Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘For the servants. Someone needs to be satisfied.’ A harsh voice, filled with repugnance.

  Katherine saw red liquid oozing across the bed.

  Before she could say anything, he was gone.

  But it was then that she understood. A hysterical laugh rose to her throat. A virgin. She wasn’t a virgin. It was too ridiculous. They were in the second half of the twentieth century and the man she had married was distressed because she wasn’t a virgin. What difference could it make? He had never spoken to her about it. Never mentioned it. Never breathed a word. She reflected on the course of their relationship, saw for a moment how he might have thought she was a complete innocent. But it was too silly. Absurd. Tomorrow she would explain to him. Tell him how it had no meaning. There was no other man in her life. No men. They would laugh about it.

  But from the recesses of her mind stories tumbled forth, feudal stories which ravaged her dreams. About the rights of Italian noblemen, the droit de seigneur, the land rights to virgins. About unclean women, booted, eschewed, burnt. About the magical chastity of the Madonna, the universal mother, redemptive, sacred.

  She woke, frightened, not realising she had slept, to the noise of a knock. Sun slashed through the shutters making a cell of the bed. ‘Signora,’ she leapt up at the sound of the maid’s voice, told her to come in, but rushed to hide in the bathroom. Her face in the mirror was bruised, uncanny. The woman called to her through the door. She had brought breakfast and a message from Signor Negri. He had had to go to the mainland. He would be back this evening.

  Katherine ran the bath. Waited until she was sure she had gone.

  So Carlo had fled. She shivered.

  The shutters had been thrown open to the glistening blue of sky and sea. A table perfectly set for breakfast with white linen, a silver coffee jug. The bed, too, had been changed, sparkled white. That hysterical laugh rose to her throat again and choked her. Perhaps the tell-tale sheet would be hung outside the Castello, proof of the master’s virility. She had heard of that custom.

  Proof too of his wife’s purity.

  With a shaky hand, Katherine downed cup after cup of coffee. She had to pull herself together. She would swim, sun-bathe, walk around the island. It would calm her, prepare her for Carlo.

  She tried to cover her bruises with make-up, donned vast sun-glasses, a bikini, shorts. The island was tiny, no more than three miles in diameter. From the castello the sea was visible all around her. A scattering of small houses clustered around the pier. She walked away from them, clambered over rocks, came across a stretch of vineyard and then on a promontory at the furthest tip of the island lay down to purge herself in the sun’s rays.

  When she woke, the sun was low on the horizon. In the distance she could see Carlo’s yacht already moored. She had a sudden wish to run in the opposite direction. But there was only the sea. She scrambled down the precipice and dived off a rock into the crystalline water. So cool. She swam until she had no breath left and then struggled up rocks to where she had left her things. A rustle woke her to another presence. She looked up to the promontory.

  Carlo, his eyes on her. She waved, called his name. He turned his back on her, walked away.

  The maid came to tell her dinner was ready. At last, she would be able to talk to him. She gave a final brush to her hair, adjusted the strap of her muslin dress, looked at her face. There was nothing more she could do about the bruises.

  He was standing, white suited, severe, on the vine-covered terrace. ‘Ah, Katrina. There you are. I trust you have had a good day.’ His voice was even, formal. His eyes didn’t meet hers. She saw the old retainer who had welcomed them yesterday, placing some dishes on the table.

  ‘Thank you, yes,’ she said matching his tone.

  ‘You swam?’ his gaze flickered.

  She nodded. ‘I thought you had seen me.’

  He didn’t answer, stared out at the sea. ‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked politely.

  She wanted to put her arm on his shoulder. Force him to acknowledge her fully. He looked so brooding, so handsome. Despite herself, a tremor of remembered passion, coursed through her.

  ‘Carlo,’ her voice cracked.

  ‘Some wine, perhaps a gin?’

  ‘Wine,’ she murmured.

  ‘Un poco di vino bianco, Rudolfo.’

  When the servant had left them, he turned away from her completely. Didn’t speak.

  ‘Carlo,’ she tried again. ‘We must talk. Please.’

  ‘Talk, Katrina? Words have such fluid meanings. They don’t change facts.’

