Portrait of a Girl (16 page)

Kate didn’t wait for him to kiss her on the lips. With a small, involuntary sound of triumph, she placed her mouth over his and with her tongue carefully parted his lips.

The room service waiter spoiled this good beginning. He was standing outside the door with the champagne, and Kate had to open it for him. James sat up properly again after having slipped dangerously into the horizontal with Kate in his arms.

He made no special effort to take up where they had left off before the interruption, but instead poured them each a glass of champagne. Then he lifted his glass and said, “To you, Kate.”

What was the matter with him, she wondered. Why was he acting so lukewarm?

“Well, what do you think of our young Mathilde, James? The girl is very much in love with you.”

“Yes, she is indeed,” James said, showing no emotion.

“And do you still feel flattered, or is it already beginning to get on your nerves?”

He turned away from Kate, answering her almost peevishly, “I don’t know yet.”

“How unresponsive you are today, James. Really, quite uncommunicative. I have to admit I was suspicious when the girl didn’t meet me after her health treatment. And you didn’t turn up at lunch eithe
r . . .
”

“But I told you, I had a tennis match.”

“Excuses are nothing unusual in the business of seduction. That’s no proof that you weren’t with her during the time I was waiting for both of you in vain.”

Kate could see from his expression that this conversation was in danger of veering off in an unexpected direction.

“But why talk about the girl,” she said, “when we can indulge in grown-up pleasures.”

She took a bit of foie gras, refilled his glass, and began to undress him. He didn’t help her much, and she tried to convince herself that it was because of the pleasure it gave him to play the passive role of desired object and not a growing disinterest in her.

She was skillful and experienced. And he did gradually surrender to her, sliding off the sofa onto the rug, pulling her down with him. Her housecoat opened wide, and she lay there naked on the golden silk with its pale pink and salmon-colored flowers. She took pleasure in the looks he gave her, seeing him as a voyeur reining in his lust even as she became aroused.

Supporting himself on one elbow, he gazed at her, at the same time spreading her legs with the other hand, still coolly, almost dispassionately, but Kate didn’t give in to him at once. Then finally, he threw himself on her. He’d forgotten Mathilde now. Kate had won again.

Uncertainties

Nika was talking. But only with Segantini and Gian. It was hard for her to find her tongue again after the many years of silence, and words were too treacherous and too valuable to waste.

Nika waited impatiently for Segantini’s visits when she worked in the hotel garden, but they weren’t as frequent as she would have liked. He had many appointments, and Baba always went with him when he was painting. But sometimes he sent Baba home, saying he would follow shortly.

He still had Nika’s sketchbook. She had talent. He’d seen it immediately. She should be encouraged. She wanted to learn how to write properly and to draw, like him. He knew it well, this hunger for the education that has been kept from you, the urge to express yourself, the longing to be seen and acknowledged—to see the appreciative look in the eyes of others, and to realize: I am, and it is good that I exist.

“I’ve been thinking how it could be arranged,” Segantini said to her one day, when he’d found her at work outside. He didn’t want to have her join his children, who were taught by a private tutor. She didn’t belong to that part of his life, and he didn’t want to mix up the two worlds.

“Perhaps I can talk with the priest; I’ll see what can be done.” He didn’t want to admit to her that when it came to writing he wasn’t very sure of himself.

“You still have my notebook,” she reminded him. “I can’t go on sketching because I don’t have another one.”

“Right,” he said. “I looked at it very carefully. You have a good eye. Your hand is still hesitant, you don’t trust yourself, but that’s just a matter of practice. You see what’s important, the essential, and that’s what matters. If you don’t see the essential of what you are drawing, then no amount of technique is of any use. Moreover, if you can’t express the essence of what you’re drawing, then the picture will be boring and uninteresting.”

Segantini was silent for a moment, looking at her hair glowing in the evening light. A warm golden tone like that of the gold leaf that as the last step he rubbed into the barely visible grooves produced by his way of painting—placing one stroke of color next to another in the divisionist style. The technique gave his paintings a singular shimmer and a magic that viewers could not account for. It was much the same magical effect that Nika’s hair had on him. And the blue-green of her eyes, wasn’t that the exact color that was dominant in his painting
The Spring
? Wasn’t she the beautiful nude, lying next to the bubbling waters?

Nika lightly touched the sleeve of his black jacket, looking at him questioningly.

“Call me Segante,” he said, almost indignantly, because she had interrupted his thoughts, “that’s what my friends call me.”

“But we’re not friends,” Nika said. “Even if you come to see me here.”

He looked at her in surprise. “Well, as you wish. In any case, I thought that I might teach you to draw. If you like, I’ll bring your notebook with me next time. I’ll give you an assignment, and when we see each other again, we’ll discuss how you could improve it.”

She stood there transfixed, as if he’d said something terrible. Then her eyes filled with tears. “You would do that? For me?”

“Why not. We could give it a try.”

He looked away in embarrassment. Did she have to cry? And because he wasn’t looking at her, he couldn’t prevent her from taking his hand, pressing it to her wet face, and kissing it.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Oh yes,” she said, her voice choking with tears.

As Segantini was walking past the hotel, Robustelli, who had just stepped outside, raised a hand in greeting. Segantini returned the greeting and quickly walked on. He didn’t care to get involved in a conversation just then.

His fear was unfounded. Robustelli saw lots of things without feeling the need to talk about them.

Betsy telephoned her sister Emma. Despite being so far away, she tried as much as she could to cushion the panic that would probably break out in Zurich in the Schobinger family.

“Emma, we’ve done everything we can do right now. The doctor she has is good. I wonder why your family doctor didn’t see the signs before. But be that as it may, Dr. Bernhard thinks that she hasn’t had the illness for long. The private clinic in St. Moritz is new, well managed, and comfortable. Mathilde has a lovely room with a balcony where she can lie with a view of the lake. She is glad she can stay there and not have to go to a sanatorium in Davos or elsewhere.”

