Lucca

by Jens Christian Grøndahl

  When he spoke to her it was as if an ancient eccentric world had bred this charming, grown-up boy to open itself to her through his words and his wise eyes. He spoke to her as you speak to someone you have known for a long time. He listened attentively to her account of the course of her young life, and gently, so that she should not be embarrassed, he showed her how to eat a lobster without cracking it into a thousand orange pieces. She felt she had found a friend. She had never felt like this with a man, certainly not with the boys of her own age, but she felt safe, for Carlo was always there to remind her that Giorgio could not possibly intend anything but simply sitting together chatting and listening and laughing.

  Why didn’t she stay the night? They were all lounging on separate sofas drinking green tea, which Carlo prepared on a charcoal pan on the huge stove. Yes, why not? Carlo showed her the way to a room with a four-poster bed similar to the one she had seen in the film the previous afternoon, in the suburban cinema where her father worked. A towel, a toothbrush and a kimono were laid out, as if it had always been intended that she should stay. When he waved goodnight she laughed at the affected waving movement he made with his fingers, and he smiled back companionably and closed the door behind him.

  She slept until late into the morning. When she opened the shutters she looked out over a jumble of tiled roofs, a sea of stiff, terracotta waves. Her bag was on a stool beside the window. She heard a faint chinking behind her back and turned round in a fright, as Carlo put a tray with a cup of coffee on the bedside table. Today his kimono was mint green with yellow flowers. The blue cat jumped onto the bed. He picked it up by the scruff of the neck and carried it out. She found Giorgio in the kitchen. He had been to fetch her bag in the morning and paid for her room at the boarding-house. She asked if he had kidnapped her. He smiled. Had he? The green eyes looked at her inquiringly.

  That day they took her with them to the Uffizi. She didn’t like to say she had been there the previous day. And it was completely different from when she visited the museum with her father. She had felt almost choked by all the pictures she hadn’t looked at properly. Giorgio reassured her, they would only do one floor. You could spend a lifetime at the Uffizi, he said. So you had to choose what to miss, he went on with a smile, art or life outside. He was dressed in white again, and Carlo wore black silk pyjamas. She took pleasure in noticing how the tourists stared at the tall slim girl laughing with the white-clad aristocrat and their bleached muscular friend.

  Giorgio wanted to show her one of the rooms with altar pieces from the early Renaissance. He spoke of the pure, stylised severity in the presentation of the faces, the figures and the folds of the clothing, and he told her of the Byzantine influence. Carlo went on ahead. She stopped before one of the numerous paintings of the Madonna and Child. She was not sure but she felt she recognised the picture from the postcard she had been staring at in the train, the only clue she had in the search for her father. She gazed for a long time at the pale young woman’s face with its faintly blue tinge, introspectively dreaming as if she had forgotten the child in her arms, surrounded by the faded and mottled gilding that was cracked into finely branching lines. The gold melted before her eyes and flowed over the woman’s face. She made haste to dry her eyes with the back of her hand, but Giorgio had seen. He laid a hand lightly on her shoulder and smiled, fixing her eyes with his. It’s nothing, she said.

  He took her arm and led her out into the gallery that ran the whole length of the building. She caught sight of Carlo at the end, in silhouette against a high window, he stopped and turned towards them. Giorgio let go of her arm. It’s strange, he said, as they went on. He looked up from the tiled floor and lowered his voice. You look like my sister . . . When they came up to Carlo she noticed he avoided her eyes. He put his head on one side and said something in a querulous voice that made Giorgio laugh. The poor man is about to pass out with hunger, he said. But they had probably had enough pre-Renaissance for one day.

