Mimi's Ghost

by Tim Parks

  Needless to say, this was a lie.

  Antonella stood gawkily amongst her expensive furnishings. She was simply and traditionally dressed, but one of the few Italians Morris had met who didn’t appear to know how to hold herself properly. With that speed of intuition he had always prided himself on, he realised now that this high-class domestic environment she lived in must be the product of Bobo’s mentality. Antonella would be more interested in a publication like I miracoli di Sant’ Antonio than Casa bella.

  ‘But he’s always in the office,’ the wife said, perplexed.

  ‘Perhaps he just popped out for a minute.’ Morris hesitated, as if genuinely weighing up how best to manage his precious time. ‘I suppose I’ll have to drive the boy up there,’ he decided. ‘Kwame,’ he said in English, ‘this is your boss’s wife, Signora Posenato.’

  Bowing, the big black came and took her hand. Antonella’s fear was evident, as was her distaste for the strong smell the boy emitted. But at the same time she was clearly determined to overcome these negative feelings. Unwilling lips and cheeks were forced into a smile. The corner of the mouth was trembling. After shaking his hand she instinctively began to wring her own together. Kwame continued to nod rather idiotically.

  ‘Bene,’ Morris announced, looking about him.

  Then Antonella at last said what he was waiting to hear: ‘Bobo didn’t tell me we were taking on any new workers. Why’s that?’

  ‘Davvero. Didn’t he?’

  She shook her head, hair tightly knotted above a solid neck. She wore a crucifix, he noticed, in what was actually a rather deep cleavage. More like Massimina’s than Paola’s. Traditional and maternal. The sort of abundance that made you think of a resting place and source of nourishment rather than a pornographic playground. In the end more rewarding.

  Why on earth had he married Paola? Or could it be that everybody’s life was just a long slow discovery of all the mistakes one was born to make?

  ‘You see, the fact is I’ve landed a huge order from a supermarket chain in the UK. We’re buying out to make up the numbers and we need some more workers for packaging. There’ll have to be a night shift.’

  Antonella was now genuinely interested and concerned. The looming presence of Kwame was forgotten.

  ‘But we’ve never bought out,’ she protested. That was always Father’s policy. And Mother’s too. Trevisan wines from Trevisan vines. Nothing else.’

  Morris had no difficulty pretending surprise. He cocked his head, a perplexed look on his handsome blond brow, then pulled a rather austere chair from a glass-topped table and sat down. If anything, the problem was not to overdo it. He was having so much fun.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said, ‘I hope I haven’t said the wrong thing!’

  The black, he noticed, was smiling cannily, as if he understood more than he let on. Morris shot him a stern look.

  Antonella also sat down. Opposite.

  Morris was most candid. ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I can never get used to this business in Italy - I mean, of what can be said and what can’t, you know? - the safe in public view in the office and the safe behind the fuse box, the accounts in the books and the ones on the computer with the restricted access code. Everybody’s in on it, aren’t they, but there are only certain people you’re allowed to say it to. I find it difficult.’

  Her eyes were wide as saucers now. After all, it was her family who owned the place. Not Bobo’s.

  ‘No, my idea was, once one’s accepted the principle of buying out, which after all most wine companies do - there’s even the list of the suppliers on the computer- well, one may as well set up a night shift, use the machines to the full, and if none of the Italians want to work nights, we can give work to these poor people who are crying out for it.’

  Before she could intervene, he went on to explain about the house he had rented to set up a hostel. ‘Perhaps you could talk to Don Carlo about it. I know some of them would be interested in doing a catechism course. They’re simply craving to be accepted into society.’

  Antonella was staring at him with the air of one who sees all kinds of unusual objects scattered across the floor and has no idea where to put them away or whether it mightn’t be better just to chuck them all out.

  Morris smiled his most winning and apologetic smile. ‘Actually, Paola and I have got a fair number of clothes that could go to the poor too. Ill get her to give them to you if you’re collecting.’

  ‘And Bobo’s happy about this, er, development?’ Antonella asked, trying to hide her incredulity.

