The Watercolourist Read online

  It is always this way and in the morning everything is as it should be; the servants have cleared away the remains of the party but something still lingers, something unfinished, which the fresh morning air cannot dissipate. Life goes on. Real life, not shiny or flashy, but a life that nonetheless emits its own pale radiance. It is like a replica of a precious jewel worn by a lady who keeps the original locked up in a safe for special occasions.

  ‘I wish I could travel,’ whispers Minna, contemplating the egg-white ship on the windowsill.

  ‘You’re not supposed to say what you wish for, silly, otherwise it won’t come true,’ Pia says, berating her with the wisdom of a thirteen-year-old.

  ‘It won’t come true, anyway,’ Minna mumbles, before heading down to the laundry and the mountain of tablecloths that need washing.

  ‘I don’t care. I’m not going to say my wish out loud anyway,’ Pia insists, looking for Bianca’s approval.

  But Bianca only smiles. What can she say to these girls? They have essentially been born prisoners. How can she console them when their future is already laid out? It is written in the stars. It cannot be any other way.

  Bianca hovers there for a bit and considers. Each and every one of us makes our own destiny. But this is only really true for men. Am I different? she thinks. It is a pity that the great equality they experienced the night before disappears with the light of day. It is a pity it isn’t contagious, that it cannot be gifted, a little bit at a time, like a mother yeast that is passed from home to home, making different doughs rise in the same way. Whoever has the power to transform things, or to transform themselves, doesn’t share it. Come dawn, we were all Cinderellas, Bianca says to herself. We had to slip back into our grey rags, pick up our brooms, and clean up the shards of our dreams before we stepped on them and wounded ourselves.

  The thought makes her furious. She storms outside, forgetting a hat, swooping the rest of her things up along the way. The gardeners mumble veiled greetings and then watch her lewdly. She notices nothing, just keeps on walking, up and down the hills and then beyond the ditches. Despite the water and mud, it isn’t hard to find what she is looking for: those strange, small, wild orchids – the sweet peas. They crawl up and around the big bushes of lavender and across the elastic slouch of lespedeza, which in its current flowerless state looks mute but is still beautiful. The jasmine, likely not happy with the fact that the sweet peas have bloomed, proposes its own new reddish shoots like fumbling hands moving towards new adventures. She stops and sighs.

  On closer inspection, she discovers new details. The garden is so big and variable that the poet’s experiments overlap and get confused. Even those left unfinished – and there are many of them – reveal their own kind of harsh and rebellious grace, the secret charm of possibility. Bianca begins to draw and soon everything is restored to its place, at least for now.

  Some days are simply not long enough for all the life that runs through them; the climate is perfect, shifting miraculously from cool to warm, from shade to sunshine and back again to the shade. For the days are not always clear – at times the clouds pass rapidly overhead and stain the ground below. On those days, every natural thing seems to have just been born and at the same time seems to be a hundred years old, every natural thing looks back at you in challenge: you inconsequential crumb, you miserable, minuscule mortal. You understand that everything of significance has already happened and will continue to happen long after you’re gone. And instead of feeling frustrated, you feel a profound happiness because you realize that this is how it is supposed to be, it’s the course of non-human life, things that need to be contemplated but not understood, for this kind of comprehension is simply too vast for brains the size of a fist. Whatever you do on those days, you come away feeling both satisfied and incomplete: nothing will ever compare with so much glory and yet you have wasted all this time on banalities. You should have just sat still and reflected on what was happening: both everything and nothing. That would have been better. And instead you busied yourself like an ant, filling your hours with mindless tasks: eating, sleeping, talking. And when the day disappears into the velvet blue there’s nothing left to do but pray that tomorrow will be identical, but it won’t be, because perfect days are always different, one from the next; no one can ever recall two being alike.

  Some days begin badly for Bianca but get better as the dissatisfaction, anger and capriciousness that force her to hate everyone – first and foremost herself – melt like frost in the sunlight. It takes so little, sometimes just an excuse, to laugh or even smile. Since she cannot fly as she might wish, she chooses to walk very slowly, thankful for her two feet.

