She returned nervously to standing in her doorway, wondering how to handle this. Her policy with Luca, her rigorous detachment, had been thrown into disarray since it became clear that Francesca’s condition was terminal. It had made detachment look like something else, something that was really about her and not about him. It had subverted the whole situation. So she stood nervously, wondering what the urgency was, and was taken completely by surprise when Luca ran at her. He didn’t speak but came right at her, banging the door behind him with one arm and moving fluidly to encircle her waist, still moving forward, so that she was lifted, almost lifted off her feet, struggling to keep contact with the floor as she was pushed backwards. He almost knocked her over; he was still pushing forward and almost lost his balance and she began to lose her own balance, tipping back, but then before they could fall she hit the wall hard and came to rest against it, and pushed herself upright again. Before she could move away from him Luca was in front of her, opening his legs and pressing himself into her, and then he was kissing her, hungry and certain.
“And you — you kissed him back?” Dr. Christos looked appropriately disappointed. That was good. She needed him to be horrified.
“We kissed. Well, he did the kissing and I did the being-kissed part.”
“Oh, come on. There isn’t any being-kissed part.”
“We had very brief sex. Our clothes still mostly on. Against the wall. It wasn’t really a two-way thing.” She looked intently at his face, waiting.
“I get that completely,” he said. He saw the look on Nina’s face but didn’t understand it. “What’s the matter?”
“He and Francesca hadn’t had sex in a long time,” she continued. “Paolo and I weren’t having sex, either, and of course Luca had probably told her that. Luca had probably told her every confidential thing I told him when we had lunch.”
“You and Paolo weren’t any longer making love?”
“We did from time to time, but it was more like a necessary release than anything. It was like eating when you’re tired.”
“I know what you mean.” Now it was his turn to check they were alone. “It was like that with us. When we made love it was almost embarrassing. It made it obvious how separate we’d become.”
“The more the sex dwindled, over the years, the more Luca and I were physical with one another. That’s chicken and egg, right there. I’m aware of that. But even before the dwindling, Paolo had handed me the initiative.”
“He’d lost confidence.”
“It wasn’t just about sex. He made me dictate how things were, how we communicated, what we did, how we lived, and then on the day we split up he said that my dictating had got him down. I couldn’t win.”
“You were right to tell him you weren’t any longer in love. That was brave.”
“Luca and I could always risk being low with one another and this was the ultimate low. Francesca was dying. Paolo and I weren’t communicating. Luca and me … we had the ultimate sympathetic conversation, one without talking.”
“Exactly, exactly,” Dr. Christos enthused. “I mean, sex is just sex, right? We bring our bodies together and it feels good, and all the additional material — that’s mythologizing. It’s not emotional. It’s not betrayal. You hit the nail on the head there. The ultimate sympathetic conversation.” His phone was ringing again and Nina watched him talking. Even without Greek she could tell that he was saying he’d call back.
“That’s the line, anyway. The one I used on the psychiatrist.”
“What do you mean, line?” He put his phone away. “What sort of a line?”
“I told her about Luca, the sex, Francesca, but I was managing the divulging very tightly. I gave her the line I just gave you, the healthy line about ultimate sympathy. Like it was nothing. A part of our friendship and one we knew we mustn’t pursue, but essentially without consequences. Although, I added, Luca had wanted consequences. He’d wanted to be with me and I’d said no. She swallowed it all, just like you did.”
“Because he didn’t want to be with you.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s not the right thing to be sorry about.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Have you ever had someone kiss you so hard that you can’t move, holding your face still, clamped still with the back of your head pressed against a wall? Forcing their tongue into your mouth? Has that ever happened to you?”
There had been urgent coupling — sex that was all about Luca’s rapid climaxing and not at all about hers. She could only hint at this with Dr. Christos. She would never tell him how it really was, her initial refusal and Luca begging her, still holding her face, Please, Nina, please, Nina, I love you, Nina, please, Nina, I need this so much, and her consent and his going at her so fast and so hard that it hurt. The reason she couldn’t tell was a simple one; it was because she was too ashamed. It was also a complicated one: she was ashamed of being ashamed. She’d consented, after all.
