Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘Katherine, it’s no good. Not yet. You’re still a child,’ he said softly, as evenly as he could. ‘Tomorrow, you will go home. To Jacob. Try to understand him a little. Youth is so unforgiving. So impatient of human frailty.’

  She said nothing, wouldn’t face him.

  ‘And perhaps you shouldn’t play with these things, Schätzchen. Not just yet. Not until you’re older.’

  She wanted to hit him for saying that to her. A child, always a child, powerless, humiliated. Her eyes blazed at him as she fled to her room.

  The next day she insisted on leaving.

  Saying good bye to her at the station, Thomas looked at her sternly, ‘You mustn’t take all this too much to heart, Schätzchen. You’re troubled now. And sex is always a little problematic at first. In a little while, we shall sit and laugh over it,’ he squeezed her hand. ‘And reconsider your proposal.’ He smiled.

  As she turned away from the limousine, the last thing Katherine felt like doing was laughing. Resentment burrowed inside her. She was irritated, indignant. They all treated her like a child. A child to be cajoled, lied to, patted. But she was seventeen. In other cultures women of seventeen had families, worked. She had had enough of these old people who looked down at her from their height of years, who always knew what was best for her. Well they didn’t know what was best for her. Didn’t know what was best for themselves half the time. Look at her father. No sooner one woman in the grave whom he had cheated on, a woman who had been miserable enough to kill herself, than he was in bed with another. Another cold blonde bitch. Katherine tried the word and liked it. The bitch and he were probably in bed making another child together.

  Jacob was in fact at the Plaza Hotel dining with Violette.

  ‘You should have told her,’ Violette fingered the heavy pendant round her neck and raised eyes at him that both accused and laughed. ‘It should have been you. Not me.’

  ‘I know,’ Jacob sighed. ‘She hasn’t spoken to me since. Simply left a note to say she’d gone off with Thomas. Wasn’t sure when she would be back. God knows what the two of them are up to together.’ He shook his head slowly, poured Violette a glass of wine. ‘It’s so difficult with Kat. She’s so sensitive. Runs back to her lair, if I so much as breathe about the past. Not like you,’ he smiled a slow admiring smile at Violette. ‘How are you, my vagrant daughter?’

  ‘Your thick-skinned vagrant daughter is not at her very best,’ Violette rolled her eyes.

  ‘And are you going to confess your sins to your analyst Daddy?’ Jacob matched her tone, but he was aware that Violette was troubled, had been aware since her arrival.

  ‘What would you say if I told you I was pregnant?’

  He looked at her attentively. ‘I don’t know. I might ask you if you were pleased. I might ask you who the father was. I might ask you if you were contemplating marriage. I might jump up and clap my hands. I might hope to be a better grandfather than I’d been a father.’ He stopped and met her eyes. ‘Tell me, Violette. What do you want me to say?’

  ‘I want you to tell me I’m a silly ass for letting it happen.’

  ‘Et voilà. You’re a silly ass for letting it happen.’ He paused. ‘You don’t want the man?’

  ‘Want is hardly the problem. He’s an addiction. I’ve thought of replacing him with heroin. Breaking the habit would be easier.’ She smiled her roguish smile. ‘The problem is we’re no good for each other. It’s like a race. Who can do the worst, the most exciting things to whom. And first. It takes a lot of imagination.’ Her eyes grew stormy. She took out a cigarette, lit it slowly, brooded, ‘ You see, we’re totally alike and totally unsuited. If we got married, we’d kill each other.’ She hesitated, ‘And I don’t want a child. And he doesn’t know.’

  There was a gravity in her face he had never seen there before. ‘Ma pauvre, Violette.’ He knew, without having to ask, who the man in question was. Instead he asked, ‘And why do you have this particular addiction? Why this craving for stimulus? Perhaps if you had a child…’ He let the sentence hang.

  She finished it for him. ‘I’d die of boredom instead. Life is short, Jacob. I like to pack my minutes.’

  ‘And so you try to make it shorter.’

  She looked at him for a moment and burst out laughing. ‘Are you offering that as an interpretation?’

