The Watercolourist Read online

  Contents

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  A Note from the Author

  She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if this is love, this rubbing of fabric against fabric, this warm and rugged fumbling. Fingers. Fingers everywhere. Hands touching places no stranger’s hand has ever been. A strained gasp. To want and not to want. Here, this, where, what, why. And now the pain: piercing, tearing, leaving her breathless; unceasing, insistent, like pain without compassion, a rasping of flesh inside flesh. No, not like that, no. But words are useless. Nothing changes.

  Her other self, silent and composed, watches from afar. Her eyes are pools of pity. Why pity? What if this is actually what it is like? What if it is supposed to be like this? She doesn’t know any more.

  She continues to listen to the agony stampeding inside her, nailing her to the wall, snatching from her very throat a sound that doesn’t belong to her. It isn’t her voice; it is neither laughter nor lament. It is a horrible sound, the sound of a wild beast suffering, nothing more. How long will it go on? Will it ever stop?

  And later, when it is finally over, the question lingers: is this love?

  Six years later

  There is a queue in front of Santa Caterina. She arrives in a rush and out of breath, tripping over her own feet, now and then turning around to look behind her. She stops and hides behind a pillar. She is not alone.

  In front of her, a short, thickset fellow takes a quiet and unmoving bundle out from under his cloak and, without hesitating, places it inside the wooden pass-through in one smooth and careful movement. As if he has done it before. He doesn’t linger but turns around and walks away, the hem of his cloak flapping at his back. Like smoke vanishing into the darkness.

  Next is a woman who wears no bonnet. The dim light of the street lamp is bright enough to illuminate her face as she places her tiny, shaking, angry bundle in the sliding drawer. It is not a cry that emerges; it is a wail, a bleating. The woman hesitates, leans forward towards the infant and is herself almost swallowed up by the drawer. Her shoulders shake. She straightens up, turns around and walks off, bareheaded, poor, in tears. She is likely a seamstress, mending hems. She is very young, almost a girl. Not a maid, though. It must have been her first time but it probably won’t be her last.

  It is her turn now. She herself has nothing to entrust to the city’s custody, nothing from which to free herself with anger, relief or sorrow. She knocks on the wooden door and waits. The door swings open and a large, ample woman comes out, wiping her hands on her apron. As it closes behind her, she leans against the doorway.

  ‘You got the money?’ she asks, without preamble.

  The girl nods. She holds out a pouch, trying in vain to meet the woman’s gaze.

  ‘So, is she all right?’

  ‘She’s fine, fine.’

  The woman snatches the pouch, her eyes downcast, and slips it into her open, damp blouse, her large breasts drooping like the ears of a dog. She spits on the ground like a man.

  ‘She’s healthy. She’s fine. The supervisor went to see her last month. It’s just that the woman died.’

  ‘Oh.’ The girl holds her breath. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Now nothing. She’s been moved to another family. But don’t worry, she’s fine.’

  ‘Is she big? Is she well behaved?’

  She knows it is silly to ask such questions. This spitting, milk-oozing woman doesn’t know a thing. She won’t know if her little girl’s skin has been ravaged by smallpox or if she has escaped the outbreaks entirely; if she has started drawing her first letters or if there is no one there to teach them to her. It is a miracle in itself that the woman is able to tell her that her daughter is still alive. And she knows that this, too, could be a lie.

  The fat woman grows impatient.

  ‘I have to go. I got seven new ones last night. Plus the ones from today. Three have died already. It’s better that way, though, because I’ve got almost no milk left. I would have had to start feeding them cow’s milk, and they would have died anyway. Cow’s milk isn’t good for little ones.’

  The girl pretends not to hear the woman.

  ‘I’ll come again when I can. How is your child?’ she adds politely.

  ‘Ha! I’ve sent mine off to the countryside. Just like yours.’ The fat woman laughs a horrible laugh, turns, opens the door and disappears back inside.

  Alone now, the girl looks up at the moon without seeing it. Lowering her gaze, she sighs, adjusts her bonnet, and leaves. She doesn’t cry. She stopped crying long ago. But her grief and doubt are an obsession and the woman’s few words have done nothing to soothe them.

