They lived for months on end without making plans that weren’t from one day to the next, sometimes one hour to the next. At night they would talk, make love, laugh, dream of taking trips and doing the most improbable things. Viviane was still perfecting her postural massage technique, working in various medical and sport centers in the area, or at patients’ homes. Milena, on the other hand, found a short-term job in a pastry shop in Fayence, and experimented with new gelato recipes in the kitchen of their small rented apartment whenever she had the time. They had very little money, but neither of them worried too much about it; they were sure they would always find a way to get hold of what they needed.
Then what happened? Between them? To them? What the heck happened? And where do they think they’re going now, with all this pushing and resisting and dragging? Toward a consolidated family, not much different from the ones they come from? Toward an increasingly defined and enduring division of roles? Must a relationship between two women inevitably re-create the dynamics of one between a woman and a man, purely as a matter of survival? Given that two women in a world of men are in a condition of vulnerability regardless, no matter how evolved and emancipated and independent and intolerant of constraints they might be? Is it possible that, in order not to be overpowered by men, one of the two women is forced to become at least a little bit of a man herself, even against her will? In order to survive the warpaths created by men, so that at least the other woman is free not to be a man?
You need only look around to realize that the world is perpetually on the brink of an involution of behavior, language, mental imagery, in which women are guaranteed to get the short end of the stick. There are entire religions that dedicate themselves full-time to denying women’s rights or attempting to chip away at or revoke those they’ve already obtained, to force women back into a condition of domestic servants and procreators. There are entire military organizations, both terrorist and otherwise, whose primary goal is to force human relations to regress toward a system of bullying in which women will invariably find themselves on the lowest rung. There are entire industries that with the support of national governments produce and sell arms to all sides in any conflict, so that males can enjoy killing and destroying with the joyful cruelty of children whose bodies have grown up but not their minds. There are entire obscure networks that provoke and direct the movement of people and profit from it more than from heroin, and push hundreds of thousands of males of a medieval mind-set to look for easier lives in countries whose values they despise, first and foremost the freedom of women. There are entire political parties whose reaction to barbaric threats consists of slogans that regurgitate words no less barbarous. At the slightest occasion, there are displays of primitive manliness: fists pounding against chests, feet stomping the ground, guttural voices rumbling, martial uniforms and parades, beards and turbans, fists and clubs and pistols and rifles raised to provoke fear.
So? Will Viviane always have to be the one who elbows in the ribs someone guilty of pushing in a train station, kicks in the balls some pig who cops a feel in a supermarket, raises her voice with a bully who tries to steal a parking space? And then, once they’re home, oppresses her in a way very similar to what a man would do?
Milena Migliari eats another spoonful of muesli, wipes the soymilk from her lips with the back of her hand. She chews slowly, trying to concentrate on the consistency and flavor of the oat flakes and raisins and hazelnuts, but she can’t, not one bit.
TWENTY
NICK CRUICKSHANK PRACTICES time and again the first notes of Beethoven’s Sonatina in C Major for mandolin and fortepiano that he’s considering playing at the party tomorrow, if his mood and the general atmosphere and the sound system were to miraculously (and improbably) come together. It’s a fast piece, and the damn arpeggio in C forces you to stretch your hand out to the utmost, makes your fingers skip rapidly over the capos, careful not to produce dirty or muffled notes. It might not present great difficulties for a classically trained mandolinist, unless you wanted to play it twice as fast, like that virtuoso fool on YouTube. But it’s a challenge for a rhythmic guitarist and slow learner like he is, and requires a great deal of effort. This might also be why he likes the mandolin, in addition to its being so small and portable: for the way it forces him to get out of his comfort zone, free himself of the automatic reflexes of when he’s playing the guitar.
But then he was already fascinated by a variety of instruments during the production of the Bebonkers’ first few albums, and often snuck them into the arrangements of their songs, even if every time he had to overcome the others’ veiled opposition. They might have been in the studio working on a really fast boogie-woogie, and he would snoop around in the room next door, where a xylophone was stored for some other recording session. He would try banging the mallets on the wooden bars without knowing exactly what he was doing, and intriguing ideas would appear to him as if by magic. So he’d go back to the others, with the attitude of someone completely sure of himself: “I’m going to play over it with a xylophone.” The others would snigger and shake their heads, tell him that the xylophone didn’t have a damn thing to do with the boogie, and that even if it did he didn’t know how to play it. But he would put his foot down and force them to give it a try, and by the second or third attempt it would work: the xylophone would end up producing a sound that was distinct from that of the countless other bands that had their exact instrumentation. In almost all of the Bebonkers’ songs from the golden years, there’s an unusual instrument adding color to the atmosphere and creating surprising shadows and reflections: a bouzouki, a dulcimer, a sitar, a Celtic harp, a tenor sweet flute, an oboe.
