Portrait of a Girl (29 page)

Edward wouldn’t be put off anymore. “I wouldn’t have any doubts about this, of course, if I didn’t know that you’ve fallen in love with James.”

Mathilde’s expression turned cool. “That’s over and done with.”

“Then there isn’t any uncertainty anymore? No decision to make? Because you are absolutely certain that you’ve found your way back to the right man?”

Mathilde said nothing. She looked out of the window, but there was nothing to see. Just clouds and fog. “His family no longer wants me. They can’t depend on me for the continuation of the Zoller family. Not anymore.”

“But your fiancé, what does
he
sa
y . . .
”

“He is standing by me. Yes. Adrian wants to marry me. Even against the wishes of his parents.”

“But that’s nice,” Edward said, unhappily. He was thinking of Emily, whom he had loved without a successful outcome, and he thought that there are always other men with more charm, wit, or daring than he had. It was time for him to leave. He got up and reached for his hat.

“But you still haven’t told me what hard times you’re preparing for!” Mathilde said and drew him back into his chair. “And above all, why you asked me about Adrian and my engagement.”

“Right,” Edward said and sat down again. “But I don’t know if it makes any sense to talk about it.”

“But talk about what? Come on, tell me what you want to tell me! And please look at me while you do.”

She smiled because suddenly she saw again the image that a moment ago had carried her off for an instant into a London drawing room. The truth was, Edward wouldn’t carry her off. Not to his “castle” at Pension Veraguth and not to London. He was no robber baron. But she felt infinitely comfortable with him. Yes, that was it. A deep familiarity, a closeness.

She looked at Edward, and it would have been hard for him to persuade himself that her look was not affectionate and encouraging. And even though he was very adept at choking off things in the early stage of germination, he now threw all care to the wind.

“I wasn’t a good substitute for James.”

“Oh?”

“I wanted to kill hi
m . . .
”

“Really?”

“I saw what he did to you.”

“I hope not,” Mathilde said, firmly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Edward said. “Could you imagin
e . . .
” He was suddenly very tired. “Could you see yourself deciding in my favor?”

“And all that without flowers?” Mathilde asked.

“They’ll be delivered afterward,” he replied with a crooked smile. He felt as if he hadn’t eaten anything for days. “Now of course there aren’t any tiger lilies anymore,” he said.

“Let’s see if it won’t work just as well with roses,” Mathilde said.

Dr. Bernhard was right. The delicate green needles of the larches were just beginning to change color. Edward went on long walks with Mathilde in a landscape of rocks, glittering lakes, clouds, and light.

“The sun is so bright in one’s eyes that one can hardly see anything,” Edward said, touching Mathilde’s arm affectionately. They stopped, and Mathilde actually closed her eyes. She felt the shadow that fell over her cheeks and the warmth of his face as it came closer and their lips met. Have you ever kissed a man? James had asked her, and she had lied. One didn’t have to lie to Edward.

“Oh, my God,” she said after they’d pulled apart and she’d taken a deep breath. “You’re full of surprises!”

She shook her head. No, she thought, she couldn’t possibly tell him what she meant by that. Why had she assumed that Edward would kiss her gently and hesitantly? She took a step back and looked at him. James was athletic, energetic, charming, experienced. Edward was tall, calm, and sensitive. How could she not have seen that he was manly and passionate? She took his hand and drew him closer.

“I am glad that this side of you doesn’t immediately jump out at everyone.” She kissed him again on the mouth.

“Why?” he asked. “What have you discovered?”

“I’m discovering you. And every day I discover something new. One has to be patient with you. It will take me time to discover everything about you. Thank God that not all women can have the opportunity, otherwis
e . . .
”

He opened her coat and put his arms around her waist. “Or otherwise what?”

“Otherwise I’d be jealou
s . . .
”

“You silly girl,” he said. “Do you think I waited this long to fall in love again just so I could go look for another object of affection right away?”

She took his hand and pulled him down to the lakeshore. She tossed a pebble into the glittering golden grid the sun was making on the water.

“To fall in love again?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Naturally, I was in love once before. After all, I’m not a little boy anymore, but a grown man. I’ve met many women, and there was one whom I loved very much.”

Mathilde looked at him in disbelief with her blue eyes, as if it was utterly impossible that he had eve
r . . .

“Loved very much?” she murmured, shaken, “very much?”

