The Other Language (24 page)

The summer heat gradually intensified and reached its peak in mid-July—the scorching sun forced the whole village behind closed shutters for a good part of the day. Lara realized one had to be sturdy to endure that kind of temperature and that she probably didn’t have the required stamina. There were days when she felt she was hiding from a raging war. The thick walls of the house protected her, but the moment she opened the door the sun scalded her skin like a burn from the stove. It didn’t even feel like heat, it was more like nuclear radiation, an assault of mysterious
force from outer space. The true nature of the place had emerged at last and its face was merciless. Her hydrangeas, roses and clematis, which had looked so happy until June, now lay incinerated in their pots. Her pretty courtyard had turned into a cemetery. She finally got it: this was cactus country, all thorns and spikes; it had no patience for anything soft or pastel.

She went swimming at seven each morning, when the small pebbled beach was empty and the water still retained a hint of coolness from the night. Already by eight there would be lines of people, streaming antlike from every direction, holding children, inflatable mattresses, folding chairs, umbrellas, plastic coolers, and by nine the place was swarming with people crammed in a small space, surrounded by their ugly, brightly colored belongings. The mingling of their thighs, hairy chests, stomachs, flabby arms smeared in lotion, plus the loud chorus of their voices, was unbearable. How was it possible that the oasis of peace and solitude she had experienced at the onset of summer had turned into this living hell? Was the dream of her new life in the village yet another mistake she’d made?

When the
farmacia
opened again after the afternoon siesta Lara pleaded with the chemist to let her have a Xanax even without a prescription.

“I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask you if this wasn’t an emergency,” she said quietly.

Toward the middle of August the glare began to dwindle, till it dimmed, anticipating the soft September light. Lara could open the shutters and let the breeze in at last.

Curtains, she thought. Some billowing linen curtains were what she needed. She should have thought about this before when the light had been harsher. She decided it was time to pay Mina a visit—she hadn’t seen her for weeks—to ask her where she could get the right material.

She waited for the bells’ toll to announce the end of the evening Mass, then opened the door and went outside, watching the procession of her street’s
signore
walk back together from church. The evening prayer was their one big outing of the day. It was not to be missed.

The same ladies who, only a couple of months earlier, had populated her vision merely as extras in the background now had names; they were Lina, Ada, Teresa and Assunta. Lara greeted them one by one. The women all had the same rectangular shape as Mina, they all wore similar housedresses in various shades of brown and gray, hair cut short, and held their small handbags close to their chests. They smiled back and waved; they probably didn’t approve of the fact that she never attended Mass, not even on Sunday—but Lara felt she had gained their trust in other ways, and that they were even beginning to like her. She waited for Mina to appear, but there was no sign of her within the slow procession, which was unusual, since she was a devoted churchgoer. So she walked over to her house. The door, as usual, was open.

There was fabric all over the place, folded cuts of light merino wool, thick tweeds, dark blue cashmere; shirts, jackets, trousers, coats in various stages of their making were hanging from the backs of the chairs, from the open door of the armoire, from nails on the walls. The proprietor of this vast winter collection was unmistakable: his initials were embroidered inside the collar, on the inner pockets, in a royal swirl. The
B
and the
J
entwined in a knot, in golden thread. Mina sat by the window, sewing, barefoot and disheveled, gray roots showing on the top of her head, a big oily stain on her shirt just above her left breast. The house smelled stuffy and unclean.

“My God, what have you been up to?” Lara asked.

Mina gestured toward the clothes hanging about the room.

“Ben has been sending me the fabrics from America. With DHL.”

She pronounced
DHL
with particular pride. International
courier service was clearly a novelty for her (the truck with the logo, the guy in uniform, the printed shipping envelope, how exciting was that? Surely nobody in this tiny village had ever DHLed anything anywhere).

Lara touched the merino wool spread on the table next to a couple of DVDs. She noticed they were both Ben’s old movies.

“I’ve had no time to do anything else but work. No time to water the garden, look … everything died, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers.
Tutto morto
.” Mina shook her head, pretending to be worried, but Lara could see that she was gleaming underneath.

In the adjacent room, through the half-opened door, Lara glanced at a flat TV screen. She could swear it had never been there before.

“Ben has to go to Venice for the film festival and he wants this ready for the press conference,” Mina said, holding a light gray linen jacket. “I have been up two nights in a row, the courier comes to pick it up tomorrow.”

Things had changed indeed, in the brief space of one summer: even Mina knew about film festivals and press conferences now.

