Accompanied by Dantesque quotations and the often obscene mythological allusions of which Orimbelli was a master, we passed the arm of the lake that divides the castles from the coast and went to anchor under the main fortification.
During our visit to the ruins, Orimbelli was with Wilma almost constantly, and she showed interest in his classical culture. I contented myself with the other one, Milena. She was the less attractive and more stupid of the two, and I almost regretted having picked them up; they seemed so simpering after our first few chats. I’d met them a couple of months before in a pastry shop in Laveno, and they’d looked as if they were classy, so much so that I was surprised to find them willing to go off for three or four days in the boat. I asked Milena what they’d told their families.
“That we were going a friend’s in Milan,” she said, “to study together for a Latin exam. Instead of taking the train, we stayed in the station bar until it was time to set sail.”
We rejoined Wilma and Orimbelli in the only habitable room of the fortress, a small round room carved out of the eastern tower, with the remains of some ornamental frescos. There, I regaled them with stories of the crimes of the fifteenth-century Mazzardi pirates, who’d come home after raids loaded with people from Marengo, and always with three or four women captured from the lakeside villages. They’d use them until they were finished with them, and then toss them in the lake like rubbish. One by one, they were washed away by the current, toward Cannobio, where they slowly sank to the bottom.
Unmoved by the fate of their predecessors between these walls four hundred years ago, Wilma and Milena behaved like honest prey. So I decided to keep them with us for all of the promised four days, and take them to Stresa and Baveno, too.
At the Hotel Suisse in Baveno we took two double rooms. One afternoon while I was taking a nap in my room, Orimbelli disappeared with Milena. He told the porter they were going to visit the Isola Pescatori. When I came down, I found Wilma sitting on the terrace holding a book she’d brought along in her bag.
I had a gut feeling, so I went up to the room where Orimbelli was staying with Wilma and put my eye to the door. I heard his voice, then Milena’s, saying he was horny.
Not again, I thought as I went back downstairs. But I said nothing to Wilma and took a walk around the town looking for the Villa Fedora, where I’d seen the musician Umberto Giordano.
I found it, but the gate was closed. A man came out from behind the villa with an armchair over his shoulders; he stopped when he saw me. He must have been a thief, stripping the residents little by little. I asked him who lived in the villa.
“No one,” he replied. And off he went with his armchair.
I returned to the hotel to find Orimbelli sitting in the garden with Wilma and Milena.
“We just got back from Isola Pescatori,” he said.
VII
THE NEXT DAY we went back to Laveno, but the girls begged me to put them ashore at Cerro; they’d walk home from there. I complied, and we got off at Cerro, too, to go with them as far as the village. While Milena and Wilma went to the station to scan the schedule so they could say when they got home that they’d just got off the train, we went to have supper in a trattoria.
We made our way slowly back to Cerro in the dark to sleep in the boat. I was walking beside Orimbelli, who was silent and absorbed, when all at once, it occurred to me to tell him something that had been on my mind since the day before.
“Orimbelli, you don’t stand on ceremony, do you? A couple of days ago at Stresa: Charlotte. Yesterday at Baveno: Milena …You regularly dine from my plate.”
He didn’t deny it. “Put it down to weakness,” he said. “I should respect others’ women, but I can’t. But also, it’s my view that women don’t belong to people. It’s not as if they can become the property of this fellow or that. They’re free to choose, or to make sure they’re chosen. All the same, if I’ve taken advantage, you’ll have to excuse me. But in the first case as well as the second, I didn’t have the impression I was stealing anything or betraying anyone. It was a case of res nullius, no one’s property. Or rather, something abandoned, left for others’ discretion. In legal terms, a scrap, leftovers. I helped myself to your leftovers; that’s the best description of my behavior.”
There was nothing I could say to that.
“And yet,” I said to him, “your leftovers—I haven’t yet had the chance to see how they taste. You never throw me a thing. What I mean is, you never add anything to the mix. Could it be that you don’t know any women to invite onto the boat?”
He was very embarrassed and started making a mental list of everyone he knew.
