The small cloakroom near the front door was almost dark except for a side light, and the pile of coats was considerable. Naturally, most of the coats were black. How would he find his own worn jacket? He began on the procedure of picking up each one, putting it to his eyes to examine the label, before dropping it to one side. It took a lot of time, but what was his time for, now?
He wasn’t keen to go home. He was a little drunk and the sight of his friends that evening had made him aware that he could do with some time to think about his future, such as it was. He would walk for a while; he loved to see the city at night in silence and semi-darkness, when the people didn’t obscure the buildings.
Outside the apartment, when the door to the small lift opened, he was surprised to see that it already contained a red-haired woman in her late thirties. Since they were on the top floor and she was bundled shivering into the corner holding her coat tightly around her, he assumed she’d been unable to get out at the ground floor. Perhaps she had been going up and down for some time.
‘Are you okay?’ he said, stepping in and pressing the button. ‘Are you frightened?’ She nodded. ‘Did you drink too much?’
She said, ‘I might have.’
‘Do you have any water?’ She shook her head. ‘I do – here. I’m Luca Frascati.’ She mumbled something. He cupped his ear and said, ‘Frida Scolari did you say?’
‘Yes.’ He looked at her face more closely. She shielded her face. ‘Stop! Why are you staring at me like that?’
‘Is your mother Cristina?’ She nodded. He asked, ‘Is she alive?’
‘I hope so. Did you hear otherwise?’
‘No. I’m just so relieved and glad to hear it,’ he said. ‘Thank God, and thank you.’
‘She lives in Paris.’
‘She is fortunate, and a dear woman. She and I were close before you were born. And then … She was very – Well, I can’t say now … Frida!’
He saw that Frida was leaning her head back, her cheek on the mirrored glass of the wall. She had fainted; her knees were buckling, there was nothing for her to hold on to: she would fall.
Fortunately the lift bumped and stopped. He could now take her around the waist and, by one arm, pull her out, depositing her on a chair in the hall. He stood beside her as she sat there, lowering her head between her knees. When she sat up he passed her his bottle of water.
‘I agree with your faint. It was traumatic in there,’ he said. ‘Colleagues, lovers, friends, enemies – they were all present, ageing, stumbling about, showing off, gasping for breath. I had to get out when I felt I was attending my own wake.’ She was flapping at her face with her hands. ‘Frida,’ he said, ‘I knew both your parents. You are the best thing to come out of that untidy commotion – of the party, I mean to say. Can I get you a taxi?’
She nodded and he hurried out into the street. The cab he found waited outside while he helped Frida out of the apartment block. In the taxi he sat close to her, to stop her swaying. She smelled of perfume and marijuana, and he was afraid she might be sick. When the cab stopped, fifteen minutes’ drive away, she continued to sit there, slumped. He paid the driver, went round and opened her door, and helped her into her building. He knew it would be difficult work getting her up the stairs, and he went behind her, in case she fell backwards. He did that, and she gave him her keys. While he fumbled with them, she thought it would be a good idea to sit on the ground. As he was in his late sixties it was quite an experience to get her to stand up. At last he opened the door and helped her in.
Her bed was wide; it was in the centre of the room, under a skylight which, he guessed, lying there, she liked to look through. But the room was small, and its shelves were packed with books and CDs. To one side there was a stove, a separate bathroom and, he thought, another small room, perhaps a study.
She lay down on the bed and seemed comfortable when he pulled a blanket over her. Though she was twitching a little, her eyes were closed; he thought she’d soon be asleep. It was disappointing, but he’d leave her his phone number and walk home.
He had turned away when she said, ‘I won’t be able to sleep. And I’m afraid I’ll disappear. There’s a bottle of vodka over there. Pour me some, please.’ She reached out to him, ‘Do you have something else to do now?’
‘Me? No. Nothing. It’s late. All I look forward to, before sleeping, is a book.’
‘The room is revolving, rather. If you left too soon, I’d be worried.’ She was now clutching at her mattress with outstretched arms. ‘I might go mad. I’m so grateful. You’re sweet. Are you as kind to everyone?’
‘If they need me. But it’s you – you, Frida! I’m totally surprised and delighted.’
She said, ‘Luca, if you’re so nice, will you please say something – to help keep me grounded?’
‘Yes, of course. You might find it hard to believe,’ he said, pulling up a chair and sitting down not far from her, ‘but there was a time when people were afraid of me. A couple of my sentences could knock you almost dead.’
‘But why? What did you do?’
‘I was a critic, you know. For ten years I was feared and powerful – until I was replaced by a younger man. The usual story. For the last twelve years I have taught a little, written a bit, and lived on more or less nothing. I wrote two books, one about the British writer Edward Bond, which no one read, and a lovely monograph on darkness in Visconti, which no one published. I will bring it to you tomorrow, if you want. As for my book on Beckett … You know I met him several times?’
There was a pause while Luca found two glasses and put the vodka on the table next to her. He poured for them both before sitting down again. He sipped the neat vodka and said, ‘An out-of-work critic is regarded rather like a myopic sniper: he can finally be hated for his necessary work. I noticed that people are still afraid to approach me. Or they won’t forget some longago grudge.’ There was a silence and he watched her move about restlessly, as if she were trying to refocus everything. He said, ‘Would it be okay if you told me a little about your mother?’
