The Watercolourist (35 page)

Love and war. Love is war. It’s a careless occupation by a foreign territory within you – daytime, night-time, in everything you do. One is invaded, one resists, one
surrenders. And surrender is productive. If one could measure the benefits by placing a piece of oneself on a scale and on the other side what is produced, lost, and what remains, the only
certainty would be that something is consumed. If you fantasize about what you want, do you lose it? Or does it become ruined? There’s always an abyss between the desired and the achieved;
the abyss attracts and summons like a wall that needs to be climbed over or jumped from.

Should I come forward and take what’s mine? Should I take what’s not yet mine? Should I move towards what I want but do not know, or should I wait for it to be placed into my hands?
To take or to give? To give in? Should one do this?

Should I sit on the sofa with my hands in my lap and a smile on my face? Should I peer out of the window into the night to see who is in the shadows?

We give some things and we want some things. In the end, what counts is what we can give. I can give something. But can I, a lone female in this world, only desire, hope, and then finally say
yes? Can I also say no? Yes, the arrow points to the future. No, the stone drags you to the bottom with the algae, dazed as though dead. Father, how many things you neglected to teach me. You left
me too soon. By your side, I could have learned how to distinguish and evaluate, how to listen to myself, how to understand. No, that’s not true. I would only have been able to interpret your
eager and curious signs. I would have carried myself towards an easy place and given up on thinking and deciding. I would have been happy that way. That, too, would have been a kind of love. But I
don’t know it now. Or perhaps you would have helped me understand myself. With infinite patience, you would have helped me to understand an unknown language. You had already decided to let me
go before everything else happened, before this torment. And now I know nothing. I do not know myself.

It happens. The living room is empty of unwanted presences. She stands in front of him. For just a moment she sweeps away all conventions: he is her equal. She has to do it; she
can do it.

‘I must speak with you.’

‘I, too, need to speak with you. But it’s so difficult to be alone in this house. Even talking is difficult.’

‘I know. I wanted to tell you that I understand. You have a position . . . you choose to ignore the legitimate rights of someone less fortunate . . . I understand, but I do not accept it.
A man like you, so open, so progressive. It can’t be . . .’

Everything is said without hesitation. Followed by the just reply, the beautiful humility of an admitted fault. A shadow hides his face; he leans in towards her, their eyes lock, for once. A
sigh.

‘You are right. I take full responsibility for my mistakes. But the day will come when finally everything will be clear, everything will be able to be said in the light of day. Miss
Bianca, this day is not far off. I imagine it in my darkest moments when I feel there isn’t anything left to hope for, when oppressive fetters bind me to my role, as you point out.
That’s when everything will change. Only then will we be allowed to be ourselves.’

‘So then . . . you . . .’ She trembles, encouraged. Yes, yes. It is about to happen. Yes.

‘I want to say that the moment is close, the moment when things will change forever, there will be no going back, and we will no longer hide. Do you understand?’

He takes her hands in his and squeezes them. Bianca doesn’t know what she is supposed to understand. She is confused. Has she understood, or not? And then, as if in a farce, there is a
distraction. A sound close by. They let go of each other’s hands. It is Tommaso.

‘Ah, here you are. I was looking for you, Titta. Our friend has arrived.’

Don Titta turns around sharply.

‘Yes, certainly. I’m coming.’

A bow, and he is gone. Tommaso casts a bewildered look at Bianca before closing the study door, where apparently someone is waiting for them. Has he heard everything? Has he seen them holding
each other’s hands? No, the poet’s back faced the door.

Bianca stands alone. Their conversation has been left hanging. In that other room, voices rise and fall in excitement; there is an invasion of arrogant strangers. Here, things have been said
that cannot be undone, like a flood consuming everything in its path. He has said that he will no longer hide. He has said it. What else is there? Bianca, swept up by the current, floats on its
dark waters, a blessed Ophelia in her innocent, though not harmless, folly.

Later, Bianca shudders when Bernocchi’s eyes seek her out in the sitting room. She calms a little when he lowers them back to the curled pages of his
London
Review
, which he has clearly brought with him to show off, and which he attempts to translate aloud from English into Italian as he reads.

‘“She knows far too well that the man she loves can never be hers unless extraordinary circumstances take place, a situation which she desires but which she doesn’t dare hope
for. And yet she continues to love . . .” Let me say this, Innes. Your friend, the writer, is the first and last of the romantics. What a delightful portrait of female innocence he has put
together. To think of enjoying such pure love – and pure because it is impossible. What an honour, what privilege, and what relief! And listen to this here: “They hide their advanced
age by speaking without hesitation of their youth . . . or they show off their frenzy of virtue in manifesting a passionate indignation for the same . . .”’

‘Might I interest you in an English lesson or two?’ Innes interrupts, poking fun at Bernocchi. ‘At a moderate price, of course.’

