Portrait of a Girl

by Binkert, Dörthe

  “My God, Betsy, please believe me, it really wasn’t as bad as all that!” James had said when she mentioned it to him. “You seem to have remembered only the malicious gossip, whereas I always remembered your incredibly blue eyes. Aren’t you being unfair? And besides, how would Mathilde and Edward ever have gotten to know each other without me?” He kissed Betsy’s hand, and she sighed softly. In Zurich, several admirers had vied for her attention, but she couldn’t bring herself to form a closer liaison with any of them. Since she could afford to remain undecided, she continued to enjoy her freedom. After all, she thought from time to time, you never know where indecision may lead. The thought occurred to her once again now, as she looked at James—he was still very attractive and not wearing a ring on his finger.

  When the majestic façade of the grand hotel came into view along with the sparkling surface of Lake Sils on their left, Mathilde reached for Edward’s hand. How many memories and emotions this landscape stirred in her! She was happy with Edward—and yet, what would it feel like to meet James again after all this time? She was a little uneasy; after all, they’d never really said good-bye to each other.

  Achille Robustelli was the one who was most afraid of the get-together. How could he possibly have imagined that Nika would be returning to Maloja today on Bonin’s arm? Back then Bonin had asked about her, had wanted to give her his address in Venice. Oh yes, he did remember that. Shouldn’t he be happy for them? He had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Achille took his cigarette case out of the desk drawer and lit a cigarette. Closing the case, he looked at the clear reflection of his face in the silver surface. “It’s your own fault, Achille,” he thought. It felt good to blame himself. He would have given a lot to be able to avoid showing up at the planned supper. But that was impossible. He closed his eyes; tried to regain his accustomed equilibrium. Absentmindedly he felt for the signet ring that he no longer wore. Andrina had broken him of the habit of constantly turning it on his finger. She said it made him look silly and insecure, and that wasn’t appropriate to a man in his position. And so, tired of her criticism, he’d simply taken the ring off one day. Feeling unhappy, he went over to the window. At least Segantini hadn’t come, although Nika was probably hoping to see him. Achille’s troubled heart felt some satisfaction at the thought that at least Segantini wouldn’t get to see her.

  He gazed toward the wall where Segantini’s painting La Vanità used to hang. Even though it had hung there only a few months, it had left behind a lighter square on the wallpaper.

  He was relieved when there was a knock on the door, and he was ripped from his melancholy thoughts. He went to open it.

  “Signor Robustelli! How wonderful that you’re still here in the same place!” Nika cried. She was no longer an employee who would stand in the doorway waiting to be asked to approach. She stepped into the room and with a bright smile extended her hand to him.

  Achille’s heart was pounding. His voice, usually clear and calm, failed him.

  Nika looked at him, beaming. Her hair was as glorious as ever; the color of her dress flattered her light skin and brought out the blue-green of her eyes. “I’m so glad to see you!” she said again. He at last took her hand with that somewhat shy smile of his that had always surprised her—a man who dealt with so many people, it was surprising how shy he could be.

  “Signora . . .”

  “Damaskinos?” she continued for him. “Yes, that’s what I call myself, even though . . .” she stopped.

  Achille offered her a chair and sat down also. Then he got up again and asked if she’d like something to drink. But she shook her head. “You’re all flustered,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  He cleared his throat. “You know, don’t you, there’s always this turmoil at the end of the season. Tell me, Signora . . .”

  “Would you call me Nika? I would like that.” For a moment, Nika felt as if tears might spring into her eyes. “But first tell me,” she continued, “where is Andrina? Did you marry her? But of course. You’re wearing a wedding ring.”

  “She is in Milan,” he said, almost brusquely. “I’d rather you tell me your story. Did you find your mother? Your family?”

  How concerned he is about others, Nika thought, feeling ashamed. Why had she never written to him? “I don’t know why I didn’t get in touch with you sooner,” she said. “Maybe it was because I didn’t want Andrina to find out more about me. If my story were a happy one, a triumphant one, I wouldn’t have minded talking about it. But it’s a sad story.”

