The Other Language

by Francesca Marciano

  “What do you mean noon? Why noon?”

  “I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you this year we’ll be running on a different schedule. The ceremony takes place at noon.”

  “Why?”

  “We changed it to daytime this year. It won’t make any difference, really.”

  Caterina tightened her grip on the phone.

  “No difference? Well … you mean … Is it no longer black tie?”

  “No, it’s a daytime event,” the woman said gaily, “so no worries on that score, it’ll be a much more relaxed dress code.”

  There was a pause.

  “Hello? Are you there?” the woman said.

  “Yes, yes, I’m here.”

  “I said you don’t have to worry about getting all dressed up,” the woman reassured her. “The ceremony this year won’t even be televised.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Budget cuts. It’ll be a smaller affair. But we think it’ll be a much warmer ceremony without the TV presenter, the cameras getting in the way and all the tension that comes with a live event.”

  “Sure … yes … of course.”

  “The car will be downstairs at eleven fifteen, then. Congratulations again, Ms. De Maria, we will see you there.”

  Caterina hung up but didn’t move from the chair.

  That year, due to the disastrous financial situation of the Italian economy, was in fact the only year in its history when the David Awards ceremony was downgraded to daytime, an untelevised, wholly unglamorous affair. Because of this, the nominees for major categories, used as they were to receiving their awards in tuxedos and evening gowns, were incensed. In return for the affront, none of them dressed as if they gave a hoot at all. Men showed up in crumpled linen jackets and sneakers, women in unassuming dresses and flats. It was a kind of “fuck you and your pathetic award ceremony” attitude that people had as they walked up onto that stage. In the absence of a camera nobody bothered to make a speech, to smile, or to thank his or her producer or mother. Even the statuettes looked like trinkets that year.

  Caterina’s short did indeed end up winning for her category. She was one of the very few who didn’t restrain her enthusiasm. She held her statuette up high, like she had seen actresses do at the Oscars, smiling to an imaginary audience, in her friend Tina’s flowery dress and a pair of old platform espadrilles.

  Pascal sat in the sparse audience (less than half the usual guests had attended given the inconvenient time and the lack of a red carpet) and he took several pictures with his phone of Caterina holding her statuette (the next day, when Pascal and Caterina Googled her name linked to the David Awards ceremony and found no images, they realized that his were the only existing shots of that glorious instant).

  Once it was all over, the nominees and the press were offered a cocktail backstage—another sad ordeal of tiny plastic containers filled with microscopic sushi and cucumber mousse—but everyone dashed off in a hurry. Balti was one of the first to leave. Caterina saw him wave a hand in her direction from the other end of the room, but she wasn’t certain it was meant for her. She waved hers back, just in case, and watched him disappear, arm in arm with yet another interesting woman who looked both brainy and sexy. After their encounter in Venice she hadn’t yet summoned the guts to call him, and at that very moment she decided she wasn’t going to.

  After a boozy late lunch with Pascal, Caterina came home and opened the closet. She unzipped the Chanel bag for the umpteenth time and looked at the dress. Despite everything, there it was: still hers. She quietly closed the door. One day she would wear it. She knew she would. Now she needed to work hard, to make that day happen. She refused to think of that day in Venice as a missed opportunity or, even worse, as the biggest shopping mistake of her life.

  The following year, thanks to a clever financial maneuver, some funds for the arts flowed back into the budget and the awards ceremony resumed its original grandeur, along with the live TV show. The prior year’s austerity had been a hitch, a single interruption in its long history, and soon everyone forgot that it had ever happened.

  In the years that followed Caterina managed to shoot one more short film about a community of Sikhs tending cattle near Bologna, and tried to get her first long feature off the ground, but she never succeeded.

