Letter from Casablanca (5 page)

I don’t know why I didn’t go to the window. Or rather I know perfectly well because I felt it. I understood with a great sense of emptiness and loss what she would have told me, and I knew that what she would have told me would have been unbearable. It wouldn’t do to listen to her. I might have begun to shout and hit out at her wildly, to pull those stupid pigtails of hers she was so proud of. And then I would have begun to cry uncontrollably, without any more fear of being heard, to sob as much as I wanted to. I remained silent, holding my breath. We were very close to each other—a few inches. Only the window screen separated us. But Nena did not reach the windowsill and she couldn’t look inside. I hoped with all my strength that she would believe I was asleep, and I touched the metal of the inkpot with the calendar as I did every time I wanted something to happen, for good luck. Nena quieted down and I heard her deep, excited breathing, then the sound of her footsteps on the gravel. I realized that she was heading for the veranda door. I took off my shoes and socks, avoiding making the least noise, went to the window, and closed the blinds. I opened the door of the passage just a crack and lay down on the bed. From that position I would be able to hear everything, even if they talked in low voices. If I had put my eye to the crack in the door, I would have been able to see Mama in the armchair, but I preferred not to risk my face being seen. It was enough for me to stay and listen, even though I already knew everything.

This time Mama cried. Maybe she couldn’t stop herself, I don’t know, probably she was in a moment of great weakness. Anyhow, it wasn’t like the first time when she had reacted almost indifferently. She drew Nena into her arms and said, “My little treasure,” and then she put her away again and
dried her tears, emitting little smothered sobs, like someone swallowing. And then she asked her if I knew about it, and Nena said, “He’s sleeping.” “Better so,” said Mama. “Leave him in peace. He’s so busy with his Latin, poor dear, he studies all day.” And then she sighed. “But why do you tell me these things, Maddalena? Don’t you understand how much pain your mother has?” I plunged my face into the pillow so they wouldn’t hear me. Nena’s chattering was muffled when it reached me, but I already knew much of what she reported, that she said, “Why, yes. Why is it so, Mama? I swear to you, he was on a bicycle. He had a knotted handkerchief on his head. He wanted something here at home. I understood him. I saw him very well. He saw me, too, but he went by as if he couldn’t stop. Please believe me, Mama.”

I don’t know how that week went by. Fast, that’s it, it went by fast. I should have done a review exercise of all the exceptions, but I let it go. On my paper flourishes appeared, absurd scribbles behind which I lost myself, barbed wire with which I cancelled a statement that came to me obsessively, without stopping. Next week Nena will take a cap and a note from Mama. I even translated that sentence into Latin, and in that language it seemed even more bizarre, as if the strangeness of that language underlined the absurdity of its significance, and it frightened me.

But I didn’t say anything to them nor let them know I understood. Apparently my behavior was the same. In the morning I watered Mama’s azaleas. The garden was pleasant then. It still smelled of the nighttime cool, the sparrows hopped from one branch of the oleanders to the other, and the cicadas had not yet begun their crying. You could see the city distinctly in the clear air, and all around there was something happy and light. After dinner I helped Mama clear up as usual, and when I had finished I said, “I’m going to do homework.” I went into my bedroom, closed the door of the anteroom, half-closed the shutters, stretched out on the bed,
and looked at the ceiling, where the slats of the Venetian blinds drew a rainbow in light and shade. I had no desire to think. I closed my eyes but I did not sleep. Under my eyelids passed the most diverse images. I arrived in the port of Singapore. How curious! It was identical to the photograph in my book. The only difference was that I was in the photograph, too. And Saturday came very quickly.