Is his recent passion for the mandolin a pathetically late attempt to get back in touch with his freer and more creative self of the first few albums? A conscious attempt to replicate what he created thirty-five years ago without really thinking, going on pure instinct? To wash away his guilt for acquiescing to Rodney and Wally and Todd and settling for the so-called Bebonker sound? To reduce the clutter of his instruments to a minimum, just when his life in general seems headed in the opposite direction? Isn’t it paradoxical (yet again) that he’s worked so hard for so many years, writing songs and recording them and churning out one album after another and one tour date after another without a day of respite, to be able to afford an instrument collection that occupies several rooms in several houses in several different places and countries, and he now finds himself playing almost exclusively a Canadian mandolin that weighs so little and takes up so little space? If nothing else, it maintains the calluses on his fingertips and the agility of his finger movements. But for Sunday’s concert he’ll leave it at home, locked safely in its case; no Bebonkers fan shall suffer the disappointment of seeing him onstage with anything other than a Stratocaster or Telecaster over his shoulder.
But what’s the point of learning Beethoven or Bach or O’Carolan by heart after listening to them dozens and dozens of times in different versions since he can’t read the sheet music, after figuring out the fingerings and hand positions all by himself, sensing the connections between scales and arpeggios with which he has no familiarity? Might some of these elements someday surface in an original song of incredible beauty? If that occurred, would the other Bebonkers agree to play it, given that it would almost surely have nothing in common with their current repertoire? Baz’s reaction yesterday was telling: they certainly would not. And the same would be true for the fans, seemingly determined to demand an infinite repetition of their classics. Is this immersion in music that isn’t his, with an instrument that isn’t his, merely the umpteenth attempt not to accept who he’s definitively become, rather than continuing to imagine who else he might have been?
Nick Cruickshank continues to play despite the knock at the door. But they’re insistent, so eventually he opens the door, very irritated.
It’s Aldino, with the half-angry and half-embarrassed expression he has whenever he’d like to rebuke him for s
omething but doesn’t dare. Last night he went berserk after discovering that Nick had left the estate on his own; upon his return he found the Italian waiting at the back of the house with a flashlight in his hand, agitated beyond belief.
“I needed to take a spin on my own, okay?” Nick Cruickshank goes on the attack, the best form of defense.
Aldino shakes his head. “I didn’t want to talk about last night, I wanted to talk about tomorrow.”
“What part of tomorrow? There are several.” It’s not that Nick Cruickshank wasn’t thinking about tomorrow: for weeks his head has been pounding at the idea of tomorrow, with all of its implications. For months.
“Well, the security, no?” Aldino has now been working for him for eight years; between the two of them there’s always been a sort of role-playing game, the restless protectee and the patient protector.
“What’s the problem with the security?” It seems to Nick Cruickshank that of all the aspects of tomorrow, the security is the only one he couldn’t care less about.
“Eh, there are lots of them.” Aldino has a really hard time being optimistic; maybe that’s why he’s good at his work. “Allard will be here shortly from Monte Carlo for the inspection, but we already know we’ll need men at the gate, behind the hedges, in the house, on the lawn in front of the house, at the edge of the woods. Then there’s the question of the local police. Threadbare crew, same goes for their equipment. If, God forbid, we get any nasty surprises, I don’t know—”
“What type of nasty surprises could there be?” For a moment the idea that there could be a nasty surprise tomorrow seems almost desirable, a glimmer of hope to latch on to.
Aldino raises his chin, opens his arms slightly. “Anything from the lone maniac loser that pops out of the woods, to the commando of three or four well-trained men who smash through the gate, a van with reinforced bumpers, Kalashnikovs, grenades, and the like.”
“Christ, Aldino.” Nick Cruickshank can’t help laughing, because he’s reminded of his paranoid reaction toward the workers in the olive grove the other morning; he remembers how stupid he felt.
“It’s really not funny at all.” Aldino remains perfectly serious, as well he should—that’s what he’s paid for. “Sunday at the airfield will be even worse, because there we’re naturally talking about many, many, many more people, in a completely exposed area. With roads on two sides, anyone can come and go as they please.”
Nick Cruickshank forces himself to be serious; he nods, shoves his hands in his jeans pockets. He thinks about when the Bebonkers did their first tours without a shred of private protection, and had to trust in a few local cops, completely unprepared to handle the out-and-out assaults directed at the stage by young men and women viscerally determined to get their hands on the clothes or hair or chunks of anyone in the band who came within reach. He thinks about the hysterical yelling, the crazy looks, the gestures in front of the stage by people who seemed possessed, without the slightest barrier in the way; and how all that was set ablaze by his performances, in a tide of primordial energy flowing in both directions. As lead singer he was the main target, but even Rodney had his out-of-control cannibalistic idolizers, even Todd and Wally; more than once their strong legs had been the only things that saved them, carrying them out to their cars and back to the refuge of their hotels just in time. But they wouldn’t have complained about it back then: it was a crucial part of the rock mystique that had pushed them inexorably to where they were now. Before the manhunt became an annoyance and then a genuine nightmare, they’d found it exciting, the definitive consecration of their star status.