  Part One

  Inside the carriage there is the overwhelming smell of sweet vinegar, perspiration and possibility. Bianca looks out of the dirty window and sees the sprawl of Bergamo: its trees, walls and towers, red mixed with green, green mixed with red. Then a new scent, an earthy one. Probably from those low trees with slender trunks, thick foliage and supple thorns that claw at the sides of the carriage as they pass by. Springtime. The best season for travelling, except when rain transforms the roads into swamps. Bianca is lucky, though: hers isn’t a very long journey. One night at an inn isn’t enough to call it an adventure. She knows where she is going. There is no mystery involved.

  All that brilliant green seems to force itself in through the window. The old woman travelling alongside her, enveloped in a cloud of camphor, starts muttering.

  ‘What is there to see? It’s just the countryside. Personally, I don’t like the countryside. I prefer the city.’

  The fragrance of camphor, mixed with the lady’s bodily odours, which are intensified by the unseasonable heaviness of her black garments, grows stronger with every gesture and suffocates the smells of nature, ruining them. Bianca opens the window in search of fresh air and breathes in only dust. She coughs.

  The old woman ties the ribbon of her hat under her chin. She keeps mumbling to herself, but Bianca has learned not to pay her any attention. She wishes she could push her out of the carriage door and leave her there, on the ground, enveloped by her own vile odour, in the middle of the fields that she so detests. That way Bianca could continue the trip alone and enjoy the silence that is not quite silence: the rhythmic pounding of hooves, the creaking of the carriage, the calling voices of peasants outside, the fleeting sound of women singing, a concerto of birds. As she travels, she becomes someone else, not the person she has always been. Not even the one they are expecting. She is in limbo. She always felt this way when she and her father journeyed together, too. Only their bond defined who they were. But now everything is different.

  She looks down and picks a leaf off the sleeve of her turtledove-coloured dress. Bianca’s path has been decided. A powerful magnet pulls the carriage towards the halfway mark of their journey. Some call it destiny, others duty. And even though she knows that dresses for travelling ought to be dark in order to hide the dirt, she has chosen a light one so that every trace of change will be evident. This is her last adventure. Once she arrives at her final destination, she will be who they want her to be, or who they expect her to be.

  Maybe.

  The master, Don Titta, isn’t there when she arrives at Brusuglio in the evening. He isn’t in the living room with the rest of them, in any case. His three daughters sit on the sofa, all dressed in white, their dresses flouncing, their tiny black feet hanging down like musical notes. Donna Clara, the older lady of the house, is dressed in black from head to toe and, with her marble eyes, looks like a large insect in her shiny satin. Her beauty hangs stubbornly from her cheekbones. The younger lady of the house, Donna Julie, Don Titta’s wife, is dressed in white. She smiles kindly, though s
omewhat vaguely, on account of her guest. Lastly, there are two almost identical boys who come and go endlessly.

  The living room is pale green and filled with the light of dusk. It seems cool to Bianca after her long, sticky journey. She feels dirty, dusty and out of place. And so she simply gives a slight bow, which to some may appear rude, but the younger lady understands.

  ‘I will have Armida attend to you at once,’ she says with a hint of a French accent. ‘Go upstairs now. You must be exhausted. We will have time together tomorrow.’

  Bianca climbs the stairs and goes down a long tiled and carpeted corridor. She is shown to her bedroom. It isn’t very spacious but it is charming, with a white and gold sleigh bed. There is even an unexpected luxury: a bathroom entirely for herself. Armida, a giant of a woman with a solemn but gentle face, has already run her bath.

  Bianca tests the water with her fingers. She hasn’t even taken off her bonnet and is already imagining herself submerged.

  ‘Is it too cold? I’ll bring you a pot of boiling water.’

  The woman is halfway down the hall when Bianca stops her.

  ‘No, thank you. It will be fine.’

  Armida comes back with the quick step of an experienced domestic servant.

  ‘Then let me help you.’

