The Other Language (9 page)

Shortly after her arrival in Rome, Emma sat on a bench in the Piazza Navona eating a gelato while waiting to meet an old friend for a movie. It was a beautiful evening, warm and clear, and the large oblong square was busy with tourists taking pictures of the Fountain of the Four Rivers, while swifts flitted overhead. She was early and had a little time to contemplate the scene. She observed a crowd of Korean women in floppy hats, dark shades and with short legs entering the church of Saint Agnes in an orderly line; a mime with a face plastered in white set up his portable speaker, getting ready for his act; and children riding their bicycles in circles, oblivious to their mothers’ calls. Emma felt buoyant, something of a tourist herself, able to look at every detail with a fresh eye.

The mime’s sound track boomed from the speakers. It was, predictably, a frenzied piano score from a silent film. He was dressed in a business suit and his gig was about having to lift a very heavy suitcase. His efforts seemed titanic. The suitcase wouldn’t move. He signaled a child to step out of the circle of onlookers and gestured for him to lift the suitcase for him, which the child did, effortlessly. People cheered and laughed. Emma smiled at the naïveté of the performance, and slid back into her musings. She saw that now that she lived in another country she had been able to develop a completely different affection for Rome. She no longer felt responsible for any of the things that had humiliated her in the past. The graffiti on the walls, the garbage on the streets, the potholes, the hideous traffic, the cheap tourist menus, the cheeky café waiters: none of it concerned her anymore, it was pure folklore.

Suddenly Emma felt a shift of energy around her and realized
the circle of onlookers were now looking at her. The mime seemed to have zeroed in on her as his next assistant. She shook her head a couple of times and mouthed “no, no” but he ignored her and leaped forward, stretching his hand out. She spoke under her breath.

“No. No, please. Someone else, please. I can’t.”

But he already had her by the wrist and was pulling her in. The audience signaled their approval with applause. It was too late, he was already pointing at the suitcase. Obediently Emma lifted it: it was empty and weightless. The mime feigned bewilderment; he scratched his head like a clown and gestured for her to carry it over to his left. She did. More head scratching, more laughter from the audience, then he pointed to his far right. Emma complied, wanting to be done with it as fast as possible. He stood next to her and tried to lift the suitcase in vain. It really did look as if the suitcase weighed a ton. People clapped and cheered. Before she could take her exit, the mime grabbed Emma’s arm and whispered in English.

“Wait. I think I know you.”

“What?”

“Are you Emma?”

Emma stared at the white mask, the eyes penciled in black. A panda face.

“I’m Jack. Don’t you remember? Jack from Kastraki beach.”

He asked her to wait for him to finish his gig but she told him she had only fifteen minutes, she was supposed to be somewhere.

“Fifteen minutes. I need to wash my face. I can’t talk to you with this stuff on.”

“Yes. Sure. Fine. I’ll wait for you over there.” She pointed to one of the cafés bordering the square.

She kept an eye on him from where she sat. She watched him close his act in a hurry, gather his things and store them behind
a potted plant. He washed his face with a sponge, at one of the water fountains.

When he sat at the table she recognized him. It was Jack all right, but a deflated version of younger Jack, his skin no longer so taut, some creases in his forehead. Still handsome, brown-eyed Jack, though, with a full head of hair. In his haste to meet her he’d left some smears of white makeup on his face. He stared at her, bewildered.

“I just knew it was you the minute I touched you. Your eyes. I never forgot them.”

They each ordered a glass of red. He told her he had been studying with a famous French mime in the south of France, that he lived in Marseilles and he did street shows—that’s what he called them—to make some cash when traveling. To justify this rather vague description of his life he said the previous year he’d performed at Avignon’s theater festival with a Belgian company Emma had never heard of; she pretended to be impressed.

She told him she lived in Manhattan and worked for an architecture studio. No, she wasn’t married and no, she didn’t have children. Yes, she lived by herself, in a small one-bedroom apartment downtown.

He seemed relieved and smiled. He had bad teeth now, she observed. They were jumbled and yellowing, the teeth of a person who hasn’t been taking care of them. Yet he didn’t seem self-conscious about his smile.

“Do you still have your house in Greece?” she asked.

“Oh no. Mummy sold it years ago. She and Dad divorced. The money from the sale was part of the settlement.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. They’d been fighting like cats and dogs for years; we actually couldn’t wait for them to divorce.”

Emma took a small sip of wine. It was the kind of cheap Chianti they served in those tourist traps. The conversation seemed to be heading nowhere. She thought of something to say to relaunch it.

“How is David doing?”

“David died. Six years ago,” Jack said.

Emma felt something in her chest, a sinking feeling.

“What happened?”

“Drugs, I’m afraid.” He made a face and tilted his head sideways.

Emma closed her eyes for a second.

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah.”

They stared at each other for a few seconds, not knowing what to say. Emma thought she should grab his hand across the table. But Jack gulped his wine and looked away, above her head.

“Well, David always had problems. Dyslexia, depression, then drugs.”

He paused, then tried a smile, to lighten up the mood.

“They all start with a
d
, like his name. I wonder what that means. Doom and disgrace, maybe?”