  ‘Look’ - Morris began to fiddle with the buckle on his briefcase - ‘thinking about it, I don’t suppose I will actually have time to get up to the factory before lunch. I should have a copy of the Doorways contract here in my bag somewhere. Just show it to Bobo when he gets back. I mean, you only need to look at the kind of figures they’re talking about to understand why he’ll be happy about it. And if it means we can help people like Kwame, then I think it’s great. After all, capitalism is only good when we draw others into our wealth, don’t you think?’

  ‘Sì, sì, sono d’accordo.’

  But Morris could see that she hadn’t expected this philanthropy from him. The family still had the same prejudice they had had that first day he arrived with Massimina: that in the end he was no more than a gold-digger. They denied him any spiritual dimension, any scrap of altruism. Suddenly he felt determined that the pious Antonella should understand that there was more to him than met the eye. He would pay back for Massimina’s death. Somehow he would. Again he smiled warmly. ‘Better to give them jobs, in the end, than clothes, don’t you think?’

  Antonella nodded.

  ‘Oh, I’d better leave a note too.’ On his memo pad he wrote in Carrier biro: ‘Bobo, I’ve found the workers. To respect delivery dates we will have to start a night shift within the week. You’ll have to be in touch with your suppliers at once. Speak to you this afternoon. Ciao, Morris.’

  At the door he turned and enquired: ‘By the way, about Mamma? I’m never sure if I should visit or not. I know Bobo goes quite a lot.’

  ‘She’s a bit better,’ Antonella said. Though the doctors say shell never speak again. Bobo says it might have been better if she had died, but I’m praying for her to recover at least some faculties.’

  Morris shook his head sadly. ‘I’m afraid Paola doesn’t go as often as she ought and I feel odd going when she doesn’t. I mean, somebody might get the wrong idea.’

  Antonella found her forgiving smile. That’s just Paola. It wouldn’t really be her if she was always visiting Mamma, would it?’

  This was a more intelligent response than Morris had expected. Character was destiny. Noticing the rather daintily crucified Christ above the entrance, he left with a better impression of his sister-in-law than when he had arrived. Pious she might be, and gawky and inelegant, but her heart was in the right place.

  ‘And those breasts . . .’ he said aloud to Kwame as they climbed into the car.

  The black burst into raucous laughter and began to beat a swift rhythm on the thighs of his new jeans. But Morris immediately felt angry with himself. It was just the kind of down-market remark his father would have made. Then, reversing suddenly and viciously from the small car park out into the road, he almost ran down a scarecrow figure toiling up the hill on an ancient bicycle. The cyclist swerved and fell, unbalanced by the tattered briefcase he was trying to hold in one hand as he rode. Morris had already opened the door to dash out and apologise profusely, when he recognised, in wispy hair fluttering about an unhealthy bald patch, the familiar and ludicrous presence of Stan Albertini. ‘Shee-et and mother-fuckin’ shee-et, man!’ a West Coast voice exclaimed. But before it had finished, Morris safe in the knowledge that he hadn’t been seen, was already back in the Mercedes attacking the first hairpin back to town at breakneck speed.

  9

  Morris was in the dark again on the armchair in his dressing-gown. He felt the pressure of the shu
ttered blackness on his open eyes. Sex had been having this effect on him lately. The more adventurous and demanding Paola became, the more alienated he felt. He watched himself going very efficiently through the motions, but the sense of discovery and conquest was gone, and affection on either side had never been more than cursory. Her avidity had begun to irritate him. Until, afterwards, he felt as though reduced somehow to a state of razor-sharp consciousness. His mind was a sleek panther interminably pacing a cage, dreaming of non-existent prey.

  He held his head upright and quite motionless in the total dark. If only she had wanted a child! Something that could have given Morris a sense that all this was leading somewhere, towards some social consolidation, some greater vision of Morris taking his rightful place in the traditional lattice of family ties. Sometimes images of Mimi would superimpose themselves over Paola’s squirming body. Maternal Mimi. Her big breasts. The quiet smile on her face when she had told him she was pregnant. After her death he had repressed all this, but now it was coming out. The adventure with Paola was no longer doing its job of suffocating all his nobler feelings. Sooner or later he would have to face the anguish of having lost Mimi, his one true love.

