The Watercolourist (42 page)

Later, Giulietta tries to explain.

‘We went down to the brook together yesterday afternoon. Alone. There was so much confusion and no one was looking after us.’

Everyone glances at Nanny but it isn’t her fault. They recruited her in the kitchen and she couldn’t be in two places at once.

‘She wanted to learn how to swim like me so that she could show everyone and prove that she was a big girl. She had almost learned. She almost didn’t sink under the water any
more.’

And then? The questioning continues as if adding more details will help clarify, correct and soften.

‘And then we got tired. Matilde didn’t want to walk any more and I had to carry her. She even fell asleep. We changed our clothes. Nanny came and fed us dinner early and then we went
down to greet the guests.’

The girls wore identical mauve dresses tied at the waist with violet ribbons. They left their hair down, which was unusual for them, and wore headbands. Francesca’s band kept slipping down
onto her face like a pirate’s bandana. Her hair was very fine and had recently been washed by the fresh water of the brook.

‘Mamma let us have one dessert each. I chose the pastry with the raspberries and she chose a
petit four
with a pistachio on top. She got her whole face messy with cream but no one
scolded her.’

Children get lost in the details. Adults are indulgent when they have something else on their minds.
Oh, Franceschina, what a messy girl you are! You look like a clown. You’re so
funny. Isn’t that right? Isn’t she funny? Our little star. Now up you go. It’s bedtime, girls.

‘And then Nanny came down to get us,’ she continues.

Bianca remembers how Nanny came out of the shadows in her ugly, dark silk dress, not at all fit for a party.

‘And she brought us to bed. I fell asleep right away. I was so tired. Matilde, too.’

There is a pause. She looks at their tense faces, searching desperately for approval.

‘Then the dark man came in. It must have been him.’

If only there had been a dark man. If only one of the statues had awoken and descended from its pedestal to vindicate some ancient wrongdoing. If only there had been a faceless monster that
could be held responsible for all of this.

Bianca has no difficulty imagining what happened. The little girl was restless and couldn’t fall asleep because of the sounds from the party: the music, the chatter, the laughter. She got
up and went to the playroom window, the one protected by bars – a prudent yet useless measure – and sat on her knees and watched. She looked down on the great lawn from above; a splotch
of darkness delineated by stains of light. There was beautiful Mamma, and Miss Bianca in green (a play on words like the ones she always enjoyed). There was Papa, at the centre of the crowd.
Everyone looked as tall and dark as he did, as they laughed, drank and talked.
Sometimes, my papa makes other people laugh
, she must have thought.
If I learn to swim, he will be happy.
Miss Bianca will be happy too. Everyone will be happy because it’s something only big boys do. I could go and practise and stay up all night trying. No one will see me. I will learn how and
then tomorrow I will show everyone. I will say:
I have a surprise for you. Come, come and watch me
, and everyone will follow me like the children of the Pied Piper, and then I’ll
jump in and everyone will tell me how good I am, and that I was brave to learn all by myself. I can do it. The others are sleeping but I’m not scared. It’s a bit dark but I’m not
scared. The moon is bright enough for me.

It rains for a full two days. It is as if the sky is crying. If the sun dared come out, someone would extinguish it or shut it down, such is the sentiment in the air.

On the afternoon of the second day, Bianca finds herself in the nursery playroom without realizing how she has got there. It is empty. Donna Julie and Donna Clara don’t want to leave the
children. Bianca, though, doesn’t think that being with two crying women will be good for them. If adults cry, there are no more rules; the world is upside down. Innocence is gone from the
nursery. No one feels safe anywhere. Nothing is sacred; nothing can remain untouched, not even childhood. Bianca straightens an overturned chair. She closes the doll’s house by shutting one
of its facades onto the bewildered faces of its inhabitants. She goes over to the window with bars on it. There are fingerprints on the glass, a small hand, a palm print and five little fingers,
open wide. There is no need to measure it to know that it is Franceschina’s. She is the one who, on the night of the big storm, found the courage to look out at the world. Her sisters covered
their ears with their hands, trying to shut out the sounds of thunder. Bianca tried to calm them down.

‘It’s just angels moving furniture. Even they get tired of the sky and like to change things around sometimes.’

Francesca was the only one who listened to her.

‘What is their furniture like? Is it made of clouds? And if it is made of clouds, why do they make so much noise?’

She pushed the chair forward to test its own sound, until it bumped into an uneven brick and tipped over.

