The Watercolourist Page 13

  Returning to her studio with vegetables inside her apron after her walk with Innes, Bianca reflects that she still doesn’t really know her own true colours. She places the vegetables in a basket, but it looks too much like a Baschenis still life. Resting in an almost random fashion on the rough table, however, they are perfect. She draws them and then colours them in. She is not sure who would find this little bit of garden pleasing, but it is beautiful. It is life. When she finishes, she picks up a tomato with her hands, which are still dirtied with colours, and bites into it. She eats it greedily, sucking down both the juices and the colour. Red is also a taste.

  At times, Bianca thinks, children – and especially boys – really are unbearable. Pietro needs total attention. He is greedy and manipulative. He always wants to be right, and as the firstborn he enjoys certain privileges that the other children are denied. These defects accentuate his propensity towards tyranny. Enrico follows him around and imitates his every move, as best as he can, since he is more fragile and inclined to cry. Taken together, the boys are pernicious. One day, Bianca finds Pietro throwing a spider into another spider’s web. From a distance she can’t understand what he is doing. She sees him lying on the ground next to his brother, tossing something and then looking into a void. She walks up to them, curious, just in time to see the spider envelop the stranger in an excited frenzy. The victim is moving and then it stops. Pietro glances up at Bianca. She has stood in his light. He looks her up and down with daring eyes, his lips pursed in a smile.

  ‘You’re cruel,’ Bianca says.

  ‘Even Papa does it,’ he replies. He looks around for another little insect and finds an ant to condemn. Bianca turns and walks away without saying a word. She never knows quite what to say to Pietro.

  The next day he comes up to her with his younger brother as if by chance while she is strolling in the gardens. He has his hands behind his back as if he is a miniature adult. He stands in her way, like a bandit.

  ‘I have written a poem, like Papa. Would you like to hear it?’

  Bianca nods, without letting herself be deceived by his innocent tone. He takes the piece of paper that he has been hiding in his hand, unravels it like a messenger, and reads aloud:

  I ossi dei morti

  son lunghi, son corti

  son bianchi, son morti

  Ti fanno stremir.

  Sta’ attento alle spalle

  se vengono piano

  se hai tanta paura

  ti fanno stecchir.

  The bones of the dead

  Are long, short,

  White and dead

  They worry you

  Watch your back,

  They sneak up on you slowly

  If you’re too scared

  They will even kill you.

  ‘Did you like it?’ he asks, waiting for the usual overindulgent praise.

  ‘There’s a missing rhyme and a word that’s not in Italian that I do not understand. Also, “ossi” are animals’ bones, you should use “ossa” for human bones. That’s another mistake. Principally, though, poems about bones are no longer the fashion.’

  ‘Maybe they’re not popular any more, but they certainly are spooky. If you saw bones, you’d scream so loud you’d shatter glass. Be careful, because this place is full of bones. Aren’t I right, Enrico? They grow like your dear little flowers.’

  Enrico, playing the part of a good sidekick, nods. Pietro walks away with his hands behind his back, gripping the piece of paper like an offended dignitary. Enrico follows him.

  ‘Minna, what’s this story about bones in the garden?’

  ‘Who told you about the bones, Miss Bianca?’ Minna says, eyes open wide in alarm.

  ‘I overheard the boys talking . . .’

  ‘Oh, those two troublemakers. It’s an ugly story. Do you really want to hear it?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, they say the bones belong to Don Carlo.’ She sniffles a bit, and then tells the story rather too quickly, as if she feels guilty. She looks off into space, frowning as she speaks. ‘Don Carlo owned this house. My grandfather says that he was a good man, for a count. When he died, he left everything to Donna Clara, and then everyone else came, like grasshoppers. And the bones, well . . . at first the old lady did everything she could to make Don Carlo’s tomb beautiful. Masons came, even a master mason from Bergamo. And then, well, they moved the tomb. There was a party . . . well, not really a party, more like a second funeral, with a priest and everything. Even Frenchmen came from France and they gave speeches about how great a man he was. I never saw him myself. I was tiny, but they told me. They sealed the coffin in the tomb. At first Donna Clara went there every day, praying and making daisy crowns, as though she was a saint. Then I suppose she got tired of it. Or maybe her son wanted her to stop when he moved in. Anyway, they tore down the tomb. It took two days. I remember because by then I was older. And they used the stones to build the rotunda up there on the hill. The coffin disappeared. They say that the bones are still here, that they wander around. It makes me frightened to think of dead people’s bones.’