  In the course of the following years potential occasions for wearing the Chanel became fewer and fewer. It was either too warm for summer, or too green for winter. There had been a couple of weddings but the dress always looked too dazzling for a simple civil ceremony or a reception in a country restaurant. There had been a few film premieres, the opening of a play or of an exhibition in a museum, but none of the people who went to these events would wear anything as shockingly elegant, so each time she opted for a more comfortable outfit. With time she got so used to the Chanel bag hanging in the closet that it became just another thing living in there, so familiar that it had become invisible. It became part of the furniture, and with the furniture it followed her to another apartment when her new boyfriend, Riccardo, asked her to move in, and on to another one when, three years later, he asked her to marry him. For a moment she considered wearing the dress at her own wedding.

  Her sister and her friend Tina had studied the ensemble of dress and shoes while she modeled them once again in the bedroom.

  “It looks a bit funny. I am not sure why,” her sister had said, tentatively.

  “Maybe a bit tight on your hips?” Tina had suggested.

  “And anyway, you should wear something brand-new the day of your wedding. What the hell, right?”

  Caterina hurried out of the dress self-consciously. It was true she had gained a bit of weight, especially around her midline, but at the time she didn’t know yet that she was pregnant with the twins.

  Whenever she checked the dress—more and more rarely now after the twins were born—she noticed how the feathers had lost their softness and had become brittle, how the fabric had lost some of its luster. She began to think of the Chanel as an old virgin—untouched but no longer fresh. Every time she zipped up the bag, it felt as though she were laying it back in its coffin.

  It took a while before one day, sitting in her kitchen and feeling particularly depressed, she rang Pascal in Paris and told him she felt like a total failure. In the meantime, shortly after he’d moved in with his lover in the Marais, he had been cast for a minor role in a successful TV series as an Italian maître d’, and that had been the beginning of a steady career as an actor. She told him she couldn’t think of herself as a filmmaker anymore, but just as a mother of two.

  “You are not a failure,” Pascal said while munching on something. “Maybe you are not meant to make another film. That’s all.”

  It felt like a shock and a liberation at the same time to be hearing this.

  “Wow, I feel like I just received a punch in the jaw,” she said, uncertain as to whether she should agree with him and accept this truth or try to fight it a little longer.

  “It’s not the end of the world, you know, there are other things in life you can do.”

  “What are you eating?”

  “Fromage and crackers. I think you’d be brilliant at a million other things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Darling, I’m not a tarot reader. All I’m saying is that if in all these years you haven’t been able to make another film as impressive as your first, then maybe you should move on.”

  Pascal could always be brutal, but wasn’t that exactly the reason she had called him?

  “I still have the goddamned Chanel!” she cried. “I feel guilty every time I look at it.”

  “Why guilty? Just wear it.”

  “Where to? I doubt I’ll be asked to go anywhere that formal ever again.”

  “Caterina. You should wear it to the supermarket and have fun with it.”

  “That’s ridiculous and you know it.”

  “You are making too much of it. It’s just a dress, it’s not a coronation mantle.”
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  Caterina thought of herself wearing the Chanel through the aisles of the Esselunga supermarket, or when going to pick up the twins at kindergarten. Of wearing it nonstop till it became a uniform, so that people would begin to think of her as the woman in the green dress. She would be considered an eccentric, of course, though by wearing the dress to death out of sheer willpower, she would not only extract from it every euro it had cost her, but also exhaust its fibers till it would have to simply give out and die of consumption, lose its feathers, become more humane, turn into a lifeless threadbare rag and no longer intimidate her. She would win by humbling it. It was an idea, a way of looking at the dilemma.

  But she knew she didn’t have the guts to engage in that kind of battle.

  In her forties, working as a freelance editor for TV commercials, Caterina spent most of her time inside a darkroom off Via Cavour, cutting three-minute ads for luxury cars or perfumes. She had made peace with what she had become: she wasn’t an artist but an artisan of sorts. There was no dormant Jane Campion inside her, there had been no misunderstood talent and there was nobody to blame. The twins had turned into bright, witty little boys with remarkable imaginations, well behaved and fun to be with; she and Riccardo were still good together and their marriage still felt like a safe place to be. In that, at least, she had been successful. The statuette she had won for her short now served as a doorstop and as a joke in the family.

