Prodigies Page 44

  ‘I will hire one. I’ll tell them at the hotel.’

  ‘Oh, but they’re sure to overcharge you.’ After the extravagances of his youth, poverty had taught him thrift.

  ‘They always do that! That goes without saying.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like me to see if I can find something cheaper?’

  ‘Oh, why go to all that bother?’

  Together they wandered through empty room after room of the palazzo. Many were empty, their furniture long since sold. One, a ballroom, open at its far end to the sky, was spattered with bird droppings. Another contained a high-piled heap of rubbish – broken chairs, a rusty enamel basin, a dog basket, clothes, yellowed newspapers, broken-backed books. Yet another, otherwise wholly empty, had at its far end an organ, many of its pipes scattered below it. Massimo became increasingly depressed. Since he and his mother now confined themselves to a wing, he had not visited these rooms for a long, long time. Alexine, on the other hand, was enthralled. She gazed up, mouth open, at a cracked trompe l’œil fresco; ran a hand along the back of a dusty sofa, its damask hanging in shreds from the honey-coloured walnut like skin from a bum; stared in wonder out of a long window at a vast parterre sprouting a rash of weeds.

  In the garden, he kept pointing. The land over there – and there – was still theirs. But that vineyard was sold, and those barns had also been sold, as had the stables in which his father had kept bloodstock famous all over Italy. He opened the door into a coach-house, revealing an ancient carriage, its hood hanging loose and its leather seats sprouting horsehair. ‘We no longer use that one. The other – the one being repaired – is so much more modern and comfortable.’ She knew that he was lying; there was no other coach.

  After a meal served to them on a terrace overlooking the distant sea by an elderly manservant so like the one in the apartment that Alexine wondered if they were brothers, she asked: ‘ When am I going to meet your mother?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to meet her. Why?’

  ‘Why? Why? Because she’s your mother. And anything to do with you interests me.’

  ‘But she’s so old.Ill.’

  ‘She can’t be that old if you’re only twenty-three.’

  ‘She’s aged since she tried to kill herself.’

  Alexine was taken aback. ‘ How did that happen?’

  ‘My father died. My sister died. No money. She was unhappy. Perhaps it would have been better if she had succeeded, instead of being found by Maria,’ he added morosely.

  Alexine asked what form his mother’s suicide attempt had taken.

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t like to talk about death – or near-death. Can’t we talk of something else?’

  When she continued to press him, he said: ‘Well, if you must know – she cut her wrists. She bled a lot before Maria went into her room. The loss of blood affected …’ He pointed a forefinger to his head.

  His mother lay propped up on a number of pillows in a four-poster bed. The curtains of the bed were tattered and dusty, and Alexine, who had been so fastidious about cleanliness even on her African travels, was horrified to see how dirty the sheets were. Immediately she decided that she would offer to pay the wages of a servant who could devote herself exclusively to looking after the invalid.

  ‘Who is this?’ The Principessa looked so fragile, like some starved, wounded bird up-ended on the sagging mattress, but her voice was strong, even sharp.

  Massimo explained. As he rattled on about Alexine, greatly to her embarrassment, he made much of the yacht in the harbour and the suite at the hotel, as though this evidence of wealth would ingratiate his new friend with the old woman.

  The Principessa seemed hardly to listen to, much less take in, what was said. Instead, without any further acknowledgement of Alexine, she suddenly announced, apropos of nothing: ‘Those two are at it again.’

  Exasperated, Massimo protested: ‘ Mother, they’re absolutely honest. I’ve told you that over and over again. If you go on like this, you’ll find yourself with no one to look after you.’

  ‘My ear-rings, the emerald and diamond earrings. They’ve totally disappeared.’

  ‘You sold them, mother, you sold them. Have you forgotten? Levi came here and made you an offer for them and you sold them.’

  ‘Levi? Who is Levi?’

  ‘Who is Levi? You know who Levi is!’ But it was obvious that she had no idea at all. ‘He’s been buying your jewellery for the last ten years at least.’

  Alexine had only now noticed the purple, ridged scars on the old woman’s wrists. She stared down at them, horrified but fascinated.

  ‘Is this the one who’s buying you all those clothes?’

