A Life Apart (14 page)

Now I would walk up to the nettle-tree house laden with my discoveries, and Signora De Lellis listened, moving her head backwards and forwards a little or shaking it as if to chase away a bothering thought. Then, in swift episodes, she would regale me with her own memories:

“At night, as she sat on the bench in the street between the two rivers, your mother would speak of this sweet child of hers, named Rebecca. When you were very small, they would sit you on the softest blue cashmere blanket, moving it from room to room to keep an eye on you. They would surround you with toys and teddy bears larger than you were, and you would look around like a fledgling penguin, tiny, your hair like a spiky little crown of black feathers. And she would talk about her own self chained to the rock of her dark sickness, stranded on an island that was near enough for her to see you but too far for her to reach out and touch you, her soul dripped dry by each look that your eyes did not dare give her. She would speak of her own lips, heavy as stone, that could not tell you the story of Prince Charming because she knew that there are no princes and that stories can hurt so much. And your voice was like an unheard song. She could see your uncertain steps, and she really had wanted to stretch her arms out and to support you and stop you from falling. And not only support you, but hold you in her arms and take you upstairs in the evening with laughter and little bouncing steps, and lightly place you on your
bed, dizzy with happy flights. But she had not been able to. She had raised her arms, she had stretched them out, oh how she had stretched them! She had thrown herself forward crying out help, help me, my little girl is falling. But the shores of the island on which she was a prisoner had suddenly drawn back, and the water gulf had grown wider and deeper. She had been unable to save you, and everyone around her said she had not wanted to, no-one had seen her raised arms or heard the cry of her will. How could none of them see that water was her enemy?”

The end of my last year at secondary school came quickly and found me distracted, unprepared for what would happen next.

I asked my father what could be done about me and he did not understand. About my looks, I explained. A long silence stretched between us. And then he said that yes, he would think about it carefully, something could certainly be done. He did not speak of that again, but the company of that half-promise was enough for me to feel lighter as I climbed the staircase in Contrà Riale, and to sometimes be able to look into my teachers' eyes.

At home I was lovingly tending the lavender and daisies I had planted in large pots and placed on every balcony, just as I had seen in my mother's watercolours. To speed up the final results, I had asked Maddalena to buy large daisies in first bloom, and already the white corollas could be seen, shining luminous against the silvery grey of lavender leaves and the light grey of the stone. Hidden by the parapet as I worked around the plant pots and arranged the daisies so they would spill out over the ledge, I could hear passers-by commenting admiringly on the effect and wondering who might be bringing that old palazzo back to life.

“I think the most appropriate decision, and surely the best for your child, is to stop exposing her to this environment, in which her behaviour is already – how shall I put it – notorious. Though of course, Doctor, we will do everything we can, you have my word, and after all that is in our own interest too, you understand, absolutely everything, as I say, to stop any news of this matter ever spreading. God forbid that anyone outside might ever know. For everyone's sake, and for the sake of each child, too. First and foremost, I have Mrs Albina's word. She was the one who found your child in a – how shall I put it – a very explicit position. And in a place where she was not supposed to be – but we shall not speak of that, of course. Yes, it was the music room: the place the child might have found – how shall I put it – most congenial? And Mrs Tramarini, she is one of our teachers, she was the one who helped Mrs Albina to – how shall I put it – clean the child up, wash her I mean … she has also promised to be very careful with her words. She told me she is one of your patients, and that she has very much respect for you, very much gratitude. As for the other children – leave them to me! I know how to deal with them, how to ensure their silence. They are only a few days away from their final secondary school exams: none will speak now. And none will speak later: they will forget, I know they will. I know them very well. Children forget everything, they have a whole life in front of them! And for them too, it's a question of respect: they know your
child is a – how shall I put it – a special case, yes, really a special case. And that is why they have always treated her normally, as confirmed by the fact that I have never received any complaints, either from you, or from the child, of course, and she is here, she can confirm that. The children too understand that it is her – her particular nature that has brought her to behave in that way. But on the other hand you do understand that this is an educational environment. Parents entrust us with their children and we must indeed ensure that they are well respected. That is due to everybody. And for that reason, your child too must tell the truth, of course. That is also a form of respect, as must be very clear. She did entice them. And in fact there has been a certain effrontery in the child's behaviour of late, as you must have noticed? A certain brazen attitude that was – rather extraordinary, in fact. All the children in her class are well-behaved. All from good families: you will certainly know most of them. And there were girls in the room as well. You understand, Doctor, that if there were any truth in what your child is saying, well, she could have cried out: Mrs Albina would have heard her from the bottom of the stairs, just as she saw everyone leaving the music room afterwards: she had been there for ten minutes, she says. From halfway through the break, so as to check that the children would take care on the staircase, you know how they are always running up and down. And of course she would have gone up to the room, as in fact she did afterwards: slowly and heavily, as you understand, poor woman. But the child did not cry out, did not call out. She had enticed the others, out of some … some impulse, I mean. You are a doctor, you will understand this kind of thing. And seeing that she had not
got what she wanted, she staged a crisis and began to roll on the floor, just as she was, without – without any clothes on, I mean. And that's where Mrs Albina – poor woman – found her. Now for everyone's sake, you will agree, Doctor, the child will not be … reported, I mean. I would never want things to go that far. We want to do what's best for her, as well as for the school and for each child, of course. Truth be told, we might have a small problem: as you must surely know, one of the children is the son of the chief of police, and his father might well demand a formal report against your child – you know how it is, he has precise duties, it's the law. But I have spoken to him on the telephone: it was a matter of taking counsel, of doing the right thing, you understand. And he has assured me that the matter will be kept entirely confidential. Out of consideration for your good name, Doctor. The chief tells me that you have delivered all his children: three, I think, plus the one who is studying here at the school. He's from the South, you know – large families. Consideration also for the school's and everyone else's good name. As you can see there is no … no intention to prosecute, I mean. We are here to find the best solution for each and for all. Including your child, you understand. And I dare say, I think with good reason, that it would be appropriate if your child did not sit her final exams here. All we need is a medical certificate from you. The law makes provisions for these cases, as you might know. A visiting examining board will come to your house – that's right, they will come straight to you. It's for her, for your girl's sake, first and foremost. As a man speaking to another, I am sure you understand, Doctor.”

