Lucca (39 page)

He put on a tape of Beethoven's late string quartets and sank into the music as they passed industrial complexes and the looping junctions to big cities. All those emotions, he thought. The music vibrated with them, rough, smooth, hoarse or trembling, singing in the warm soundboard of the instruments, like slim crystal glasses vibrating from the circling of a damp finger. So many emotions were involved there, but they had lost their faces, they were no longer elicited by something or directed towards anyone, swallowed up by the transforming power of music. Their anonymity was the price of his own feeling, sitting in his car surrounded by strange cars and road signs, factories and cities, and yet being recognised and exposed. They sat silently listening to the music linking the cities as did the endless asphalt. It had different meanings to them, the same music, as it vibrated through their heads, and that could only be because in itself it meant nothing at all.

The ease he had felt in the morning at the prospect of going away had been superseded by a drowsy flatness, but he did not feel heavy as he usually did when he was tired. Nor was it the monotonous driving that exhausted him. His ease had changed into a strange, weightless feeling, and it seemed as if the restless or lingering string instruments echoed inside him as in a cavity surrounded by porous walls. Suddenly it seemed unrealistic to be sitting in his car beside his one-time patient on the way to the town whose name she had been given. In the past few months he had not had time to fall back into vegetating as usual. When he got home from work she was there, whether they talked or she sat by herself on the terrace, and at weekends Lauritz came and filled the house with his toys and his high-pitched babbling. He saw more of her son than of his own daughter, and the boy was becoming dangerously attached to him.

When they returned to the car after tanking up and having coffee at a service station outside Wurzburg, she put on the radio before he could go back to Beethoven. She zapped between programmes until deciding on a station playing pop. He never
listened to that, but he thought it was her turn to choose and when they had driven another hundred kilometres the mindless pop music had merged with his strange, at once relaxed and melancholy mood. Now and then they chatted a little. She asked about details of what he had told her, or answered herself when he asked her to say more about some of the men she had known.

As he heard his own voice and listened to hers above the soft, stupefying pop, he recognised the feeling that had struck him when he was on the beach watching Lea swimming alongside the reef, the last Sunday before the summer holidays. It was the same feeling that overwhelmed him a few weeks later when Lauritz had stayed the night with him for the first time. He hadn't gone into the house when he came back after driving the boy home. He sat in the car thinking of what Andreas had told him about his trip to Stockholm. His abortive attempt at flight from the life he now spoke of so devoutly was almost unbearable. As Robert alternately slipped into the overtaking lane and back into the line of cars driving south through Germany, he again recalled Lucca's eyes in the photograph from Paris and the vague, intangible recollection her expression had woken. Like a mute reminder of something left undone, but what? Some act of negligence, he had thought, an unredeemed pledge, but of what and to whom?

It wasn't so much the thought of how Andreas had smoked his cigarettes and gobbled up plums as he untangled himself from one illusion only to get wound up into another. It was not that which had paralysed him so he stayed on in his car listening to the sprinklers in the quiet gardens, staring at his own idiotic plastic chairs reflected in the window by the terrace. Nor was he suddenly struck by paralysis at the melancholy realisation that Lea would soon be a young woman who had no further need of him. That was not why he felt dumped on a siding when he waved to her out there between the poles and later, as the train moved off and he walked along the platform beside it to keep in sight of her face for a second or two longer.

Behind Lea's face in the train window and Lucca's at the
pavement café, others appeared. He saw Monica's face again, looking over the water and smoking a cigarette, one late afternoon on the beach a year or two before they were divorced. He saw his mother sitting on her balcony looking out over the railway towards the heating system's blank red-brick wall concentrating the last sunlight. He saw another Monica blushing as she bent over him beneath a woollen blanket in the Alps, and he caught sight of Sonia's inflamed young face behind Monica's, bent over in the same way while she rode him like a mechanical toy horse. And behind them he was looking Ana in the eyes again, her dark gaze watched him through all the others' as she lay down with loosened hair on the dim patterns of a dark red carpet, that winter evening when they were young and she finally gave him what he had wanted for so long he had forgotten why, and wanted it so frenziedly that she had not been able to quell his insatiable hunger.

