by Lucy Foley
There is less and less food. People are less pitying now, less inclined to share their own supplies. Sometimes I queue and come away with nothing. I catch myself worrying for Tino – how I will keep him healthy, strong – and I remember that it is only me now. For a few moments it can be an odd sort of relief. I have nothing to care for, any longer, nothing to protect. Really, I have nothing to live for, now. But it is something beyond my control, this will to survive.
At dusk one evening, on my way back to the station, I see the woman, Maria. I am drawing closer to make sure that it is her, ready to greet her, when I see a man approaching from the other direction. I hear her call out to him. She shifts herself and then I see the white flash of thigh as she draws up her skirt. I turn and walk quickly away.
*
I hear a rumour that people with any claim at all to British heritage, or French, are throwing themselves on the charity of those embassies. They say they have better supplies there. I go to the British Embassy, but am turned away by a young Englishman who seems frightened of me. As though I, a sixteen-year-old girl, could do anything to him. But I have seen this hunger, my own hunger, reflected in the gaze of others, and it is a frightening thing. At one time, it was love that defined me: for Papa, for Tino. Now it is hunger. Something worrying: day by day those memories that I summon are losing their immediacy and clarity. It is a second loss. With it, I lose a little more of myself.
In the hotels, where the foreign correspondents stay, they say they dine on sardines and fresh bread and fruit. On my stone bed, with the dark shuddering around me as the bombs fall, I dream of those sardines, my mouth wet with longing.
A day without food. The city has been picked clean of it. At first, hunger sharpened everything: thoughts became extremely clear. Now, they are fracturing into incoherence. Daily I am growing weaker. Perhaps this will be how it ends.
I return to the metro station. Sometimes, someone has shared something with me there – though it hasn’t happened of late. At the very least, I can lie down in the dark and sleep, and for a few hours postpone the struggle to keep myself alive.
On the way, I pass an entrance to one of the great hotels on the Gran Vía. It is the hotel bar: the smell of the food hits me like an assault. I do not think – I follow it, like a starving dog. The people in here are cleaner, their faces fuller: hunger hasn’t reshaped them yet. There are eyes on me. I am an outrage, among them. But I am almost beyond shame.
The barman is a thin, wiry man with skin like tanned hide, and an abundant dark moustache – compensation, perhaps, for the sparseness of the hair on his pate. He meets me halfway across the room. ‘You can’t come in here.’
I see how he looks at me, and what he thinks I am. I think of Maria. In this moment, there is very little I wouldn’t do for a meal. I have only the haziest idea of things, but can it be so bad, really? It is just a body, after all.
‘I’m not one of them,’ I say. ‘I came to see if I could get any food.’
‘You can have some food if you can pay for it.’
‘Please,’ I say, ‘I’ll work.’
He shakes his head.
I turn from him, half deliberating as I do whether I can reach out and snatch a bread roll, a fistful of something from a plate. I could be eating it before the barman had time to chase me out. And as I cast about myself, deciding upon my target, I realize that I am being watched.
A man in a pale suit. I can feel his gaze as tangibly as if he has brushed my face with the palm of his hand. I wonder if I should be afraid. He is just on my right – I can make out the blurred shape of him at the corner of my eye. I turn. I look. In doing so I make the connection. I have allowed him in.
19
Early morning, and Hal hopes to have the deck to himself. Perhaps he will lie in the newly risen sun for a while, then go for a swim. There is something exhausting about spending every moment in such close proximity to others, especially for one who has spent the last five years living alone. But when he reaches the top of the steps he sees that he is not the first up.
‘Mr Jacobs.’ Truss is sitting at the dining table, Gaspari opposite him, a chessboard between them.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve been meaning to thank you. I realize I didn’t get a chance yesterday.’ There is a strange law of diminishing returns, Hal thinks. The more cordial the man is, the less he likes him. He mistrusts his manner entirely. Because even when Truss smiles – especially when – his eyes remain watchful.