  ‘Who are they?’ Bianca dares to ask, trying to make sense of the girl’s words.

  ‘People. Everyone,’ Minna concludes, wringing her hands beneath her apron. ‘Why do you want to hear these ugly stories, Miss Bianca? You wouldn’t want the ghost of Don Carlo to get angry and come and tug on your feet at night, would you?’

  Bianca laughs.

  ‘Ghosts don’t exist, Minna,’ Not until we conjure them. That’s when they begin to take shape, when we imagine them. Once we summon them forth, for whatever reason, there’s the chance that they will never want to leave. They become so tightly wrapped up in us that they blind us with regret, guilt, and the sting of renewed grief.

  There are moments when Bianca thinks of Pia as a friend. She is not really her friend but she wishes she could be. Theirs is a relationship that needs no words but feeds only on glances, gestures and trust. It is an understanding that concentrates on things of small importance, transforming what little they have into things infinitely more precious. Pia gives Bianca gifts of flowers that she picks and arranges herself with an innate tenderness, mixing the high with the low – wild snapdragons, buttercups, a nosegay of miniature roses – as if she has always been doing it. She will put them in a teacup – with black and gold decorations – and suddenly the flowers are fit for the gods. Bianca gives Pia ribbons – not old, used ones but new and crisp – a lace collar, and three handkerchiefs with decorated borders.

  ‘Do you ever daydream, Pia?’ Bianca once asks her impulsively.

  They are lying on the grass, looking at the sky, hands behind their heads, feet close together.

  ‘Yes, I like the ones I have where I am in charge,’ Pia answers coolly. ‘I like to invent a life as it will never be.’

  ‘But you don’t know what your future will bring.’

  ‘Oh, yes – if I’ve already imagined it, then it cannot be. For this reason I invent things that are impossible. That way I can have fun and not waste my time.’

  Hers is a practical economy of self-satisfaction.

  ‘So what do you daydream of, then?’

  ‘I cannot tell you, Miss Bianca. You’d laugh at me.’

  ‘Me? Never.’

  ‘What about you? What do you daydream of, Miss Bianca?’

  ‘I only dream at night. And I never remember anything afterwards, except for the fact that it happened. No . . . once my father came to visit me. He was dressed in a long white shirt, like the Christ of the lambs, and he wanted to hug me but he was too far away.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘She never laughed. And then she died,’ Bianca says, grateful that they are not facing each other.

  ‘Maybe she knew. That she was going to die, I mean. But even Donna Julie . . . she only laughs rarely.’

  What about your mother? Bianca wants to ask. The pretty swaddling and all the rest? But she holds back. She doesn’
t want to risk losing what they have. They can say anything to each other and know that there won’t be any consequences; neither will either repeat what the other has said, and they don’t need to be ashamed of anything.

  ‘Do you think Tommaso is good-looking?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Pia. He’s only a boy.’

  ‘I know. But his hair is as smooth as silk. I’d like to run my fingers through it, mess it up a little.’

  ‘It’s messy already!’

  Laughter, and then silence.

  ‘Anyway, I think he’s good-looking,’ Pia continues. ‘Even Luigi will turn out to be good-looking. His father wants to send him to become a servant at Crippa of Lampugnano. We will never see each other again.’

  ‘It isn’t that far away. He can always come back to visit.’

  ‘A maid is like a prisoner. And anyway, I only like to look at him. I don’t want to marry him or anything. It’s better to be alone. I’m used to it.’

  ‘But one day it will happen.’ Bianca turns onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow. The child is still on her back with her eyes closed.

  ‘Do you feel the same way, Miss Bianca?’

