'An accomplished first novel' - Time Out
I picked up the worry beads from the bedside table and held the tassel between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand and I swung the chain in front of my eyes. There are thirty-three beads. I counted them. Then I sat down on the end of the bed. The beads were a present from Angelo. On the day I left the village Angelo gave them to me. 'From my friend Saledin,' Angelo said. 'He too was a soldier of sorts and with these it is possible to last through many hours of doing nothing. They concentrate the mind. How else do you think I could have done this job for so long? Take them. Ha, I remember when Saledin gave them to me. He saw me admiring them and he said take them. They are yours, he said. And I said to him, like a fool, but these are precious to you. What if I lose them? Lose them, he said. Are you telling me that you have so little respect for our friendship? Well, I took them, and I know he would have wanted you to take them now. There are thirty-three beads. The number is symbolic of something, but don't ask me what. Just bring them back with you. They have been a long way one way or another.'
I twirled the worry beads on my fingers for a while then put them down again and took another sip of whisky and threw the half smoked cigarette out of the open french windows. I looked at the time. I still had time. There was half an hour before I had to go on duty and Angelo, in any case, would be late. For as long as I can remember my uncle has always been late for work. I smiled and lay back on the bed. The blanket felt warm under me and I shivered again. I reached out for the worry beads and placed them on my chest and played with them, tracing circles on my skin with the tassel. Then I threw them on to the floor in the corner of the room by the door and jumped up off the bed.
That is all I have. Worry beads and a few clothes. Nothing else in the room belongs to me. It is a typical hotel room. Bland, uniform, bare, though tasteful. I did own a lighter, but I gave that to a girl at the station in Bolzano. 'Do you have a light?' she asked me. Have a lighter, I said. It was a Zippo. Army issue. Not something to keep. My sunglasses I gave to Elisa a long time ago. And everything else I threw out when I got back. Everything except the boots. And my father threw out all my other things while I was away. 'You are a man, now. You don't need that junk,' my father said to me. 'Yes even your hi-fi. It was old and I'll buy you another. Yes, next month we'll go to Bolzano or even Milan. We could go to Milan and buy you some things. We'll get everything you need for your new room. You are a man, now. It's better this way. Believe me.' At first I was angry but now I do not care. In the army the thought of home, of my own things, it was important at times. But in the end it is the thoughts and not the things which count.
I crossed the room to the wardrobe and looked in the mirror. I thought I should shave, but I was not in the mood. There would be no one to see me, in any case. I looked closely at my reflection. My face has become heavier than it was before I left. That was the first thing Angelo said to me when he saw me. 'Your face is heavier, nephew. Some people would say that the face is only the surface, that it is weightless. But that doesn't cut any ice with me. The face gains weight with living. It suits you.'
Elisa did not think so. 'You're getting old before my eyes,' she said to me. 'And I'm getting old before your eyes. It's no good. I don't want to get old. I don't want to die.' I told her she was not going to die. 'You don't understand,' she said. 'I want never to die. I want to live for ever.'
Elisa was a hooker. On our first Friday night, with money in our pockets, we went to Number sixty-nine, the traditional first stop for new recruits. The madam looked at us closely. 'Your name?' 'Joachim.' 'You look like you need something to get a hold of. Room seven. You?' Andreas. 'Yes, I have just the thing for you. A nice girl for a nice young man. Room twenty-two. Special deal for first-timers like yourselves. An hour for the price of the usual twenty minutes. Make the most of it and don't forget to come back.'
When I went into the room Elisa was sitting in an armchair playing with an artist's mannequin, holding it by the head and moving its limbs into different positions. 'Hello, you are Andreas,' she said. 'And I am Elisa. The Duchess, she calls us to tell us your names. To make you feel more at home.' The Duchess? I asked her. 'Yes, her mother told her there was a one in three chance that Mussolini was her father. You can believe it if you want to. She's not a fascist at all, but a communist like the rest of Como. You'll learn that soon enough.' You are young. 'You call me young? What about you. You are young. You are wet behind the ears. It's easy enough to see that from the way you're standing there. Are you going to stand there for ever? Come on, then. Clothes off. You might think an hour's a long time, but in an hour's time you'll think an hour is no time at all.'
It was against the rules, but I moved in with her. It was her idea. 'Of course,' she said. 'You should know that using a prostitute is just formal rape. You don't have to agree, but in any case I won't let you rape me any more. Just buy me flowers or books or something nice. The Duchess, she'll fix it with your officers. It's no problem. The Duchess can fix anything. And it's not as if you're a real soldier, anyway. You're just a cook who wears boots.'
