Portrait of a Girl

by Binkert, Dörthe

  Fabrizio came and went. And came again. That was good. She would smile when he sat down next to her bed, then close her eyes again. He read, filed papers, corrected texts, and would leave her bedside to sleep. Once she stretched her hand out for him just as he was about to quietly leave the room. He saw her gesture, came back, took the outstretched hand in his, and stroked her forehead with his other hand. She drew him closer, whispered, “Fabrizio?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “It’s a beautiful name,” she murmured and contentedly turned her face away.

  Another time she woke up and wished he were lying next to her. But how was she to tell him?

  She didn’t even ask him about the pension where she had stayed. Only when she saw the bundle with her few things in a corner of the room did she remember that she had even been there. Now, gradually, she began to ask questions.

  “The pension . . .”

  “You had the address in your pocket. Probably because you were afraid of not finding it again. We had your things picked up from there.”

  “We . . .?”

  Fabrizio laughed. “We, my parents and myself. You are in my home. You also had my address in your pocket, but I found you before you could come here.”

  Nika shook her head, incredulous. “But I was in a church . . .”

  He laughed again.

  “The Chiesa dei Frari is just around the corner from here. I usually have breakfast at the bar across the way. And as I was leaving the bar that morning to go to work at the newspaper, you fell into my arms without even saying good morning.”

  Nika did not remember.

  Fabrizio was so glad she was feeling better that he couldn’t suppress teasing her gently. “Yes, that’s the way it goes. As soon as you see me, you simply fall into my arms. But from now on you won’t need to faint when you do it.”

  “And so you ran out of the Palazzo Damaskinos?” Fabrizio asked. He’d looked at her with concern for the entire time she’d been recounting her story.

  “Yes,” Nika replied.

  “Your grandfather accused you of being a thief?”

  Nika nodded.

  “And that’s when you ran away.” She nodded again.

  “You probably run away quite a lot. You also ran away from Mulegns.”

  She tried to interrupt him.

  “It’s all right. Don’t get upset.” He was gradually beginning make sense of Nika’s story.

  “But now,” he said, “now you don’t need to run away anymore.”

  “Oh yes!” she cried. “I told you what happened. They don’t want me here in this city.”

  She was really from another world. “Venice isn’t Maloja, where one man believes he can decide whether you may stay there or not.” He didn’t mention Segantini by name, but added with satisfaction, “And even there he couldn’t have. Venice is a big city. The Damaskinos family doesn’t have the right to decide who may enter the city and who must leave.”

  “But they can have me arrested as a thief!”

  “Nonsense.” Fabrizio shook his head. “They have no proof that the locket was stolen. But you can prove that you were abandoned in Mulegns—with the locket. Because you have witnesses you can call on.”

  Nika said nothing.

  “And in spite of that, you’d still like to run away?”

  She nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t belong anywhere. Not even in my parents’ home.”

  Fabrizio got angry. “But you don’t stay a child your whole life long. At some point every human being has to grow up and take responsibility for his or her own life.”

  “I’ve waited so many years for this moment,” she said, “for the time when I would belong somewhere. To have a family like other people. You don’t seem to understand.”

  “Buon giorno,” Nika said, as the bent-over woman opened the tall portal of the palazzo. “You probably don’t recognize me. A few weeks ago I knocked on the door and asked to speak with Signor Damaskinos.”

  The woman nodded hesitantly.

  “Today, I don’t want to speak to him, but to you.”

  The woman, uneasy and anxious, stepped out into the street. “Come,” she said, taking Nika’s arm. “Let’s go a few steps away from the house.”

  She led Nika to the Campo San Zaccaria, where they could sit down.

  “Now you can ask me what you want to ask.”

  “Perhaps you already know the question I want to ask.”

  Nika showed her the locket. “They found me in the Swiss Alps, along with this and a sum of money. I was a baby. Abandoned by a young woman and her companion; they were going to Silvaplana in the Engadine on the post coach.”

  The woman still didn’t say anything, even though Nika paused at the end of each sentence. “I grew up in that village. In the house of a farmer, who took the money and made me work on his farm.”

  “I was your mother’s companion,” the women now said, haltingly. “I was her servant from the time she was a young girl. I spent two years traveling with her on an educational trip through Europe. The Damaskinos family is an old merchant family. And we were welcomed everywhere, in the best houses, by her father’s respected business associates. Xenia was beautiful and kind. Her father probably hoped that she would marry one of the sons of his foreign business partners. But your mother got pregnant and never revealed the man’s name.”

  People were walking across the square; a cat chased some sparrows; a dog, lying in the shade outside a shop, yawned. Nika sat still, not moving. Suddenly she felt wonderfully relieved. Whatever her mother had done, she had existed. Like everyone else, Nika had a mother whom someone could tell her about.

  “Xenia’s father is . . .” the woman broke off. “In any case, Xenia was terribly afraid to have him discover the truth. We decided that she would have the child . . .”

  “. . . and then abandon it,” Nika completed the sentence.

  The woman nodded. “It was the only solution.”

  “Maybe. How did my mother die?”

