Lucca (29 page)

She pulled out a chair and sat down beside the captain. He passed her a pencil. Watch out, it's sharp! he whispered with a sly foxy glance, as if he was a schoolboy and she was the new girl. Right, let's get going, said Harry Weiner, but he didn't put on his glasses nor did he open his script. He sat leaning back with crossed legs while they turned to the first page. He stayed like that throughout the reading, his head bent slightly forwards, eyes half closed and fixed on a point on the floor, listening to the actors reading their parts. If one of them started to stress a sentence, already trying to make their mark on how the role should be played, only then did he raise his head slightly and smile a little, inscrutable smile. That made the reader subdue his tone again and content himself with reading the words. When they had gone through the text and closed their scripts there was a moment's silence. Then he stood up, looked round and thanked them. They remained seated while he gathered his things and left. Again Lucca had the feeling of being in a classroom. As soon as Harry Wiener was out of the door conversation broke out all across the table.

That's how he was! The captain stretched out his arms backwards and smiled in amusement at the bewildered look on her face. He rested his hands on his knees with his elbows pointing outwards. Lucca shrugged her shoulders. She had expected him to say something to them about the play and the roles. He never did that . . . the cavalry captain held his breath a moment before breathing out through his nose. But just you wait! He might well seem a bit cold to begin with, and he was never much of a chatterbox, you could get quite frightened of him, but he was a
lovely
person. Probably the reason for his reserve today was because of his wife. It was bloody awful, she wasn't likely to see the new year. But he was taking it bravely . . . really there was something gentle . . . yes, gentle about him. You wouldn't
believe it, said the captain, but he makes you feel safe, even if he gives quite the opposite impression. That's the secret, he smiled. Lucca nodded agreement, as if she was quite familiar with the situation. Harry Wiener put you at ease, but you didn't get to be friends. He knew how to keep himself to himself! The captain held up his hands. The diva leaned forward, her breasts in the informal sweatshirt pressed flat on the table. She put her head on one side and smiled lasciviously. Well, darling, so what was it like in Borneo? The captain turned towards her.
Brilliant!

Sitting slightly apart Lucca wondered why it was that actors always talked to each other so affectedly. It was
darling
or
sweetheart
the whole time, and she secretly questioned if they were all gay. Even the women sounded gay because they seemed to mimic gay men's parody of women. She promised herself never to start talking like that. On her way down the corridor the diva caught up with her on high, clicking heels. The high-heeled shoes seemed like a feminine comment on the blue jeans, relaxed sweatshirt and ugly, mannish spectacles. It went
very
well, she said with a motherly smile, as if Lucca had been up for an exam. But do take
care
with your consonants! People don't
learn
to articulate properly any more . . . She held open the street door for her young colleague and put her head on one side again. Nice to have met you!

The captain had been right. Harry Wiener never exchanged jovialities with the actors that other directors might at the start of the day's rehearsals, to warm them up and maybe redress the ghastly old-fashioned authority they still represented. But although he did nothing to ingratiate himself with them or put them at ease, after a week Lucca discovered she felt perfectly safe with this undemonstrative, discreetly attentive man. She lost her fear of appearing foolish. Every bid, every suggestion was permitted, and if they could not be used, they dropped out by themselves, she didn't know how, for he never directly criticised her way of playing the part, a raised eyebrow was enough. Nor did he praise her, simply smiled now and then with unexpected mildness, almost gratefully, as she felt warmth spreading through her.

He preferred to express himself in simple and very physical images, always based on the current passage. Before and after rehearsing a scene he spoke to the actors separately. He seldom interrupted them when they were acting and if he did, it was with a specific question or a single word that might seem irrelevant or puzzling to the others, like a private code meant only for the one he was addressing, which helped the actor get back on the track. On the track of what? To begin with they didn't know. They thought they were approaching the unknown core of their character, but little by little they each discovered they were merely following the outlines of something they had known all the time without thinking about it, since it involved hidden aspects of themselves.

