Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Alexei almost dropped the cigarette he had just lit. Makarov. His father. Sylvie Kowalska and his father. He thought back rapidly. There was no way Sylvie could have discovered the name Makarov from his uncle. They had held it secret between them, a talisman of the past. No, Sylvie Kowalska had been with his father. She had been in Lublin, his birthplace. His imagination proliferated scenes, images, the possible trajectories of a romance leading to him. Now that he had the proof in his hands, he didn’t know what to do with it.

  ‘Yes, they are troubling images, are they not, Mr. Gismondi?’ Jacob’s voice reached him as if from a great distance.

  Alexei nodded, ‘Very.’ He closed the folder, focussed on Jacob Jardine. How could he ask this man who had opened his house to him, this man who looked at him with kindly eyes, if he knew of an illicit affair his wife might have had with a certain Ivan Makarov. One couldn’t do things like that. He imagined himself in Jacob’s place, tasted the anger he would feel, the cold fingers of betrayal, the confusion at having to confront the living product of a secret infidelity. ‘Very,’ Alexei repeated slowly. ‘Perhaps you might let me look at them again sometime. But I’ve now taken up quite enough of your time.’ He rose. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

  ‘Oh it’s nothing, Mr. Gismondi. A friend of my daughters is always welcome,’ Jacob surveyed him and smiled. ‘I hope we’ll see you in Boston. If you are a lover of art, then the Sachs Collection will interest you.’

  Alexei bowed.

  *******************

  The Thomas Sachs House thronged with people and life. Excitement and champagne bubbled. The thrill of seeing and being seen. Everyone was there. The Beacon Hill and Park Avenue dignitaries looking like a restrained tableau from Vogue. The Bucks County rich with their exuberant voices and equally exuberant diamonds. The city and state officials. Even the artists had come, some languorous, some dashing, some plainly bored. Had come out of homage to Katherine or out of curiosity. And the journalists and critics were there to report on it all with their cutting superiority or their tittle tattle wit.

  It was, Katherine thought, as she walked through what had been Thomas’s spacious reception rooms, the study, the library, a success, an enormous success. She smiled, greeted people, accepted congratulations. Some of them, she saw were even looking at the collection, particularly the students and school groups to whom she had extended invitations. She thought of Thomas, hoped that he would have been pleased. She felt at once exhausted and jubilant.

  There was only one person missing. One person she hadn’t seen. An ache bolted through her, making her smile stiff. Alexei Gismondi. He wasn’t there. She didn’t have time to examine the lack which opened up in her in the midst of small talk and kisses. But it was there. Palpable.

  By nine o’clock the rooms, as well as the champagne bottles, were beginning to empty. Replete with congratulations, Katherine strolled through the galleries to where she hoped she might find Jacob and Natalie. There they were in the study.

  And there beside them was Alexei, tall, intent, listening to her father. Her pulse raced.

  ‘Isn’t it all too exciting, mommy,’ Natalie saw her first. ‘And look who’s arrived. It’s Alexei. I introduced him to Gramps, but it seems they’ve already met. Gramps has invited him to join us for dinner,’ Natalie’s tone was triumphant.

  So there it was, Katherine thought. All neatly taken care of. Quite out of her hands. She patted Natalie’s shoulder, ‘That’s wonderful, hon.’

  Natalie stole a glance at her mother. ‘You’re not upset, about Alexei joining us?’

  ‘No, why should I be, hon? I’m pleased,’ Katherine smiled, embraced her father, paused for a moment, before taking Alexei’s hand. ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ she said quietly. She was struck again by the magnetic force of his dark good looks, that sense of a textured past he gave off, of buried secrets. She was also suddenly acutely aware of the way her trim new suit hugged her body.

  ‘I’ve invited Mr. Gismondi to join us for dinner, Kat. It seems that apart from his passion for St Loup, he has an interest in psychoanalysis.’ Jacob turned to Alexei, laughed. ‘That won’t please my daughter, Mr. Gismondi. If you’ve spoken to her at all, you’ll know that she has an undying contempt for matters psychoanalytical. And whatever we say, she will argue us under the table.’

  ‘Mommie doesn’t argue, Gramps. She just looks at you disapprovingly,’ Natalie’s clear voice burst in.