  One day, across from her office, right next door to the Pasticceria Paradisi, she saw that a stylish young woman had opened a vintage clothing store. Caterina browsed through the racks during her lunch break. The labels were all quite exclusive and prices were high.

  “I have a vintage Chanel,” she found herself saying. “Would you be interested?”

  The woman raised her head from the book she was reading.

  “Of course. As long as it’s in good condition.”

  “It’s perfect. It’s never been worn.”

  The woman seemed skeptical.

  “Bring it and I’ll give you an evaluation,” she said, lowering her eyes to her book again.

  Caterina rang Pascal in Paris—he was about to direct his first play—and told him that she was finally getting rid of the Chanel. He replied without hesitation, saying it was blasphemy to sell it to a secondhand store.

  “I need the money. It’s not a hand-me-down, it’s a very exclusive vintage store right across from the studio in Via del Boschetto. I’m tired of keeping this corpse in my closet.”

  “Whatever,” Pascal said. He was busy, or perhaps tired of the game, which by now was more than ten years old.

  “It’s gorgeous,” the stylish young woman from the vintage store said as Caterina freed the dress from its body bag. “Is it yours?”

  “Yes. I bought it almost a dozen years ago. It’s from the cruise collection.”

  The woman brushed the fabric with her fingertips and delicately fluffed up the feathers.

  “May I ask you why it’s never been worn?”

  “Oh … it’s a long story. Actually that’s not true, it’s quite a simple story. Every time I tried it on it never looked right.”

  The woman smiled. She had beautiful black hair piled up high on top of her head and wore a dark red lipstick that contrasted with her very white skin.

  “I can hardly believe it didn’t look right on you. You have such a nice figure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And the dress is a masterpiece.”

  “You think you can sell it?”

  “Of course. It’ll sell like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  “And how much do you think we could …”

  “I can get more than a thousand for sure, but I’ll have to check online. Probably it’ll be the most expensive item in the store. If I had the money I would buy it from you for myself,” she said with a hint of regret, gazing at the gown with longing.

  “I have clients who will fight to have it. Costume designers, maybe a couple of actresses …”

  She caressed it again and under her delicate touch the fabric rustled as though it were coming back to life.

  “Are you really sure you want to part with this?” the young woman asked. “I feel a bit bad selling it. You might regret it afterward.”

  “No. Thank you. But I don’t think so. Really. I kind of want to get rid of it. Actually I’ve been wanting to for years.”

  The woman was silent for a few seconds.

  “Do me a favor. Just try it on one last time. Please.”

  When Caterina came out of the dressing room sheathed in the alpine lake cloud, the woman just stared at her and said nothing. She then brought her thin hands to her face, like a stunned child.

  “What?” said Caterina.

  “I beg you. Don’t make the mistake. Keep it. You can always sell it later on.”

  “When? On my deathbed?”

  The woman laughed.

  “No, seriously. I won’t take it unless you wear it at least once. It would be—it would really be unethical of me. It looks too good on you, trust me.”

  Caterina looked at herself in the mirror. She knew what the dress looked like on her—she had lost count of how many times she had tried it on—but now she saw something different.

  “Please,” whispered the woman, behind her now. “I know clothes. You keep this one.”

  “I can’t believe it. This thing just won’t let go of me,” Caterina said out loud, and sank onto a chair in front of the mirror. The dress had never looked so good. As if it didn’t want to leave her.

  She took it back under the livid light of the metropolitana, holding it in her arms like a child. She felt a special tenderness now, similar to the joy someone experiences having just rescued something that seemed forever lost. She had been on the verge of making a terrible mistake by disowning the dress as something she didn’t need, or worse—something she didn’t deserve and never would. How could she not have seen it? The dress was a talisman—her own talisman—the gift that she must always treasure, like the gold dust that she feared would fly out the window and follow Pascal all the way to Paris.

