Escape

by Anna Fienberg

  When I burst into tears after an argument, Guido shook his head.

  'I'm sorry,' I said, seeing his annoyed expression. I sniff ed loudly but a drop of snot fell onto my lip. I wiped it with my hand.

  He looked away in disgust.

  'Well, haven't you ever cried?'

  'Not since I was a little boy,' he said. 'In my 'ouse, crying was a sign of weakness.'

  Guido liked to keep his room private, too, but I had to venture in at least once a week to clean. One Saturday morning when I was vacuuming, I found another letter from James Heartacher on his bed. I was examining it, looking at the date, when he burst into the room.

  'What are you doing in here?' he yelled above the roar of the vacuum.

  I turned it off and held the letter out to him. 'Could you read it to me?'

  Guido looked shocked, as if I'd asked to watch him peeing or picking his nose. He said nothing, just snatched it from me and tore it into little pieces.

  'Christ, why won't you let me see?' I said. 'We're living together! I want to know about your life!'

  'Why can't you stai zitta?' He took a step towards me. He was shouting, his face savage. 'Shut up for once!' He kicked the bed. 'Always with your nose in my things. Cazzo, you're everywhere! Why can't you leave me alone?'

  My heart was thumping with fright. I ran out into the garden and leant my forehead against the cool metal of the Hills hoist. Guido's pyjama leg flapped soft on my cheek. I closed my eyes and breathed in the comfort of lemon soap. When I came back in, Guido was standing at the sink, unwrapping a sausage of salame. 'Is not bad, this sorpresa.'

  I said nothing.

  'What is the matter, you don like it? The sorpresa?'

  'I'm not used to . . . arguments. You shouting at me.'

  Guido shrugged. 'But was not an argument – you call this argument? There were no arguments in your 'ouse?' He grinned. 'Must be the Anglo-Saxon way again. Everyone must to be nice all the time.'

  'No, but—'

  'We jus have different opinions, cara, is okay. I'm sorry if you don like the way I espress myself . . .'

  That gave me courage. Sorry. 'Well,' I began, taking a deep breath, 'it's just that the way you react to this Heartacher man, I think he can't just be boring. I mean, you wouldn't tear someone up for that small crime.' Or shout at me so frighteningly, I thought, looking down at my shoe.

  Guido turned back to the sink.

  'Did Heartacher do something really bad to you? Really off end you somehow? Like, did he take your girlfriend or . . .' I heard my nagging voice in wonder. As I hovered from foot to foot on the kitchen lino, my cheeks burning, I realised that my need to know what mortal offence James Heartacher had committed was far greater than my fear of Guido's displeasure. Because if I didn't know the crime, mightn't I one day, accidentally, do something similar?

  Guido took the knife from the drawer. My stomach clenched. He muttered something and cut a thick chunk of salame. When he turned to face me, he gave a half-smile. 'Look, cara,' he said mildly, his left cheek bulging with sorpresa, 'this person—'

  'Heartacher?'

  He rolled his eyes. 'Yes. I met 'im at a time in my life I don like to think about.' He gave a short laugh. 'Was not a big thing, jus, how you say? Unpleasant. I am not proud of myself about this time, or things that happened. So I don like to think about it. Or talk about it. This is jus the way I am done.'

  I was quiet, thinking of ways to get him to do exactly that. To talk about it.

  He crossed the chessboard lino and put a hand on my stomach. 'Don get upset, is bad for you and the baby. No need for lacrime. There are so many other more interesting things to discuss, no?' And his hand moved from my stomach to my breast.

  I put my hand over his and squeezed it. 'But I would like to help, you know. Sometimes it's a relief to talk about things, and you can tell me anything, I'd never stop loving you, ever.'

  Guido's eyebrow rose. 'Try to understand. You do not 'ave things in your past that disturb you? Things you would prefer to forget?'

  'Yes, I suppose—'

  'But I do not insist you tell me, do I? I respect your privacy, yes?'

  'Yes, but maybe we could—'

  'Well, is only this I am asking from you. You wan a piece of sorpresa? Is not bad.' And he picked up a magazine from the bench and went to lie on the couch.