That morning I said nothing, did nothing, tried to let myself be seen as little as possible. Mama was in the kitchen and I was in the living room. She came into the living room and I went into the garden. Nena went out to the garden and I went into the bedroom. But they did so only to show that their behavior was normal, which complicated things terribly because they forced me to pretend that I didn’t notice anything. The worst moment of this game of hide-and-seek came when I suddenly went into the kitchen, thinking that both of them were outside, and surprised Mama while she was passing a note to Nena. That stupid thing turned all red and hid the note behind her back, but it was so obvious that I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t noticed it, otherwise they would really have become suspicious, so I had to resort to a shameful pretense and said carelessly, “It’s useless for you to hide the letters from Aunt Yvonne. I know she writes to you and not to me. You’ve always been her favorite.’’ And then Mama said, “Stop it! Don’t fight because of jealousy. It’s a mortal sin between brother and sister.’’ And I felt relieved, but my shirt was soaked with sweat.

Immediately after dinner I said that I was going to take a nap, that I felt very lazy, it must be the humidity, and my declaration was received with much understanding. From my bed I heard them clattering around in the kitchen, but it was all a sham. In reality, they were talking very softly. I heard an indistinct chatter. Anyway, I was indifferent, I had no interest in deciphering what they were saying.

Nena went out at precisely quarter to two, exactly as the clock was striking one and then the three little pings for the forty-five minutes. I heard the creaking of the back-kitchen screen door and the light shuffling that went away on the gravel toward the main gate. And this caused in me distressing anxiety because I realized that I, too, was waiting, and there was something both absurd and dreadful about it, like a sin. The clock struck twice and I began to count: one—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten. I felt it was the most stupid thing I could do but I couldn’t stop myself, and while I was thinking of the absurdity of that counting I continued to count by accenting the seconds, as if for good luck, a kind of protection—from what I didn’t know, or rather I didn’t have the courage to admit. When I reached one hundred and twenty I heard Nena’s footstep. I judged that she was still far away, at the beginning of the avenue. On her return she avoided the gravel, but I heard her just the same. I got up on tiptoe, bathed in sweat, and through the slats of the blinds I saw her approach slowly with her eyes lowered. She had on her face an expression of sadness that I had never known—Nena who was always so happy. In one hand she held a hat and in the other a piece of paper which she worried between her index finger and her thumb. Then I returned to bed and went to sleep.

And it was as if I woke up the following Saturday. Because that week hurried away very rapidly in its slowness, lined with silence, interwoven with the glances that Nena and Mama exchanged, while I tried to be present as little as possible with the excuse that the make-up exercises took me all afternoon. But in reality they didn’t take me any time at all, because my notebook was full of barbed wire.

The morning of the following Saturday Mama made ravioli with ricotta. We hadn’t eaten ravioli with ricotta for a long time. We had almost forgotten it. For months we had eaten
only food that was horrifyingly mundane. Mama got up early. I woke up at six and heard her moving quietly in the kitchen, working. It was a pleasant morning. When Nena and I got up we found the table covered with strips of pasta already ready to be cut into shapes like a shell, which then had to be filled with ricotta. We had to have our coffee and milk on the little radio table, then we threw ourselves into cutting the pasta. Actually, it was Nena who cut the shape, I filled it with a spoon and passed it to Mama, who saw to the closing of the edges with a little fold and a light pressure of her fingers, with great caution, because if you pressed too hard the filling squirted out and the tortello was ruined.

“Today we’ll have a little party,” said Mama. “It’s a special day.” And then, without knowing exactly why, I felt again that blast of heal inside my chest that I had felt when Nena had made that statement. And then I began to sweat and I said, “How hot it is already this morning.” And Mama said, “Well, of course, today’s the third of August. Remember this day—today is Saturday, August third.” And I said, “If you don’t mind, Mama, I’ll go to my room for a little while. If you need any help, call me.” I don’t know why I didn’t go outside. Maybe it would have been better. The humidity had not yet descended on the garden. I could have checked the state of the pergola—that is, do something. But I preferred the shade of my room.