‘For what?’
‘Escorting my wife, yesterday, on the hike.’
‘Oh,’ Hal says. ‘Well, I didn’t exactly …’
‘She can be very determined about things,’ Truss says, ‘but, as I’m sure you have by now seen, she is also quite frail.’
‘She didn’t seem to be having any difficulty to me,’ Hal says. ‘If anything, I had to keep up with her.’
‘Well,’ Truss says, patient, ‘it might not be obvious to a stranger, but she gets very tired.’
There is something distasteful in his speaking of her as though she were an invalid. Hal doesn’t want to hear any more of it. He nods to the chessboard.
‘Who’s winning?’
‘Oh, we’ve only just started.’
‘And yet,’ Gaspari says, ‘I do not – what is it they say – fancy my chances.’
‘It’s a fine set,’ Hal says, looking closer.
Truss smiles again. ‘Thank you. It’s mine – a travelling one.’ He picks up the white queen and passes her over. Hal studies it. A tiny nude, small enough to fit in the centre of the palm.
‘It’s very fine.’
Truss smiles. ‘Evidently we share the same tastes, you and I. I was there, you know, when they killed the elephant. I have a few other pieces made from the same ivory – but she is my favourite.’
Hal hands the piece back to him.
‘I rather like the idea that this little thing, so pale and refined, has come from some great beast – hulking, shitting, crashing through the forest. You should have seen the blood, too, when we slew it. Rivers of it – very dark, almost black.’
‘Yes,’ Hal says. The piece has suddenly become abhorrent to him: an object of barbarism. He looks at Truss, who is studying the piece minutely, as though he has never seen it before. He has time to observe in more detail the sleek head, the hair combed precisely back from the brow. The short, manicured fingernails, the long elegant fingers. Hal cannot imagine him on a game drive, his clothes covered in dust from the road, sweating in the heat. He does not look like he sweats. But then Hal thinks of the ivory: the violence polished into something benign.
20
Genoa
Genoa is a barnacled, salt-sprayed place. A city of astonishing contrasts, of sublime beauty and of profound ugliness. In the harbour handmade sailing boats jostle with beasts of maritime industry, and the sea – the very same sea that laps at the feet of Portofino – carries a surface scum of oil, debris and what on closer inspection might turn out to be fish guts.
The contrasts continue within the city itself. Here is a gorgeous palace, appearing in all its decadent finery: the trompe l’oeil façade, the intricately carved gargoyles and seraphim. They recall Genoa as it was portrayed in the film: the gilded capital of a Renaissance state at the height of its power – a fitting rival to Venice, or Florence. But as soon as one glances down from these wonders, there in the midst of the street is a heap of refuse, the odour ripening in the heat, or a scrofulous cat stretching its thin body across a doorstep.
An excited crowd has gathered around them, hooting and cheering, pushing at one another to get to the front, brandishing autograph books. For Genoa is not like Rome, in which film stars mingle daily with the city’s populace. There is no Via Veneto here, where one may merely go and observe them like animals in a zoo, sitting at coffee tables and looking for all the world almost like ordinary people – only not quite.
‘Please, excuse,’ a young man touches Hal’s arm. ‘I wa
s in the film.’
Hal turns to him. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ The man smiles, revealing a gap where his right incisor should be. ‘I was a sailor, on one of the ships in the battle, at the beginning.’
‘Ah, yes. An important scene.’
‘You’ve seen it?’ The man peers at him.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you see me?’
Hal doesn’t quite know what to say. How to explain to the man that the battle sequence is only a minute long and that, in the onscreen chaos, it would be impossible to recognize one’s own brother?
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Do you know … I think I might have done. Yes – I’m almost certain.’
‘Ah!’ The man beams, and Hal is suddenly sure that he has said the right thing. ‘I won’t see it. Too expensive. I have a family, you understand. But it is good to know.’ He claps Hal on the shoulder, and disappears back into the throng.