Instead she repeated herself. “It was over quickly. It wasn’t really sex at all.” He had a second chance to wonder, but didn’t, for a second time. But then why would he?
Afterwards she and Luca sat in silence on her sofa together, his hand on her thigh. Luca had his own reasons for keeping quiet, and Nina didn’t trust herself to speak. The pressure of unshed tears was almost unbearable and she didn’t know how long she could delay. The well of them was filling and filling; there was already wild sobbing, though it was confined inaudibly to her head. Luca, unaware of (or perhaps unconcerned about) her despair, rested his head on the sofa back, his eyes closed and face blank. He’d absented himself; she could see that. After a few minutes, a token few minutes, he’d patted her leg and got to his feet. He’d said, “We should do this in another twenty-five years. Actually it’s been twenty-six, hasn’t it? Twenty-six years.” She hadn’t said anything, just stared at him. He’d reached for his shoes, saying, “I’d rather not go, but needs must,” a claim that was plainly fake. Nina had watched as he adjusted the laces and tied them tight with a double knot. He’d reached for his jacket and looked at his watch. “In fact what I’ll do is go to the drinks for Bob, just for one. I ought to say goodbye to him properly.” He’d taken his phone out of his pocket and pressed two buttons and held it to his ear, his eye already on the exit. “Fran. Me. Assume you’re asleep. I’ll be home by twelve. See you later. Bye, darling. Bye. Bye.” The last word was softer, a whisper. As he’d gone out of the door, without turning to look at her, he’d said, “I’ll ring you tomorrow.” And then, devastatingly, “Take care.”
He didn’t ring. He didn’t text, even when she prompted him late the following afternoon. Why did she text him? She knew she shouldn’t, but she had to. Despite knowing she hadn’t done anything wrong, she needed to be told that she hadn’t. She needed that, more than that, and even prompting him was a kind of humiliation. But something had to be done. She’d begun clock-watching. She’d lost concentration on the manuscript that was already late.
Hey. Said you’d call me. Hope Fran’s more comfortable today. Let me know if she wants me there.
Luca didn’t answer, so the next day she sent another one, and then another, and they, too, went unanswered, so she stopped messaging. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t heard from him. There hadn’t been a word, a call; no acknowledgment at all of her sacrifice. Worse, there was the possibility that it hadn’t even occurred to him that what had happened would have consequences. Sacrifice wasn’t too grandiose a word. At the very least it was her own peace of mind that was in jeopardy. It was something important, a cherished thing that she’d allowed him, and at the very least — was this a peculiar way of looking at it? — there ought to be thanks. Thanks and moronic little emoticons, at the least, and a little bit of openhearted, well-judged self-loathing on his side, for what he’d asked of her. Friendship and text kisses at the least. But there was nothing, and Nina got the message. In effect it
was Francesca who was punished, because Nina stayed away.
Francesca died in her sleep fifteen days later, on a day that sparkled white with frost. She died in the midmorning, having said she was too tired to get up and would have a lie-in. When Luca discovered her, he phoned Paolo at the office, and Paolo went straight over there and made the calls that needed to be made. Luca wouldn’t let him call Nina, not until the arrangements had been put in place. Afterwards, Luca pleaded to be taken out of the apartment, to anywhere there was alcohol, and so when Nina arrived she found only neighbors there, holding the fort. Paolo texted to say that he was on his way to collect Maria and that Luca was walking back alone from the pub, but Luca didn’t turn up. When Paolo and Maria arrived he was still missing, though other people were arriving in a steady stream. Francesca had left explicit instructions and cases of an exceptional wine for just this occasion, which meant that people who hadn’t seen each other for a while couldn’t help themselves from becoming lively. When Luca arrived, ringing the intercom because he couldn’t find his key, Paolo went down the stairs to intercept him, to warn him that the wake was already in progress. Luca said he wasn’t coming up. He was going to climb a hill, he said, and look at a view, and didn’t want anyone’s company. Nina could hear the two men talking, their words soaring upwards from the opened door. She waited, looking down over successive banisters and steps that curled away in a spiral like a shell, but it was only Paolo who appeared.