  ‘Facts. What facts?’ her voice rose. ‘You don’t understand anything.’

  ‘Katrina, this is hardly the moment,’ he said sternly. A second later, Rodolfo was upon them, bearing a tray, large globes of chilled wine.

  The servants, Katherine thought. Never in front of the servants. She sat through a dinner which seemed to go on interminably. Carlo ceased to speak to her as soon as they were alone.

  She tried once more to engage him when the zabaglione had been served. ‘Please, Carlo, listen to me.’

  He looked at her reflectively, his gaze straying over her bruised face, her bare shoulders, her bosom.

  ‘Later, Katrina.’

  But there was no later. He didn’t come to her that night. Or the next. Or the next. Though that morning, he walked into her room early, waking her. He looked at her coldly. Then without speaking, he rumpled the sheets on his side of the bed, tossed a pillow. The laugh rose to her throat again. ‘Don’t tell me, the servants will be suspicious,’ she mumbled.

  He left without saying a word.

  During the days, he vanished. And each dinner was a repetition of the first, but with an added tenseness, an increase in forced politeness so that Katherine began to feel that tone might totally usurp the possibility of any other. They were meant to stay here three weeks, three weeks of glorious honeymoon isolation before the boat was intended to cruise them to a variety of coastal spots. She couldn’t bear it any longer.

  On Sunday she took her courage in her hands and after the lights in the house were out went in search of his room. She walked in without knocking and he leapt up from the chair where he had been sitting. Newspapers were sprawled on the table. A bottle of whiskey, half drunk.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he looked at her threateningly.

  ‘I… I couldn’t sleep,’ Katherine shivered, put her arms around her chest. She hadn’t prepared her lines and confronted by him, she didn’t know where to begin.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep?’ sarcasm whipped at her. ‘Couldn’t sleep. Perhaps you need a little injection of male for a sleeping tablet. Is that it? And there’s only me here to provide it.’ The ferocity of his eyes scared her.

  ‘It’s not like that Carlo. You don’t understand.’

  ‘Don’t understand?’ He took her by the arms and shook her so that her hair tumbled over her face. She could smell the whiskey on his breath. ‘Don’t understand that I married a liar. A slip of a girl who tricked me into believing she was pure.’ His fingers dug into her painfully. ‘Who kept me at bay for a year, two, while she was having it off with others. And then cheated me into marriage. Marriage which is a sacrament.’ He slapped her, hard across the face.

  Tears leapt into her eyes. ‘No, Carlo, no. It’s not like that.’ But the depth of his rage made her mute, helpless, like a child. Words wouldn’t come. She turned away from him, made for the door. He dragged her back. Lifted her chin so that she had to confront the fury in his eyes.

  ‘Why did you do it? Was it for money?’ He spat the word at her. ‘The Buonaterra fortune. Eh? Like a whore. For money.’

  ‘I loved you, Carlo,’ she said softly, the tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Love?’ the word seemed to fuel his wrath. ‘There is no love with whores. Only this.’ He flung her down on the bed and with one swift gesture loosed his trousers. ‘And this is what you have come for.’ With a scowl, he tore off her panties and lun
ged into her, his hands kneading her breasts, his breath at her ear, a savage chant to the cadence of his thrusts, ‘Liar, liar, cheat, liar, liar, cheat.’

  Despite herself, despite the tears, she came to his rhythm in great bounding waves. Afterwards, he looked at her as if she were a piece of refuse the sea had washed up. He left the room abruptly.

  Katherine sobbed. She felt dirty, defiled, degraded - all those words whose meaning she had never fathomed. And lost. So lost. He hadn’t even kissed her. There had been no tenderness, no caress. And yet she had responded. Responded tumultuously.

  The next day, she didn’t leave her room. Told the maid she was feeling ill. Which was, somehow, the truth. She gazed out of the window, wishing there was someone she could talk to, go to. But she was a prisoner. A prisoner in a fairy-tale partly of her own making. And a grim tale it had become. The pun startled her, made her think of Portia with her ‘happily ever after’. But she couldn’t have told Portia about any of this. It was too demeaning. She wouldn’t have understood.

