by Anna Chillon
Next to her I wore a soft minidress with a boat neckline and two silver earrings that every now and then touched the naked skin on my shoulders. I put my hair to one side, showing off one of the earrings. Thinking about it, we’d gone a bit over board because just the fact of being there alone wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
“Jesus, look at that,” Zoe covered her mouth giggling as we walked further in, realizing that the paintings were getting more and more racy. We waited for a man to step away from a picture of vampires to get closer. Zoe's embarrassment was obvious, but like me she couldn’t avoid looking at the tiniest details. For a few moments those canvases were able to make me forget the real reason I’d brought my friend there. Then I saw him in the corridor, engaged in a discussion with a man and woman about his age, and it all came back to me. The artist was the epicentre of the show, though hidden in the shadows.
The environment got darker. There was a strange smell that I hadn’t noticed before because my senses were overwhelmed by something else. It was an odour of paint and plastic.
Zoe crossed her arms shivering. “Do you know what effect it has? Kind of when you go into the room of horrors at the fair ground: I feel like I’m going into a dangerous creatures nest.”
“Because that’s what it is,” I murmured. It was good that I’d lost sight of Niccolò, and I was avoiding bumping into him; I could still get out the way I came in. “Maybe it's better if we go,” I said in a louder voice, moving on my legs as if I was dying to go to the bathroom. He probably hadn’t even seen me, and I was still in time to slip out without him even realizing.
“No, wait. I want to go to the end. Blimey, now we’re here I want to see what else he’s done. “Zoe moved her face to the corner of a painting, pulled out her mobile and took a photograph of the signature. “Who is the pervert that’s painting this stuff?”
Someone at our shoulder cleared his throat in amusement.
I turned around and, seeing him, I grabbed my handbag with both hands to have something to hold onto. This time Niccolò wore an anthracite suit over the dark T-shirt and his right wrist had two large metal chains that you couldn’t help but notice, and his usual ear piercing.
“Welcome back, Giada,” he said. His gray, x-ray look passed from me to Zoe. “Won’t you introduce me to your friend?”
I opened my palm sliding it between them. “Zoe... the pervert. Niccolò, Zoe.”
Zoe jumped, her cheeks flooded scarlet. “Damn...” I don’t know if she was referring to him or to the bloomer she’d just come out with. She covered her mouth by tapping her fingertips on her lips. “I didn’t mean to be offensive. I'm so sorry. Really.”
Niccolò held her hand a moment longer than necessary, smiling at her. “No, don’t be sorry. I love shrewdness.”
She elbowed me. “How much do you want to embarrass me?”
“I imagine Giada hasn’t spoken to you about me.”
“How could I explain... this?” I pointed to a couple of paintings. “Anything I said wouldn’t have sufficed.”
“You did well. I like to see surprised and troubled faces, especially when it comes to young girls.”
Zoe didn’t get the double meaning because she didn’t know him like I did. She batted long black lashes, thick with mascara, partially regaining her bravado. “It's the first time I’ve seen paintings so... precise,” she said, “goodness knows how long they take to finish.”
“It depends on the technique. Those made on paper with pencils and pens take less time and are more precise. But the most valuable ones are the canvases, they are also the largest in size.”
They were almost all canvas, without glass or a frame; I loved their acrylic smell, of fantasy and whim. I liked how daring Niccolò was, giving shape and color to thoughts that should have stayed imprisoned in men’s minds.
Zoe lowered her skirt only to reveal a bit of silky skin under her navel. It consoled me not to have been the only one to feel the weight of that look. Generally, Vincent's was equivalent to a playful and threatening “I'm going to frisk you,” while Niccolò's was more like a calculated “I see what you’re hiding.” Of the two, the first one caused an adrenaline rush, the other a deep unease.
“Can I ask you something?” My friend said in a loud voice.
“Yes, of course, just as long as you ask me on your knees” he managed to provoke us both in one sentence, especially me. She watched me expecting a reaction that immediately came into my convulsion to swallow.
