Dancing to the End of Love

by White, Adrian

  I reckon on having needed the sleep. It’s not as though I kept waking up and turning back over, or that I just didn’t feel like working today. I don’t know where this tiredness has come from, and it’s a long time since I’ve experienced such a lack of control over my sleeping patterns. A huge black beetle scuttles across the bathroom floor and I automatically pick my feet up in panic. The beetle freezes for a moment and then makes a dash for a corner of the cubicle. All the years I’ve spent abroad in hot countries and I still haven’t lost my Englishman’s nervousness of foreign insects. There’s nowhere for the beetle to go, so it’s down to me to make a move. I flush the toilet and we both make a run for it in opposite directions.

  I splash my face with cold water at one of the four sinks and try to come round. Where did that sleep come from, I wonder? I run my wet hands through my hair and look up in the mirror to see a long-legged spider land from above, on to my shoulder.

  “Jesus Christ!” I shout, and swat it away. What the fuck is happening? I don’t see where the spider lands; I just get out the bathroom fast and back to my cell. I sit down on my bed and laugh in relief. Brendan Loughlin, the sophisticated traveller to foreign parts. That probably wasn’t the best thing to be shouting out in the bathroom of a Catholic monastery. It looks like the rain has upset the routine of the local wildlife; their homes are all flooded and their children all gone.

  I make a decision: I’m not going to compound my error of not turning up for work by disturbing Giovanni’s siesta. I take the time to shower and have a shave, sharing the bathroom with the bugs and the spiders, before setting off to look for Giovanni.

  I’ve had three further visits. I sit with my head in my hands and wait for him to leave. My anger has eased and I use the time he’s in my cell to become accustomed to this being a part of my routine. The only problem is I don’t know when he might or might not turn up. I’ve practiced talking to myself, if you know what I mean – not crazy talking, but listening to the sound of my own voice. I’ve often heard others in here shouting, or mumbling in the yard, or passing on whispered messages to each other, and I’ve always thought madness lies in that direction. I’ve tried singing a scale of notes, hopelessly out of tune, in an attempt to regain the use of my vocal chords. This is what his visits have brought me to.

  I tell him that in my head he’s the Padre.

  The Padre – he likes that.

  From Hemingway.

  For Whom the Bell Tolls?

  No – from one of the early good ones, before it all became a joke.

  A joke – the Spanish Civil War?

  Hemingway’s writing. Not the war.

  Says he wouldn’t know about that.

  I ask if he’s studying for the priesthood.

  He’s taking some time to think about it. He’s considering his vocation.

  I smile at his using the actual the phrase.

  And what’s the news?

  He looks at me, puzzled, and then he gets it.

  Early days, he says, early days.

  Why the doubt?

  No doubt. He believes in God.

  I’m sure he does, but why the doubt about the priesthood?

  Again, there is no doubt. He just wants to make sure.

  I don’t know if he’s aware of the contradiction. His face gives nothing away.

  Will visiting me help make up his mind about being a priest?

  No. He just wants to be doing something useful at the same time.

  Was this his idea or someone else’s?

  His own.

  Is he sure about that?

  Whose might it have been otherwise?

  I need him to do something for me.

  His face lights up again with eagerness. He’s more of a Brother Ernest than a Brother Paul. He wants to help in some way – in any way.

  My shoulders slump again. I’m tired.

  We can talk about that, I say, but not today.

  So what is it?

  I need you to stick to a routine. I can’t have you coming one day and not the next. I need to know when you’re going to arrive.

  But you have no clock, he says.

  I tell him I measure my time in different ways. I just need to know if he’ll be here every day, every other day, every week or never again – which, by the way, would be my preference.

  He smiles. He needs to talk to his superiors.

  He’s not free to make his own decisions?

  He’s a step away from the priesthood, not a member of some democratic organisation.

  When will he next be here?

  Tomorrow?

  Is he asking my permission, or is he saying he’ll be here tomorrow?