“Well, I don’t have a great stable here. Of course if we were in Naples, we’d need Noah’s Ark, not the Tinca. But I don’t know anyone around here.”
“You don’t know anyone in Intra?”
“Yes, I know a few people in Intra. I can try … In fact, we’ll probably get her on board. She’s a fine woman! Not really from Intra, but from around there: a pharmacist’s wife. A woman of quality. Let’s go to Intra and see what I can arrange with her.”
We stayed at the port in Intra for a couple of days while Orimbelli came and went, phoning, sometimes disappearing for hours, bustling about finalizing this business with the pharmacist’s wife.
To judge by his reports whenever he joined me on the boat or at the Leon d’Oro, it was no simple matter. The lady, who had two children, was waiting for her sister in Melzo to phone her to give her a bogus excuse to get away.
After two days’ delay, she was finally ready to leave. She would go to Laveno on the eleven o’clock shuttle boat, and instead of taking the train, she’d slip onto our boat.
I hoisted the sails right away so we’d arrive in time to catch our prey. Orimbelli was extremely excited. It was a real sacrifice for him, because Armida was a highly emotional woman, and very proper. But to break even with me, he was going to have to arrange to leave us alone in circumstances that would make her surrender inevitable.
We were at the port of Laveno by ten. Seated on the dock with his binoculars, Orimbella kept the Intra jetty under observation. When the shuttle boat set off, he climbed back into the sailing boat.
“It’s done. She must be on her way by now.”
He moved toward the arrivals area and got into position to watch the passengers disembark.
The shuttle boat docked and just as instructed, Armida got off with her suitcase and purse and went into the waiting room for the Northern Line, as if she were going to take the train. But she let it depart without her.
Having inspected the square and the area surrounding the port, Orimbelli gave her a prearranged signal and she moved toward the dock. She looked about for the Tinca with a frightened expression, spotted it and descended the stairs that took her to the pontoon where it was docked. Orimbelli emerged at the appropriate moment, took her case and offered his arm to help conduct our prey into the boat.
Thanks to careful surveillance the operation was secure, and Orimbelli quickly stepped off the jetty and jumped aboard. The lady was already safely below deck. We then raised anchor and set sail for Luino as if there were nothing going on.
She’d come aboard so quickly I hadn’t had the chance to take in anything apart from the fact that Armida was gigantic. The Tinca complained, too. As soon as it felt her weight, it dipped on one side as if blasted by a sudden wind. Once we’d moved away from the shore, the signora struggled through the doorway and appeared before me in all her glory: a large woman of about forty, with a double chin, saggy breasts, wrestler’s arms and a small, turned-up nose between fleshy cheeks, just like all fat ladies.
Orimbelli settled her on the bench and sat across from her to compensate, if only partially, for the boat’s listing. A good wind carried us toward Luino.
When she heard where we were bound, Armida shrieked, “For heaven’s sake! My husband has a brother in Luino and his house is right by the harbor!”
“So we’
ll go to Cannobio,” I said.
“Cannobio? I lived there for three years before I got married. Everyone knows me there.”
“We could turn back and head toward the lower end of the lake,” Orimbelli suggested. “Solcio, Lesa or across from there, Arolo or Ranco.”
At five that afternoon, the signora was feeling ill, so I dropped anchor at Sasso Moro, close to Arolo, near the mouth of a stream and under a canopy of branches that hid the boat completely.
Orimbelli had his own plans. He hurried to the village and came back again to say that he’d found a double bedroom. However, since it was risky to take the signora to the hotel, he would sleep in the village and leave us the two couchettes.
Despite his objections, I gave him the place in the boat, and after we ate, I went to the village to stay at the Albergo Milano.
In the morning, I headed back to the river at around eight and saw the boat practically submerged on one side. I realized that the two of them were in one couchette, and to avoid disturbing them, I took a walk through the fields and came back an hour later.
With the boat at anchor and the signora still feeling sick, there wasn’t any point in setting off. Orimbelli kept wanting to leave me alone with Armida, but in the space of a few hours she’d turned into something of a clown, with her clothes and her face all mussed up.
