‘Which casino? You mean the one in the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘So what!’ he unexpectedly laughed. ‘There’s no harm in losing money in a building with such heavenly windows.’
He was certainly trying to calm me by making light of my serious error of judgement, but it somehow sounded very different. I felt my hand suddenly move to grab a piece of broken brick lying in the balcony floor.
He saw my hand move and looked into my face, stunned. Then he got up, took his coat and walked out the door.
He didn’t return home that night.
I went to his office the next morning. He told me that he had slept on the floor in his sleeping bag. I apologised. He kissed me and told me that I shouldn’t worry about money because the advance he had received for his book would more than cover my losses. But he would have to work even harder to meet his publisher’s deadline.
We had breakfast in a café and he told me all about the storm he had witnessed standing at the window in his office.
‘Peace,’ I said, as I was leaving.
‘Of course,’ he replied. He kissed me and returned to work.
Vasu
Peace. We both knew that peace would never come to us again. We had failed each other, miserably.
We both needed some time apart to sort out the mess
Perhaps that is why at first I wasn’t surprised by her absence. I had gone to Milan to attend a conference and on my return, she wasn’t at home. I assumed that she was at the music shop, went to the office and tried to call her several times. The shop’s phone was constantly engaged.
Late that afternoon I called into the shop to surprise her with the little present I had bought for her in Milan. The woman there told me that she hadn’t seen Anna for more than a week and was wondering if she was all right. On the way back home I phoned Sophia and was told that she had last seen Anna on Monday, a week ago, and although she had appeared a little out of sorts, she had been friendly and chatty. She would phone Marco, she told me, and find out if he knew where Anna was. Then she would call me back.
I was tired from the travel and the hectic work of the conference. I took a few pills, turned on some music and went to bed. The following day I kept myself busy at work, taking my class on an excursion around Venetian gardens. I returned to the apartment quite late in the evening.
When I opened the bedroom door I saw on the floor, near the bed on Anna’s side, a photo. I picked it up.
It was the only picture I had taken of her in Venice. Anna and Sophia were sitting on the Lido beach quite early in the morning before the sun had properly risen. Little Isabella was still asleep, stretched out between them, her head in her mother’s lap and her legs resting on Anna’s right thigh. Sophia was staring at the camera but Anna’s head was turned a little to the left. On the sand in front of them lay her glass bangles: red, yellow, blue and green. Just near Anna’s kicked-off sandal were her feet in their full magnificence, dusted with moist brownish sand speckled with mica flakes.
I put the photo back on the bedside table between two heavy books to flatten its folded corner. I noticed Anna’s slippers poking from under the bed. She had gone but she was still there: her hair on the pillow, her smell in the sheets, her toothbrush in the glass and near it the tube of paste, squeezed as always from the middle.
I looked into the mirror above the washbasin and saw her face. ‘What should I do?’ I asked her. Her face in the mirror told me to go for a walk.
And so I did, to walk her presence away.
That first night I found myself on the island of Torcello. I don’t remember anything about my walk except that I returned the next morning and slept again in my office. On the second night I walked again. I walked through the alleys and up and down the bridges, many times finding the deadends forcing me to turn back. Soon I was lost and had to sit down and lean against damp walls waiting for the map in my mind to tell me where to go. I walked and walked and found myself in the Ghetto. I noticed it only when I discovered that I was going round and round in circles.
It reminded me of the narrow alleys of Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi, with their tall three-, four-and even seven-storey buildings, simple and shabby with their peeling plaster, cracked red bricks, broken windowpanes and white sheets hanging on washing lines even at night. I bumped into boats and sat for a while in one of them, waiting for the moon to slide across the alley.
In one narrow street near a bridge a dog barked, got up and followed me. I didn’t run away but stopped and let her catch up. She was friendly and stopped a few steps away, looked at me in a confused way and then wagged her tail. I searched my pockets and found a piece of dry bread which I offered to her. She smelt it, didn’t like it, and turned away.
