Juggling the Stars

by Tim Parks

  ‘What shall we do for lunch?’

  ‘Perhaps we should celebrate, in a restaurant. That’s what I was thinking in fact.’

  The frown puckered. ‘l think we should be careful with the money, Morri. If we want it to last.’

  ‘But at least the first day we should celebrate.’ He had been looking forward to a wholesome, slap-up meal. He hadn’t eaten well in ages.

  Massimina insisted. They should buy bread and cheese and make a picnic. They could sit on the steps at Mercato Vecchio and feed the pigeons. That would be wonderful. The nun smiled again. Morris felt suddenly hot and angry. He wasn’t going to be dragged around Italy playing lovey-dovey hippy-dippy on the steps of public monuments, feeding scruffy winged rodents. There was nothing he hated more than people who cluttered up beautiful places with their backpacks and sandwich papers. If you didn’t have money, you shouldn’t travel. He stared at Massimina, boiling now (Morris Duckworth playing soppy boyfriend for a nun’s regretful smiles!), but held back. The worst thing would be to draw attention to themselves.

  ‘Whatever you say, cara,’ he said, and the old peasant glanced up and grunted.

  The day stretched before them, a great hazy blank with everything to be invented and not a shred of routine to hang on to. This did not seem to worry Massimina, busying herself with bread, cheese and cooked, the cheapest, ham. She was in love, she had escaped from home, everything was new and she had the energy to carry herself into a thousand empty days. She had wound her hair into tresses and knotted them over her head to keep herself cool and now she sat straight-backed on the steps of the monument with a fine ivory neck exposed to the blazing sun.

  Morris, on the other hand, already felt bored and somewhat annoyed. It would be two or three hours yet before the Church of the Holy Crown opened after the siesta and meanwhile there was nothing at all to do. He brushed the crumbs off his lap. They had left his suitcase in left luggage at the station because Massimina had refused to get a taxi into town. She wanted to search out the cheapest pensione on foot and then walk back to the station, pick up the bag and carry it there. Morris wilted at the thought. The sun was boiling., the air unpleasantly still. Better a million blown in a week of air-conditioned comfort than this eking out into a future that held no special attraction for him.

  ‘We'll have to get you some clothes too,’ he said, but she said no, as long as there was a sink to wash what she had now, she’d be fine. Wash it at night and it’d be dry in the morning in this weather (amazing how the pampered were just dying to live lives of privation). She leaned over and hugged his leg, resting her head on his knee.

  'It’s really marvellous to have got away like this.’

  ‘Let’s move into the shade,’ he said. 'I'm baking.’

  ‘We could walk up to Monte Berico on the hill and get the view.’

  But this time Morris insisted he needed a beer and Massimina gave way with a giggle, saying how English he was.

  In the bar Massimina talked about Catholicism, so as to let him know, Morris soon realized, where she stood on sex. She was devout. She helped with collections of old clothes for needy children. Perhaps after a month or so, when they felt truly sure of themselves and she had reached her eighteenth birthday, they would find a priest to marry them and they could go to bed together and Morris could find himself a job in another town, teaching; then they could make a family and after a while her mother would give way, as soon as the first baby arrived that is, because she adored babies, and then everything would be all right. Morris could imagine his mother saying exactly the same thing to his father; with this difference: that Dad, no doubt, would have been pushing his hands in her clothes as she said it.

  Still, it did give him a breathing space. He was thankful.

  ‘My mother was a Catholic,’ he said, and after a couple of beers added, ‘Maybe we should go to a church and pray -I mean., I’m not a Christian myself, but I don’t mind you praying about things - about us, if you like.’ She would immediately start a crusade to convert him. That was the kind of romance that would really turn her on.

  The church was gloomy with just a faint echoing shuffle of sparse tourists. Dotted here and there, twenty or so people were praying in air spiralling with dust and incense. Massimina crossed herself and genuflected. The gestures were attractive. Morris led her towards the left side of the nave.

  'There’s a picture we ought to see,’ he whispered.

  And she said, ‘l didn’t know you were interested in art.’