“But what ac-tual-ly-hap-pen-ed in that room, Rebecca?”

Lucilla has stood up. She is sitting on the little stone balcony outside one of the French windows in the salon, swinging one leg and flicking the ash from her cigarette into the river. The tight skirt hugs her hips and waist, the shirt she is wearing seems to be on the point of bursting at the breast, the only memory left of the abundant shape she had as a child. There is something in her body that speaks to me, but I cannot tell what it is.

She becomes aware of my gaze:

“Since losing weight I've been unable to wear anything properly comfortable. It's like some sort of revenge. What happened, Rebecca?”

I am thinking that she calls me Rebecca, just like Miss Albertina had done, just like Signora De Lellis does.

“What about you?” I say, trying to buy time.

Lucilla crushes her cigarette into the ashtray she has placed on the ledge, then slides down and turns to look at the river, rocking backwards and forwards slightly on her spiky high heels. I recall her as a child, practising in front of the mirror, and think she is much better at keeping her balance now.

“After what happened, we moved to England, and went to live in York. My mother wanted somewhere far away, and thought she would find work as a translator. But she got a job in a cake shop instead, and now she has set up on her own.”

“She used to create marvellous cakes,” I say to fill the pause. “Angel cake with rose marmalade. Does she still make that?”

“It's her speciality. Her shop is called
Heaven's Drops
– a bit kitsch, but then so is she after all, don't you think? We moved to York after the trial. My mother got away with self-defence. What do you know about me?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I've been asking Maddalena for years. But she wouldn't say a word. I don't know anything at all.”

“They wouldn't believe me, and so they decided my mother had pushed him into the river in self-defence.”

“Did you do it?” I say, and even as I ask I realise that I have always known: she was always the one to solve problems.

“Yes. But the ex-perts testified that I-was-too-small, that I could never have been strong enough to push him off the balcony. They
all thought I wanted to protect my mother. I screamed it out withall-my-strength, that I'd done it myself. My mother in turn was screaming that I was crazy, that I had always made things up. I even grabbed one of the experts by the legs to show him how I did it. They had to give him thirteen stitches – right here, across the back of his head: I'd sent him crashing into the police filing cabinet. But that was no use.”

Lucilla turns around and opens her arms, as if to surround the former shape of her body: “They don't know how much strength a fat, desperate child can have.”

“Why?” I say.

“Because he-was-aw-ful. Because I'd make the world a better place.”

Lucilla pauses and breathes deeply, inhaling the mouldy smell that rises from old river weeds at summer's end.

“He wanted to come back into our lives. He was my father, he said, and that gave him some rights. And also because he'd hit my mother so hard in the belly that she could not get back up from the floor, and I thought she had died. That's why she got away with self-defence.”