  Jacob shook his head sadly. ‘You know I’ve never been able to combine being a father with analysis. Just look at the three of you.’

  She kissed him. ‘You’re the best father I’ve ever had. And the three of us are fine. Just remember that.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Jacob grinned, grew serious again. ‘And you… No, I won’t moralise. You know I’ll back you up in whatever you do.’

  ‘I know, Jacob.’ She looked at her watch, rose. ‘But I’m convinced the stimulus is better than the boredom. My very own tender trap.’

  Jacob helped her with her coat. He had a sudden sense that Violette had more of Sylvie in her than Sylvie’s own daughter. Sylvie, tempered with Mathilde’s quick wits and humour. He sighed. That mysterious female continent. Still a mystery after all these years.

  Katherine, as she wandered restlessly round the Manhattan apartment, felt as trapped as Violette. For the first time since she had moved back into the house, she knew she couldn’t face an evening with Jacob. She was angry, seething. She poured herself an uncustomary drink, and grimacing, swallowed it down in two gulps.

  Then, with relief, she remembered. There was a gathering at Ted’s tonight. He had mentioned it to her at the party.

  She liked Ted. He was a big burly man who made her feel comfortable. Though he drank too much and when he did, his American accent slipped and the BBC tones came through. He told scathing stories about his life at Oxford, about his home in Yorkshire, stories in which the humour dipped into anger the more he drank. Sometimes the rancour in these stories frightened her. She wondered what his lectures were like, but she had never taken up his invitation to come to CCNY and listen.

  Yes, she would go to Ted’s, Katherine determined. She slipped into her Village gear, a black ribbed dress, fishnet tights, pale lipstick, boots. Her reflection dissatisfied her. She still looked like a child. Kid sister, Katherine. Indignantly, she forced the dress down over one shoulder, leaving it bare; piled her hair up loosely on top of her head. Looked at herself again. Jewellry, that’s what she needed. With sudden grim resolve, she pulled a large box out of the bottom of her cupboard. Sylvie’s jewellry. She had never used it before. She fingered glittering necklaces, gold and silver chains, bracelets, beads, broches, earings. Tentatively, she tried a few and then with something like exasperation, chose heavy bangles, a choker with ruby-red stones and matching pendant earrings. A different Katherine looked out at her from the mirror. That Katherine smiled with her lips open.

  Ted’s apartment was in the East Village, an assortment of dank rooms almost devoid of furniture but with a variety of rugs and cushions and mattresses scattered around the floor. In most of them now music throbbed, thick white candles flickered and couples danced or sat in little intent circles and chatted above the din. Katherine could smell the high sweet scent of marijuana.

  In the last room, there was a pocket of quiet. Ted was declaiming to a small hushed group. Long sonorous lines of verse. She had known that he wrote poetry, but she had never read or heard any of it before. She listened attentively. An incantatory rage came from him. Images of men, crushed together. Underground. In a mine. A wail. A rush of rich metaphor. The mine became one of the circles of Dante’s inferno, a London tube, a heaving labyrinth. He was good, Katherine thought. Very good.

  When he reached the end, she went up to him, shyly told him how much she liked what she had heard. He embraced her, thick heavy arms, crushing her, the smell of alcohol. ‘Thanks kid. And where’s your big brother?’

  Katherine shrugged, ‘I’ve come on my own.’

  ‘Really?’ a shaggy eyebrow rose.

  ‘Really.’

  ‘A
nd your glass? Where’s your glass?’ He placed one in her hand, poured thick red wine. ‘To poetry and all that rubbish,’ he clicked her glass with his, smirked, and drank to the bottom. ‘And now I’ll show you how poets dance.’ He took her into the next room, performed a little pantomime of swivelling hips and stormy eyes, then wrapped his arm around her. ‘I’m not very good at this,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘Now, Brian, Brian here is a whizz of a dancer,’ he motioned her towards another man, made the briefest of introductions and set them off. Brian smiled, ‘Gotta do what the big man says.’