I left the bridge and saw that the lights on the third floor of a nearby house had come on. A window opened and a young woman looked out. She waved and before I could respond a sickly-looking old man thrust his head out and shouted at me to fuck off. He called me insane and I did feel like a madman, walking aimlessly simply to forget the unforgettable.
I must have wandered for another hour before I suddenly found myself in front of Café Iguana. It was past midnight but the place was open and still busy serving food and music: guitar, violin and bongos. I noticed behind the window glass a photo of Anna with Sophia and Marco. It showed what must have been their first performance together.
Suddenly a young man ran out of the café, followed by a woman. The two of them ran over a bridge, stopped, and leaning against the railing started kissing. I was scared that one of them would slip and fall. They continued to kiss and as I turned to walk away, I heard the woman shout ‘You idiot!’, as one by one yellow beads from her broken necklace fell into the water.
On the third night I drifted unknowingly into Dorsoduro. I knew the streets and canals well and yet on that night they seemed strange and unsettling. It was foggy and the waxy moon, sickly and sleepy, was shrouded in a rainbow-like halo. The streets were busy, which annoyed me at first, but then I got used to the crush. Some of the streets seemed familiar from my daily walk to and from the university, but yet no one stopped to talk and I ignored those I recognised.
I sat for a while on the bench near the fountain in Campo Santa Margherita. I had been there with Isabella and helped her sketch. Suddenly I felt the urge to see the golden globe that topped the Customs House, supported by two tired-looking figures of Atlas. I had never warmed to the Goddess of Fortune perched on the globe. She seemed so arrogant even though she was nothing but a weather-vane.
I turned and walked along the Zattere, stopping for a few minutes outside a café where a band was playing jazz. Then I turned right onto Squero di San Trovaso and saw that one of the gondolas near the workshops was turned on its side, exposing a big crack in the hull. In another a couple of pigeons slept soundly. An old man who was painting a new boat to turn it into a charming gondola offered me a cigarette. I declined but accepted his invitation to join him. He soon discovered that my Italian was basic, but that didn’t stop him talking to me. I suppose he, like me, just needed someone with whom to share a few moments.
‘India,’ he said, looking at me. I nodded.
‘Ravishankar,’ he continued. I nodded again, and he got up, went to his work table and pulled out a photo. ‘Roberta,’ he said, pointing at the young woman in the photo with a sitar. His daughter was in India learning to play it. ‘In Benaras,’ he said. ‘The holy city.’ Raising his hands he brought the two palms together and said ‘Namaste.’
‘Namaste,’ I replied, looked at his daughter’s picture. Soon I left him to continue my walk. I must have walked for fifteen minutes when I had the feeling that someone was following me. I looked round to see a tall young man wearing a red scarf and a white baseball cap. He came right up to me and shouted ‘Money!’
I gave him my wallet. He opened it and found some notes, counted them, exclaimed in disgust and threw the wallet back at me. As I kneel
ed to pick it up, he kicked me hard, then picked me up and punched me in the face. I fell down and must have hit something sharp. As I tried to get up, he kicked me again, this time in the stomach.
‘No money!’ he shouted. ‘Fucking foreigners, go home.’
It started raining again and the moon too vanished completely. I got up in some pain, left the narrow alley and discovered that I was not far from Sophia’s house. My eye was swollen and I slipped several times as I climbed her stairs. Maybe I had sprained my ankle.
I reached the door and knocked. As I waited, suddenly my legs gave way and I fell, my head hitting the door.
It opened and from the floor I saw Sophia and, standing behind her, Isabella.
‘It’s Zio Vasu, mamma,’ I heard Isabella whisper. ‘He needs help, mamma.’ I was covered in mud and bleeding from my nose and a cut under my right eye. They helped me get up and stagger inside. I sat on the floor struggling to take my shoes off. Sophia helped me remove my coat. As I lay on the sofa she examined my injuries. They were minor except for the cut under the eye.
‘It will need stitches,’ she told me. ‘We’ll go to the doctor in the morning,’ she reassured Isabella.
