“This is from Mina. She has an amazing vegetable garden in the back of the house. Have you seen it?”
“Nope.”
“Ben had a go at digging out the potatoes. It was hilarious.”
He went straight to the fridge and poured himself some water. He glanced at the table.
“Don’t bother with food, we just had something to eat at Mina’s.”
“Did you? Did she make you lunch?”
“Yes. Supplì di riso with saffron.”
Lara cleared away the plates, napkins and her tastefully constructed salad.
“… and carciofi fritti.”
“Wow, pretty fierce, cholesterol wise. And what did you talk about?”
“Lots of stuff. That woman is so much fun. The stories she tells. She told us about an old house right outside the village, past the railroad crossing. Nine rooms, vaulted ceilings, a huge lemon orchard.”
“Really?”
“Some relatives of hers want to sell it. She said she could get it for us for something like two hundred.”
“Us?” Lara stopped putting the plates away and turned toward her brother. “I had no idea you were interested in real estate, Leo.”
“Well, Ben is.”
“But why?”
Leo looked at his sister, surprised, then his tone shifted as if he were trying to handle someone irrefutably obstinate.
“What’s so strange? He likes it here.”
“He hasn’t seen anything. All he’s done is run back and forth from here to Mina’s or up on the roof to talk on the phone.”
“Ben has traveled all over the world. He can tell pretty quickly how he feels about a place. And nobody knows who he is here. That’s a big plus for him.”
Lara sat across from her brother at the kitchen table, discouraged. This little vacation wasn’t going at all the way she’d hoped.
“It could be a good investment as well. Ben is pretty shrewd when it comes to business.”
“Is he?” she asked, trying to sound neutral.
“Of course. His father was a mega investment banker. Ben has learned a thing or two from him.”
“How convenient.”
Leo ignored her sarcasm.
“We’re going with Mina to look at the house later this afternoon,” he said, without inviting her.
Lara felt gloom wrap itself around her like a fog. When she had mentioned her plan about buying property only a couple of days earlier, he hadn’t shown a flicker of interest. Why couldn’t they ever connect on anything? She had missed her brother and now that she was on her own, she needed him more than she had in the past.
They both remained silent for a moment across the table from each other, suddenly uneasy at finding themselves alone with each other in such a small space. Ben’s intense phone flirting came down through the open door in bursts. It had become the musical score of their days together.
“Is this his lover?” Lara asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Of course it is.”
Leo didn’t say anything. He stood up and made a move as if to leave the kitchen, then turned back to her.
“Don’t you open your mouth.”
“As if I could give a shit. Honestly.”
“He’s in love, okay?”
“Good for him.”
Then Leo moved closer, lowering his voice.
“He’s madly in love, Lara. I’ve never seen him like this before.”
Leo seemed sincerely moved, as if Ben’s new happiness had changed things for the better for him as well. Actually, it was generous of her brother, Lara thought, to give some dignity to all those extramarital phone calls.
Lara was beginning to see what her problem was: she wasn’t ready to accommodate other people’s joy yet, she didn’t have enough room in her. Next summer, maybe. It had been a mistake, this desire to share her space so soon. She heard herself saying, “It’s a phase. It doesn’t last. It never does.”
Leo frowned. “Jesus. Why do you have to be so negative?”
“Actually only the other day you called me an optimist. Anyway, it’s lust, Leonardo. It’s a drug. You know that perfectly well, we’ve all been through it.”
“Maybe we all need a little help for the initial boost,” Leo said.
She thought about this for a moment. Yes. Love was a drug, a rave. People got high on it and within half an hour were capable of doing anything in its name. No place was too far to reach, no phone number too expensive to call, no decision faster to make. Lara envisioned a gigantic diptych in the vein of Michelangelo. It would be called The Last Misjudgment. Two frescoes on opposite walls: on one, a crowd of people would be engaged in all sorts of crazy activities—jumping off cliffs on Olympic trampolines; getting ready to sail the Atlantic solo or kneeling all the way to Santiago de Compostela, all in the name of love. On the other, the same crowd would be trapped in the debris of their marriages: slumped on couches, snoring in front of TV screens, overweight, dressed like slobs, eating in murderous silence at a pizza parlor.
Was Leo right? Had she really become negative? Hostile? Jealous? God, did she feel awful.
Ben barged in from the roof staircase grinning and made his announcement.
“Green light. We can go tomorrow!”
“Excellent!” Leo stood up, beaming.
They gave each other a high five. Then Ben turned to Lara and said, “We’re going to visit a friend in Pantelleria. Do you know how to get there from here?”
“I have no idea. But I’m sure your phone will tell you,” Lara said, her voice blurred, as though she’d just woken up from a feverish sleep.
Neither Leo nor Ben seemed to notice her grumpiness, and Ben was already tapping away on his beloved touch screen.
“I’ll get Allison to take care of this. She’s a whiz when it comes to travel,” he said to Lara, smiling his fat boy smile.
