Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  From behind her she heard Alexei laugh. ‘He has good reason. Once my uncle allowed a magazine team to do a feature on the interior. The next week we were burgled.’ The story seemed to delight him.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t mention anything specific,’ Sylvie said. ‘It’s not my style,’ she added with bravura. ‘It is only Alexei I am interested in.’

  The youth grinned, a trifle embarrassed now. More like a child of his own age. Sylvie suddenly remembered how uncomfortable in his own skin Leo had been at fourteen. But Alexei had a poise, a calm. She wondered where it came from, how deep it went. She had a moment of pure desire in which she wanted to shout to him that he must come away with her. Now. But she only gripped her bag more firmly.

  He turned away from her, discomfited at her glance. Yet polite, so polite. He gestured for her to precede him through the door. They walked round the loggia to the other side of the house where Alexei threw open a door on a spacious reception room.

  ‘We entertain in here. Though it’s been rather quiet since my aunt died.’

  Sylvie saw a room of classical proportions, a ceiling painted with the voluptuous splendour of the Baroque, prepossessing marble fireplaces, mirrors, an array of sofas, lamps of the finest porcelain, polished wood. Splendour. But she wasn’t interested. Instead, she asked Alexei, ‘Your aunt. What was she like?’ She gestured around the room, encouraged him, ‘She must have been a woman of great taste.’

  Alexei looked a little wistful. ‘Yes,’ he answered hesitantly. Then as if he had on the spur of the moment decided to take her into his confidence, he added, ‘But she was always a tiny bit sad. She felt guilty, she once told me. Guilty that she had been the lucky one. The one of the three sisters to be sent to Italy, before the war. She was the eldest, my mother the youngest. My aunt was the one who went to all the trouble of trying to get me out of the Soviet Union.’ He looked sad, a little boy now.

  ‘You loved her,’ Sylvie murmured.

  Alexei nodded. ‘She was very kind to me.’

  ‘Have you any photos of her, of yourself?’

  Alexei wavered. His photographs were private.

  ‘It is getting late, Alexei,’ the minder intervened. ‘Signor Gismondi will soon be home. You know he likes you at the table punctually.’

  ‘Oh, but your room, I should so like to see your room,’ Sylvie tried to delay the moment of her departure. She felt restless, at odds with herself. The boy showed no more than a formal interest in her.

  They walked up a grand staircase, first the minder, then Sylvie, then Alexei. She thought she could feel his eyes on her legs. Men’s glances were so much more direct here. Even this boy’s. She swallowed. Moved more provocatively.

  His room gave her a subject. It was a large room with windows that looked out on grounds. Inside it was all clutter. Yellow backed books everywhere, a shelf full of Russian tomes, then a desk, neater this, with school materials ranged. At one end, a screen with a home projector, a camera, spools of film, a splicer.

  ‘You make movies?’ Sylvie asked.

  Alexei grinned. ‘Hardly movies. Just little bits of this and that. My uncle bought me a camera for my birthday.’

  She could see the enthusiasm in his eyes. ‘Would you show me a little bit of this and a little bit of that? I’d love to see what you’ve done.’

  He held back, but she convinced him. She realised as he started to load the projector that he probably didn’t have many people to talk to. Sylvie started to chat about films she’d seen recently. He raved about Hitchcock, about Bogart and Raymond Chandler. The atmosphere grew easy between them. While they talked she glanced at three photographs framed on a shelf. A blur of fair hair, a delicate face, young. Hanka, she remembered. Behind her, standing, a man in a Russian uniform. Makarov, she thought, though she didn’t recognize him. Then two portraits, distinct, calmly posed. A burly man. A slender, frail woman, her eyes filled with longing. Alexei’s family.

  Sylvie was confronted by the utter pointlessness of her presence. Tears rose haphazardly to her eyes as she watched the sequence of silent film Alexei showed her in the now darkened room. A street, the details of a door, a handle, the grain of the wood. Then a woman coming through the door. Her face in close-up, anxious, shadowy, the brow furrowed. The camera followed the woman along a gravel path. Feet on pebbles. Walking quickly. She could almost hear the crunch they made. Then grass. The camera moved up the woman’s body to her eyes, searching, searching. Peering downward. And then a smile, full lips curling, eyes sparkling. She bent. Something glistening through grass. The woman picked it up. The camera zoomed in on her hand. A ring. Then nothing. The rattle of the projector.

