, the deep inside parts of them I wanted, but could never have.

  I lay awake for hours that night, thinking about the boys I'd dated, the ache when they left . I used to throw myself up in the air, crossing my fingers that a man would catch me. Men were made of solid stuff . I was made of vapour, a breath on the mirror.

  But my worry about Guido was more like a heart attack than a toothache. Now look what you've done, said the voice, you've ruined everything, as usual. I gritted my teeth and decided that no matter how great the temptation, I would never ring in the night again. Please god, I said under my breath, if Guido comes back to me I promise never to ask where he has been, or what girlfriends he's had, or what plans he is making. We would live in the present, like people on holidays, together. We wouldn't be weighed down by burdens of the past, and consequences in the future: we would travel light.

  After all, what I treasured
most when I searched Guido's face was the absence of sorrow I'd seen in my father.

  Chapter 8

  When Guido moved out of his hotel into a flat, I asked him home to dinner at Cuthbert Street. 'Sì, I will come,' he replied quickly. 'Is a long time since someone cooked for me.'

  He was under contract to the Capitol Theatre for another two months, but he'd grown tired of living in a hotel. He didn't like all traces of himself being swept away each morning; he liked his things to stay exactly where he put them. And he didn't appreciate people knowing his habits, spying on the small towers of empty takeaway boxes perched like miniature cities on his bedside table. When a maid asked him why he always ordered sweet and sour pork, and how come he drank so much tea when everyone knew Italians preferred coffee, he decided to accept the stage manager's offer of a room in a boarding house at Paddington.

  Mum made chicken à la crème and baked potatoes for dinner. She told Dad to put on a clean shirt and long pants, even though it was 30 degrees. I bought a bunch of carnations for the table and liqueur chocolates to have with our coffee.

  'Ugh, garofeni,' shuddered Guido when he saw the flowers. 'These you buy for funerals,' and he did a little hop, touching his testicles to ward off the evil eye.

  But he seemed to enjoy my mother's chicken. 'This is very good,' he said warmly, smiling from me to Deborah. 'Is a pity your daughter does not inerit your talent,' and he pinched my cheek.

  When Dad got up to pour the wine, he said to Guido, 'Now Rachel told us not to give you the third degree, but I've got to ask you what it's like to be a magician – and a travelling one at that!' He gave a low whistle. 'That's something I never came across, I can tell you.'