  Katherine flushed, ‘There you have it, Alexei. All the family secrets out on the table at once. It’s common practice in New York households.’

  The intense blue light of his eyes washed over her. ‘I’m certain there are still a few secrets to discover.’

  Jacob chuckled, ‘Without secrets, I would be out of a job.’

  ‘What secrets?’ Nora Harper came up to them.

  ‘The naughty kind,’ Jacob teased her, greeted her.

  Katherine watched her friend carefully as she shook Alexei’s hand. She had forgotten she was meant to be joining them for dinner. She drew Alexei’s attention back to herself, asked him what he thought of Thomas’s collection. As she spoke, Katherine suddenly felt absurdly young. She had no ready responses for this situation. She met Alexei’s eyes, held them, read their desire. Yes, it was there. She felt its response in herself. And yet there they were in front of her father, her daughter. And still that flame kindling between them.

  By the time they reached the seafood restaurant in Boston’s old quarter, Jacob Jardine had reaffirmed the lightning assessment he had made of Alexei the first time he had met him in his consulting room. He approved of this young man who stood a good head taller than him, approved of him not only for himself but for his daughter. This Gismondi had both a directness and a refinement about him. And yes, something else, Jacob thought. He was not unlike Katherine. Too much energy kept under a tight leash.

  He looked at his daughter. She was radiant tonight. Somehow altered. Perhaps the opening of the House would mark a change in her. Perhaps, he stole a look at Alexei. Perhaps it was this young man. He should contrive to leave them together. Soon.

  Despite Jacob’s earlier warning, dinner arranged itself around the menu of psychoanalysis. The delicately spiced seafood cocktail was served with Freud and the importance of the father. With the lobster came the primacy of the mother for Melanie Klein. Chocolate mousse inspired an argument on Lacan, language and the symbolic sphere. Natalie piped in at one point, ‘I don’t know what you’re all talking about, but I know I think fathers are important, and mommy thinks mothers are important and Gramps never stops talking, so he must be on the side of language.’

  Jacob burst into laughter. Katherine, upset, smoothed Natalie’s hair back from her face with a caressing gesture. Natalie moved away from her, ‘What do you think, Alexei.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m quite old enough to know. Or maybe too old,’ he smiled at her. His gaze shifted to Katherine. ‘I’m sure your mother is very important.’

  Katherine’s hands trembled. She excused herself from the table. Nora followed her. ‘So who’s going to go off with the delicious Alexei? Is it you or me?’ she asked as soon as the door of the powder room closed behind them.

  Katherine looked at her in astonishment. ‘Why I hadn’t thought,’ she murmured. And then, she thrust away her customary evasions. ‘Me, I hope.’ she said.

  Nora laughed a little coldly, ‘I never thought I’d hear you say it.’

  But when they got back to the table, they heard to their surprise that Alexei was leaving.

  ‘I must catch the last plane back to New York, I’m afraid. I’m sorry. It’s been a pleasure.’ He shook Jacob’s hand, Natalie’s, Nora’s. He paused in front of Katherine, held those long slender fingers tensed within his. He read the pain, the confusion in her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured again. ‘I must go.’

  She averted her face. ‘In New York then,’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes, yes. Yes, Katherine,’ he squeezed her
hand, smiled sadly. He shouldn’t have come, he thought. It was getting worse. He had to go. To escape.

  She returned his smile, watched him leave, aware only of his receding form and the longing which coursed through her.

  The next evening, Katherine was back home in New York. She tucked Natalie in, wandered through the house, at a loss as to what to do. She couldn’t settle to anything. What was happening to her? Almost, she picked up the phone to ring Alexei’s hotel. But no, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t pursue him. How bizarre that her life should have turned topsy turvy in the space of a mere two weeks. It was madness. Did she only feel this way because all the energy she had put into Thomas’s house now had no channel? Yes, Katherine thought. That was part of it.

  But not all of it. No. There had been that kiss.