Zoe, totally unaware, laughed forcedly at what she thought was a joke. But then Niccolò's cutting look came to her and she took a step back.
She brushed my fingers. “Is he joking?” She murmured.
I opened my mouth and whispered: “No, I don’t think so.”
I took her hand feeling guilty that I hadn’t warned her about him.
Finally, after a long silence, his expression eased, softening the spiky atmosphere. “Two cute girls like you will steal the scene tonight.”
“What a nice compliment. Thanks!” She smiled feeling more comfortable, exposing her white teeth. She was used to receiving male compliments and knew how to accept them. “I just wanted to know, if I'm not indiscreet, the value of the paintings. For example, she approached a beautiful canvas, about one meter by two, forcing us to follow her. In the picture, a wolf man abused a girl caught in a cave and another watched. The atmosphere it created was undoubtedly the most incredible aspect of the painting: the damp cold, the smell of moss, the darkness broken by the light of a torch, filled the senses in a suggestive way.
“Can you tell me?” She insisted.
“Of course,” Niccolò said, calmly. “If you were kneeling in front of me I could answer you...” he shrugged, “but you are not.”
I’d told her he wasn’t joking. For the first time, someone was able to take the words out of Zoe’s mouth. She usually reacted badly to figures of male authority, but at that moment she was only speechless, perhaps because Niccolò could appear gentle and courteous until his deviations revealed his true self.
She needed to stop looking embarrassed, passing the chewing gum from one cheek to the other. “Well, now I’d really like you to try and ask me something,” she said broodily.
“Let’s make a bet that you’ll answer any question I ask you?” He replied, sure of himself.
Zoe was obviously tempted by the challenge, she looked around curiously. “We’ll bet this painting.”
She was determined to put him in difficulty, but Niccolò nodded without any problem. “Deal.”
She turned to admire what she was already expecting to be hers, that she’d have no idea how to hide or justify to her parents, when Niccolò moved with a sudden gesture, whisking her mobile out of her hand.
“Hey!” She swung round, finding herself suddenly without her phone.
He put his hands behind his back, filled with the booty. “My question is: can I keep it or do you want it back?”
“But... what the hell!” Despite being upset, she opened her mouth in astonished laughter. “Do something, Gia!”
“What do you want me to do?” I shrugged, smiling, feeling the earrings tickling my skin. “I think you've lost.”
She pouted, sticking her lower lip out. There was nothing to do but declare defeat. “All right, yes, I want it back.”
“Don’t be offended, Zoe. I like to bet and win.” He gave her the phone and un-buttoned his jacket with a loose movement of his fingers. “I counted on the sentimental value of your mobile.”
Thinking about it, I had a better look at the painting. “Zoe, you've made a mistake. I think this painting is worth a lot more than your phone.”
She realized only then that she’d been doubly played: she’d lost the bet by choosing to hold on to the item of lowest value. “I didn’t think about that!” She thought about it then, but remained equally firm about her answer, as he’d expected. “But I’ve got all my photos and messages in this phone. No, thank you, I prefer to keep
it.” She tucked it away safely in her handbag.
Niccolò put his hands in his pockets, moving aside the flaps of his jacket, his legs slightly spread, and in that pose with our stratospheric heels we could almost look him straight in the face. “Now, Giada, you can finally ask me what you came for.”
Talk about ‘I see what's hidden...’
I wasn’t sure I knew why I was there, so I asked him, really wanting to know the answer. “What do you think I’ve come for?”
“You're here for Vincent. You want to know how he is and what he’s doing, I imagine.”
Yes, absolutely, yes, my inner voice begged.
Zoe put the two and two together and it dawned on her. She’d been trying to understand my relationship with Vincent, and she’d had to admit that it was tempting to have a fling with an older man, but she was still far from understanding what I’d been through and what it’d meant to me. Her relationship with Tim was healthy, right, natural, and exciting, while mine was just perverse, wrong and creepy.