  She thinks of the time she went to the kitchen to ask for some clean rags and found Donna Clara seated there on a high altar, like a gargantuan queen, intent on teaching the cook something new. She read recipes out loud from Agnoletti’s Nuova cucina economica, some in perfect Italian and other parts translated into dialect, naming ingredients, directions and measurements. The cook wanted to know what was wrong with her gnocchi, and why they weren’t good enough any more.

  ‘Listen,’ Donna Clara said. ‘Here it says to add two eggs to the mixture to make it more compact, do you understand? Do you usually do that? No? Well then, don’t complain if your gnocchi are too soft.’

  They are a strange family: at times snobbish and then practical and down to earth. Sometimes they mix with the peasants and moments later they give off airs of superiority. First they laugh and then they are serious. Even Donna Clara’s ailments have something comical about them.

  ‘I’ve got an awful headache. It’s as if a beast with large hands were squeezing the back of my head . . .’; ‘Today I have a stomach ache. It’s as if a beast with large hands were taking hold of my intestines and shaking them . . .’; ‘If you only knew what a backache I have today. It’s as if a beast with large hands were punching me here, here and over here . . .’

  Old Pina, maid and Cerberus to Donna Clara, is the only one who pays any attention to her complaints. She cocks her white head to the side like a perplexed chicken and spews out suggestions of herbal remedies in no particular order: aniseed for the belly; bittersweet to rid her of phlegm; fava plants, but just a little, for her headache. The other maids listen, containing their smiles with bowed heads. And when Donna Clara drags herself to the living room awaiting the treatment most suited to this day’s ailment, the giggling begins.

  ‘Be careful the beast doesn’t put his big hands up your skirt! Because that’ll definitely make you feel better.’

  ‘But how big is he?’ snickers another maid.

  ‘This big!’

  Bianca doesn’t engage with them but can easily imagine the vulgar gestures that accompany the exchange. She pictures a mythological animal, some sort of Minotaur, slipping into bed with Donna Clara and massaging her white shoulders with his giant hands in a prelude to providing her with the kinds of pleasures that are now only memories for the lady of the house. Bianca wonders about those memories. She herself does not yet possess any.

  ‘What kind of name is Minna?’ Bianca asks. It sounds almost Nordic to her but she cannot imagine how the girl’s parents – two peasants with red, rugged faces – came to choose that name from the Litany of the Saints or a list of relatives.

  Minna, who has been folding shirts, drops what she is doing, sits down on a stool, crosses her legs, rests her elbows on her knees, and looks Bianca up and down.

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ Bianca says, brushing her hair.

  Minna begins to tell her story. It is clear from the start that it is one she enjoys recounting.

  ‘Minna is the name that they copied by mistake from the document that the parish issued. They already had a Mirta, Carlo, Battista and Luigina. There was no room for me in the house, and since I was born at harvest, in May, and Mamma had to go and work in the fields and couldn’t even breastfeed me, they left me at the group home in Milan.�
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  ‘What do you mean?’ Bianca says, putting down the brush and facing the girl. It seems the story will indeed be long and complicated.

  ‘The group home was where they brought us abandoned babies,’ Minna explains.

  ‘An orphanage,’ says Bianca, convinced now of having understood.

  ‘Oh, no, Miss Bianca.’ Minna laughs, covering her mouth with her hand. ‘I had a mamma and a papa, I told you. I still have them. Not only orphans get abandoned, you know. Poor children are abandoned too. Sometimes just temporarily. They came back for me when I was five.’

  ‘And until then you lived in the institution?’

  Minna raises her eyebrows. ‘Institution?’

  ‘Yes, the place where they keep abandoned children – the home, as you call it.’ She has seen one in Paris. It was a big building, white and elegant. Her father told her about this custom of entrusting newborns to the public institution so that they could grow strong and educated, as was their right.