  Morris pressed the thumbnail of his right hand deep into the soft skin below his left elbow. For a moment the black room filled with colour.

  Was this why he was getting involved with this farce of the wines, Bobo, the immigrants? Clearly, even a plan of this complexity could be nothing but underachievement for someone like himself. Provincial sitcom. But it would force them to notice him. Why, Morris wondered, his mind suddenly quite cool and enquiring, why had they never simply accepted him into the family as they would have done anybody else, let him share things as of right, know everything that was going on? And if they didn’t accept him, could they really expect him just to sit around and agree to some subordinate role, as if he were a mere employee, rather than one of the clan? Why was it that they not only rejected him but also failed in some way to appreciate that he was actually there?

  Still pressing thumbnail into flesh, Morris laughed, then burst into tears. Only Mimi had ever really taken him into her trust. With the others he was always being forced to punish them for not doing so. He himself would accept those blacks like blood-brothers. Even the marocchino who had cheated him. Even Stan, had he not seen him that fatal afternoon. For God’s sake, what a scare it had given him seeing Stan again!

  Falling to his knees, Morris was suddenly praying: ‘Mimi, Mimi, help me to do what is noble and right. Show me the way of acceptance and justice. Let me achieve happiness in the end.’

  His lips moved soundlessly in the air. As they must when one prays. And so complete was the darkness with the shutters tightly closed that, away from the chair, Morris experienced a moment of acute physical disorientation. As if he were nowhere, falling through space, or in some remote place of the spirit. Then he became aware of having pressed his hands tightly together before his face, a child again doing his mother’s bidding. He felt thrilled, uplifted, purged. He had prayed to Massimina. His saint! Morris had prayed. Surely he was a deep person! After two minutes, perhaps three, he stood uncertainly, felt his way across the black room, and stretched voluptuously on the bed.

  An hour later his eyes were still wide open to challenge the staring dark. Because he suffered: that was the truth. Yes, he suffered, he possessed the marvellous gift of intensity. Not like the serene Paola, stretched out in baby sleep after the pleasure she had taken from him. Whenever he thought of Paola now, her body, her sex, the word ‘maw’ came to mind: more, maw, more maw, the swollen brown redness of her, at once vulnerable and insatiable beneath the teasing, fascist-black pubes. What if he were simply to come into his hand and slither the stuff up inside her? Why not? Morris was stiffening already. He enjoyed the feel of a smile spreading across his face. The truth was, there were all kinds of interesting thoughts to take you through the night. Moving a hand down across the smooth skin of his belly, Morris embraced his insomnia like a bride.

  10

  They were by no means all black. There was a Croat, Ante; and an Egyptian, Farouk. There was an Albanian, Ramiz, perhaps only fourteen or fifteen; and an older Moroccan, Azedine, apparently in his mid-fifties. Forbes was not pleased with Azedine. Then Kwame and another three Ghanaians. And a couple of Senegalese who came and went. They slept in three rooms on the second floor on the hard wooden boards of the empty house amongst the paintings of St Peter crucified upside down and the woman weeping by a tomb. They washed in cold water in the bathroom, sharing a single towel. They did their shopping separately and kept their food on different window-sills which served perfectly well as fridges, eating in pairs or groups on the huge, stone-topped table in the kitchen. Forbes cooked simple pastas for Ramiz and the somewhat pathetic Farouk, which Morris thought extremely generous of him. It was the mark of a truly cultured man that he was willing to give time to those younger and simpler than himself.

  In the morning they slept until one or two o’clock. Farouk and Azedine said their prayers before an east-facing window on the first floor. The other rooms here were Forbes’s bedroom, study and bathroom. In the late afternoon on the ground floor Forbes offered lessons in Italian language and culture. Only Ante, Farouk, Kwame and Ramiz attended, sitting on rusting iron chairs retrieved from the gazebo at the bottom of the garden.’ Forbes taught them the various tenses of Italian verbs in a splendidly English accent and explained the sad decline in Italian art from the Renaissance on. For which Morris, from his own pocket, paid him enough cash every week to tide him over until such time as the house could be furnished and restored to receive the well-educated, paying pupils Forbes felt his life had prepared him to teach.