He had been too young when he lost Ana, too young to lose something he had wanted so terribly much. He had withdrawn into a cave deep inside himself. It had terrified him to witness his own body amusing itself with anyone who came along. He had not dared come out until Monica pulled a woollen blanket over her head to protect their first kiss from the cruel light of the snow-clad mountains. By then he had learned to be more patient, less basic in his desires, but perhaps his body had grown used to being on its own. At any rate, it had gone off again when Sonia appeared in the barrister's garden showing off her strong legs and slight breasts and doing her tai chi until he was totally mesmerised.

An incident of no importance had chanced to devour what meant everything, not with the insatiability of desire, but with that of silence. In fact he had not been as greedy as a lot of people, but what had been his had ended by slipping out of his hands again, because he let go, or because he was no longer capable of holding on with his previous conviction. As he watched them, the faces from the story of his life appeared before him and grew thin and transparent, Ana, Monica and Sonia, even his mother
and Lea paled in his mind. Finally they fused and disappeared like reflections when a gust of wind whips up the surface of the water into sudden ripples. Again he visualised the flat landscape he had so often walked, the sand banks and reeds, the lonely shed of tarred planks, the birds' signs on the sky and the tufts of grass on the inlet, their inundated stalks.

After midnight he drove into the car park of a motel between Stuttgart and Tübingen. Lucca had been asleep for the past hour. It was stupid to have driven so far when they were both tired, but he had been caught up into the trance-like monotony of driving and kept succumbing to the temptation to drive another hundred kilometres. As he switched off the engine and stretched out in his seat, fatigue came over him. He sat for a while looking listlessly through the drops on the windscreen, sparkling in the light from the motel's yellow sign. The restaurant behind the white net curtains was in darkness, with only bluish neon strip lights to relieve it. He spoke her name several times, at first quietly, then with more insistence. Finally he laid a hand on her shoulder and shook it gently. She woke with a start, frightened and confused. He told her where they were. That far . . . Her voice was thick with sleep. She apologised for having slept instead of entertaining him. He carried their bags in one hand and took her arm as they hurried through the rain.

The motel was furnished in sham romantic style, as if guests were supposed to imagine themselves in a hunting lodge, a casino and a solid Christian home blended into one. While they were signing the register he said she should be glad she couldn't see how ghastly it was. She did not react, it was not very funny, but it had become a habit with them, these slightly cynical references to her handicap. She stood swaying slightly, on the verge of falling asleep. They had rooms side by side. He showed her the bed and the door into the bathroom before going to his own room and collapsing in his clothes.

He hadn't even taken off his shoes, he must have fallen asleep at once. At first he had no idea where he was, he lay on his side with his shoes tangled up in the blanket, watching the distant lights of passing trucks. It was a long time since he had
remembered a dream. As a rule his dreams faded as soon as he woke up and he only saw a few dissolving, disconnected details. But this dream he remembered absolutely clearly. He pulled the pillow under his ear and sniffed in the scent of washing powder in the cool, smooth pillow-case.

It had been a colourless dream in shades of grey, white and black. He had never been in Africa, but that was where he was, he didn't know why nor what kind of room he was standing in. He kneeled down in front of a boy with curly, close-cropped hair. A boy of four, perhaps five, not dark brown but grey like everything else in the dream. The boy had no eyes. There was nothing in their place but thin grey skin. Someone spoke to him behind his back, he did not know who. He could not see the person who spoke, nor hear if it was a man or a woman. The voice told him what he was to do. It said he should reach out and rub the skin where the boy's eyes should have been. He rubbed cautiously with his knuckles and felt the tense membranes breaking at the light touch. As the flaps of skin curled up, two dark boy's eyes appeared. Then he woke up.

At first he did not know what it was, the clenching feeling in his diaphragm, which made him double up with his forehead against his knees. He could not breathe, and for a few seconds everything in his body locked in a vice-like grip, until the cramp gave way to an overpowering force that chopped through him in hard, rhythmic stabs. Then he felt sobs breaking from his lungs and throat, hollow, deep and impossible to check.

A little later his muscles slackened, the weeping stopped and he was able to sit up. He dried his eyes and looked out at the silhouettes of parked cars. His watch showed the time to be half past two. He found a cigarette and lit it. The door beside the window led out to the car park. He went outside, it had stopped raining. The cold wind went straight through his shirt, but he kept on walking up and down beside the line of trucks and trailers. There was a wood beside the motel. He had not noticed that when they arrived. The tops of the tall pine
trees were faintly outlined against the night sky above the dark windows of the building.