  He’ll be here tomorrow.

  Okay. So now, please leave.

  No doubt he’s delighted to be getting somewhere, but I’m getting somewhere too: I’m making sure his visits are more on my terms.

  I’m exhausted. I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation with another person; they’ve all been in my head. I can’t remember much, actually, if I try to think about the past three years. Maybe I have gone a little crazy, talk or no talk.

  I have my first proper Italian conversation with Giovanni and his wife, Ines. There’s no hope of any stray English words to help me out. There’s no shared language other than what little Italian I manage to string together and I have no choice but to strain hard to catch what it is they say back to me. I’m far from perfect, I know, and what I do to their language has a physical impact on their features – it’s like I’m slapping them in the face with my mistakes. But I persist. I’m ashamed about failing to turn up for work, and I think it means a great deal for Giovanni to introduce me to his wife.

  I have to ask around where I might find Giovanni on such a wet day. The reception area of the hotel is very busy, and the staff are being pestered by guests who are hanging around with nothing much to do. Hit the bar or hit the chapel, I feel like saying to them. The Villa runs coach tours into the city, to the Vatican mainly, but today’s coach would have left early this morning and it’s too late now to arrange something extra for the evening. There are guests returning from venturing out in their own cars, shaking the water from their coats and shaking their heads at the relentless nature of the rain. New guests are arriving and you can see them questioning the wisdom of basing themselves out here in the hills for the Rome leg of their holiday. Javier, one of the bell boys who I occasionally help out with the luggage, comes through the door pushing a trolley loaded with bags. He’s wearing a waterproof cloak that drips rainwater on to the carpet where he stands. He’s Spanish but he has good English and I ask him if he’s seen anything of Giovanni. He says no, and looks at me in my dry clothes; we gardeners obviously have it easy on days like today. I walk outside and stand under the cover of the portico.

  “You’re not thinking of going out in this, are you?”

  It’s Brother Michael. He looks cheery, dressed in slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, and is carrying one of the Villa’s large complementary umbrellas.

  “I need to find Giovanni, and I haven’t got a clue where to start looking.”

  “Where were you working this morning?”

  “That’s just it – I haven’t seen him all day.” I hesitate and then decide to tell the truth; this place would have that effect on you. “I slept in.”

  Brother Michael laughs.

  “Until now – it’s four in the afternoon?”

  There are plenty of opportunities here to drink late into the night if you’re a member of staff, but Brother Michael knows I’m not a part of that crowd. I’m not sure just how much he knows about me, but I get the impression he respects my preference for time spent alone. I smile and shrug – what can I say?

  “I believe Giovanni spends wet days in his workshop,” Brother Michael tells me.

  “You mean the tool shed?”

  “No, he has a workshop next door to his cottage.” He looks at me. “You don’t know where his cottage
is either, do you?”

  “No.” I get the feeling Giovanni enjoys his privacy as much as I do.

  “I’ve to go along to the library,” Brother Michael says. “I can point you in the general direction from there.”

  We share the umbrella as we walk along the gravel path that skirts around the main building of the Villa.

  “Will Giovanni mind me going to his workshop?”

  “I doubt it. Anyway, I’d say you have the right idea – get to see him before the day is over.”

  He hands me the umbrella at the entrance to the library.

  “Won’t you need this for getting back?” I ask.

  “I’ll be here for at least a couple of hours and the rain will have eased off by then. Besides – I can cut through to the Refectory from here.”

  Giovanni’s cottage is a long way into the woods, below the Villa and towards the lake. If I hadn’t been reassured by Brother Michael that this was the right path, I’d have given up before I arrived. It seems further because I’ve never come this way before, but Giovanni must tread this path at least four times each day as he’s back and forth for his lunch and siesta. The cover from the trees is such that I don’t really need the umbrella; it feels incongruous in the woods anyway. The occasional heavy drop of rain catches me on my head, but the air is warm and I don’t mind. The long sleep has done me some good.