They left at the speed of a Special Forces operation. There were phone calls to L.A., with Ben’s assistant booking tickets to Pantelleria via Rome, bags were packed and more phone calls were made to arrange the details of their arrival at the other end. It turned out that Ben’s lover had rented a villa next to Giorgio Armani’s on the secluded, volcanic, inhospitable but extremely chic island that lay halfway between Sicily and North Africa. Probably a husband, boyfriend or a not-so-trustworthy friend had just left, so that Ben and his faithful buddy Leo could make the final leap across the Mediterranean. For a moment Lara contemplated saying to her brother “I get it now: basically you two sat in my house as in a parking lot optimizing your wait by working on your wardrobes” but she was tired of being thought of as hostile, negative or, in this case, completely paranoid.
Mina’s last package came an hour later, still warm from the ironing board. It was a beautiful linen jacket in a cream color. While Leo was busy loading the car, Ben unfolded it and held it in front of Lara with the tips of his fingers, as if he were showing her the Turin Shroud. Mina had come herself in case last-minute alterations were needed. She helped him slide his arms into the sleeves, frowning slightly as she adjusted the lapels, pulled the front, brushed the back with her palms, straightened the collar. Her light touch had a magic; she made the fabric do exactly what she wanted, till it flattened and fell just the way it was supposed to.
“It’s a beauty,” Ben declared in front of his audience. “Come Prada, no?”
Mina nodded, pretending to know what he meant. She adjusted the front of the jacket once more and stepped back to look at her finished capolavoro.
“Sembri il principe di Inghilterra.”
Ben laughed. He turned around in a pirouette and grabbed Mina, hugged her tightly and kissed her on both cheeks.
Mina turned scarlet. For a moment she was so disoriented—how long since a man had touched her, let alone kissed her with such impetus? Perhaps she was used to receiving from men only the damp, marble-cold kisses that people exchanged at funerals. Her schoolmistress mask dissolved and in its place came the
face of a ravished awkward schoolgirl with a bad haircut.
That night, after Leo and Ben left, Lara stood alone in the kitchen by the sink eating a nonfat yogurt as her dinner, her gaze fixed on the opposite wall. She ate slowly, savoring every spoonful, just as her book on meditation described. The yogurt tasted especially pure—how could anything white be harmful?—then she opened the fridge and looked at the massive food supply she had hoarded for her guests over the course of the previous days. The vegetables were neatly grouped by color on the bottom shelf, leftovers in identical glass containers were stacked in the middle, jars were arranged by size on the top, whereas all the dairy products were confined in a box with a smiling cow on the lid.
The summer heat gradually intensified and reached its peak in mid-July—the scorching sun forced the whole village behind closed shutters for a good part of the day. Lara realized one had to be sturdy to endure that kind of temperature and that she probably didn’t have the required stamina. There were days when she felt she was hiding from a raging war. The thick walls of the house protected her, but the moment she opened the door the sun scalded her skin like a burn from the stove. It didn’t even feel like heat, it was more like nuclear radiation, an assault of mysterious force from outer space. The true nature of the place had emerged at last and its face was merciless. Her hydrangeas, roses and clematis, which had looked so happy until June, now lay incinerated in their pots. Her pretty courtyard had turned into a cemetery. She finally got it: this was cactus country, all thorns and spikes; it had no patience for anything soft or pastel.
She went swimming at seven each morning, when the small pebbled beach was empty and the water still retained a hint of coolness from the night. Already by eight there would be lines of people, streaming antlike from every direction, holding children, inflatable mattresses, folding chairs, umbrellas, plastic coolers, and by nine the place was swarming with people crammed in a small space, surrounded by their ugly, brightly colored belongings. The mingling of their thighs, hairy chests, stomachs, flabby arms smeared in lotion, plus the loud chorus of their voices, was unbearable. How was it possible that the oasis of peace and solitude she had experienced at the onset of summer had turned into this living hell? Was the dream of her new life in the village yet another mistake she’d made?
When the farmacia opened again after the afternoon siesta Lara pleaded with the chemist to let her have a Xanax even without a prescription.
“I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask you if this wasn’t an emergency,” she said quietly.
Toward the middle of August the glare began to dwindle, till it dimmed, anticipating the soft September light. Lara could open the shutters and let the breeze in at last.
Curtains, she thought. Some billowing linen curtains were what she needed. She should have thought about this before when the light had been harsher. She decided it was time to pay Mina a visit—she hadn’t seen her for weeks—to ask her where she could get the right material.
She waited for the bells’ toll to announce the end of the evening Mass, then opened the door and went outside, watching the procession of her street’s signore walk back together from church. The evening prayer was their one big outing of the day. It was not to be missed.
The same ladies who, only a couple of months earlier, had populated her vision merely as extras in the background now had names; they were Lina, Ada, Teresa and Assunta. Lara greeted them one by one. The women all had the same rectangular shape as Mina, they all wore similar housedresses in various shades of brown and gray, hair cut short, and held their small handbags close to their chests. They smiled back and waved; they probably didn’t approve of the fact that she never attended Mass, not even on Sunday—but Lara felt she had gained their trust in other ways, and that they were even beginning to like her. She waited for Mina to appear, but there was no sign of her within the slow procession, which was unusual, since she was a devoted churchgoer. So she walked over to her house. The door, as usual, was open.