  Katherine danced. There were any number of nameless partners, telling her she was a cute chick, trying to fondle her. On occasion, she would meet Ted’s eyes, and he would wink, and nod his head encouragingly. Still the kid sister to him, she thought dismally. She looked round for Leo, but he was nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t spoken to him since New Year’s Eve, since Violette had told her. And suddenly she wanted to see him, to tell him she knew.

  Katherine meandered through smokey rooms. Couples, everywhere now, their arms around each other. The last of the bedrooms was dark, empty. She was about to turn around, when she heard a low moan. And then, she saw him in the corner of the dim room. He was kissing Claudia, his body straining against hers, his hands cleaving her bottom. Katherine stifled her cry, turned guiltily away, but Claudia’s laugh stopped her.

  ‘And here comes kid sister, right on time. Daddy’s little girl, seventeen going on forty-five,’ she examined Katherine brashly from luminous blue eyes, laughed again. Then she ran her fingers through Leo’s hair, challenging him with her look, ‘Next time you want to get your cock into me, Leo, why don’t you leave kid sister at home?’ She flounced away from him, past Katherine and out of the room.

  Leo looked at Katherine mutely, but his eyes accused her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she murmured. And before she could stop the sentence, she blurted out,‘She’s just like Sylvie isn’t she? She looked at Claudia’s receding form, the blonde hair, the narrow swinging hips, with distaste.

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’ Leo turned on her. ‘If only you were a little more like her, you’d be a lot less of a drag.’

  Katherine’s mouth dropped.

  ‘Yes, Daddy’s girl.’ Irritation covered his face. ‘Claudia’s right. But you know something, that darling father of ours was mad about Sylvie. Have you looked at those photographs of her from the Paris days? She was breathtaking. I don’t blame him. They weren’t even married when I was conceived. He couldn’t keep his hands off her.’

  Katherine had a sudden desire to vomit. This too, on top of everything else. She felt the ground giving way beneath her feet. She scanned Leo’s angry face helplessly.

  But her silence seemed only to goad him. ‘You should go and get laid,’ he muttered and left her.

  Right, Katherine thought, that does it. She marched furiously back towards the front room, poured herself a glass of wine and downed it quickly. She scanned the dancers, saw Claudia moving vampishly against another man, Ted. As if an unknown force were compelling her, Katherine strode towards the woman, pulled her away from her partner, ‘Ball-breaker,’ she said loudly, so loudly that everyone around them turned. Then, with a resounding smack, she slapped Claudia’s face.

  Leo, watching from the corner of the room, dropped his glass in amazement at Katherine’s unexpected wildness. Then he froze, saw as if in slow motion, Claudia raising her arm, hitting out. At empty air. Ted had pulled Katherine away, was navigating her towards the other end of the room. ‘Do something about that little twerp,’ Claudia was hissing at him.

  He put his arm around her absently, ‘It’s okay. Ted’s lecturing her.’ He led Claudia away, looked back to wave to Ted and saw in astonishment that Katherine was planting a kiss very firmly on his lips.

  ‘Leo told me to get laid,’ Katherine was saying to Ted. She looked seriously into his eyes as they danced.

  ‘By me?’

  She pressed closer to him, let her hips move as she had seen Claudia’s do.

  ‘Me, huh? The man definitely has taste,’ Ted quipped. He eyed her curiously. ‘Are you sure, kid sister? Have you ever done this before?’

  Katherine recoiled, ‘I am not a kid. And I’ve had enough of being a sister. Anyone’s sister. Or daughter.’

  Ted stroked her hair, slowly pulled out the combs which she had used to keep it up. ‘Hard growing up, isn’t it?’ he murmured.

  She put her head on his shoulder. They danced. After a while, he asked her, ‘And have you done this before, Katherine?’ Deep-set eyes quizzed her in the candlelight.

  Katherine shook her head, hid her face again in his shoulder, ‘But I want to,’ she mumbled.

  He led her to the far room where she had found Leo. ‘You stay here and think it over quietly,’ he put another glass of wine in her hand, ‘and I’ll go and see if I can get rid of the remaining folks,’ he ruffled her hair and grinned.