  She gazed at the light square on the wall as if looking back at the last few years through a window.

  “My mother died a long time ago. She died of cholera in 1884. She was still very young back then . . .” Nika faltered a moment. “She got married in Venice after she came back from a long trip through Europe. Her husband was a young business acquaintance of her father’s, my grandfather. She had two sons in quick succession. The children were still little when cholera took her life. I have only one photograph of her.”

  Nika opened her velvet muff, took out the photo, and held it out to Achille. It showed a serious young woman leaning with her right hip against a chair back, looking directly at the viewer. Her children weren’t in the picture. One couldn’t tell whether she was happy or unhappy, sad or contented. Thick, dark hair emerged from under her hat. From the black-and-white photograph you couldn’t tell the color of her eyes, but they were lighter than her hair.

  “She was beautiful,” Achille said. “You might have inherited her eye color. And her mouth, it’s similar to yours.” The photograph had been taken by a certain Antonio Sorgato in 1882.

  “That store is still there,” Nika said, pointing at the photographer’s signature. “But I couldn’t ask Signor Sorgato about my mother because he was dead . . .” She gently brushed her finger over the sepia-colored photo.

  “How were you able to get all this information? Whom did you find there? How did your family receive you?”

  Nika leaned back wearily as though she felt again the exhaustion, the pain, and the disappointment from that time.

  Oh, Lord, what an adventure that journey turned out to be! Following the instructions Signor Robustelli had written down for her, she’d gotten off the post coach in Chiavenna, at the Hotel Conradi. Then she’d purchased the first train ticket she had ever bought and taken the train to Colico. The train had started with a hiss. Nika was almost paralyzed with terror. Then telegraph poles started flashing past and she felt dizzy. The speed! She felt nauseous. She hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since she had started out. But she didn’t dare unpack her bread there on the train, not to mention the piece of cheese Benedetta had wrapped up in a cloth for her.

  After an hour, they arrived at their goal. A horse-drawn omnibus was waiting at the Colico station to take those passengers who were continuing their travels to the dock where the ship was anchored.

  Nika’s heart was in her throat. Before her was Lake Como with its steamboat, the engine already running. The travelers hurried across the landing stage, Nika among them, her bundle pressed to her chest, in one hand her ticket, a ticket to an unknown future.

  And then finally, after she had found a seat on deck, spread the cloth in her lap, and put a piece of cheese into her mouth, the tears began to stream down her cheeks, unstoppable. The tailwind cooled her face, but more tears kept coming. They ran down her throat and dampened the locket with the emblem of the Damaskinos family; a few teardrops fell on the bread and cheese. And Nika, who kept wiping her wet face, couldn’t say what it was she was crying about most: the accident that had revealed the secret of her origins, her happiness at being on her way to find her family, or her unhappiness at having lost Segantini. She cried, remembering how Benedetta had taken care of her like a mother, she cried about everything, even about the farmer who’d taken her into service, and for Mulegns. She wept beca
use she would be homesick for the Engadine and because she was afraid of the strange land she was about to set foot in.

  Achille Robustelli’s dependable directions had taken Nika to the place where the Milano–Venezia train, on its narrow embankment, dove into the sparkling lagoon approaching the city of Venice. Nika was overwhelmed by her first view of the city.

  Although they had been going across the water, the train station itself was on terra firma. Nika, bewildered, had taken a few steps as if to make sure that the ground would not give way. Ahead of her, there was more water. On the Grand Canal there were rowboats loaded with vegetables and potatoes. And all around her, people—old ones, young ones, women, children, elegant lady tourists with parasols accompanied by men in black suits—no different than in St. Moritz or at the Spa Hotel Maloja.

