Juggling the Stars (2 page)

‘Where d'you live then? Out of town?' Stan was a teacher at the school, from California.

‘Montorio.'

‘Montorio?' The American's accent murdered the name. And he had been in Italy twice, three times as long as himself, Morris thought. He felt pleasantly superior. Enough to keep him affable anyway.

‘Where the hell's that?'

Morris said it was at the end of the bus line, seven kilometres away.

‘Aren't you a bit lonesome out there on your own, man? I could find you a place in the centre if you like. That Susie's got a spare bed in her place. She's looking for somebody to move in. Cheap too. Bouncy girl. Could be fun.'

Stan was trying to be friendly and Morris should have been grateful. The American was grinning in a welcoming sort of way and obviously imagined that Morris was just shy. ‘Got to stick together, us immigrants,' he laughed. ‘Brits and Merks the same. Otherwise we'll get lost in this place with all these Eyeties.'

Morris kept his peace.

‘Bunch of us are going down to Naples for Easter if you're interested. Wanna come?'

‘How are you travelling?' Morris asked politely.

‘Hitching it, in pairs, then meeting up there. But we've got one too many girls right now, so if you want to tag along …'

The arrival of the bus spared Morris another refusal. He jumped on, savouring the pleasant lightness of his body as he skipped over the steep steps, punched his ticket, sat down and closed his eyes.

He had chosen to live out in Montorio precisely because of its isolation from the rest of the English community. They lived for the most part in an extremely dilapidated section near the centre of town. They had a fixation on living in the centre, feeling part of old Italy, near the art museums and chic shops (otherwise why on earth had they bothered to come?), and seeing as the prices of any property in the nicer areas of the centre were quite exorbitant, they settled very happily for ramshackle and dingy bedsits in the decadent and often foul-smelling area around Ponte Pietra. Morris too would very much have liked to live in the centre, but only in the more elegant, well-to-do areas and certainly not amongst a feckless group of fellow immigrants. He had chosen his flat in Montorio because it was modern and practical and not, by Italian standards, too horrifically furnished. He had removed all the bargain madonnas and supermarket crucifixes on arrival, and now the walls were thankfully bare, apart from one or two tasteful prints a rich student had given him, plus the spotlights he had wired up in every corner to make the place bright and very white.

Morris sat down on the high kitchen stool to eat a supper of parmesan and dry bread from off the counter, washed down with a glass of Valpolicella. He fiddled with an old valve radio and listened to a quiz show on the BBC World Service. Reception wasn't very clear tonight and the programme was awful. It made Morris wince with its utter inanity, but he forced himself to listen as a sort of medicine almost.-Nothing better than reminding yourself you'd done the right thing leaving the place.

Then, at quarter to ten, he telephoned Massimina. Just before it was too late, in fact, because she would be off to bed any minute. After the rest, the food and a change of socks and shoes, his Italian was near perfect and quite ready to confront the mother should there be any trouble.

Morris had met Massimina in one of the courses he taught at the school, a hopeless student despite her great show of diligence and then the exam that loomed for her at the Liceo. She caught a bus home from the same bus stop as Morris and noticing that she had taken a strong liking to him and that she was pleasant, well-mannered and shy, Morris had got into the habit of offering her a glass of wine in a bar during the half-hour wait they both had. Massimina had a wide, open face, freckled and friendly, and in reply to Morris's detailed questions about her home and family she replied with such a generous account of provincial riches that Morris had taken her out to the cinema on a number of occasions (when there was a film he particularly wanted to see) and every time they said goodbye he held her hands and kissed her carefully on both shy and freckled cheeks.
‘Morrees!'
she said. ‘Morrees, quanto sei dolce!' She was just seventeen and a half, with a slim but generous figure, and she was failing in every subject at the Liceo Classico.

The previous Friday evening Morris had asked her to become his
fidanzata
.

It was big sister answered the phone, Antonella.

‘Was it you sent the flowers?' she asked, rather coldly Morris thought. And then, who else?

