by Lily Tuck
“Remember last year . . . or was it two years ago?”—all the summers run together—Gaby asks. “When Pete took Mimi over to the mainland in thick fog to pick up her husband and they got lost and had to spend the night in the boat tied up to a lobster pot?”
Right away, when she gets back from Italy, Liliane fits into the summer routine on the island as if she had never left—all but her bikini. The first time she wears it sunbathing on the lawn, Liliane overhears Irène and Gaby as they sit having drinks on the deck directly above her.
“Lillian fills out that little bathing suit quite nicely,” Gaby says.
“In Europe, everyone wears bikinis,” Irène answers.
“Maybe so, but they don’t wear them in Maine.”
Liliane can, she thinks, bicycle back and forth in her sleep to the tennis club, the yacht club, the single store that sells newspapers and magazines, scented pine cushions, and ice cream. The same small group of girls her age—Christine, Missy, and Phyllis—are there every summer. Privileged, rich, athletic, they are her good friends. Together, they play tennis, sail, water-ski. If the weather is bad, they stay indoors, bake brownies, and play Monopoly.
There are a few boys.
Not much goes on with the boys—boys whose first names sound like last names: Carlton, Jackson, and Porter. They appear young. Liliane and Christine steal a bunch of golf carts with them one night and ride around the golf course, tracking the greens; on another night they shoot out the streetlamp in front of the post office with a BB gun; on still another night, they go to the local pub—a trailer with a jukebox, part of the floor cleared for dancing—and watch the only couple on it (Fred, the boy who rolls and sweeps out the tennis courts, and an overweight teenage girl, who works as one of the cashiers in the only market on the island, locked in an embrace, hardly moving) and they smoke and drink a few beers.
Liliane is reading Peyton Place. The novel has been passed back and forth among her friends so many times that when Liliane finally gets it, the pages containing certain passages are earmarked and worn—especially worn is the passage that occurs immediately after Allison MacKenzie loses her virginity to the handsome, urbane, married literary agent, Brad Holmes:
“It is never as good as it should be for a woman, the first time,” he said. “This one will be for you.”
He began to woo her again, with words, and kisses, and touches, and this time she had felt the full, soaring joy of pleasure without pain.
“I thought I was dying,” she said to him afterward. “And it was the loveliest feeling in the world.”
“Do you really think it’s all that great, Lil?” Phyllis asks Liliane.
Liliane does not know. She has only been as far as second base—and only twice with Porter. Each time, he squeezed and pressed her breasts in such a way that instead of giving her pleasure, he hurt her.
“I doubt my parents ever make love—or maybe they did once and conceived me,” Missy says, and the other girls laugh.
“The part that really got to me was the one where Lucas rapes Selena. Can you imagine, your own father?” Christine says.
“Stepfather,” Missy corrects her.
IX
The following summer, Xavier Cugat’s mambos, sambas, rumbas, and his sultry fourth wife, Abbe Lane, singing “Strangers in the Dark” are the rage in Rome and Liliane takes some of Josephine Baker’s beauty advice to heart. She goes out dancing nearly every night. A cigarette, a spark, Liliane has started to smoke, to drink a little, And love walks in, and she has boyfriends. As yet, she has not slept with any of them.
Mario is short, blond, stocky, and does not look Italian. Enrolled at Sapienza University, he is studying to be a lawyer. Over the bed in Mario’s one-room apartment in Trastevere, a mirror hangs from the ceiling. Liliane can look up and watch as she and Mario almost have sex. Afterward, before driving her home—Rudy, either out himself or a heavy sleeper, does not hear her come in—Mario stops at a café in a working-class district of the city where the other customers are just starting out their day. They watch as Mario and Liliane order a glass of red wine—clearly the two have been making love all night and are thirsty—and, among themselves, the other customers wink and make suggestive remarks. In spite of feeling like an impostor, Liliane is pleased to be the center of their attention.
