Now there is nothing to smile about. The city grows darker and uglier with every step. The boulevards narrow into alleyways and houses lean against each other carelessly as if drunk. A beastly stench comes from a dark rivulet that passes through the middle of the street. What am I doing here? She reminds herself: I’m seeking the solution to a mystery. This neighbourhood is like an entirely different city; gone is the airy vastness of the great tree-lined boulevards; there are no piazzas with ornate churches here. Are secrets always so crooked? Perhaps it is their nature, she tells herself, trying to ignore a woman in rags squatting on the steps in a doorway, surrounded by barefoot, naked children playing in the mud. A rusty sign for an inn squeaks in the breeze, the only music around.
She isn’t scared. She has no fear. Dozens of heroines before her have ventured to even darker depths, with only their courage and sincerity to shield them. Many have revealed lies in order to see the true and just triumph. She is not frightened, but she is cold. The returning sun shines crookedly down these alleys, and only meagrely at this time of day. Foul, fetid smells emanate from the cracks in the walls. Cellar windows leak frigid bursts of air that snake around her ankles. She wouldn’t be surprised to see claws emerging from a grate. She walks faster; the alleyway is long and she has to travel its full length. Finally, the houses separate, the sky becomes visible again in all its vastness, and a young boy stands waiting, leaning against a fountain, his arms crossed, clogs mired in dirt. He has a smirk on his face – no, it is more of a smile.
Afterwards, Bianca looks around and notices the hackberry trees. Their roots are so strong that they crack open rocks. Their Italian name, bagolari, is too plain for a tree that is so true, so beautiful, vertical, sensitive and strong. They have the arms of day labourers with veins and muscles, and a delicate grey bark filled with sap. The air is filled with pollen that makes her eyes red and itchy, and it is hard to breathe. Springtime cannot be rubbed away; it is an assertive and capricious child that likes to step on people’s feet. The skies have never been this way – and yet memory tells her that they always were. Springtime always brings first times. She suddenly senses the countryside beneath the paved roads. She feels the streets ready to be freed of their winter coats. Daisies poke out of cracks between the cobblestones. Life is coming back, blessed and expected. Men’s eyes are flirtatious, insolent and possessive. She needs to laugh – laughter is good, and it makes her feel safe. The air is like a cool wine that burns and freezes simultaneously. You could drink it from your skin, from your hair, from everything.
The expedition has been a success and the day is splendid. Bianca returns on foot, the road made shorter with so much to think about. She has her drawings, her projects, and what’s more, this magnificent season that pulsates inside and out. Now that she knows, everything is possible.
‘Come, my little one. Let me look at you. May I hug you?’
‘May I call you Mother?’
Bianca imagines that beautiful word falling silently from Pia’s lips, erasing all hesitation and boundaries, confusing everything into an embrace. It will be so simple, and each of them will reclaim their rightful place in the order of things. Pia will step forward uncertainly, her head bare, her hair as shiny as chestnuts. It will be wonderful to see her self-assuredly show herself the way she truly is, tender and pure. Pale, almost translucent. She will be reduced – or rather elevated – to the essence of herself in this most precious of moments. And the woman – the mother, who will now have the right to call herself this – will be made youthful again through her repressed joy. Shadows under her eyes still speak of countless nights of torment but the light that will radiate forth will smooth out all wrinkles. Her lips will utter that serious and perfect word ‘daughter’. Hands will seek hands, hands will reach for arms, the pair will embrace, and this hug will dissolve all doubt.
At that point in time, in her imagination, Bianca will leave them. It is hard for her to see more than this. She is certain it will happen. Perhaps it won’t happen in that exact way, but it will happen.
It will be so lovely to see them together.
She has to make it happen. But how? Who could act as her accomplice, if not Innes? The moment has come for her to speak to him without reticence or deception. It is simple, really. She practises her speech in her head:
I understand everything now. It’s all clear. You knew all along, didn’t you? You could have told me. But no, of course not, I understand. Loyalty, your sense of honour, duty, et cetera. Save yourself the sermon. Now that I know, and now that you know that I know, I need your help. We must do something. That poor girl has the right . . . what right, you say? You, of all people? Of course, in front of the poet you bow down to all noble principles. Or is there something else I should know? You need time?
I solved the puzzle myself. What, it’s not a puzzle? Well, you are correct. There is no mystery. It’s the same old story. No, I can’t, I won’t ignore the situation. It is for her own good, you understand? Don’t you want to give her even the smallest glimmer of hope? She’s been nailed to a fate that she didn’t ask or wish for. She could have so many possibilities in life; she needs so little, and could reclaim everything. What’s that? Like me? You flatter me, really, you do. But I am a poor role model. Trust me. I have had everything all along, and I did nothing to deserve that which she has been denied. Talent, you say? You really believe that my talent makes a difference? It doesn’t count a whit more than fortune, or fate, or whatever you call it. And how do you know that she doesn’t possess unspoken talents? She is still only a child . . .
