When they were in the car he unfolded the map over the steering wheel and traced the road south to the Swiss border and on through Zurich, St Gotthard and Milan. She put on the tape of Beethoven’s string quartets. He asked if they could hear something else. Like what? He searched out the route to Genoa and down the coast through La Spezia to Viareggio, where they would turn inland again. Whatever you like, he said, folding up the map. Tunes of the day, he added, starting up. She moved the red needle along the FM band until she found a station with good reception. He was grateful to her for not saying anything. Her silence was neither awkward nor frightened, she merely let him be. She kept quiet as you do beside someone in a state of deep concentration.
It was not that he concentrated on anything besides driving. Thoughts passed through his head like birds, and he made no attempt to hold on to them, but he was fully awake. An hour later they were on the way through the Alps. The lethargy of the previous day had been replaced by a clear, sharp feeling, like a reflection of the white light that dazzled him when they emerged from yet another tunnel, forcing him to screw up his eyes.
They reached Viareggio in late afternoon. The sky was overcast and there was an offshore wind. The blue-grey colour of the water changed into a lighter milky green under the frayed foam as the waves arched themselves and collapsed. She walked in front of him prodding the sand with her white stick. He stopped to tie his shoelace. The wide beach was completely deserted. A black dog ran around wildly with its tongue hanging out of its mouth and bared teeth, as if biting at the wind. Far to the north behind her solitary figure in the fluttering coat he could see the rocky island off La Spezia and the promontory that sloped upwards and merged into the Apennine Alps. The highest peak was white, not of snow but marble. He straightened himself and caught up with her. Minute drops of salt water covered her dark glasses in a fine layer. Like marble dust, he thought. They walked back and along the promenade past the imposing façades of hotels and pavilions between the promenade and the beach. Hardly anyone was about. There was only the dull rumbling of the breakers in the background, the sound of their heels and the tapping noise of her slim stick.
It was somewhere round here, said Lucca, somewhere along this stretch, she saw him for the first time. Robert tried to imagine a young version of the woman with the mature cultivated voice he had been talking to once or twice a week. A young Else in her suit standing at the edge of the curious crowd watching a film being shot featuring Marcello Mastroianni. There must have been spotlights behind the camera even though the sun was shining. They depicted the scene to each other as they walked along the row of wind-blown palms. It developed into a game in which they took turns at elaborating each other’s fancy.
Else must have been fascinated by the blend of sunlight and white spotlights enveloping the actors in a magical sphere impossible to break into, like a dream. And there, carrying a long boom as he adroitly followed the camera’s movements along the rails, she suddenly caught sight of the dark young man, who perhaps, in a pause between two shots, had already observed the elegant, Scandinavian girl on the other side of the white, the magic circle. It was no longer Mastroianni she looked at, it was Giorgio, but she did not know that. She did not yet know his name, nor could she know he would be the father of her daughter. Merely because, during a stroll along the promenade in Viareggio, she had been attracted by the artificial glare around the crowd of spectators.
And up there, said Robert, pointing, as if it would help, up there behind one of the closed shutters she undressed for the first time in front of her lover, while her husband lay vomiting on one of the other floors because he had eaten some oysters he should have left well alone. Yes, said Lucca. In the afternoon, most likely, with the slanting sunrays from the shutters caressing their young, curious bodies just as in a film. And cut! All of a sudden her life was changed, she loved someone else, and no one in their wildest dreams could have imagined that her story would take such a completely different turn. By chance, said Robert. Yes, she responded. I’m an accidental girl!