‘What for?’
‘I’d be most grateful for any news.’
‘I’ll only tell you this.’ She sat up, looked about wildly, lay down again, and said, ‘Her husband the diplomat died two years ago.’
‘I heard. I’m sure she is still quite a catch. She was beautiful. If only I could see her. Before I go to sleep I think of her often. What does she do?’
‘She loves to eat and think about clothes, and read. And she—’
‘I like that. You make it sound as if she has no worries at all. You must give me her email address.’
‘One day – when I feel better.’
‘Does she ever mention me – Luca, Luca Frascati?’
Frida said, ‘I was taken to the party by a friend of my mother’s. I recognised people, but I don’t know them. Stupidly, I smoked something on the balcony, thinking it might make me laugh and approach people and join in more. It was too strong. My legs dissolved and my mind started turning over and over, and flashing like a shutter. It still is.’ She giggled. ‘But I can see pretty things.’ She sat up suddenly and said, ‘Anyway, why are you thinking of my mother? Tell me, what is your situation tonight? What would your wife say if she knew you were here with me?’
‘What wife? Oh, Frida, I am living in the apartment of a ramshackle mad-haired woman I was together with for a month, years ago. She makes my flesh crawl and we never speak except to abuse one another. But I have a tiny pension, and sometimes I help a friend sell cheese in the market. The woman likes me to help with the bills, go shopping, and walk her dogs. She has had cancer of the liver for some time. Most of it has been removed, but it returns, as these things do. When she dies, her children will reclaim the house and I will have to leave. But where? I have nothing of my own. I could die alone. If you can believe it, we were a generation who didn’t believe in money, and, to be honest, I didn’t think I’d get to be this age.’
‘You thought
you’d just die?’
‘Or be excused, somehow. Yes, you’re laughing. I should have laughed then, when I thought I had integrity. Beneath most people, you know – and this I’ve noticed recently – there is always an abyss, covered over with leaves and branches. But one day your foot goes through it, and you see you are one fatal step from eternity, a blink away from destitution …’
She shouted suddenly, ‘What the fuck is that?’
He stood up and looked around. ‘What? My eyesight is poor – is it an animal?’
‘Is that yours?’
‘Frida, what is it?’
‘Look – there, there! You’ve put a hat on a bed! Are you kamikaze – that could kill us instantly.’
He snatched up his hat, put it on a table and smoothed it down. ‘Sorry, so sorry,’ he said.
She relaxed. ‘Don’t you know me either, Luca? I’m sure you saw me. I was an actress for years. I appeared in this and that for no money and didn’t get anywhere. But you look at me blankly. Oh dear. My mother also thought I was ridiculous and she gave me advice.’
‘What did the dear woman say? She was always promiscuous, if you don’t mind me saying, with her advice.’
Frida said, ‘Even now, she said, women are defined by their men. She said I should marry a rich one while I still had the breasts for it.’
‘Did she like your breasts?’
‘She complimented them, and was jealous.’ She giggled. ‘I think it was because I said I’d inherited them from my father.’
He said, ‘Did she take her own advice?’ There was a pause. ‘Frida?’ he said again.
She seemed to have fallen into a stupor. He sat there quietly for a bit, before getting up and taking a few steps into the other little room. He saw a couch, covered in clothes, and a little desk, piled with books and clothes. He caught a sudden movement in the room and was startled. It was himself in a mirror, a harried, almost haunted and probably mad old man in need of a haircut. When had he grown so plump? Looking away, he noticed there were some photographs in a pile; he picked them up, and was beginning to look through them when he heard her voice.
‘Naturally, she didn’t think for a moment of taking her own advice,’ she was saying. ‘Who does? I remember she was completely preoccupied and mad for the grand diplomat. She batted his wife right out of the way until the poor woman went crazy. Mother wanted to travel and live here and there, and look at this and that, and photograph people in mud huts. And she did – at his expense.’
He came in and sat down again. ‘What was your rich man like?’
She laughed. ‘He had an accountancy firm, can you imagine. He was dull and he didn’t like to part with money. I wasn’t even sure he was a breast man, after all. To my credit, Luca, I scared the shit out of him. Often, at night, I wake up around three, you know. I hate that hour but am usually around to see it. And I’d be screaming, terrified that I was being chased by an axeman. He’d jump right out of bed and leave the room. Then he left the country. He wanted a woman to admire him, he wasn’t interested in being a saint or a psychiatrist. Soon he’d had enough. I was back on my own.’
Luca leaned forward in his chair. ‘But why would you wake up screaming like that, dear girl? What has happened to you?’
She was sitting up now, and fumbling in a side drawer. She began to roll a joint.
He went on, ‘Your father I remember well. I was just finishing with your mother when he came on the scene. He was big then with huge black hair and manic energy, drinking, smoking, sweating, spitting everywhere, addressing massive student meetings, making speeches, running his paper. I must have some copies at home.