Farewell, Franceschina. You died young. You didn’t have time to learn much. If you ever feel like moving a bedside table or chair, we will listen for the soft, distant thunder, not the
frightening kind, and know that it is you.

For a moment Bianca thinks of calling in the child’s mother and grandmother to show them that last trace of her, but then decides against it. There are already so many signs to erase: her
doll, Teresa, with her dishevelled head of hair; her clothes in the wardrobe; her little shoes under the bed. Traces of her that need to disappear. They lead nowhere; there is no mystery to solve.
They only speak loudly and boldly of the little girl’s absence.

Bianca returns to her senses. As if awakening from a difficult sleep, she feels a moment of confusion. She senses that something is not right. There is something else, she remembers, and she
feels embarrassed. She feels like a monster. That death, ugly and unjust to the umpteenth degree, is, in that instant, merely a painful distraction. It is like a terrible headache, the kind that
makes her eyes hurt, that forces her to press her index fingers into her lids in order to feel more pain, hoping that one grief will cancel out the other.

By thinking about Franceschina, she does not think of herself. And, of course, there
is
no comparison. Franceschina is gone. There will never be another Franceschina. She, on the other
hand, is alive. Thank God. Alive. Everything is still possible – forgetting and forgiving. Although these both seem so remote, she thinks of them as old accomplices that support and encourage
one another.
Certain wounds heal
, she thinks.
And some do not.
Downstairs is a woman with a wound that will never heal

Guilt hits her again like a backhanded slap, a kick in the stomach, a hand clenched around a heart. These feelings come to her cruelly and regularly. When it seems as though her
cheek has lost its sting, her eye burns in its socket. When the depth of the punch has tapered off, her stomach is seized by anxiety. Although no one has ever accused her, she cannot forget that
single playful swim that took place almost a year ago. Once she thinks she sees a slight look of disapproval in Pia’s eyes. Although perhaps it is just fatigue. The meeting of two exhausted
beings. Her eyes burn constantly. As soon as she finishes crying she is ready to start up again, to spill tears that can never wash away the grief, tears that fall like alcohol onto an open wound;
that burn like fire in her flesh.

‘What does the death of a child really mean? When they’re little, they’re all the same: all children are promises. Whether the promises will be maintained, no
one can know for certain. And how many did Donna Julie lose already? Two? Three? That didn’t prevent her from bringing more life into this world. Isn’t this a woman’s trade?
Everyone, ultimately, is capable of being a mother. So come now, all of us, let us remember that life awaits us.’

Fortunately, very few people actually hear Bernocchi’s grim funeral oration. He mumbles it in a low voice from a pew at the back of the church. A few do hear, though, and no one wants to
add anything.

Francesca was unique, as we all are. She had the right to become her own person, as we all do. Bianca casts a glance at Bernocchi, who looks as empty as the void she feels inside. She then goes
back to staring at the backs of the people in the front row, their shoulders hunched over, locked in their grief. Visitors have come from the city in a melancholic procession similar to the one of
two nights earlier, wearing crêpe instead of muslin, black instead of white and pink. They come with puffy eyes, burning eyelids, and irritated skin due both to their suffering and to the
cruel light of morning. But they will leave their grief there, with the flowers, the too-many flowers, all of them white and destined to wither under the too-brilliant sun. Once the guests return
to their homes, they will feel discomfort mixed with relief; they will throw themselves with new vigour into everyday tasks because Death has passed them by. Father, mother and grandmother speak to
no one after the ceremony. They walk slowly to the cemetery behind the coffin, which has been hoisted onto the shoulders of four peasant men but which is so small that one of them alone could carry
it under his arm. Don Dionisio shields the family and shakes his head.

‘I beg of you, please. The family wishes to be alone.’

Some guests climb back into their carriages immediately, a touch disappointed by the lack of show. Others linger in the church piazza, engaging in brief circumstantial conversations – they
can’t even remember which one Franceschina was. As Bernocchi has said, she was only a little girl.

‘Shall we go to the tavern to drink something and refresh ourselves?’ Signor Bignamini proposes.

Attilio is pleased to receive so many clients at such an odd hour. He hasn’t even opened, but he quickly pulls the chairs down, pours some wine, and slices up some bread.

Bianca stands to the side with Innes and Minna. Pia whispers something into the elderly priest’s ear. He nods and they hug farewell. He goes then to the cemetery while she stays
behind.