Bianca’s imagined Innes is complacent in his silence, the best confidant for the situation. If only she had the courage. But she is scared. She doesn’t know how to give herself courage. She is also frightened that he might stop her for any number of excellent reasons. So she contradicts him in her head. But it is only a matter of time and patience. A fourteen-year-old secret can wait another couple of weeks. So she waits, convinced that eventually she will be able to move the chess pieces across the table. She doesn’t understand that the game is not hers to play, and that she has no power really, not even over the poorest pawn.
Bianca’s drawing needs full outlines before she can fill in the shadows, and several details are still missing. She needs to imagine the poet before he became a poet, back when he was just a reckless boy, a city boy with a long name and an empty brain, before the muses kidnapped him, before the desire for domestic piety pushed him to seek his perfect bride. She needs to find out more by teasing it out of Donna Clara.
Bianca is like a cat with a ball of yarn. She almost feels bad about having to trick Donna Clara, but she has to find out.
It is a pity that the poet’s mother is so cautious. She ignores the inappropriate parts of the story and sheds light only on her preferred ones, the parts that illustrate her in all the glory of filial love. The rest of it might not have even occurred. Don Titta was born when he decided it was the right time, which is to say when he was twenty years old. But Bianca keeps her ears open for clues as the story progresses.
‘I remember it well. He arrived in Paris on the tenth of April. Before that, you know, the season wasn’t right and the road not safe, so he waited for the first safe journey. He waited because he knew I would be worried about him crossing the Alps, up there in the snow among the wolves and avalanches.’ Bianca smiles sympathetically as Donna Clara takes advantage of the occasion to bask in her memories. ‘They got along from the very start, my Carlo and my Titta. Father and son in spirit, I used to say. Ah, I recall those first strolls in Parc Monceau, our garden of delights . . . We needed to get to know each other again, he and I. We recognized ourselves in each other, you know? Between mother and child there can be no other way.’ Bianca nods but has stopped listening. She subtly counts on her fingers. Pia was born in the December of the same year the poet arrived in Paris. Therefore, it is plausible and possible. All she needs is proof, some kind of confirmation.
Donna
Clara cannot stop talking. ‘It was the most beautiful time. Today everyone is fixated on their children. But I sent my boy to a boarding school with the priests because that was the right thing to do and his father wanted it. And then, when things unravelled as they did, and his father left us for the Lord, I went to Paris with my Carlo, and the boy stayed here in order to finish school. The good Lord wanted us to be reunited, but as adults, as equals. I don’t know if children really need their mothers when they are young. They don’t know a thing; they barely even know they are alive, and, as I see it, the more a mother worries, the more a child is spoiled. And then we forget . . .’
It is almost as if she is trying to justify herself. By comparing her own behaviour with that of her daughter-in-law, she wants to come to some absolute conclusion, prove she hasn’t made a mistake, that she has done the right thing. It is true that the times have changed. But it is also a fact that conventions make life comfortable and easy. They help us to avoid confronting complicated and risky sentiments.
Bianca thinks of her friend Fanny, who lost her heart to Zeno, only to be informed by her family that she would instead be married to Cavalier Gazzoli, a man twenty years older who owned an immense property near the rice fields of La Bassa and whom she had never met. She cried for two weeks. She cried even harder when she met her husband-to-be: pudgy, wearing a wig, his nose a network of veins. Then she visited his home, Villa Salamandra, and came back amazed by the number of rooms. ‘You could play hide-and-seek there,’ she said. ‘And the vast gardens!’ Her tears dried up. Everything became quite lovely, mosquitos included. Which was all well and good as Zeno, with his good looks, never even looked at Fanny.
‘I was everything for my Carlo,’ the older lady continues. ‘I was his confidante, a sister, a mother, a true-life companion. And I knew I was lucky that I had found my soulmate. Then when Titta came back to me, I had the both of them.’
As Donna Clara lists the glories and joys of her life, it occurs to Bianca that she truly has been fortunate. She’s had everything, and what she didn’t have, she acquired. First a solid husband. Then a rich, intellectual lover. Then, once her youth faded, she had her son, a fashionable poet whose fame reflected back onto her. Bianca doesn’t need to exert herself to piece together the joyful past of the proprietress. Everyone knows that Carlo, whom she followed to Paris when her husband was still warm in his coffin, was her lover long before her marriage. Everyone also knows that Titta and Carlo (who could well have been his father although this was never officially stated) never got along. It is known too, that when Carlo died, Donna Clara was somewhat relieved. She was tired of being a mediator between the two men, ready to bring her French romance to a conclusion, eager to continue her life of comfort with her lover’s money in his countryside villa that she’d inherited, and happy to indulge Titta’s desire to leave Paris. And yet she insists that she would have gladly stayed on in the city and become the next queen of a new salon; that she’d go back tomorrow if she could.
Donna Clara is astute and accustomed to worldly things; she knows that her story has unfolded in the most elegant way, far more than the predictable, banal debaucheries of Parisian life could ever have permitted. As her beauty fades, familial piety becomes more important. In other words, it is all for the best. It is a shame, though, that she can only talk about Carlo when Titta is not around. All traces of that other man and his rural domain – his drawings, writings, collections – are in the attic of the country house, inside a long row of chests covered by old rugs that a maid has once shown to Bianca.
