Escape (12 page)

Guido pushed his plate away with a sigh.

'I'm sorry about that,' I said, shamefaced. 'I'm not used to cooking
on a barbecue.' Guido looked surprised, so I explained that our family
didn't go in for those kinds of social gatherings. 'Dad resigned from
the police force just three months after his accident.'
Too ill
, I'd heard
my mother whisper on the phone. 'And then he started work at a
boys' refuge. Helped in the kitchen, talked with the kids and their
counsellors. Sometimes he took children to school and picked them
up afterwards. And then he began bringing them home.'

I tried to make it amusing, telling tales of boys stealing from our
change jar or hoarding packets of biscuits, even though I hadn't found it
amusing at all. As I talked, I sounded heartless, making entertainment
out of something tragic, but I hurtled on just the same, like a great
lumbering bus out of control. I told him about poor Johnny Walker,
and then suddenly I stopped. Guido himself was an orphan boy!

I felt myself blush scarlet. No wonder, way back in the conversation,
he'd liked the idea of sons and daughters living with their parents until
they were old. Parents would be really special if you didn't have any.

But all he said was, 'I would not like to have strange boys in the
house, touching my things. I would not like it at all.' He traced the wet
circle on the table left by his glass. Round and round went his finger.
No one had ever reacted to my story of the orphans this way. Not that
I had told it to many. Never the real story. Just a few sketched outlines.
I was used to people responding with awe, exclaiming at the kindness
of my parents. I told Guido how when beds at the refuge were full,
Dad brought home the most desperate boys and cared for them like a
father. He gave everything of himself. As my mother said, there was no
man with a bigger heart.

'See, love is something that's always expanding,' I explained to
Guido. 'The more you give, the more you're able to give. My mother
says love is an endless fountain, a renewable source of energy.'

Guido lit a cigarette. I didn't know if he thought love was an
endless fountain or not. 'I would like to brush your 'air,' he said,
leaning suddenly towards me. He kissed the spot just under my ear
and a melting feeling spread through my body.

'Is so beautiful, so free.' His fingers were threading through the
mass of it at the back of my head, pressing lightly on my scalp. Through
his hands I felt how heavy my hair was, a weighty fact to be considered.
It seemed the only solid thing about me. He massaged my head, neck,
running his hands all over. I felt very warm, almost too hot.

'I would never cut your 'air,' Guido murmured. 'I would brush it
like so . . .' His fingers combed through my scalp down to the curled
ends lying on my breasts. 'And then I would bend you over,' he pushed
gently at my neck and as I leant forward, responding to his pressure, he
spread the hair down over my face, towards my lap, combing it from
the back. When he tipped back my chin, I could feel my hair standing
up, expanding with this sudden rush of attention.

'You see,' he smiled, 'like wild fire.'

I tried to slap it down but he caught my hands. 'Your 'air is the
true expression of your character.'

'You seem to know a lot about it.'

He smiled. 'Is one of the things I remember about my mother.
'Ow she would brush 'er 'air.'

This time I said nothing. The roots of my hair tingled where he
had touched.

*

We had crème caramel for dessert. I really enjoyed it, especially as you
didn't have to cook it. While we ate, we talked about magic and the
theatre and travelling. I told him how much I'd loved watching him on
stage – if I could, I said, I'd go to the theatre every day for as long as he
was performing.

He laughed. 'And you would get very bored!'

'I wouldn't, ever – I get totally swept away. It's as if, I don't know,
when the lights come down the old me vanishes and there's someone
different in my place, spellbound. It seems so effortless for you up
there, you move like a ballet dancer, or a . . . you must have a wonderful
life, doing what you love.'

Guido shrugged. 'You are kind,' he smiled. 'But sometimes we
do well the things we do not love. Is a strange trick of nature. I find
magic easy, is just the way I am done. Magic is all pretence. I am good
at these things, at making illusions. It amuses people. I learn very early
to do this.'

I tried to concentrate on the words he was saying. It was hard
because of the way he looked and his power and the feelings that were
churning in my chest. I'm not good at doing two things at once. I
frowned, giving myself time. All I really wanted to do was throw myself
on that beautiful neck with the Adam's apple and have him hold me.
'So,' I said slowly, 'magic is not a choice of passion for you, but more
like . . .'

'A comfortable way to make money,' he said. 'Is pleasant, no? And
gives people pleasure, I think.' He sighed. 'In this world we 'ave to do
the things that come easy to us, that make us money. But often they
are not our passions: these instead lie deeper. We are seduced away
from them, from our true selves. We don even know what they are. We
spend our lives searching.'

