by Dan Rhodes
Madalena found that wherever they went there was something to catch her eye. With so much for her to untangle it was a while before it struck her that a lot of the sights that held her gaze were people. Her eyes would land on somebody walking past, and even though she knew it was impolite to stare she just couldn’t look away. It took a while longer for her to realise that the people who were transfixing her were, without exception, women. She had seen women like these on television and in magazines, but they hadn’t seemed real. Here, though, they were three-dimensional and they carried their beauty with no apparent effort, as if it was just a simple, ordinary fact.
The men didn’t catch her eye nearly so much. They went past in their thousands, but she never saw one who came close to being as handsome as Mauro. One evening, as they sat on the steps of a church, she turned to look at him and noticed that his eyes were also on the passers-by. It seemed that he too was paying the men very little attention. For the first time she was not the only girl he saw. She also noticed that some of these women would see him looking in their direction, and smile just a little before lowering their eyes and carrying on their way.
He turned to Madalena. ‘Come on,’ he said. He offered his hand and pulled her to her feet. As she smiled up at him her worries faded into the back of her mind, but she could feel them sitting there, ready to jump out again.
She couldn’t sleep. As Mauro lay on her bed she sat at her desk, and in the dim light she looked in the mirror. She recalled some of the women who had walked past, with their lustrous hair, slim waists and delicate features, and as she stared at the image that looked back at her she faced the realisation that she was not a great beauty. She wasn’t ugly, and neither was she plain: she was a pretty girl, but that was all. She reminded herself of the words that Mauro had spoken to her over the years, and of the vow they had made, and she went back to lie beside him, to lay her head on his chest as it rose and fell. He stirred. She wanted him to wake up and look at her with eyes alight with love, but instead he rolled over and let out a long sigh.
As they walked together Madalena went out of her way to look for girls who were better-looking than she was. She never had to wait very long until a lithe goddess or a golden-haired elf-child passed by, leaving her feeling inelegant and bad at make-up. Sometimes they passed a girl who was trying her best to hide the fear in her eyes, a girl who in her small town or village would have been pretty enough to have been considered very pretty, perhaps even a beauty, but she was in the city now, and everything had changed. Madalena could see that the girl felt as if her features had coarsened, and her build become somehow agricultural, and a part of her wanted to rush over and say, Me too.
Mauro seemed to sense her worries, and he would give her hand a squeeze, or pull her close. She hoped this was his way of showing her that his feelings hadn’t changed, that he still loved her, and that to him she was still the most beautiful girl in the world.
One day they met up after a morning of looking for part-time jobs. Madalena had been recruited straight away to work on Saturdays at a pharmacy counter, and Mauro was confident that one of the opticians he had approached would take him on to file their contact lenses and keep the displays free of fingerprints. As they sat on the edge of the fountain in the park and exchanged notes about their day, Madalena noticed an exceptionally well-dressed middle-aged woman approaching.
She sat beside them. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ she said, then she introduced herself and explained that she ran a modelling agency, and had noticed Mauro from the other side of the park. She told them she would like to arrange for him to have a session with a photographer, to see if he looked as good in front of the camera as he did in the flesh, and to find out whether he had the potential to be a model. She said she couldn’t promise anything, but if the shoot went well he would probably get quite a lot of work. She handed him her card and asked him to have a think about it, and to call her if he was interested. Apologising again for interrupting, she said goodbye to both of them and walked away.
‘She seemed nice,’ said Madalena.
Mauro shrugged. ‘Most people are nice,’ he said, putting the card in his pocket. ‘Come on.’ He took her hands and pulled her to her feet. They walked around the park, and didn’t mention the woman again.
Two weeks later he received his first modelling cheque.
He had never had so much money, and he announced to Madalena that he was going to spend it on a romantic night in a five star hotel. Madalena drank her complimentary champagne, made the most of her fluffy robe, ordered their evening meal from room service, and wallowed in the soft sheets of the enormous four-poster bed as he told her how easy it had been, and how he already had more work booked in so they could afford to spoil themselves this once. As they lay together Mauro kissed her, and told her that he loved her, and all the time she kept reminding herself to smile, to see this good fortune as theirs.
The next day they checked out of the hotel with moments to spare, and settled back into their old routine. That night Madalena lay in Mauro’s bed, and looked at his face as he slept. She tried to see if he had become even more beautiful since coming to the city. Nothing had changed. He was just the same as he had always been, and she found herself wishing he wasn’t quite so handsome, his smile not so dazzling, his hair not so thick and his skin not so flawless. She felt a pain in her belly. Eventually she slept, and when she woke the next day it was still there, a constant dull ache.
Within weeks he was everywhere: smouldering down from billboards, smiling on the front of breakfast cereal boxes, and stripped to the waist on the covers of magazines. When life-size cardboard cut-outs of him started being stolen from clothes shops by teenage girls, the story made the television news and suddenly everybody knew who he was: Mauro.
