Choose Somebody Else

by Yvonne Fein

  There was always a break between lunch and afternoon lessons. On one of these, Ivory and I accompanied Carla to the library. She urgently needed some books for an assignment that was already overdue. Fortunately, it was not work that the General required, but even had it been, whatever penalty that teacher might have imposed was nothing compared to the response the girl could have expected from her father. His pressure was unrelenting; he spoke to her teachers once a week to ensure she was not breaking faith with those high Biancardi standards.

  The three of us sat together whispering at the library’s permitted levels so Ivory and I could help Carla with her research. Although I could see she was apprehensive enough about consequences to want to start work immediately, I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘I have to ask you,’ I said in a very low voice.

  Carla was impatient. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Maria-Elena. She never goes anywhere. She doesn’t–—’

  ‘Stop it,’ said Carla. Now her voice was fierce. ‘We won’t discuss it.’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Ivory.

  ‘I thought we were friends.’

  ‘We are friends.’ Ivory had gone a little paler.

  ‘So why—–’

  ‘You’ll have to ask her,’ Carla said.

  ‘It’s not our story to tell,’ Ivory said.

  Which closed the conversation. And because of their union with Maria-Elena, they would refuse to reopen it.

  The players in Gatsby’s world, the quivering, glittering flame-hoverers, understood nothing of fealty. But unlike the nature of their alliances, ours were utterly strange, yet very fine: Carla, Ivory and Maria-Elena—Athos, Porthos, and Aramis if you like—and me, d’Artagnan, the latecomer. There would be no betrayals.

  It was considerably different with my roommates, Spanish Anastasia and Turkish Halime. It was true, we were intime. But it was an intimacy born from seeing each other in the shower every morning and also, of waiting our turn on the bathroom scales as we weighed ourselves daily, naked and compulsive, swearing to self-deny forever all desserts in general and the divine Toblerone in particular.

  MARCH 1972

  Cuisine plagued us every Tuesday. It was a four-hour lesson in the school’s luxuriously appointed student kitchen which ate slowly away at the time (pun intended). Here, Chèf Béranger assured us that the staples she was teaching us to prepare were dishes no ravenous teenager or weary breadwinner could resist: breast of pheasant au cognac, for example; preceded by chicken livers en brochette in sauce Napoléon; or avocado vinaigrette accompanying sauté de veau avec coeurs des artichauts. But I found her instruction bizarre and her recipes improbable. There was nobody I knew, nobody I had ever known, who would eat such things.

  Then Carla’s timetable changed, and everything changed. I neither knew nor cared why, except that it meant she would now join me for classes in cuisine and etiquette.

  We became permanent culinary partners and the first recipe the two of us were assigned was a chocolate soufflé. Under Chèf Béranger’s eye I couldn’t help noticing how exacting Carla was as we assembled the ingredients. I had simply laid them in a muddle on the bench; now she arranged them in the strict sequence we were to use them. Not long after, Chèf Béranger was happy to trust that we could be left to our own devices.

  ‘I have already seen, Carla,’ she said on that first afternoon we were paired together, ‘that this work is not new to you. Please to be instructing Katterine as you will seem to be in progress.’

  Carla grinned at me as Chèf walked away.

  ‘Qu’est-ce qu’elle a dit?’ I asked. ‘Why doesn’t she just speak French?’

  ‘She likes to show off her English. But she’s very sweet so we never laugh.’

  The Chèf clapped her hands. ‘The soufflé, the soufflé,’ she said. ‘Enough with talking, jeunes dames.’

  She hastened to the other side of the kitchen and we heard her expostulating at the mess another group had managed to make. Now she spoke French. Such catastrophes could only be dealt with in her mother tongue.

  ‘Soufflé is actually one of the things I do best,’ said Carla, keeping her voice low.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ I replied. ‘Your father sent you to a top cooking school in the summer holidays.’

  ‘That would be La Scuola Internazionale della Cucina Italiana—one of the three finest institutions in the world. But no, he didn’t send me there.’

  ‘Then where?’

  ‘Downstairs.’

  I looked at her obliquely.

  ‘To the kitchen. Signora Baldovini was in charge down there and that’s where I had to go when my parents had had enough of me. Which was most of the time.’

  I did not even know what that meant. My parents never seemed to be able to get enough of me.

  ‘They found the long summer breaks particularly trying,’ Carla said. ‘If they could have left me here all year long, they would have.’

  As she spoke I was attempting, without much success, to make the egg whites stiffen but she swatted my hand away from the whisk and said, ‘Not like that. Here. Let me show you.’

  I was not unsurprised that our soufflés exceeded the expectations of Chèf Béranger.

  ‘Signora Baldovini taught me everything,’ Carla said as we made our way to the common room. We could miss lunch in the dining room after Cuisine because we had to eat what we cooked. Not always an exceptional affair.

  ‘She was very formal, very correct. I would never have dreamed of calling her by her first name. I’m sure I never knew it. And each time I left her little kingdom, I had learned something else. Sessions with her were supposed to remind me that if I didn’t remain seen and not heard I would be condemned to the underworld as often as my parents liked. But it became so that I much preferred the underworld.’