“I’m going back to the office to tell the staff,” he said, his face tipped up and his voice amplified by the tunnel effect of the stairwell. “They don’t know yet and I need to tell them what’s happened.”
Nina went back into Luca’s apartment and stood in the kitchen, unsure what to do. It occurred to her that Francesca might still be there, up in the bedroom. Nobody had mentioned this, but maybe she was still there, in state in her bed upstairs, what remained of her — remains was a terrible word — with people gathered round. Nina went to the stairs and stood on the bottom step and listened, but couldn’t see or hear any activity. She returned to the kitchen and opened more wine for the mourners, and found peanuts and crisps, and took a tray into the sitting room. Maria was there, seated on one of the hard upright couches, being comforted by her sister Emilia, and as Nina was about to go in, around the half wall from the kitchen, she heard Maria saying, “I don’t want atheists in the house, depriving my loved ones of their heaven.” Nina put the tray down on the coffee table and picked up her coat and went home, and had just shed her shoes, kicking them aggressively towards the hall table, when Paolo rang, saying that he was setting off to find his brother. Luca had gone to Arthur’s Seat, the magnificent hill that rises above the city. “Francesca made him promise to climb it when she died,” Paolo told her. “There was something else he was supposed to do there; I didn’t catch it all.”
“Oh God.”
“She said she’d be there, too, if it was possible to be. She believed there’d be a short window in which she could communicate, before her spirit passed on.” His voice began to break. “I’m going to return to work afterwards if that’s all right.”
“Of course it’s all right. If you’re sure. I’ll see you later.”
Ten minutes after this, Luca texted to say that he was parked outside. Nina ran down the stairs to the ground floor, and found him sitting in a black cab, its engine running. He hadn’t truly arrived, but was merely in pause, the driver sitting staring ahead, awaiting orders. Luca, too, was staring ahead, as if mimicking the cabbie’s vacancy, his mouth turned down, his hair unwashed, and his collar askew inside his sweater. She got in and sat turned towards him, and took his hand; he was cold to the touch, his coat too thin for the weather. He didn’t seem to want to meet her eyes. What on earth could she say that would match the gravity of the situation? In the circumstances all she could do was be sorry. She said, “I’m so sorry, Luca,” and he nodded, looking ahead. “Do you want me to come back to the house with you?” And then, “I won’t come if you’d rather I didn’t.” Why had she added that, giving credence to her imagined culpability? Speaking his disdain for him?
“I need to get back,” Luca said. “And thanks. It’d be better if you didn’t come with me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Nina’s phone buzzed and it was a text from Paolo, asking what time he was expected. She put him off, writing, Get some sun and I’ll see you later. Dr. Christos asked what she’d said in reply and she told him. He looked relieved.
“So, over the next week Luca continued to be silent,” she said, “and the reason for it wasn’t embarrassment, but something else.”
“What?”
“He worried that I had material. I had a weapon, this thing that we’d done that I had up my sleeve, and that I could take to Paolo at any time. That’s the kind of person Luca thought I was.”
“Surely not.”
“After the funeral he was in a bad way. He was on leave from the office and Paolo found him one afternoon in his pajamas, watching daytime television and monosyllabic. Paolo rang me; he wanted to invite Luca to stay with us. There wasn’t any way of saying no.”
Luca was grateful; he’d been hugely relieved when Paolo suggested it. It transpired that Paolo had already suggested it and asking Nina was just a formality. So, Luca moved in with them, theoretically only temporarily.