  She went to bed and tried to sleep. She wasn’t sure if she dreamt or thought, but her life suddenly appeared to her as a long, coiling tunnel, pierced only by the occasional light. Sylvie, gigantic, monstrous, stood at one end pushing her, forcing her to enter it, to go underground. It was hard to breathe in the tunnel. Lianas clutched at one, mud clung to her feet. But now the tunnel was growing smaller, Katherine larger. She was too big for it. She stood close to its end. Yes, she could see it, see the end. Another few turns, another few feet. A blaze of light. Bright. Obliterating that shadowy coil. All she had to do was reach out, pull herself through. Squeeze.

  She woke, dazed but smiling.

  As she was coming out of the shower, she heard the bell. A messenger. A vast bouquet. Her heart sang. Alexei. It could only be from him. She buried her head in the proliferation of spring blooms, hummed to herself. It was all right. She would see him, see him tonight. She hugged the flowers to her, then unwrapped them carefully. A small box fell from the bouquet and a note.

  Katherine tore open the note. It was in Italian. Her hands trembled as she read. ‘Mia cara,’ my darling, he said. Her eyes sped over the words. Then, her face grew pale.

  He was gone. Gone back to Rome. Disappointment spread through her, so tangible that she could smell it in the room above the scent of the flowers.

  The box. She had forgotten the small velvet box. She opened it clumsily. A ring. Finely crafted. An emerald in an antique setting of white gold. She stared. Felt herself grow cold. Sylvie’s ring. No. It wasn’t possible. She examined the band. Initials leapt out at her, untarnished by time. S.K. Her mother’s ring. It dropped from her fingers. The ring Jacob had given her mother. The ring Katherine had been accused of stealing, time and again. The ring which had signalled her own unjust punishment, anger, shame. Sylvie’s ring.

  She looked at the ring for a long time.

  How had Alexei Gismondi come to have Sylvie Kowalska’s ring?

  Why had he sent it to her and gone?

  ‘Try to understand,’ his note had said. What was it that she was intended to understand?

  He had come for Sylvie’s portrait. She mustn’t forget that. She, herself, was incidental. An aside. A moment’s company in a foreign city. But he had sent her Sylvie’s ring. The ring, she now dimly remembered which had never been found amidst her mother’s jewellry.

  Sylvie’s web. Her mother’s web reaching out to trap her now after all these years.

  Katherine sat there for she didn’t know how long. She thought of Sylvie. Thought of Alexei. Sobs overtook her.

  Then with a sense of foreboding, she reached for the telephone. She dialled the number of Alexei’s hotel.

  ‘Mr. Gismondi has checked out,’ a cheerful voice told her.

  ‘Has he left a forwarding address?’ Katherine asked. Her hand was trembling.

  ‘One moment please,’ the voice ever cheerful disappeared.

  Katherine waited, her knuckles growing white around the telephone.

  ‘He has returned to Rome.’ The woman awkwardly spelled out an address.

  ‘Thank you,’ Katherine said bleakly.

  A fist clutched at her entrails. She rose painfully, looked out the window at the quiet street. Then she went up to Natalie’s room.

  ‘Pack your bags, hon,’ Katherine said with seeming gaiety. ‘We’re going on a trip. We’re going to Rome.’

  Natalie looked at her as if an angel had suddenly materialised from a vaporous sky.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Five

  __________

  ∞

  Rome. A blaze of light. Sculptured fountains. Secret lanes. Majestic squares. Mouldering fresco. The breath of the past. And everywhere people, faces animated, horns blazing.

  And Natalie chattering. Chattering with unstoppable excitement. Hugging her. Squeezing her hand. In love with Rome.

  Katherine could no longer recapture the emotions that had kept her away.

  They checked in at the Villa Medici on the Piazza Trinità dei Monti, ate in the resplendent rooftop restaurant, gazed at the city spread before them.

  Then Katherine positioned herself at the telephone. She took a deep breath. Dialled the Contessa’s number, asked for her, identified herself. Waited an interminable moment before a crackling but still familiar voice came to the telephone, heard the woman’s rush of elation, the insistence that they come straight away, the chauffeur would be sent.

  Katherine said they would drive down the next day. She gave Natalie, the receiver, watched her daughter’s face. The shyness. Then the pleasure. She wondered for the second time that day why it was that she had stayed away for so long.

  The next call was more difficult to make. Alexei. What would she say? What could she say in front of Natalie? She decided to wait until the evening.