Mama was happy during dinner, too happy. The ravioli was delicious and Nena wanted two plates of it, but Mama seemed to be in a hurry for us to finish and frequently looked at the clock. At quarter past one we finished dinner and Mama cleared away hurriedly. She said, “We’d better leave the dishes for later. Now let’s all go and rest. It will do you good, too. We all got up too early this morning.” Nena, contrary to her custom, did not make a fuss and went straight to the divan in the dining room. Mama settled herself in the living room in
her usual armchair, with the blinds closed and a handkerchief over her eyes. I lay down in my clothes, without turning down the bed, to wait. In the silence of my room I heard my heart beat tumultuously, and I felt that that dull noise could be heard even in the other room.

Perhaps I dozed off, but probably for just a few minutes, then I jumped at the sound of the clock which struck quarter to two and I stayed motionless, listening. I got up when I heard the creaking of the armchair in the living room. It was the only noise. Mama was truly quiet. I waited a few seconds behind the blinds. I realized that I was trembling, but certainly not from cold. I had to grit my teeth so they would not chatter. Then the back-kitchen door slowly opened and Mama went out. At first I didn’t think it was really she. How strange! It was the Mama in that photograph on the chest of drawers, where she was arm in arm with Papa. Behind them was the Basilica of San Marco and below was written “Venice, April 14, 1942.” She wore the same white dress with the big black polka dots, the shoes with the funny straps fastened around her ankles, and a white veil that covered her face. On the collar of her jacket she wore a blue silk camellia, and slipped over her arm she carried a crocodile purse. In one hand, delicately, as if she were carrying a precious object, she held a man’s cap that I recognized. She walked slowly as far as the entrance to the avenue, between the large pots of lemons, with a graceful gait that I had never seen. To watch her like this from behind, she seemed much younger, and only then did I realize that Nena walked exactly like her, with a slight swing and the same position of the shoulders. She disappeared around the corner of the house and I heard her footsteps on the gravel. My heart beat harder than ever. I was all sticky with sweat. I thought that I ought to get my bathrobe, but at that moment the clock struck two, and I couldn’t take my hands off the windowsill. I moved two slats of the blind
slightly in order to see better. It seemed an interminable time. “How long she’s staying!’’ I thought. “Maybe she won’t come back.”

And at that moment Mama emerged from around the corner. She came forward with her head held high, staring in front of her with that distracted, faraway look that made her resemble Aunt Yvonne, and on her lips there lingered a smile. She had slipped her purse over her shoulder, which gave her an even younger look. At a certain point she stopped, opened her purse, took out a little round box of powder with the mirror inside the cover. She released the hook and the box opened by itself. She took the powder puff, rubbed it on the powder, and, looking at herself in the mirror, she slowly powdered her cheeks. And then I felt an enormous desire to call her, to tell her, “I’m here, Mama.” But I couldn’t say a word. I was aware only of a very strong taste of bilberries that filled my mouth, my nostrils, that invaded the room, the air, the whole world.

U
ntil the day I met Madame Huppert, I had never heard of Ikebana. I was very much on the defensive that afternoon. I had prepared myself psychologically to tell a lot of little lies if it seemed to me “promotional.” At that time I considered little lies as a necessary ingredient in order to appear interesting, to escape from mediocrity, and I trained myself to tell them without constraint. All things considered, I found myself quite convincing when I lied, perhaps more so than when I told the truth. But faced with a direct question, without pretext, without even the glimmer of who or what Ikebana was, all my admirable inclinations toward falsehood crumbled inexorably, and I was forced to admit my ignorance.

For the interview, Madame received me on the terrace. She was lying on a very austere, cushionless, reed deck chair, of the yoga-meditation type and was dressed in a delicious pale blue kimono. Up until the last moment I had been undecided whether to wear my blue pleated skirt with my red pullover, the “adolescent-of-good-family-who-belongs-to-the-tennis-club” type, or my nut-brown tweed suit with the beige shin. Then I had decided on the suit, not without certain misgivings over the resolution because the season was not really
ideal for a heavy tweed like mine. That year a dazzling October seemed untiringly to prolong a summer that had been magnificent, and the last tourists were still going around the lake shore in shorts, as if they wanted to absorb the sunshine.