For the first time I noticed that his face was weary, and there
were shadows under his eyes. Was it really just a knack – raw and
easy, as Guido said, practised and polished up to shine? It sounded
empty suddenly, this kind of talent, a bit thin, like gold leaf or a packet
of glitter. If you left it to the wind, it would blow away. I didn't like
thinking of the powerful magician in front of me that way.

Guido pushed back his hair. His hand ran across the two faint
lines on his forehead. It was disturbing, this sense of emptiness inside
the light. I wanted to return to total admiration, to being lost inside
my awe. I rubbed at a wine spot on the table.

He looked down at the spot and our eyes met. He smiled. It
was a rueful, honest smile, and he spread his hands out wide on
the table, smoothing his serviette. What humility he had – he was
so young, he toured the world with his magic. And yet he wasn't
proud or self-satisfied. How I would love to help him find what
he was looking for. Imagine me, holding his hand, travelling with
him on his journey. A man in his position, he could be so arrogant,
so sure of himself. Instead he was restless, searching, profound.
Thrilling
!

Guido squeezed my hand lightly, then dropped it. 'You wan to
come back to my 'otel to take a coffee? There will be the dreadful little
packets with 'ot water, but the coffee is bad in this place also. You want
to come to see where I sleep?'

I did. I couldn't wait. Everyone knew what coffee meant. To be
wrapped up in Guido's arms warm and safe instead of here with the
wrong words and our still-full plates groaning under my bad cooking
would be such a relief. When you were kissing, silence was not a
problem. You couldn't talk and kiss at the same time. And you didn't
have to think about later. You didn't have to
think
. I just wanted to run,
run, dissolve away inside Guido's skin. I could stop up my ears and not
even hear my own heart beat.

Guido's room was on the third floor, number 17. 'Ah,
bene
,' he smiled
as we walked into the room. 'The maid has come.'

In hotels the bed is the main event. It takes up most of the room,
unless you're in one of those large incredibly expensive suites shown
on TV. The corner of the blue satin coverlet was turned back to reveal
a triangle of crisp white sheet. Two fresh towels lay with a cake of soap
at the foot.

I went into the bathroom. I didn't need to pee, I just wanted to
have a peek. I absolutely love hotels. The best things are the pristine
packets of toiletries that no one has ever used, like items from a doll's
house. They are little personal gifts, just for you. It's suprising how
most people don't seem to appreciate their special magic.

I picked up the white plastic packet near the sink containing a
shower cap. Then I opened the manicure set and comb, shampoo and
moisturiser. I squirted a little of the smooth white cream on my hand.
It smelled of chemical peach. Lovely.

When Guido came up behind me I jumped. 'You know,' I said,
'there's an English writer who chose to live all her life in hotels so that
every day when she returned from the outside world she would find
the room like new, swept of any traces of herself.'

'
Beh
, the English, they are like this. The women do not like to do
domestic tasks. Their standards are low,' said Guido.

'But you could imagine her starting afresh each day, couldn't
you,' I went on in a flurry, 'as if she'd only just alighted on the planet, a
weightless sort of being like a butterfly – it'd be wonderful, you'd have
no history, no previous sins, not yet squashed. Just think, all through
her life, no matter what mess she made, she could be sure it would
vanish in the next twenty-four hours as if she'd never been there at all.'

Our eyes met in the mirror.

I saw him reach up from behind and put his hands on my
breasts. He didn't rub or caress them, just stood holding them, as if
acknowledging their weight and existence. He made no comment.

I watched as he pulled up my blouse and undid my bra. God, there
were my breasts, naked in the mirror. His hands cupped them. He
traced the pale circles around my nipples, around and around, as he'd
traced the wet lines left by the glass. His fingers were gentle, creating
a silence, a kind of reticence, so that all the other places that weren't
being touched yearned to be. I thought of those hands pulling lights
out of nowhere, making fire, making cards disappear. He stood behind
me, his chest against the bones of my spine. In each place his body
touched mine there was a heat and pressure, as if he'd drawn magic
shapes on the skin under my clothes.

My belly felt hollow. The emptiness was unbearable. In the mirror
my nipples had swollen into crimson, aching to exist under his fingers.
A moan rose up from the pit of me. I closed my eyes and the loneliness
floated out through my lips, a dry, desert sound that made me squirm
away from him, from the noise of me. But his fingers came down hard
on my nipples. Oh such heaven, like a question answered. He squeezed
and stroked, so sure of each movement, putting his face in my neck, a
perfect fit, his lips sliding along the hollow to my shoulderblade while
his fingers played over me, up and down my rib cage, beneath the
waistband of my skirt, making me see how hungry I was, and I wanted
him to go on forever.