  ‘Very,’ he said.

  And then there was somebody sitting in precisely the seat that counted! He couldn’t believe it. An old woman in black, muttering and crossing herself. Shit! He turned to the Bellini, Massimina squeezing his hand rather irritatingly with devoted enthusiasm. Her fingers were sweaty. The painting wasn’t anything in particular. Christ emerging from the Jordan, arms raised to heaven from where a bright light was shining and John the B with all the rest of the crowd standing in the background and staring like a bunch of idiots. The woman stayed put in her chair.

  ‘Let’s pray then.’ Massimina stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear.

  He took her to the chairs behind the old woman’s, scanning the tourists to see if there was anybody suspicious hanging around. No one. Massimina sat and bent forward. Himself likewise. But the other chair was too far in front to reach under. Why on earth hadn’t a detail like this occurred to him? Massimina’s eyes were tightly closed while her lips formed silent words. Five minutes, ten. Shit and shit, this was thoroughly stupid! For nearly fifteen minutes she prayed, as if God would ever want to listen to all that stuff about her studies and her croaking Grandma and leaving home and whether she should surrender her virtue to Morris, etc. etc. Untill finally she turned to him with a calm smile.

  ‘Let’s go then.’

  ‘I’d rather like to stay for a moment or two,’ Morris said sombrely. ‘l love the atmosphere here. So moving.’

  'I'm afraid I have to go to the bathroom.’ She was embarrassed.

  ‘You go. I’ll follow in a few minutes.’

  That surprised her. A moved Morris. (Or perhaps it didn’t surprise her at all. Because the whole mystery was, what did she think of him?)

  ‘Right.’ She stood and tiptoed away, genuflecting and all the rest again when she reached the aisle. Perhaps she imagined her prayers had been answered, Morris thought, with him staying. He turned round quickly and saw she was already out of the church. The woman in the critical chair was still there, but there was nothing for it now. He simply counted to ten, then shamelessly tumbled forward on his knees, ran a hand quickly along the underside of her chair -and tugged the envelope away! It was there! The woman twisted round.

  ‘Scusi, I slipped, so sorry.’

  ‘Niente, Signore, niente paura.'

  He had the envelope right there in his hands! This was incredible. Crime paid. If the money was all there he could slip out through another door and dump Massimina for good before it all got too oppressive. His fingers tore open the envelope. But it seemed a shade slim. He prepared himself. And out came just a slip of paper with only two crumpled bills for a thousand lire each.

  Caro Signor Blackmailer, seeing as I was passing through, I thought I would leave you this little note. Luigina and Monica, you will be relieved to hear, are my daughters. My dear wife died some years ago. No money for you then. However, I would be very happy to have my diary back; there are various phone numbers and addresses there that I don’t have other copies of. Could you please, therefore, mail the diary to my address as soon as possible. If I don’t receive it within a week, I will inform the police of this whole affair and give them your letter plus a description of yourself.

  Cordialmente, AMINTORE CARTUCCIO

  PS In case you’re short, I enclose 2000 lire for postage. You can keep the document case.

  8

  Morris washed carefully, wiping behind his ears with a flannel, and considered himself at length in the cracked mi
rror. A cracked Morris. Handsome, but flawed. He puckered his lips grimly. The little bathroom of the pensione was all lagged hot waterpipes, trapping the dust in corners, and a whitewash the colour of chimneysmoke. The bidet was stained and gritty. A million other people had seen their cracked faces in this mirror. Not to mention other mirrors. Millions and millions, puckering their cracked lips. And the figures told against you. The sheer immensity of the figures. The number of noughts behind every significant statistic. That was nausea, Jean-Paul. Where was the prestige of being a Morris among millions? Unemployed, unobserved. Nowhere. Morris observed himself unobserved. He smiled his smile at himself and pulled his tongue. But the same considerations counted against the others too, didn’t they? Oh yes, the figures counted against every last one of everybody. Against Massimina also. Perhaps especially against Massimina. Ten million like her. Ten billion. The numbers damned you, and they freed you.