  I call to the cottage rather than the workshop, and rest the umbrella against the stone wall. I’ve psyched myself up to talk only in Italian, but it throws me when Giovanni’s wife opens the door. I recognise her from the kitchen in the Refectory – one of the locals who earn their living up at the Villa – and I’ve noticed how all the other staff defer to her when it comes to getting the work done. It might be her age, or that she looks like anyone’s idea of a round, homely Italian mama. I tell her I work with Giovanni, and ask to speak to him, which is a little redundant because I can see right away that she knows who I am. She introduces herself to me as Ines, and walks me around to the far side of the cottage. She pulls back the large wooden door of the workshop, and I see Giovanni leaning over and working at a lathe. He’s running a motor of some kind and Ines has to shout over the noise. He turns around and smiles when he sees it’s me, raising a pair of goggles on to his forehead. If he’d wished not to be disturbed, he doesn’t show it.

  “Brendano,” he shouts, and gestures for me to come over to where he’s working. The name is a joke between us, about how my refuses to translate into anything vaguely Italian. Ines leaves us and returns to the cottage, closing the workshop door behind her. Giovanni is keen to show me his work; he’s a wood turner and there are bowls and plates and wine goblets stacked on shelving above the lathe. There’s a workbench running along the length of the workshop with chisels and blades each in their allocated space on the wall; a full set of a car mechanic’s wrenches and spanners; and Giovanni’s own personal set of tools for the garden surrounding his cottage. I see an old petrol lawnmower that looks like an antique, plus what I presume to be a motorbike beneath a dirty tarpaulin. Giovanni replaces the chisel he was using to a bracket on the wall and chooses another, which he hands to me. He peels the goggles off his head and holds them out. I put the chisel down and when I pull on the goggles they’re warm and sweaty from Giovanni’s forehead. Giovanni uses his illustrative technique of showing me what to do while he says it in Italian. I want to interrupt to give him my prepared speech about why I didn’t turn up for work today – both as a courtesy and to impress him with some sentences of actual Italian – but he shows me the foot pedal for the motor of the lathe, and guides my hand and the chisel to the piece of wood he’s working on. The chisel jars on the wood as I press too hard and Giovanni pulls back my hand.

  “Softly, softly,” he says, like it’s a piece of music for the piano, and this time he lets me do it alone. I feel the contact and lean gently into the wood. I manage to smooth out the nick I made and stand back to Giovanni’s nod of approval. He turns off the lathe at the mains, and the noise of the motor winds down. I hand him back the chisel and the goggles, and take the opportunity to tell him about sleeping through the morning. He listens and says fine, it’s not a problem, and that we wouldn’t have been doing much in the rain today anyway. He puts his arm around me and leads me out from the workshop, turns off the lights and closes up for the day. I ask him about the woodturning – does he sell his work, or is it a hobby? I think he says he gives most of it away to friends, or to the Villa, and that this way he can justify working at his lathe on rainy days. He seems genuinely pleased to see me, and I’m glad I took the trouble to come.

  Inside the cottage, I’m told to sit while Giovanni fetches a bottle of pastis and two glasses. Ines comes through with a jug of water and a glass of ice cubes. I ask her if she’s joining us for a drink, and she tells me she has to go to work in about ten minutes. There’s an awful lot of pointing and gesticulating going on for us to understand each other. I smile like an idiot, especially when I’m shown a photograph of their son. He’s also called Giovanni and, from what I can make out, is studying to be a doctor in Rome. Giovanni goes quiet at the mention of his son and I pick up some vibe. I ask Ines if they have other children and immediately wish that I hadn’t. She makes a theatrical show of regret and we get over the moment, but I know instinctively that this issue goes right to the heart of who she is.

