The Secret Lives of Emma: Unmasked

by Walker, Natasha

  For two weeks Emma luxuriated in the lie they had created. With the help of her parents back in Sydney she sorted the money issue. She was now able to access her account. She bought more clothes but spent much of the time naked in the room with Paul. They were tender, they indulged each other, they were rough and then gentle, they took their time, and they were intimate. It was a sensual interlude that never sought the deeper regions of their hearts. A holiday from themselves.

  Paul woke first. He said they should move on, and when he said it he believed he was suggesting they both move on together. Another town, another country.

  But a day later he realised he didn’t want her to join him. He had not stopped loving her – he loved her more than ever. He was very happy that he had been there for her, that he had been able to rescue her and that their time together had been so like his dreams. This all made him happy. What wasn’t so great was that it was obvious she didn’t love him. Not in the way he had hoped.

  They were sitting in a café when he decided he had to put an end to it. But there was no way he was going to reveal how hurt he was. He played it cool. He set her free with no strings attached.

  ‘There is something about us, Emma. We work best together in stolen moments.’ He took a sip of his coffee. She was watching him. He hoped she wouldn’t notice his hand shaking. ‘This is no longer a stolen moment.’

  And that was that. Emma knew exactly what he meant. It was just like Paul, she thought. As soon as he said it she knew it was over and that he would be gone in a day or two. She went back to the hotel by herself, threw the clothes she had bought into a bag and left.

  Paul stayed another week in the room he had shared with Emma, lingering against all of his better instincts, before hopping on a flight out of Italy.

  Emma headed north to Florence and for the next few months – December, January and February – toured the north of Italy like a backpacker – San Gimignano, Pisa, Lucca, Cinque Terra, Genova, Turin, Milan, Padova, Verona, Venice … Then turned south again to Bologna, Ravenna, Urbino, back to Rome, Naples …

  Italiy was empty in winter, so she was able to do everything on the cheap. She took her time. She stayed in hostels. She linked up with other lone women travellers, accepting lifts from those with rental cars, travelling on trains with others for safety and sharing beds on occasion to save money. They were short-lived, mutually beneficial friendships. She saw all the sights. She lingered. She ate the food and tried her hardest to avoid the men. She had had enough of men. She had had enough of desire. She had had enough.

  EIGHT

  Otranto was the end of her Italian road. She was exhausted. She had taken in as much as she could. It was now April. Every day, every hour, had been spent studying Italy’s past in an attempt to avoid her own. In the freezing winter winds she had toured ancient ruins, cathedrals, churches, palaces, town halls, hill towns and fortresses. In over-heated galleries she had examined thousands of paintings, sculptures, objects. In her bed at night, footsore and tired, she had read guidebooks and histories.

  But when she arrived in Otranto she knew her travels were over. She walked from the train station towards the old town with her bag on her back. The way was longer than it looked on her map. The streets were ugly and decaying: headless palm trees, faded pastel colours, twenty-year-old unkempt holiday villas and grasses growing in the cracks on the road, the pavement and walls. Otranto had the appearance of an abandoned resort town. Her bag was heavy, she was tired and she lost her way.

  The sea appeared at the end of a congested laneway and she found herself on a windswept esplanade. The old town was before her, raised on a low hill surrounded by fortress walls. Keeping to the edge of the harbour she walked slowly onwards, crossing a tree-lined park and reaching a large open piazza which jutted out into the harbour. She walked to the low wall and placed her hands on the cold white stone. She had no desire to visit the cathedral, even though the guidebook said the mosaic floor was a ‘must see’. She had no desire to visit the castle made famous by Walpole, either. She glanced north to the over-developed and cluttered promontory, glanced south towards the marina and then stared out across the pier to the east where she had read that on clear days you could see the mountains of Albania. But there were no mountains visible that day. Just clouds, a grey sea and a strong cold wind blowing into her face.

  Her travels were over. There was nothing more she could do. Her bank account contained enough money to buy a bus ticket to Rome and a flight back to Sydney and not much more. She left the piazza and while walking empty streets of the old town looking for a pensione she spotted a large green bin. She dropped her bag to the ground and opened it. Squatting, she took out her guidebooks, pamphlets and timetables and tossed them into the bin. After walking up and down the medieval streets blindly, she found herself a cheap room, washed, ate a few biscuits and went to bed.

  Not long after this she started to write. The words came and they were a relief. She wrote about David. She wrote about him and he entered her heart again. Those first nights were the hardest. She let him back in. She stared into his eyes for hours at a time and cried and cried. But the writing changed things. The more she wrote the more she was able to see.

  Two months later Emma was still in Otranto. Her days were uniform. She was living frugally. The money she made from her conversations with Sylvia did not cover her costs but it had meant she was able to postpone her departure. One of Sylvia’s friends had rented Emma a room in her apartment. The woman was old, in her late seventies. Her children were living in the north, her grandchildren were scattered around the world.

  Emma spent hours alone in her room. She had re-read the three novels in her bag. The Portrait of a Lady a few times. She couldn’t move on. Whenever she asked herself what she wanted she found only one answer, but that was something she couldn’t have.