  ‘Oh, no, Miss Bianca, you don’t understand,’ Minna says. ‘In this place in Milan, there’s a kind of big wooden drawer that slides in and out of the front door. Babies are placed in it and they are pushed through into the building. But the babies don’t stay there. They only remain when they’re newborns. They are taken in, inspected to make sure that they’re healthy, and then given to a wet nurse in some village. The real parents provide clothes, a blanket and some money now and then if they can. The new families are either farmers, they herd geese or they work in the fields. They take good care of the babies. Every so often someone goes to check on them. If a baby dies, the money stops coming and it’s all over. When the mothers and fathers – the real ones – want their babies back, they go and get them. If they want them. If and when they can afford them. They came to get me when I was five,’ she says again, proudly. ‘But my name was wrong. My document said Erminia but either the priest was old and deaf, or the man who copied the name into the book wrote it wrong, or the priest read my name wrong to the people of Cusago who took me in, because he said Arminna, or something that wasn’t even a Christian name, so they had to give me the name of a normal saint. Anyway, they changed Arminna to Minna. When I finally came home, the name stuck. Now I’m used to it. It’s like dogs and cats: if you start calling them something else, they don’t understand.’

  So that is Minna’s story, Bianca thinks. Not at all Nordic. Bianca wonders if Minna has any memories from those five years she spent with strangers; if they cared for her well; if they treated her like their own child or like a servant. Maybe she won’t be able to answer. Probably she has forgotten everything; or perhaps she doesn’t want to talk about it. Bianca looks at her with newfound respect. That little girl with the face of a kitten has dealt with her own trials and tribulations, and yet, here she is, alive and whole. That is not insignificant. That is the stolid force of one who takes life as it is, because nothing can be done about it.

  Bianca turns to the mirror and looks at Minna’s face in the reflection behind her. ‘Would you like to finish my hair?’ She sees the child smile from ear to ear. Minna is finally being considered more than just a maid – a lady in waiting. Bianca doesn’t mind if Minna pulls her hair; it is only because she is excited. It is all right if she doesn’t fix the tiny bone pins tightly enough in her bun, even if it means she can hardly move her head throughout dinner. Later Bianca sees Minna’s reflection again in the mirror in the dining room, when she peeks in to check on the public effect of her hairdressing.

  No one notices her hair except Tommaso, who hurries to sit next to Bianca after dinner.

  ‘You have the neck of a nymph,’ he whispers while others are chatting amongst themselves.

  Bianca frowns. She doesn’t know how to take compliments. She has never learned, never having had the time or the occasion to do so. Instead of blushing or looking down, as is customary, she stares at him fiercely. What nerve. Her neck flares with anger. She feels it transforming into a scarlet map of an archipelago, and she places her hand to her throat and coughs.

  ‘Have you caught a cold, Miss Bianca? You ought to take care of yourself and wear a scarf,’ Donna Clara says, unwittingly dissipating all embarrassment with her prickly thoughtfulness.

  Tommaso turns away, resting his elbow on the table and leaning his chin in his hand. He changes the topic.

  ‘Titta,’ he says, ‘if it’s no burden, I’d like to talk with you about something that is dear to my heart . . .’

  The two men get up, bow and take their leave. Bianca’s flush of colour slowly fades under Innes’s severe gaze.

  Perhaps encouraged by a new sense of trust – and not quite ready to accept that what has occurred between them is a one-off – Minna never leaves Bianca’s side even though she doesn’t need an assistant and has already told her so. But Donna Clara thinks a domestic painter should have an assistant and Bianca fears that by turning Minna down she will offend the older lady. So, in addition to letting her care for her hair, Bianca allows Minna to carry her paintbox and easel. And when the drawing session is over, she lets the girl clean her brushes, but always under close observation for those little hands can also be rough. Minna follows her wherever she goes, as loyal as a puppy, curious to the point of appearing insolent. She is a domestic servant who has barely been domesticated herself. Initially, Bianca suspects that Minna follows her so that she can watch her paint and tell the others about it later. But then she understands the loyalty of servitude.