At this point, having obtained the information she wants and from a primary source no less, she takes her leave with the excuse of having a drawing to finish, while the old woman continues to recite her litany to herself.
The drawing isn’t an excuse, actually. Outside the viburnums have flowered and Bianca wants to draw their white flowers before they fade. Viburnum: the word rolls off her tongue like a plump berry. She picks up a pencil and asks herself which is more beautiful, the word or the flower. Perhaps poetry is a superior art, she thinks. It summons things with a sound and on paper with a symbol, while her art is mute and rallies only one of the senses, never producing echoes. She wishes she could share her complex thoughts with someone to see if they are absurd or actually make sense. She might surprise them.
Should she have run away from Donna Clara? There is nobody else in the house to keep the lady company. No, she is better off being quiet and drawing, she thinks. It’s what she knows how to do best.
Be quiet and draw, be quiet and take a walk, but most importantly, be quiet. The house is a cocoon of enforced peace. The three men disappear once again, this time to discover more about silkworms, it seems. When Bianca raises an eyebrow at Innes, he shrugs without even trying to answer her silent question. Traitor.
Donna Julie gets her much-needed rest. She is always resting these days, with Donna Clara watching over her, dealing with a silence that must be unbearable for her. The children have been instructed to behave. Pia is absorbed and pensive; she minds her own business, as if she feels something stirring in the air, the distant arrival of a storm. Bianca leaves her alone.
Sometimes Bianca gets the feeling that her own voice no longer works, she uses it so seldom. It is fine only for ‘good morning,’ ‘goodnight’ and ‘a little more soup, thank you, but no dessert’. Bianca’s interior monologues remind her of the watery spirals of bindweed, which she tries to draw. By evening, though, she can no longer stand the peace and runs out to the garden.
Thanks to the insistent rains and mild weather, the city garden has reached its most luxuriant state and has become a neglected realm of delight. She enjoys this weather. She likes to watch the earthworms, how they contort their bodies to smell the air with their nose, only to return underground, ready to eat up the world. And then there is the moving loyalty of the bulbs. They are the ever-faithful dogs of the flower world, ready to bloom in the same place, year after year. But in that small swatch of green between the high walls of the buildings, their generous little hands close too quickly. No one takes the time to look at them, and then suddenly, they are gone.
What a waste, Bianca thinks as she caresses the tips of the palmetto leaves and the corners of the banana plant, burning with green. What a waste, she thinks again, the thought itself like a sharp splinter of glass that one picks up so that someone else does not step on it and bleed. When does spring end? Is summer really more beautiful, when everything has happened, when everything has already been decided, when imagination is useless? For the first time, Bianca has the feeling that what was will not always be; that any kind of flowering is merely a delicate deceit. There is no grand design. There is no room for the unexpected. It is all anticipated, predictable, and therefore as if it has already happened. Where will I be when this tree is laden with fruits? What will I be like? Will something have changed, or will I still be here, leafing through pages? Bianca delights in these thoughts. She lets herself be transported by a melancholy that makes her feel both serious and adult. She doesn’t realize, however, that she had spoken out loud.
‘I’ve never heard someone summon forth autumn with such grace.’
The man’s voice catches her by surprise and makes her jump.
‘Is that you?’ she asks the shadow with some discomfort, although she is unsure why.
‘I’ve returned alone. Silkworms aren’t for me. They require too much patience. I was scared when I saw the house so dark and silent. The servants are too quiet. It’s as if they have a secret. Is something happening that I don’t know about?’
‘Only the same old dramas.’
Bianca tries to sound light-hearted, but the phrase comes across as brazen, or perhaps just overly sincere. In any case, it is true. What is more normal than Donna Julie’s perpetual discomfort? Tommaso completes her thought.
‘If it had been severe, we would have received word and, in any case, I am certain that tomorrow morning at breakfast I will be given
an abundance of details. I can wait. But you, so alone in this damp garden . . . you’ll catch cold. Or are you demanding your share of attention?’
Bianca is stupefied. What did she say or do, now or even prior to that, for him to know her so well? Has he guessed? Or is this just another innocent skirmish? Tommaso often says things only for the sake of saying them. He conquers boredom through provocation. How long has he been spying on her, listening to her strange rant? She isn’t quick enough to answer so he presses on.
‘Don’t be afraid. If you are so eager to taste the fruit, inevitably it will be attracted to you.’
There is so much intimacy in that sentence. It is the sort of intimacy that is not permitted but is often stolen without consideration. Bianca wraps herself up tightly in her shawl, trying to avoid those burning eyes, which, even in darkness, see her clearly.
‘Come on, Miss Bianca,’ he jokes. ‘It’s almost dark and we’re alone. It’s not right for a well-mannered lady like you. But what do we care about conventions? And do you really want to be afraid of me? Look at me: I am only a half-poet bound to a great oak tree that ignores me, an insignificant lichen stuck to the bark on which it feeds. And you, on the other hand, are so intrepid, free, a working woman . . .’
Bianca collects her thoughts and pride. She doesn’t like the carelessness in Tommaso’s concealed, offhand manner. She finds it offensive.
The Watercolourist Page 20