  ‘I’ll have to go back to Verona for a day. There are a few things I forgot to do if we’re going away for a while.‘

  They were in a single, dingy room with a double bed, but Morris had promised to sleep on the eiderdown on the floor.

  'That’s okay. I can wash my things while you’re away. Explore the town a bit.‘

  Morris poured for himself liberally from a bottle of wine, which provoked the inevitable small frown on her girlish face.

  ’You mustn’t, Morri!’

  'It helps me not to think.’ (Something Dad could never claim.)

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About all the things I should and could have done and will never do now.’

  ‘Oh Morri! Don’t say that!’ She came round and sat next to him on the bed and had her arms around him. The tracksuit under her armpit was damp.

  ‘I could have had a terrific job or done something really important and instead, look at me! Nothing more than a crappy English teacher.’

  It felt odd saying it to Massimina. As if while saying the thing that was always and most urgently in his head, he nevertheless wasn’t being sincere.

  ‘But being a teacher is a respectable job. I could never do it.’

  Well, that was true.

  Morris shrugged his shoulders, downed the glass of wine and immediately poured another. She laid a gentle hand on his wrist to stop him and he rather enjoyed the little drama of resisting it. It was like a moment in one of those films Paul Newman had done from Tennessee Williams’s playscripts.

  ‘I could have done better for myself,’ he pronounced with sudden and extraordinary self-pity.

  'Then why don’t you, Morri?’ she pleaded. ‘Why don’t you?’

  'It was too late now,' he said. And meant it.

  No it wasn’t. ‘Look, Morri, honestly, as soon as Mamma sees it’s all decided between us, I’m sure she can arrange a terrific job for you with Bobo’s family.’

  ‘Your family will never accept me after this.’

  ‘Oh yes they will,’ she insisted. ‘Morri, I promise they will. Really. I’ll do everything. Look, when you go back to Verona tomorrow, why don’t you go and see them and tell them it was me who ran away and everything because of the thing with the school and that you’re trying to persuade me to come back.’

  Morris was rather moved and pressed her freckled face into his shoulder a moment, pretending to cheer up. He drained the wine which was a rather insipid Soave. If only one could make the girl spend, for Christ’s sake, the situation would be ideal.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I can write a letter to take from me to them saying exactly what the situation is, I mean that we’re not even going to bed or anything and that we just want to take a holiday in each other’s company and she should trust us. You can take it and give it to her.’

  'That’s an idea.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘Look, in fact, while you write the letter, why don’t I rinse out the tracksuit. It could do with a wash.

  'There’s no need,’

  ‘But I should do something for you, cara. You’re doing everything. Shopping, preparing the food, finding the pensione. Let me do something for you. I’m not one of those Italian men who has to be served hand and foot.’

  ‘Morri. Quanto sei caro!' She turned away to pull down the tracksuit bottoms and unzip the top, showing baggy blue cotton panties and a tight to bursting white bra. Morris glanced with no more than discreet interest. Her face flushed. She sat down on the room’s only chair at a tiny wooden table, found pen and paper in Morris’s (Cartuccio’s) document case and puckered her lips into the usual frown.

  In the bathroom Morris plunged her red suit into a tub of cold water and having rubbed a little soap into it for effect, left it there to soak for the night. With nothing to wear in the morning she’d be stuck in the pensione most of the day waiting for the thing to dry, and he hoped to be back by four, or five at the latest.

  ‘Morri?’ her face loomed over the edge of the bed as he was drifting off to sleep. ‘Morri, are you awake?’

  He was now. Flat on his back the oval face hung pale and worried above him.

  ‘Morri,’ She was whispering for some reason, like a child who doesn’t want her parents to hear she’s awake. 'You don’t regret coming away with me, do you? I mean, that’s not what you were thinking about when you wanted to stay in the church for a bit. You seemed so distant when you came out. As if you didn’t care about me at all.’

  ‘Of course I don’t regret it. Maybe it’s about the smartest thing I've ever done.’

  ‘You know, Morri, you have a lovely voice, the way you speak, your accent. I think that’s what first made me fall in love with you. In your lessons.’