  Katherine looked round her. This was Ted’s bedroom she realised. There was a small desk, strewn with books and papers. She glanced at them, saw some lines of poetry. She picked up a leather-bound volume. Shakespeare. The Sonnets. She rifled through pages. Drank. Then, remembering herself, she slipped off her dress and went to lie on the bed. She closed her eyes. The room reeled and she opened them again, tried to focus on the book, waited. The apartment grew quiet. And then Ted came in. He looked huge as he gazed down on her.

  ‘Not much on, I see.’

  Katherine put her hand out to him. Tried to make her eyes look sultry, the way she had seen women do in films.

  As he bent to her, she thought she heard him murmur, ‘Well, well, well. My present from Leo.’

  He kissed her. A tongue probing, dry. Hands on her back, firm, strong, rubbing. It wasn’t unpleasant. She closed her eyes. She saw Leo with Claudia, his arms round her, straining. She arched against Ted. A man’s body, she told herself. She wouldn’t be a child anymore, wouldn’t. A laugh came to her lips now. Ted was putting a condom on, milky plastic stretching. She stifled the laugh, kissed him.

  He lay beside her, hands caressing her, one leg astride her, rubbing, stroking. Her eyes seemed to be on the ceiling, watching them. And then his voice, taut, low, drowning them out, intoning, ‘Listen Katherine, listen,

  The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

  Is lust in action; and till action, lust

  Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

  Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust…’

  She had never heard the sonnet. She listened, listened to the rise and fall of his voice in her ear, a rumbling incantation which made her almost oblivious to the movement of his body. The words covered the hot ache inside her, the sense of an object that didn’t belong, ripping, invading.

  ‘Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;

  Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

  Past reason hated…’

  His voice grew louder as he reached the crescendo, words labouring against breath.

  ‘All this the world well knows; yet none knows so well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.’

  The last word was a caustic rasp.

  And then nothing for a few moments, until his voice came again and he lifted himself from her.

  ‘And there you are, young lady. The bloody deed is done.’

  She followed the direction of his eyes and saw the bloodied sheet.

  ‘I hope Leo is pleased,’ he murmured.

  ‘And me.’

  ‘Oh yes. And you.’ He looked at her strangely. ‘But what you don’t understand is that it’s Leo I’m doing it for.’ He laughed oddly, then stroked her hair. ‘You’re a sweet girl, Katherine.’

  In the taxi, on the way home, Katherine didn’t know whether she should be jubilant or in tears. She consoled herself. If that was all that separated her from childhood, it wasn’t much. A few lunges. A little blood. Not much. What was all the fuss about? Would Leo be able to tell the differen
ce? Her father? Would anyone know? It didn’t matter. She knew. Knew that she was no longer a child.

  Katherine gazed out at the empty Manhattan streets.

  She had liked the sonnet.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  __________

  ∞

  By the time Alexei Gismondi was seventeen, he was rather further along the road to sexual knowledge than Katherine Jardine. Milan may have been a bustling modern metropolis, capital of Italy’s post-war economic miracle, but in matters of sexuality, the habits of the city’s bourgeoisie harked back to a previous age.

  When Alexei was fifteen, his uncle brought him to a woman. A woman who would initiate him into the ways of the sexual world. Alexei went back to her and other women like her many times. It was soon evident to him, engrained in him, that there were certain women one could make love to. And there were other women. Women like his aunt. Women one met socially. Women one might talk to, perhaps in the distant future, marry. Women one could secretly desire, but who were pure, untouchable. Women who were mothers. One could always tell the two kinds of women apart.

  The problem was whether one could ever bring them together in one person.

  This disjuncture was the one which most preoccupied Alexei in his young life. But another came close second. It had to do with his two fathers, or rather his uncle and his father. On the one hand there was his uncle, shrewd, practical, energetic and yes, kind. His uncle and everything he stood for. Wealth wrought out of industrial riches. A vast entrepreneurial empire run with paternalist generosity, but with power and profits solidly centred on the Gismondi family. An empire which ran hand in glove with the regime of the Christian Democrats and their many-tentacled system of patronage. An empire to which Alexei, sheltered and pampered, would one day be heir in partnership with his cousin, Sergio.