Emma didn’t know how to answer; she was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. It all sounded so hopeless.

“You know, he was an adopted child, and maybe that was part of the problem,” Jack continued. “He never felt he fit anywhere. At least that’s what Mum thinks.”

There was a silence. Jack seemed to be thinking about something, while he contemplated the froth of the Bernini fountain across from them. Emma was desperately trying to come up with the right thing to say. He turned to her.

“He had a huge crush on you, you know?”

She said nothing.

“He used to talk about you quite often. Every summer he’d say, ‘I wonder if Emma is coming back.’ He didn’t know how to find you. I guess you hadn’t exchanged addresses.”

“No. In fact. We didn’t.”

Jack looked at Emma intensely, then smiled.

“And here I am, running into you by chance in Rome. He would have been so chuffed to know that I’d found you.”

Emma smiled and nodded. Then she managed to squeeze in a quick look at her watch.

“I’m so sorry Jack, but I’m afraid I have to …”

“Sure. How long are you here for? I’d love to see you again, so we can catch up.”

“Of course, I’d love to.”

They made an appointment for the next evening at the same café.

“Afterward we could go for a pizza. If you have time, I mean,” Jack suggested.

“Yes, why not? I know a good place around the corner.”

She grabbed the outrageously expensive check and left some change on the table. Jack protested.

“No, please. Let me take care of it.”

“Don’t even try, this is my turf.”

They hugged awkwardly. He smelled of sweat and wine. He held her an extra second, just as she was about to pull away.

“God, I am so happy I found you, Emma,” he said, close to her face. “You have become such a beautiful woman.”

Emma held her breath, fearing it might be possible that he would kiss her. They lingered for a few seconds in that dangerous proximity, then he let her go.

She turned around once more to wave goodbye from a secure distance. Jack was still sitting at the table. He lifted his wineglass in a toast, leaning back in his chair, his legs wide open, like a satisfied man enjoying his place in the world.

She walked away fast. She had already made up her mind not to show up the next night.

Many years later she told the story of this chance encounter to the man she had married. He didn’t understand what she was trying
to convey. He was a furniture designer, a person with a strong practical sense—who found Emma’s penchant for introspection both charming and alien. What was the point of the story? People did run into each other. It happened all the time.

“A mime,” she said. “He was a
mime
.”

They were driving a rented SUV through the Arizona desert. She had a map on her lap and was in charge of directions.

“Yes, I got that,” he said. “But what made you feel so bad? Didn’t you say you had been in love with him? Or was it the brother? I’m not sure I understand.”

“No, not in love exactly. Although …”

She didn’t know how to explain why the story had stayed with her all those years and why it still pained her. It had to do with many things at once; the passing of time marring Jack’s once beautiful teeth; David’s expression when she swam off the island, the look of defeat and resignation of a child used to being left behind. And the expression on Jack’s face as he toasted to their reunion, when it was she who had turned her back to him in Piazza Navona.

“I guess what I mean is … in some ways I wouldn’t be who I am today if it wasn’t for those two. I wouldn’t even speak English. I doubt I would have married you,” she said.

She looked out the window at the vast expanse of the desert dotted by cacti under the cobalt blue sky, at the long trail of clouds hanging over the horizon, as if in a scene from an old western.

“They were my inspiration,” she said, and realized she was almost on the verge of tears.

“That can’t possibly be it,” her husband was saying.

“Why not?”

“We should’ve taken the left at the gas station fifty miles back. I knew it.”

He flapped his hand impatiently and pulled the car over.

“Just hand me that map, Emma.”

Chanel

It was early September, the air still balmy, the perfect weather for a Venetian escapade. Caterina and Pascal were sitting in a café across a canal divining their future, in a quiet
campo
off the beaten track, away from the tourists and the film crowd who had invaded the city for the festival. They sipped their frothy iced cappuccinos, basking in the sun, their eyes fixed on its refractions dotting the greenish canal with specks of glitter. They felt that for once things were beginning to look promising for both of them.

Pascal had just fallen in love with a man in Paris and was going to move there in the fall. His intention was to get a job in a restaurant at first, give himself a little time to learn French well enough so he could find an agent and start acting in French films. This was of course an utterly delusional plan, but Pascal suffered from a very particular kind of blindness: he never took into consideration potential obstacles that might be looming ahead of his designs. It wasn’t clear whether he simply ignored them or had a special technique for dodging them; the fact remained he did find success with most of the crazy schemes he pursued. Whereas Caterina—due to a more pragmatic approach to life or perhaps to a lack of self-confidence—didn’t trust her resources enough and spent much of her time worrying about futile things. Recently she had been worrying quite a lot about Pascal moving out of the apartment they’d shared for almost three years. Not only because she was going to miss him terribly and she’d have to replace him with another roommate (although nobody could replace Pascal),
but because she feared that, along with Pascal, the scent of his positive take on life was going to fly out the window and follow him to France, abandoning her.

Then, unexpectedly something miraculous happened.

Only a week earlier, while she was stuck in traffic in Via Nazionale on the 64 bus, Pascal had rung her.