A bow, and he is gone. Tommaso casts a bewildered look at Bianca before closing the study door, where apparently someone is waiting for them. Has he heard everything? Has he seen them holding each other’s hands? No, the poet’s back faced the door.
Bianca stands alone. Their conversation has been left hanging. In that other room, voices rise and fall in excitement; there is an invasion of arrogant strangers. Here, things have been said that cannot be undone, like a flood consuming everything in its path. He has said that he will no longer hide. He has said it. What else is there? Bianca, swept up by the current, floats on its dark waters, a blessed Ophelia in her innocent, though not harmless, folly.
Later, Bianca shudders when Bernocchi’s eyes seek her out in the sitting room. She calms a little when he lowers them back to the curled pages of his London Review, which he has clearly brought with him to show off, and which he attempts to translate aloud from English into Italian as he reads.
‘“She knows far too well that the man she loves can never be hers unless extraordinary circumstances take place, a situation which she desires but which she doesn’t dare hope for. And yet she continues to love . . .” Let me say this, Innes. Your friend, the writer, is the first and last of the romantics. What a delightful portrait of female innocence he has put together. To think of enjoying such pure love – and pure because it is impossible. What an honour, what privilege, and what relief! And listen to this here: “They hide their advanced age by speaking without hesitation of their youth . . . or they show off their frenzy of virtue in manifesting a passionate indignation for the same . . .”’
‘Might I interest you in an English lesson or two?’ Innes interrupts, poking fun at Bernocchi. ‘At a moderate price, of course.’
‘Why don’t you read it, then?’ Bernocchi says, irritated, and hands him the paper. ‘It is quite difficult to translate on the spot. Go on, read, right there, the part that talks about love. It will be instructive to all of us.’
Bianca feels averse to all of this but tries not to show it. They are so mistaken. Everyone is wrong. Love is not always impossible. But she mustn’t and won’t say anything. She looks up, surprised to see Tommaso staring right at her gravely.
Innes leafs through the pile of papers. The Italian language in his mouth sounds lovely and exotic, precise, though slightly blurry.
‘As you wish. “Love is no longer a cunning rascal, laughing in his heart while he pretends to cry, nor is love a small curly-haired boy . . . Today love bears the expression and the grave posture of an old sage. Do not imagine him running around naked like a cherub, as he once did. Today love is dressed from head to toe in the clothes of a lawyer.”’ Tommaso chuckles and stamps his feet on the ground. Innes continues. ‘“Love’s quiver has turned into a blue postal bag, and his arrows into documents and contracts, his most powerful tools, for both men and women.” Is that enough for you?’
‘Oh, more than enough. For once, your Foscolo was right. “Listen to me; love no longer exists.” How did he phrase it? Didn’t he compare love to a child that had grown up and become a serious businessman? And thank goodness. Everything that can be bought can also be measured.’
‘Indeed,’ intervenes Donna Julie, who has been silent until now. Her boiling point is slow to reach, but once she achieves it, her lid bursts off. ‘How rotten this world is when we make a business out of sentiments,’ she exclaims, more desolate than disdainful.
Bianca shoots her a perplexed look.
‘Ah, but I didn’t say that. You misunderstand,’ Bernocchi retorts. ‘Sentiments, unfortunately, are utterly unreasonable and difficult to tame. All of us, sooner or later, will fall prey. The important thing is to know how much damage they can cause and to try, as reasonable beings, to control them.’
‘I continue to abhor the world you describe,’ Donna Julie insists.
‘Or perhaps it is me whom you don’t like very much? Poor, wretched me,’ Bernocchi says.
Everyone’s eyes are on the count, judging him, nailing him to the armchair from which he tries to rise, ready to flee. But the depth of the chair combines with his own feebleness and the weight of those stares keeps him fixed in his place.
‘To hear Bernocchi speak of love is an outrage. What could he possibly know, that toad who I doubt has ever been kissed? How can he claim to lay down the law? And everyone just sat there listening to him, nodding their heads like asses. Don’t you find it horrible?’