Edward laughed out loud. “Yes, very much.”

Mathilde was silent. My God, she didn’t know anything about him. She’d always taken it as a matter of course that he cared for her, but she had never asked anything about his past. To her he seemed to have had no other life, except for the interests he shared with her, and his friendship with James.

“Aha,” she said, both disappointed and ashamed. “Where is she now? Is she dead?” Obviously that’s what Mathilde would have preferred.

“No. She’s alive and happy. She’s married. But it was me she was actually engaged to.”

Mathilde sighed.

“The way I’m engaged to Adria
n . . .
” She gazed over to the opposite shore of the lake, at a loss.

“The way you are engaged to Adrian,” he said, slowly. “It took me a long time to get over our splitting up. You can ask James. Years. It took years. But now I am happy, maybe happier now that I’ve found you than I would have been if I hadn’t had that earlier experience.”

He leaned against a tree trunk. “How differently things can turn out. Quite different from what we imagine.”

Mathilde looked unhappy. The wonderfulness of his kiss had suffered a bit in the face of the knowledge that he had kissed another woman before her. Kissed her the same way. Or, it was to be assumed that he had kissed her in much the same way.

“Mathilde?” he said softly, “Mathilde. You’re not going to be jealous of the past? It is over, you know. But it is a part of my history. Emily is a part of my life. I can’t simply cut out that chapter. I wouldn’t be the man you know if I didn’t have my history. And,” he went on, taking her in his arms, “you, after all, have scarcely reserved your attentions for only one ma
n . . .
”

“I neve
r . . .
” she wanted to contradict him, but he didn’t let her finish.

“You fell head over heels in love with my best frien
d . . .
”

She nodded sheepishly. She couldn’t deny it. On the contrary, she wanted to tell him. That was a dark chapter that she had to get off her chest at some point, not to Adrian, but to Edward.

“Are you all right?” Edward asked and brushed a few blonde curls out of her face.

“Yes, yes. It’s jus
t . . .
there’
s . . .
” Her voice faded despondently.

“Maybe I don’t really have to know what happened?” he said.

She looked at him with gratitude. Then she frowned and said, “Yes. You
do
have to know. I did something terrible. You won’t love me anymore once you find out what it was.”

“Yes, I will,” Edward said.

“But you have no idea what happened,” Mathilde said, convinced that after her confession he would never again kiss her as he had kissed her just now. “He took my clothes off,” she said softly, not looking at Edward. “He saw me almost naked.” She looked into his eyes. But his expression remained unchanged. “Edward, he touched me and looked at me. And h
e . . .
he took photographs of me. Do you understand? He can ruin my life; he has a photograph of m
e . . .
well, almost naked.”

“It’s all right. It’s all right, Mathild
e . . .
” Edward held her close. “James told me.”

“What? How could he tell you!” Mathilde was indignant. “How could he do such a thing!”

Edward held her at arm’s length and looked at her in amusement. “Well, now. He
is
my best friend. And he realized that I had feelings for you. I think he felt an obligation to tell me. The way you did just now. That is really good.”

How could he say something like that? Mathilde looked at him. She was perplexed.

“You know,” Edward whispered in her ear, “I don’t hold it against James that he desired you. He realized even before I did just how wonderful you are. He knows what I have in you; he saw i
t . . .
”

Mathilde was speechless. To hear such a sentence come from his lips. There was really no end to the things she had to learn about Edward.

“And,” he went on, “after all, times have changed. Women aren’t goods that you acquire only if none of the edges have been chipped or damaged. Women are at last starting to decide for themselves what they want to be—and how they want to live. I like that. I also like your Aunt Betsy. She seems to jump right over a lot of hurdles. And she’s right. You may well take a page from her book.”

My God, Mathilde thought.

“So you like Aunt Betsy too?”

He nodded. “That’s what I’ve been saying. I like Betsy a lot. She’s an intelligent, beautiful, unconventional woman wh
o . . .
”

Mathilde put a hand over his mouth. “Enough. Please take me home to my sickbed, to Dr. Bernhard, to the nurses.” She looked at him dubiously. So this was Edward? And this was life?

“Kiss me,” she said.

“Till the end of my days,” he said.

The End of the Season

Sometimes, going around a turn, the coffin on the old horse-drawn cart would slide back and forth a bit. It was made of lightweight pine and only sloppily secured to the cart.

