He woke with an acute sense of disorientation. Where was he? He couldn’t move. He wanted to scream and couldn’t scream. A nightmare, he thought. Then he remembered. Realised his feet and arms were bound. The blindfold and gag still in place. He must be on a floor, a tile floor, cold, somewhere in the house. He listened. In the distance, from across the room, he heard voices whispering. He tuned his hearing.
‘Old Gismondi will pay a lot for him.’
‘No, it’s too tricky. We can’t stay here. There may be others coming.
‘It’s too dangerous to move him. We’re not prepared.’
‘I can get the van brought round. By tomorrow night.’
‘No. It’ll wreck our other plans.’
Then silence. In the silence, Alexei recognised the voice. A woman’s voice. Rosa. He was torn between the need to call out to her and the recognition that she was complicit in his situation. How could she have allowed them to knock him out, to bind him? Did she know it was him? She must. What would they do to him?
The voices again.
‘I still say we should take him with us. There’s a lot in it.’
‘No. We’re not cheap criminals. We follow plans.’
She was defending him. Alexei’s mind cleared a little. At least there was that.
‘Go and get some sleep. I’ll guard him. Go on. We leave in the morning, as planned.’
Rosa’s voice, authoritative. An indisputable order. He heard the shuffling of feet. And then nothing.
Alexei waited. His body cramped, his breathing constricted. In that interminable waiting, he at last realised that the Rosa he had known was dead to him. As dead as his aunt, as dead as Francesca in her cloister, as dead as the mother he had never known. Loss, black, despairing filled him, greater than any fear. It bore none of the soft murkiness of self-pity. He didn’t feel sorry for himself, felt no remorse. There was only that sense of loss, like a vast, dark, vault, encasing him.
Into it Rosa’s hushed voice crept.
‘Alexei, Alexei, it’s Rosa. If you can hear me, nod.’
Alexei moved his heavy head.
‘If you promise not to try to do anything rash, I’ll take the blindfold off. Promise? The old Alexei’s honour?’
He jerked his head. Up down, up down, scraping his ear on the floor.
There was a moment in which he could hear her hesitating and then slowly, nimbly, she removed the gag, the blindfold.
The dull, muted light of a torch. In it he searched for Rosa. Saw a raven head, short clipped hair. The purity of a face. Hers. Bared down to its essentials of bone and line. Her eyes flickered, green, greener. A trace of savage irony. ‘Your timing is appalling,’ she said to him, her voice flat. ‘Another day and we would have been out of here. I’m sorry they hit you.’
‘That’s something, I guess,’ he murmured.
They looked at each other warily. He curled on the floor, bound, helpless. She, kneeling beside him, his jailer, his protector. Silence stretched into distance. Alexei stumbled into it, trying to cover miles.
‘Are you alright, Rosa?’
Almost, she laughed. ‘That’s an odd question coming from you,’ her gaze lingered meaningfully on his bound limbs.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Always the same, Alexei,’ she shook her head slowly. ‘Always the personal first. You’ll never understand. We’re nothing,’ she snapped her fingers. ‘Here, gone. Specks of dust in history. What matters is greater than us. You. Me.’
‘Yet you won’t let them take me. Kidnap me.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s not part of the plan,’ she said coldly.
‘Is that all, Rosa?’
‘That’s the greater part of it,’ she met the insistence of his eyes, her own proud. ‘It would be complicated, messy. It’s better when things are clean, straight,’ she swung her arm downward in a firm motion.
‘Clean, straight,’ he murmured. ‘Without the complications of memory, of emotion. Without life.’
‘The life which is a privilege of your class,’ she came back swiftly, her voice hard.
‘So many answers, Rosa. You always had so many answers.’ Alexei mused.
‘And you always had too many questions. That, too, is a privilege.’
They looked at each other through the thin beam of light, the distance between them growing.
‘It’s the last privilege I would want to lose,’ he said at last.
‘I know, Alexei,’ there was a sudden glimmer of reminiscence in her face. Her voice grew softer.