  She resurfaced into the sunshine at the Garbatella stop and straightened her back, walking briskly toward her street. She clutched the dress bag closer to her body, feeling the glorious softness of the fabric inside, the faint crackling of feathers under her fingertips. Perhaps she just needed to remind herself more often how that gold was still floating above her head, its minuscule particles visible only when pierced by a certain light.

  Big Island, Small Island

  The swallows keep darting back and forth across the roof like shooting arrows. I think they must be playing a game—a kind of hide-and-seek—because they don’t seem to get tired of it. I am not used to seeing birds fly through airports. It’s quite a stretch to call this thatched roof standing on pillars an airport and I’m worried about the size of the plane we are about to board. If this is the size of the airport of the Big Island and we are going to the Small Island, how big can the next plane be?

  I look around at my fellow passengers. We are not more than ten and that worries me too. There are large men clad in white kanzus (I’m already using the local language thanks to the Teach Yourself Swahili booklet I bought in Dar es Salaam) and kofia, which I just learned is what their finely stitched cap is called. Judging from their potbellies and thick gold watches they seem rather affluent. A couple of them have small-sized wives sitting next to them, wrapped in the black cape they call buibui. The men talk loudly, mostly among themselves or on old-fashioned Nokias—only a few have smartphones—whereas the wives don’t flinch. They are as still as pillars of salt surrounded by hefty bundles and boxes. I can see baskets brimming with mangoes, cartons containing some household appliances, an electric fan, a kettle, a DVD player. They must’ve been shopping on the mainland; I didn’t see any shopping opportunities for such items as kettles or fans on the Big Island. Just a few gift shops and a desolate, half-empty supermarket. A crackling vo
ice on the intercom speaks in Swahili, and the man next to me shakes his head with disdain.

  “Delay,” he says, meeting my eyes.

  “How much?”

  “One hour.”

  It could be worse, I think, so I pull out my book.

  I’ve been to Africa before—to Egypt and Morocco—but never south of the Sahara and never to such a remote place. During my travels I rarely ever mix with the locals, sealed as I am in my work bubble, always surrounded by colleagues. We end up spending most of our time inside conference rooms, in line at those ghastly buffet lunches, or in our anonymous hotel rooms watching the news. Since I’ve been on this particular detour I’ve been feeling more vulnerable but also more adventurous. I think I’m beginning to get the hang of traveling solo. For instance, whenever I am the only white person within a contained space, I find that reading is the best thing to turn to. It’s actually an act of courtesy, I realized; it allows people to stare and even point at me if they need to—usually it’s the women who find something ridiculous about my clothes and tend to giggle with hands over their mouths. My reading gives them total freedom to examine me without creating unnecessary embarrassment.

  “Are you Italian?” a voice asks me in English.

  I lift my eyes from the book. Sitting across from me is a man in his early fifties. He’s clearly been looking at the cover of my book. He must have just sat down; I hadn’t noticed him earlier. He wears a white linen shirt, nicely tailored cotton trousers in a shade of ocher, Ray-Bans and soft loafers without socks. This last detail, more than anything, tells me he must be Italian as well. Those are expensive car shoes, the kind Mr. Agnelli made famous. Only Italian men wear loafers without socks with their ankles showing this much beneath the trousers.

  “Si,” I say, and I shake the hand he’s already holding out.

  I am not sure whether to be relieved or disturbed by this chance encounter. He lights a Marlboro and begins to chat amiably in Italian, ignoring my desire to read on.

  His name is Carlo Tescari, he’s been living in Tanzania for the last ten years. He’s built a couple of luxury safari camps near Ngorongoro. Before that he lived in Kenya, where he built more luxury camps and sold them for a fortune. Twenty-five years in East Africa, he says, as though it’s a record of some kind. Funny, because he looks as if someone had just lifted him from the Via Roma in Capri and landed him in this tiny airport on the Big Island, on his way to another, smaller island not many people have ever heard of.