He did not wake up until half past nine. Lucca answered at once when he knocked on her door. She sat with her coat on beside the open window. Her bag was on the bed, packed. They were silent in the restaurant. The end wall was decorated with antlers, and a subdued Viennese waltz sounded from the invisible loudspeakers. He fetched their breakfast from the sideboard. There were no other people and the car park was almost empty. He asked if she had slept well. As she turned her face towards him he could see himself and a section of the wood in her dark glasses. I heard you, she said quietly. He directed his gaze through the corridor of pine trees, their dark trunks vanishing into the dimness. Her cup clattered on the saucer, and he felt the warmth of her hand on his. I am your friend, she said. He looked at her. My friend? She nodded. Yes, she said with a wry smile. Your friend in the dark . . .

When they were in the car he unfolded the map over the steering wheel and traced the road south to the Swiss border and on through Zurich, St Gotthard and Milan. She put on the tape of Beethoven's string quartets. He asked if they could hear something else. Like what? He searched out the route to Genoa and down the coast through La Spezia to Viareggio, where they would turn inland again. Whatever you like, he said, folding up the map. Tunes of the day, he added, starting up. She moved the red needle along the FM band until she found a station with good reception. He was grateful to her for not saying anything. Her silence was neither awkward nor frightened, she merely let him be. She kept quiet as you do beside someone in a state of deep concentration.

It was not that he concentrated on anything besides driving. Thoughts passed through his head like birds, and he made no attempt to hold on to them, but he was fully awake. An hour later they were on the way through the Alps. The lethargy of the previous day had been replaced by a clear, sharp feeling,
like a reflection of the white light that dazzled him when they emerged from yet another tunnel, forcing him to screw up his eyes.

T
hey reached Viareggio in late afternoon. The sky was overcast and there was an offshore wind. The blue-grey colour of the water changed into a lighter milky green under the frayed foam as the waves arched themselves and collapsed. She walked in front of him prodding the sand with her white stick. He stopped to tie his shoelace. The wide beach was completely deserted. A black dog ran around wildly with its tongue hanging out of its mouth and bared teeth, as if biting at the wind. Far to the north behind her solitary figure in the fluttering coat he could see the rocky island off La Spezia and the promontory that sloped upwards and merged into the Apennine Alps. The highest peak was white, not of snow but marble. He straightened himself and caught up with her. Minute drops of salt water covered her dark glasses in a fine layer. Like marble dust, he thought. They walked back and along the promenade past the imposing façades of hotels and pavilions between the promenade and the beach. Hardly anyone was about. There was only the dull rumbling of the breakers in the background, the sound of their heels and the tapping noise of her slim stick.

It was somewhere round here, said Lucca, somewhere along this stretch, she saw him for the first time. Robert tried to imagine a young version of the woman with the mature cultivated voice he had been talking to once or twice a week. A young Else in her suit standing at the edge of the curious crowd watching a film being shot featuring Marcello Mastroianni. There must have been spotlights behind the camera even though the sun was shining. They depicted the scene to each other as they walked along the row of wind-blown palms. It developed into a game in which they took turns at elaborating each other's fancy.

Else must have been fascinated by the blend of sunlight
and white spotlights enveloping the actors in a magical sphere impossible to break into, like a dream. And there, carrying a long boom as he adroitly followed the camera's movements along the rails, she suddenly caught sight of the dark young man, who perhaps, in a pause between two shots, had already observed the elegant, Scandinavian girl on the other side of the white, the magic circle. It was no longer Mastroianni she looked at, it was Giorgio, but she did not know that. She did not yet know his name, nor could she know he would be the father of her daughter. Merely because, during a stroll along the promenade in Viareggio, she had been attracted by the artificial glare around the crowd of spectators.

And up there, said Robert, pointing, as if it would help, up there behind one of the closed shutters she undressed for the first time in front of her lover, while her husband lay vomiting on one of the other floors because he had eaten some oysters he should have left well alone. Yes, said Lucca. In the afternoon, most likely, with the slanting sunrays from the shutters caressing their young, curious bodies just as in a film. And cut! All of a sudden her life was changed, she loved someone else, and no one in their wildest dreams could have imagined that her story would take such a completely different turn. By chance, said Robert. Yes, she responded. I'm an accidental girl!