  Sometimes silence is the best answer.

  ‘So, you finally decided to paint portraits. I told you it was more worthwhile.’

  Bianca is startled to discover Donna Clara standing behind her, and this time in the space she has carved out in the study. She has no place just for herself downstairs, and so when she does work there, these interruptions happen often. Even so, she needs to get out of her room. Donna Clara pulls out the portrait of the mysterious woman that Bianca has composed quickly and then never touched again. She fixes her lorgnette on her nose in a nest of flesh and wrinkles.

  ‘Beautiful. It reminds me of someone . . . Was it done from memory?’

  ‘No, actually it wasn’t. It’s a woman I met.’

  ‘Tell me, who? I know, I know . . . but no, it can’t be. There’s no way you could know her. My mind is deceiving me, my age, my imagination, and all the rest of it.’ Donna Clara strides around the room as she speaks, bobbing her head from side to side like a bird. And then she discards the idea. ‘Anyway, it’s a good job. Very good. My compliments.’

  Bianca is silent: what can she possibly say in return? The old woman puts the composition back down on the desk.

  ‘When will you do my portrait? Although, thinking about it, I don’t really want a painting of myself. My mirror is good enough. It’s a sad day, my dear, when you don’t recognize the person in the reflection and she’s staring you straight in the eye. You’d like to make her disappear with a wave of the hand – shoo, you ugly beast! – and instead see the person you once were. But that other woman is gone. She’s lost, never coming back. Time is no gentleman, not one bit. So unless you can be kinder than the mirror . . . but I know you. You are fixated on the truth and you’d make me into a monster, into the monster I am.’

  She chuckles, turns around, and walks away.

  There is nothing to laugh about later, however, when Bianca comes across her sketch of the mysterious woman torn in half, and deliberately placed on top of a pile of her other drawings. Just two days have passed; she hasn’t shown it to anyone else, nor has she reworked it. She has only put it aside, as one does with ideas when they are still unclear. Whoever wished to slight her clearly looked for that specific drawing.

  Bianca lifts the two pieces of torn paper and fits them together, her hands trembling. The woman stares out at her, her eyes slightly off-kilter and her mouth folding into a smile. She is beautiful, achingly beautiful, aching but beautiful. And she no longer exists.

  The sabotage is unexpected and fills her with anger.

  The children’s mother and grandmother are not around; they have gone to the city to run some errands. Although it is late summer, it is still incredibly hot, as hot as July. Even Donna Clara admitted yesterday, after three lemon sorbets failed to restore her energy, ‘It’s as hot as hell here in Brusuglio. Summer is scorching. And then in winter we freeze. No matter how you look at it, we lose. Although, the sky is so beautiful when it’s clear, it’s heavenly. I always tell my son, not even in my beloved Paris did I see such skies.’

  Bianca is shocked that someone would actually tear her drawing. She decides that she will have to deal with it in her own way, and in the meantime do something that makes her happy, for once. Nanny is taking her nap now and she sleeps heavily. The boys have gone with Ruggiero to see the foals in the Bassona stables and won’t be back until nightfall. The cool water of the brook is inviting and far enough away that no one will hear them splashing about. Minna is Bianca’s accomplice.

  ‘I’ll help you, Miss Bianca. But will the girls be quiet?’

  Bianca doesn’t know and doesn’t care. She wants to have some fun. If someone finds out, she can always count on the master’s support. Hasn’t he applauded the English form of education some time ago at dinner? And so, off they go, one after the other, Minna leading the procession with a basket of delicious snacks hanging from one arm.

  The girls are perplexed.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Giulietta speaks for everyone. She understands that this isn’t going to be just like any other picnic. Usually they go up to the clearing or to the meadows with the birches, but no further than that.

  ‘It’s a secret,’ Bianca tells them, as she guides the girls along the trail that brings them to the far reaches of the estate, where the brook divides the cultivated land from the wilderness.

  ‘Are we allowed to do this?’ whispers Francesca, intelligent enough to realize that secrets can also often be trouble.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ Bianca reassures her. ‘Just because you have never done it, doesn’t mean it’s not allowed.’