  Then in the evening the Trevisan delivery van came to pick them up and take them to work in the long shed attached to the office that housed a primitive bottling line. Having seen the size of the contract and appreciated how much Morris knew and was willing to tell Antonella, and presumably Signora Trevisan as well, about the way he had been running the company, Bobo had reluctantly agreed to the purchase of a thousand hectolitres of assorted plonk, from the south, from Algeria, from the Valpantena itself (he had his contacts after all), to cut with their own mediocre produce, plus a fair sprinkling of sugar, and then sell on to the poor English.

  ‘Doorways Trevisan Superiore,’ the label said. ‘A full-blooded table wine from the sun-baked slopes of northern Italy.’ It was priced a good forty pence cheaper than anything else available in the store and apparently sold fast. The immigrants were paid 150,000 lire under the table every Friday night. The van in which they arrived and left the factory had no windows. Anyway the weather was still predominantly foggy. Cleaning up as splendidly as they were, Morris just couldn’t understand why Bobo wasn’t more cheerful about it all. The whole thing had been a stroke of genius.

  ‘Happy customers!’ he said this morning, showing Bobo a fax announcing a further order. The boy sucked in his cheeks, then shook his head. The situation could not be protracted over the long term, he said sourly. It would become contmproducente.

  They were in the main office with the plastic Crucifixion and a Marilyn Monroe look-alike straddling a Fratelli Ruffoli bottle as it zoomed through a Christmas snowstorm. Bobo sat forward in his leather chair and held a yellow pencil so that one end was between his teeth (also yellowish). His hair was limp on his forehead and thinning dangerously - at what? twenty-six, twenty-seven? Morris, full of the kind of blond bounce and enthusiasm he paid so dearly for at nights, felt younger somehow. Also his cheerfulness was morally superior. The divinities surely would have no truck with truculence. Especially from those born with a silver spoon. He sat on the desk beside the computer and actually swung a leg.

  Bobo took the fax from him and scowled. There was something theatrical about his head-shaking, Morris thought, as if he had prepared himself for this eventuality and was simply following his script. He had been planning some kind of showdown. For the moment the English
man just waited, enjoying the feeling of firm flesh tensing and relaxing under good wool trousers as his leg went back and forth. There were moments when being handsome was just an immense plus. And if he had found acne lurking around his jawline like that, then he would most certainly have done something about it. As he was presently treating the fungus that made the top of his right foot so ugly and itchy. Surely there was a way in which those with money had a duty to make themselves attractive. He would write an essay one day exploring the relationship between aesthetics and morality. Something Aristotelian.

  ‘You need me to translate?’ he asked Bobo, still poring over the fax.

  ‘I need you to send a polite fax back explaining that this year’s supplies are now exhausted and that any further communication will have to wait until next year’s harvest,’ Bobo said.

  Morris had no difficulty being friendly: ‘Look, Bobo, we’ve made more money in six weeks than in the rest of the year. Why don’t you relax?’ And he used one of his favourite Italian expressions: ‘Don’t be such an owl’ - meaning a misery. But then this reminded him of Massimina that night in Rome when he had refused to dance. ‘Non fare il gufo, Mo, balliamo.’ Her winsome smile, her flashing eyes. ‘Don’t be an owl. Mo.’ So that while savouring the forthcoming tussle with his brother-in-law he was also finding time to reflect on the way that for the sensitive person like himself each and every word - gufo, genio, artista, vittima - will tend to acquire its own personal history, its own special echoes, depths, associations. How could other people ever know why you chose the words you did? And Massimina wasn’t dead at all. It came to him as a sudden and entirely convincing intuition. She had become part of himself: her voice, her essence, absorbed inside him. As Mother had been too. And Father never could.