  Bianca draws back, embarrassed.

  ‘I can manage on my own.’

  Armida smiles, bows deeply, and then walks back towards the staircase.

  Finally Bianca is alone. She frees herself of her travelling dress. She kicks off her undergarments, now grey with dust. She takes a million bobby pins out of her hair, steps into the bath and crouches down, her knees to her chest, enjoying the sweet feeling of her breasts against her bones. Then she relaxes and settles back. Water seeps into her ears, cancelling out all noises except for the deep, low sound hidden inside seashells. Bianca has only ever seen the sea at night: twice – once coming in and once going out. It was a yawning nothingness, ferocious, black, cloaked in fog and frightening. But she still likes water more than anything.

  She resurfaces and leans out, dripping wet, for a vase of peach-rose bath salts. She sniffs the pungent scent of artificial flowers and then hears the children playing outside. The boys are running, kicking up gravel, and arguing over something precious. Their accent is almost foreign: soft and harsh at the same time. She doesn’t like it.

  She emerges from the bath, enjoying the shivers that run down her clean body. She takes a dry linen towel, wraps it around herself, and goes back into her bedroom. A tray has been positioned on a little table with crooked legs. There is some milk, two white rolls, a cold chicken wing and three plums. She sits on the soft carpet and dines, clean and half naked, like a goddess, the wind billowing the curtains as if they are the sails of a ship at sea.

  She meets Don Titta for the first time two days after she has arrived, in the afternoon. Before this, she has been uncertain what to do with her time.

  ‘For that, you need to speak to him. He’s the one who summoned you here, isn’t he?’ Donna Clara remarked drily, giving Bianca the impression that she disapproved of the entire project.

  So Bianca takes walks in the park, intent on measuring the extent of its wilderness and discovering where it turns into moorland, which she has heard can be somewhat dangerous.

  ‘There are wild dogs out there,’ the housemaid warned as she brushed, or rather pulled at, her hair.

  Bianca, fighting the urge to cry out in pain, imagined the moorland filled with extraordinary creatures like shaggy, ferocious bears. In reality, the only creatures that cannot be ignored are birds. Thrushes, skylarks, blackcaps and thousands of other tiny unidentified creatures fill the sky with their baroque songs.

  As she bends down to examine an unknown flower, focusing on the pale green-veined striations on the white petals, she doesn’t notice him approaching. At the sound of snapping branches she turns around sharply and freezes. She doesn’t know what to do next.

  To say that they have met then, though, is an exaggeration: she has simply seen him. He doesn’t even notice her. He continues striding on, at a rapid pace. He looks like a giant: tall, thin, bony – sickly even. His head is bare, he wears no frock coat; he looks more like a villain than a gentleman. His shirt is not even fully tucked into his trousers. His clothes cling to his body with the same sweat that drenches his hair, making it appear darker than it probably is. He walks briskly, his arms swinging wide and his hands spread. He mumbles to himself. A poem, Bianca thinks. Perhaps this is how he composes them: he wanders through the woods and allows himself to become transfixed by divinity. Maybe it’s even in Latin.

  ‘So you saw him?’ Armida asks the next day, in the matter-of-fact way of the domestic help, who see and know everything, as she brushes her hair, pulling a little less this time. ‘He roams around like a vagabond, talking to himself. He calls out plant names. Blah blah blah here and blah blah blah there. He does it for hours on end. Gentlemen are truly strange.’

  He isn’t present for lunch.

  ‘My son has gone to Milan to attend to urgent business,’ explains Donna Clara, before starting her soup. ‘Be sure to make yourself available when he’s ready to speak to you.’

  Bianca would have enjoyed chatting with Donna Julie, but after just two spoonfuls of soup, the younger lady pushes herself away from the table and rises.

  ‘I have to attend to little Enrico,’ she says apologetically. ‘He’s got a fever again.’

  And just like that she disappears up the staircase, followed by a maid carrying a tray of treats for the ill child. The little girls come in from the nursery in single file in search of their mother, awaiting their after-lunch ritual: a sweet and a kiss. But she is gone. So they stand there like lost ducklings. Their governess hurries them away, paying no attention to the youngest one’s shrill screech.