  So she stayed, and each afternoon she went to work. The room was cheap but out of town in a grim housing development. The walk into town was not long but still depressing. Modern Italian architects seemed determined to build with no reference to the outstanding examples of architecture left them by their ancestors. Emma would make a beeline for the coast and then walk along the waterfront. Every step she took towards the old town, the more pleasing was the environment. The local government’s duty of care only seemed to extend as far as the day-tripping tourist dollar wandered. And few wandered out of the old city.

  Otranto woke as winter retreated. The waterfront cafes reopened, people were taking to the water, the evening promenades began. Young people started to appear. Where they had been these last months, Emma could not say, but she welcomed their return. They stood on the esplanade by the beach in groups, chatting, flirting, smoking and laughing. They were loud and fierce, sweet and affectionate, rude and uninhibited. The girls stared at her as she passed them. Bold, threatening, inquisitive stares. And Emma felt instinctively that she had to hold her nerve in presenting an unruffled and cool front. She stood straighter and found herself exaggerating the natural rhythm of her stride. It was all very primeval, but the attention invited blood back into her veins. She had allowed herself to become sexless since leaving Rome.

  One evening, having stayed out longer than usual, Emma was walking back along the waterfront to her room. The night air was warm and the entire town had come out to enjoy the change. They had converged upon The Promenade of the Heroes, which was the name of the large piazza Emma had found when she first arrived, mingling and strolling with no greater purpose than to mingle and stroll. Emma had found it hard to tear herself away. She hadn’t even minded the unsolicited attention of the men.

  By the time she left, the street lights were on and the lingering dusk had become night. The further from the old town she went the fewer people on the street. The esplanade took on a lonely appearance. Up ahead of her Emma could see a group standing under a street light. She would have to pass them. She saw one of the group lift his head and stare at her. He motioned for the others to look.
They all turned. Emma saw that there were about eight men, no women. She had been hoping for at least one woman. They started talking to her before she had reached them. She couldn’t understand what they were saying – her alarm bells were ringing and all she could focus on was finding another way home. She started to move off to the left. This was not clever. One of the men jogged across into her path.

  ‘Where you go?’ he asked in English.

  Emma turned away again, heading back from where she’d come. Another man was standing in her way.

  ‘Bella, talk with us,’ said the first man, taking hold of her arm.

  Emma wrenched herself from his grip. ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘Oooh. Fuck off? Not so nice.’

  By now she was surrounded by the men, who ranged in age between late teens to mid-twenties. None of them was smiling. If anything, she thought they looked bored.

  ‘We walk you home, si? Not safe,’ said the youngest of the group. He was smoking. One of the men took a photo of her with his phone. The flash surprised her and the others. There was some quick chatter and then a burst of ugly laughter that made Emma’s blood run cold.

  ‘We take you home. We talk. You like us. Not bad boys. I am Maurizio,’ said the first man, smiling. He tried to lean in to kiss her on both cheeks. Emma pulled back and Maurizio’s smile vanished.

  ‘Come for a drink,’ said the boy, taking her arm again. ‘We nice boys.’

  Emma heard a scooter coming down the road beside the esplanade. She wriggled free and ran into its path. The bike slowed and came to a stop.

  ‘Marco, come stai?’ shouted the boy to the man on the bike.

  Marco took one look at Emma and one look at the group. He needed no further information. He motioned for her to get on and Emma didn’t hesitate. Marco had kind eyes. He was at least thirty. Her options were limited. She threw her leg over the bike, gripped him around the waist and without a word they were off.

  Emma had been too panicked to notice where they were going, but within moments of leaving the men Marco brought the bike to a stop. He had pulled up outside her building.

  She stepped off the bike, unnerved again by this new and strange turn of events. ‘How did you know where I live?’ she asked.

  He was looking at her with a warm smile. ‘Otranto. Everybody know everybody,’ he said. ‘You OK?’

  Emma nodded.

  ‘Bene. Ciao.’

  And with that he was gone.

  The next few days were strange for Emma. She was emerging from a fog. She had become so self-absorbed. She hadn’t thought of Otranto as a small town but now she was noticing the same faces again and again throughout her day. The tourists entered the streets and distracted the eye; they had given her a sense that the town was bigger than it was. In the day the town bulged with a transient population. But if you stood still you could see others doing the same. The shopkeepers, the men on the docks, the fishermen, the guards outside the bank, the priests, the cleaners, the professional men and women coming and going from buildings with bronze plates by their street doors. These people remained when the buses left and the last train to Brindisi rolled out of the station.

  She even saw Maurizio, her would-be attacker, sitting with a girl on his lap on the wall outside the castle. He nodded to her as she passed. The girl turned to see who he was nodding to. She gave Emma a filthy look and then turned back to harangue her beau.

  And then there was Marco. Suddenly, a man she had not laid eyes before was everywhere. She saw him entering a deli. She watched him drive by Sylvia’s shop on his scooter. He was sitting with friends at a café table on the esplanade. He saw her each time too. His eyes were calm, his nod of recognition measured and his smile warm, but not once did he try to talk with her as any other Italian male would.