  They went for a walk instead, meandering down the Spanish Steps, through the maze of small streets which lay at their base. Without quite knowing how they had got there, Katherine realised they were passing in front of the club where she had last seen Carlo. She shivered involuntarily and then forced herself to look at it in the clear afternoon light. Look at herself too. In a gleaming window her reflection confronted her. No, not the Katherine of old. A frightened child, fearful of her desires, afraid to face them, afraid to face her dependency on the man who had aroused them, as terrified of his rejection as she was terrified of the need. Needing to control both and to be punished, abased by both. Trapped.

  It was hard now to locate that Katherine anymore. When had she disappeared? Perhaps only gradually. Perhaps only and finally when she had decided to come here. To come back to Rome. To find a man she barely knew but sensed she needed to know, regardless of the consequences.

  Katherine looked at her reflection. Une femme d’un certain âge, the French would say euphemistically. Not in her first youth, but formed. The sun gave her hair a copper glow. Deep set eyes wide in a face more finely honed now. A pale peach dress which swayed and clung in the breeze. At her side a young girl, dark-eyed, eager.

  No. She was no longer the Katherine of a decade ago.

  ‘This is where I last saw your father,’ Katherine found herself saying.

  ‘What was he doing?’ Natalie asked.

  Katherine laughed. ‘He was enjoying himself. Gambling. At a roulette table.’ The words formed without too much difficulty.

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘A little wild. Attractive. Not unlike you.’ she paused, ‘I thought he was very handsome,’ she said with slow emphasis.

  Natalie flashed her a quizzical look. ‘And so you made a beautiful couple,’ she said after a moment, in her best magazine reader’s voice. ‘I’m glad you’ve come here with me, mommy,’ she added.

  ‘So am I,’ Katherine placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘Come, we’ll go and see what the house looks like.’

  She brought Natalie to the house near the Capitol where she had spent her first years, pointed out in great detail the trajectory of her walks, told her about her first nannies. She also told her, as they ate ice cream in the Piazza Navona, how Carlo had idolized his little Natalie, had eyes and ears and arms only for her. Natalie cried. As Katherine emb
raced her, she suddenly thought of Jacob, thought he might be just a little proud of her. She wondered, too, how it was that she who had been so attached to her own father could have denied Natalie’s need for so long.

  The Roman light had somehow simplified things, given them clear, hard edges. Rid memories, which stole up on one like vengeful shadows, of their force.

  From the lobby of the hotel that evening, she rang the number she had found for Alexei Gismondi. A woman’s voice. Katherine swallowed hard, took her courage in hand, asked for him. Learned that Signor Gismondi was not in Rome, would not be for another day or two at least. She didn’t leave a message. Couldn’t bring herself to wait for a call that might not come.

  The next day they drove the ninety kilometres to the Palazzo Buonaterra. Natalie, now, was in a tizzy of nerves. ‘What will I say to her? I’ve never met a Contessa,’ she twisted the strands of her hair and looked beseechingly at Katherine.

  Katherine laughed, ‘You’ve met a Principessa and you had no trouble finding words with her.’

  ‘But that’s different,’ Natalie moaned.

  Katherine stilled her, forced her to look at hills, trees, flowers, the blue Mediterranean in the distance. Natalie’s anxiety obliterated her own. She felt calm. What was the Contessa but a lonely old woman who wanted to see her only granddaughter. Not an ogre, not Carlo’s hungry, invasive shadow, a role that her own heated imagination had attributed to her.

  And so it proved. The Palazzo was as grand a baroque pile as it had ever been, the fountains and gardens as impressive as they had been of old. But the Contessa who inhabited them in the shelter of her countless servants, was a small shrunken woman whose eyes filled with tears as soon as she spied Natalie.

  ‘Que bella. Bellissima.’ she put her hands on Natalie’s cheeks and kissed her. She kissed Katherine, too, but her gaze was only for her granddaughter. For her too the careful English, the long walk through every nook and cranny of the Palazzo, which ended in a room the Contessa proudly designated as Natalie’s, a room crammed with dolls and toys and books. As if the Contessa had amassed objects for every year of Natalie’s life during which she had not been visited. For Natalie, too, the many-flavoured gelati in the garden, the gambolling puppies.