‘Frida, look at me, please. Don’t you remember me at all?’ Luca said. ‘Your parents eventually lived together in a big communal house, and I was upstairs. We sat around night after night discussing society, revolution and the family, and your dad said we should share the children around. Of course, this was a way for him to do nothing himself. You were supposed to be communal property, and we would bring you up together – all of us, friends, comrades, sisters. That’s what we believed then. We dismiss the fundamentalists of today, but it makes me laugh even more to think I was once a Maoist – one who always had to confess he loved the highest art!’ He leaned towards her and said confidentially, ‘As I get older, my contempt for all that increases. Don’t be offended – I only mean contempt for what we were. Your father wanted us to support the Cultural Revolution.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes, kill the bourgeoisie – the bourgeoisie who were our own parents! We were authoritarian in the name of liberty! Before the anarchy of paradise there would be discipline! The sheer stupidity was absurd. Shelley calls it “serious folly”.
‘Cristina preferred your father to me. He had certainty and strong desire. He was a rabble-rouser and, as you know, the rabble are easily aroused. Look at me, I lack confidence, I’m terrified of the slightest thing. I was only a liberal critic, and so I let her go. You can only catch the other by the libido. And for reasons I forget, I didn’t believe you could make claims on people.’
‘So – what happened? Where did you go?’
‘The commune broke up and we dispersed to different places in the neighbourhood. Did you know that for two years, because I worked in the evenings, I looked after you as a child, while your mother worked as a journalist and your dad was doing more important things? I took you to school on my shoulders, we went to the park, we played together for hours, and I fed and bathed you at my place. There must be photographs of us together somewhere.’ He sat quietly for a moment. ‘I remember when you wanted a watch. I couldn’t say no to you. We went to a shop and spent all my money on it. Then you went back to your parents. You wanted them.
‘But your dad had a lot of women around, as radical political figures tend to, you probably know that. Then they both moved away. I was dumped, as if my relationship with you had been nothing. I believed in it; I’d helped bring you up. I was ready to be a parent.
‘You’ve forgotten me. It’s all gone. There’s no reason why you would remember.’ He got up and fetched her an ashtray. She offered him the joint but he shook his head. He poured himself another drink. ‘Perhaps I should go.’
‘Will you go back to the party? There’ll be alcohol there.’
‘Some of those people I absolutely loathe.’
She laughed. ‘But you said they’re your friends.’
‘They are my only friends, though I never see them now.’
‘You must envy them.’
‘Dear girl, at times tonight I was almost levitating with envy as I contemplated their houses, their furniture, their country places. Some of them made millions from the theatre and cinema – they had taken such good care of themselves.’ He was silent, before saying, ‘Do you have that address?’
She drew on her joint. ‘Sorry, what are you talking about?’
‘Your mother. I am available to go to Paris to visit her. Perhaps this weekend—’
Frida said, ‘You’re not in touch with her, yet you still like her that much?’
‘I knew her for a long time – and I was with her for two years, on and off. I took her to the theatre and movies when I received tickets. She began to love the opera. She had always been political, of course, and she had a lot of nerve. One night, I was watching TV, and suddenly she blazed onto some show or other, arguing with a revered church father, giving him a roasting which must have reminded him of a premature hell.’
‘She’s quieter now.’
‘Naturally. I made her cultured when she became bored by the vapid political struggle and the hippy Marxism. She wanted to grow up, read women writers and think for herself. I gave her books – I made her subtle.’
‘Subtle! If she actually came into the room now, you’d be terrified.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘She would swing about grandly, looking at everything, and ask, “What do you actually have to offer now, Luca?”’
>
Frida poured herself another drink. He shook his head. ‘I remember her as more humble. Cristina said to me, “I’ll never know anything, Luca.” But I watched her grow, Frida.’
‘With or without you, she was certainly intending to grow, Luca,’ said Frida. ‘My father died and my sister and I had to settle down and adore her, always telling her how magnificent and competent she was. From her side, she thought we should just get up and get on with things. Why would we not become successful people? She was capable of great love – with a man. She believes she deserves everything. I dream she is a tower, or sometimes a giraffe, looking down on ugly us. She crushed us without knowing it. By the time I was fourteen I wasn’t living at home …’ She went on, ‘After the diplomat died Mother grew sick of galleries and lunches with the other less-than-merry widows. She began to go to Africa or Asia or Eastern Europe to write reports on raped women. She is even more irreproachable now.’
‘But I can still talk a little,’ he said.
‘The last thing she wants to hear about are the old days.’
He poured himself the rest of the vodka, dropped the bottle in the bin and said, ‘She knows how much I know. She respected my ideas.’
‘What ideas?’
‘About theatre.’
‘They’ll be out of date.’
He said, ‘My humour will get through to her.’
There was a silence. He noticed Frida was looking at him. ‘What is it?’
‘I’ve been observing you.’
‘You must be feeling better, my dear.’
‘But are you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re biting your nails and making faces. Your body won’t keep still. Try now – try and be static.’
‘Surely I am tranquil. I’m almost a dead man.’
‘Now, look – your knee’s jiggling.’
Love + Hate: Stories and Essays Page 10