  “Soon after her return, Xenia married a Venetian, a younger friend of her grandfather’s. She bore two sons in quick succession. She never spoke about you with anyone. I don’t know how happy or unhappy she was. She didn’t talk about that either. In 1884, there was a cholera epidemic in Naples. The plague spread quickly, to Venice too. The sirocco, the many travelers. Your mother died of cholera in 1884. Both the boys were still very small. They grew up with Signor Damaskinos, their grandfather.”

  Now Nika and the old woman were both silent.

  “It’s a sad story,” Nika said finally. “But I am glad that I heard it.”

  The woman got up from the bench. “I have to go back inside now,” she said, and then, uncertain, “would you like a photograph of your mother?”

  Nika looked at her in surprise. Of course there were photographs! She nodded, “Yes, I would like that.”

  “Then wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  And with her bent back, the servant hurried off.

  Nika was still holding the sepia-colored photo of her mother. Achille Robustelli saw she was struggling to hold back her tears.

  “No,” Nika said. “My family did not accept me. It was stupid of me to think that they would be happy about my turning up. It wasn’t a nice moment; believe me, it was horrible . . .”

  At this point Achille Robustelli got up, drew Nika from her chair, and took her in his arms. It was the most natural thing in the world for him to do. “You’re alive. You’re here. You’re beautiful. Segantini always admired your beauty. And Signor Bonin is probably waiting for you.”

  Nika smiled, “How did you know . . .?”

  “You came into the hotel on his arm. I saw the carriage arrive.” He didn’t look happy as he said this, and that’s why she interrupted
him.

  “And how are things with Andrina?”

  “Nothing’s going on with Andrina,” he said. “At the moment, she’s in Milan. Moreover, Segantini no longer comes here for supper. He’s been up on the Schafberg for several days already, painting.”

  Nika turned her head away. “I have to leave now and freshen up for the evening,” she said simply. “And from now on I’m going to call you Achille. Now that I finally saw you again after all this time.”

  Carefully, Benedetta put aside the scarf Nika had brought her from Venice. “You can stay in the house overnight, if you like,” she said. “Gian is at my sister’s in Soglio.”

  “What is he doing? How is he?” Nika asked.

  Benedetta shook her head. “We don’t know if it’s going well, but he has a girl. Flurina, from the laundry. You don’t know her. She wasn’t there yet when you worked at the hotel.”

  “But that’s wonderful!” Nika cried.

  “We’ll see,” Benedetta said. “If the same thing happens as with Andrina, then it isn’t so wonderful.”

  “Signor Robustelli told me that Andrina is in Milan.”

  “You might say it that way. He married her. Not that I was ever for that. But no sooner was she married than she ran away from him. It’s a shame! She used him, that’s all. She ran away with a rich hotel guest.” Benedetta drank her coffee and pushed the cup away. “How the world has changed. I should have said, I don’t want Aldo anymore.”

  “But you do want him,” Nika said soothingly.

  “Easy to say that, hard to live it,” Benedetta said, and crossed herself.

  Nika looked around the kitchen wistfully. “Do you still remember, Benedetta, when you bandaged my ankle? At first you didn’t want to have me around, and then you took care of me like a mother.”

  “Never mind, you paid for your meals, after all,” Benedetta growled. “And what are you living on in Venice? Roast pigeons don’t exactly fly into your mouth there.”

  This was something Nika knew very well. After her arrival in Venice and as soon as she was feeling a little better, she had begun to wonder what to do next. She needed work. Venice was a favorite tourist destination; there were many hotels and pensions, and Nika had a good reference from Signor Robustelli. The simplest thing would be to ask around for work in the hotels and pensions. But Nika wondered whether there wasn’t another way to approach it. She missed drawing, and yet she knew that without some instruction she wouldn’t get any further. And it was expensive to buy drawing paper, canvas, and paints. There were several art academies in Venice. But how was she to pay for her education?

  Ever since the old servant had given her the photo of her mother, a new idea had been taking shape in her mind. She remembered Count Primoli’s photographs, and how enthusiastic she had been about them, along with her conversation with Fabrizio about the modern trendsetting art of photography. She recalled his saying that in Venice, a photographer could earn a decent living. And she thought how happy she herself was that photographs existed. In his photograph of her mother, Antonio Sorgato’s art had given her an invaluable gift.

  And so, one day she went to the Campiello del Vin, the address of the photography studio that was on the back of the picture she’d been given of her mother.

  The shop was still there, but they told her that Antonio Sorgato had died years ago. She left the store in disappointment and walked slowly across the Riva degli Schiavoni toward the Piazza San Marco. And suddenly—because you’re more likely to find something that you’re already looking for—she noticed that the street was lined by photo studios, one next to the other. Photography was apparently a lucrative art. Especially here, in this place that everyone wanted to remember.

  She plucked up her courage, turned around, and walked back to the studio. She asked to see the new owner of the Sorgato Photography Studio. It was the owner himself behind the counter, Signor Filippi. Business was so good that he had to help out in the shop, even though he should have been working in the studio. Consequently, he wasn’t averse to hiring an assistant, even if it should happen to be a female one. And since Nika would present a pleasant personality and perhaps even promote sales in his store, he agreed to employ her beginning the following week. When Nika asked whether he would be willing to train her as a photographer, he said, if she showed talent, then there was nothing to stand in the way. In that early period of enthusiastic intoxication with the technique of reproduction, the world could use a lot of photographers—why not female ones too?