But for heavens sake! After all, that suit had cost me almost all my salary, in spite of the fact that I’d bought it on sale at the end of the previous winter, and then I hadn’t had a chance to wear it yet. It was a Saint Laurent divided skirt, Forties-type squared shoulders with stiff padding, and wide lapels with two buttons like a man’s. A super chic item: in
Vogue
Deborah Kerr wore an identical one, leaning on the veranda of her ranch. But in that stupid school whoever would have appreciated a Saint Laurent like mine? My colleagues arrived in the morning dolled up in an appalling way. Only their aprons and hair curlers were missing. I might as well put on the Saint Laurent for the interview with Madame. At least someone would be able to appreciate it. At least I presumed so, and I thought I knew why. I say, a villa like Madame’s was not in keeping with those stupid creatures, the rich grocers’ wives type who had infested the hills around the lake with villas in taste that could compete with Disneyland and who swooped down on the gallery at the end of the season when the owner organized AN AUCTION WITHOUT PRECEDENT and carried away some daubs of paint that would make a horse faint in order to hang them on the walls of their small-town mansions. Furthermore, it was enough to look at the wrought-iron gate from which led two straight rows of cypresses, the arabesque towers in early twentieth-century style, each with its own lightning rod, the Italian garden, the terrace flooded with bougainvillea. And then I thought that even a simple announcement in the newspaper could be enough for a shrewd person to understand something about the class of a lady. The job offers, which I looked through avidly on Saturday, were full of rude and insinuating, or at best dull and predictable, proposals, where “the possibility of
a brilliant career” masked the squalor of selling encyclopedias for deficient children door to door. An announcement like this one requiring a secretary: “Intelligence, discretion, culture. French indispensable,” didn’t happen very often.

I considered that these were four qualities which I possessed unequivocally. It’s a pity that the principal of the school, terrorized because I talked to the boys about the
Nude Maja
, and the owner of the gallery, who thought only of fleecing the ladies from Varese, didn’t agree. Too bad for them.

To say that Madame was
charmante
may seem trifling, but serves to convey the idea. If she was fifty years old, she carried her age in an excellent manner; if she was forty, she carried it with dignity. But I was inclined toward the first hypothesis. She had hair of a blonde so unnatural that one ended up by accepting it immediately, because blatant deceit is much more acceptable than pretended deceit. (At that time I had a whole theory based on the scale of deceit.) And, thank heaven, she didn’t have a permanent. On principle I had nothing against permanents, for goodness sake, but the fact is that my colleagues came to school with such painful permanents that I’d ended up detesting them.

Madame began a very lengthy conversation in French. Evidently she used French to verify my knowledge of the language, as was requested in the advertisement, but in that regard I felt myself impregnable, thanks to Charleroi, even though I was careful not to say so. However, I did nothing to disguise my strong Belgian accent, even though it wasn’t difficult for me to do so: it was only a question of tonics and gutturals.

We began with literature. Very discreetly Madame informed herself of my tastes, not without letting me know hers, in order to put me at ease, which were Montherlant of
La reine morte
(“so human and all-consuming,” she said) and the enchanting melancholy of Alain-Fournier. Pierre Loti, however, was not to be disregarded. He was redeemed, especially
by his
Rarnuntcho
. She was sure that sooner or later someone would have done it, perhaps even an American critic: the Americans had an unquestionable flair for the
rêpechages
. To tell the truth, Loti brought back to me the memory of the stuffy smell of the classrooms in the Sacred Heart School in Charleroi, where
Pécheurs d’lslande
was one of the few reading books allowed, but I tried to agree. I had spent eight years erasing the school in Charleroi from my existence and it would not have been to Madame’s liking to bring those memories back to me. I could have aimed at the intellectual, risking Sartre, one of whose stories I had read (it was horrible, however) but I preferred to proceed cautiously and said Françoise Sagan who, after all, had something to do with existentialism. And then I mentioned Hemingway’s
The Snows of Kilimanjaro
(I’d seen the film with Ava Gardner) and Louis Bromfield’s
Rain
. Madame asked me if I knew the tropics. I said no, “
unfortunately
,” but that sooner or later I must; I had always lacked the opportunity. And then we went on to painting.

