Juggling the Stars

by Tim Parks

  ‘Such an awful lot of money, Morri,’ she pouted. They stepped out of the hairdresser’s into an oven of a sun with Rimini’s long beach blazing white in front of them.

  ‘But you look marvellous!’ (-ly different) Morris cried, and in his sudden euphoria he bent down and gave the creature a resounding smack of a kiss right beside her mouth. And enjoyed it.

  ‘Morri!’ She hugged herself beside him, running slim fingers up and down his chest. 'You know that’s the first time you’ve done that.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if you really do love me, you’re so reserved.‘ The little pout again - but she didn’t really wonder anything of the kind. She thought she had him for good and ever. (That humble-pie letter he’d written to Mamma.) And the pout was partly for a bright shop window to see how it came off under this different thatch of hair. Vanity was getting the upper hand. But it made her nicer, somehow, rather than the opposite.

  'It’s because I don’t want you to feel I’m trying to push you into anything you might regret.’ Morris had his answer prompt. ‘And then I’m English you know. You know what the English are like.’ (God knows how he’d have convinced the girl if he was French or something.)

  ‘‘Come si comico, Morri,' she was saying. ‘‘Come sei comico! Ti amo sai,' and arm in arm they picked their way down stone steps onto the burning sand and through the kaleidoscopic sunshades of the beach. The only thing Morris was worried about was that with so many women topless she might decide to do the same. Massimina had shown suprising signs of adventurousness of late (running away, for heaven’s sake, cutting her hair) and to have her topless with the breasts she had was precisely the kind of attention he could do without.

  10

  They had bought her a new set of clothes the morning after his return to Vicenza. She had resisted strongly and they had had their first big argument. Morris would have liked to give way, so great was his distaste for any kind of open conflict, but the red tracksuit was just too obvious. In the end he offered to use his own money to buy the clothes (that would show her who was generous now. Go and tell that to your suspicious mamma) and Massimina had flushed and broken down in tears.

  'It’s too hot for a tracksuit for one thing. And then I love you Mimi, I want you to look beautiful.‘ Vanity was the key. ‘Not always in that shapeless sweaty thing that covers up every inch of you. How can you look feminine in a tracksuit? And then I don’t want you to be stuck indoors half a day every other day while you wash and dry the thing.' (Which was actually the only advantage. Giving him a chance to pop out and do things, safe in the knowledge that she couldn’t make a phone call or post a letter or read something in the newspaper.)

  Massimina was beaten, though she insisted on UPIM, the department store, rather than the more chic expensive shops round about; and seeing as he was going to pay, Morris gracefully conceded this point. But when they finally reached the cash desk with a handful of shirts and blouses, she wouldn’t hear of Morris paying and forked out for the whole lot herself, a cool two hundred thousand lire. She reached up and kissed his neck while the cashier’s fingers did a polished jig over the till.

  That was such a nice thing he’d said, she whispered, about wanting to see her look pretty; and he was right. But why on earth should he spend his hard-earned money on her when everything she had she’d simply been given? He could hardly have put it better himself. But Morris felt quite honestly a shade guilty then and insisted on buying her two pairs of shoes (still at UPIM). He rather enjoyed choosing them. Red would go with the pearl grey skirt, No, not high heels, they were long out of fashion; flat with an open top. And then sandals for the beach. Aesthetics was his realm after all, and dressing a dressable woman was fun. He even held out for a large straw hat with a wide brim that conveniently shaded her face. After which he had to agree to a frugal lunch of supermarket mozzarella, bread and cheap Merlot.

  That first day, quite frankly, the first twenty-four hours after the Verona trip and the burning of the boats, Morris had been afraid he might have bitten off rather more than he could chew and he caught himself looking over his shoulder every few minutes and shivering whenever a police car came past. Despite having got her out of the tracksuit well before lunchtime, he was so nervous for a while in the afternoon he’d got cold sweats and a touch of diarrhoea and had to pop into the lavatories of every café they passed without ordering anything, which he hated - especially because it left her free and dangerous outside on her own.

  One time when he came out and found her talking to someone on the pavement he thought he really was done for and she had met a friend, an acquaintance, by chance, which would blow absolutely everything. But it was only some American army chap asking directions to the Basilica and Massimina was trying to answer him in the awful halting English she’d learnt from Morris. As soon as he’d sized up the situation, Morris made short work of the fellow.

  ‘Right, left and right again, buddy, then carry on straight,’ he said, having not the faintest knowledge of the city, and he swung Massimina firmly away. His stomach felt light and empty and his bowels as uncertain as an English spring.

  ‘You’re just jealous,’ she told him happily. She was enjoying herself more than ever apparently, despite all the bad news he’d given her the previous night; his negative reception at the Trevisans, her mother’s tough reaction, etc. She wanted an ice-cream now, stracciatella, amaretto and bacio ('Bacio, Morri?'). She wanted him to put an arm round her shoulders, she wanted to go to the cinema, to have a manicure.