  They went into an expensive restaurant, an old-fashioned, formal place where the white cloths swam like ice floes in the quiet semi-darkness. When they had ordered Carlo got up and left the table with a remark that sounded ironical, almost taunting. Lucca asked what he had said. He says he’s jealous, smiled Giorgio. But she wasn’t to believe it. Carlo was wild about her, and he feigned jealousy purely for his own enjoyment. He gave her a long look and suddenly stretched out a hand, stroked her loose hair back from her forehead and gathered it into a knot in his hand at her neck. There really was a faint likeness, even though she was fairer. He shook his head in wonder and let go of her hair. Of course it was just an idea, but he couldn’t help thinking she might have grown to resemble Lucca.

  She asked him to tell her about his sister. He fidgeted with the heavy cutlery. There had only been a couple of years between them, they had been like twins. They had always been together and told each other all their thoughts. When they were in the country they found hiding places in the trees so the grown-ups could not find them, and at night they crept into each other’s rooms. The first to wake up had to wake the other one so they were not found out. The wine waiter brought them a bottle. Giorgio looked dubiously at the label and asked the waiter a question or two, then with a resigned expression let him open it.

  It had been like being cut in two, he went on, when their parents sent him to England. Carlo came back. He put his head on one side, rested his elbows on the table and laid his fingertips together as if he was listening with interest, but Lucca could see he did not understand anything Giorgio said. Giorgio took no notice of him. He had not only lost part of himself, he had also torn his sister apart and gone away with one half of her. He paused and pushed the foot of the wine-glass back and forth on the cloth. She had drowned during a holiday on Elba when she was fourteen. If only he had been there . . . It was an accident, but he had never forgiven their parents. After the funeral he went back to England and stayed there. He interrupted himself as he raised his glass and smiled at them.

  It really was like being kidnapped, a fairy-tale flight from everything she knew. Every day they went out in the black Ferrari, driving along winding roads between terraces of vines and olive trees up to mountain villages surrounded by high walls. She was shown round medieval monasteries with cool vaulted ceilings, where water dripped in the gloom, and they sat over lunch for hours on sun-dappled terraces with views over the mountains. She drew her hair back from her forehead and tied it in a pony-tail. She had not worn a pony-tail since she was a child, she usually let it hang free. She could see Giorgio noticed it, but he made no comment.

  She thought about what he had said when he lifted the hair from her face, that she resembled his little sister, his idea of what his sister might have looked like. If she had lived she would have been about Giorgio’s age now, a grown woman. Lucca could not visualise her own face in ten or twenty years. As a child she had often asked Else what she would look like when she was grown up, but Else had merely shrugged her shoulders. Time would tell, but she would probably look like herself. Lucca hadn’t believed her. After all, Else had changed over the years, since she was young, driving through Italy in an open sports car unaware of what the future would bring. Was it just age that made the difference, or was it something else?

  When they drove home in the evening from yet another excursion she sat curled up under a rug on the back seat, listening to Giorgio and Carlo chatting casually to each other. Like a married couple, it occurred to her, a couple who had lived together a long time. But she still couldn’t understand how Giorgio lived with Carlo as if he were a woman. In contrast to Carlo there was nothing in the least feminine about Giorgio, and when she met his exploring gaze she had to remind herself that he did not look at her as other men did.

  He did not mention his sister again, but she was sure he thought about her. She played with the idea that she was a living memory for him, or rather, a living reflection of his fantasy about the face and the figure his dead sister had never been able
to develop. A smiling ghost walking beside him through the quiet villages with the unaccustomed tight feeling of her hair, which she had combed back and tied with an elastic band. When they walked beside the ruined ramparts facing the mountain slopes, surrounded by invisible cicadas, she fancied he was her brother, who had brought her back to the future she had been denied.

  One hot afternoon they all lay on the big Persian carpet in front of the fireplace smoking a joint, lazily passing it around to each other. Sunlight smouldered through the cracks in the closed shutters and diffused a golden light through the semi-darkness. They had come home early and lay slouched in their kimonos, as if they had sought refuge from the midday heat in a shady oriental garden. Lucca had had a bath, her hair was still wet and the kimono stuck to her damp skin. Carlo was lying on his side with his head resting on his bent arm and half-open mouth. He had fallen asleep. She rose and the carpet’s wine-red and moss-green arabesques twisted and turned around her. She stood still for a moment, waiting for the rocking feeling beneath her feet to pass off. Giorgio sent her a muzzy smile and threw the end of the joint into the stove. A spidery wisp of smoke wavered upwards in the darkness there. She smiled back. She knew he was watching her as she walked across the cool marble floor.