She stopped just long enough to take a breath, because she didn’t want to let her sister get a word in before she had told her the most important thing.

“And look, it just so happens that I have nothing else planned right now and can extend my stay here so as to be with Mathilde. First, you should gently break the news to Franz. And then you or the two of you together can come for a visit as soon as you can arrange it.”

Betsy sighed and held the receiver out at arm’s length as a torrent of words assaulted her ear. It wasn’t surprising that Emma wasn’t taking this unexpected and alarming news calmly.

“We have to tell the Zollers, too,” Emma was just saying. “It’s really terrible. What will they say! We were supposed to start on the wedding preparations right after your return from St. Moritz. And now a blow like this. Has Mathilde spoken with Adrian yet?”

“No, Emma. I think at the moment it really would be better if you could do that. And don’t send him up here for a visit right away, you hear? First Mathilde herself has to digest this diagnosis. Her mood is very changeable at the moment. We really don’t want to create an unintentional misunderstanding with Adrian, just because she’s still very upset right now.”

One thing at a time, Betsy thought. She didn’t want her sister to have a heart attack on top of everything else.

“You’re right, Elizabeth.”

Thank God, the trick had worked.

“All right,” Betsy said. “So you’ll keep everyone away until Mathilde has calmed down a little and gotten used to the clinic routine. Then—and you’ve got to prepare yourself for this, unfortunately—she’ll have to stay here for a while, you know. You’ll have lots of time in which to come and visit.”

While Mathilde, under Dr. Bernhard’s care, still had a long road with an uncertain end to travel in the fight against consumption, Gian lay between life and death—without the care of a doctor. Benedetta couldn’t bear the thought of losing him and looked after her oldest child night and day. True, the veterinarian had stopped by and given Benedetta hope. The herbs from the old woman from Stampa were having some effect, and the vet felt that anything that was good for cows wouldn’t hurt people either. Not everybody died of
Alpenstich
. Gian was young and strong and could make it. And so it was.

In the evenings, Nika sat with him, holding his hand. At first, he was aware of it only hazily as a distant hallucinatory echo, but as the fever slowly left him, it touched his soul profoundly: Nika had said his name! She was speaking! Then he sank back into semiconsciousness. But gradually, in the course of a few weeks he returned to the world of other people.

Luca didn’t come home often. Like the other tracklayers, he lived in improvised quarters near the construction site. Most of the laborers came from Italy. Luca got along well with them. They were self-assured, held strong, aggressive viewpoints, and stuck together.

Aldo missed his son more than Benedetta did, but he didn’t talk about it. He was proud that his son was participating in a great project that would change the world. Luca would come back one day with lots of money and more experiences than any other member of the family had ever had. Luca would amaze the villagers. He would tell them what it was like to blast apart cliffs, to build bridges and tunnels.

He didn’t know that Luca would also be able to tell them how quickly—as quickly as one could snap one’s fingers—a life could come to an end in a landslide or a fall from a bridge substructure, and that they kept having to bury comrades. Comrades who were young and had wives and families. They worked, advancing through the mountain; with simple pickaxes they attacked rocks that were tricky, and sometimes only loosely in place and would crumble. It was hot inside, and the sweat ran down their dirty faces. The petroleum lamps often went out, and the darkness of the mountain scared even these brave men.

Aldo knew nothing about that aspect of the work. His thoughts remained focused on the day when Luca would come back, and Aldo’s reputation among the villagers would rise. He remembered that Count Camille de Renesse had also planned a rail project for Maloja. But in the end, that one had come to nothing. Who knew, maybe Luca would become an important man and would one day turn the count’s idea of making Maloja accessible by train into a reality.

Benedetta, on the other hand, spent more of her time wondering what they would do about Gian. Could they keep sending him up to the high pasture by himself? She would have preferred to keep him closer to home. But Aldo said if he couldn’t take care of the cows then he was totally useless, and he had to make some contribution, like Andrina and Luca.

Andrina didn’t spend much time at home, and when she was there, she bragged a lot about her experiences at the hotel.

“You should see the wardrobes of the ladies there,” she would boast. “When I clean their rooms, I look at their dresses, their jewelry, and believe me, those things would look just as good on me. And they not only keep changing their dresses, they also change me
n . . .
”

“Andrina!” Benedetta would say, when all the talk got on her nerves, “Don’t keep babbling such a lot of nonsense.”

“But you have no idea,” Andrina would reply. “Life in other places isn’t like it is here for you at home. I saw with my own eyes Signora Simpson—who wants only me to wait on her—having men visit her in her room.”

Aldo chewed on a toothpick he’d made from a broken-off piece of bush.

“And so you want to be like the signora,” he said deprecatingly, because giving Andrina any advice was hopeless.

“Yes,” Andrina said, with a note of rebellion in her voice. “Just as rich, beautiful, and admired.” She gave Nika a challenging look. “If men who are respected in the village pay court to the
straniera
, it shouldn’t be so hard for me.”

Nika blushed. Benedetta interrupted Andrina with an emphatic gesture of her hand.

“What are these stupid things you’re saying?”

But Andrina wasn’t finished yet.

“I know everything. Old Gaetano told me. Signor Segantini comes by to see her any opportunity he gets. And not because he’s longing to see the old man.” She looked coolly at Nika. “You can be glad that Gaetano talks almost as little as you. And besides, nobody in the village thinks he has any stories to tell anyway.”

“Now, that’s enough,” Aldo said, getting up from the table. “All this nonsense is just unbelievable.”

But Andrina knew better; she wasn’t stupid.