  ‘Oh Morri, if only everything didn’t cost so much!’ And the happier she became, the harder and more irritating it was to have to explain that he had the runs and that that was why he kept popping into all these cafés, so as to empty himself over their filthy insanitary holes in the ground. It was her fault (he had an itch now too) for the godawful diet she was miserlily insisting on; but she laughed and said he should learn to see the funny side of things. She even twirled round in a dainty little pirouette which fanned out the pleated green skirt they’d bought and had men turning round to see the tops of her legs. Morris put his arm round her tight. Not an unpleasant feeling, her hip moving against his. But the publicity of the pirouette was to be avoided.

  The nervousness and faint nausea had passed by the evening, however. It was as if Morris had finally got his sea legs or something. And when he slipped out after supper, promising to post her next letter to her mother (no doubt saying how sorry she was Mamma had taken the first so badly, throwing Morris out of the house like that), he felt marvellously confident as he tore the thing to shreds on the corner of Giardino Salvi and Corso Andrea.

  The gardens did look so elegant in the twilight! So classical, so Italian, with their scent of cypresses and water splashing on statues. Marvellously, marvellously confident he felt. He must tell her to send a postcard to her grandmother in particular, or a get well card; that would be nice. The old dear was probably dead by now, which at least saved her any worry about Massimina (how humane Morris could be!), but a card would hearten Mimi. And to use up the time it most probably would have taken to find a postbox in a disorganized town like Vicenza he found a tobacconist, leafed through the get well cards and picked up a cartoon of somebody bandaged to the eyeballs which was presumably supposed to be funny.

  A lot of things were playing his way. That was what he had realized. If she insisted on staying in the cheapest pensioni, for example, then it was all the easier never to produce one’s passport. All you had to do was say you’d lost it, or had it stolen - and certainly no one was going to ask him for her passport. The woman was never questioned about anything. Latin etiquette. And whether they believed your story or not they always took you in the end because they needed the money. Plus of course, cheap pensioni never had televisions or radios, like a good hotel might, so there was no danger whatsoever of her seeing an item about herself. Newspapers in general she obviously had no taste for, and then even the big Italian dailies were fund
amentally local, based on a single city with national news on the front page, local news inside. This made it extremely unlikely that a Vicenza paper, or even one of the quasi nationals like Corriere délia sera or La Siarnpa, would carry news on a minor kidnap like this, or at least not for more than a day or two. The country was teeming with more ambitious kidnappers for God’s sake, mafia and terrorists and all sorts of dramatic events which made his little adventure more like some kind of Sunday afternoon outing (actually, it did have that sort of enforced gaiety feel to it). Not to mention a forthcoming general election. (Inspector Marangoni probably didn’t give a damn really. It was pieces of paper to be pushed about between one coffee and another for him.) So that barring some million-to-one meeting with an old acquaintance, Morris could consider himself safe. Just keep an eye on her, make sure she made no phone calls home, wrote no letters that he didn’t know about, and all would be well. Then the real beauty of it was, he hadn’t actually hurt anyone. On the contrary, he was giving her the time of her life. And without even having ‘defiled’ her or anything. No Caliban he.

  Morris skipped back up the dark stairs of the pensione, whistling. The thing was, his mind was occupied, occ-u-pied. One hundred per cent. Boredom and drudgery were over. No more nothing-to-do and dogs waking him up to raw nerves in the dead of night. No. (He would have killed that dog now anyway, he was sure of it - the sponge in the meat juice for him if ever Morris went back there. He was through with suffering in silence.)

  ‘Someone’s happy!’ Massimina said. She was trying on the pearl grey skirt, red T-shirt, red shoes.

  He stopped whistling. ‘And why do you think that is?’ (Don’t smile that smile, it’s not pleasant.)

  ‘Because you’re with me, most probably,’ she said.

  There was an element of truth in that.

  ‘You do look terrific,’ he told her.

  ‘Thank you Morri,’ she said, and then with a new note in her voice, ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘For what? Saying you look terrific?’

  ‘No, no I mean for all this, the clothes.’

  ‘You paid for them, cara, not me.’

  ‘But I would never have done it without you. You know what I mean? I wouldn’t have dared. I’ve never bought clothes without Mamma before.’ And she did another one of her little pirouettes, lifting her hands together over her head, twirling till the panties showed. He did hope things weren’t going to get difficult.

  ‘Morrees?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You know something? I’ve never slept so well as these last few days.’

  ‘No? That’s nice.’

  ‘I feel so relaxed.’

  Out of sheer envy, he found after a moment or two he hadn’t replied to this. And wasn’t going to.

  ‘Really. You don’t know how horrid it is having to sleep with my mother.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  Then she had just launched into a description of all the things that made it unpleasant passing the night with Signora Trevisan, her trips to the bathroom, snoring (farting? Morris wondered), when it suddenly occurred to him to ask, ‘But don’t you ever have bad dreams?’

  Hardly were the words out than he was conscious of a surreptitious confessional instinct - he had really been looking for a way to talk about his own oneiric afflictions. And simultaneous with that realization came the awareness that no, he must not, must never disclose the utter utter horror of last night’s visions for example. The violence. Such a sudden deterioration too. He couldn’t remember anything quite so bad. Though’probably it was just the sleeping arrangements. He was getting rather fed up with eiderdowns on the floor to tell the truth.

