The Other Language

by Francesca Marciano

  His face morphed into the more familiar expression of hostility and alarm.

  “Please, don’t let’s start.”

  “Start what? I am so done.” Her rage had unleashed itself like a vicious animal. “I am so bored with you I cannot bear this conversation another minute.”

  She stood up and wobbled across the creaky wooden floor without turning around. She asked for the ladies’ room and when she came across her image in the mirror—half drunk, her hands still shaking from adrenaline—instead of Grace Kelly what she saw was a dull, unattractive woman in a frumpy beige raincoat with a ridiculous scarf around her head.

  That fall Ben Jackson was listed in Vogue as one of the Ten Best Dressed Men of the Year.

  Leo sent her a link from his office in Los Angeles.

  Check this out. How cool is that?

  Vogue had posted several photos featuring Ben either attending different exclusive events in eveningwear, caught on the street fidgeting with his car keys, or walking with a take-out latte in his surfing shorts. Lara scanned the pictures one by one: nine times out of ten he was wearing one of Mina’s creations. The clothes had a distinctive, classic Italian cut with a slight retro look, which felt new and original because of the gutsy nonchalance he had in wearing them, thanks to the way he turned up the stiff collars without wearing a tie, or left the shirt cuffs dangling unbuttoned.

  The other nine celebrities on the list had gone to great lengths to praise their favorite labels and designers, whose clothes they were wearing, whereas Ben told the press he detested labels and that his entire wardrobe had been cut and hand stitched by a single seamstress in a small village in the south of Italy. A true talent, he was quoted as saying, like those gifted dressmakers Balenciaga or Dior at one time had had in their maisons—a rare, endangered species that should be protected. The whole thing sounded fabulously exclusive and rare, and the writer tried in vain to obtain at least the name of the obscure Italian seamstress, which Ben refused to disclose. “I’m a no-logo, and I want to remain a no-logo,” he stated vehemently, like an anarchist standing on a barricade.

  Lara e-mailed Leo back.

  I hope he’s sent Mina a present. A ticket to Tahiti? A big fat check?

  There was no answer. She re-sent the message as a text and got an instant reply.

  what are you now, mina’s agent?

  Lara put the magazine in the post to Mina and rang her brother at his office. She got his voice mail instead and resigned herself to leaving a lengthy message in which she listed all the things she most resented in their relationship. It was a long list that got cut off by the end of the tape.

  The days were getting crisper and shorter, the light through the trees projected starker shadows on the sidewalk. October came, the month of enterprises and plans. Everyone around Lara had one, even her mother—she had enrolled in the Elders University, resolved to get a degree in anthropology. Anita was looking into a rare breed of Balinese dogs—even smaller than the hairless Chinese cresteds—which were all the rage in California (you can stuff them inside your coat pocket and fly with them everywhere, she’d exclaimed) and she predicted they would soon hit Europe. Leo was finally getting an office of his own—he had enough clients now to have a company with his name. Her ex-husband and Nicole were probably unpacking boxes in their new Parisian flat. Her belly must be pretty big by now.

  Lara sat in her apartment in Rome, thinking about all this. After three weeks of gentle physical therapy, her knee was fine again, she had printed flyers and made a few phone calls advertising her yoga class, but only two people had called so far. She sat around the house unable to think of an alternative. What had happened to her? Nine years of safe marriage with a steady flow of cash assured by her husband’s salary had turned her into an incapable, paralyzed human being. It had been a steady flow of unlearning all that she’d known before. But it was late now. Too late even for being mad at herself.

  The tourists had gone and with them their ugly plastic paraphernalia of inflatable mattresses, flippers and flip-flops that all summer long had crammed the exterior of the tabacchi shop and the grocery store. The village had regained its sober style and had gone back to looking like what it used to look like: an undisclosed secret, just a village nobody had ever heard of, with a small but perfectly proportioned square, a pretty clock tower, a baroque church and a grand palazzo once owned by a family of barons.

  Lara had taken an early flight and arrived at the house just as her neighbors were sweeping the street outside their doors, as they did every day. When they saw her get out of the taxi they called out her name. They seemed happy to see her back, off season, just like a regular neighbor, like someone who lived there.