And then abruptly, she switched off the torch. Above them, Alexei heard a slight movement.
He felt her breath in his ear. ‘That’s why you’re so dangerous, Alexei,’ she whispered. He could feel her loosening the rope round his arms and feet and then swiftly replacing the blindfold. ‘Don’t try to move till we’re gone,’ she hissed. And then with another change of voice, she murmured. ‘Goodbye, Alexei. Thanks for the help. The past.’ Lips touched his. Lightly. Like the play of air. Then the gag. More firmly. Before he could speak.
A few moments later, there was movement in the hall, the click of the door, the muted rev of a bike, then another. And then nothing.
Alexei lay there. No longer waiting. He had a certain sense that he would never see Rosa again.
He was in Paris when he read the article which carried Rosa’s name. A brief news piece in Le Monde: three members of the Red Brigade had been captured. It was June, the sky a clear blue in which the woolly clouds billowed playfully. He read the article again. Looked at that frivolous sky.
The next day he flew to Rome. He rang his lawyer, asked for him to arrange permission for Alexei to see Rosa. There was a long pause. Then an incredulous voice asked, ‘Can you repeat that again?’
Alexei repeated it.
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ his lawyer demurred.
‘Do it,’ Alexei barked with Giangiacomo’s tones. ‘Leave the reflections on good and bad to me.’
By the time the permission came through a week later, it was too late. Rosa was dead. Dead by her own hand. Or was it? Some of the papers implied that she might have been helped, that her interrogators had been less than gentle.
In a sense Alexei was not surprised. He had spent the days trying to think himself into Rosa’s skin. Rosa captured, deprived of her mobility, the freedom of her brisk energy. Rosa afraid, afraid of torture, afraid of talking, of implicating others. Rosa, her historical role complete, nothing to do but crumble into dust. Quickly, efficiently, cleanly, before the questions took over from the answers. Instantly and to maximum effect. Rosa, martyr to a cause. Santa Rosa.
Alexei felt cold. A cold the hot sun could not penetrate.
It had been inevitable. Sooner or later. They had both known it. Once the initial choice had been made, the rest had inevitably followed. And perhaps even before the choice had been made.
Yet he felt implicated, responsible. Why hadn’t he been able to sway her, with his arguments if not with his person. He suspected it was because he, too, had been in love with her belief, its steady gaze into the distance, the pure whiff of its integrity which cut through the stale odours of cynicism and corruption. And yet he had not been able to share that faith, had merely longed for it as one longs for something one’s reality cannot bear.
Yes, Alexei thought grimly, it was as if he, his friends, all of them, had willed the Rosas into existence to be the uncompromising guardians of a social faith they wished for.
And what if there was something wrong in the very origins of that longing, that desire? Where had centuries of belief, whatever its content got them?
No, Alexei argued against himself, it was right, it was necessary. Otherwise nothing would ever change.
The arguments trailed him, chased him, unresolved. Throughout that long hot summer, they accompanied his mourning for the person Rosa had been. He began to read in areas he hadn’t explored before, the history of the church, of religions. Texts on ps
ychoanalysis. When the autumn leaves began to dry underfoot, he had a hot furious film in him. He wanted to make it quickly.
His intensity was transformed more rapidly than usual into a budget. Two generations of a single family. The wartime resisters and his own peers. The left’s legacy. A dialogue. Through Rosa’s eyes. He thought of calling it Rosa x Two, but wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything about the film except his need to make it. When it was finished, it caused a storm of debate in Italy.
Alexei could hardly bear to watch it. He felt empty, hollowed out, felt he didn’t want to direct anymore.
Desultorily he picked up the strings of his life. Produced other people’s films, spent time with Giangiacomo and conversely more time travelling. It all felt empty, directionless. He toyed with the idea of moving out of Italy, setting up a base elsewhere.
But his uncle was putting increasing pressure on him to spend more time in Milan. He wanted Alexei to be prepared to head the firm. ‘I’m getting old,’ he increasingly muttered . ‘It’s time you settled down. Gave me some bambini.’