  ‘I don’t tell people about our conversations. I swear to you, may I die as a spy,’ Minna tells her, crossing her fingers in an X and kissing them.

  ‘Cross my heart, hope to die,’ Bianca says, in English.

  ‘What?’ Minna asks.

  Bianca explains the rhyme and has Minna repeat it. Later Minna goes to the girls in the courtyard and tells them that she knows English. And she does know a little: several rhymes, deformed and mumbled, yessir, yesmadam, things that she has picked up in Innes’s lessons. Bianca enjoys correcting the child’s pronunciation and has her repeat Mother Goose rhymes like ‘Mary had a little lamb’. She chooses rhymes about animals so it is easier for Minna to separate the words from the rhythm and connect them to the inhabitants of their own courtyard: the geese, the baby lamb, the cats, dogs and ducks. Each time she learns a new word, Minna’s face brightens, amazed by these tiny discoveries. It occurs to Bianca that because the pleasure of learning isn’t being imposed on Minna, but rather gleaned with the eagerness of someone who is not privy to it, she absorbs everything. The other children, meanwhile, sit at their desks in the nursery and repeats dull phrases in French that echo all the way down into the garden. The maids in the kitchen giggle and repeat their own lessons: mossieu a un shevall, madame a un paraplooie, bonshoo, bonswa, addieww.

  Pia joins Minna and Bianca as often as she can. Her presence has a strange effect on Minna. At first the younger girl seems annoyed, but then she calms down and almost seems relieved not to have to take on assignments that are too complicated for her. With Pia around, Minna plays happily on the sidelines. She will take a little dolly out of her apron, give Pia her seat, and still manage to keep herself under control. As Bianca retreats into her world of drawing, Pia also disappears into a secret world. She doesn’t carry toys or dollies in her apron. She has a book. The first time Bianca realizes this, her surprise is evident.

  ‘I’m allowed, you know,’ Pia says defensively. ‘The books come from the library – I don’t steal them! Don Titta said I could borrow them. All I have to do is show him which book I want so he can see if it’s right for me.’

  From then on, Bianca looks with amusement at the books the maid chooses. She sees Breve storia della rosa, Il Castello di Otranto and I fioretti di San Francesco. She understands now why Pia’s vocabulary is a mix of popular dialect and more polished words.

  The three girls keep each other company, each in their own silent world.

  Pia too, though, is only a child. And sometimes she is
overcome with excitement. Once they reach their selected location, she will set down Bianca’s box of colours which she happily carries for Minna, and run off, like a little horse, until she reaches the limits of the woodlands. Then she’ll come back laughing, worn out but calmer, breathlessly justifying herself.

  ‘That feels good!’

  Once, upon her return from a galloping excursion, her bonnet slips off and reveals light blue satin ribbons braided through her glossy brown hair.

  ‘The ribbons come from the young misses,’ Pia explains quickly. ‘But they’re mine now. They were a bit spoilt, and they weren’t wearing them any more, and so they gave them to me. This too, look.’ She lifts up her dark red skirt to show off a white lacy underskirt. ‘Even my knickers,’ she says, laughing and twirling. ‘But they belonged to Donna Julie.’ She looks at Bianca for signs of understanding. ‘I’m more comfortable in these.’ She pulls up the skirt to reveal a pair of white knickers with bows at the ankles. Donna Julie is very petite and not much bigger than the girl. It occurs to Bianca that this passing down of used clothing must raise some dissent in the kitchen.

  In fact, Minna is staring at her friend as if she wants to hit her, but then she bursts into a smile that is too genuine to be false. Pia understands.

  ‘The maids don’t want me around. They say I’m the misses’ darling. But I am always alone with the cook and with Minna, or with the girls, so it’s all right. And now,’ she adds, with sincere glee, ‘you’re here too.’