They were bringing Luca home.

Aldo was silent. How different he had imagined Luca’s homecoming. How proud he had been of his son. Benedetta, instead of an expression of mourning, just wore her perpetually unfriendly look. What did she care about the suffering of others? What good was it to know she’d been right all along? Luca had been torn apart by exploding dynamite when they were blasting a tunnel. Now there would be another gravestone in the cemetery with the name Biancotti, as if there weren’t enough already.

Signor Robustelli didn’t dirty his fingers. He sat behind his desk and admired the daring stretches of train tracks from afar. She wasn’t pleased that he came to the funeral, but Andrina had insisted. She cared for him. And Benedetta didn’t like that either. She didn’t want a man like that in her family. It just wasn’t right. He didn’t fit. And if Andrina went on like this, she soon wouldn’t fit in to the family either.

Benedetta’s legs were tired, and she was having trouble breathing. Nika had noticed, and she’d climbed up to Grevasalvas to tell Gian and to bring him home. Benedetta needed him now more than ever.

They were all afraid that Gian, upset by what had happened, would have an attack and scare everyone to death. But the worst did not happen. Gian was quite calm. He held on to his mother and supported her even as, standing in front of the open grave, she staggered momentarily, as if wanting to throw herself down into the hole on top of the light pine coffin gleaming up from below. He held her tight and whispered calming words as if he were talking to his cows.

Aldo stood by himself, trying to catch Andrina’s eyes. But she was with Robustelli and didn’t leave his side.

Even if Luca had had bad luck, she, Andrina, was going to look forward to the future, just as her brother had. She enjoyed the way Achille put a protective arm around her, and she knew he was her future. She couldn’t rely on her family, who had only managed to make it from Stampa to Maloja, and not a step beyond.

Nika was standing to one side. Luca had found his resting place. She pulled her woolen shawl tightly about her, pressing her hand to her chest. She imagined him lying there in his black suit. Not able to hear or see anything anymore, not even the dull sound of the clods of soil raining down on his coffin now.

The Segantini family had of course come to the funeral too. Bice looked as if she were suffering, but maybe she was only cold. The wind of Maloja blew over them all, whirling past them along with their thoughts of the dead boy. Segantini saw the wind driving the reddish-blonde strands of hair into Nika’s face. Whenever a cloud covered the sun, the fiery note in her hair was extinguished, and only her sad face remained. He had been troubled when she’d told him she would not miss him. If she had admitted the opposite, he wouldn’t have had to keep thinking of her. And he would have preferred that.

“Be careful,” Adrian was going to say, “they can bite.” But by then Mathilde had already stuck her finger into the cage. She screamed. Startled, the squirrel hopped back and forth at the end of its chain, its red, bushy tail beating wildly against the bars. The tears that welled up in Mathilde’s eyes were not only in response to the shock and pain of the small, deep wound, but also in pity for the caged animal. It was an unfortunate present Adrian had brought her. She didn’t know how she should thank him for it, and anyway, she had some unpleasant news for him.

“You can chain it outside the window,” Adrian had said as he greeted her and handed her the cage.

“But I wouldn’t chain up an animal that wants to run around free in the forest,” she had said with passion, and without thinking twice about it, had stuck one of her fingers in between the bars.

“I thought an animal might pass the time a little for you,” he said apologetically while she was trying to stop the bleeding. She said nothing, and a long silence ensued between them that he didn’t understand.

Finally she said, “Adrian, I am not going to marry you.” She could see from his face that he hadn’t grasped the meaning of her words. “I don’t know how to explain it to yo
u . . .
My life has changed since I’ve been up here. I’m not the same Mathilde you knew and fell in love with.”

“But you don’t look sick.”

“I am not talking about external things,” she said. “Many things have changed inside me. What I think, how I feel, what I wan
t . . .
” It was no use. He simply didn’t understand. He was here, just as he always was, no different from a year ago, and he was only waiting to take her home, to marry her, no matter how his parents felt about it. Wasn’t that enough? What else could she possibly want?

“I don’t understand you,” Adrian said. She was glad at least that he didn’t bombard her with questions.

“No one can understand it,” she said. “I myself don’t understand.”

“But it’s probably just a mood.” He tried again, “Emotion
s . . .
”

“Yes. It is only emotions, feelings. And I am going to listen to my feelings.”