  ‘That’s as far as I’ve got with this bit.’

  ‘Who is the woman?’ Sylvie asked, needing to know.

  ‘Oh, that’s Anna. She works here. She let me film her. She also teaches me French. She gave me the idea for this footage. I think it’s from some French writer. A woman loses some jewellry she thinks is real. But it’s not. It’s fake. It’s a complicated story and I’ve only used elements of it. There’s only so much you can do with a Super 8,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Oh, but you’ve done it beautifully. The atmosphere is wonderful. I want to know what happens next,’ Sylvie enthused.

  ‘Do you?’ Alexei looked at her skeptically. ‘It’s only an exercise. Not the real thing. I’d like to do the real thing.’

  And there she had it, Sylvie thought. Her answer. Alexei was more interested in film than in anything else. She looked at him. So distinctly his own person that there was no space for her. If he had been in a sorry state, if he had needed anything, then she could have helped him, perhaps eventually told him. As it was, Alexei was a closed case.

  Yet she desperately wanted him to acknowledge her, to have some impact on his contained life.

  ‘If you ever want to meet anyone in movies,’ she began. But a knock at the door interrupted them. A woman’s voice, murmuring in Italian.

  ‘Signor Gismondi is home, Alexei. He is waiting for you.’ There was a hurried exchange between the boy and the woman Sylvie recognised as Anna.

  Then Alexei turned back to her, ‘Perhaps you would like to meet my uncle?’ he said politely. ‘He has asked to see you, since you are still here.’

  Sylvie nodded, willing to do anything to prolong her visit.

  They went down the stairs again, this time to another room, a smaller reception room. A barrel-chested man in a well-cut suit stood to greet them, gripped her hand firmly. He assessed her with shrewd eyes, but his lips smiled. ‘Good evening, Signora Stirling,’ he said in strongly accented tones. ‘I may call you by your pen name, yes?’ he added.

  Sylvie had a sense that he was threatening her. She panicked for a moment, and then seeing the beam on his face, smiled as calmly as she could in response. Had she really expected that one of Italy’s leading industrialists would not check her out before letting her into his house. What did it matter, she thought? She had achieved her purpose, at least in part.

  ‘Of course, the Princesse has told you,’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he waved the matter away with a gracious gesture. Sylvie noticed that despite his short legs, his girth, he had a grace about him and a power.

  A tray with crystal glasses was brought, Sylvie served. Cool champagne. She drank it with relief.

  ‘I also know that you speak French, which would suit my poor tongue much better. But then my son would be left out. My son has not yet had adequate lessons in French.’

  Sylvie looked at him curiously, glanced at Alexei.

  Signor Gismondi missed nothing. ‘So Alexei has been referring to me as his uncle?’ He tousled the boy’s hair with a friendly gesture. ‘He is stubborn, my Alexei. Not a bad thing. He would like to think that his father is still alive. Though, of course, there is almost no hope. The poor man disappeared into Stalin’s camps, you know.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Povere popolo.’

  ‘Still, eh, we have to concentrate on
the future. Fathers, uncles, what does it matter?’ He focussed his gaze on Alexei. ‘You are happy here, eh Alexei?’

  The boy nodded, his embarrassment visible only in the slight stiffness of his limbs.

  Signor Gismondi glanced at his watch. Sylvie knew it was her cue.

  She rose. ‘A great pleasure to meet you, Signor Gismondi. And your son. He is a very fine boy. Talented,’ she said in even tones which didn’t reveal the effort it cost her.

  She shook Alexei’s hand, held on to it a little, savouring the cool texture. ‘Thank-you, Alexei.’

  He looked into her eyes dreamily. He was seeing Lauren Bacall sauntering across a room, shoulders high, slim hips moving. Imagining Marilyn Monroe, the wide mouth, the perfect teeth.

  ‘You will, of course send me a copy of your manuscript before it goes to press,’ Signor Gismondi followed her to the door. The words were less a request than an order.

  Sylvie gazed at him in momentary confusion. She had forgotten her alibi.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ she recovered herself, spoke effusively. ‘Though it will take some time. I have quite a few more interviews to do.’ She smiled, her old dazzling smile, the smile of Sylvie the performer who spoke to men’s hearts as well as their groins.