I had sprained my ankle. Isabella fetched the ice-tray from the fridge and her mother put the cubes in a pillowcase and wrapped it around the ankle. Next morning the doctor stitched my cut but warned that the scar would take some time to fade.
‘What were you doing out on the streets so late?’ Sophia asked me as we returned from the surgery.
‘I was walking,’ I said.
‘The whole night?’
‘Three whole nights.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I couldn’t sleep in that room without her. It was too hard.’
‘I know.’
‘No, you don’t. You can’t imagine. You really can’t.’
Six months after that night I received a postcard of the Sydney Harbour Bridge with a short note on the back:
Privet. I am in Sydney. The weather is fine, blue skies and bright sunshine, and I am fine too. Don’t wait for me, please, and don’t worry. Ya pridu; Yesli smogu; Yesli zakhochu. AHHA xx
In a note that was mostly in English, only the greeting and the last three phrases: I’ll come; If I can; If I want, were in Russian. She had signed her name in Russian, followed by the two kisses.
The date on the stamp was smudged. It took me a few minutes to work out that it had been posted quite a while ago.
In the lunch break I phoned Sophia to tell her about the postcard from Sydney.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘It’s too late now. And Sydney is so far away.’
She asked me to read out the card to her, which I did, translating the Russian.
‘I can’t come over now,’ she said. ‘Isabella is sick so I can’t bring her with me. But why don’t you come round this evening and help me cook a vegetarian meal? Then we can have a long chat. Isabella loves seeing you. You know that, don’t you?’
Before I went out that evening I took Anna’s things from our cupboards and put them into a suitcase which I dragged to Sophia’s apartment. As I approached it I saw Isabella at the window. She spotted me and waved.
I saw her waiting for me at the door, smiling.
‘Zio Vasu, Zio Vasu, I have some news for you,’ she announced.
‘Let him in, you naughty girl.’ I heard Sophia coming. ‘And get back to bed. You’ll make him sick too.’
Sophia kissed me on the lips, drew back, examined me and said: ‘You look fine. I’m glad to see you.’
I went in. I left the suitcase near the door of the sitting room.
‘What’s that, Zio Vasu?’ Isabella asked.
‘A suitcase with presents,’ I replied.
Sophia recognised Anna’s suitcase but said nothing.
Isabella was excited. ‘Let’s open it and see what’s in there for me.’
‘No, not now,’ Sophia intervened. ‘It’s bedtime for you.’
Isabella looked at me, then at Sophia, then back in my direction, pleading.
‘She can stay up with us, can’t she?’ I asked.
Sophia gave in, and Isabella brought in her doona, her pillow and her hot-water bottle and arranged herself on the sofa.
‘So what’s your news?’ I asked her.
She looked at her mother, trying to guess if it would be all right to talk about happy things. She waited and after receiving a nod from her mamma proudly announced:
‘I’ve won a prize.’
‘Is that right?’ I smiled.
‘In the art competition. First Prize, Zio Vasu.’
‘And what did you draw?’
‘It’s in the exhibition. You’ll have to go and see it.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘I don’t know, but there’s a boat in it.’
‘And?’
‘And there’s a bridge—’
‘And?’
‘And on the bridge there’s a little girl with a kite.’
‘What sort of kite?’
‘Looks like a Chinese lantern.’
I remembered the Chinese kite she had bought to the Lido and how we had tried very hard to make it fly – but it wouldn’t.
I saw Isabella looking at the suitcase and I opened it. She jumped out of her makeshift bed and claimed every piece of Anna’s jewellery for herself: the Indian bangles, the necklaces, bracelets and earrings and even a silver nose-bud that Jijee-ma had sent as a gift.
Sophia said she would go through the dresses and other clothes, keep whatever she fancied and take the rest to a charity shop.
‘You really want to give everything away?’ Sophia asked.
‘Almost everything,’ I said. I had decided on two keepsakes: Jijee-ma’s nose-bud and the Budapest scarf.