  As I left the kitchen and went to hunt for my purse – there was shopping to do for the seafood pasta we were having for lunch – I thought how easy it would be to make a fatal mistake with Guido. There were so many silent parts to him that I didn't understand. Guido said this was because we came from different cultures.

  'We are not all the same,' he said at lunch. 'Grazie a Dio! That would be boring, no?' He grinned, and scooped up his spaghetti. After the shopping, I'd spent an hour and a half preparing the sauce. It was a pity, as Guido remarked, that I hadn't added enough salt to the pasta.

  'Well, we never cooked spaghetti at home,' I said. 'Just like we didn't shout at each other.' I stuck out my jaw.

  'Beh, you think people are always polite, like your parents, the teachers in your school, all with good motives, but not everyone is like this. People show you what you wan to see. Is all on the surface. You are so innocent, Rachel, but the real world is not so. I am just pointing out the realities. You Anglo-Saxons, you don admit the true way the world works. But the 'uman civilisation is not polite.'

  'Yes, but—'

  'Look at the 'istory of the feudal system. The peasants at the bottom, digging at the earth with their hands for a living. Is not an easy life, they must learn to be cunning, they must try to get every lira they can from you to survive. Everyone knows this – the peasants, the landlords. Your place in society shapes your attitudes. You must be aware of this.'

  I writhed on my chair. I hated the way he divided everything up, divisions where there might be unity, privacy where there might be happy closeness.

  'Yes, of course, but can't we change? I mean, tradition isn't this implacable force, like, I don't know, some great concrete boot that comes down on top of us!'

  'Of course.' Guido looked down at me with a smile. 'Ideals are important, I agree. Vital. But they are ideals.'

  'But that's what drives us! The imagining of possibilities, of what could be rather than what is.'

  I faltered and Guido sighed. He pushed back his plate. 'I am very tired. Is good to talk during the lunch, not after. Is time now for la siesta.' He got up then from the table and went to take the weight off his feet, while I stood up on mine, and washed up.

  Later, when I went to lie down on my bed, Guido was there. He was sprawled from one side to the other, his arms flung out as if he had surrendered, quite suddenly, to the onslaught of sleep. I lay down in the long thin space at the edge of the bed, trying not to disturb him. Guido hated being woken up during his siesta. He would talk in grumpy monosyllables all afternoon. I took shallow breaths so I wouldn't make any noise.

  You are ridiculous, said the voice.

  I know, I said. I felt two tears on either side of my head slide down sideways into my hair.

  You're just a cowering little mouse, the voice went on. You hardly exist at all.

  I looked at his back. Such smooth olive skin. There was a dark freckle on his shoulder. I loved that freckle. Why did he choose my bed to sleep on? He could have slept in his own room, privately. Perhaps he wanted to make up after the argument, just like I did.

  It wasn't an argument, said the voice. You just can't handle anyone disagreeing with you. Being separate. You go to pieces.

  Very carefully I raised my head and then my shoulders off the bed. I'll go and lie down on the couch, I thought, and read the paper. It would be a change. Normally I lay on the floor when we watched television with my head on the Indian cushions. Guido always took the couch because he didn't like the floor, whereas I didn't mind it much at all.

  I was about to swing my legs over the side when I felt his hand like a clamp on my arm.


  'Sorry!' I gasped.

  'Where are you going? Stay here, with me.'

  His voice was gentle. He turned me on my side and I felt his hardness against my back. His hands trickled up my blouse, gentle as running water. He unbuttoned me and his fingers lay still for a moment in the dip at my waist. He leant over and kissed me there, right in the hollow.

  In that moment I was forgiven. There were only his lips and his fingers and his warm flesh pushing against mine. It was as if no argument had ever taken place.

  Chapter 11

  By the time I was six and a half months pregnant, I was huge. I had put on nearly ten kilos and it took quite some time getting up from the floor at night. The solid fact of my bulk had convinced me the baby was not just an idea that, like a dream, or Guido, could vanish when I woke up one morning. Whenever I arrived somewhere and settled myself, even if the position was uncomfortable or unsuitable, I was reluctant to move.

