He rolls to the edge of the bed, jumps to his feet, stumbles on the carpet, bangs into the chest of drawers he never wanted in there, feels his way to his bathrobe hanging on the coat rack, puts the bathrobe on. Aileen turns over under the comforter, grunts, snorts, resumes her regular breathing. Despite her insomniac tendencies, she has the impressive ability to create mental compartments between one activity and another, one phase and another of the day or night: it’s how she’s able to maintain her lucidity and stay operative even in the most difficult moments. Agreed, last night she was infected by the climate of general lunacy, eventually turning into an extremely deteriorated version of herself; but then at about one in the morning she called time on her extenuating attempts to reconstruct events and attribute responsibility and brought the proceedings to a close. “I need to sleep, tomorrow’s going to be a long day.” She went into the bathroom to remove her makeup and take a sleeping pill. Ten minutes later she was in bed with a mask over her eyes, five minutes later she was asleep.
He on the other hand has never truly been able to absorb the techniques of mental detachment, and not for lack of trying, with yoga, tai chi chuan, shuai jiao, Transcendental Meditation, and all the rest. Not that he doesn’t zone out, from situations, relationships, practical problems: he does so far too often, even in situations that to others seem tremendously important. He does it out of boredom or disinterest, laziness or impatience, often with the result of inviting accusations of arrogance or indifference. But it’s precisely when he’s emotionally involved that he’s unable to: all it takes is a gesture, a word, a look that pursues him through his thoughts and eventually pierces his heart, arousing in him an unending sense of loss and guilt, catapulting him into the deepest sadness. It’s a good thing deep sadness is his primary creative fuel, because he has an almost inexhaustible supply of it, whether from stability disrupted, dreams shattered, separations, abandonments, distances, voids. He’d have enough to write dozens of great tearjerkers, if only he had the guts to go down that path more often.
He leaves the bedroom, closes the door with extreme caution, walks down the hallway as silently as he can, so that Aldino or one of his bodyguard colleagues that arrived yesterday doesn’t think there’s an intruder and spring into action. From the north-facing windows at the back of the house only darkness is visible, though it’s already less dense than an hour ago. He passes the rooms assigned to Wally and Kimberly, Rodney and Sadie, Todd and Cynthia. He isn’t overly astonished that they’ve all stayed, despite yelling such horrible things at each other: theirs is a bond that by now is difficult to break, held together by a tangle of consolidated roles, rooted habits, thirst for revenge, fear of the unknown, economic interests, even a worn-down and extenuated form of affection. He thinks of the relationships in which the others too have gotten bogged down over the years: the conquests put hurriedly on display, the getaways, the secrets slapped on the pages of newspapers, the public declarations of love, the lies inspired by press offices, the families ruined only to form new and very similar ones, the harm done by having too much and not having enough, the constant disproportion between merit and compensation.
He opens the door to the kitchen, goes in. It has a strange effect on him so empty and calm, without Madame Jeanne intent on dicing and kneading and cutting and mixing and frying and boiling and opening and closing oven doors and refrigerators. The first light of day begins entering through the eastern windows, bathing this motionless heart of the house, this core that once activated produces warmth, comfort, and sustenance for those present, when they’re present. It occurs to him that if for any reason he ended up giving in to Aileen’s badgering and fired Madame Jeanne, this house would become a lifeless place, frighteningly cold. It occurs to him that ultimately this has never really been his house: it’s just a property that he purchased, too big, with too much land around it, in a place where he has no roots, whose language he doesn’t even speak very well. Not that he feels more rooted in London, or in Sussex, or in the other places where he invested in real estate, each time as if he were investing in the idea of a stable life, to come back to at the end of his tours or leisure travel. Those ideas of stable life had the false vividness of dreams, or television commercials: breakfasts in the kitchen, lunches outdoors in the gorgeous light, gallivanting on the lawn with children and dogs, evenings in front of the fireplace, music in the living room, amid the warmth of family and friends. Not realistic; at least not for him, not for how he’s made, not for his highly flawed mental and emotional profile. The lives his houses contained have invariably broken apart after a few years, shifted elsewhere, dispersed, and always because of him; the containers have remained, within them the tenuous reverberations of hypotheses no longer verifiable. Better, then, to continue flitting here and there around the world? On the road at least there’s the advantage of not having too much time to think about insufficiencies or nostalgia or doubts, of filling up your days with activities, even if they’re mainly tedious. But now he’s had enough of the string of air and ground transfers, hotel suites, sound checks, set lists modified to avoid going insane from the repetition, crowds in varying states of enthusiasm, each tour stop already projected into the next.