  She put her fingers in his hair, alerting his whole body with the electric shock her simple unselfconscious affection was.

  ‘Only sometimes. Last night you laughed in your sleep though?’

  Laughed? Was it possible?

  As long as he didn’t talk.

  ‘Morrees,’ she said again apropos of nothing and everything. Feigning relaxations he closed his eyes.

  They were stretched out on the beach at Rimini, Morris under a sunshade, Massimina a foot or two away in the full sun. Morris felt rather embarrassed by his dead white English skin. He hadn’t done any serious sunbathing for years, and so had bought those bermuda bathing shorts that stretch nearly to your knees to protect himself. Massimina was wearing a single-piece green-and-white costume that Morris had insisted was the thing for her (she could hardly take her top off that way, could she?) and she had a yellow rubber bathing cap to protect the new hairdo.

  The beach was shimmering with the heat and the encampments of sunshades and deckchairs thronged with beauty and the beast, laughing and chattering, a figure ocasionally detaching itself to plunge into the tepid still water of the Adriatic. A strong smell of coconut oil drifted aimlessly without a breeze; overhead a biplane towed an advertisement for Crodino and from the shadow of the sunshades the eyes of old men darted after the girls. Who would ever ever dream of looking for a kidnap victim here? Amongst the pleasure-seekers and the free?

  ‘And then how can you ever have a good lie-in,’ Massimina began again, ‘with somebody who insists that sleeping after seven is a sin? I mean, I know I'm a Catholic myself, but where’s the harm in staying in bed just a little on Sunday morning?’

  ‘By the way, I'm sorry you missed Mass last Sunday,’ Morris said, ‘I’d never have left the tracksuit to soak if I’d only thought.’

  She laughed. (Oh, she really was pretty damn content, wasn’t she? Oh yes!) 'I'm sure God doesn’t mind. I'm sure he’s not just like some miserable old schoolteacher only interested in rules and things. He knows what I feel in my heart and that’s enough.’

  So she was a Protestant in the end, not a holy Roman at all. Next she’d be saying it was all right for them to go to bed together as long as they felt right in their little hearts.

  After a while’s silence she asked about his family and for no reason at all Morris went and told her how his mother had died; in a car accident when he was fourteen. He had learnt to recite this event with great sang-froid, no perceptible tightening of the muscles nor reddening of the eyes, and he knew it made a great impression.

  ‘One day Mother was on her way home from the Co-op with the week’s shopping in her little push-trolley, when a car driven by some idiot with a heart condition went out of control, rode up on the pavement and crushed her against the wall of Barclays Bank.’ (But then weren’t we all crushed against the wall of some bank or other?)

  Morris lifted himself on his elbow and licked dry lips. Have to buy some Lip Balm in this heat. By the sea as well. The salt really did it to you.

  ‘So then there was just me and my dad.’

  After a few moments’ pause, not knowing what to say, she said. 'Funny you losing your mother and me my father.’

  And she said: ‘I’d very much like to meet your dad. I do hope he comes over. He must be very brave, going on after a disaster like that.’

  What was he supposed to do? Morris thought. Kill himself? Dad? In the end he got up in the mornings went out to work at seven thirty, lunch at the canteen, came home, snatched tea and off to darts at the pub till closing time, the same as always. What could it possibly matter to him whether Mother was there or not? If anything it was an obstacle out of the way.

  The only one who truly missed Mother was Morris.

  ‘He despised me,’ Morris announced unwisely.

  ‘Cosa, Morri?’

  ‘Dad. He was always saying I wasn’t a real man because I didn’t go out to work at sixteen.’ Why not let the girl hear? ‘And then because I spent so much time reading. He had this obsession about real men and work and women. He’s always saying how socialist he is and then wants everybody to go and break their backs from dawn till dusk for some capitalist coronary candidate (the one who killed Mother for example), as if …’

  But when you said it like that it didn’t mean anything at all. He didn’t
seem to be getting anywhere near explaining it. And not with the tapes either. The thing eluded you. As if the problem was somewhere else altogether.

  She didn’t know what to say of course, though you could hardly blame her for that. You could hardly expect your kidnap victim to provide you with comfort and intelligent conversation after all, could you? To settle all your little personality niggles. No one else ever had for heaven’s sake, so why expect it now. But Morris suddenly found he was near to tears.

  When he didn’t speak for some moments she said, ‘A bit like me and Mamma really, her wanting me to study all the time when it’s obviously useless. Only with you it was the opposite.’ And then she said, ‘Morri, don’t be upset,’ and she slid a slim naked arm round his shoulders so that their warm skins came together in the heat and she kissed him with tongue and lips on the corner of his mouth. Morris tasted salt.

  ‘Oh Morri,’ she whispered, ‘I am so glad I don’t have to do any more exams!’

  The problem with having to watch her all the time was that it left him with very few free moments to himself. And there was so much to do! So when she said she felt too hot and needed another swim, Morris declined to join her- he didn’t like to go in the water too often, he said, delicate skin - and he sent her off on her own, promising to watch.