‘Did she like them?' he demanded, and got the tone just right, he thought. Eager, a trifle breathless. Quite indifferent as to what big sister might think.

But obviously Massimina had liked them, because now she was wrestling the phone from her sister.

‘Morri!'

‘Caral!

Ti
ringrazio tantissimo, tantissimo, sono bellissimi, mai visto fiori cost belli.'

Two lessons' worth, Morris thought. The worst of all seasons for roses. But at least they seemed to have done the trick. Morris wasn't actually sure whether he really would marry Massimina, even if her family were to let it go that far. He imagined probably not. He'd have to be crazy. Yet he was tantalized. And it wasn't pure mischievousness, it really wasn't. He wanted to test the water, to see if such a thing was feasible, to see if in the final analysis he might expect to save himself in this way. He had had a growing sensation of late that something was changing inside himself, that new paths of action were opening to him, paths that in the past he would simply never have dreamed of. Even that silly business with the document case, for example. It was as if a fundamental inhibition had finally been removed.

‘Scusami cara?'
He had lost track of what Massimina was saying.

Her mother wanted to meet him, have a word about it all.

'Fine. When?'

‘She says as soon as possible, Morrees. Like tomorrow night. She'd like you to come over to dinner. She's a bit concerned, not having met you and so on.'

He was working late tomorrow, Morris said. Clearly that was the right impression to give. Hard-working man.

'The next night then, or Friday?'

Morris thought quickly. He was going to have to charm the pants off the old battle-axe, obviously. And he could do it. He really could. He was feeling very confident in that department these days. The only thing was, to go when
he
felt up to it. Not when they wanted.

'The thing is Mamma says I'm not to go to any more lessons untill she's approved of you!' Massimina wailed, and was clearly upset. Morris was really beginning to like the girl. She wasn't at all like those tweed-skirted, toffee-nosed types one had felt obliged to court in one's student days, always ready to air some opinionated opinion on any and every subject, the spirit of contradiction prompt and bristling under their powdered Oxbridge skins should.you try to do the same. He'd be over there Wednesday, he promised, voice as soft as it could go. Or absolute maximum, Thursday.

Morris's large blue Moroccan leather diary was dated 1977, but the days of the week were the same as for 1983. He had found the thing in his little flat along with various other papers left by the late last tenant. After marking off lessons done and earnings taken, Morris sat in the bath and considered tomorrow. The same rush around town. The school twice, then Alberto, then the school again, Matilde, the school again. In the morning he must do something about the zip on his best trousers., get some cream for the document case, get some food, cheese, bread, some more dish-washing liquid, something for his dandruff (him, Morris, with dandruff!) and some more tickets for the bus of course. He soaped shaved armpits, tracing time-saving itineraries across an imaginary map of the city.

No, it was awful. He was living from hand to mouth, from one day to the next, one month to another, week in week out. From the point of view of career, social advances, financial gain, the last two and a half years had been completely wasted. More than that, they had left him physically exhausted and mentally addled by all these stupid lessons, besieged by boredom and mediocrity. Did he have one bright student? Even one? Was there any of them recognized Morris's uncommon talents (the way he could make up exercises on the spot, invent the wildest stories for listening comprehension)? Did any of them have any idea of his calibre? No, the only thing he had truly gained these last two years was the ability to speak a foreign language near perfectly and the curious freedom that ability now appeared to give him in the way he thought. As if he had shifted off rails. His mind seemed to roam free now over any and every possibility. He must make a big effort always to think in Italian as well as speak it, Morris thought. It could be a way out of himself and out of the trap they had all and always wanted him to fall into.

Twisting the wax out of his ear with a Q tip, Morris considered himself in the mirror. Yes, perhaps it was precisely the change of language that had slowly been altering his way of thinking. (Had he been thinking in Italian when he stole the document case?) His blue eyes glared at themselves in a mirror that was misting. ‘Dr-r-rarudge!' he said, but with a smile about the corner of his lips now, a slight baring of long teeth. It seemed a new smile to Morris. He really couldn't remember having seen that particular smile there before. So much inside oneself one didn't know about.
‘Cara Massimina,'
he mouthed,
‘cara, cara, Massimina,
' and he felt rather pleased with himself.