“This is madness!” she said as soon as he’d gone. “What a circus! If my husband realizes I’m not at my sister’s it’ll be a disaster. I’ve two children and I’m pregnant with the third. But that man is so charming and romantic, I’d do anything for him.”
“It takes half an hour in a taxi from here to Gavirate, and from there you can take the train to Milan. You’ll be at your sister’s in Melzo by the afternoon, and tomorrow you can return to your husband and children in Intra. You’ve spent a night now with Orimbell …”
She was offended. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. I spent a night with Orimbelli? Yes, but that man is a gentleman and I can assure you that he behaved himself. It was only this morning that he sat on the edge of my couchette. What dignified behavior! A real cavalry officer!”
When Orimbelli returned, the signora was ready to leave for Gavirate. He took her there after lunch and returned to Arolo in the same taxi.
“You’ll forgive me,” he said, climbing into the boat, “but as far as women go, as you said, she’s all I’ve got—or nearly. However, you have no idea what you’re missing. Armida has her special ways—unique. A pregnant woman …” And he lost himself in descriptions of the unbelievable curves on that giantess, her creamy skin and other exquisite bits that correspond to various cuts of veal: haunch, loin, rump, shoulder, rack.
“Do me a favor,” I interrupted him. “You got Signora Armida at the fun fair, not the pharmacy.”
He didn’t open his mouth again until that evening, when, all tucked up in his couchette, he felt he had to wish me good night.
VIII
WE’D BEEN SKIMMING THE LAKE with variable luck for almost two months, and our last cruise had kept us away from Villa Cleofe for over a week.
“It’s time to go home,” said Orimbelli. “If we don’t, they’ll take us there by force.”
His words conjured up such a wonderful image of Villa Cleofe—with Matilde, its fine food and the bishop’s bedroom—that I turned the prow toward Oggebbio without even taking note of the winds.
When we arrived in the drawing room after climbing up an internal stairway from the dock, we found the women sitting quietly on the sofa just as I’d seen them for the first time.
I noticed that Matilde had left off playing the widow and wearing half-mourning. Perhaps now that her husband had officially been gone for ten years, she’d decided to change her life—or at least her appearance.
Signora Cleofe didn’t ask what we’d been doing for the six days we were away, but throughout dinner Orimbelli talked about Ascona, Stresa, the islands and the beauty of sailing up and down the lake, day and night.
“One at the prow and one at the stern,” he said. “Alone, in silence, blown about by gusts of wind, one passes one harbor after another. It’s as if turning the pages of an illustrated book: constantly changing pictures and colors …”
He came to the description of the nocturnal storm that had surprised us, as well as the girls from Laveno. He didn’t mention them, but he bragged about his sang-froid.
“In the midst of the gale,” he said, “the facade of the villa appeared between flashes of lightning. Just a bit more, and we’d have crashed into the wall. It was maybe about three, and I saw a light go on in the bishop’s bedroom.”
“That’s right,” Signora Cleofe acknowledged. “On the night of the storm I took a turn around the rooms to make sure all the windows were closed.”
Orimbelli went on. “Storms apart—and in any case they’re rare—the spectacle of the lake is something indescribable. You can’t imagine what the shores look like from the middle of the lake. All the different villas, the inlets and streams, the waterfalls in the mountains, little villages …”
“Why don’t you try it yourself?” I said, turning toward Matilde. “Just for half an hour, in front of the villa. Then, if you get a taste for it …”
Signora Cleofe looked at me with an air of pity, expecting a negative reply from her sister-in-law. But Matilde immediately said that she’d come with us the next day for a little turn in front of the villa.
•
She came aboard the next afternoon dressed in white piqué and with a blue scarf over her hair. She gave me her arm and climbed into the boat. When she lost her balance, she leaned, sighing, against my side. That was enough for me to understand just what she was made of, inside and out. I realized she cherished this accidental contact—the first reward, perhaps, of the new life she’d decided to embark upon.
When the boat caught the wind and began to list, she was momentarily alarmed. But after half an hour, nothing could frighten her, not even the waves that now and again splashed over the side and divided round the gunwale. She sat below the bridge, enraptured, her hands gripping the bench. With her face to the wind and her bust erect, she resembled one of those eighteenth-century figureheads with rosewood breasts splitting the billows under the bowsprit.