To placate him, Alexei began to invite him out to dinner with women friends, an actress here, a designer or writer there. The next day, Giangiacomo would always begin tentatively, ‘I thought your friend last night was very nice…’ and would draw an idealised picture of the woman in question and the comforts of married life. Alexei would sit very still and try to imagine an existence with Helena or Marina or Giulietta and his sense of unreality would grow to disproportionate bounds. One day, his uncle raged, ‘You’re spoiled. You’ve had too many women. I don’t know what you’re waiting for. Marriage is about families, continuity. Just choose a sensible woman who’ll make a good mother and get on with it.’
Alexei looked at him blankly, ‘And how do I know what a good mother is?’
‘Bah,’ Giangiacomo scowled at him. ‘If you’re not careful, I’ll find one for you and that will be that.’
‘Perhaps that might be easier,’ Alexei laughed. But he stopped inviting his uncle to dinners with his women friends. Stopped going out very much himself. He realised with an occasional panic that he no longer particularly enjoyed making love. His imagination wasn’t in it.
Instead, he threw himself into the business of Gismondi Enterprises. Not with passion, but with a kind of coldness he didn’t recognise in himself. He split his time between the production company and the rest. That, at least, he thought, would keep his uncle at bay.
And he developed an interest in fine art. It had never been his favourite medium before, but now he grew enamoured of it for precisely the reasons it had never moved him before. The lack of narrative, of movement beyond the single frame, gave him a kind of peace. He began to haunt the museums and galleries, to buy scores of art books. Each period fascinated him, the images like icons that could be returned to. Still, unmoving, always the same except for what one brought to them. He redecorated his apartment, filled it with pictures. Restlessly bought another in Rome.
It was during this time that he went in Rome to an exhibition entitled Paris Between the Wars. Ranged amidst Picasso’s weeping women and Picabia’s mechanical monsters, he saw an image he didn’t know, a face that called out to him, childlike yet seductive, a woman’s face mounted on an owl’s feathered body. He glanced at the caption and then looked again: Portrait of Sylvie Kowalska by Michel St Loup, Roussillon 1935.
That name, Sylvie Kowalska. It meant something to him. Alexei’s mind sped through time, sifted, landed. That letter, all those years back, with the ring. During the kidnapping scare. A letter from a Sylvie Kowalska, telling him she was his mother. How bizarre to find that name here. That face. Alexei tried to remember the faded image that had come with the letter, but his memory of it was blurred.
He stood in front of the picture for a long time. Those eyes. Was he dreaming it, or did they have the colour of his own? He bought a catalogue, learned a little about Michel St Loup, less about the sitter. He returned to the exhibition again the next day. And the next. Curiosity nipped at him. Bit. Who was this woman with the Polish name? Why had she written to him?
The face possessed him. Where there had been emptiness, Alexei was suddenly filled with a sense of mystery. No sooner was he back in Milan, than he accosted Giangiacomo, told him of what he had seen, reminded him of the letter.
‘You remember you said you were going to try and find out something about that woman. Did you?’
Giangiacomo looked at his son, noted the fire of an excitement there that had been lacking for some time. He grimaced, ‘You should be finding a wife, not chasing after ghosts.’
‘What did you find?’ Alexei grew suspicious, prodded his uncle.
Giangiacomo shrugged, ‘You may not remember this. A journalist once came to interview you. When you were about thirteen.’
Alexei tried to remember, had a fleeting memory of a woman who had watched his home movies with him. He nodded tentatively.
‘Well, that journalist’s real name was Sylvie Kowalska.’
‘Who is she?’
‘All I found out was that she came from New York. Her married name was Jardine.’