There was fabric all over the place, folded cuts of light merino wool, thick tweeds, dark blue cashmere; shirts, jackets, trousers, coats in various stages of their making were hanging from the backs of the chairs, from the open door of the armoire, from nails on the walls. The proprietor of this vast winter collection was unmistakable: his initials were embroidered inside the collar, on the inner pockets, in a royal swirl. The B and the J entwined in a knot, in golden thread. Mina sat by the window, sewing, barefoot and disheveled, gray roots showing on the top of her head, a big oily stain on her shirt just above her left breast. The house smelled stuffy and unclean.
“My God, what have you been up to?” Lara asked.
Mina gestured toward the clothes hanging about the room.
“Ben has been sending me the fabrics from America. With DHL.”
She pronounced DHL with particular pride. International courier service was clearly a novelty for her (the truck with the logo, the guy in uniform, the printed shipping envelope, how exciting was that? Surely nobody in this tiny village had ever DHLed anything anywhere).
Lara touched the merino wool spread on the table next to a couple of DVDs. She noticed they were both Ben’s old movies.
“I’ve had no time to do anything else but work. No time to water the garden, look … everything died, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers. Tutto morto.” Mina shook her head, pretending to be worried, but Lara could see that she was gleaming underneath.
In the adjacent room, through the half-opened door, Lara glanced at a flat TV screen. She could swear it had never been there before.
“Ben has to go to Venice for the film festival and he wants this ready for the press conference,” Mina said, holding a light gray linen jacket. “I have been up two nights in a row, the courier comes to pick it up tomorrow.”
Things had changed indeed, in the brief space of one summer: even Mina knew about film festivals and press conferences now.
Lara lowered herself into a chair. “That’s very exciting, Mina. Listen, though, do you think you could make me some curtains? Very simple job, I’ll give you the measurements and all you have to do is the hem at the bottom and—”
“Are you kidding? Eh no, bella mia!” Mina stopped her in mid-sentence, raising her hand. “See how much work I have to do? Look, he sent me a coat he wants me to copy. I’ll show you, it’s very expensive, molto signorile, it’s made in America …”
She opened the armoire and pulled out a huge black coat on a wooden hanger. She turned to Lara and brushed its lapels with an automatic gesture.
“He wants me to make him two of these—two!” She laughed. “He says all his friends compliment him on the clothes I make and now he wants me to stitch his whole winter wardrobe. Look at this …”
Mina put the ends of the sleeves of one of the jackets she’d made under Lara’s nose, pointing to the minute work around the buttons.
“These days nobody hand stitches like this anymore, it’s all machine work. By Chinese people! Ha!” She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture.
“Right. I see. Well, I guess you have no time for the curtains, then.”
“How? Look at me: I haven’t had time to do my hair, cook a decent meal. I am so tired, sometimes I fall asleep right at the sewing machine!”
Her throaty laugh went up an octave.
Lara stood and made a move toward the door.
“Okay, well … I guess this is good for you, Mina. I mean, it’ll bring you lots of work.”
Mina stood up from her chair and grabbed Lara’s elbow tightly. She lowered her voice. “Ben is going to buy that house I told him about. I had my cousin take pictures and I sent him the photos—you know, for his architect to see. He calls me and says, ‘Mina, I don’t need to see it again, I trust you, how much do they need for down payment? Ten percent? No problem.’ ”
Lara didn’t say anything.
“I made him cut a very good deal. He’s getting a local price, no tourist price.”
“Mina, he’s a millionai
re!” Lara cried.
“Yes, of course. He’s very elegant, very stylish,” Mina replied, not picking up on the irony.
Lara stood motionless for a moment. She felt betrayed in a way that was difficult to explain. It wasn’t just the curtains. It seemed unfair that, while she had been lying in the shade of her rooms, feeling weak and indolent, just trying to stay in the moment, everyone else’s alliances had been speeding forward. And in her very own backyard at that. She disentangled her elbow from Mina’s grip.
“Okay then, see you around, Mina.”
Mina was already back at the table, her glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose, threading a needle. She barely looked at Lara when she said goodbye. She didn’t seem interested in her anymore, now that she had found a suitable replacement for the barons of her luminous past.
Ben Jackson’s film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. It was a harrowing drama about a father who kills his child’s mother by accident and the difficult relationship that ensues between father and son. The critics raved about Ben’s performance (“at last Jackson seems to have found his maturity and gravitas”). The German director was a young, controversial, good-looking guy and the press had fallen in instant love with him because he was new and nobody had a reason to hate him for anything yet. By accepting a part in such a low-budget project, Ben had gained a brand-new innocence. The two of them made a cool pair: young independent European director and Hollywood star, each shining his own particular light on the other. Lara watched clips of their interviews, which ran for days on cable, the major networks and YouTube. Lara had to admit Ben looked slimmer and happier. Mina’s shirts and jackets fit him like a glove. Sure enough, there had been no sign of the wife with the sensible shoes anywhere on the red carpet, nor in any of the photos.
The Other Language Page 14