Unmasked (6 page)

‘We take you home. We talk. You like us. Not bad boys. I am Maurizio,’ said the first man, smiling. He tried to lean in to kiss her on both cheeks. Emma pulled back and Maurizio’s smile vanished.

‘Come for a drink,’ said the boy, taking her arm again. ‘We nice boys.’

Emma heard a scooter coming down the road beside the esplanade. She wriggled free and ran into its path. The bike slowed and came to a stop.

‘Marco,
come stai
?’ shouted the boy to the man on the bike.

Marco took one look at Emma and one look at the group. He needed no further information.
He motioned for her to get on and Emma didn’t hesitate. Marco had kind eyes. He was at least thirty. Her options were limited. She threw her leg over the bike, gripped him around the waist and without a word they were off.

Emma had been too panicked to notice where they were going, but within moments of leaving the men Marco brought the bike to a stop. He had pulled up outside her building.

She stepped off the bike, unnerved again by this new and strange turn of events. ‘How did you know where I live?’ she asked.

He was looking at her with a warm smile. ‘Otranto. Everybody know everybody,’ he said. ‘You OK?’

Emma nodded.

‘
Bene. Ciao
.’

And with that he was gone.

The next few days were strange for Emma. She was emerging from a fog. She had become so self-absorbed. She hadn’t thought of Otranto as a small town but now she was noticing the same faces again and again throughout her day. The tourists entered the streets and distracted
the eye; they had given her a sense that the town was bigger than it was. In the day the town bulged with a transient population. But if you stood still you could see others doing the same. The shopkeepers, the men on the docks, the fishermen, the guards outside the bank, the priests, the cleaners, the professional men and women coming and going from buildings with bronze plates by their street doors. These people remained when the buses left and the last train to Brindisi rolled out of the station.

She even saw Maurizio, her would-be attacker, sitting with a girl on his lap on the wall outside the castle. He nodded to her as she passed. The girl turned to see who he was nodding to. She gave Emma a filthy look and then turned back to harangue her beau.

And then there was Marco. Suddenly, a man she had not laid eyes before was everywhere. She saw him entering a deli. She watched him drive by Sylvia’s shop on his scooter. He was sitting with friends at a café table on the esplanade. He saw her each time too. His eyes were calm, his nod of recognition measured and his smile warm, but not once did he try to talk with her as any other Italian male would.

Then after a rush of sightings a few days went by and Emma started to miss his smile. He wasn’t around. She swore to herself that she wasn’t looking for him but her walks in the old town became rather comprehensive. She thought of the old town as one big structure, a large mansion with many rooms. She was familiarising herself with all the narrow passages that cut through between the ancient squares.

One of the busiest of these passages linked the castle with the cathedral. Emma emerged from this passage about a week after her rescue and entered the small square in front of the cathedral. She saw Marco immediately. He was across the square in the sunshine, seated on a camp stool in front of a sketchpad that was resting on a small easel. Facing him was a large woman sitting on an identical camp stool. Her husband stood a few feet away reading a map. He had to be her husband as they were wearing matching pale yellow jackets. During the day the square was never empty. The dull, unadorned façade of the cathedral was duly photographed by each and every tourist and now there stood at least twenty people doing just that from many different angles.

Emma was able to get quite close without being spotted. Marco was busily marking the paper. He looked up at the woman and saw Emma. He smiled and kept on sketching. Emma moved around behind him to see his work. He had taken the features of the plain, round-faced woman before him and transformed them into a thing of beauty. Emma could clearly see it was the woman – everyone who knew her would be able to recognise her – but it was unlikely she had ever looked as beautiful in life.

As she was studying this drawing, Marco swiftly exchanged it for another and Emma burst out laughing before she could stop herself. It was a caricature of the woman. She turned around and tried to smother the laugh by faking a coughing fit. But it was too late, the damage had been done. The woman stood up, demanding to see the sketch.

Marco stood too. In faltering English he explained that he had shown Emma a funny picture. He pulled out a cartoon he had done earlier of another of his customers and then pulled out the flattering sketch of the woman, which delighted her as he must have known it would. The husband was drawn into the
discussion. Marco was shorter than the man, she noticed, and money changed hands. Then the couple waddled off, sketch rolled up and tied with a ribbon, placated and pleased.

When Marco had finished he found Emma where the woman had been sitting.

‘No, no!’ said Marco, smiling.

‘Why not?’

‘No, I no draw you,’ he repeated. He leant forward and scribbled something on a page and then lifted it from the easel. He handed it to her. It was the caricature of the woman and on it he had written in capitals, TOO FUNNY.

‘Is this for me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you. Now draw me.’

‘No, no, no,’ he said, waving his hands in front of his face.

Emma laughed. ‘Why not?’

‘No, no,’ he said.

Emma stopped laughing and looked into his eyes. He returned her gaze and held it. Emma had to turn away.

‘My English … no good. I no draw you. It is job.
Lavoro
. Work. I painter.’

Emma didn’t understand.

‘I work bar. I work boat. I work draw. I work Club Med. But I painter.
Capito
? See?’

Emma shook her head.

‘I show you. You come?’

‘Now?’

‘I work now. Later?’

Emma nodded. He was sure of himself but not overtly. He had none of the restlessness of other Italian men she had met. He had an inner calm. And though he had made it clear he found her attractive he would not press her to accept his attentions.

‘Here. Later? Two hours?’