She looks at me and shakes her blonde hair: she wears it sleek and short these days. I am thinking that it offsets her sharpened features and gives her a refined, aristocratic look.

“Miss Albertina went away too,” I say.

“She did. To escape from here. Too much gossip, see? She has always helped us. But she is not very far from us – didn't you know? She is head of a school in this province. She is ex-traor-dinari-ly good.”

“At primary school she saved my life,” I say.

“Yes. Mine too. My mother would never had pulled through without her: lawyers, defence, somewhere to stay. She even found her the job in York. I went to college in England.”

She pauses again, looks at me with the amused air that she took on when, back in school, she must ab-so-lu-tely tell me about something just when Miss Albertina was in the middle of a lesson.

“I studied singing,” she says in the end.

“Singing! Your passion for Schubert's
Lieder
!”

“That's right. Soprano. And I did learn German in the end. After the diploma I worked for a few months with a small baroque music ensemble. A few concerts here and there, then we disbanded: different directions. At the moment I'm unemployed – or ‘between jobs', as they say in England.”

I look at her and realise what I had sensed in her new look: she had the bearing typical of classical singers, that way of arranging the whole body around the gift of the voice, the shoulders slightly rounded to protect it, the breast generously offered to sustain it.

“I've always been here,” I say.

“I know. I know ev-ery-thing about you.”

“Did your Aunt Albertina tell you?”

“Yes, she did – and Maestro De Lellis too.”

“You know him!”

“Not directly. Aunt Albertina does, though: she got in touch with him after leaving. So she could always have news … of you.”

“But he's hardly …”

“A chatterbox? That's true. But my aunt has a way with people.

And in any case they did … well … understand each other, if you see what I mean.”

“That's where the Maestro went when I was watching over his mother!” I say in amazement, recalling the many days I had spent in the villa over the last few years, being company for Signora De Lellis.

“Yes: he didn't want to upset her, in her condition, he said. But things will be easier now: I know my aunt is applying for a transfer back to the city.”

I had kept in touch with Maestro De Lellis. After my final diploma in piano, I would often visit his house to play music with him. Signora De Lellis loved listening to us: she would glide around the room, her eyes half closed, following thoughts that her son believed to be uncertain and vague – but I knew better, and poured all my soul into those afternoons dedicated to her.

With Maddalena, I had helped her through the brief illness that took her from us in the end. And I still walked up to the nettle-tree house to visit and play music, but it had never occurred to me to ask Maestro De Lellis for news of Lucilla, because I was unaware of his relationship with Miss Albertina.

Darkness was falling over the Retrone, and a smoky scent already carrying an intimation of autumn came from the hills and spread densely over the water. In the hillside woods, farm workers were burning dried summer branches.

“Why did you never look for me?” I say, thinking of how the need for Lucilla's presence has cut me like a flesh wound thousands of times in the past years.

“I wasn't ready to come back. Too much sorrow, even for strong Lucilla,” she says, smiling as she lights another cigarette. I am thinking that she should not smoke.

“Many singers smoke – and anyway, these are the lightest.” She responds to my thoughts, just like she did in the past.

“What about now?”

“A year ago, in London, I thought I recognised your playing: it was the film on the post-war years in Germany – ‘Weimar', it was called. One of the main characters was listening to a concert from his favourite pianist, she was playing ‘Gaspard de la nuit': it was instant intuition, the way the pianist ended the piece just a fraction too sharply, like you would. But I had never heard you play that piece, and I thought it was just a moment's nostalgia on my part. Then last week I saw the film on Lili Boulanger and immediately realised that only you could play her music that way, those pieces so full of beauty and sorrow – and when you played ‘Pour les funérailles d'un soldat' I was ab-so-lu-tely certain: your way of eluding conclusion by sliding away in a rush of notes. And I also saw that the hands were yours. But your name was not in the credits.”

“I don't want it there. I have a stage name.”

“And so I asked Aunt Albertina, and she asked De Lellis, and then I knew. He had never told us.”

“It was a secret. I have my work. It was the last present from the old Signora.”

“The old Signora?”

“Signora De Lellis. She really had been very famous, and knew the right people. She said I am not at liberty to keep my … talent
to myself. So I lend my music to film actresses, when they play the part of pianists.”

“Your hands too,” Lucilla says.

“My hands too.”

“You will have to travel – for the recordings …”

“Perhaps. So far only in Italy – but yes, that will come.”

“And how do you like it?”

“It's work, but it's lovely. It feels good, and allows for a little dreaming.”

“She didn't have Pick's Disease, did she?”

“No, she didn't.”

“Aunt Albertina says her son always suspected as much.”