Here I went on at great length because it was my field, and if I told some falsehoods it wasn’t entirely for “promotional” motives but only to embellish a little. I said that I’d graduated from the state institute of art two years before (which was true) but that Italy was intolerably narrow-minded. What was offered to a young artist in Italy? Substitute teaching in a middle school.

Fortunately in the summer I could cultivate my interests by working in a local art gallery (I ardently hoped, while I said it, that she had never gone there); only that at the end of the tourist season the gallery closed and the town plummeted again into a cultureless void. And so,
me voilà
.

I thought that the moment for more precise questions had arrived. In particular I feared that Madame would question me about my ability to type, an ability which I considered indispensable for every secretary. Mine was nonexistent. The
rare times when I had to write a letter, down at the gallery, it took me all afternoon (I typed only with my right index finger) and even after much application the results were not very impressive. Instead, Madame didn’t seem in the least disposed to ask me “technical” questions. She seemed to have her mind very much occupied with painting, and it didn’t seem right to discourage her.

At first we talked about Bonnard’s yellows—I don’t remember why, probably because of the autumn light and the golden spot of chestnuts that we could see on the side of the mountain across the lake. Then I grew crafty and went for the
fauves
, the “big game.” Matisse was out of the question, of course. I took that for granted. But personally I
felt
Dufy more, the Dufy of the seascapes, the geraniums, the palm trees of Cannes. —With Dufy—I said—the happiness of the Mediterranean sings on the canvas.—On the wall next to the desk in the salon of the “Palette of the Lake,” the owner kept a calendar which had a Dufy reproduction for each month. I was a veteran of thirty consecutive afternoons from five to nine (thirty-one for July and August) for every reproduction. In the summer months the “Palette of the Lake” never closed. Let’s say, to be more precise, that Dufy even came out of my ears. But in the gallery the view varied between the Dufy reproductions and the idiotic faces of the women who admired the daubs hung on the walls, and to whom, according to the owner, I had to direct welcoming smiles into the bargain. It’s logical that I preferred Dufy. I knew him from memory.

I asked Madame what she thought of
Bal à Antibes
(it was the reproduction for June) with those splashes of blue and white for the sailors in the foreground in the midst of the turmoil of colors. And the light blue enchantment of
La mer
(July) with those sails (I really said this) like little bursts of laughter. And the harmony of the pastels in
Plage de Sainte-Adresse
, the 1921 one, I thought, (August) didn’t it make her
think of a little symphony? Madame agreed. However, I said preemptorily, I thought
Jardins publiques à Hyères
(September) was unsurpassable. I found it “
definitive
.” For me, after that picture, Dufy did not exist any longer. (And this was the absolute truth.)