The only property of his that makes him feel a sense of belonging right now is the little 450-square-foot cottage in the clearing in the middle of the woods, where yesterday he was with Milena the Italian gelato girl; it hurts to think that that too is empty now, after being filled with such burning intensity for a few hours.
It’s there that his thoughts continue to return, back through the sleepless night spent trading accusations: to the caution of their initial circling, the growing curiosity of their approach, the exhilarating joy of their contact, the overpowering surprise of their fusion. There was a rightness never previously felt in the combination of their expressions, their shapes, their desires, their spirits, their breathing. He’s amazed he doesn’t feel the slightest shred of guilt, but it’s true; even all these hours later it’s as if what happened was too pure, too untainted by intentions to be wrong. He has all these images in his head: Milena filling up the waffle basket with her fior di latte and persimmon, Milena handing it to him, Milena observing him seriously as he tastes it, Milena worried, Milena smiling, Milena laughing. And the many colors of her eyes, the white and orange of her gelato, the yellow light of the oil lamp, the red of the fire in the stove, the black of the evening beyond the windowpanes when they awoke from their enchantment and looked outside. His mental state is far from limpid but his fingers contain a precise memory of the lines of her forehead and the curves of her thighs, in his nostrils the smell of the skin between her neck and ear, in his ears the sound of her sighs, on his tongue the taste of her tongue, so similar to the taste of her gelato: and each one of these memories so recent and yet already so far away brings with it a sense of lack that knocks the wind out of his lungs, makes his stomach muscles contract.
Nick Cruickshank thinks that he knows almost nothing about her, and that nevertheless it seems like he knows everything. And he’s convinced that it’s the same for her: he felt it. It seems absurd to have met her just the other day, to have greeted her like a stranger, before their mutual unfamiliarity melted away. He’s reminded of when she talked to him about the twin flames: about the instantaneous, complete harmony of their rejoining. He didn’t even let her explain the idea very well, feeling the need to interrupt her at all costs with his stupid disillusionment, his stupid “Cruickshank cool.” But doesn’t this notion of twin souls seem like something out of a book of illustrated fairy tales? Could he have played along anyway? Pretended to believe? Perhaps even tried to believe for real? After all, how many other times has he felt such a deep familiarity in such a short time? How many times has he recognized someone who in theory (and practice) he didn’t know? Limiting himself to real life, thus excluding the lyrics of “Twin Soul Reunion,” and his adult years, thus excluding his thirteen-year-old pining for Mia Lees (who never even looke
d at him because she considered him a little boy): never. From this perspective, as a purely mental exercise, could Aileen be his twin flame? No. But it’s a stupid question, the wrong question. Theirs has been a mature relationship from the beginning, conscious, realistic, keeping in mind previous experiences and giving priority to each other’s practical and professional needs, not teenage dreams. Isn’t this precisely what he needs now?