  Signor Gismondi was not unsusceptible. ‘I shall look forward to it, whenever it arrives.’ He bowed.

  Over the bulwark of his body, Sylvie waved to Alexei. His eyes were already elsewhere. She was invisible to him, already forgotten. Sylvie took her leave. At the front door of the Palazzo Gismondi, she was handed her tape recorder, her briefcase. Her hands trembled.

  In the moist warmth of the evening, she leant against the wall which encircled the Palazzo. She was tired. She thought of Alexei, his life, its wealth, its comforts, his family, so substantially lodged in him that nothing could remove them. And she thought of her tiny incursion into that life.

  The life of her son.

  She felt as if she had given her last performance.

  And now depression tugged at her. Four years. It had taken her four years to meet him and within an hour it was all over. She remembered again the scene she had recalled at the clinic. The scene that had sent her on her journey. But this time she knew its ending.

  She saw the two women lying in their beds, their mouths round with cries. She saw the nurses, heard the noise. In the bed next to her, Hanka, pale, screaming. Then murmuring, ‘A boy, a boy for Ivan.’ Her child. No, Sylvie’s child. No, no, Sylvie had a girl, Katherine. She wanted a girl. Yes, yes, a girl for Caroline. A girl for Jacob. Sylvie floating, choosing between two cots, two babies. Boy and girl. A girl for Caroline. Katherine for Caroline. A boy for Hanka. Her son, Sylvie’s son for Hanka.

  Everything had become clear to her because of that scene. Her hatred for Katherine, the dismal turn of her life. Her resentment of Jacob for not recognizing that the daughter he adored was not his. He should have been able to see it sooner, see it instantly. Understand why Sylvie couldn’t stand the sight of the girl. He was cleverer than her. But no, he idolised the girl from the start. She made him blind. She could do no wrong in his eyes. She, it was she, Katherine, who had stolen Jacob away from her. From the very first, as soon as he had held her, he had had eyes only for her.

  Sylvie had brought a cuckoo into her own nest.

  And her son? She had found him, seen him, shivered at the resemblance to Jacob, but he was as distant as he had ever been. Not some peasant boy she could steal away with the promise of a better life, but a youth sheltered by his wealth, closed to her.

  All the excitement that had buoyed her up over these last years drained out of her. What was there for her now? Only a return to the barrenness of her life. A life without Alexei. A son no sooner found than lost. A fleeting moment. Never to return. Almost like death. Like Caroline’s child. No sooner had than lost.

  Sylvie walked. The streets were crowded with evening strollers. Young couples, arm in arm. Not much older than her son. Her Alexei. Laughing. They didn’t see her. Saw only each other. Their present. The future in each other’s eyes. She wasn’t part of it. She was invisible to them. Invisible. An invisible vessel for voices. Random sound teeming inside her. A bleak flat voice surfacing. ‘You understand nothing, Sylvie. Nothing. Katherine, my child, my future, died before me.’ Caroline’s voice. Dead. Burbling empty sound. ‘Get her away from here. Take her away. I can’t stand the sight of her.’ Papush. Look Papush. Look. I have a son for you. Dead. Dead like you. Dead babies.

  Sylvie walked. Unfamiliar streets. Shadowy crowds. A shadow herself.

  She found herself back in her hotel. The bar. Yes. A drink. She needed a drink. Everywhere around her, couples, murmuring, gazing into each other’s eyes. And she, alone. Invisible. Sylvie drank. And then a voice, a real voice, a stranger’s voice, addressing her in English. ‘May I join you, Signora?’ Sylvie focussed. A young man, looking into her eyes. Seeing her. Not invisible. A warm smile, a flash of bright teeth, directed at her. ‘Another drink?’

  Sylvie nodded, sat back. A live voice, chatting. ‘You are a stranger here, si? Alone? Milan is a beautiful city. I could show you, show you some attractions.’ The smile again, seeing her. Admiring. A young face. Unlined. Alive. A young man’s face. Like Alexei. She saw Alexei in him. Sylvie sipped her drink. Smiled serenely into eyes which saw her.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Umberto.’