“Luca was living with us and the secret was also living with us. The strain was terrible. I thought Luca would find it difficult to be around us after everything that’d happened, but it didn’t seem difficult at all; he treated me like a stranger.” It was as if Nina were a distant relative, or an old friend from college who’d come to stay, and it was Luca and Paolo’s apartment. “Luca threw himself into being a perfect housekeeper. I found him one afternoon in our bedroom, Paolo’s and my bedroom, tidying up the books on the bedside tables and insisting it wasn’t any trouble.” There wasn’t any escaping him, even at night. Luca was in the spare room, right next to theirs. They had to whisper in bed and sex wasn’t possible.
“I hope you told him straight that it had to stop.”
“I didn’t. I had become afraid of him. He took over the shopping and cooking. He took over in general, and it wasn’t possible to tell him to stop because there wasn’t any doubt that it was helpful, and he’d just lost his wife. There wasn’t an evening without him there, in the kitchen, making bread, making delicious meals that Paolo waxed rhapsodical about.”
Meanwhile Nina was working stupidly long hours and taking on more projects, to avoid having to be around the two of them. That was a mistake. When she gave ground, Luca took more ground.
“It must have put you under so much strain. How did Paolo react? He must have seen what was happening.”
“At first he didn’t seem to notice it — the silence, the atmosphere. He was tired, doing Luca’s job as well as his own, and Luca was odd, anyway, grieving, in other ways unlike his usual self, so it didn’t strike Paolo as inexplicable that Luca only spoke to me to ask if I wanted more salad, or if I had any washing that needed doing, or could I turn off the radio because he was finding it annoying.”
“It was an invasion.”
“You don’t want to hear the whole saga, I’m sure, but eventually when Luca was provoked it was clear that he didn’t love me. Worse, that he disliked me, that he blamed me.”
“People don’t always use words in the same way.”
“Well, that’s the problem — it’s not a thing, it’s not cheese or a thing we all agree on, like wet or dry, or cloudy or sunny — words we all agree on. People could feel the same thing and call it by different names. People must use the same word and mean entirely different things.”
“Love, infatuation, obsession — they all blur into one another. I’ve had experience of this.”
“In what way?”
“A nurse at the last hospital. She ended things after a month and I was knocked flat. It’s still hard to know what to call it. I say love, you say
infatuation, my wife says obsession: all of them are ways of describing the same thing, the way I reacted.”
“How did you react?”
“I became depressed. Doris quit her job and then I quit mine, and we came home, we came back here. It wasn’t because of my dad dying and my mother getting ill.” He worried at his lip with his teeth. “And now you know the worst. We know the worst about one another.”
What could she do? She reached across and pressed his hand.
“Luca said that he’d never loved me, not even at the beginning, not even when he proposed. He said proposing had been a mistake. He was swept along by the emotion. First sexual experience. My mother’s death. Everything was heightened.” Nina shifted her weight in the chair. “I’m uncomfortable again. Do you mind if we go inside?”
She went slowly into her room and lay on the bed, denying gravity to the leg and enacting the long exhale of gratitude.
“He was aware, saying love one day and not-love the next, that I couldn’t challenge his feelings. Feelings aren’t things anyone can argue with. He exploited that; it was easy to say it wasn’t ever love. He used one of the conventions. He’d never loved me. It shut the conversation down.”
“Yes.”
“Two months. We had two whole months of Luca living with us, the same day after day. It got so I’d be afraid to go into the kitchen. He’d made camp there with his technology all spread out.” His computers and his iPad and his phone and his chargers and all the cables, his miniature TV and his music system. His retro music pumping. His magazines and his work files and printouts; his printer set up on the butcher’s block. His recipe books, his kitchen gadgets he couldn’t live without; his own better coffee machine, his juicer, and his better knives.
“It really was an invasion.”
“He’d glare at me when I went in there. He wouldn’t reply if I spoke to him. I’d hear him talking quietly on the phone to other people and I began to be paranoid. I started hiding in my room.”
The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay Page 31