Then what is behind what happened yesterday with Milena? An infantile tendency to give in to instinct, despite the damaging precedents? An irresistible predisposition for choosing imagination over reality? A desire to flee responsibility? An intolerance for what Aileen has become these past few years? For what she probably always was? An inability to accept the fact that every person is the result of a combination of qualities and flaws, and that it makes no sense to want to keep the former and get rid of the latter? If there’s anyone who ought to be able to appreciate people’s flaws as much as, if not more than, their good qualities, it’s him. Of course, it depends on which flaws, because ideally two people’s flaws should combine just as well as their qualities. Which opens the door onto some dangerous terrain, because there are so many couples who get on so well together thanks to the combination of the worst things about them. Without having to look too far, you only have to look at Wally and Kimberly: from this standpoint they’re a rousing success (at least they were until last night, before the matter of the underage girl in Rio surfaced). Too bad the result is only twice as unpleasant for everyone else.
And him, what the hell does he want? What is he searching for? Is he still chasing after fantasies inspired by the novels he devoured as a boy to get away from a life he wanted nothing to do with, and that then gave life to his songs, which in turn nurtured the fantasies of millions of people? Is he actually responsible for deceiving them, a ruse that’s now coming back to bite him?
But the sensations he felt yesterday with Milena seemed so damn real, not products of his imagination. In that cottage in the woods he sensed he’d found the soft and sweet yet strong and intelligent woman he’s always desired, ever since Aunt Maeve. That he rediscovered her and rediscovered himself. And it had seemed by contrast that Aileen had the characteristics of his mother that so upset him as a child: the sentimental coldness, the hardness of character, the tendency to deal with too many things at the same time, eyes and thoughts in constant motion. But how reliable are these sensations? In the (growing) light of the day after? The sensations of a few hidden, illicit hours, between two people shaken and confused by the crucial choices they’re about to make? And what’s truly special about Milena? Her sincere passion for what she does? But Aileen is passionate about the Anti-leather thing too; and she used to be about her job as a costume designer, when he met her. Her artistic spirit? But Aileen is certainly much more than an entrepreneur: she’s also someone who designs her own creations, who works with shapes and colors. Is it her devotion to the search for nuances that are difficult to capture? But it’s not like Aileen is insensitive to nuance; in fact, she’s extraordinarily quick to pick up on it. Her disinterestedness? But is the fact that Milena’s not interested in catering to the widest possible audience a merit? Does it give her a degree of moral purity and integrity that Aileen doesn’t have? And that he hasn’t had either, for a long time now? Is this the focal point of their encounter, right here? Or is it in the fact that they both feel like two lunar creatures fallen to earth, and yet still have such sunny warmth, such radiance in them, as yesterday made clear? Are they terrestrial, too?
The problem is that by now he’s all too familiar with the stupidity of falling in love: the indiscriminate enthusiasm for novelty, the excessive amplification of minuscule differences, the attribution of incompletely verified qualities, the exaggeratedly generous interpretation of mundane gestures, the mental photoshopping thanks to which you end up seeing only what you want to see. And the linguistic regression, the ridiculous simplification of thoughts, the systematic repression of doubts, the inability to step back. If he tries thinking back to the times he’s fallen in love in the past, they appear like a collection of superficial impressions, illusions produced by a yearning for surprises, judgment errors dictated by impulsiveness, steps taken without really reflecting on the consequences. Today not a single one of them seems based on solid, genuine reasons; not one of them would last for even half a day in light of what he now knows. In the end, his two relationships not based on falling in love are the ones that have lasted the longest, and left the most durable memories, composed of small daily harmonies, the sharing of simple gestures, understandings on the essentials without unreasonable expectations, without fireworks or drumrolls. And what’s left of the relationships that seemed so extraordinarily intense, each one a thousand times better than the last, so unspeakably important that they justified the criminal devastation he committed in their name? Only the vaguest idea of physical and emotional sensations, tiring to recall, exasperatingly vanished, impossible to grasp.