The apartment was small but comfortable. 'The Duchess my mother, she used to live here. That's why it's so nice. She gave it to me. I'm her favourite daughter.' It had a large balcony and Elisa draped old blankets and rugs over the railing so she could sunbathe naked on it without being watched. I liked her for her modesty, or for the incongruity of it. 'If people want me, they have to pay,' she said.
She liked me to cook for her. 'I get so bored of Italian food. It's nice to eat Austrian.' But I am Italian. I'm in the Italian army. How Italian can you get? She laughed: 'Ha, a lot more Italian than that. But they like your food.' They only tell you that because they like the fact that they're fucking my girlfriend. They like the way you fuck. 'Oh, poor Andreas, shacked up with a whore. What would your mama say?' My mama would never know. Being friends with Alexandra and her daughters is one thing, living with a full-time pro is another.
Elisa was right when she said her mother could fix things for me at the barracks. She also fixed it for me to work in the officers' mess so I could be free all day when Elisa was not working. We would sleep together until late, eat lunch for breakfast, promenade together, make love again. Then I would go to my work and she would go to hers. It was a good arrangement. Soon the Duchess fixed things even better for me. 'I have your captain wrapped around my little finger,' she said. 'You leave him to me, Andreas. I'll take care of him and he will take care of you.' A few days later he called me back after parade. 'From tomorrow you just need to show your face in the right places once in a while. As a favour to the Duchess, you understand. And perhaps you can do me a favour too. Arrange it for me to visit Elisa now and again at her apartment. Once a week will be fine. I won't pay her, but perhaps I'll bring presents. There are all sorts of things I can get. You like hashish? Or opium? It's no problem.' From then on I went to the barracks every Friday to collect my pay and the rest of my time was my own. Elisa started working in the day, with weekends free. My captain would visit her once, maybe twice a week at our apartment - I would disappear for an hour - and the rest of the time we took life easy.
'But if you married me,' she said, 'I could stop working. OK, perhaps I still see your captain because then it's better for you. But apart from that I would be yours.' I told her I did not care if she worked or not, why should I? 'You are a pimp,' she said. 'You want me to be with other guys. You are sick, yes, sick.' She slapped me on the cheek and left the apartment and did not come back for two days. Two days I spent alone in the apartment, not going out, not eating, not sleeping, not doing anything. When she came back I asked her where she had been. 'I have been reading a book by a great English writer called Cyril Connolly who is dead now. He said that according to some doctor, Charles Baudelaire was afraid to perfect his works because he was scared of the incest with his mother which would be his perfect fulfilment. Cyril Connolly says that perfectionists are notoriously lazy and that all true artistic indolence is deeply neurotic. That it's a pain, not a pleasure.' Then she took me to bed where we stayed for nearly a week. 'I'm on vacation,' she said.
I reached out and touched the mirror with my fingertips. I tapped the glass and then scratched a fingernail along the lettering in the top right-hand corner of the mirror. Hotel Weissman. It is etched in a frosty italic script. My uncle is always complaining about it. 'As if people don't know where they are,' he always says. 'In my opinion it is pretentious. To write the name of the hotel on every object whether it can be moved or not. I ask you, towels are one thing, but a telephone is another. Who's going to steal a telephone, after all? If you ask me, your father is an arsehole, but then he always was. You can't help him and that's the truth.'
It made me think of him when Elisa carefully printed her name in capitals on the inside cover of the first book I bought her. Elisa Borsatto. Why did you do that? I asked her. 'It's my name. Elisa Borsatto. Me.' I had not known what book to buy her so I asked her what she would like. 'The diaries of Cesare Pavese are very good and so sad.' She was disappointed when I gave her the book. 'But you hadn't even heard of him,' she said. 'You can't give me a book like this when you haven't even heard of him.' But you asked for it. You wanted it. 'No, no, I didn't. It is a wonderful book, yes, it is, but it means nothing to you. How can it mean anything to me if it means nothing to you? Buy me something else. Buy me something important to you.'
I thought about what she had said. It was only three or four days later that I had the courage to tell her: I can buy you nothing because there is nothing which is important to me. I am sorry. I just don't know how.
But Elisa loved books. She would take me to bookshops and we would spend hours browsing and at the end she would hand me a pile of paperbacks. 'Buy me these.' And once I did buy her flowers, but they made her sad. I gave her my sunglasses and she asked me if they were important to me. I squinted at her in the bright sunshine and said, Of course. I have blue eyes. That made her laugh. 'You are a very strange man, Andreas Weissman. Yes, you are. You are upside down and inside out and back to front. You have never learnt to do anything properly.'