It became hard for him to move around the city without attracting attention. He tried wearing dark glasses and a cap pulled down over his eyes, but it rarely worked. Wherever they went groups of girls would approach, asking to have their photographs taken with him. As Madalena discreetly moved out of the shot the girl with the camera would sometimes ask her if she could take the picture so they could all be in it. They spoke to her as if that must surely be her job: they could see no other reason for someone like her to be hanging around with Mauro. Often one or other of these girls would write something on a scrap of paper and slip it into his back pocket.
When it was finally over and they had gone, giggling and waving, on their way, he would squeeze Madalena’s shoulder, and give her a smile that said I’m sorry about all that, before emptying the contents of his back pockets into a litter bin without even looking at the phone numbers, the love hearts and the dirty invitations scrawled in lip liner.
He started being paid to appear at parties to celebrate the launches of motorbikes, watches, hotels and colognes. He would be paraded around by somebody from the company, and introduced to all the people who mattered. His agent told him to act as if he was there because he wanted to be, not because he was being paid, and to give the impression that meeting all these new people was a real pleasure. She also said that it would help if he could exude an air of availability. He didn’t know how to go about exuding an air of availability, but it didn’t seem to matter because he always ended up surrounded by women twirling their hair around their fingers, long nails poking from the glossy coils. He kept an eye on the clock, and as soon as his contracted time ran out he excused himself and slipped away, to meet Madalena and tell her how stupid it had all been, and talk about how useful the money would be when the time came for them to set up their businesses and buy a house. She agreed that it was taking them closer to the dream they had been nurturing since their childhoods.
After the launch of a range of luxury glassware they sat together on a bench in a tucked-away corner of the cathedral square. Mauro had been given a set of elaborate sherry glasses in a presentation case. He passed one of them to Madalena. ‘Feel how light it is,’ he said. ‘That was the small talk I was
making today, about the delicacy of their design, and the incredible craftsmanship that’s gone into them. So don’t go saying I have an easy job.’
Madalena agreed that it was very light. She felt that if she held it too tight it would shatter in her grip. Part of her wanted to do it, to squeeze it until it splintered, to feel it turn to shards and powder. She didn’t, though. She held it gently, then put it back in its velvet-lined box.
‘I’ve been asked to advertise eggs,’ he said.
‘Are you going to do it?’
He nodded. ‘I think so. After all, I like eggs. The shoot’s for five days next week. In the Caribbean. They want me eating a boiled egg on a beach. With my top off.’
‘Sounds nice.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s work. I was thinking about asking them if I could take you, but really it’ll just be a lot of hanging around. You would probably find it boring.’
‘I couldn’t have gone anyway – I couldn’t miss that many classes. What about you?’
Mauro looked away. ‘I’ve . . . I’ve told my tutor I’m leaving. Well, not leaving exactly. I’m going to take a year out, then go back. I can’t do both at the same time, and all this is too good an opportunity to miss. I mean, it’ll help us in the long run.’
She knew he would never go back. She looked at his face. She knew it so well. What had been the most beautiful face in her town had become the most beautiful face in the city, and the country, and now it seemed as if it was the most beautiful face in the world. People were asking him to cross oceans to look into a camera. And with it right there before her, she could see how fragile this beauty was. Just like the glass, it could be ruined in a moment.
He pulled her close, took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, kissed her, and said, ‘You have quite big eyes.’
At the same moment, in a small town in the mountains, a pen could be heard through a bedroom door as it scratched on paper. A poem was being written. The poet knew it could never be sent to its subject, that it would be added to the pile of poems that could never be sent. In this one the beauty of a girl’s eyes was praised to the heavens. They were compared with the eyes of other girls from the town, and then with the eyes of the girls in the city, because the poet had been to the city and had seen the girls there, and not one of them had ignited so much as a spark in his heart. In his final stanza he acknowledged that his love would never come to anything, that the girl would always be beyond his reach, but that his devotion would never waver.
Wondering whether anyone before him had used the words National Bread, Cake and Pastry Expo in a poem, he put down his pen, sighed, and turned off the light. It was market day in the morning, and it wouldn’t be long before he had to start getting the ovens ready.
While Mauro was in the Caribbean, Madalena went for coffee with some of the other girls on her course. She enjoyed talking to them until the subject of Mauro came up. They spoke of how perfect he was, and of all the filthy things they would like to do with him. She said nothing. She didn’t want to tell them that she was his lover. There was no way they would believe her, and they would pity her, thinking her a fantasist. Even if she could find a way of proving it to them they would only be baffled, and wonder why on earth he had picked her when he could have chosen any woman on earth.