  In a sudden panic, Nika clapped her hands over her ears. The place was noisy, crowded; the narrow streets lay in the shadows cast by the tall houses lining them—they would have resembled canyons in the mountains, if clotheslines had not been strung across them from one side to the other. There were tables set up outside the houses, loaded with food; the people seemed to live in the streets. Cats ran underfoot, dogs lifted their tired heads from their paws. Nika kept her hands over her ears because she didn’t want to close her eyes, so afraid was she of getting lost in this strange bustling activity. The warm, humid air smelled foul and sat heavily on her anxious heart.

  “Signorina, watch your baggage!” an older woman called out to her as she walked by. “Don’t daydream, or you’ll get the shock of your life!” The woman laughed and already she was gone. Nika had scarcely understood the woman because her Italian was so different from Nika’s Bregaglia dialect and the Italian spoken by Segantini or Count Primoli.

  Evening was falling over Venice. But it didn’t get quiet and the streets didn’t empty of people as would have been the case in the mountains. All Nika wanted to do was go and hide. A gaunt cat, with a fish head between its teeth, disappeared into a building entrance. Nika watched the cat. There was a pension in the building, and so she followed the cat and asked if they had a room available. They gave her a key and sent her up a dark, narrow staircase. The musty smell from the mildewed walls mixed with the smell of minestrone. “Numero due,” the man called after her.

  The following day, still confused and tired, she tried to find the Chiesa dei Greci. She kept having to ask for directions. She crossed countless canals, then got lost in the narrow alleys of the Ghetto, but finally found her way back to Strada Nuova. She felt as if she’d been walking for hours. The heavy air made it hard to breathe, as did the barrage of sights. Live eels writhed in a vat on a flat barge gliding past. Children jumped into the opaque green canals to cool off. There was no way of knowing how deep the canals were; you could only guess. The light captured by the water was reflected on the flaking walls of the narrow houses. Exhausted, Nika sat down on the edge of a fountain in the middle of a small square. From a church façade, saints and angels looked down on her, white with golden halos. A young woman stopped in front of her and asked if she needed help.

  “Yes,” Nika said weakly. “I was looking for the Piazza San Marco.”

  “But that’s right around the corner there,” the young woman said, pointing. “You’ll be there in ten paces.”

  And it was true. Nika stepped out of a narrow street into the light and found herself standing in the Piazza San Marco.

  Finding the house itself had been easy. Everyone in the Calle Magazzin knew the palazzo of the Damaskinos family.

  Nika lifted the door knocker to knock on the door. It was a heavy brass lion’s paw. She knocked once more, harder.

  An elderly woman opened the door.

  “Good day,” Nika said, “I’d like to speak with Signor Damaskinos or the signora.”

  The woman asked, “Who may I say is calling?”

  “Nika Damaskinos,” Nika said boldly.

  The woman, whose face was not discernible in the dark of the hallway, was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Wait here, please,” in a voice that was as inscrutable as her face. “I’ll ask whether someone here will see you.” She closed the large door, and one could hear her steps receding.

  Nika stood there in the afternoon heat. She touched the locket at her throat. So this was her family’s house, and this the city of her origin, her country.

  The tall door had iron fittings; it opened again. “Come in,” the woman said, “I’ll take you to the master of the house. Signor Damaskinos doesn’t have much time and says he has never heard of you.” The servant, bent with age, led Nika up to the second floor.

  A large room opened up before her. A splendid chandelier made of milky glass hung from the high wooden ceiling. Carpets covered the marble floor. The woman pointed to a sofa standing against the wall directly by the stairway. Then she disappeared through one of the doors leading to various other rooms. Nika sat there, a petitioner, a beggar in the house of her parents and grandparents. The coolness enveloped her.

  An old man came through one of the doors, approached Nika, and looked her up and down with keen, penetrating eyes. She rose, but he had his arms crossed at his back and did not extend his hand to her.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked icily and took a step back as if to observe her better that way.