  We sat in silence for a while.

  ‘It’s embarrassing to talk about the kitchen and the cook,’ she said at last. ‘I’m ashamed.’

  ‘Why should you be ashamed?’ I asked, thinking she was being snobbish. ‘She was like a professor. I’d have been proud to study under someone like that.’

  ‘I’m not ashamed of having spent time with her, you donkey,’ Carla said. ‘I think I actually loved her. I’m ashamed of my parents. What poor excuses for human beings they’ve always been!’

  She looked at me, her eyes now bleak with distress but also anger. Then she sighed.

  ‘I feel like I’ve just been to confession,’ she said, almost smiling. ‘Which means you can’t tell what I’ve told you to another soul. I never have.’

  ‘And I never would,’ I said, ‘but not because I feel bound by the laws of your dark, religious fairy tales.’

  ‘Your people have dark fairytales, too. What with Red Sea partings; frogs on the footpaths, in the beds…’

  ‘Or,’ I said, ‘virgin births; risings from the dead. Your lot outclasses our lot for nonsense. But I think it’s all nonsense, anyway: yours, mine, everybody’s. Rules and stories to frighten children.’

  ‘I won’t fight with you, today,’ she said. ‘I can’t. It felt so good to be able to tell you things.’ She hugged me quite passionately. ‘And I do love you, even if you are a Jew.’

  I looked at her in disbelief.

  She laughed. ‘Catholics and Jews are historic enemies. We weren’t ever supposed to fraternise with you. And if my father had his way, he still wouldn’t. But it’s good for business.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Tout à fait! Absolutely.’

  How was I to respond to her bloodless condoning of her father’s opportunism? As she sat there. Right in front of me.

  Yet I forgave her; I always forgave her. Even at the end.

  ‘We weren’t supposed to consort with you, either,’ I said at last. ‘That’s why we have kosher food and kosher wine. It prevents us
from being able to sit down with you to eat and drink in the same place.

  ‘But you do consort,’ she said. ‘You do eat and drink. Does that mean you love me too?’

  ‘Even though you’re a Catholic?’

  ‘Even though I’m a Catholic.’

  ‘Tout à fait!’

  So, Tuesdays, quite boring, yes; but Mondays worse, très, très stupide. For two hours, Mme Mirielle, our headmistress, instructed our class in Etiquette. We covered a wide range of subjects and discussed matters of universal consequence such as the most elegant mode of ascending a staircase or, conversely, the most elegant means of descent. And they were nothing alike. Heaven help you if you did not differentiate.

  Last week was the best yet. Madame primed us to trembling anticipation when she foreshadowed that in this class we would discover the essence, no, the quintessence, of being a lady. We were breathless (I confess that even I was more than a little intrigued): twelve girls filled with anticipation, like balloons inflated with just a little more air than was good for them. And how was one to achieve this quintessential deportment?

  ‘By,’ said Madame, ‘holding fast to the consciousness of her obligation never to be a bore. A true lady will never try to prolong or dominate a discussion which might interest her, but not other members in her company.’

  I didn’t have to look around to know that the other eleven balloons had simultaneously deflated. Not only did Mme bore us to tears every week, but then she had the nerve to tell us—oh, never mind. I could only hope that one of the much younger pupils might just be bright and brave enough to assert, ‘But look, Madame has no clothes’.

  Yet if I am to be honest, classes in cuisine or couture or even etiquette were also filled with much laughter. Occasionally, of course, it was mirth concealed behind hands over mouth or with breath held back. That way the hilarity we experienced would not be communicated to our teachers. Occasionally, I felt as though I had been transported back to some Enid Blyton novel with all the smothered laughter and the doodling of inventive miniature flowers and animals in the margins of our text books—a practice that was gravely frowned upon.

  Naturally there was some boredom, but for all that, it was something like being in a huge house with a multitude of sisters and cousins and lots of lovely food. Of course, the teachers were the wicked stepmothers, adding a certain frisson to the milieu. And then there was the handsome prince, the painting teacher, M. Duchamp, probably the only man for miles around. Not only did we all swoon every time he walked into the atelier, but when we knew he was coming, there we were, more than a dozen jeunes dames, leaning out over the windowsill, almost asthmatic in our ardour.

  As I recall, it was a Sunday. Mid-March, snow crystals still on the ground, melting slowly. And even where grass was hidden beneath the ice, crocuses and bellflowers, fireweed and gentians managed to push their way through in search of the sun. Late afternoon made hazy by daylight’s creeping retreat. I sat with Maria-Elena before an open casement in the common room where we could look out over the gardens.

  There was a silence between us, not exactly uneasy, but not easy either. Our breath touched the air. When it became visible, we closed the window and turned on the heater.

  ‘You want to know, don’t you?’ Maria-Elena said.

  I wished I could say, ‘Know what?’ but I couldn’t bring myself to be so disingenuous.

  ‘Ivory and Carla wouldn’t tell you?’

  ‘I think you know they wouldn’t.’

  ‘They’re my friends,’ Maria-Elena said. She made it sound like some sort of explanation.