She excused herself, and as she walked back to her room she passed a vent at the side of a supermarket, and smelled a waft of baking bread. The last thing she wanted to do was think fondly of the sad-eyed boy from her home town, but she had assured him that she would, and she didn’t want to break her promise. She stood still, and breathed in. The sound of the euphonium rang in her mind, and though she tried hard to hope that he was getting over her, she knew he never would. She noticed that the smell was nowhere near as sweet as the one that came from his family’s bakery. She had found that in the city all the bread was somehow dull, even the freshest loaf seeming as if it had already spent a day or two in the cupboard. She walked on, getting ready to spend the evening alone.
With girls appearing from around every corner, Mauro and Madalena could no longer go to their favourite places without being pestered, so they sought out the more expensive bars and restaurants, where people were supposedly too blasé to pay attention to famous people. Even so, they kept peering in Mauro’s direction over the tops of their cocktail menus.
On his return from the Caribbean they met up in the depths of a fancy hotel, in a bar that still seemed tasteful and discreet in spite of its chandeliers and its white grand piano. Mauro let slip that he had a few prints from the shoot with him, and Madalena asked to see them. He was reluctant to hand them over at first, but he relented and passed her a folder. She pulled out the first photograph. He was lying on a sun bed, wearing only a pair of black, expensive-looking swimming trunks while a beautiful young blonde in a tiny golden bikini draped herself across him, feeding him a boiled egg with an elaborate spoon. He told her they had tried it with a fried egg too but it hadn’t worked quite as well. It took a moment for Madalena to realise he was joking. He saw the way she was looking so intently at the pictures. ‘Her name is Eliska,’ he said. ‘She’s very professional. She has a fiancé.’
Madalena nodded, and looked at the next picture. She didn’t know what to say, and was glad when a waiter came over, but as they ordered the same again she noticed a woman coming in who was even more beautiful than the girl in the golden bikini. She felt surrounded. The woman sat at a table on the other side of the room, and as the waiter turned to go Mauro looked over and saw her. Just for a moment their eyes met, and Madalena was caught in the surge of electricity.
Their drinks arrived, and she listened quietly as he told her further tales of egg eating in the Caribbean until she could stand it no longer.
‘Go to her,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Go to her. You know who I’m talking about. You belong with someone like her, not with someone like me. She’s beautiful, Mauro. You two will be so happy together.’
He reached out and gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’m not looking for anybody else. I have you. Listen, just because I have this new job it doesn’t mean I don’t love you any more. That’s all it is – a job. Quite a stupid job, too.’ It was the first time either of them had ever mentioned that there had been a change between them.
‘But Mauro, don’t you see? It’s not your job that’s the problem. This has all been a mistake. We were right for each other in our town because we didn’t know any better, but it just doesn’t make sense any more. Look at us. Yes, you were the most handsome boy in the town and I was the prettiest girl. But we’re in the city now, and you’re still the best-looking boy around and I’m . . . well, look at me. I’m ordinary.’
He smiled. ‘You’re not ordinary at all. How can you say that? You’re really . . . pleasant-looking.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘We made a vow, Madalena.’
‘Is that why you’re staying with me? Because when you were fourteen years old you made a promise?’
He didn’t know what to say.
‘We were children, Mauro. We thought things would never change between us, but they have changed. I know you would never say so, you’re too kind for that, and I know you would never abandon me, but I want you to know that I’ve thought about it – I’ve thought about it a lot, and it’s OK. I’m letting you go. Go to her, before it’s too late. Tell her I’m your cousin, or something like that.’
Mauro shook his head. He reached below the table and gently stroked her fingers with his thumb. ‘Madalena,’ he said, looking deep into her eyes, ‘listen to me: you are the most wonderful person I have ever known.’ With a final squeeze of her hand he stood up and walked over to the woman.
Madalena could hear every word. ‘My cousin said I would be crazy not to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘My name is Mauro.’
‘I know your name,’ she said, smiling and extending her hand, her nails long and red, sharp ends to her
soft, slender fingers.
As Madalena passed their table on her way out the woman flashed her a conspiratorial smile, as if to say, Thank you, Mauro’s cousin – I owe you one.
Mauro didn’t notice her leave.
Madalena made her way through the corridors. A man in a cap and gloves held the door open as she went into the street. She had no idea what to do or where to go, so she just walked and walked, following routes she knew, revisiting the places she and Mauro would go before the madness had begun. She stood alone on bridges and walked along the back streets, which without him by her side seemed not romantic but menacing. She hurried to find a street that was busy and well-lit, and when she found one she heard a band playing in a bar, and went inside. Sitting alone with a glass of beer she let the songs take over her emotions. It was a show aimed at tourists who had read about the incomparable melancholy of fado music in their guidebooks, and felt they should experience it while they were in the country. It was all the old songs beautifully sung to a half-empty room, and as she thought of what she had done the words crept under her skin, and she began to cry. There were no sobs, just tears which she let run unhindered, falling from her face onto her clothes.
Other members of the audience noticed her with a sense of satisfaction. I can’t understand a word, they thought to themselves, but if it’s got that local girl crying her eyes out then it must be the real thing.