Out of love for me she tried to hide it, but I read it again in her face when she said to me: “Now I understand why we came here: he brought you here, didn’t he?”
I shrugged, guilty of hiding the not negligible detail that Niccolò and Vincent knew each other. “You wouldn’t have come with me if I’d told you.” Even less if she knew what feelings had led me there.
“Because it's best that you get him out of your head,” she said, dropping her arms to her hips. “You said you’d really try to.”
I’d simply said what everyone wanted to hear from me. At certain moments I’d even believed it myself, before I felt that void that had opened with abandonment, sucking me back to the bottom.
“I was wrong, we shouldn’t have come,” I replied despondently. I took a hand to my head, clutching my temples to contain the blood that was bubbling inside. My body seemed to express a need that I was no longer able to tame. I tried to by opening my mouth and taking deep breaths. “It's best if we go now.”
She was ready to agree, but Niccolò, who had a great sense of observation, intervened. “Zoe, can you just give us a moment to talk before you leave?”
He surprised us. Zoe studied him, uncertain whether to leave me alone.
“I’ll meet you right away,” I reassured her to make her understand that I wanted to stay and talk to him.
“All right, I'll wait for you,” she replied with a tone that said, ‘then tell me everything.’ She said goodbye and disappeared past the curve of the corridor, presumably to phone Tim.
“I can’t believe that you don’t want to know anything about him,” he said, once left alone.
Curiosity rose inside me, but I did my best to resist it, whilst the anger emerged chilling me all over, making me lose all my cordiality. “Believe it. He said he loved me, but he took me for a ride and you know... it hurt...” I spoke with as much emphasis as possible.
“I'm sure it did.” The voices of the people around the corner of the corridor became more acute, dispersing in some guffaw that didn’t concern us. He remained indifferent. “At first it's always a bit painful, especially the first few times, but that’s part of its beauty. Even more when you love each other.”
I turned to putty, blushing from his audacity, much like Vincent's. “I didn’t mean that. I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
“You know what I mean,” I'm afraid.
“In all senses,” he replied.
“Oh, enough! He shouldn’t have told you something so intimate!”
“He didn’t tell me anything. You've just told me now.” His eyes were attracted by the shimmer of my ever swirling earrings, reflecting the glow. “Anyway, I haven’t seen Vincent for a long time.”
“I told you I’m not interested in hearing about him.” I put my arms around my stomach, turning to the painting, I saw the bearded wolf with his naked eyes pointing to his prey and I felt damn vulnerable. “Why do people go to galleries? For the paintings, don’t they?” The anger was holding back the too predictable tears.
“You tell me, why else they might come,” he said. “You’re suffering, I see it in your face and in your eyes. What can I do for you, chicken?”
“Nothing…”
“Tell me the truth,” he went on, took my hand and led me to a nearby chair. He sat me down and bent forward so he could see into my eyes even when I looked down. He assumed a confidential, understanding tone. “You’ll be too proud to ask for help, and yet you have come here. To me. There must be a reason.”
I placed one hand over the other, clutching my purse in my lap, my back rigid, contracted limbs. I was obliged to give voice to my skeletons, those that before Vincent I had not yet learnt to identify. “I'm not sure, but I think it has to do with what you are.”
“An artist?”
“Not really,” I said with trembling lips. “With that other thing.”
“Oh, chic. That’s what I was worried about” his tongue clicked on his palate.
A black tear, dirty with mascara, rained onto my hand. “I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t understand either. I just know that I'm not OK, I need to get out... the bad. I thought maybe, if I told you, you might understand, but I must seem like a fool.”
The problem was that Vincent had opened my Pandora’s chest and now I didn’t know how to handle the demons that had come out. That's why I ended up talking to a man I instinctively thought to be equally possessed. Anyway, if he wasn’t, his paintings were.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have come.” I started to get up, but he put a hand on me with a slight tinkling of bracelets, kindly inducing me to stay.