Today things have changed significantly, among teams of bodyguards with earpieces, elevated stages, metal barriers, precautionary distances. The price to pay for security has been a loss of contact, not just during concerts but before and after as well: permanently. Nick Cruickshank thinks that between him and his audience there’s now a permanent shield; the dangerous thrill of physical contact that can degenerate from one moment to the next is long gone. He’s actually glad that for a couple of days there’s a little more risk, for once, in spite of what Aldino might think.
TWENTY-ONE
MILENA MIGLIARI IS working once more on her batch of chestnut gelato, since she wasn’t too happy with the one from yesterday. Not because Guadalupe didn’t follow her instructions properly, but because she did so too well, without taking the liberty to add a personal touch. The fact is that you can teach almost anyone the practical part of a procedure, but you can’t teach the creative part: that depends on the individual’s personality, on their particular combination of qualities and flaws, on how they react to circumstances. Maybe you wake up one day with a dislike for a certain flavor and the atmosphere and stories it carries with it, or you discover you’re missing an ingredient and don’t have time to find it, so you use another, risking a different combination, changing the entire equilibrium. That’s how she has stumbled on some of her best flavors, that’s why she always needs to leave herself a margin for improvisation when she’s working: to allow herself to be inspired by sight, smell, the weather, the temperature, the mood of the moment, the thoughts passing through her head, even the music coming out of the radio.
Now, for example, the radio is playing “Enough Isn’t Enough” by the Bebonkers, with the slightly hoarse but warm voice of that Nick Cruickshank over the urgent rhythm of the bass and drums and the harried chords of the electric guitars, and without thinking she throws a pinch of salt into the mix, and a dash of white pepper as well, to contrast with the sweetness of the cream. As always she doesn’t use a scale, measuring amounts on a long-handled spoon, on a small plate onto which she grinds up the fresh ingredients. It’s not extreme changes that get you interesting results; it’s the tiny deviations from the norm, the almost imperceptible touches that you really feel.
Guadalupe watches her, perplexed as always when she sees her stray from a proven recipe. She still doesn’t really understand why yesterday’s gelato didn’t receive full approval, though it had no evident flaws and tasted good to her. (“What do you mean it’s good but not interesting?” she asked late yesterday afternoon, after Milena calmly tasted a spoonful and commented on it. “That there’s nothing new about it,” she replied, knowing it might have seemed like a slightly enigmatic observation.)
Milena Migliari reaches over to turn off the radio, because now the rhythm of the song is making her feel anxious. Or maybe it’s the words or the voice. Or maybe the song has nothing to do with it, and her anxiety stems from yesterday’s visit to the Centre Plamondon, from her thoughts racing forward to Monday, to next summer, to a future that no longer seems her own. She tries to focus exclusively on what she’s doing: on gestures and steps, on the slow amalgamation of the ingredients.
But there’s someone knocking on the glass door of the shop, like the other day; her heart suddenly accelerates. It occurs to her that she has been expecting it, fearing it; since the other day, since last night. She can see Nick Cruickshank peeking into the lab, smiling at her in that way of his that seems so spontaneous but might be carefully crafted for effect. She can already hear the voice that was singing so angrily on the radio two minutes ago making interesting observations about her gelato and her life, apparently sincere but potentially the product of a bored mind that’s accustomed to ignoring personal boundaries.
“Someone’s at the door.” Guadalupe motions toward the shop.
“I heard. Ignore them.” Milena Migliari puts a pinch of dill in the chestnut gelato batter; her heart keeps beating irregularly, though she tries not to think about it.
“What do you mean, ignore them?” Guadalupe raises her head. She doesn’t get it.
“This is not a frigging drawing room for chitchat!” Milena Migliari’s tone comes out much too harsh, but she’s agitated, and furious with herself. What was the meaning of the hug with Nick Cruickshank last night in the market square? Was that innocent, too, like the kiss on her forehead in the morning? J
udging by how she feels right now: no. Or how she felt at home, tossing and turning in bed, her head and body full of contradictory impulses. The very dynamic of the hug has uncertain contours, as much as she keeps forcing herself to reconstruct it precisely, which might be partly explained by the fact that they both had their eyes closed. Before they had them open, though. Did they really not recognize each other as they were standing there in the circle, half shivering, among the shadows and lights and mist? There were eighteen people in the circle: What were the odds that the two of them, out of everyone, would come to be locked in an embrace? Did he aim for her intentionally? Did she maybe aim for him, without realizing it? Did she let herself get pulled into a stupid magnetic current, already worn out by the two intense hours of folk dancing in the room under the town hall? And what was Nick Cruickshank doing there, among the huggers from Digne-les-Bains? Had he taken up position like a predator? But why should someone like him be interested in preying on someone like her, with all the far more suitable and willing victims he can certainly dispose of? Out of a slightly perverse taste for hitting on a woman who doesn’t like men? Even though in truth he had no way of knowing? Even though it seemed like there was absolutely nothing perverse about their hug? Even though it seemed like the purest hug she has ever experienced?
Imperfect Delight Page 16