Hal turns away. As he does, he catches Stella’s gaze. She smiles.
‘This palazzo used to be in my family,’ the Contessa tells them, as they step inside one of the wedding-cake constructions on the Via Cairoli. ‘It was rumoured that one of my ancestor’s courtesans was housed here, for a time.’
This woman could have been the one from the journal, Hal thinks, with a secret thrill. Now he knows why the street’s name sounded familiar. He has read it there.
The place is typical of Genoa: the umber paint of the façade faded and stained in places, but with the beauty of the place all the more visible for these flaws, for it is a gorgeous edifice in spite of them. Inside is more finery: trompe l’oeil painted ceilings and walls, a conspicuous demonstration of once great wealth.
Gaspari leans over. ‘We filmed some of the interior scenes here at first,’ he says. ‘It is the right period.’ He grimaces. ‘But one of the frescoes got damaged by the lighting team. After that we had a replica made up for the studios.’
While a photocall takes place for the stars in a silk-lined salon, Hal is free to explore. Wandering along one of the corridors, he discovers a series of gilt-framed paintings. They are Renaissance oils, with that peculiar effect of being lit from within, the faces appearing to glow out of the darkness. He gropes for the word. Chiaroscuro. They are by different artists, Hal sees – superficially similar, but the effect in some noticeably more deft than in others. And yet none hold Hal’s attention for long: he has never had much interest in this era of art. It is caught up with religious concerns, too sombre: the women depicted as versions of the Madonna, the men after classical gods and Old Testament heroes. He passes quickly. But as he reaches the end of the corridor, something halts him in his tracks. He has an uneasy feeling; as though from the corner of his eye he has just glimpsed something terrible or impossible. And when he turns the thing he sees is indeed an impossibility. Staring down at him is the woman from his imagining, the woman he has read of in the captain’s journal. He cannot take his eyes from her.
‘She is beautiful, is she not?’
He turns, and finds the Contessa standing at the end of the corridor.
‘Who is she?’ His voice is hoarse.
‘No one is quite certain where she came from.’
‘The woman in the water.’
The Contessa nods. ‘That is one theory, yes. How interesting, though, that you should make the connection. What made you think it might be her?’
He speaks without thinking. ‘The mole, beneath her eye, there.’
She spins on her heel, and looks at him, and he realizes his mistake. ‘You’ve read the journal, haven’t you?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘How did you get it?’ Then, to his surprise, she throws her head back and laughs. When she has recovered, she says, ‘I tell him not to show anyone, and he gives it to the journalist.’
‘I promised not to mention anything of it.’
‘I suppose that he trusts you. I do not blame him for that – I do, too.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And it is a rare talent, yours.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You invite …’ she searches for the word, ‘rivelazione – how do I translate that?’
‘Revelations, I suppose. Or, confidences.’
‘Precisely. It is your quietness, the fact that you do not demand them of people in the way that many do – and certainly the way those of your profession do. You are … discreet. And because of this, people feel encouraged to make confidences of their own accord.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true.’ He thinks of the terrible interview with Giulietta Castiglione.
‘Ah. But I am. That is the other thing about you. You are modest.’ She smiles. ‘Would you like to see him? My ancestor? He is here too, you know. The same artist, in fact.’
‘Please.’
She leads him back to the end of the corridor. He had passed the painting without seeing it – dismissing the bearded figure as another John the Baptist. But now he stares. He has not had a clear idea in his mind of how the captain would look – other than Earl Morgan’s brawny portrayal – but now this seems exactly right. A young man verging upon gaunt, all the bones in his face very prominent. The painter has been accurate to the point of cruelty in depicting the sallowness of the man’s complexion, the haunted gaze.
‘He does not look well,’ the Contessa says.
‘No.’
They look at the painting for a time in silence. Then the Contessa leaves, telling him she is going to check in on the photocall. But Hal remains for a while longer, unable to drag his eyes away.