Bianca, enraged, looks at Innes leaning against the doorway, his hands behind his back. They are alone. The others have gone to get ready for dinner. The count has finally left.
‘Bianca, Bianca, brazen and contemptuous Bianca. Come along, they were just words, thrown like harmless darts.’
‘Harmless, perhaps, but not innocent.’
‘You have the right not to like them, but also the right to ignore them.’ He pauses, then says more seriously, ‘Be wary.’
Bianca throws back her shoulders and faces him with an air of challenge. She paces up and down nervously, marking the carpet with her feet.
‘What are you trying to say?’ she says, finally.
‘You’re playing with fire,’ he answers elusively. ‘I wouldn’t want to see you burn your feathers.’
‘Is that how you see me: as a chicken? Or better, a wild goose with her feathers clipped? Rummaging in the yard among the rest of the fowl?’
‘If you’re fishing for compliments, then I actually see you more as a young heron with its claws stuck in the mud: elegant in flight, clumsy on the ground.’
‘Of course. And soon they will pluck me for dinner. Is that what I should be careful of?’
‘I’m telling you to watch out for yourself,’ answers Innes solemnly.
He must have understood. Yes, of course, he has known all along. But what Bianca wants is a friendly shoulder to lean on, not an authoritative guardian. She cannot accept seeing everything reduced to dry accounting, to hear someone tell her not to run risks.
Donna Julie was right in her argument but then suddenly she had fizzled out. She is too inconsistent, barely worth considering, at least not until she made that comment. Consequently, Bianca has simply propped Donna Julie and her counter-argument up against the wall and forgotten about her as though she is transparent. It embarrasses Bianca to think of taking away from Donna Julie something that is legitimately hers. It is like pricking blood from a vein. She of all people, who is so innocent; she’ll hold her wrist out for a phlebotomy with a smile on her face, convinced it is for her own good . . . how embarrassing. What confusion. What folly.
‘Are you all right, Bianca? You’ve changed colour.’
Innes is attentive. Suddenly he is next to her; he takes her hands and squeezes them. He seems sincerely worried. He bends over her, so close that Bianca can smell the Indian scent of his cologne, and just barely below that, the warm current of his skin. Bianca realizes that Innes is not just a friend. He is also a man.
He is too close. Bianca slips out of his grip, turns, and flees. Innes’s gaze follows her as she runs up the staircase in a hurry, anxious to be alone with her thoughts.
Dinner is torture. Innes seems angry and doesn’t say a word to her or to anyone. The absence of his conversational grace, which usually fills the pauses and dissipates the conflicts, weighs over the entire table. Bianca cannot even look at Donna Julie. Don Titta is distracted. Tommaso hasn’t come down, apparently unwell. Donna Clara begins a soliloquy based on the preaching of Don Dionisio, the only merit of which is that it fills the silence, interrupted on occasion by the clink of china and crystal. It is sad to eat in divided company.
They disband in a hurry after dinner. Before disappearing upstairs, Innes looks at her in pained anger. She ignores him and immediately forgets it. The women disappear to the sitting room. Bianca starts to follow them but then returns to the library to recover her personal copy of Shakespeare that she has left on a side table. Don Titta is there, leafing through one of his magazines. She tak
es the book and holds it tightly, as if it carries her salvation. This is where she wants to be. She needs to try again, to be clearer this time. She has feared and desired a situation like this for so long. Instead of leaving, she looks over at him. He, provoked by the power of her eyes, puts down the newspaper and returns her stare. It isn’t the right time for words to muddle the situation. How different this silence feels compared to the one in the dining room. How much purer and more profound; it is a kind of water that provokes thirst, then appeases and renews her. Bianca stands there for a long time, hanging onto that gaze that tells her everything she needs to understand, perhaps even more.