The calendar had a certain effect, on Madame, who was not sparing of her compliments to me. And then—oh, well—I said with all the ease that the act seemed to merit that in order to study the
fauves
I had gone “on purpose” to Paris. Naturally, I refrained from saying that I knew Paris well, because all my knowledge resulted from a school field trip with the nuns when Papa was working in the mine at Charleroi. It had been a four-day bus trip, with brief stops for bread and bathroom, then on board again and another round of
En passant par la Lorraine
under the inflexible joy of Sister Marianne who, fearing long conversations and long silences, both messengers of mischief, resolved the dilemma with the jollity of a healthy song. Of Paris I retained the dreadful memory of the Musée de I’Histoire de France, of the Pantheon, of my feet swollen like hot water bottles, and of my first menstrual period, which had started after a memorable walk the second night of our stay. The last day Sister Marianne had piloted us to the Louvre for a fifteen-minute visit, just long enough to put our noses in front of Corot and Millet, and at the booth at the exit each one of us had had to chip in to buy a reproduction of
The Angelus
, which during the trip home Sister Marianne had then stuck up on the rear window of the bus. I was thirteen years old, I felt ugly, unhappy, and misunderstood, and for the entire trip I dreamed of a cruel vendetta: One day I would become a great painter with a grand studio in the Latin Quarter. Sister Marianne would come to beg me on bended knee to go and fresco the refectory of the school in Charleroi where the great artist had done her first work. But I would answer haughtily that it was just, not possible, I had to prepare for my triumphal exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris
rendered me homage, the whole world claimed my paintings, and even the President of the Republic would be present.

—And Ikebana?—said Madame.—Do you like Ikebana?—I answered that “
decidedly
” I did not know him. (I felt stuck, and chose to be dry and definitive.)

—A pity,—said Madame,—but it’s not important. I’m sure you will learn to love it. Please put the bottle of gin nearer to me and call to Constance to bring me another tonic water.—

While she waited for the tonic water, Madame asked me absent-mindedly about my hobbies, if by chance I had a passion for oenology. Ah, yes? Splendid. She did not, she preferred cocktails. But the engineer, yes, her husband, had a passion for wines as a good Italian—an adoptive Italian, but Italian nevertheless—oh, for rare wines, of course. She would have liked to learn something more about them, too, but she certainly couldn’t insist that the engineer give her lessons, he was always traveling, always so consumed by his business, poor dear. But, by the way, my French was excellent.

I answered that yes, it was indeed true, my poor papa had taken my education very much to heart, in spite of not ever having a free minute in his life—he was in mining. The governess had required French, obviously, old, dear, austere Francine (I was slightly moved by her memory) who had been practically a mother to me. She was a Walloon. This unequivocal Belgian acccent that once I detested and that today I found delightful I owed to her. Oh, no, no, my mother didn’t leave me an orphan. It was only that Mama was so fragile, so delicate, and then her piano gave her no rest.

Madame pushed the cart with the aperitifs toward my armchair and invited me to help myself.

—And so school does not interest you? It is not your vocation?—

I said that as far as a vocation was concerned, I might even have followed it, but I had been graduated for two years already, and it still fell to me to do substitute teaching. And,
dear God, I was
almost
twenty years old. I explained the concept of substituting, which Madame appeared to totally ignore, and to be concise said that the following week, when the teacher I was substituting for had finished her maternity leave, the principal would tell me that the school was very grateful for my most valuable assistance, good day and goodbye. And while at one time the pregnant ladies to be substituted for had sprouted like mushrooms, nowadays people think twice before having children, what with the cost of living, just imagine. I don’t know if she kept abreast of the statistics relative to births in Italy.

Dusk was falling over the lake, and from our position it really was a painting, anything but Dufy. The terrace overlooked the garden, full of lemon trees and cypresses, furrowed by the geometry of the boxwood hedges which outlined the pebbled avenues. The town, on the spur that jutted into the lake, was already in shadow, and on its roofs lingered vague streaks of pale blue light. The last light of day was for the landing stage opposite the gale and for the towers of the villa, which were warm yellow, toasted by time. The swallows made a marvelous uproar, going crazy low in the sky. Madaine was explaining to me that she was very much afraid of being bored during the winter, used as she was to Paris. She couldn’t say she exactly needed a secretary, let’s say rather a companion. Yes, some letters now and then to certain Swiss galleries from which she bought, and things of that kind. But fundamentally she was looking for a person of good taste with whom to exchange impressions, with whom to talk about intelligent matters. “
Naturally
,” she did not insist that I decide on the spot, I could give my answer tomorrow. But “
naturally
,” food and lodging. Would I like to have a look at my eventual bedroom? She called Constance.