‘Why don’t you read it, then?’ Bernocchi says, irritated, and hands him the paper. ‘It is quite difficult to translate on the spot. Go on, read, right there, the part
that talks about love. It will be instructive to all of us.’

Bianca feels averse to all of this but tries not to show it. They are so mistaken. Everyone is wrong. Love is not
always
impossible. But she mustn’t and won’t say anything.
She looks up, surprised to see Tommaso staring right at her gravely.

Innes leafs through the pile of papers. The Italian language in his mouth sounds lovely and exotic, precise, though slightly blurry.

‘As you wish. “Love is no longer a cunning rascal, laughing in his heart while he pretends to cry, nor is love a small curly-haired boy . . . Today love bears the expression and the
grave posture of an old sage. Do not imagine him running around naked like a cherub, as he once did. Today love is dressed from head to toe in the clothes of a lawyer.”’ Tommaso
chuckles and stamps his feet on the ground. Innes continues. ‘“Love’s quiver has turned into a blue postal bag, and his arrows into documents and contracts, his most powerful
tools, for both men and women.” Is that enough for you?’

‘Oh, more than enough. For once, your Foscolo was right. “Listen to me; love no longer exists.” How did he phrase it? Didn’t he compare love to a child that had grown up
and become a serious businessman? And thank goodness. Everything that can be bought can also be measured.’

‘Indeed,’ intervenes Donna Julie, who has been silent until now. Her boiling point is slow to reach, but once she achieves it, her lid bursts off. ‘How rotten this world is
when we make a business out of sentiments,’ she exclaims, more desolate than disdainful.

Bianca shoots her a perplexed look.

‘Ah, but I didn’t say that. You misunderstand,’ Bernocchi retorts. ‘Sentiments, unfortunately, are utterly unreasonable and difficult to tame. All of us, sooner or later,
will fall prey. The important thing is to know how much damage they can cause and to try, as reasonable beings, to control them.’

‘I continue to abhor the world you describe,’ Donna Julie insists.

‘Or perhaps it is me whom you don’t like very much? Poor, wretched me,’ Bernocchi says.

Everyone’s eyes are on the count, judging him, nailing him to the armchair from which he tries to rise, ready to flee. But the depth of the chair combines with his own feebleness and the
weight of those stares keeps him fixed in his place.

‘To hear Bernocchi speak of love is an outrage. What could he possibly know, that toad who I doubt has ever been kissed? How can he claim to lay down the law? And everyone
just sat there listening to him, nodding their heads like asses. Don’t you find it horrible?’

Bianca, enraged, looks at Innes leaning against the doorway, his hands behind his back. They are alone. The others have gone to get ready for dinner. The count has finally left.

‘Bianca, Bianca, brazen and contemptuous Bianca. Come along, they were just words, thrown like harmless darts.’

‘Harmless, perhaps, but not innocent.’

‘You have the right not to like them, but also the right to ignore them.’ He pauses, then says more seriously, ‘Be wary.’

Bianca throws back her shoulders and faces him with an air of challenge. She paces up and down nervously, marking the carpet with her feet.

‘What are you trying to say?’ she says, finally.

‘You’re playing with fire,’ he answers elusively. ‘I wouldn’t want to see you burn your feathers.’

‘Is that how you see me: as a chicken? Or better, a wild goose with her feathers clipped? Rummaging in the yard among the rest of the fowl?’

‘If you’re fishing for compliments, then I actually see you more as a young heron with its claws stuck in the mud: elegant in flight, clumsy on the ground.’

‘Of course. And soon they will pluck me for dinner. Is that what I should be careful of?’

‘I’m telling you to watch out for yourself,’ answers Innes solemnly.

He must have understood. Yes, of course, he has known all along. But what Bianca wants is a friendly shoulder to lean on, not an authoritative guardian. She cannot accept seeing everything
reduced to dry accounting, to hear someone tell her not to run risks.

Donna Julie was right in her argument but then suddenly she had fizzled out. She is too inconsistent, barely worth considering, at least not until she made that comment. Consequently, Bianca has
simply propped Donna Julie and her counter-argument up against the wall and forgotten about her as though she is transparent. It embarrasses Bianca to think of taking away from Donna Julie
something that is legitimately hers. It is like pricking blood from a vein. She of all people, who is so innocent; she’ll hold her wrist out for a phlebotomy with a smile on her face,
convinced it is for her own good . . . how embarrassing. What confusion. What folly.

‘Are you all right, Bianca? You’ve changed colour.’

Innes is attentive. Suddenly he is next to her; he takes her hands and squeezes them. He seems sincerely worried. He bends over her, so close that Bianca can smell the Indian scent of his
cologne, and just barely below that, the warm current of his skin. Bianca realizes that Innes is not just a friend. He is also a man.

He is too close. Bianca slips out of his grip, turns, and flees. Innes’s gaze follows her as she runs up the staircase in a hurry, anxious to be alone with her thoughts.