Then he turned me around and led me back into the room. We
stood at the foot of the bed, near the neatly folded towels and packets
of soap. He kissed my lips, opening my mouth with his tongue, and
the groan in me was no longer a desert wind. I came alive and shining
everywhere he put his hands. He reached around my waist and drew
down my zip and my skirt slid to the floor, silky, like a puddle at my
feet. His lips sucked at mine and his breath was inside my mouth. The
curtains drawn against the street lamps webbed the light, trawling us
in its net. He drew down my pants, lift ed off my blouse, took off his
shirt and trousers all in one graceful flow of movement. The thought
that he must be dangerously practised at this flashed at the corner of
my mind. 'Practice, if only you 'ave the practice, you become good at
anything!'

We lay top to toe so that every part of us was touching. He held my
waist, nothing else. I held my breath. He didn't pull me into the ocean
but stayed on the shore. We studied each other in the grey light. His
lashes grew close together, drawing a line under his eyes, thick as kohl
pencil. Up close, his skin was smooth, his pores invisible. He was like
a Chinese silk painting, and the little creases and fine hairs were the
dark mysterious calligraphy moving over the surface. When he smiled,
there was a light playing underneath. I felt a fierce determination that
nothing should ever hurt this beautiful man, nothing should mar or
scratch the surface of his sensitive soul ever again. Tears came to my
eyes at the thought.

'Why you 'ave
lacrime
?' He pointed to the corners of my eyes.

'I want nothing to ever hurt you,' I mumbled.

He smiled. 'There is nothing to do for the past.' But the way he
smiled, I knew he felt warmed. I could tell that much. He took both my
hands from the pillow. He didn't mention the future. Was it deliberate?
Was he implying that I may play a part in it? He had looked at me with
hope. I felt a swell of excitement. Even bravery.

While we talked, murmuring at each other from our separate
spaces, the thrill of his hands on my waist was an engine purring
inside me; a deep, drilling ache. I imagined it like the sun, about to
burn through clouds and dazzle the sea.

But I always imagine more than I'm capable of. I felt frightened
suddenly by the power of what I'd suggested, what I was about to
undertake. In this waiting of his, the breath before the plunge, I had
time to recede, back down into my shivering self. How could I keep
him safe? I was a small cowering creature that couldn't possibly keep
another being alive. But then he pushed back my hair and took hold of
my thighs and the waiting was finished.

No matter what happened afterwards, that first evening with Guido
and the miracle of Clara's birth nine months later are two events I
would never regret. Perhaps you can live out your whole life in the
afterglow, the memory of one day. Perhaps that's what I have done.

There are days that stick out like hooks in the wall and the rest of
your life is just tacked up around them, falling in long shapeless folds.
These kind of days are like plot turnings in a novel. If you're writing a
book you might ask yourself: Is this the right path for my character to
choose? What are the alternatives? When it's the first draft , you can go
back and change it. When it's your life there's fuck all, as Maria might
say, you can do about it.

The first weeks with Guido were extraordinary – a gift for which
I wasn't prepared at all. It was as if it were the first time I'd had sex.
I loved the way his hands swept down to my hips, gentling over my
thighs. I loved how he traced the map of me, from the back of my knees
down to the arch of my feet. It was as if I were something precious, a
new territory to be examined in detail, before the act of possession.
The wetness between my legs lay like a secret country waiting to be
discovered.

Guido wiped clear my sad little history of fumblings with one
wave of his wand. It was he who told me, actually, that 'wand' can also
mean penis. I thought if I could eat him, I would. I loved taking him
into my mouth, opening my throat so that my lips kissed the root of
him. It was as easy as breathing. I loved what he did with his hands,
and his mouth, and his eyes. It was a shock the way he touched me
again right after, the way my flesh responded to his fingers, the way
he turned to me in the night, his penis slipping into me from behind.
There was the roundness of my bottom against his hard belly, the way
he murmured and cried out. I'd never heard that before. It was as if
he was wrenching something out of himself against his will, helpless.
I kept trying to remind myself that this cry was with me, because we
were together. When I looked at myself next to him in the mirror I
heard that cry again. I saw him paying attention to my breasts, stroking
my hair. I liked my face better when his was beside it. And the voice
was quiet.