  Nika left Signor Filippi’s store with a feeling of elation such as she’d had only once before—back when she first learned to read and write.

  Ecstatic with joy, she bought a bag of bird food and fed the pigeons on the Piazza San Marco. And for the first time in her life, she went to a bar and ordered a glass of Spumante. The cannons sounded from San Giorgio Maggiore, the signal that it was noon, and Nika suddenly felt a great longing for Fabrizio Bonin. She swept all hesitation aside and looked him up. She found him in a small trattoria right near the newspaper building. She stepped up to him with a happy smile and said, “You can send me away too . . .”

  He got up in surprise, but she had already kissed him on the lips. They tasted of sea and the spicy peperoncini that the cook in this restaurant favored.

  “Why should I send you away?” Fabrizio asked and kissed her in turn.

  “I don’t know,” Nika said. “I’m used to it.”

  A few weeks later, she found a modest room she could afford. She was self-supporting.

  “I’ve become a photographer,” Nika said, and Benedetta looked at her as if she didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Are you staying for dinner?” she asked, quickly returning to familiar ground.

  Nika shook her head. “No. I’m sleeping in the hotel. I didn’t know that you had room here. But couldn’t we go to visit Gian together before I leave?”

  Benedetta put on her skeptical expression. “Now that he finally has a girl? He’ll get all mixed up.”

  Mathilde was blushing as she held out her hand to James, but instead of taking it, he drew her to him and kissed her on both cheeks.

  “I brought you something,” he whispered in her ear. “I thought you might like to have the photos I took of you . . .”

  “But you have to destroy the negatives,” she hissed back softly. Sometimes, with a certain sadness, she still remembered that hot summer afternoon in St. Moritz.

  Edward turned his gaze discreetly aside, busying himself with Betsy as he had done back then at their picnic on Lake Staz, so that James and Mathilde could have an undisturbed moment. He trusted Mathilde, and to a certain extent, he trusted his friend too.

  Betsy wanted to take a walk with Mathilde before supper. “Tilda, come on,” she called to her impatiently. “Who knows when you’ll be in Switzerland again. I have so many questions to ask you!”

  Betsy was incredibly anxious to find out if Mathilde was pregnant. Her sister Emma had hinted at something of that nature.

  Edward, on the other hand, knew that James would applaud enthusiastically once he found out that his old schoolmate had pruned back his obsession with plants—it was now just a hobby. After all, Edward had Mathilde to take care of and look after and had therefore returned to his work at the Art Institute.

  His father and his father-in-law, moreover, were both very happy about Edward and Mathilde’s marriage. Ever since the wedding, Schobinger, the contractor, had been furnishing his buildings exclusively with bathroom appliances produced by Edward’s father. The English baths, it was said, were the best of their time. Edward’s relationship with his mother-in-law, however, had remained somewhat cool. Emma Schobinger clearly would have preferred an elevation into the banking circles of Zurich. England, after all, was a very unfamiliar land.

  Nika also took a walk. She went down to the lake, to the place Gian had fi
rst taken her and where Segantini had first seen her. But the lake was not a mirror today; the surface was choppy; you could still see down to the bottom, but you couldn’t see the reflection of your own face.

  Segantini wasn’t coming to the friends’ get-together. His staying away had nothing to do with her; he couldn’t have known that Nika would be there too. Nika sat down on the bench she had sat on when he sent her away. He had been quite cruel in pushing her to follow her own path. She had gone her own way, just as he had, but she had done it in her own fashion.

  Suddenly she felt as if Segantini were standing at the shore of the lake. There were rings in the water, just like the time he’d picked up a flat pebble and thrown it so skillfully that it hopped across the water with several jumps.

  “You were right,” she whispered, hardly caring that she was speaking to nothing more than the wind. “Although I didn’t forgive you for a long time. The locket led me to my family, but they didn’t want me. The hope of finding my family was what had helped me survive for so many years! What happens when you realize that your hope will never be fulfilled?”

  She thought she heard Segantini laugh, “That’s life.”

  Nika was lost in thought.

  “I have to go,” she seemed to hear him say.

  “Wait!” she cried. “Only a minute more!” But it was as if Segantini was no longer listening.

  The ghostly image she had seen so clearly faded. “Stick to art, Nika.” His words floated across to her. “It consoles the one who creates it as well as those who look at it.”

  Nika sobbed.

  “Signor Segantini, I wanted so much to tell you that I’m happy. You climbed up into the light. But I long for the darkroom where my pictures are created, pictures that capture the face of the world in my way.”

  She got up and walked slowly back to the hotel. “I look for the darkness in the light, and in the darkness, I look for the light,” she said. She hoped he could hear her.

  Even as Nika thought she saw him once more clearly before her, Giovanni Segantini lay dying in an alpine hut up on the Schafberg above Pontresina.