Emma nodded again and stood up. She felt light-headed as she moved away down the alley towards the port. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Too much time alone. She was thinking of David when she reached the piazza. The look on his face when she told him she had not been true to him. He had wanted to be forgiven but had shown he was unwilling to forgive her. Had he searched for her? She stood against the sea wall as the sea breeze blew against her face. She hadn’t spoken to David since leaving their home. She hadn’t bought another mobile phone. She had abandoned her email addresses. There was no forwarding address. She had given him no second chances.

But she loved him. She loved him more than ever.

So far she had resisted the temptation to ask her parents about David. She communicated with them by payphone, assuring them she was fine and that she would come home soon. They didn’t pry. Her mother wasn’t that kind of mother, her father knew better than to ask. They had always respected her choices. Her mother had given her the phone numbers and addresses of her family in Denmark as a backup and had moved a couple of thousand dollars into Emma’s account, which Emma had refused to use. It was still there, in case of an emergency, though.

Now that her life had been stripped down to the barest essentials she needed nothing. From this perspective David was rooted to a particular spot on the earth and he represented a life full of
things
. She remembered her pride in their home. The furniture she had chosen. The lovely pieces she had bid for in antique furniture auctions. She remembered her hand caressing the gear stick of her BMW, the solidity of the oak banister, the way her skin brushed against her expensive cotton sheets … and she felt sick.

Nothing was permanent. She glanced up at the beautiful brutality of the walls of the once
proud fortress town. These walls hadn’t protected Otranto, the Turks had taken the town twice. David’s solidity, attractive as it was, hadn’t been enough to save their marriage. She had been seduced away from her true self. She was made strong enough to have no roots, to have nothing, to do what she pleased. She was lonely now, but free. But her life with David had been lived in a minefield of rights and wrongs. She had come to believe in these distinctions, too. She had become too frightened to move and had made do with what she could safely reach.

There was no minefield. Right and wrong were fluid not fixed. That’s why some wrongs feel so right. We must be fluid, too, if we are to do more right than wrong. She loved David, but could never go back.

Emma started to walk towards the cathedral.

Marco was sitting on his stool. The other stool was empty.

‘We go now?’ he asked as she came up to him.

‘Yes, now,’ she said, folding up the empty stool for him.

‘
Va bene
.’

Marco was smiling. Less than half an hour had gone by since Emma had left him. He packed
up the toolbox he used to store his pens, pencils, charcoal and rags, and folded up his little easel. It was all then crammed into an oversized, striped carry bag, stools and all. He then crossed the square and entered a building. Moments later he was back without the bag.

‘
Va bene
,’ he repeated, smiling. ‘You want we go now, we go now.’

Emma enjoyed his good humour. He led her down the alley and they cut through a passageway she had discovered only the day before. She was expecting him to stop at one of the doors – she had a romantic idea of him living in the old city – but they kept walking and he stopped where a number of scooters were chained up. He unlocked his.

‘You still want?’ he asked Emma, who realised her face must have been revealing her feelings. She wasn’t sure anymore.

‘Where do you live?’

He waved his hands north, in the direction Emma lived.

‘Far?’

‘
Si
, far.’

Emma hesitated.

‘We go have drink,’ he said, locking his scooter again. ‘I show later.’

‘No, no. I’m OK. We go now.’

‘
Va bene
,’ he repeated and unlocked the bike, then kick-started it. He climbed on and Emma did as she had done when he had saved her, she threw her leg over and gripped him around the waist. His scent overwhelmed her. She had not smelt it since that night and it affected her now. It was a very attractive scent. Suddenly her arms around him felt different. His body against hers was no longer innocent. His flesh was firm, his waist and shoulders rigid, his arms muscular.

They took off and Emma gripped him tighter. She saw immediately that he had no respect of the road rules. They drove across the traffic, mounting the pavement when necessary, reaching speeds that made Emma stiffen with fear. But as they left the town she felt safer. They were on the main road north. They were keeping to the right and following the rules. The scooter was so noisy, the wind buffeted her and cars kept overtaking them at unimaginable speeds. The countryside around them was flat and ugly. Everything man had touched looked dry and broken, rusted and needing repair. But soon even this changed. They entered forested areas. At one point he turned his head and waved his hand to the right, shouting,
‘Club Med. Sometimes I work.’ And they sped on.

Then they veered off to the right onto a narrow dirt road between rows of trees and they bumped and wobbled their way down an incline. They passed a few run-down buildings and the trees thinned and Emma was surprised to find herself at the edge of cliff staring out over an azure blue sea.

Marco stopped the bike and left the engine running.

‘Beautiful, no?’ He pointed to a cluster of whitewashed buildings to their left. ‘My house.’

Emma looked with interest. Along most of this part of the coast the forest ran to the sea, thinning as it reached the low cliffs or stretches of beach, but here it had been cleared. The unpaved track they had taken from the highway ran through low shrubs and grass before cutting between the buildings and coming to stop. It was a beautiful but lonely spot.

Marco had turned and was watching Emma’s expression. As it didn’t change and as she asked no questions, he popped the bike into gear and drove towards his house.

On approach Emma thought she saw a woman’s face spy them from a window on the bottom floor
of the nearest building. Then she heard a dog begin to bark. Marco steered them into the courtyard and waiting for them by the door of one of the buildings was a woman with a small child on her hip. Emma’s heart skipped a beat.

Marco stopped the bike and, before either he or Emma could move, a torrent of words washed over them.

The woman spoke too rapidly for Emma to understand, but it was obvious she wasn’t pleased with Marco. Adding to this unpleasant welcome, a small white dog was barking incessantly from behind a closed window, its fluffy face distorted in its fury.