I thought about that and decided that it was true. I knew I was supposed to buy Elisa flowers or perfume or chocolates. That I was supposed to feel jealous of the fact that she had sex with other men, especially when she said that she sometimes enjoyed it. I knew that I was supposed to miss my family and my friends in the village. But I did not know how. 'It's why I like you, so I shouldn't complain,' Elisa said. 'But it is very hard work at times. What it adds up to is that you don't know how to love me.' But I do love you, I said. 'Perhaps, but you don't know how to love me. It's different.'
Elisa. She was fascinated by names. She once discovered that Queen Dido of Carthage was known as Elissa. The spelling was close enough. She went immediately to the bookshop and bought a copy of Virgil and read me the story. 'But this I like,' she said. 'If you ever leave me, Andreas, be warned. This is what I shall do. I shall make a bonfire of everything you have touched and I shall jump into it and stab myself to death. Would you be sad if I did that, Andreas?' I will never leave you, I said. You are the one who will leave me. You will have a customer one day and that will be it, gone, just like that. 'But you are terrible. As if that's what I need. No, Andreas, you have me for ever, or my for ever, at least.'
But when I did tell her that I wanted to leave she did not burn herself or stab herself. And that made her sad as well. 'I should be Dido, Queen Dido of Carthage, and you should be my Aeneas. But we are nothing. This is nothing. You have taught me to feel nothing.'
I traced the outline of my reflection in the mirror. Elisa was a different type of person to me. That is how she would have put it. Sitting in a cafe, the waiter asks her what she would like. She reads the menu. She studies it. 'What brand of espresso do you use?' 'Splendid.' 'You have no Lavazza? Black?' 'It's possible. I can check.' 'Give me a lungo. Andreas, have you decided?' I'll have the same. 'On second thoughts, perhaps I should prefer an iced coffee. No, a lemon tea. Or an ice-cream. No, no, I'll have a cappuccino - or what time is it now? Oh, it's too late for a cappuccino. Give me an espresso. Preferably with Lavazza. No, a lungo after all. Yes, a lungo and Splendid will be fine.' Then she smiles, satisfied. She has made a decision.
Decisions, choices were so important to her. Opinion was everything. 'What do you think of this, or how about that? What do you mean? You are a cook, a chef, this is your speciality, how can you say that? Do you prefer my hair tied up, like this, or down like this?' I don't know. I don't mind. 'You are crazy, yes, crazy. Do you know what craziness is? I will tell you, yes, I shall. A crazy person is someone who won't identify with society. That's you. Normal people, people who aren't crazy like you, they can understand the world because they see themselves in it. They see the world in themselves. But you don't. You don't identify. You are a lunatic. Yes, that is the word for you. You should live on the moon because your mind is already there.'
I started to dress. I pulled on the trousers of my new suit, the new shirt, socks, boots, put on my tie and finally my new jacket. I took the jacket off again and laid it on the bed. Snow was settling on the carpet inside the balcony doors and the curtains were wet and flapping in the wind. I thought about closing the doors then I decided not to. Let part of this place belong to the mountains tonight, I thought. It's better that way. I sat on the bed and lit a cigarette and took a gulp of whisky from the glass.
Elisa used to love to watch me at work in the kitchen. 'I love it,' she would say. 'The way you take these things which used to be whole and you chop them up so they aren't whole any more and then you put them together again so they become whole again, but something else. It can't be done with everything. It's a special talent.' But I hate cooking. I have hated it ever since my father put me to work in the kitchens when I left school. 'If you won't study, you can do the work I tell you to do,' he told me. 'Then you will do your military service and after that it's up to you. You will be a man and you can make your own decisions.' In the kitchens I started mopping the floors and carrying out the rubbish. Then I was promoted to washing dishes and after that they let me cut up onions and garlic. Small things become important. Sometimes onions have two centres and when their skin is peeled away they fall into two complete, though misshapen parts. I told Elisa about this once and showed her such an onion. 'The world is just a great big onion,' she said. And then she was sad for a few days and would not speak to me. Why are you sad, Elisa, I asked her. 'Is that how we are, Andreas? Like an onion with two centres but no skin, so only a little tug pulls us apart?'
In every moment of her life Elisa sought an image of herself in the world around her. She sought metaphor at every turn. If she saw a bird eating a worm she would ask me, 'Who is the bird, who is the worm? I don't mind being the worm because I should not like to eat worms myself, even if I were a bird. Will you be the bird, Andreas? Would you eat me? Your little worm? I shall wriggle for you if you do.' On New Year's Eve I took her to Vienna. We arrived at the Westbahnhof at eight in the morning. 'It is like the end of the world, all these fireworks,' she said. 'It is symbolic. I like it.' We drank beer for breakfast, checked into a hotel and slept for a while, took a taxi around the Gürtel because she wanted to know what Viennese hookers looked like. 'They are not so pretty. Not so pretty at all.' Dinner, then a bar, and Stephansplatz for midnight, champagne, kisses, a party on the trams and another in the hotel, more champagne. 'I did not enjoy tonight. The pizza was not made with mozzarella. If a pizza does not have mozzarella, it is not a true pizza. Take me home.'