  “I came for this evening’s procession. Per la Vergine della Tempesta,” Lara announced proudly, wanting to confirm that she had, in some way, become one of them; that this particular day—when the Virgin had appeared to a group of fishermen in the midst of a storm and had saved them from drowning—mattered to her as well.

  “Brava! Brava!” The women in slippers with brooms in hand nodded and laughed.

  Mina’s house had gone through a radical transformation. Everything was in its place, no more wisps of thread flying around, no bolts of fabric or clothes hanging off nails. Surfaces were clean and clear, there was no trace of work, no electricity or stuffy smells of sweat and fatigue in the air. Even the orange cat looked different, stretched on the windowsill next to the Gertrude Jekyll rose. Lara peered in the next room. The big TV screen was gone. But the change was owing to something deeper than just a cleanup. Something was gone from Mina as well: her mad exhilaration, her electric excitement. Now she looked older, more austere.

  “It looks so neat in here.”

  “I’m on holiday,” Mina said drily.

  “That’s good. You deserve a bit of rest. You did so much work this summer.”

  Mina didn’t answer. She was sitting on a chair and fiddling inside her tiny handbag. She pulled out a handkerchief.

  “Too much work.” She gave Lara a crooked look and blew her nose.

  “You mean … the work you did for Ben?”

  Mina scowled. “Do you have any idea how much material I had to use for that big a man?”

  “Of course. More fabric, more sewing. More everything.”

  “Not more money, though!” Mina cried with unexpected force, which allowed Lara to dig deeper.

  “You don’t feel Ben paid you fairly?”

  “Ha!” Mina turned her face to the side with spite. “Those people, they have big mansions in England with swimming pools and servants but when it comes to—”

  “Actually he lives in America, he doesn’t have a—”

  “—squeezing money where they can, then … you should see them! Do they know the difference between something expensive and something truly beautiful? No, they don’t!”

  Lara replayed the last sentence in her mind and double-checked its meaning. That was a sharp observation.

  “Did he not pay you what you asked?”

  Mina shrugged again, and turned her face away, as if the question didn’t even deserve an answer. Lara pressed her.

  “Didn’t you tell him upfront what you were going to charge him?”

  But, clutching her handbag and rising from the chair, Mina ignored this. For the occasion she had chosen to wear her pleated skirt and a funny blue jacket with golden buttons. She eyed her tiny wristwatch.

  “We’d better go,” she said. “The procession starts at six and we need to find a good parking spot, one by the harbor.”

  In the car—the small Subaru she had bought secondhand from a local dealer when she had first moved down south—Lara hoped Mina would release more information about what had happened with Ben, but she was wrapped in silence. Lara had to poke at her again.

  “Have you heard from him lately?”

  Mina shook her head.

  “I thought he used to call you on the phone like every other day.”

 
; Mina looked out the window, pretending to be absorbed by the landscape.

  “Oh yes, he called, what, three weeks ago? ‘Mina, I’m flying down to see you for two days,’ he says, ‘I need you to do some more work for me.’ I say, ‘Of course, come, you are always welcome, and we must speak about the deal on the house.’ You know, the house of my cousin. So he arrives in a black car with black windows and a driver in a black suit. It looks like a funeral car, everyone got so frightened. People thought I was dead.”

  Lara laughed, but Mina didn’t.

  “With this blond woman. The one in the photograph.”

  Lara stopped at a red light and turned toward Mina.

  “The one by the swimming pool?”

  “That one. He walks into the house, hugs me, kisses me like I am his mother,” Mina said with disdain. “Then he introduces this woman who doesn’t speak a word of Italian. She’s almost naked, in a little camisole that shows everything underneath. He says, ‘Mina, this is my fiancée and she loves your work, look, she has brought some clothes for you to copy.’ And this woman opens a suitcase filled with her flimsy dresses, and then she throws them on my table.”