  The maid brought her lunch, dinner, was kind. Katherine decided to stay in her room for another day. She couldn’t face Carlo. She saw his boat leaving, returning. If only she could go, on one of those little fishing boats. And never come back.

  He came to her room after dinner, just as she was scheming means of escape.

  ‘I’m told your ill,’ he said. He looked tired, his eyes bleak. ‘Shall I call a doctor?’

  She shook her head. Tried to find her tongue, her courage. ‘Carlo, I should like to go. Leave here.’

  He gazed at her as if she were deranged. He paced the room, back and forth, back and forth as if he too were a prisoner in a cell. ‘Ah no, my little Katrina,’ he said at last. ‘It is enough that I know my shame. We will not tell the world. A man and his wife have their honeymoon. The time has already been prescribed. We will not change it.’

  ‘I will go mad,’ she said softly.

  ‘Madness doesn’t come so easily,’ he refuted her. The sardonic expression she had not seen for what seemed like years settled on his face. It reminded her of better days, of London. She took her chance.

  ‘Carlo, it’s not how you think. What you say about me. There was only ever one other man. A long time ago. It wasn’t important.’ She blurted it out.

  ‘Not important. A long time ago.’ He laughed harshly. ‘You see, you talk like a whore.’

  He had trapped her again. They were talking two different languages, two different value systems.

  ‘And why should I believe you. I don’t believe you.’ He took her hand, ran his fingers up her bare arm, touched her lips. She trembled. ‘You see, you like it too much. You couldn’t have waited a long time. Not like a good little girl, not like a wife,’ he spat out the word. ‘But like a whore.’

  ‘Only with you Carlo. I like it only with you.’

  ‘That’s what all the whores are taught to say.’

  Again that trap. She was not a person, with her own history. But a category. One of two categories. A wife or a whore. A virgin or a slut.

  ‘Shall I prove to you again what a whore you are?’ His hand on her arm caught her by surprise. Roughly, he stripped her robe from her so that she stood naked before him. Ruthless fingers played over her body, circled her nipples, while all the time cold eyes watched. She caught her breath, steeling herself, but his mouth came down on hers fiercely, punishing her. She gasped.

  ‘You see?’ a pitiless laugh. He switched off the light, tumbled her on to the bed.

  That night he made love to her - though in retrospect she knew that would not have been the name the romances gave it - in a variety of postures which wrenched her body. Each time, as the climax neared, that voice rasped triumphantly in her ear, ‘Puta, puta, puta,’ and then the waves bursting on her.

  He left her at dawn.

  She didn’t sleep. She bathed, looked at her whore’s limbs, waited for the sounds in the house. As soon as she heard them, she dressed. A bikini, a sun frock, a broad brimmed straw hat. She went down to the terrace, had some coffee, waited for him to leave the house.

  Sure enough, around nine, he made his way down the steps to the little pier. She raced after him. ‘I’m coming with you today,’ she said.

  Astonishment spread over his features. And then he mumbled, ‘Suit yourself.’

  She perched on the deck of the yacht, the sea spray fresh on her face. Watched the island recede with a sense of jubilation. He didn’t speak to her, but he whistled tunelessly as he steered. She recognized that concentration in him. Like when he was driving.

  A little glimmer of hope pulled at her. The old Carlo was still there. Perhaps, perhaps, he would see her again as she had been before, as she was.

  They moored at Baia on the pretty little Bay of Pozzuoli. He suggested a drink at a beachside terrace. She felt like whooping at the normality of it, as if she had just awoken to find that the past days had been a dream. She dared to touch his arm. But he pulled away, frowned. At the café, he was polite, formally solicitous, aware of the eyes on them. Then he left her, saying he would meet her back at the beach around four.

  She watched him, that tall, handsome man, with the indolent stride whom she now had to call her husband. She wondered whether she should try to find a bus, flee. She imagined herself returning to London, to her friends. To New York and Jacob. They seemed further away than another planet.