  Bianca still confuses the girls’ names. Even though there are only three of them, they all look alike. Pietro, on the other hand, sits at the table with the adults. His eyelids are heavy; he has prominent dark brown eyes. They are almost black, opaque and unreadable.

  ‘Does the little red pony belong to you?’ Bianca asks now, trying to make conversation with him. ‘What’s his name?’

  But he just looks down at his plate in silence.

  Bianca spends the rest of the day reorganizing her clothes, going back and forth to the laundry, and freshening the items that need to be aired out, which is pretty much all of them. When she comes down that evening, the only person at the dinner table is Donna Clara. She gives no explanation for the absence of the others and limits herself to glaring at Bianca impatiently. The cook serves stewed quail. Donna Clara throws herself at the frail little bodies rapaciously, sucking on the bones and drawing out the tender, dark meat. Bianca hates game. It is meat that was once so alive and is now sentenced to rot. She eats two slices of white bread then peaches with lemon juice for dessert.

  ‘You’re a delicate little thing,’ observes the elderly lady, licking her lips.

  The next day, Bianca sees the master of the house approaching from afar and gives a hint of a curtsey. She is worried that she is wasting both her time and his being here. With her standing there, in his way, he has no choice this time but to look at her, the pale thing that she is. But instead of stopping, he walks on. He isn’t any more composed than on the first day she saw him. Again, he is mumbling his strange botanical rosary. She watches him grab hold of a large buzzing insect with a swift movement of his right hand and hears as he squashes it between his index finger and thumb. And then he is gone, his mumbling and rustling footsteps gradually receding. She imagines the bug’s cartilage cracking and squirting its thick and greasy fluid onto his fingers as if they are her own.

  Enrico recovers and goes back to bickering with Pietro. The two boys are very similar, with Enrico being the more timid. He always has a sullen look, as though expecting defeat. Instinctively, Bianca prefers him. She watches him chase after Pietro, who has taken possession of
the pony and cart and is now flogging the animal mercilessly. The pony runs and runs, as though fleeing from the pain, kicking up wings of gravel down the driveway. When Enrico realizes that he is never going to be able to catch Pietro or the pony, he throws himself down on the grass in frustration. Bianca walks over to him, pretending to have seen nothing.

  ‘What’s the pony’s name?’ she asks.

  ‘My brother says you’re a foreigner and we don’t like foreigners,’ he replies defiantly.

  ‘Listen to me. Do you hear what I am saying? I’m not a foreigner.’

  ‘I’m not going to listen to you. You’re a spy. You’ll spy on me and then tell Mamma everything, even if it isn’t true.’

  ‘What could I possibly tell her? That I saw a little boy chewing on a blade of grass?’

  ‘My brother is horrible,’ Enrico continues bitterly. ‘He always wins because he’s bigger. When I get big . . . do you think I will grow up to be bigger than him?’

  He finally looks up at her. In the light of day she sees that his eyes are greenish-grey.

  ‘I think so, yes,’ answers Bianca, looking him up and down. ‘You may be smaller now, but if you eat lots and exercise, you’ll end up taller than him, I’m sure.’

  It could happen: Pietro has a fairly solid build with robust, sculpted legs but Enrico has the long, delicate bone structure of a foal.

  ‘Then one day I’ll beat him and get the pony back, since it belongs to both of us. That’s what Papa said. But Pietro always keeps it to himself.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me his name?’

  ‘Furbo. I named him. Do you like it?’

  ‘It’s nice. It suits him.’

  ‘Well, I’m leaving,’ says the little boy, standing up and smoothing out the wrinkles in his trousers. He wanders off without saying goodbye. But after a few steps he turns around. ‘I guess you might not be a spy.’

  Five days after her arrival and she has still yet to formally meet him. She doesn’t know what to do any more. His mother keeps saying he is in Milan, but now and then he emerges from the woods and startles her, only to quickly disappear again. And so, Bianca decides simply to start working.