The light was fading as they left Viareggio and drove east through hills covered with pines and olive groves. One crest appeared behind another in the twilight. The hills resembled the moveable scenery in a puppet theatre with minute silhouettes of wide pine crowns and pointed cypresses. It was dark when they arrived in Lucca. He drove around the town along the city wall and through one of the gateways to the old quarter. They parked in the square in front of a church. The marble façade shone yellow in the light from the street lamps. She was silent. He wondered whether this was the church where Giorgio had sat when he had his photograph taken one day in early youth, happy and unaware while the low-flying swallows threw their whirling shadows on the marble façade. They continued on foot along
a narrow street without traffic. People thronged the street, the shops were still open. The walls resounded with steps and voices, and beneath their murmuring he heard the tip of her slim stick when it grazed the cobblestones. He asked if he should describe the town to her. No, she said, slightly irritated. Have I ever asked you to describe yourself?

They went into a café, she ordered espresso and grappa. He was surprised to hear her speaking Italian. He asked for a beer. They had been quiet for a while when she rose to her feet. I'm going for a walk, she said. Should he come with her? She would rather he didn't. And if she got lost? She shrugged her shoulders. Then he'd have to look for her. As he sat alone watching the inhabitants of the town in their winter coats coming in to sit at the bar, he began to understand why she did not want to know what the place looked like.

He could have described the square tower with trees growing on top of it, or the church façade consisting of columns of which not a single one matched the others, some with animal reliefs or geometric patterns, others twisted or carved to look as if they were tied in knots. He could have described the angel standing atop the gable looking down on passers-by with a teasing smile, and he could have mentioned the narrow staircase on the back of the gable, apparently gratuitous unless it was meant for the angel to climb because he didn't want to terrify people by flying. But all of this would have been nothing but pictures to her, his own pictures, of which she could only form vague and imprecise ideas.

Why should she be interested in the beauty of the town? After all, she could not see it. He thought about what she had said. It was true, she had never asked him what he looked like. Only when he went to see her the first time without his white coat and she wanted to know what he was wearing. She had no inkling of his face. To her he was a voice and what the voice told her, and the expectant, listening silence in which she herself could speak. Her town must be like that to her. A name and the echo of steps and voices blending with her thoughts among the invisible walls. He remembered how he had stood at the door of Lea's room the
previous day looking at her because he thought she was asleep. Her own face was no longer of any concern to her. She had come to regard it as something outside herself. Like a mask, he thought. You don't see it when you wear it. Why worry yourself about it if that's the only one you've got?

He pictured her walking around with her tapping stick among the other pedestrians in the narrow old streets, how she noted each street corner and marked it on a plan in her memory. When he had waited half an hour he began to get worried. He paid and went in search of her. The shops were closing, traders let down the shutters in front of the windows and he thought she must be able to hear the same rattling sound perhaps only a few streets away. The moon had come out, almost full, above a medieval tower whose only decoration was a white clock-face of marble. The moon and the clock looked like images of each other. He would have liked to describe the likeness to her, and for a moment felt sad at the thought of her prohibition of pictures.

He had been walking a long time up and down the streets, growing more and more anxious, when he caught sight of her, framed in a gateway with a strangely curved façade. The entrance led to a square surrounded by terraced houses, all painted yellow, with small windows at different heights. She stood perfectly still among the passers-by in the middle of the square, face raised. He stayed at the entrance. He remembered reading about the square in a guide book. Once it had been a Roman arena, and later on houses had been built in a circle following its circumference. There was nothing remarkable about those houses. They were quite ordinary, with washing hanging on lines and shutters open to apartments where people were cooking or watching television. The remarkable thing about the space was its long elliptical curves.

He closed his eyes and listened to the steps approaching or withdrawing in fleeting, contrapuntal figures. The walls behind the open windows resounded with voices, squealing chair legs, domestic machines and churning television sets, and the sounds blended into a complex murmur above his head. It probably sounded like that every evening, when the occupants of the
houses had come home. A scooter crossed the square. It was an ordinary evening in Lucca, with nothing particular happening. An evening when they would just be together, the people who lived here, whether they were happy or unhappy or something in between. Robert waited until the scooter had passed before going up to her. She turned towards him and smiled. Well, there you are . . . He took her hand. I can find my way very well, she said. I know you can, he answered.