I took off my boots again and lay back on the bed. I had time to kill. Last night I arrived on duty at eleven as I am supposed to and my uncle arrived an hour later. On the stroke of midnight. He came in, stamped snow from his feet, threw his anorak over the reception desk, searched his pockets for his tin of chewing tobacco, took a lump of tobacco, a wad, from the tin and slipped it inside his lower lip and then he looked at me with his eyes and mouth wide open. 'Ah, you are here,' he said. It is an old joke. When I was younger my uncle often took me into the mountains to walk in the meadows. We would arrange each expedition the day before, planning the route we would follow and what provisions we would need, and Angelo would always pretend to be surprised when I arrived at his room on time with my knapsack on my back, map and compass in hand. 'Ah, you are here,' he would say, sometimes emphasizing the 'you', sometimes the 'are', sometimes the 'here'.
And this will be my second night of work since my return, the second night of my new apprenticeship. My father asked me if I wanted to work in the kitchens and I said no, I would prefer to do something different. 'But we need a commis in the kitchens. There are no other jobs for you. I don't know what to do with you.' It was Angelo's idea that I join him at night for a while. 'We can see, at least, if he has a taste for the work, though in my opinion you should give your son a holiday. Military service is no joke and a boy needs a rest when he's completed it.' My father looked at Angelo as if he were mad. 'Holiday? Yes, Andreas can have a holiday in a month or so, when the season is over and we all have our holidays. I do not make exceptions for my family. Andreas is a man now. He can take his holiday like the rest of us. Very well, you can learn Angelo's duties. Then there will be extra cover, at least, though I may be able to think of something better for you in the summer. Perhaps when old Hans retires we will need a new estate manager for the chalets. We will see.'
'Ah, you are here,' Angelo said last night. Then he came round to stand beside me behind the reception desk. 'On the wall over there,' he said. 'Behind the bar, you can see it, framed, these are some lines from Lorca, from his poem, "La Luna Asoma." Nadie comer naranjas bajo la luna llena. Es preciso comer fruta verde y helada.' He stood looking at me, without speaking, for nearly half a minute before he went on. 'These are beautiful lines,' he said. 'And they remind me of the Alhambra palace where I worked for a season as a cleaner. We would arrive at nine, as the last visitors were leaving, collect our equipment and set to work. I cannot imagine eating an orange in that place. In the Casa Real an orange would be an obscenity. Olives. Green olives. Are they a fruit? Perhaps a poor excuse for a fruit and unripe with it. In any case, they are perfect for the Alhambra Palace. The perfect fruit to eat under the light of the full moon.'
Then he stopped talking and the two of us spent the rest of the night saying hardly a word to each other.
I felt uncomfortable. I wanted Angelo to ask me about my life in Como, about what I had done in the military. I wanted to tell my uncle about Elisa, about my feelings now that I was back in the village, about what I wanted to do with myself. But every time I opened my mouth to speak, Angelo held up his hand and shook his head. Finally I accepted the silence between us. It seemed to me that Angelo was like an expert diamond cutter, contemplating the night as a stone he would cut, turning it over in his mind, examining it from every perspective, from within and without, seeking the lines of stress which would guide him in his first, decisive stroke. He would not be distracted.
The thought of that made me laugh. Elisa would have been proud to hear me. 'You are too literal for your own good,' she used to say to me. 'You have to learn metaphor, you have to learn to see the world a little more interestingly. I'm younger than you, but already I am bored of seeing the world as it is. You must live in a very boring world, Andreas Weissman, if all you see is reality and nothing else. Look, what do I have in my hand?' An empty beer bottle. 'No, no. This is my life. This is a poem. This is sex. This is love. This is your empty head. This is a garden. This is the stars and the moon and the sun and the sky. It is a worn-out hat which keeps your head warm, but doesn't keep it dry. It is everything you can think of.'
She would talk like that for hours. I would sit opposite her in a cafe, drinking beer or coffee while she articulated herself, her whole being, reinventing herself with every new thought, with every sentence she spoke. She would talk with passion. She would talk herself into a state of sexual excitement. 'Pay the bill,' she would say. And then, breathless and flushed, she would lead me by the hand back to her apartment and, without saying anything, we would make love as if for her it were the first time, as if through talking she had become a new person with a world to discover.
Steven Kelly is the author of the short story collection Invisible Architecture and the novels The Moon Rising and The War Artist. By day, he maintains web sites for a living - including his own on-line literary magazine The Richmond Review. By night, he writes. He can be emailed at [email protected]