In the mornings when I went to school I would look at other
people on the bus, at the bank, the supermarket, and wonder: How
did they manage to do normal things like shop or worry about their
investments when there was this whole other world of sex and love?
I couldn't help smiling and often people smiled back. I decided that
everyone must know this secret. The smiling was like flashing your
membership badge, certifying that you were human not vegetable,
with love and nutrients flowing free without boundaries. At last I
belonged to the human race.

Sometimes I worried that after I'd slept with him in the webbed
room, he would be too tired to perform at the theatre. I didn't know
how he got through it. I drooped home after school, eyes closing on
the bus, in a perpetual dream. How could he click into that other
world, with its split-second timing and harsh lighting?

But he never made a mistake with magic. He was so focused.
When he walked onto the stage he went into another state of mind.
He described it as an altered state of consciousness. I wondered what
that would feel like – perhaps like falling in love was for me. Still, he
must have got more sleep than I did, as he fell practically unconscious
a heartbeat after we'd finished having sex. I envied him that ability,
because I spent hours of the night picturing in my mind what we'd
done and how it had felt and what we would do in the morning when
it was light. I missed him as his eyes closed. It was like watching his
magic act, the Door of Death – if he didn't escape in three minutes,
the hinged door studded with knives would slam shut. When he slept,
he travelled far away, at the speed of light, to an unreachable place.

On Saturday evenings after his performance I met Guido and we
toured the cafes in town. We drank retsina at Greek restaurants and
ordered fat green olives, or perched on high stools at the Spanish Club,
where we'd rest our elbows along the thick wooden slabs of bench,
picking at
tapas
. I bought the old Corolla that Maria's brother was
selling and began my research into Sydney. It was shameful; I was like
a tourist in the city in which I was born, so little had I ever explored it.
As each new location was ticked off , with no major disasters, I grew
more ambitious and began to explore destinations beyond the city:
rivers and forests in the country, beaches north and south, places I'd
never been. Soon I had quite a decent collection of maps. I looked
at the overflowing wad of adventures folded into my glove box with
amazement.

'Good girl, Rachel,' I'd whisper to myself when, miraculously,
I'd got us to a famous picnic spot in time for lunch. The whisper was
compulsive, magical, like touching wood or crossing your fingers. The
voice said nothing.

The
alimentari
shops lay on the other side of the city. I'd heard
about these 'streets of Italy' with foreign signs and sounds, but it had
all seemed so far away, a fairytale landscape that had nothing, really,
to do with me. But Guido's arrival was a major life event, like winning
the lottery or witnessing a plane crash, and you couldn't help being
forever changed.

At the Italian food market I was entranced by the vast blocks of
cheese hulking behind the glass. I bought fresh ricotta that trembled
at the touch, and
parmigiano reggiano
, the best for grating, Guido said,
because it had been cured for years in dark Italian cellars. A mustard
wheel of it sat regally on the counter. I peered at the names printed on
cards stuck deep into fat spicy sausages and salty meats.
Mortadella,
provolone, salsicce
– I rolled the sounds around in my mouth, the saliva
spurting.

As Guido tasted a slice of
salame
, I listened to the Italian chatter
playing like music, and hugged myself. It was hard to believe I was
here, me, Rachel Lambert, who had always stayed where I was put.
I followed him around like a puppy, peering at the shelves. I would
have licked his hands if he'd let me. His long elegant fingers pointed
to
prosciutto, melanzane sott'olio
, gesturing at a history I had never
imagined. It was hard to concentrate on the names of things when
I wanted to see again how his slim wrists went up under his sleeves,
to have those arms hard around my ribs. I wanted that more than
anything.

We walked for kilometres around the city. I learnt to hold my
stomach in, to walk straight with my shoulders back and my chest out.
Guido liked good posture, and proud breasts. My heart beat fast all the
time, as if I were running for a bus, and sometimes I was uncomfortable
because there was no calm place any more where I could just sit and
let my stomach out and my shoulders droop.

We went often to the Italian cafes on Sunday afternoons. I loved
munching creamy
cannoli,
listening to the sound of Guido's voice.
It was so lilting, the way the words slid into each other. Most Italian
words ended with a vowel, Guido explained as he blew smoke over
his shoulder. I thought vowels must be the most vulnerable and soft of
sounds, like tiny animals with no bones. Consider 'e' I told him, how
it clings to the end of English words such as 'little' and 'feeble', never
making a sound. He looked at me blankly. When we were outside he
wrote '
amore
' on the dusty back window of a ute. He pronounced
it
amoray
. Say it, he said. I did.
Tu sei mio amore
, you are my love. In
Italian, the final 'e' was always sounded. For me 'e' became a private
symbol of the different ways to love – you could be bold and generous,
sounding out your feelings, or hide and stay silent. I preferred the
Italian way, even if I found it hard to do myself.