  The pastis is perfect, but I turn down Giovanni’s offer of a second, saying I have to get back. I apologise again about this morning, though he’s not in the least bit concerned and jokes that he’ll work me twice as hard tomorrow. Ines says she’ll walk up to the Villa with me, so we leave together. I carry the rolled up umbrella like a walking stick. Unlike Giovanni, Ines makes little allowance for my lack of fluent Italian so I only pick up the bare bones of what she has to tell me, which is mainly about her son and how well he’s doing in Rome. There’s sadness there too, as well as pride, and I wonder what their story might be. By the time we reach the Villa, the rain has stopped and my face hurts from so much polite smiling.

  The Padre comes back the following day as promised, but for some reason I can’t speak to him. There’s too much weight, or something. I haven’t done my exercises. My limbs are so heavy I can barely move. I can make a noise with my throat but I can’t speak any words. I’ve been going over and over what I said to him and already it feels like too much. What was all that Hemingway bullshit? It’s a struggle to sit up on the side of my bed. I hear the Padre’s noise but I don’t hear what he’s saying. I suspect he’s being reasonable about it and I want to tell him I’m not doing this out of badness but I can’t get my body to work. I haven’t felt like this before this is new. It’s heavy, man; the hippy’s had it right. The air feels like a mattress above my head, or is it just the flu?

  He leaves and I let myself fall sideways on to my bed. I sleep and time passes and I hear the door to my cell again and it’s time for the yard no choice so I get up and for the first time I’m like one of the shufflers. Pick up your feet I want to tell them what has happened to me what have I let in can’t live like this won’t make it like this won’t survive. I get through the hour and back to my cell and to the next meal and to the next morning and still the heaviness weighs down on me my limbs it’s my limbs and my head got to be some kind of flu or a drug have they drugged me why start that now? No Padre – where is he? I force myself to eat, and I pace my cell – six, seven paces that’s not right but I stick with it and I try not to shuffle around the yard. Feels like I’m being watched always being watched but this time by the beards what do they want from me this is not my fight it’s theirs and it will be a long one it’s an old one and a long one and it will run and run but it’s not my fight. Collateral damage – that’s me. Keep your war it is a war but it’s not my war and it’s a war we can’t win who’s we? It goes on. The heaviness goes on and the war goes on and I think the heaviness will win. I dig in and I count the days without the Padre returning. One, two, three a week wa
s it all a game? Why, after all this time – almost three years? I can’t live like this. Won’t make it like this. Won’t survive like this. Won’t survive.

  When Maria returns to work in the kitchen of the Refectory, I don’t recognise her at first because her hair is dyed blonde. Ines shouts across the kitchen from the washing up area to where I’m standing at the serving hatch, and points to where Maria’s dropping off some dirty dishes. Ines is obviously delighted that Maria is well enough to return to work and is oblivious to any bad feeling there might be between Maria and myself. Maria looks from Ines to the serving hatch and away again when she sees it’s me. I get the feeling that if it was anyone but Ines drawing attention to Maria, they’d be getting an earful of abuse.

  I’ve gotten into the habit after work of returning with Giovanni to his cottage and sharing a glass of pastis together before dinner. Occasionally I walk back with Ines to the Villa, but more often than not she’s already started her early evening shift by the time we arrive. After enjoying a little aperitif together, I return to the Villa for a shower and my dinner, and Giovanni waits for Ines to return home for their evening meal. My Italian has improved and Giovanni has stopped repeating and illustrating everything he has to tell me. I still miss most of what he says, but it doesn’t seem to matter and besides, we don’t always have that much to say to each other. Away from the Villa, Giovanni is relaxed and he seems comfortable with having me around. Ines is much more conversationally direct than her husband and wants to know all about me. While I struggle to find the words, Giovanni waves the questions away as being unimportant and pours us another drink.

  “This is Brendan’s business,” he says, for which I’m grateful. They’re both very kind and welcoming, and I don’t want to have to lie to them. I suspect Giovanni already knows a fair bit about me – as does Brother Michael, I suspect – and they’re both prepared to leave me be.