Orimbelli was manning the jib at the prow. Every now and then he looked at his sister-in-law, worried lest she feel sick what with the pitching, rolling and gybing caused by the wind, which had now risen to gale force. It wasn’t the usual inverna but a devilish tramontana, the kind that clears the lake of all craft and threatens even the lifeboats.
“We’ll have to hug the coast so we won’t rock so much. Let’s go back to the villa,” I said.
“What a shame!” Matilde exclaimed. “I’m having a world of fun.”
To keep her happy, I had to stay in the middle of the lake until evening. The boat ran back and forth like a greyhound.
•
At table Matilde asked me with the greatest seriousness if I’d be prepared to recruit her as part of my crew.
“Of course,” I replied. “I’ll have a full crew then, and I’ll be able to introduce myself to the Stresa Yacht Club as master of my own boat. It was with that club, an old sailing academy on our lake,” I told her, “that we began yachting like true Englishmen in the Borromeo Gulf. At the end of the nineteenth century it was Ceriana the lawyer, the Marquis Dal Pozzo and Prince Troubetskoy. Count Lele Borromeo, the nobleman Tirelli, Giovanola di Cannobio and the others came later.”
Matilde was excited by these names. “Let’s go now!” she said, looking at me earnestly.
I reminded her that she’d have to get hold of the right clothing—sundresses, shorts, espadrilles, bathing suits, a few sailors’ hats and a waterproof jacket, since there could be rain and bad weather.
“I have everything already! So I’ll be ready tomorrow at eight,” she replied.
Signora Cleofe couldn’t believe her ears. “Have you lost your mind?” she said.
Signora Cleofe shook her head and said nothing further.
The sun wasn’t up yet, but a red glow behind Luino forecast a clear, windy morning, the kind that comes at summer’s end. Like a woman changing her clothes, the lake sheds its subtle, light colors after Assumption Day in order to put on an intense sky blue, sometimes a deep turquoise if the tramontana sweeps across it in the morning and the inverna again in the evening.
I opened the balcony window and looked at the lake, which passed before me like a river in full flow. It was as smooth as oil near the shore—protected as it was by the Cannero promontory and the one at Carmine before that. But two or three hundred meters out, as far as the eye could see, the waves bounded ahead, beyond Santa Caterina, Arolo and Ranco. There, it usually becomes calm again, exhausted by the great race.
I’d woken up while it was still dark, excited by the wind and the thought that in the morning, Matilde would be coming with us on a three- or four-day expedition. It was a sure thing that I’d get close enough to catch her scent, to see her in her swimsuit, touch her on some pretext, help her back onto the boat after a swim or out of it on jetties that were too high at some of the ports. One thought followed another, until I came to the problem of nights in the boat. Where would she sleep? Certainly not outside the cabin on the cockpit, where Orimbelli slept under canvas out of nostalgia for the tents in Africa. Below deck there were two couchettes with barely more than seventy centimeters between them and a four-inch keelson toward the prow, the mast at the foot. She’d sleep in one of the couchettes, and Orimbelli and I would sleep side by side outside under the canvas. But when we lay down, partly undressed, she’d see that we were uncomfortable, and it would be silly to leave one couchette empty … Who was to say that she might not invite me to sleep below deck? She certainly couldn’t invite her brother-inlaw; in this case, a stranger would be less out of place than an in-law. I’d be able to hear her breathing in the dawn silence, more anxious than the night’s. My arm, having fallen out of the couchette, might meet hers while we were slumbering. And hand in hand, we’d both pretend to sleep, until a quiver under her skin would tell me I could go up her forearm, to her shoulder—she’d be calm and quiet the whole time— until I reached one of her breasts. Just one of them—like a fairy’s chalice, or the Holy Grail—would be enough to give me a foretaste of that sublime nectar, or one of those miracles only love can bring about. I’d relish it, a little at a time, day and night, with Orimbelli there, but blind.
The Bishop's Bedroom Page 5