So? What substance could there ever be with Milena the Italian gelato girl, who’s about to have a child with another woman? How long could the conviction last that with her everything is so much more natural and free and right than in any of his past relationships, with no need to adapt or to attempt to transform, no self-deception or sensory distortions? Didn’t the distortion of the senses begin the moment they first kissed? Even earlier, the moment he went to visit her in her lab? Even earlier, the moment he tasted her gelato in the kitchen, under the vaguely perplexed gaze of Madame Jeanne? And is her gelato really that extraordinary? So essentially different from the still-delicious gelatos he’s eaten at other places and times? How long would they be able to replicate the sensations he felt with her in the cottage in the woods, and that continue to play havoc with his heart and leave him short of breath? For months, for years? For an entire life together, like he wrote in a couple of songs so absurdly sentimental that common sense and shame dictated he discard them immediately, without even letting the rest of the band hear them?
And yet there was a previously unfelt naturalness in what happened between them: a total lack of poses, including the pose of not having any poses. They both seemed to be simply what they are, in all their incredible resemblance and diversity. Try as he might, he can’t remember ever before having felt a similar blend of the physical and the spiritual; bodies and souls communicating as one (another good line never to even think about putting in a song). There was a mutual recognition: it emerged from every look and every gesture, every breath, every word they said or didn’t say. There was the continuous surprise in a continuous flow, and the joy at the surprise. There was the marvel. Imperfect, yes, and it did end, and badly, for that matter; but it was there.
But would he really be willing, on the basis of sensations impossible to verify, to ruin his consolidated relationship with Aileen, a woman whose qualities and flaws he knows beyond any possible doubt? To destroy the plans for a life together that she has been working on for months, aligning them with so much care, intelligence, and know-how? To make her look terrible in front of dozens and dozens of friends and acquaintances who’ve come here from around the world? In front of the Star Life team, who certainly wouldn’t miss the chance to transform the report of a fairy-tale ceremony into the chronicle of a catastrophe, for the perverse enjoyment of its audience? Knowing furthermore how he would get off practically scot-free in the matter, as it would gel perfectly with the persona he’s constructed for himself since the beginning? Not only would the majority of his fans not disapprove of such a gesture, they would applaud him enthusiastically for it; you only have to consider how they’ve continued keeping tabs on him all these years, always looking out for signs of possible bourgeois backsliding, ready to accuse him of betrayal. They would almost certainly interpret such an unforgivable slight as confirmation that the author of “I Won’t Have It (Any Other Way)” is still very much alive and kicking, with the same proud aversion to social etiquette he had thirt
y-five years ago.
Nick Cruickshank looks in the freezer, with a sudden desperate desire to find one of the containers of Milena’s gelato. He’d even settle for one that’s only half full, even one with only a little corner left; just enough to see the colors, pass his tongue over it. His hands search frantically among the containers of baby carrots and peas and zucchini that come from the estate’s garden, but of Milena’s gelato there isn’t a trace: gone.
THIRTY-FIVE
MILENA MIGLIARI SLIPS out of the house, closes the door behind her, trying not to make noise, though the last time she checked, Viviane hardly seemed on the verge of waking up. The sun is still low, the sky a very pale blue, but the air is clear, the light painful to the eyes. She walks with a slightly uncertain step, down the cobblestone lane between the close-in walls of the houses; she bypasses the ramp of the small castle, the front window of the tourist office, the boulder beside what’s left of one of the old gates. She continues down to the parking lot, gets into her van. For a while she just sits there, the cold making its way through her jeans: the compartment smells a little moldy, but it seems like the only space where she can feel safe. Then she begins not to feel safe here anymore either; she turns on the engine, pulls out, goes up the road that follows the ridgeline and then curves downward toward the valley. She doesn’t have any actual thoughts in her head: only the perceptions of shapes, colors, sounds, movements. There isn’t even a precise direction she’s going in; she turns the wheel and shifts gears automatically, with an emptiness that grows with each curve, as if she’s driving along the edge of an abyss that might suck her in from one moment to the next, make her vanish into thin air.
Imperfect Delight Page 28