  Like she was his mother, Lara thought. Could that be what had hurt her the most? But how could Mina have been that deluded? But—she reminded herself—it was also true that Mina now knew Ben’s body like a familiar map, its exact measurements; she’d cut and sewn the fabric that would envelop him and keep him warm. She’d touched him on the shoulders, around the waist, along his legs. She had memorized every inch of him. Wasn’t that some other, extraordinary kind of intimacy?

  Mina didn’t say anything more. She sat stiffly on the edge of her seat as the small harbor came into view. She indicated a slot between parked cars.

  “There. You can fit right in there.”

  There was another long pause during the parking maneuver.

  “And then?” Lara kept checking her rearview mirror, pretending to be only half interested.

  “I told him I was on holiday,” Mina said bitterly. “I gave him the address of Jolanda, in Ortelle. She’s not as good as me, no. But she can make their clothes.”

  Slowly, gingerly, they made their way with the crowd down the steep winding road that led to the small harbor. Whole families marched together, fathers carrying their children on their shoulders, old ladies holding on to the arms of their daughters, kids eating their gelati. They walked briskly, with festive smiles, grown-ups and children equally eager for the music and the fireworks that were to follow. Below, on the small piazza by the water’s edge, there were stalls selling sweets—caramelized almonds, chocolate nougat and Nutella crepes—and Chinese-made toys that lit up, buzzed and shrieked with Star Wars sounds. The local band in their uniforms was tuning the trombones and the tubas under the pagoda-shaped gazebo set up in the piazza. In a few minutes the door of the white church would let out the procession bearing the statue of the Virgin. The oldest and strongest fishermen decked out in their Sunday clothes would bring her down to the pier, haul her onto one of the boats. Mina’s gait wobbled on the steep descent. She grabbed Lara’s arm, making her slow down.

  “I am not stupid,” she hissed. “If one’s name is printed in that American magazine—whatever it’s called—one becomes famous all over the world. Why couldn’t he say, ‘Write this down: all my clothes were made by Mina Corvaglia from Andrano’?”

  “He totally should have told the magazine,” Lara agreed. Part of her was rejoicing. She was going to recount it all to Leo, word for word.

  “Perhaps he thinks he doesn’t need to give my name because I am just a—a peasant, from the sticks,” Mina said, shaking her head. “But we don’t live in mud huts here.”

  Mina knew exactly where they needed to position themselves in order to get the best view of the boats and the fireworks. She stopped on top of a stairway that went steeply down all the way to the square, unfolded a large handkerchief and spread it on one of the spotless steps. She sat on it with care, and kept brushing her pleated skirt, making sure it wouldn’t touch the pavement. Lara sat next to her and remained quiet for a few minutes, as the procession slowly approached the harbor. They watched as the statue of the Vergine della Tempesta was carefully placed inside a palanquin on the prow of a larger boat adorned with flowers and candles.

  “What about the house he’s buying?” Lara finally asked.

  Mina was busy making sure her skirt was in place. She then closed her arm around her knees.

  “My cousin, he changed his mind. He’s decided to keep the house for now.”

  “Really? How come?”

  “Too much confusion. Paparazzi will come to steal photos, more foreigners will come to buy property, prices will go up. We don’t need that kind of pandemonium here.”

  The evening light was dimming and turning everything into a watercolor with runny edges of lavender and blue. The boats had grouped around the biggest one, the one that carried the Virgin, and they started to move away from the shore in the twilight. The big boat led the way with its palanquin in a triumph of tiny lights and the fishermen’s boats followed with their flickering lanterns. Somewhere, someone was lighting small hot air balloons made of paper that ascended in a slow, billowing flight, one by one. They were dotting the sky with their orangey glow, illuminated by the boat lights below, forming a dazzling constellation.

  Just then the moon emerged from the strand of haze sitting on top of the horizon. A big, apricot moon, pinned against a lilac background. Everything went quiet, the band, the birds, the children’s voices, the Chinese electronic toys. It was as if for a moment everyone felt what it was like to be present, all together, and alive.

  Lara held her breath. She had hoped for this feeling for so long. And now, without her aiming for it or practicing toward it, here it was, epiphanic, timeless. She knew the feeling would last only another handful of seconds. But somehow, hadn’t she earned it? From now on she’d at least be able to call it back and it would unfold, replay itself.