The light was fading as they left Viareggio and drove east through hills covered with pines and olive groves. One crest appeared behind another in the twilight. The hills resembled the moveable scenery in a puppet theatre with minute silhouettes of wide pine crowns and pointed cypresses. It was dark when they arrived in Lucca. He drove around the town along the city wall and through one of the gateways to the old quarter. They parked in the square in front of a church. The marble façade shone yellow in the light from the street lamps. She was silent. He wondered whether this was the church where Giorgio had sat when he had his photograph taken one day in early youth, happy and unaware while the low-flying swallows threw their whirling shadows on the marble façade. They continued on foot along a narrow street without traffic. People thronged the street, the shops were still open. The walls resounded with steps and voices, and beneath their murmuring he heard the tip of her slim stick when it grazed the cobblestones. He asked if he should describe the town to her. No, she said, slightly irritated. Have I ever asked you to describe yourself?
They went into a café, she ordered espresso and grappa. He was surprised to hear her speaking Italian. He asked for a beer. They had been quiet for a while when she rose to her feet. I’m going for a walk, she said. Should he come with her? She would rather he didn’t. And if she got lost? She shrugged her shoulders. Then he’d have to look for her. As he sat alone watching the inhabitants of the town in their winter coats coming in to sit at the bar, he began to understand why she did not want to know what the place looked like.
He could have described the square tower with trees growing on top of it, or the church façade consisting of columns of which not a single one matched the others, some with animal reliefs or geometric patterns, others twisted or carved to look as if they were tied in knots. He could have described the angel standing atop the gable looking down on passers-by with a teasing smile, and he could have mentioned the narrow staircase on the back of the gable, apparently gratuitous unless it was meant for the angel to climb because he didn’t want to terrify people by flying. But all of this would have been nothing but pictures to her, his own pictures, of which she could only form vague and imprecise ideas.
Why should she be interested in the beauty of the town? After all, she could not see it. He thought about what she had said. It was true, she had never asked him what he looked like. Only when he went to see her the first time without his white coat and she wanted to know what he was wearing. She had no inkling of his face. To her he was a voice and what the voice told her, and the expectant, listening silence in which she herself could speak. Her town must be like that to her. A name and the echo of steps and voices blending with her thoughts among the invisible walls. He remembered how he had stood at the door of Lea’s room the previous day looking at her because he thought she was asleep. Her own face was no longer of any concern to her. She had come to regard it as something outside herself. Like a mask, he thought. You don’t see it when you wear it. Why worry yourself about it if that’s the only one you’ve got?
He pictured her walking around with her tapping stick among the other pedestrians in the narrow old streets, how she noted each street corner and marked it on a plan in her memory. When he had waited half an hour he began to get worried. He paid and went in search of her. The shops were closing, traders let down the shutters in front of the windows and he thought she must be able to hear the same rattling sound perhaps only a few streets away. The moon had come out, almost full, above a medieval tower whose only decoration was a white clock-face of marble. The moon and the clock looked like images of each other. He would have liked to describe the likeness to her, and for a moment felt sad at the thought of her prohibition of pictures.
He had been walking a long time up and down the streets, growing more and more anxious, when he caught sight of her, framed in a gateway with a strangely curved façade. The entrance led to a square surrounded by terraced houses, all painted
yellow, with small windows at different heights. She stood perfectly still among the passers-by in the middle of the square, face raised. He stayed at the entrance. He remembered reading about the square in a guide book. Once it had been a Roman arena, and later on houses had been built in a circle following its circumference. There was nothing remarkable about those houses. They were quite ordinary, with washing hanging on lines and shutters open to apartments where people were cooking or watching television. The remarkable thing about the space was its long elliptical curves.
He closed his eyes and listened to the steps approaching or withdrawing in fleeting, contrapuntal figures. The walls behind the open windows resounded with voices, squealing chair legs, domestic machines and churning television sets, and the sounds blended into a complex murmur above his head. It probably sounded like that every evening, when the occupants of the houses had come home. A scooter crossed the square. It was an ordinary evening in Lucca, with nothing particular happening. An evening when they would just be together, the people who lived here, whether they were happy or unhappy or something in between. Robert waited until the scooter had passed before going up to her. She turned towards him and smiled. Well, there you are . . . He took her hand. I can find my way very well, she said. I know you can, he answered.
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