“I understand it better than you imagine. I know exactly what you mean, and I know a way to get it out, all that bad, and all your tears. I can do it without excessive pain and without even abusing you.” He was damn serious. “I'm not like Vincent, he’s the most dangerous kind of man because he’s not in any scheme, he's instinctive and unpredictable. With me you won’t be in danger, you know who and what I am: I have a role, a discipline.”
A dominator, that’s what he was, or at least what I’d understood on the basis of his vague information, his attitude, and Vincent’s jokes. It was terrifying and at the same time a relief to imagine what he could do for me. I hadn’t really thought about it seriously before that moment, yet that was what led me there, shivering imagining consolation that might have looked like harassment.
“You also have a girlfriend,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to take care of me.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, I wouldn’t do anything that could put my relationship with Lia at risk, it’s not one of the most conventional, but it’s definitely the best,” he pointed out.
“However, there is a fundamental problem, that is, you see, for a moment you would feel relieved, I would be immensely pleased, but then you may have dark sore marks on your skin, the traces of what has happened, or worse what hasn’t happened. You would only be able to think that Vincent didn’t make them, but I did, and so they would become a pain you don’t want to feel, because you're a chica in love, the kind that’s easier to hurt in the wrong way.”
I pulled a hand out from beneath his, drying a tear to avoid panda eyes. “I don’t want that. I just want a way to feel it again: to feel what I felt when I was with him.”
Someone I hadn’t noticed came out of the corridor looking at the paintings, but realizing that the artist was trying to console a young girl retraced his steps.
“I can’t do that for you. No one can.” Niccolò put a knee on the floor and shifted his weight. “Besides, I would surely have a short life in the very moment that Vincent discovered that I lifted a finger to you. He would probably stab me to death.”
“I don’t see why he should care anyway. He doesn’t care what I do or how I am... he probably wasn’t even interested before.”
He nodded. “Yeah: you were deluded. It ended. That's what everyone says and you're waiting f
or me to confirm it, too.”
“And this time you’d be honest?” I blinked my eyelashes repeatedly swallowing. “If you'd let me see him for what he was, instead of defending him...” I criticized.
“That nut case doesn’t need defending, he’s perfectly capable of looking after himself if he wants to.” He laughed, stretching a finger out and swinging my earring. “I just told you how things were. Nothing more, nothing less. But if you still haven’t understood who to believe, you must have a screw loose. So what can you do to put your heart in peace?”
I looked down at the row of bracelets I wore on each wrist, as though I wanted to continue to believe that I belonged to Vincent. “In fact, I don’t know.”
“You're a bright girl, I'm sure you'll be able to figure out the truth, without having to listen to anyone’s opinion.” He patted my hand and bowed his head with a wink of encouragement. “Stay strong chicken, OK?”
I nodded. It had done me good talking to him, he’d given me a way to vent myself without feeling judged. He also made me realize that I couldn’t look for relief elsewhere until I was willing to let Vincent really go, otherwise it would undermine the importance of our relationship, for me still too important.
Zoe's head poked around the corner.
He was aware of it. “Your friend is impatient.”
“She's just curious.” I turned around and smiled because she seemed really funny to appear like that, like a mushroom after the rain. “It’s best if you go and face the third degree.”
“When it’s time, it’s time.” He rose to help me up. “Your visit made me happy, but I won’t keep you any longer. Of course you’re free to come and cry and bring all the beautiful girls you want, whenever you want. You know, just to feed my reputation a bit.” That is, as the rapist of young girls, expressed in every scandalous painting. Even in the one I first saw myself in, hanging over Vincent's bed.
I didn’t see much of Niccolò in all those animals as much as the darker and most precious part of my lost lover, hardened by life. The side you never knew when to expect, but that was snubbed out by the tender gestures he often made.