  ‘How old are you, Umberto?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘Eighteen,’ Sylvie echoed. She was still at the convent. At the convent with Caroline. The games they played. With the nuns. At her parents’ house. The make-up. The forays into cafés. Strangers’ eyes staring. That one. She would have that one. Sylvie sidling, smiling with red lips. Their hands, touching her, desiring. Caroline over her shoulder. Watching mutely, angrily.

  Umberto was stroking her hand. ‘I will take you dancing, si? And then…’ his eyes trailed over her slowly. ‘And then…’ he flicked his tongue over full lips.

  Sylvie let him take her arm, floated. Floated on a young man’s arm through the lobby, smiled proudly, a little vainly at the greying assistant manager behind the desk.

  ‘Che cosa fai in questa casa?’ A hiss came from the manager. The arm on Sylvie’s stiffened, dropped.

  ‘I told you not to come in here again.’

  The greying man turned to her, his face battling between pity and contempt. ‘You should know, Signora,’ he said softly, ‘this young man will charge you for your pleasures.’

  Sylvie looked at him incomprehendingly for a moment. Then, with a sudden savage gesture, she struck Umberto hard across the face. He scurried from the hotel.

  Sylvie shook.

  The manager grinned. ‘E meglio cosi. Much better.’

  A loud self-lacerating laugh broke from Sylvie. Fool. She was a fool. She looked wildly round the lobby. People staring. A humiliated fool. There was nothing, nothing here for her.

  She caught the first plane back to New York.

  Jacob was kind, solicitous. But his kiss was not a kiss. Merely a hollow formality. He didn’t see her either. Saw only her state. Was she drinking? taking pills? Was her mind wandering? That was what his eyes asked, while his mouth spoke hollow questions. Had it been a good flight? Had she enjoyed her holiday? Being patient with a patient. That’s all it was.

  Almost, in the midst of the new apartment that she hated as much as he did, though it had been decorated to her own specifications, she said, ‘I have been to see my son.’ That would have made him stop, look at her, see. But no, he was asking her about Mathilde, about Katherine. Katherine again. That’s all he cared about. He had bided his time, not asked her straight away, waited. Oh, she knew him so well. His little supposed sensitivities. But the question had been there all the time. All he could think about.

  All he saw in her was the absence of his daughter.

  Almost, she brought it out. ‘She is not your daughter.’ But she didn’t. She could predict his empty
stare, the calm voice, soothing her, ‘Sylvie stop fantasizing. I know you wish it were so. But a wish is only a wish.’ She could have pushed it, prodded an old wound, ‘No, not your daughter, someone else’s.’ And then? Then he would shrug, a little stiffly, look away. ‘All so long ago. So many years. What does it matter. Our daughter, nonetheless.’

  No, she was more cunning than that. She had a better way of rupturing that patient impassivity, of making him look at her. Listen.

  Sylvie poured herself another drink, smoothed her dress. ‘That nice man Thomas Sachs was there. Such a nice man,’ she sat back in her chair, crossed her legs slowly. Oh yes, he was listening now, four ears in place of two, all his eyes on her. ‘A gentleman. I think your Katherine is in love with him.’ She laughed.

  Jacob leapt up, ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Oh, we women know these things,’ she taunted him, waited for the press of questions. Teased him with hints, then elaborated details of look and stance and voice as they passed between Katherine and Thomas, conjured up a possible affair, a marriage.

  Sylvie laughing, enjoying herself, enjoying his discomfort.

  He made love to her that night. Love in the dark. Her and not her. Was it what they used to call love, that cursory groping devoid of excitement?

  The next day listlessness overcame her. She wandered round the empty apartment aimlessly. The tape-recorder sat there. She pushed the switch. Alexei’s voice. Sylvie listened. Over and over, she listened. She started to doodle with the tape as accompaniment. Random scratchings of her pen. Trapped animals with human bodies. Birds with frightened eyes. Mutilated fantastical creatures. For days she doodled.

  One evening Jacob found the pad. ‘You’re drawing again, Sylvie. These are wonderful.’ He bought her paper, inks, pens, charcoal. Encouraged her, his eyes warm.

  Sylvie drew to the accompaniment of voices. Alexei’s voice, one of many. She no longer had any need to switch the tape on. Each word, each intonation, lived inside her. But sometimes, she still did. And while she drew, one of the many voices inside her set up a repeated chant, ‘What should I do? What should I do?’