But in a large house one is never alone. There are shutters that need closing and curtains to draw, and almost invisible beings appear to complete these duties. The order of each day depends on them. They enter rooms, ignoring the glances that extend like taut strings between the other people, the people who have a place in the world. The beings tread over these strings or skirt around them, but don’t trip on them since they don’t really see them. Their duties break the tension.
More than a minute has passed – a long, yet fleeting minute – and then it is over. Bianca walks away without saying a word. She is sure that she has said in silence everything that she has wanted to verbalize. She is sure she has received the correct answer too, the only possible and acceptable one. It is the misunderstanding of silence.
She climbs the stairs in a hurry, clutching her book like a buoy. Once in her room she leans against the wall and lets herself drop down to the floor. The book slips out of her hands and falls open. Bianca picks it up. In the dim candlelight that one of those invisible beings has lit, she searches for a message in the words on the page. Tolle et lege. If only, if only there is a little note, a letter, something.
Nothing. The open page merely says things that she isn’t willing to understand:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that low’r’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
No, wait, something is there. A piece of paper pokes out like a bookmark. Cautiously, Bianca picks it out with two fingers. It is what she least expected to find: a portrait of her mother at the age of twenty. Beautiful and remote, this is how she needs to be remembered. Her father used to use these commemorative portraits on sepia-coloured paper as bookmarks; he took notes on their backs, and caressed them secretly with the tips of his fingers. It isn’t surprising to find one inside this book. Would you, Mother, whom I did not know well enough, would you understand? If you were still here, perhaps I wouldn’t be searching for other people’s mothers. Would you judge me harshly? Are you judging me now, your paper eyes piercing me from afar? Are you condemning my passion because it is insulting, illegitimate, and useless? Or perhaps you’re just holding me in your arms without saying a thing?
The face stares back at her, unperturbed. Bianca remembers her mother just like that, as a woman who didn’t smile. Or was that a mask? She closes the book on her mother’s face. Enough. You’re a stranger. You have no right to scold me like that. You aren’t here. And meanwhile the moment has been ruined. The night of discontent will be a long one.
The days pass and nothing happens. The steady stream of secret gifts ends. Don Titta leaves again and takes Innes with him. The house full of children and women feels like a prison. Bianca forces herself to catch up on her work and make up for the time she has spent fantasizing. Work is good for her. It numbs her and rids her of thoughts; it leaves her feeling exhausted and empty, while her folders fill up and the money rolls in. Will I end up like this: rich and unhappy? She fastens her purse strings without even counting her money. She is far from being either rich or happy – what she feels is physical exhaustion.
‘It is springtime and we need something to invigorate us,’ Donna Clara announces, convinced that there is no bodily or spiritual discomfort that does not have a chemical solution. She sends one of her most trusted maids to the herbalist for an infallible recipe. Bianca and Donna Julie, both under her care, are forced to surrender. In the end, it is just a concoction of boiled herbs to be drunk once a day. The table is set with nutritious food and Donna Clara makes sure that the two young girls, as she calls them, eat everything on their plates, the same way that Nanny oversees the children. There is something comforting in feeling looked after. Bianca gives in to the concoction, feeling just a tiny bit of residual guilt towards her companion, who is far more feeble and sick than she. But she puts her guilt aside. In the end, she hasn’t acted on things, she has only imagined them, and dreams never harm anyone except those who invent, cultivate and nurture them.
One thing still bothers her, though, and after it is resolved, she promises herself that she will behave. She will fold her wishes up like a handkerchief and put them away in her pocket, and that will be the end of it all. She has to clear the air with Pia. She feels the need to tell her. It all began by trying to do what was best for her. She needs to talk to her, to explain herself. She needs to find the right time and just do it, get it over with. She has to absolve herself sincerely. Bianca has not confronted Pia because it is the simplest thing to do; she does it now because she knows she won’t be able to escape the trap of the young maid’s gentle lamb-like eyes. She has failed with everyone else but with Pia she cannot afford to.