  “Good afternoon,” Nika said, and when he didn’t return her greeting, she continued. “My name is Nika. Twenty years ago, I was abandoned with this locket by a young woman and her companion—at a post coach station in the mountains in Switzerland. No one could tell me who my mother was or what family I belonged to. But Count Primoli recognized the heraldic emblem on this locket.” She gathered all her courage, looked straight at the man’s expressionless face, and said, “That’s why I’m here. My name is Nika Damaskinos.”

  The man laughed out loud. “A lot of people would like to claim the name Damaskinos. It is an old and venerable name and smells of money.” The man laughed again, but by now his face had assumed a menacing expression. “My daughter is dead, and she had only two sons. Show me your locket!” He gestured for her to take off the piece of jewelry. But Nika only held the locket, still on its chain around her neck, out to him. The man bent down; the corners of his mouth twitched. Nika took heart. Yes, he did recognize the coat of arms; she was quite sure of that. Now the ghastly business would end, and he would look at her in a friendlier way.

  But instead, he grabbed the chain as if he wanted to tear it off her neck. Instinctively Nika took a step backward.

  “You little thief!” the man cried. “What an outrage! Back then, my daughter said that the locket had been stolen on the trip. And now, after all these years you want to profit from the theft—whoever may have been the actual thief at the time . . .” He reached for the bell to call the servants. But before he could grab Nika with his other hand, she ran down the palazzo stairway and out into the street. Turning into Calle Moruzzi, she disappeared into the crowd.

  In no time, she had lost her sense of direction. She seemed to be going in circles, seemed to keep turning into the same campo, each time closer to exhaustion. When a little barking dog jumped toward her, Nika, already perplexed and confused, was scared out of her wits and began to tremble. She started to run, panic-stricken. Crossing the Grand Canal, she realized she had never been in this part of the city. But here, too, the labyrinth was endless, the light shimmered on the canals, one bridge followed another.

  At last, she was in a square dominated by the brick façade of an enormous church. The wings of the church door were open. She entered the gentle dusk of the nave and sank down in one of the pews. At the front, at the altar, a priest was reading the evening Mass. Enveloped by the murmuring of the faithful, Nika’s head dropped forward in weariness.

  The church eventually emptied; the last white-robed altar boy disappeared into the sacristy; only the faint aroma of incense wafted like a soft
evening mist through the nave.

  Nika dragged herself to one of the side chapels. Candles intended to carry the prayers of the faithful up to heaven threw their flickering light on a young Madonna looking down on her from the altarpiece. She had reddish-blonde hair, just like Nika.

  The next morning Nika awoke with a start and jumped out of the pew when the sacristan opened the door of the Basilica dei Frari to let in the old, insomnia-plagued men and women for early Mass. It took her a while to realize where she was. The picture she had looked at the night before was now deep in the shadows.

  Nika’s face glowed with fever, and she was tortured by thirst. She needed help, a doctor. She had to find Fabrizio . . . Yes, she wanted to go to Fabrizio. When she left the pension that morning, she had taken his address along, as if to protect her in this strange city. Nika staggered toward the door. The daylight was dazzling; she closed her eyes and walked blindly a few steps onto the campo. Then she saw a young man coming toward her from the café across the way. She had seen that face before. It was a pleasant face, but now it looked surprised, shocked.

  “Signorina,” the young man with the brown eyes called out, “what a surprise to see you again so soon!”

  But Nika did not hear what he said. She had fainted.

  Later, Nika remembered hardly anything of the two weeks that followed that morning. Only scraps of recognition penetrated her fever, a cup being held to her lips, cool sheets whenever the bed linens were changed. Again and again, she saw the face with the brown eyes, bending over her with concern. At some point, some words did get through to her: “I’m Fabrizio . . . Fabrizio . . . Do you remember me?”

  It was many days before she nodded in answer to his question. “We met at the Spa Hotel Maloja,” he said. “I was there with Count Primoli . . .”

  Then her mind cleared, and after a long time of accepting only fluids, she began to eat solid food again.

  She didn’t see Fabrizio in the daytime. A servant named Paolina cared for her during those hours. But mostly Nika just lay there, her eyes closed.