  Massimo visibly cringed. ‘Mademoiselle Thinne has been very kind to me.’

  The Princess gave a scoffing laugh through her curved, high-bridged nose. ‘Poor fool!’

  ‘Let’s go.’ Massimo turned to Alexine. His face was flushed. He inserted a hand in his collar and twisted it from side to side, as though he had difficulty in breathing.

  Alexine nodded.

  ‘Perhaps she’d like to settle some of those gambling debts!’ the Principessa shouted out, as he hurried to the door to open it.

  He turned: ‘Please, mother!’

  ‘Please, mother? she lisped back in a parody of his voice quite as cruel as his of the opera-singer three nights before.

  Outside he turned to Alexine: ‘I’m sorry. I told you it was no good. She …’ Once again he made that gesture of pointing at his head. ‘Pazza.’ he said in Italian, forgetting that the people of Naples so often called Alexine ‘ La Pazza.’

  ‘I was glad to meet her.’

  ‘You don’t mean that. Why pretend?’

  ‘Yes, I do mean it. She’s part of you. I wanted to meet her because of that. And because of that I’m now glad that I’ve done so.’

  Downstairs, in the hall, the two elderly servants were waiting. They looked shifty and morose, as the old man coughed, cleared his throat and then asked, in a hoarse voice, if they might have a brief word with the master.

  Massimo pointed to a small room, once his father’s study, leading off the hall. ‘I’ll see what they want in there. Would you mind waiting a moment? I’m sorry.’

  ‘I think I know what they want.’

  Humiliated and angry, he stared at her, his usually pale, translucent face suddenly transfused with colour.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll let you have the money for them. Tell them that.’ When he lingered, she repeated: ‘Tell them that!’ She experienced a triumphant sense of possession and then at once felt ashamed of it. Addy had more than once told her: ‘You like to buy people.’ To buy people was potentially corrupting not merely of them but of oneself. She had at last come to realize that, but could not stop herself.

  Alone, she returned to the old woman’s room. She wanted somehow to win her over, to make a friend of her. She knocked and there was no answer. She knocked again. Then she entered and approached the high, untidy, four-poster bed. Her mouth wide open to reveal toothless gums, the old woman was snoring loudly as she slept.

  With a sudden uprush of pity, Alexine stared down at her.

  Then she heard Massimo calling: ‘Alexine! Where are you? What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m here. I’m coming.’

  But she continued to stare down at the woman for several seconds longer.

  In the middle of the night, Massimo started up from one of the wet-dreams that he so often experienced because of the rarity in his life of the sort of sexual contact natural to him. Mopping with a handkerchief at his thigh and the rumpled, sodden sheet beneath it, he was filled with astonishment. He had dreamed of Alexine. They were on a high, four-poster bed, the dusty hangings of which fluttered around them in gust after gust of wind. Moonlight poured in through a diagonal rent in the ceiling at the other end of the otherwise totally empty room. She was astride him, gripping his wrists, so that he was unab
le to move. In mounting excitement as she rode him, he twisted his head from side to side, pleading ‘ Let me go, let me go!’ But she was remorseless, smiling down with half-closed eyes and shaking her head. It was only as he felt the convulsion of the semen shooting out of him, that she relaxed the punishing grip of her hands and her thighs.

  Why should he have had such a dream? Only once in real life had he ever had an ejaculation with a woman, and this was the first time that he ever had one with a woman in a dream. As a boy of fifteen, his father already dead, an uncle had taken him to a brothel. ‘It’s time you learned about this sort of thing,’ the uncle had told him before they had entered the establishment. ‘The one I have in mind should be ideal. Mind you, she’s a bit long in the tooth, but she’s a delightful creature, very kind and patient. She’s learned a lot over the years and so she can teach you a lot.’ In the event, the woman, a Sicilian, had needed all her kindness and patience with her virgin client. As he became more and more embarrassed and ashamed, so she, her exasperation almost slipping out of control, became more and more like the English nanny who, along with his mother, had dominated his childhood. Finally, by dint of some laborious fellatio, she at last brought him to a climax. When that occurred, he burst into tears, partly of disgust and partly of relief. Scrambling off the bed, the naked flesh of her thighs quivering, she spat into a basin and then reached for a towel. ‘Well, that’s it.’