Next morning Isabella returned everything except six bangles.
That night, by the time the meal was cooked, she was already asleep. I helped Sophia carry her to the bedroom. Back in the kitchen, Sophia looked at the postcard, read the message and put it down on the table.
We talked about work, her music, the launch of my book, Isabella’s flu and the tides which, according to the forecast, were going to be particularly bad that winter.
‘I’m sick of this city,’ Sophia said. ‘Sick of the water and the wretched smells.’
Like many Venetians she was fed up with the overcrowding and had been waiting for years for a chance to leave. She told me that her family came from Palmanova, a little town to the north-east. She had been born and brought up there and had come to Venice to study. Soon she had found a job, fallen in love, married and settled down.
‘Isabella’s Papa was a master glass-blower, like his father and grandfather. He was doing well: had an established clientele, reliable contacts with galleries, showrooms and tour operators, and was a good salesman. He knew how to make potential customers feel comfortable and important. He didn’t cheat anyone. He just talked and talked, very fluently and easily convincing you of the extraordinary beauty of this or that piece of glass, praising its design, shape and colour. He was young and energetic and wanted to conquer the world.’ She paused, and her face changed. ‘Stupid he was, really stupid.’
‘What’s his name?’ I asked.
‘Patricio,’ Sophia said. She continued with her story.
‘Then one day he met a tall blonde American from San Francisco. She was older than me, yet still looked young and fresh. And the way she walked! You had to move aside to make way for her. She had power. No wonder Patricio lost his mind and his will to resist and couldn’t sleep. He packed his bags and flew away with her. No sorry, no goodbye. Just left. Isabella was still tiny, just three months old. I felt so tired, so miserable and useless. Isabella cried non-stop and because I couldn’t cope, I cried too. My breasts and feet hurt and I felt utterly useless.’
She paused again. ‘You know what? The most awful moment is when you star
t hating yourself, blaming yourself for everything. Thank God Gloria, my younger sister, was there to rescue me from this mess. She lives in Milano, running her little boutique and designing her own material. Haven’t you met her? She was in love with Marco too, head over heels, as they say. Who wasn’t? He’s such a charmer.’
‘So Patricio knows about Isabella?’ I asked.
‘Of course he does. But she doesn’t know him. I’ve only told her his name. It’s easier that way.’
‘Does Patricio write or call?’ I asked.
‘No, never.’
‘Have you tried to look for him?’
‘Have you tried to look for Anna?’ she shot back. Then she looked at me and said softly: ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No need to be sorry.’ It had been rude of me to ask. ‘No, I haven’t looked for him. It’s his loss, not mine,’ she said.
‘But wouldn’t one day Isabella want to know, find out and—’
‘You want to know if she’ll blame me. Of course she will. But she’ll understand eventually. At least I hope she does. I also hope that she’ll be kind to both me and her Papa.’
Kind. Who knows? Perhaps with time; perhaps after she has faced the consequences of her own decisions. But how often do we learn from the mistakes of our parents? Not very often. In fact we often commit similar mistakes, as if to fail is the natural attribute of our life. However hard we try, the time comes when the obverse of our goodness reveals itself, not as an aberration but a necessity, not as a brief moment of madness but a prolonged, incurable affliction of the body and mind.
For a few moments we were silent together. Then Sophia got up to make us fresh coffee. When she came back she sat next to me on the sofa, took my hand in hers, kissed it and said:
‘You’ll get over it. We all do. We have to, don’t we?’
‘Of course,’ I replied.
‘And don’t worry about Anna. She’ll be fine and you’ll be fine and happiness will surely return.’
I spent the night on her sofa searching for one peaceful thought that could lead to sleep. But I tossed and turned. The window was open and the wind, moist and cold, flirted with the curtain. I heard the water slapping the boats; someone walked across the bridge; a bird fluttered, followed by another. Then there was a prolonged silence broken suddenly by a song, faint and hazy, as if heard in a dream.
After Love Page 16