  They are all pleasantly surprised to find Pia already there, sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree trunk, braiding a garland of different kinds of white wildflowers.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I overheard you speaking to Minna, Miss Bianca. But I know how to keep secrets. May I stay?’

  There is an absolute calm to her manner. She already knows that Bianca’s answer will be yes. Actually, Bianca almost feels bad for not having asked her earlier or sending someone to seek her out. But Pia is already standing, joyful and incapable of bitterness.

  ‘And now what?’ Francesca asks. She still does not understand exactly what they are doing there.

  ‘Now we will take a dip,’ Bianca explains.

  ‘In the brook?’ Giulietta asks with a smile.

  ‘In the brook,’ Bianca echoes. ‘It’s cool and clean. You’ll see how nice it feels.’

  Being obedient, the girls don’t react, but it is clear that they would prefer to be somewhere else, even in the nursery, although it is the hottest room in the house, with their dolls, the tired wooden pony, and the wooden blocks. They stand there, transfixed, arms hanging by their sides, staring at the water. It has never looked so frightening. Pia begins to undress Francesca, Minna helps Giulietta, and Bianca takes care of Matilde. It is she, the youngest one, who screams first.

  ‘I’m not taking off my clothes! It’s embarrassing!’

  Bianca picks the child up and carries her behind a tree that is wide enough to hide her.

  ‘No one will see you here,’ she says, continuing to undress her with a calm firmness. Matilde’s little body is round and pale and her tummy juts out. Bianca would love to draw her now. The other girls, undergoing the same treatment, don’t say a word. And then finally Giulietta shrieks, her voice suffused with excitement.

  ‘Can we learn how to swim like Pietro and Enrico?’

  ‘Better than Pietro and Enrico!’ answers Bianca, coming out from behind the tree holding Matilde by the hand.

  Bianca quickly steps out of her own clothes and stands in her undershirt and slip. If she was alone, she would also remove those items but she suspects that none of the girls have ever seen an adult fully undressed. She is sure that Pi
a and Minna wouldn’t mind, but the other three might.

  Giulietta looks at Bianca closely.

  ‘Miss Bianca, you have freckles on your arms, too!’

  Bianca smiles. ‘I’ve always had them. What can I do, erase them?’

  Giulietta laughs at the idea, and then gets distracted by Pia, who looks so different without her bonnet. Pia slips down the smooth bank of tall grass and splashes into the water, laughing.

  ‘Is it cold?’ Giulietta asks.

  ‘It’s delightful,’ answers Pia, moving through the water like a dog.

  ‘Look, she’s floating!’ Francesca says.

  ‘Everyone can float. All you need to do is move around a bit,’ explains Bianca, entering the water slowly. The water in the brook is not deep. It comes up to her waist, and is stingingly fresh. She feels sand and grass beneath her feet. The ground is firm.

  ‘So who’s coming in first?’ she says, holding her arms up high, ready to embrace the most fearless one. Surprisingly, Matilde makes her way forward. She only needs to be in someone’s arms. When her tiny feet touch the water, she lets out a little shriek but doesn’t cry. Bianca holds her tightly as the water swirls around her undershirt.

  Francesca is more courageous. She takes a seat on the grassy bank and lets herself slide into the brook as Pia has done. In an instant she is standing with the water up to her chest and laughing in excitement.

  Minna and Giulietta hold hands and enter the water together cautiously, shrieking when the stream takes hold of them. Everyone is finally in. Pia has swum off and now turns back towards them, creating ripples in the water. They all hold hands and make a sort of ring, Bianca with Matilde in her arms. The game ends when Minna does some sort of dive, throwing herself forward, disappearing and then reappearing again, her hair dripping in front of her face. They all laugh. Minna raises her arms victoriously.

  ‘It feels so good.’

  ‘Can I go underwater too?’ Giulietta asks.

  ‘Yes, but remember to blow your air out, otherwise you might drown,’ Pia explains and shows her how, by going underwater herself and emitting a whirlpool of bubbles.