Paul is twenty-seven, much older than Liliane. On meeting him one afternoon at the Café de Paris on the Via Veneto, immediately, and for no reason except that he is darkly handsome, slender, and elegant, Liliane falls in love with him. Paul is Moroccan, from Casablanca—which he refers to familiarly as “Casa.” His family is in the sugar business—no doubt, Cosumar, the company founded in 1929 that specializes in the production of sugar loafs, sugar ingots, sugar lumps, and granulated sugar refined from local sugar beets. Paul and his family are friends of Sultan Mohammed V, the king of Morocco. Paul does not need to work. Restless, he dates beautiful models and famous movie stars, one of whom is Silvana Mangano.
Liliane is young and pretty and Paul teases and flirts with her. He takes her to Belvedere delle Rose, the same nightclub where a few years earlier Liliane had heard Claudia sing fado and where the stripper had turned out to be a man. Along with the band, a woman croons in English:
Dance me to the moon
On the dance floor, Liliane feels as if everyone in the nightclub is looking at them—the women especially, who no doubt are wondering how Liliane deserves to have Paul’s smooth dark cheek pressed against hers—but Liliane does not care.
Paul is a good dancer, easy to follow, and Liliane has never been happier than in his arms. Can this be love? Or the magic of?
When Paul is called back to “Casa” on family business, Liliane accompanies him to the airport. On the way, in the taxi, Paul hands Liliane a pair of white kid gloves, saying how the night before a woman had left them in his hotel room and could Liliane, please, return them to her. Liliane says she will and Paul writes down the woman’s address. But after Paul has gone and Liliane is on her way back to the city, she starts to cry.
“Signorina,” the taxi driver says, looking at her in his rearview mirror and shaking his head, “non preoccuparti, io sono sicuro che tornerà a voi”—Miss, don’t worry, I am sure he will come back to you.
Not answering the taxi driver and still crying, Liliane throws the white kid gloves out the taxi window.
To you
My heart cries out “Perfidia”
For I find you, the love of my life
In somebody else’s arms
Sergio too, is older. He was married—married for four months and the marriage was annulled. Ivy, his former wife, is a model but the trouble with Ivy, Sergio tells Liliane, is that she can only talk about shoes and about clothes, but he still sees her from time to time. Handsome—not as handsome as Paul—in a brooding sort of way, Sergio designs light fixtures and furniture and as it turns out—Liliane will find this out only much later—prefers boys to girls.
Liliane does not remember how Sergio said he met Alberto Moravia and his wife, Elsa Morante, but he talks about them a great deal. He describes to Liliane how beautiful and talented Elsa is and how generous she can be—every night inviting six or eight people, most of them young men, for dinner and afterward paying the bill. Also, Sergio describes her rooftop terrace filled with bougainvillea and flowering fruit trees, and the view of Piazza del Popolo below.
“I’d like to meet her.” Liliane has told Sergio several times. “I loved Arturo’s Island,” she adds.
“I will arrange it,” Sergio promises her.
Instead, Sergio drives Liliane in his brand-new blue two-seat Fiat 500—designed by Dante Giacosa and known as the Cinquecento, which Sergio tells Liliane cost him 490,000 lire—to Fregene to have lunch with Alberto Moravia. Moravia’s house, Sergio also tells her, is on the beach and they can go swimming.
“Did you bring your bat
hing suit?” Sergio asks. “I forgot mine. Anyway, it’s hazy and overcast, not a nice day,” he says.
“I don’t want to go in the ocean by myself,” Liliane says. “There might be an undertow.”
On account of the traffic that day, Sergio and Liliane are late. Already, Moravia and a tall, elegantly dressed woman who is not Elsa Morante and whose name is Claire—she appears to be English—are standing by the front door, waiting for them.
“Hurry up if you want to go swimming,” Moravia says to them. “We will wait lunch for you.”
“No, no, I don’t want to go swimming,” Sergio says, then pointing to Liliane, adds, “but she does.”
The water is choppy and gray and Liliane can feel Moravia, Claire, and Sergio watching her as, determined to show them that she is unafraid, she adjusts the straps to her bathing suit and runs into the sea. If she drowns, she thinks, it will be Sergio’s fault.
When Liliane comes back from swimming, everyone—Moravia, Claire, and Sergio—is already sitting at the table eating lunch, not waiting for her.