Alexei’s imagination performed somersaults. So he had met the woman who claimed to be his mother. She had come to see him, sought him out. She wasn’t just a crank letter writer. No, the woman in the painting couldn’t be a mere crank. Of that he was certain. But then…
Alexei went back to the Palazzo with Giangiacomo. He rifled through his old room, found the letter, the ring, the photograph. He sat there for a long time staring at each in turn. Mother. He had never known a mother. What did the word mean? A point of origin. For him, a presence that existed only in absence, in lack. He looked at the faded photograph of the couple he had always considered his parents, stared again at the image of Sylvie Kowalska. He had a sudden awesome sense that he might not be who he thought he was. It produced in him a feeling of vertigo, but also a profound excitement. A desire to fill that lack.
A decade was closing. He had had no particular hopes of the next one. And now this. The signpost for a journey into the past.
The need to find out more about Sylvie Kowalska blotted out all else in him.
The very next day he went to an agency which specialised in tracing people.
PART FOUR
∞
Chapter
Twenty-Four
__________
∞
In the early spring of 1980, Katherine Jardine was sitting in a restaurant on New York’s East Side gazing restlessly from her watch to the menu and back again.
She was not, she consoled herself, alone in her restlessness. She found its echoes all around her. Time, after all, was running out. The century was growing old, speeding to its end. A new millennium was drawing closer. A millenium shrouded in the sombre hues of science fiction. And as time ran out, each second became more precious. Everyone was in a hurry. To buy, to work, to achieve, to enjoy, before the old millenium wound down into extinction.
Just like her.
She tapped her foot and let her eyes trail down the menu yet again. A menu which bore the type-face and decorative fancies of an earlier period, like the prints and etchings on the wall. Here it was again, she thought. The visible signs of heritage, of tradition, to shore us up against the dying of the future. That was what the romance of roots was partly about, too, that search for points of origin - national, cultural, racial, personal. Histories, memories, to displace a life too difficult to live.
Katherine sighed, impatient at the direction of her thoughts, impatient too at Jacob’s lateness.
It was unlike Jacob to be late and today of all days she had no patience for waiting. But he had insisted on lunch.
‘Bring me a bottle of mineral water, please Pierre,’ she signalled to the waiter.
‘Right away, Ms Jardine,’ he moved smoothly at her request and Katherine sat back in her chair. After all, she liked coming to Gerard’s. The restaurant had become her regular lunchtime
haunt when there were guests to entertain. The place calmed, soothed, as if it existed in its own time-warp far from the bustle of Manhattan.
Soothed perhaps a little too much, Katherine smiled wryly to herself. Pierre was having trouble rousing the man at the table opposite her from his reverie. It was the third time he had asked him if he was ready to order and still there was no response. Ah, there it was at last. The man ran his fingers through dark curling hair and with a slightly embarrassed manner acknowledged Pierre.
What had he been musing on so deeply, Katherine wondered a little idly. A lost love? A bankrupt business? It was an interesting face, craggy, slightly narrow, the forehead furrowed. A face with secrets. A good face for a portrait.
Suddenly eyes of a startling blue met hers with an unnerving intimacy, filled her with an uncanny sense that her thoughts were being read. Katherine looked away, reached for her drink, glanced again at her watch.
‘I’m sorry, Kat,’ Jacob kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Couldn’t get a cab. It’s the rain. I know you’re busy.’
Katherine smiled, happy to see him now that he was here. ‘Yes, I have been. But it’s good to see you.’
‘Next Thursday’s the big day.’
She nodded. ‘Thomas’s collection ready for public eyes at last. You’re going to come, aren’t you?’
‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Not even for a psychoanalytic congress,’ he chuckled. ‘You’ve worked very hard.’ He looked at her benignly.
Yes, Katherine reflected. She had worked hard.
Transforming a private house into a public gallery had been more of a feat than she had imagined all those months ago when the matter of Thomas’s legacy had finally been decided. There had been permissions to clear with officials; State and City administrators to argue with over funds for running costs; hundreds of lengthy applications to fill out in search of subsidies and endowments. To finance the initial work, she had used the money left over from the sale of her mother’s Picasso. Part of that money had gone into the launch of her own Gallery. She liked the idea of art subsidising more art.
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