  He had never been conscious of any sexual desire for Alexine. Sitting up in his bed and pondering, he even felt repelled by what had just happened. Disgusting! He jumped out of the bed, hurried to the bathroom, and having filled the bidet, splashed cold water, each time gasping at the impact, over his crotch and thighs. He felt as if he were washing away the bloodstains that were the evidence of a crime.

  ‘Tell me about your travels.’

  They were once more seated in the small room of the Girasole. Alexine would have preferred to be in the salone, with all its bustle, colour and noise, but when she had indicated this he had replied crossly, ‘ No, no, let’s be private.’ The truth was that he did not like to sit with her under the eyes of all those people who greeted him with so much outward friendliness but who, he was certain, mocked at him as soon as he had moved out of earshot. Besides, if they sat in the salone, he would be under an obligation to introduce her to these so-called friends, and he was far too possessive of her to wish to do that.

  ‘My travels? Oh, they eventually ended in disaster. I had dreams of making some new discovery and of becoming famous because of it. But’ – she pulled a face – ‘it all came to nothing. Or, rather, it all came to disappointment and death.’

  He attempted to draw her out further, but had little success. She answered his questions perfunctorily and volunteered nothing. More than once she said, ‘Oh, I just want to forget all about it!’

  ‘You know, I once dreamed of becoming an explorer.’

  ‘You did!’

  ‘Well, it was only a dream. I wanted to escape from here and that was the way in which I dreamed of doing it. I met this man,’ he added.

  ‘What man?’

  ‘I was only sixteen. An Englishman. He was called Colonel Scott, Colonel Mark Scott.’

  ‘But I knew him! I knew him!’ Alexine cried out in excitement, leaning across the table. ‘Perhaps if I’d never met him, I’d now be leadings a boring life in The Hague, married to someone boring and with a number of boring children. What a coincidence! How did you meet him?’

  ‘He was here, on his way to Cairo. Just for a few days. A ship had brought him from England and another ship was going to take him on. He was waiting here for the ship. Staying not in the Splendido or anything like that, but in a cheap hotel down in the harbour. My mother still went about then, and she and I were at a party at the British Legation, and he, was one of the guests. For some reason, he came over and talked to me, just like that, without any introduction. I think he – he took to me. Yes, he must have done, because he wanted to see me again, invited me to dinner not in his hotel but at Le Tre Fontane, asked me to go with him to Pompeii. When he left, he told me he’d write to me. But he never did.’

  Massimo said nothing of the thrilling, mysterious sense that he still had of an unfulfilled and even unspoken sexual attraction between himself and the far older Englishman. But the excitement with which he spoke of the encounter transmitted itself to Alexine, suddenly revivifying her memories of those far-off days with Scott in Bled.

  ‘He never wrote to me either. I wrote to him, but he never wrote back. Strange man.’ She pondered, gently stirring her coffee. ‘In a way, he was my destiny.’

  ‘And he could have been mine – if I’d been older and if I’d had more courage. Sometimes I still think I want to set off for Africa. If he were to come back here again, on his way to another journey of exploration, I’d beg him to take me with me.’ He nodded, lost in this dream. ‘Yes, I think so. I’d be prepared to follow him to the ends of the earth.’

  ‘And I’d probably feel the same.’

  ‘I remember that he once spoke of what he called ‘‘ the greatest journey of all’’, and at once I thought, ‘‘That’s the one I want to make!’’ From Tripoli, across the Sahara, to Lake Chad, and on to Khartoum.’

  Alexine again leaned eagerly forward and put a hand over his. ‘But that was my dream too! Only – it seemed too difficult, the distances too great.’

  ‘Isn’t it your dream any longer?’

  ‘Oh, no! I’ve finished with that life.’

  Suddenly, like a child, coming up with some scheme at which all the grown-ups laugh indulgently, he exclaimed: ‘We could go together! Why not? It would be such fun!’

  ‘Exploration isn’t fun.’

  ‘We could make it fun. Why not?’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t the heart for it. Or the strength.’

  ‘Of course you have! Oh, do let’s go.’

  ‘And what about your mother?’