Pia stares at her for a long time and seems not to understand. For once, she has taken a seat on the sofa and she fumbles with her hands on her lap and kicks her feet, as if she cannot wait to get up and leave. She looks so dazed that Bianca feels like shaking her. On the other hand, she thinks, what was I expecting from a person who all of a sudden has found out who her real mother and father are? It is as if she has been struck by lightning. Bianca smiles encouragingly and gives the girl a gentle pat on the shoulder, waiting.
‘And when you finally understand the situation, we will decide what to do,’ she hears herself say, not knowing how exactly she can help.
The moment couldn’t be more perfect. A cool evening breeze flutters in from the open window in a pale blue wash of light. Pia, bewildered, her lips pursed into an adorable smile, has the inanimate grace of a Flemish portrait. Bianca observes her promising beauty like an indulgent older sister, with a vague air of consolation. When she finally looks up, Pia does not cry, her voice does not tremble; she is submissive and serene.
‘You . . . you are confusing me,’ she starts to say, her hands fluttering from her lap into the air, in a childlike gesture.
How strange the words sound to Bianca, as though they have been stolen from one of the books Pia reads in secret, as if the character is speaking to someone she is fond of. But the maid continues in a different tone.
‘You speak of things that I am owed. You tell me that you are thinking of my well-being. But I do not understand. I am happy like this. What do you expect, Miss Bianca? This is my destiny. Don Dionisio says that it is the duty of a good Christian to accept what the heavens have laid out for them, and that I should thank heaven for what I have. I look around and see so many people who have a lot less than I do: young girls, beaten, ignorant and alone. I not only have a bellyful of food, clothes on my back and a roof under which to sleep, but a lot of other things, too.’
Pia brings her hands down to her lap again and secures one in the other, as if to keep them from flying away.
Bianca is speechless. Is the child ungrateful, after she has spent so much pity on her? The correct answer comes to her slowly. Pia hasn’t asked her to do this. No one has. She has done it all on her own. And then come waves of anger, a river of fury, because the young girl, as stupid as she sounds at that moment, really and truly does deserve better.
‘Pia, Pia, Pia,’ mutters Bianca finally, unable to contain herself. ‘Are you telling me you don’t care to know?’
Pia doesn’t speak. She just presses her lips shut, raises her eyebrows, and then looks down in apology. But
she doesn’t say sorry.
‘Really,’ Bianca insists, ‘are you satisfied with hand-me-down skirts and ribbons and with having to ask for permission to put a book in your pocket now and then? Are you satisfied with so little in order to be happy?’
‘I don’t know any other kind of happiness apart from the happiness I feel now,’ replies Pia simply. She shrugs, opens her hands in a gesture of surrender, and repeats herself. ‘I am happy just the way I am.’ She crosses her arms in front of her and stares back at Bianca. It is as if her look is saying, You’re the one who doesn’t have what you want; you don’t know what you want. You’re the orphan. Don’t unleash your anxieties onto me. ‘May I be excused, Miss Bianca?’
Pia doesn’t wait for a reply. She gets up and leaves, without even turning around. Bianca lowers her head and bites her lip. Pia’s look has said so much, and it hurts Bianca to admit that the girl has been right.
Part Three
The joy of returning to Brusuglio in nice weather cancels out her last memory of the estate in autumn, when an oppressive sky and a thick layer of fog had smothered everything. She is now able to substitute that memory with the colours and well-defined margins of everything in bloom; she recognizes the place first through her body, nose and skin, and only later with her head.
An entire year has gone by since Bianca’s arrival. At twenty years old, it seems like a lifetime. It has taken her this long to call this place, populated by strangers, home. That other house, the one at the lake, is far away. This house, with its wide-open windows, seems to want to embrace her.
Minna leaps on her when she sees her, and then steps back, lowering her chin to her chest in embarrassment. She has grown an entire foot, as children and plants often do between seasons, and her face has taken on certain features that have not been present before.
The Watercolourist Page 23