  She looked at Mina and their eyes met. For whatever seconds were left of that knowing, they were together in it and nothing needed to be said. Then the first of the fireworks sprang up in a cascade of gold that streaked the darkening sky, then fell with a soft crackling noise into the water.

  After two hours of fireworks and deafening explosions, their lungs and eyes filled with so much acrid smoke it was as if they’d just escaped a battlefield, Lara suggested it might be time to leave. They’d eaten pork sandwiches and Nutella crepes, bought the nougat and a plastic parrot on a branch that chirped every five minutes, which Mina was planning to hang on her lemon tree. Her digestion upset, but nevertheless satisfied and happily exhausted, Lara steered Mina up the hill, back to where the car was parked.

  “Does it get very cold in the winter months here?” she asked, as she drove them back, breaking the sleepy silence in the car.

  No answer came, so Lara took her eyes away from the road and turned to Mina, who shook her head, her eyes half closed.

  “You know, I was thinking …,” Lara went on. “How much do you think it would cost to rebuild the forno at the house?”

  “I don’t know. I can ask my cousin.”

  “I had this crazy idea. I was thinking I could turn that room into a small bakery. I’m a pretty good baker, you know? I used to make my own bread.”

  “You could make pizza too,” Mina murmured.

  “Exactly! I could also bake muffins in the morning. I think it would work, especially in the summer months, for the tourists. Don’t you think?”

  “If you made good bread, even the local people will buy it all year round. Nobody makes bread the way we used to anymore. Everyone is using that chemical yeast now.”

  “Absolutely. And there are no good bakeries around us for miles.”

  Mina yawned.

  “I could give you my aunt’s recipe.”

  It had started to get dark much earlier now. Lara could smell the woody scent of fall coming through the
half-open window.

  “Maybe you and I could go into this together,” she offered.

  There was no answer.

  “You know what? I think we’d make good money,” Lara said almost to herself and threw a glance at Mina. She was snoring lightly, her head abandoned to the headrest, the plastic parrot clutched to her chest.

  Lara drove on in the pitch-dark, the brights shining on the twisted olive trunks shaped like gnomes. But it was easy; by now she knew the way home like the back of her hand.

  An Indian Soirée

  The crow woke her up with a start, ripping her away from the dream. Every morning at seven sharp, the stupid bird tapped its beak on the window demanding to enter, each day unaware that he was knocking on a pane of glass. Its relentless cawing was the most disagreeable sound to wake up to.

  Her heart was still beating fast from what had just happened in her sleep. She glanced at the pillow next to hers. Her husband gave a moan directed at the crow, then turned over and continued to sleep. Better that way. She needed some time alone.

  She lay still, in an attempt to extricate herself from the shreds of her dream. She had just been passionately kissed and made love to and the lovemaking had stirred such a strong longing, she was still overwhelmed and aroused. Apparently she and her ex-lover had met again at a party somewhere. There were people standing around with drinks in hand. He had pressed her gently against the wall, his forehead on hers, and that’s how they’d looked into each other’s eyes, like two stags locking antlers. She had felt they were being observed and for a moment had thought, This is impossible, we can’t, not in front of everybody. Instead all she said in the dream was “I have missed you so much,” and it felt as though such an uncomplicated phrase had instantly commanded a truth that had been buried for years. The words had taken on, as often happens in dreams, a special power, as if they’d meant so much more than just that. As she pronounced them she had felt a surge of relief. From that moment on, she knew it would be impossible to hide this simple truth again: it was true, she had missed him all these years, despite having refused to admit it, so that the dream had come as a revelation, an awakening of sorts. Just then he had leaned in to kiss her, pressing his mouth to hers with an incredible will, in the same way he had with his forehead. And then, still in the dream, of course, she no longer cared if others were watching and word would get out. Yes, it would be public. Her husband would have to know. It was inevitable. They had found each other again and discovered that their passion was intact. In fact, it had never faded. How astonishing was that?