  She went into her room and lay down on her back in bed, feeling all her muscles relax. On a high, she felt as if her head, body and limbs drifted apart from each other so that each began floating out in different directions from an increasing vacuum without gravity. She didn’t know how long she lay like that. At first it was like being brushed by a warm draught from the open window, then she felt his breath on her feet, then his lips. She hadn’t heard him come into the room. To start with they merely brushed her, then he kissed her, his mouth finding its way up her legs and thighs. He clasped her buttocks and pulled her to him. She kept her eyes closed and lay completely limp as his tongue slid between her labia, totally concentrated on the pulses of sensation that streamed through her, again and again, ever stronger until she began to shudder in a long, convulsive release. The walls resounded with a hard, sharp clapping. Bravo! She recognised Carlo’s melodious, feminine voice.

  Giorgio was still on his knees by the bed, between her thighs. Carlo stood in the doorway clapping his hands demonstratively with his head on one side, smiling sarcastically. Giorgio stood up and turned towards him. Carlo took his face between his hands in a hard grip and kissed him with his tongue. Then he let go of him and sent Lucca a triumphant glance, licking his lips and walking out of the door backwards. Giorgio stood with his back to her, head bent, facing the wall. It might be best if she left them, he said. He went out and closed the door behind him.

  She dressed and packed her bag. She never saw either Giorgio or Carlo again. When she opened her door the apartment was utterly silent. Only the blue cat sat in a corner regarding her, calmly waving its tail back and forth over the tiles. She cautiously eased the bolt back and slipped out of the front door, like a thief, she thought. As she walked she took off the elastic band that held her hair in a pony tail and shook her head so the hair fell around her shoulders. When she drew near the railway station she passed the bus terminal and caught sight of a bus with her name above the windscreen. Without another thought she bought a ticket and took a seat at the very back of the bus. She still had no idea of where she was going.

  As she sat looking out at the hills in the low sunlight she realised that from the beginning and up to now her journey had been directed by her name, her father’s name and her own. But she had not herself chosen her name, and she had not herself decided who was to be her father. She thought of the one Giorgio Montale, of the darkness in his eyes when he had embraced her in farewell and taken a step or two backwards alongside the façade of the Baptistery, raising his hands a little to the side in a gesture of regret. And she thought of the other Giorgio Montale, who an hour before had stood with his back to her and his face locked in Carlo’s hands, allowing himself to be kissed and hesitantly, with the same resigned movement, lifted his hands and placed them on Carlo’s hips. She thought of what he had said about homelessness, about severing all moorings. Hadn’t hers been severed long ago? Lucca was merely a name, a sound, no more. What was she going to do there? Was Lucca anything more than yet another tediously beautiful town, where she could walk around feeling sorry for herself among the flocks of Japanese tourists taking photographs of each other?

  The bus stopped at a place where the road turned. A man made his way along the gangway with a suitcase and a cardboard box tied up with string. She seized her bag and got out just as the doors were closing. She stood on the roadside as the bus disappeared round the bend skirting a slope of cypresses. The man went down a path beside a high stone wall, rocking from side to side with his suitcase and his cardboard box until he disappeared among the crooked olive trees. She caught sight of a slim lizard sitting motionless on one of the rough, sunlit stones above the path. A drop of sweat crept down one eyelid and made her blink. When she opened her eyes again the lizard had vanished. She shouldered her bag and crossed over to the shade on the opposite side of the road.