Lucca gradually came to respect the diva and the captain. She saw their concentration at work, and they saw her when she felt most vulnerable and naked. She had still not worked long enough to feel it on her own body, but she imagined their affected manner must be a shield. They were obliged to act in their own lives in order for them to be themselves on the stage. In the real world they had to allow themselves to play ironically and without commitment, employing the most grotesque and comical attitudes, because the stage was the only place where they could not allow themselves the least simulation or absent-minded, fashionable convention.

Lucca was completely exhausted after the rehearsals, and when she woke up in the evening having slept for an hour or two, she discovered she had spent yet another day without thinking of Otto. Thinking of him brought no particular feelings. She felt as if she'd had a local anaesthetic, and on the nights she had dinner with Else she hardly listened to what her mother said. Most of the time they left each other in peace, and there were days when they just met in the hall if one was leaving and the other coming home. Miriam called now and then, but if Lucca started to tell her anything she always noticed a shadow of envy beneath her friend's enthusiasm. For a year Miriam had had nothing but a minor part in a television series for children, disguised as a kangaroo. She had laughed at herself, but nevertheless she tried
to present the role in a serious light when she explained how hard it actually was to hop around in a costume like that, legs together. She had been highly praised for it.

When Miriam thought they had talked enough about Strindberg and Harry Wiener she asked if Lucca still thought about Otto and, as if to make the most of it, she announced one day that after all there didn't seem to have been so much between Otto and the mulatto model he had been seen with. Lucca could sense Miriam didn't believe her when she said she hardly thought of him any more. She ought to go on suffering when everything else was going so well. Or had she fallen for the Gypsy King, in fact? When Miriam hinted at that for the third time Lucca shut her up. There was really more to life than everlastingly falling in love, she said, surprised to hear herself quoting Else. Work, for instance, she went on. That made Miriam change the subject.

Only at rehearsals did she felt completely alert. She no longer doubted that she had been given the role because Harry Wiener had faith in her talent. She had been reassured when she went to tea with him in his rooftop apartment, and her trust in him increased when he sometimes took her hand or put an arm round her shoulder as they talked. There was nothing in the least suggestive or underhand in his touch, it came as a natural extension of the conversation and his explanations when he went through a scene and showed her how he visualised her entrance and where she should stop.

She never spoke to him about anything but her part, and he left as soon as the day's rehearsal was finished. Nothing in his professional manner betrayed that she had sat on his sofa one afternoon talking about herself while outside thunder crashed and rain fell. It strengthened her feeling of laying herself bare on the stage, delivered to his eyes down in the semi-darkness of the auditorium. There was a small lamp on his desk, but its light illuminated only his torso, not his face. She wondered whether the other actors had been to tea with him too, and if he knew as much about their lives as he did about hers.

One day she was in the canteen with the captain and the diva, the two of them enjoying a teasing, comradely banter. They must
have known each other since youth. Lucca felt an outsider. It was still strange to have lunch with them, although they were her colleagues. She had known their faces since she was a child, and here she was watching the diva pick up shrimps from her plate with her red nails and pop them between her red, red lips. She and the captain couldn't agree whether Harry Wiener's present wife was number three or four, and they helped each other count up the names of the women he had married, and those he'd had on the side. They even argued over the order. He changes wives as others change their cars, said the diva. She had been friends with the previous wife, that is, number two or three.
Wasn't
there one they had forgotten?

The captain filled up his beer glass. Anyway, Wiener would soon have to look around for a new one. He had foam on his nose when drinking. The diva removed it with an affectionate finger. Well, you
are
exquisitely sympathetic, she laughed with her moist lips and turned to Lucca. She had better take care or she would be the next! But maybe the crafty old bugger had already tried it on? Lucca felt her cheeks burn. Well, they'd better not go into that now! The captain made a poker face and raised an index finger at his friend. The young weren't like that – any more! The diva let out a whinny. One-love, she said and gasped for breath with a groan of ecstasy. But what was it he had called Wiener, that time they did
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. . . Yes, come on now! She gave his arm a pat of encouragement. The captain scratched his neck and raised his glass. She picked up the remaining shrimps from her plate and sucked mayonnaise from her fingers, looking at him expectantly. We call him the Gypsy King, said Lucca. The captain held out his glass and bent forwards as if his beer was going down the wrong way. They laughed.