Afterwards he wanders into the city. Some of the medieval passageways that thread their way through the heart of the city are so slender, and the buildings that flank them so tall, that the light barely penetrates the lower reaches, even in the brightest part of the day. A few feet remain permanently steeped in blue shadow. He is reminded of the lower reaches of the ocean, those cold hidden parts of the seabed that remain in constant darkness. Here, he thinks, is history, layer upon layer of it, in all its glory and grime and intrigue.
He wanders without paying much attention to the direction in which he is walking, his mind turning over the matter of the portraits.
‘Hal?’
He glances up, and spots her through the throng. Stella. It is the first time he has seen her properly since his dream. And their conversation of yesterday has caused a shift, too. Something between them has been removed; something else has taken its place.
She is walking fast, and as she nears him, he finds himself taking a step back, surprised by her look of panic. She speaks quickly, her hand worrying the silk scarf at her throat. ‘I was walking Nina – Gaspari asked me to. He said that it would be fine to let her off the lead, because she normally stays close by – but she’s gone.’
‘We’ll find her.’
‘I can’t bear the thought of it. If he lost her …’ Her eyes are wild. He understands the worry, but her anxiety seems out of all proportion. In her, usually so collected, it is all the more marked. He finds himself wondering what else might be behind it: what fragment of memory suddenly dislodged.
‘We’ll find her,’ he says again, soothingly, ‘she can’t have gone far.’
She doesn’t appear to have heard him. ‘I don’t understand it. She was there, and I got distracted by some people pushing past. And then, when I looked down, she was gone. You don’t suppose—’
‘What?’
‘Well, that someone might have taken her? Hal, if she’s gone, I don’t know what I’d do …’
‘No,’ he says, gently, ‘I’m sure that’s not it. She’s probably followed an interesting scent.’
They begin their search, threading their way through the streets, trying to remember landmarks that will help them to find their way back to the start, should Nina return there: a shrine inlaid into the cornerstone of a house, a faded façade, a grocers’ display that fills the air with the wet-earth scent of overripe tomatoes. He has to hur
ry to keep up with Stella at times – she seems propelled by her anxiety.
At some point the streets grow even thinner, and their surroundings less picturesque. This is a poorer, dirtier part of the city. Washing, strung across the gap above, flutters like bunting in the breeze.
A group of similarly scantily dressed women shift in the shadows like a shoal of exotic fish, murmuring and beckoning. One of them, sitting on a doorstep in little more than a stained pink pegnoir, face so lacquered with make-up that it is difficult to tell her age, leans forward and calls to Hal: ‘Your wife is beautiful, signor, but I can show you things of which she would never dream.’
Amused, he glances at Stella, and sees that she is looking at the woman oddly, almost fearfully.
They call Nina’s name, and the sounds ricochet about them before being absorbed into the stone. In these gloomier passageways the light has taken on a shifting, changeable quality, like dusk. Several times Hal thinks he sees something move in the shadows – only to look again and realize that it was a trick of the eye.
Suddenly, Stella stops.
‘What is it?’
‘I’ve just thought,’ she says. ‘I’ve stopped paying attention to the way we’ve come.’
‘So have I. We’ll ask someone.’
Around the next corner the street opens suddenly, like an exhalation, into a small courtyard, with a stone basin spouting a plume of water. The sudden space is a relief – but it is also a dead end. He is about to suggest they turn back when he hears something. He listens, concentrating on the tiny sound.
‘Do you hear that?’
She listens, intent. ‘Yes, I think so—’
A whimpering, coming from a dark corner of the courtyard. As they look, one of the shadows consolidates and becomes the little dog. She makes as though to run to them, but falters in her step. Stella rushes to her and lifts her into her arms, oblivious to the grimy paw-prints appearing on her shirt. Her relief is palpable. Hal watches as she examines the animal with exquisite care. ‘Her paw,’ she says, showing Hal.