  She did not get up when the telephone rang downstairs, far away, so far it seemed nothing to do with her. It must be someone wanting to talk to Else. She had still not told anyone she had moved back to the villa. Even Miriam thought she was still staying with Else in the country, but she had only stayed at the cottage a couple of days. Perhaps it was Else phoning. She didn’t want to speak to her, anyway. She couldn’t stand her sympathy, constantly mixed with bitter advice and censorious analyses of Otto’s blunted emotional life. They were not kindred spirits, and she had no use for her mother’s comfort or that Else had known the whole time how it would end.

  She had just woken up. She lay looking out of the French window that had been open through the night. It had rained and she listened to the whipping summer rain until she dozed off in a long, imperceptible transition in which the rain kept on foaming and whispering. The telephone rang again. The air was warm and damp, the sunlight filtered palely through the mist over the garden of the Agricultural College, and the wet crowns of the trees glittered softly. It kept on ringing.

  How indomitable, Lucca thought and suddenly remembered walking hand in hand with Else beside the roses with their name plates, bearing their extravagant names in a neat hand. She remembered the Japanese trees with delicate, curling branches, which bloomed in spring and lost their white petals to the wind, disguised as snowflakes. In winter only the names of the roses stayed above the snow on their brave little name plates. They had laughed at that, Lucca and Else, the empty white beds where the names, undaunted, went on blooming. Whether it was summer or winter the walk always ended on the narrow path out to the lake, to the little island with an old tree which had a bench around its great trunk. They sat there watching the ducks and the walls of the college, and she remembered feeling lost, sitting beside her mother on their desert island, where nobody knew they were.

  Only Else knew she was back in her old room. It had not changed in all the years that had passed since she left home a few days after she came back from Italy. Where had she been, by the way? She remembered her mother’s worried, accusing face. Luckily Ivan was on one of his business trips. Lucca described her meeting with Giorgio, and she told her about Stella, but she didn’t say anything about the other Giorgio, nor did she say anything about Ivan entering her bedroom the night before she left. Else asked a few questions about Stella, what she was like. Lucca could feel she was slightly interested, and she willingly told her about Stella’s hard-edged features, about her bar-tender’s costume and about the bar in the suburban hotel furnished in the English style.

  It probably had to happen sometime, said Else. Of course she had had to go and find her father. The words sounded strange in her mouth, your father. Else regarded her with an expression that was both tender and exhausted. So it had been a disappointment? Lucca took her hand. It doesn’t matter now, she said, and as she said it she f
elt for the first time that she and her mother were equally adult. Else was just older, that was the only difference. She soon realised that Else knew nothing about what had happened at the cottage when she was alone with Ivan. How could she have known? She didn’t even know Lucca had been there that night.

  At that time one of her friends from school shared a flat with another girl, and they needed a third tenant. That was how she met Miriam. She got a job in a café and earned just enough to manage. After she moved she avoided visiting Else and Ivan for several weeks, until she could no longer make excuses without it seeming strange and perhaps in itself suspicious. Ivan behaved normally when she went to Sunday lunch, but after the first course while Else was in the kitchen he smiled in a way that told her he did not feel threatened and even regarded her as a kind of fellow conspirator.

  Miriam was taking lessons from an actor, she planned to apply for entrance to Drama School, and when she heard Lucca had been playing with the same idea she kept on urging her to go to an audition with her. Lucca was accepted, Miriam failed and was not admitted until the next year. Lucca could not understand why it had all gone so easily for her. She had only done what she was asked, but perhaps she succeeded because she was not quite so anxious to get in as her friend. She had just been herself, her teachers told her later. She had to smile. Just herself . . . who could that be, then?

  She discussed it with one of the other students, a loud-voiced fellow already going bald, whom she befriended because he could always make her laugh. Herself! he giggled. How could you know yourself? If you knew yourself, you must be different from yourself. This was a linguistic misunderstanding, a logical deadlock. You could only get to know yourself if you could observe from somewhere outside yourself. But then you would no longer be yourself! On the contrary, you were always a second or a third or a fourth, all according to whom you were with. He had read philosophy for some years before deciding to become an actor, because after all everything was just one big comedy.