As she cycled home she felt irritated with herself for blushing when the diva asked if Harry Wiener had made a pass at her. Had they seen through her? Was that how he tracked down new talent? But why then had she got the part? Was it only because it would be too painful if she put it around town how she had sent off such an old ape? Not because he was ashamed of his
approaches, but because he was ashamed at being rejected. Had he given her the part simply to keep her mouth shut? That seemed too complicated, she thought and regretted having angled for such a cheap laugh with the hackneyed nickname. She had slipped that in to assure them she had not been to bed with him. But why was everyone convinced she had, Otto and Miriam and now the diva and the captain as well?

She could not make the image of the notorious womaniser match her impression of the calm, concentrated man with the lined face. Nor could she make her own image of him match the episode in his Mercedes when he had driven her home and quite openly made advances. Probably he had just felt lonely. His wife was incurably ill and he didn't know how long she had to lie suffering. Was it any wonder that he lost his bearings for a moment? Looking back at it now she felt he had opened a crack into something human in his otherwise controlled and impenetrable façade. Just as when he received her a month later, confused and half asleep in a frail and touching way.

Suddenly she pictured him again clearly, in the car when they stopped at the kerb outside the Egyptian restaurant. The vulnerable look in his eyes when he bravely gave himself away and asked for a kiss. He must have known what he was exposing himself to, the gossip and ridicule, but he had not cared. She kept on going back to the mixture of courage and vulnerability there had been in his expression. She couldn't possibly be just a firm young cunt, yet another in the series, if you were to believe the diva and the captain.

She recalled what he had said. That she was both talented and attractive, and she was wrong if she believed one had nothing to do with the other. When he said that she had thought he was merely trying to manipulate her or overwhelm her with his cynicism. But perhaps there was no difference, with a man like Harry Wiener. Maybe he had wanted to test her and see if she had sufficient substance and ability to resist. He must have seen something more in her that night. He must have seen the same thing he had patiently waited for from the start of rehearsals, down at his desk in the semi-darkness, until she too began to
see it in the bright light up on the stage, as she gradually took possession of her part. Another side of herself which so far had remained hidden.

She slowly turned off the hot water until it became icy cold. For a moment her heart seemed to stop beating. She gasped but forced herself to stand still, eyes closed, completely stunned by cold. When she had turned off the water she stepped in front of the wide mirror fitted into the wall between the Moorish tiles. The window behind her was open, the mosquito net reflected the sun and the mountains faded behind a white fog. She had gained a little weight, her hips were rounder and her breasts bigger. For once she was brown all over, without the usual pale strips from her bikini. She lay naked, sunning herself on the terrace in the afternoons. No one could see her except Harry when he sat in the shade reading. The scratching sound of cicadas intensified outside the window, escalating rhythmically. She rubbed her face with her hands and pressed water out of her black hair.

She could still feel surprised when she looked at her black hair in the mirror. One day after rehearsal Harry had taken her aside and, as if in passing, asked if she would consider dyeing her hair black. It would make her look like the captain, her father in the play. When he saw her terrified look, he immediately laughed it off. It was just a thought. She forgot it again, but a week or two later when she was standing in front of the mirror memorising her lines it suddenly struck her that she ought to have black hair. Only when she'd suggested it did she recall it had been his own idea, but he made no comment, not so much as a twitch. He merely gazed at her as he considered it, until he nodded agreement, as if it was something she herself had discovered. She was both fascinated and alarmed. He said nothing when the play had been performed for the last time and she had her hair dyed black again because her own colour had begun to show at the roots. But at that point she knew he liked her with it.