  Now the weight of me was alive. I enjoyed being 'with child'. That cosy expression was my favourite, the preposition emphasising so neatly the companionable aspect of my state. Being with child meant that I was no longer alone, even when I was asleep.

  At night, if Guido had gone to his room early, I would take off all my clothes and look at my body. My belly was extraordinary, a great shiny beach ball, the skin stretched so tight it glowed silver under the lamplight. I would stand sideways and push my stomach out, watching the undaunted curves of breast, belly, bottom, thigh. Someone should paint me, I thought, worship the magic of this female form. I'd run my hands all over me, like a lover. I imagined Guido doing that, and at night I lay on my back imagining his hands stroking me. Pathetic, said the voice, like a teenager. It had been five weeks since he'd touched me. I wanted him to hold me, put his head on my belly, feel the kicking and gurgling and the little thumps right near my hip bones. I wanted him to examine me like a doctor. He could take my pulse, stroke my screaming nipples, feel the heat that was agony sometimes under my ribs.

  But the way my body looked seemed to make him feel sick.

  Once, just before going to bed, I suddenly flung up my nightie and said, 'Look, look how round I am!'

  He shut his eyes with horror. At least that's how I saw it. A twitch started under his left eye.

  That night I dreamt there was a lake at the foot of my bed. A lake is a pool of trapped water, the voice told me in my dream.

  Do you live there? I asked.

  No, you do.

  Where?

  At the bottom.

  I was on a pebbly shore holding a little boy's hand. It was a summer afternoon, sweet as watermelon. We were playing hide and seek and then the dark came down, suddenly as a curtain, and the boy said, 'It's too late. The witch in the lake is coming.' We could hear her squelching towards us with eels in her boots and her seaweed hair. Her eyes were blank like dead starfish. She was groping around, her head moving from side to side. 'She's blind,' said my little boy but I could see her sniffing the air. She could smell us, eat us. Nearer, nearer she came, and we couldn't outrun her. I just stood there, staring. Every time I tried to move, my feet sank further under the sand.

  'A lake is a pool of trapped water,' I told my boy. But he wasn't listening. He took off his hat and pulled a rabbit out of it. The animal was dead, its fur smeared with blood. Just as the witch reached us, stepping on my foot, the little boy threw the rabbit right at her face.

  'Run for it!' he cried and when he grabbed my hand my feet came out of the sand, pop! like the cork coming out of champagne. When I looked back the witch was devouring the animal. She wasn't even looking after us.

  'It worked!' I told the boy. 'Your trick worked.'

  I woke up laughing with my mouth wide open, and such a feeling of victory that I could have bounced out of bed and done ten star jumps. Well, maybe one. I lay there breathless, looking around the room, wishing I could tell someone what had happened.

  We were married in our back garden by a celebrant with false eyelashes. She was a slight, wispy blonde, a watercolour figure in need of an outline. Too much like me. When I saw her in the garden, pale against the bright sky, I wished someone more solid was marrying us. She could have been a mirage, twinkling far away on a boiling horizon. It was hard not to peer at her eyelashes, the only stand-out thing about her.

  Maria said she couldn't stop looking either, that false eyelashes were so sixties, and didn't it look like she had centipedes on her eyes? At least she had lashes, I said, thinking of my own. Maria laughed – imagine what a fright your husband would get when you took them off !

  Husband.

  'Do you take this man to have and to hold?' asked the celebrant.

  'YES!' I shouted.

  It was a shining day. Guido looked like a prince in his bow tie and silk suit. After the ceremony, when he had to kiss my mother, he leant forward from the waist, his hands clamped to his sides. He was as stiff as royalty. When he'd finished smiling at people his mouth turned down too quickly. He must be nervous, Maria said. Imagine what it would be like, meeting all these new people, a new world, such an event and so far from home! She looked a bit nervous herself and drank far too much wine. Her paisley dress was so low cut that when she bent down to fix her sling-back, her left breast fell out. Her nipple was chocolate brown. Maria didn't believe in bras, she said they gave you cancer. She'd burned hers at a demonstration at Martin Place.