  She strolled, visited the Temple of Mercury, the ancient Roman baths, nibbled a roll. Then she went down to the beach, swam, stretched out. Men pursued her like wasps. It was as if they could smell the sex on her. One, particularly persistent, settled himself next to her, talked at the wind. She sat up once, twice and again to tell him to leave her alone. It was then that Carlo chose to reappear.

  ‘Put on your dress,’ he said brusquely, thrusting it at her. He took her arm and half pushed, half pulled her towards the yacht. His eyes blazed, but he said nothing more, not on the boat, not at dinner.

  But later, much later, he came to her room. ‘So now we know why you wanted to come with me. One isn’t quite enough for women like you, is it? You need two, three.’ She smelled the whiff of his excitement, knew, with a sudden deadly realisation that there was no point arguing. ‘Why pay for a whore, when I have one right here?’ He gripped her shoulders, pushed her down, down to her knees. ‘Here,’ he thrust his burgeoning penis in her face. She took him, gently in her hands, wondered at the rush of breath which escaped him. He wound his hand round hers, rubbed, again and again. His eyes were wild. Then, he pushed himself into her mouth, gasped. She thought she would choke. But he forced her movements. In, out, in, out until he heaved into her with a great groan.

  She cried.

  He kissed her then, almost tenderly. Almost conciliatory, as if the humiliation had gone too far. ‘Only half a whore,’ he murmured. He lifted her onto the bed, trailed his fingers over her body so that she shuddered, tucked her in. ‘Sleep well,’ he said. And then bent to her ear, ‘We shall have to teach you to use your tongue.’

  Their life took on a rhythm. When she saw him by day, he was formally punctilious, opening doors for her, pushing in her chair, offering her drinks. But there was never any real exchange, only stilted conversation. At night he came to her, usually in the dark and they performed their rites, rites punctuated by the cry of whore at the apogee of their pleasure. She felt humiliation, pain and ecstasy all at once, so that the two became indistinguishable.

  She also felt trapped. But it was the trap of an addiction, so though she thought desultorily of leaving, she knew she couldn’t, wouldn’t. Sometimes, she sensed, it was the same for him.

  By day she grew increasingly depressed. They didn’t leave the island after three weeks. He suggested casually that it would be better if they spent the rest of the summer here. She knew there would be no point arguing. She didn’t even know any longer whether she wanted to go.

  She began to have dreams, by day when she lay in the sun, as well as by night. In th
em she was always a child. A child who couldn’t speak. Mute. Trapped without words. No one understood her. No one listened. They punished her. Punished her for sins she hadn’t committed. Slapped her. Called her names. Liar, liar, cheat, whore.

  The dreams frightened her.

  At last the time came to go back to Rome. They moved into an old Palazzo, not far from the Capitol. It had been divided into two gigantic apartments. Ornate wainscotting and parading nymphs curved round a vast staircase. But their floor had been scrubbed bare, whitewashed. There was only the minimum of furniture.

  ‘I thought, all those months ago, that you might want to have a hand in the decor,’ Carlo murmured to her as a maid fluttered over their arrival.

  But Katherine had little energy for it. There was an endless round of visits to make, family, people to be met, and regular trips to the Buonaterra estate so that la Contessa could see her only and favourite son and her new daughter-in-law. Katherine felt she was drowning.

  She went to see Maria Novona.

  ‘How beautiful you look, Katherine. Carlo must be making you very happy.’

  Katherine gazed into the gilded mirror over the fireplace and saw herself through another’s eyes. It was true, she thought, with a sinking heart. She looked beautiful, bronzed face, shining hair, eyes tinged with a new meaning, an expression she couldn’t recognize. Her body betraying her, once again.

  She left, more distressed than when she had arrived.

  Carlo, their formal social life apart, was rarely around. He never told her where he was going. There were no nights out in clubs, none of those wondrous drives and expeditions which had marked their courtship. He even began to stay away some nights. When he did, she missed him terribly. An addict without her drug. And she felt even more deeply humiliated. The drug didn’t have the same potency for him.

  But her mind cleared a little.

  One day, she went into his room as he was dressing. Carlo with his indolent grace knotting a tie before his reflected image.

  She perched on a chair. ‘I want to go back to America,’ she said bluntly.