  ‘She hardly knows who I am. And she’s never in the least pleased, when she does. You saw that for yourself. If you were being serious when you offered to pay for someone to be there to look after her all the time, then there’s no reason why I … Oh, come on! Let’s do it! Let’s make the journey of a lifetime! Let’s become famous and show everyone who laughs at us and criticizes us!’

  ‘You’re crazy. They call me La Pazza but you’re Il Pazzo.’

  ‘Please, Alexine, please!’

  Inexorably, sadly, she shook her head.

  But that night, in her narrow bunk on the yacht, she found herself minking about the preposterous idea with a growing excitement. Warburton had spoken to her admiringly about the Frenchman Duveyrier and his intrepid travels deep into the Sahara. She could start by following the same route as his. She jumped off the bunk and searched for an atlas among the books piled in one corner of the cabin. Tassili d’Ajjers – yes, those were the mountains of which she now remembered that Warburton had spoken. Having passed through them, the route would go on to Lake Chad. Then there was the territory of the Sultan of Bornu … Darfur …

  She lay sleepless all that night.

  ‘You will come, won’t you?’

  Sunny shook his head.

  ‘Please! I can’t travel without you.’

  ‘I can’t travel with that man. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, he’s all right. What’s wrong with him?

  Alexine suddenly felt a revival of tenderness for this tall, muscular African, in his formal western clothes, standing before her. She also felt remorse. In the past two weeks, since she and Massimo had met each other, she had seen so little of him; and, until then, he had been her inseparable companion. When she had taken photographs of Massimo and the two family palaces, it had been not, as always in the past, with Sunny as her aid, but instead struggling alone with the heavy equipment, except on those rare occasions when Massimo had made a half-hearted, maladroit attempt to help her. Offended, Sunny had eventually gone off unaccompanied to the slums with one of the
other cameras, to take photographs by himself. Later she had inspected these images of elderly women in black seated out on their doorsteps, of washing dangling on lines between narrow streets, or of urchins leaning against a wall, squinting into the lens while attempting not to move even a fraction of an inch, and had thought wonderingly: ‘He’s become a far better photographer than I am.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ she repeated when Sunny merely gave a brief shrug and pulled down the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Oh, I just feel … He’s not right.’

  ‘Oh, Sunny, he’s kind and amusing. On any journey he’ll be fun. And we need fun. That’s what was so often wrong the last time. There wasn’t enough fun.’

  Obstinately Sunny shook his head.

  ‘He’ll do what I tell him. And what you tell him. We’re going to be the leaders – you and I. He’ll just be coming along.’

  When she had said that, she sensed that Sunny was relenting.

  ‘He’ll have to obey our orders – to the letter!’ She laughed. ‘Or else!’ She gazed fondly over at him. ‘Oh, Sunny, do say yes!’

  ‘I’ll think about it’

  ‘Please!’

  Chapter Two

  ‘YOU SAID THAT, if you ever organized another expedition, it would be a small one,’ Sunny reminded Alexine, when they had returned to their Tripoli hotel, after having recruited yet more porters. He spoke to her in the now near-perfect English that, the difference of pitch apart, sounded uncannily like her own.

  ‘I know, I know! But everyone says that we have to be safe. So we need the guards. And, if we take the guards, then we have to take the food for them. And if we take the food, then we have to take more porters … It’s the old vicious circle. Just as it was before.’

  For a while they continued with their plans, seated on either side of a rickety table in the dusty drawing-room of Alexine’s suite. Then she exclaimed: ‘Oh, I’ve had enough of this for a day. Let’s go for a ride.’

  Having read in a French newspaper of women bicycling in the Bois de Bologne, she had, with her usual impetuosity, at once written off to John to order her not one bicycle but two. She had at first envisaged not Sunny but Massimo as her cycling companion. But at first with a lot of hilarity and then with exasperation, the Italian had been totally unable to master the art. Eventually he had fallen off when travelling at speed, so that he had torn his trousers and lightly grazed his knee. ‘Oh, I’ve had enough of this thing! I can’t be bothered.’ He had made no attempt to remount the machine, stalking off and leaving it lying where it had fallen in the road. A passer-by picked it up and, foreseeing a tip, had then wheeled it back for them to the hotel. Sunny had had no such difficulty, showing a natural aptitude that he had totally lacked when learning to ride the pony.