  We only invited a few people to our wedding – Maria, Joanna and her family, my parents, some neighbours. I had wanted to ask the celebrant to stay for the reception, as she'd been so friendly and interested in our future plans. She'd even offered to help with Guido's application for permanent residency. But Guido had advised against it. 'That one asks too many questions,' he said. 'Is a private thing, our marriage, and my residency is none of 'er business. She is like a government spy, always asking about this thing.' Guido stood near the pool for most of the reception, smoking. 'How long will they stay . . .?' he asked me in a whisper. 'I want you all to myself.'

  The photo I have of me from that day is the only one I've ever liked. It was taken right after he said that. I am almost bursting out of my skin, my face so shiny with expectation, like my belly. I am looking up at my new husband, fluorescent with happiness.

  We didn't go away for a honeymoon. I felt too huge and we had no money. After the wedding we collapsed together onto my bed. It was such a relief to lie down, my head on Guido's chest. I wanted to ask him how he felt about being a Husband, was he happy, did he love me more than moonlight, did he feel strange with this new family, was he sad about his own, why was he so stiff during the wedding, what was he going to do with me now that he 'had me all to himself '?

  But he was asleep.

  'Do you want to show me what you're writing?' I asked every few days.

  'No, not yet. I am still experimenting. I'm reading Leopardi again from the beginning, Dante, the old masters. I want to create a new way of seeing. The phoenix is an interesting symbol, more resonant than angels, una creatura rising up from the dead, born again from the ashes . . .'

  'But maybe you want to think aloud, you know, use me as a sounding board.'

  He didn't, so sometimes I wrote my own poems on the typewriter when I couldn't sleep. I thought if I showed him mine, he might show me his. But he never commented.

  When the certificate of permanent residency came, Guido put it in his desk drawer. Every now and then I would take it out, when he wasn't home, and look at it. I liked to look at his printed name. He was officially real. To me this piece of paper was more like a birth certificate than anything else; it seemed to cancel out his past, signal a beginning.

  We joined a new library (on the card was printed Mrs Rachel Leopardi!) with an especially good foreign languages section, and when Guido borrowed poetry books I took out books on Italy – its history, art, cooking, culture. I read Italian novels where men threw their arms around women, cried with love, rage, lust, grief. These men adored their mothers, sat at the head of
huge tables noisy with relatives, talked and laughed with abandon. In the movies they made love to their women in fields and ruins, overcome with passion, so Latin and intense were they. Are you really Italian? I wanted to ask Guido.

  'Why aren't you like any of the Italians in the movies?' I did ask. The question blurted out of my mouth like a burp.

  'Uffa, Rachel, can you only think in cartoons? Is a cliché, this idea of the Latin lover. I am NOT a cliché! What is it you want? I married you, didn't I?'

  I was mute. Struck dumb, sniggered the voice.

  Guido looked hurt. Bewildered. He was sitting at the kitchen table, looking straight at me. The winter sun shone in through the window, gilding the fine hairs on his arm.

  Chapter 12

  The baby came late, at nine months and two weeks, in the middle of the afternoon. When my waters broke the pain took my breath away. I was standing in the shower, looking at the drops of blood joining up like dots near my feet, making swirly lines that disappeared into the hole in the floor.

  I wobbled out into the hall, holding a blue towel between my legs. Guido paled. He said nothing while he went to get the bag I'd packed as instructed by the hospital, with my nightie and dressing-gown inside. He put another towel down on the seat in the car.

  Guido stayed with me throughout the labour: eighteen hours and fourteen minutes. He held my hand, breathed with me, paced the room. In the long pause between contractions we lay on the bed together, quiet. He giggled a lot, which was unusual and rather nice. I thought it was the tension until I realised that he was using the gas they gave me. He liked it much more than I did and found it hard to give up when the doctor finally came into the room and said I wasn't going to have this baby naturally, because it was stuck.

  Typical, said the voice, you're incapable of doing it the natural way like a real woman. I waved brightly at Guido as they wheeled me down the corridor towards theatre. 'Non morire,' he whispered. Don't die.

  'It's a girl!' the nurse announced. She sounded as surprised as I was.