  Then after a rush of sightings a few days went by and Emma started to miss his smile. He wasn’t around. She swore to herself that she wasn’t looking for him but her walks in the old town became rather comprehensive. She thought of the old town as one big structure, a large mansion with many rooms. She was familiarising herself with all the narrow passages that cut through between the ancient squares.

  One of the busiest of these passages linked the castle with the cathedral. Emma emerged from this passage about a week after her rescue and entered the small square in front of the cathedral. She saw Marco immediately. He was across the square in the sunshine, seated on a camp stool in front of a sketchpad that was resting on a small easel. Facing him was a large woman sitting on an identical camp stool. Her husband stood a few feet away reading a map. He had to be her husband as they were wearing matching pale yellow jackets. During the day the square was never empty. The dull, unadorned façade of the cathedral was duly photographed by each and every tourist and now there stood at least twenty people doing just that from many different angles.

  Emma was able to get quite close without being spotted. Marco was busily marking the paper. He looked up at the woman and saw Emma. He smiled and kept on sketching. Emma moved around behind him to see his work. He had taken the features of the plain, round-faced woman before him and transformed them into a thing of beauty. Emma could clearly see it was the woman – everyone who knew her would be able to recognise her – but it was unlikely she had ever looked as beautiful in life.

  As she was studying this drawing, Marco swiftly exchanged it for another and Emma burst out laughing before she could stop herself. It was a caricature of the woman. She turned around and tried to smother the laugh by faking a coughing fit. But it was too late, the damage had been done. The woman stood up, demanding to see the sketch.

  Marco stood too. In faltering English he explained that he had shown Emma a funny picture. He pulled out a cartoon he had done earlier of another of his customers and then pulled out the flattering sketch of the woman, which delighted her as he must have known it would. The husband was drawn into the discussion. Marco was shorter than the man, she noticed, and money changed hands. Then the couple waddled off, sketch rolled up and tied with a ribbon, placated and pleased.

  When Marco had finished he found Emma where the woman had been sitting.

  ‘No, no!’ said Marco, smiling.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No, I no draw you,’ he repeated. He leant forward and scribbled something on a page and then lifted it from the easel. He handed it to her. It was the caricature of the woman and on it he had written in capitals, TOO FUNNY.

  ‘Is this for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you. Now draw me.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ he said, waving his hands in front of his face.

  Emma laughed. ‘Why not?’

  ‘No, no,’ he said.

  Emma stopped laughing and looked into his eyes. He returned her gaze and held it. Emma had to turn away.

  ‘My English … no good. I no draw you. It is job. Lavoro. Work. I painter.’

  Emma didn’t understand.

  ‘I work bar. I work boat. I work draw. I work Club Med. But I painter. Capito? See?’

  Emma shook her head.

  ‘I show you. You come?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘I work now. Later?’

  Emma nodded. He was sure of himself but not overtly. He had none of the restlessness of other Italian men she had met. He had an inner calm. And though he had made it clear he found her attractive he would not press her to accept his attentions.

  ‘Here. Later? Two hours?’

  Emma nodded again and stood up. She felt light-headed as she moved away down the alley towards the port. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Too much time alone. She was thinking of David when she reached the piazza. The look on his face when she told him she had not been true to him. He had wanted to be forgiven but had shown he was unwilling to forgive her. Had he searched for her? She stood against the sea wall as the sea breeze blew against her face. She hadn’t spoken to David since leaving their home. She hadn’t bought another mobile phone. She had abandoned her email addresses.
There was no forwarding address. She had given him no second chances.

  But she loved him. She loved him more than ever.

  So far she had resisted the temptation to ask her parents about David. She communicated with them by payphone, assuring them she was fine and that she would come home soon. They didn’t pry. Her mother wasn’t that kind of mother, her father knew better than to ask. They had always respected her choices. Her mother had given her the phone numbers and addresses of her family in Denmark as a backup and had moved a couple of thousand dollars into Emma’s account, which Emma had refused to use. It was still there, in case of an emergency, though.

  Now that her life had been stripped down to the barest essentials she needed nothing. From this perspective David was rooted to a particular spot on the earth and he represented a life full of things. She remembered her pride in their home. The furniture she had chosen. The lovely pieces she had bid for in antique furniture auctions. She remembered her hand caressing the gear stick of her BMW, the solidity of the oak banister, the way her skin brushed against her expensive cotton sheets … and she felt sick.

  Nothing was permanent. She glanced up at the beautiful brutality of the walls of the once proud fortress town. These walls hadn’t protected Otranto, the Turks had taken the town twice. David’s solidity, attractive as it was, hadn’t been enough to save their marriage. She had been seduced away from her true self. She was made strong enough to have no roots, to have nothing, to do what she pleased. She was lonely now, but free. But her life with David had been lived in a minefield of rights and wrongs. She had come to believe in these distinctions, too. She had become too frightened to move and had made do with what she could safely reach.

  There was no minefield. Right and wrong were fluid not fixed. That’s why some wrongs feel so right. We must be fluid, too, if we are to do more right than wrong. She loved David, but could never go back.