“Sit. Sit down here,” Moravia tells her, motioning to the empty chair next to him.
“I have to change,” Liliane says. “I’m in my wet bathing suit.”
Getting up from the table, the Englishwoman, Claire, takes Liliane into a bedroom—Alberto Moravia’s bedroom.
On the dresser is a framed photograph of Alberto Moravia and Elsa Morante. They are on a beach, another beach, and Moravia is sitting with one leg bent—perhaps, his bad leg; he had coxitis as a child—and Elsa, wearing a two-piece bathing suit, is standing next to him. Neither one is looking at the other.
Opening the door to the bedroom without knocking, Moravia asks, “Are you coming or not?” His tone is abrupt, almost angry.
“Ah, Elsa,” he says, relenting a little as he sees Liliane quickly put down the photograph.
“That was taken when we were living in Capri. We were just married and poor and Capri was cheap and beautiful . . .” Moravia’s voice trails off, then he says, “But come, let’s have lunch.”
During lunch, Moravia continues, “We rented an apartment in Anacapri—the apartment belonged to the mayor—and we had a beautiful view of the Bay of Naples from our balcony. We worked all morning—I on my novel Agostino and Elsa on Menzogna e Sortilegio—in English, House of Liars,” Moravia translates for Liliane’s benefit. “Afterward we walked down to Capri, then to the beach. We went everywhere on foot because we had no money and later we had to walk all the way back up again. Often we quarreled the whole way.” Moravia shakes his head at the recollection.
“Elsa had her Siamese cat on a leash and I had an owl on my shoulder. The people in the village must have thought us very eccentric but they were kind, hospitable, and honest. We never locked our doors. The war was going on but we knew almost nothing. We did not have a radio and the newspapers, when there were any, were old and out-of-date. Occasionally, Elsa and I walked up to look at the cannons that were supposed to defend the Bay of Naples but they appeared old and rusty and I doubt if they could have fired a single shot. Mostly, we led a simple and productive life in Capri.”
“What was Elsa like then?” Liliane summons up the courage to ask Moravia.
“She was quarrelsome and stubborn,” Moravia replies, drinking some wine. “For instance, she did not know how to swim and nothing I said could persuade her to learn. She claimed she was too old. She was twenty-eight.
“How old are you?” Moravia suddenly asks Liliane. “Seventeen, eighteen?”
Without waiting for her reply, Moravia continues, “Elsa was also brave. In the fall of 1943, we were living in our small attic flat on Via Sgambati—we had left Capri by then although, in retrospect, we should have stayed—and Mussolini had just been arrested and the Fascists in their blackshirts were marching all over Rome waving banners that said Viva la morte!—Long live death! Again Moravia interrupts himself to tell Liliane, “You are too young to remember any of this. But it was then,” he continues, “that I learned that I was on their wanted list and was going to be arrested. Elsa and I packed a suitcase and we took the first train to Naples. I still remember what I was wearing—a double-breasted linen suit, and Elsa was wearing a light cotton dress.” Moravia pauses a moment to smile and shake his head. “It was September and the weather was warm and we assumed that the British would arrive in the next few days and liberate the city of Naples. The train, however, did not go to Naples. All of a sudden it stopped in a deserted-looking station and we were told to get off. The conductor said there were no more train tracks. It was a beautiful day, the countryside was filled with the sound of cicadas and Elsa and I set off.”
Sergio, Claire, and Liliane have hardly said a word. Only the servant clearing the antipasto plates and bringing clean ones for the pasta, speaks. “Caldo. Fate attenzione”—Hot. Be careful, he says about the plates.
“We lived for nine months in a one-room hut built against the side of a rock in a village called Sant’Agata, in the mountainous region of Ciociara,” Moravia continues after helping himself to spaghetti and to the sauce. “The bed was made out of a plank with a sack of corn for a mattress; the floor of the hut was packed earth and when it rained, we stood ankle-deep in water. There were no pens or paper; the only books we had brought along were the Bible and The Brothers Karamazov—we used the pages of the latter for toilet paper. We got water from the well to wash and we shared one meal a day with the peasants—bread, beans, a glass of acidic local wine.