“But it isn’t all that simple, Mathilde. You can’t simply break off an engagement with three sentences. Think of all the plans we’ve made, your parents, the future that we were planning for,” Adrian said, completely at a loss.

“Oh yes, it is that simple, no matter how much we talk.”

It was futile to try to change her mind right now. But he’d come back, and he’d ask Mathilde’s father to accompany him.

Segantini was restlessly walking back and forth. He was searching for one of his paintings. Where was the oil painting that he’d hastily dashed off one or two years ago, the forerunner to
Love at the Springs of Life
? The painting wasn’t large, barely half a meter by half a meter (eighteen inches x eighteen inches), and he had never exhibited it. It depicted a nude female, a rare subject for him.

At last he found the picture; it was with his children’s things. Ah, he remembered now—in a fit of dissatisfaction, he had let them play with it, and the boys had used it as a target for their air gun. It was lying in the garden, where it had been carelessly thrown. It had been damaged in several places by the feathered arrowheads of the projectiles.

Segantini picked it up, gently wiped it off, and gazed at it.

The main colors were blue and green with some beautiful turquoise notes, as if he had already been thinking of Nika’s eyes. In the background, an idealized landscape rather than a faithful representation of nature—mountains and a gleaming blue lake. And closer to the viewer, two tree trunks close together, with leafy crowns growing out of the picture. In the foreground lay a gentle hill. Round and soft and split into two lush rounded halves by a bubbling spring that flowed from deep within the hill. The flowing waters shimmered white against the dark cavity of the pool the spring had created and tumbled downward into a dark-green lake surrounded by grass. Beside the spring, on a light-blue cloth, is a beautiful nude, relaxed and giving herself up to the light of the summer day. One of her arms is pushed under her head as if to better expose it to the sun. Her eyes are closed, her legs crossed—and yet, Segantini thought, it would be easy to spread her legs. But why—the spring, the beginning of the world was already shamelessly open, much enlarged, it was pretty much an innocuous natural depiction of the female sex, what this reclining nude concealed between her legs.

And just then, Segantini felt a tormenting, painful longing that he didn’t want to give a name to. He turned the picture over again, face down on the earth, where it had lain. It was a futile, an idle longing.

“That isn’t me,” Nika said when she looked at the painting Segantini had taken her to see. “Only the hair is right, otherwise, nothing.”

Segantini smiled. “But then, you didn’t pose for me. The painting is an allegory in which I wanted to express an idea. It isn’t a portrait of you.”

“So what did you need me for?” Nika’s feelings were hurt.

“You were the inspiration for the picture. When I was driving past in the coach and saw you at the lake, I suddenly saw the composition for a painting before me—you, standing over the water, gazing at your reflection.”

Nika silently gazed at the canvas. It wasn’t finished yet; that she could see. Segantini would still be adding many little brush strokes. But that would hardly change the painting as a whole.

Segantini had chosen a broad format. The action took place in the middle of the picture. It was a picture without sky. That bothered Nika. There was no way to avoid looking at what was happening in the picture, no escape for one’s eyes. The upper edge of the picture simply cropped out the green tops of the trees, which stood where the meadow ended. The large waves of grass that took up almost all the upper half of the picture lay in bright daylight. Totally unlike the hidden place in the forest where Segantini had taken her.

In the foreground, Nika saw the glacial pool, but even the pool wasn’t like the one they had visited. The boulder she had clambered over, and which had bordered the deep pool on one side, was flattened in the picture, a nearly horizontal line in the middle of the picture. And there she stood, naked in the landscape, bathed in relentless light, and at the mercy of all eyes.

“The boulder looks like a bridge,” Nika said.

There was the alpine rose near the water, which Nika remembered. But then she noticed a white cloth tossed over the boulder, as if to represent her clothes.

“What is the white cloth?” she asked.

“White is the color of innocence,” Segantini replied.

“It looks like a dress that’s been taken off,” Nika said.

“So there is something that’s right,” he said. “Back then, at the glacial pool, you undressed.”

Nika, feeling uneasy, looked at the girl in the picture. She was supporting herself with her left hand on the boulder. With the right, she was holding her abundant hair out of her face—reddish blonde like hers—and looking down at the water. True, Nika was also tall and slender, but this girl was much younger than she was.