  ‘Then what does that make me?’

  ‘I’ve known them a lot longer than I’ve known you.’ She paused. ‘But you’ve become a friend, too. I suppose that’s why we’re sitting here.’

  ‘So?’ I said, having no idea where we could or would go now.

  ‘So. You want to know why I don’t ever go into the school grounds or beyond them. Is that it?’

  ‘Of course, that’s it,’ I replied. ‘At first I thought you might be agoraphobic—–’

  ‘I don’t know what that means.’

  ‘Afraid of crowds or open spaces. But then I realised there was always a teacher watching you. Today it’s Mlle Delacroix. She’s been sitting behind the door for most of the afternoon. And if it’s not her then it’s someone else.’

  Maria-Elena inclined her head, a movement that was at once an apology and also an acknowledgement of the truth of my observations.

  ‘And is each of them really holding a walkie-talkie?’ I asked, wondering whether such a thing could be possible.

  Maria-Elena nodded. ‘The security man holds the other one. He can be up here in a moment or tell a faculty member if something’s going on outside that shouldn’t be. The basement is actually a panic room. And the only time I don’t have someone breathing down my neck is at night. Then there’s another security guy stationed in the garden beneath my room.’

  We sat there, holding each other’s gaze. Now, I decided, I would say nothing until she offered something of herself that I did not already know.

  ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ she said.

  I smiled. Her tone was light, as though she were the governess and I, the pupil; but as she began to talk it seemed to me that she was withdrawing to a place dark and distant.

  ‘I was ten and my sister fifteen when she was kidnapped,’ she said. ‘It is dangerous to be wealthy in Mexico. We didn’t hear from the kidnappers for six months and in that time my father fell apart. He stopped shaving, he didn’t change his clothes and he started drinking—all this from a proud, vain man who didn’t believe that alcohol had a place in a businessman’s life.

  ‘The police were convinced Isabella was dead, but mother didn’t believe or trust them. She was sure some of them had been complicit in the whole horrible business. She never stopped looking for her. We had a detachment of our own security people who had been with the family for years. They were distraught and furious at what had happened. They felt responsible. I overheard them talking one day. I was eavesdropping.

  “Even if we do get her back, she will be destroyed,” said Matías. “She has been gone too long for the worst not to have happened.” He was the captain of all the men so I was convinced he knew what he was talking about.

  “You think they have killed her?” Alejandro asked. Matías shook his head. “Something more evil than that.”

  ‘I had no idea what they could mean, but still it terrified me.

  ‘Mother put advertisements in all the newspapers; she went on TV and radio offering huge sums for Isabella’s return. Finally, it paid off. One of the kidnappers contacted Matías and in the end, we gave them ten million American dollars. They didn’t want pesos.’

  ‘Ten million!’ I was incredulous. I wondered if old man Biancardi would have been able to pay that amount. I doubted it. I knew my parents certainly wouldn’t.

  Maria-Elena shrugged. ‘We would have given more if they’d asked. It didn’t ruin us, not by any means. But it did ruin my father in other ways and Isabella was never the same.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ I whispered.

  ‘When she came back, she wouldn’t speak. Mother tried everything: retreats, hospitals, psychiatrists, even naturopaths, homeopaths and hypnotherapists. Nothing. She just stayed in her room with the blinds drawn. Only if mother begged her would she shower or bathe. Once, when she was seventeen, she went and ran a bath for herself. Mother was delighted. She took it as a sign of recovery. But the water kept running and after a while it began to stream out onto the carpet in the hallway, coloured a pale red.

  ‘Matías kicked the door down and immediately bound her wrists with bandages. Then he wrapped her in a towel and carried her down to the car. I’ll never forget how he held her, like a child; like his own.

  ‘After that, they hired a nurse to kee
p watch over her, and Matías said they should also have dedicated security guards for both me and Isabella. He said we should have done it as soon as the kidnapping happened, so I would have been safe.

  ‘They raped her, Katie. I was the only one she told, the only one she ever spoke to. They raped her time after time until she couldn’t scream any more, let alone speak. They gave her back to us only because she was ruined. They had no more use for her. She told me all of it about six months before I was due to come here, with a full contingent of bodyguards to make sure I would not be taken on the way.

  ‘The day before I left she hugged me hard. “Don’t mind the security shit,” she said. “Anything is better than going through what I did.”

  ‘So I try not to mind. I try not to mind that she disappeared that evening and hasn’t been heard of since. I know she’s still alive. I know she’ll find me.’

  ‘How?’ I asked and then wished I hadn’t.

  She shrugged. ‘I just know.’

  Mlle Delacroix came into the room to warn us not to be late. The bell for dinner had rung.

  APRIL 1972

  Carla says,

  ‘Write me a good poem,’

  And I flick my fingers…

  And ask,

  ‘Like that?’

  And she says,

  ‘Exactly’.

  Then she reads me hers,

  Of naked women

  With amber whisky glasses

  Glinting in prismic light,

  Shot through with swords of gold.

  She tells me,

  Of young men at war

  And wild-eyed grief—

  A maiden aunt’s lost love,

  Her futile tears.