“We did absolutely nothing during those nine months. We stared at the rocky landscape and waited for the Allies to arrive. From time to time, we could hear bombs dropping in the town of Fondi or we looked up at the sky and watched dogfights between the German and the British. Twice Elsa and I were strafed by planes as we were walking. Once by an English Spitfire, the other by a squadron of American Flying Fortresses. Each time we managed to save ourselves by lying down in a nearby ditch.”
Moravia stops talking for a moment to eat his pasta. He expertly wraps the spaghetti around his fork pressed against his spoon and eats quickly, noisily.
“But you asked me about Elsa,” he says to Liliane.
“I was the one who was wanted by the Fascists, but Elsa chose to stay with me. She endured all the discomforts and miseries and never complained. Also, she did a very courageous thing. In October, when it began to get cold—I told you that we had brought only one suitcase with nothing but summer things—Elsa went back to Rome by herself to get some warm clothes. She went to our apartment on Via Sgambati and packed another suitcase—ironically, a German soldier helped her carry the heavy suitcase at the train station—and she returned to Sant’Agata. Elsa also had a chance to stop and check on her manuscript of Menzogna e Sortilegio, which she had left behind with a friend. It was safe. That was all she cared about—that and me,” Moravia adds with a slight grimace.
“In 1943, Edwin, my brother, parachuted into Sicily with the 1st Airborne—” Claire starts to say but Moravia cuts her off.
“Yes, yes, you’ve told us already.”
Then turning to Liliane, he asks, “Have you been?”
“To Sicily?”
“No. Capri.”
“Oh, Capri. Yes, I went there last summer with my father and his lady friend,” Liliane answers. “It’s a beautiful island,” she adds.
Again, Moravia has lost interest and does not comment. Instead, he calls for the waiter who comes in hurriedly and begins to clear the plates.
“We have cheese and fruit for dessert,” Moravia announces. “Local cheese and pears from Emilia-Romagna.”
After lunch, Moravia tells Sergio that he will drive Liliane home and Sergio is to take Claire back to Rome.
Sergio says nothing, Claire tells Sergio that she knows Ivy, his former wife, and Liliane tries to protest.
“But I came with Sergio and I should go back—” sh
e starts to say.
“Where do you live?” Moravia interrupts her.
When Liliane tells him, Moravia says, “That’s on my way.”
On account of Moravia’s bad leg, his car is singular, custom-built—something to do with the clutch he depresses to change gears. The way Moravia drives, too, is singular—fast, with one hand on Liliane’s thigh.
The whole time in the car on the way back to Rome from Fregene, Liliane thinks how the next time she sees Sergio she will not mince words. She will tell him how Moravia drove at a hundred miles an hour with his hand on her leg and that she doesn’t care how famous Moravia is or that, afterward, she can tell people she has met him—she could have been killed.
As it turns out, however, driving back in the brand-new Fiat 500 designed by Dante Giacosa, Sergio is the one who has an accident. He gets a blowout and loses control of the car; the car goes through the highway guardrail and down off an embankment. Fortunately, Sergio is not hurt but Claire, sitting next to him in the front seat, is killed.
The next summer, instead of going to Rome or to the island in Penobscot Bay, Liliane stays in New York by herself—Irène has gone up to Maine and Gaby comes down to the city only for a few days in July. She has a job working at a travel agency in midtown; the travel agency is located in the basement of a hotel and has no windows. Liliane’s job is to type and to file. Filing is okay and boring but typing is more of a challenge. Usually, Liliane waits until all the other office workers have left for the day before she distributes all her bungled typed sheets of paper into different wastebaskets.
After work, Liliane meets up with her friend Moira in the Horn & Hardart Automat on West Fifty-seventh Street. They buy a cup of coffee before they go to Ballet Arts located in Carnegie Hall. Never mind that Liliane has taken up dancing late, she is passionate about ballet. For a while, she thinks of nothing else—of her extension, of her pliés, of being thin. Moira, her best friend, is equally obsessed and they take classes together. Moira, however, wants to be an actor. Already, she has auditioned for several Broadway roles, including the part of Anne in The Diary of Anne Frank.