‘Dear Dad, you remember you always used to go on at me about having my eyes on the ground? You used to put a fist in my back, cup your hand under my chin and force me upright. You said studying would turn me into a worm.'

Morris paused, clicking off the dictaphone and using it to scratch an itch behind his ear. What was he trying to get at?

‘You said I looked like a spina bifida case the way I was always bent over reading. I said you were hardly bloody Adonis yourself. You didn't know who Adonis was but you belted me for swearing all the same. As if you never did.'

This was tedious: infant-trauma-equals-adult-misbehaviour stuff. Never been convinced of that. And yet at the same time he did feel vaguely excited. Explaining yourself was always exciting. Especially when there was some new evidence to hand.

That new smile, this new idea.

‘And then when I was about fifteen and did start taking care of myself and using aftershave (like Gregorio!) and combing and trying to walk with my chest out and bum held in, you said I was a pansy. (Why was that particular word so wounding?) So that I couldn't win either way.'

In the end, of course it was quite simply a question of identity. Morris the good boy, the greaser, mother's helper, the bumsucker, the social climber, the masterly filler-in-of-forms, struggling from terraced Acton and dumb unionized dad to Cambridge lawns - champers and prawns - or Morris the rejected, the despised, the hard-done-by, miss is as good as a mile, irretrievably alienated (at least the ILEA had given you the words), determined to take revenge.

‘Revenge, Dad. Because …'

One was both of course, both Morrises, and yet the two personalities were not easy to combine.

I … because you were right about having my eyes on the ground. At least metaphorically. (I think I stand up a great deal straighter than you, actually.) I'd swallowed the English society.is-a-meritocracy line. I was studying to get out, to get up. To get out of our crappy mediocre house, our ugly street. Away from your beer-drinking, farting, darts friends. And instead if I'd looked around I'd've seen I could study till doomsday and never lift my head an inch out of the shit.'

Morris stared. The sheets he lay in were so gritty they were almost sandpaper, and yet the idea of washing them seemed quite insurmountably tiring and tiresome. What he really needed in the end of course was a maid. Or a wife? He smiled wryly and wondered if it was that new smile he had come out with in the bathroom. Or even a mother.

'You remember when Mother died you said I should go right out and work and not fart about studying pansy things like …'

No, that was wrong. That was the wrong tone altogether. And he'd let himself be driven off course. He was supposed to be developing this looking-down idea. He wasn't concentrating. Morris wound the tape back a little and rolled over. He felt warm and comfortable on his stomach in green cotton pyjamas.

‘I was ashamed of you. I …'

Oh God.

‘Mother understood. Mother …'

No, keep off Mother. Anyway, she hadn't understood. So damned religious. Mother, Morris appreciated this now, had only sided with him over studying because she somehow felt it was virtuous (probably because it seemed to involve mortification of the flesh) and hence associated with religion, which was the weapon she opposed to Dad's drinking. When you got down to it, both of them had tussled over his future the same way they'd argue what colour to paint the walls in the loo. Or whether to have sex or not.

‘Anyway the point is there's been a change of heart. I'm going to look up, look sharp. Italy's a funny place and it's taught me a lot of things. But most of all it's brought me round to your form of socialism, though not in the way you understand it. The rich deserve everything we can hit them with and I'm going to start hitting just as soon as I can.'

No, that was awfully shrill. That wasn't right at all. It didn't say why he had stolen the document case, or started this strange courtship with Massimina. After all, he really rather admired the taste of the Italian upper classes. It was joining them, not beating them was the problem, living artistically as they lived, with style, with flair. Whereas Dad hated the rich because he didn't want to be like them. He hadn't explained himself at all.

Start again then.