  Morris said nothing.

  ‘After you come back tomorrow, we’ll really go on a trip, somewhere exciting?’

  ‘We’ll have to see. I have some friends who are going down to Turkey for the summer. That would be nice maybe.’

  ‘Yes, let’s do that, Morri. Let’s.’ She bent down suddenly and kissed him on the lips. He didn’t move.

  'Buona notte.’

  ‘Sogni d’oro. Golden dreams.’

  There was Gregorio too in Sardinia, he thought. That would be another place to hide up if things got hot.

  ‘You do realize, Dad, you do realize that I’m kidnapping her. Which is more than you ever did with a woman for all your bragging. The perfect synthesis of class warfare and womanizing. Aren’t you surprised you didn’t think of it?’

  Morris was up at first light and dressed in the bathroom. He put on a clean white shirt and trousers that he had folded at the bottom of his suitcase and a thin leather tie left slightly loose. He put on cufflinks too and got his hair carefully into shape with a wet comb. This was six a.m. Then he left a little note: ‘Back at four, MORRIS,’ and eased the door open, listening to her deep even breathing all the way.

  In the railway station he bought four likely looking detective novels and a return ticket to Verona. It was going to be a hectic day. And the joy of it was he still hadn’t done anything anybody could reasonably expect to put him away for. Minimum risk till the very last moment, that was the watchword.

  First he read her letter that she had sealed up and made him promise not to read, ‘or you’ll never get your head through a door again.’ Her handwriting, he noticed, was as full and plump as her breasts, touchingly innocent, and each of the strokes below the line had curious, flirtatious little tails.

  Cara Mamma, I know it’s an awful thing I’ve done but I had to. I’m old enough now to decide what kind of life I want to live and I love Morris very much. Very very much. I don’t care what you say about him, I feel he is a good man even if he is a bit lazy maybe. He’s been very restrained and kind and gentle with me and hasn’t tried to force me to do anything with him at all. Maybe he does lie sometimes like you said. But I think he does it because he feels inferior or because he is afraid other people will think he is. So it’s something I feel sorry for and will try to help him with, not something to be nervous about, as if he was trying to get money from us o
r something (he hasn’t asked me for a single lira). Anyway, we’re setting off on a trip for a little while now to decide if we’re really fit for each other. Lots of love to everybody, and I’m so glad Grandma is getting better.

  Un caro abbraccio a tutte, MASSIMINA

  So he was lazy, was he? And he lied because he felt inferior - him, Morris, inferior! And this was what they called love. A month to see if they were fit for each other! That is, if he was fit for her. As if he was somebody to be weighed up like a sack of potatoes and given five or six out of ten on the matrimonial ratings. Which settled it. He was going through with it. They needed a damn good shaking up, the whole lot of them.

  As soon as he was off at Verona Nord, swinging his detective novels in a plastic bag, Morris bought the Arena, the local Verona newspaper., then caught the Number 8 out to MontoriOj arriving at his fiat shortly after nine o’clock. During his bus trip he had already found what he was after in the paper.

  LA BELLA MASSIMINA STILL MissiNG, an inside headline announced, ELOPED OR KIDNAPPED?

  There were a few details of Massimina’s sudden disappearance on Friday night with nothing but a bright red tracksuit. Untill the police had managed to contact Signor Morris Duckworth, however, il fidanzato rejected by the family, there were still hopes that it was merely a question of passionate elopement, although as each hour passed the possibility of something more terrible became ever more likely. (Indeed it did.)

  Inspector Marangoni, in charge of the case, said they couldn’t rule out kidnapping, murder, or even suicide. In an interview with the press, the director of the Nelson School of English, Horace Rolandson, had described Morris as a subdued and conscientious teacher, certainly not the rash or overtly passionate type, and he was sure Morris would be back the next week to pick up his pay cheque for the courses he’d just finished (though he probably hoped the contrary). The fact that Morris hadn’t as yet been paid for his last two weeks’ work was considered a strong element against elopement (what a cynical world!).