Lara lowered herself into a chair. “That’s very exciting, Mina. Listen, though, do you think you could make me some curtains? Very simple job, I’ll give you the measurements and all you have to do is the hem at the bottom and—”

“Are you kidding? Eh no,
bella mia
!” Mina stopped her in mid-sentence, raising her hand. “See how much work I have to do? Look, he sent me a coat he wants me to copy. I’ll show you, it’s very expensive,
molto signorile
, it’s made in America …”

She opened the armoire and pulled out a huge black coat on a wooden hanger. She turned to Lara and brushed its lapels with an automatic gesture.

“He wants me to make him two of these—two!” She laughed. “He says all his friends compliment him on the clothes I make and now he wants me to stitch his whole winter wardrobe. Look at this …”

Mina put the ends of the sleeves of one of the jackets she’d made under Lara’s nose, pointing to the minute work around the buttons.

“These days nobody hand stitches like this anymore, it’s all machine work. By Chinese people! Ha!” She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture.

“Right. I see. Well, I guess you have no time for the curtains, then.”

“How? Look at me: I haven’t had time to do my hair, cook a decent meal. I am so tired, sometimes I fall asleep right at the sewing machine!”

Her throaty laugh went up an octave.

Lara stood and made a move toward the door.

“Okay, well … I guess this is good for you, Mina. I mean, it’ll bring you lots of work.”

Mina stood up from her chair and grabbed Lara’s elbow tightly. She lowered her voice. “Ben is going to buy that house I told him about. I had my cousin take pictures and I sent him the photos—you know, for his architect to see. He calls me and says, ‘Mina, I don’t need to see it again, I trust you, how much do they need for down payment? Ten percent? No problem.’ ”

Lara didn’t say anything.

“I made him cut a very good deal. He’s getting a local price, no tourist price.”

“Mina, he’s a millionaire!” Lara cried.

“Yes, of course. He’s very elegant, very stylish,” Mina replied, not picking up on the irony.

Lara stood motionless for a moment. She felt betrayed in a way that was difficult to explain. It wasn’t just the curtains. It seemed unfair that, while she had been lying in the shade of her rooms, feeling weak and indolent, just trying to stay in the moment, everyone else’s alliances had been speeding forward. And in her very own backyard at that. She disentangled her elbow from Mina’s grip.

“Okay then, see you around, Mina.”

Mina was already back at the table, her glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose, threading a needle. She barely looked at Lara when she said goodbye. She didn’t seem interested in her anymore, now that she had found a suitable replacement for the barons of her luminous past.

Ben Jackson’s film won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. It was a harrowing drama about a father who kills his child’s mother by accident and the difficult relationship that ensues between father and son. The critics raved about Ben’s performance (“at last Jackson seems to have found his maturity and gravitas”). The German director was a young, controversial, good-looking guy and the press had fallen in instant love with him because he was new and nobody had a reason to hate him for anything yet. By accepting a part in such a low-budget project, Ben had gained a brand-new innocence. The two of them made a cool pair: young independent European director and Hollywood star, each shining his own particular light on the other. Lara watched clips of their interviews, which ran for days on cable, the major networks and YouTube. Lara had to admit Ben looked slimmer and happier. Mina’s shirts and jackets fit him like a glove. Sure enough, there had been no sign of the wife with the sensible shoes anywhere on the red carpet, nor in any of the photos.

Every now and again Lara spotted a small portion of Leo hovering in the corner of a shot, behind a photographer’s camera or obscured by someone else’s arm or head. It would be either a fraction of his profile or the back of his head, at times just one eye and some lips. Only a percentage of him showed—10 percent or 20 percent of his body at the most—the same percentage, she thought wryly, as an agent’s commission. It was disturbing to see him only in fragments, though she couldn’t really tell exactly why.

He hadn’t called her since they’d left her house for Pantelleria. He had only sent a brief text message.

Thank you for the grand hospitality, dear sister!
Can u give me mina’s phone number?

In mid-September early one morning, her mother rang. More than concerned, she sounded exasperated.

“Do you have friends staying with you? Don’t you feel a little lonely, all by yourself?”

Ironic that her mother would be worried about her being all alone, Lara thought, since she had asked her a few times to come and see her new house, but she refused to leave her air-conditioned apartment in Piazza Mazzini, claiming the trip took too long.

“No. I’m loving it here. I don’t need anything.”

“What’s there to do? Haven’t you done enough holidaying?”

“This is not a holiday, Mamma. It’s my new life. I read, I study, I plant my vegetable gard—”

“You need to get a job, Lara. We are worried about you.”

“Who is
we
?”

“Your brother and I. You need to come back to Rome, it’s time you think of your future.”

Future? What future? The future was so not what she’d been concentrating on. She was actually trying to focus on thoughts that went exactly in the opposite direction: “no past, no future; live in the moment; one breath at the time.”

“I already told Leo, I’m going to start teaching yoga again, here. I’ll be fine. Don’t you start micromanaging my life, I beg of you.”

“Micro what? What are you talking about, for heaven’s sake?” her mother said.