The Cafe Vesuvio near the Capitol Theatre remained my favourite.
Each time I sat down at a table, I remembered the first time I'd been
there and my transformation since then. No one would know the
difference from the outside, except that perhaps I smiled more and
my hair smelled of peach shampoo. Sometimes he would touch my
sandalled foot under the table with his and we'd rock the flats of our feet
back and forth in a silent companionable rhythm. We developed a joke,
a kind of code, for telling each other about our days. A Door of Death
was the worst on a scale of one to ten, and a mere Czechoslovakian
Insane Muff (leather restraints on the wrists with an electric timer)
was a five. I probably enjoyed this game more than Guido, although
he played along charmingly. To him it was quite normal to use words
like 'torture' and 'death by drowning' and 'penalty of failure'. For me
it was stunningly exotic, triggering images of Dean and Jean and the
spell of their magic in my childhood. Often I thought Guido was just
like Dean, stepping right through the television.

The coffee at Vesuvio lit a tingly path down my throat into my belly.
I liked the bitterness and the way it heightened the starry, breathless
feeling in my chest. When Guido smiled I glimpsed his teeth darkened
by the thick black espresso. He sat there easily, silky as a groomed cat
in his Versace jacket. He would have sat like this in Italy, I thought,
in that other universe with all the famous paintings and history and
cobbled pavements thousands of years old, and he would have worn
that same slow smile, his teeth varnished by coffee. And now he was
sitting here with me. Maybe he still had some of that Roman chariot
dust in his nostrils, in the neat apricot shells of his ears. I would have
gone anywhere with him then. Take me away, I wanted to say. Take me
to your planet.

Guido talked about ideas. The other boys I'd been out with had talked
about things – things you could touch or possess or do. Back then I
hadn't known what I thought about anything, so our conversations
had never lift ed off . To me we seemed stolid creatures, hobbits as
opposed to elves, scuttling around in a safe cul de sac. For this, as
well as his beauty, Guido seemed larger to me than other people. His
ideas flew him up above earth so that he seemed to hover over most
of us, immortal. Sometimes he took me with him. When he talked,
the moons of his nails clicked together, his fingers meeting in an arc
of prayer.

In his mouth, disparate facts connected in startling ways, forming
ideas unimaginable to me before. He was reticent about himself but
spell-binding on the subject of magic. He talked of its roots in Jewish
history, how the Pharaoh allowed the Jews to flee, convinced by the
sorcery of Aaron's rod; of Moses' brilliant misdirection with thunder
and smoking mountains.

With Guido's encouragement, magic became a popular science
subject with my grade three. The class listened, absorbed, as I
described one of the first conjuring tricks in history, in which the
magician, Dedi, entertained the court of Ancient Egypt by chopping
off the head of a goose and putting it back again under the cover of
darkness. Dedi's magic, with all that chopping and camouflage, caused
a fever of excited whooping in the classroom.

In those early days it was perhaps Guido's strength that impressed
me most. His beauty, of course, was continually overwhelming, but
the way he looked seemed connected to some extraordinary inner
fortitude. Weren't his fitness, his focus, the finely honed muscles
under his shirt all the result of a supreme inner conviction, a faith of
purpose?

I admired the way Guido owned himself, didn't feel the need to
explain to everyone what he was doing. He hadn't the faintest concern
that someone might be able to stop him, that anyone could have power
over him or the decisions he made. I thought it must be amazing to
live like that. Like a grown-up, I suppose, instead of a guilty child.

I watched in awe as Guido took what he wanted. His choices
were firm, authentic. He didn't go round placating people; he was
not sorry. I was always sorry. Without effort he retained his outline
against the wash of other people's needs. He didn't show his injury
like most of the people I knew, injuries that would weep for as long as
they lived.

It was such a pleasure to look at him, strong, talented, true. I never
caught him wavering – in shops, in bed, at restaurants. He didn't say,
'I'm not sure, I don't know, maybe.' He said, 'It is so', rather than 'In
my opinion.' He didn't say the food was good if it wasn't, assure me
I looked great when I didn't, caress me when he didn't feel like it.
He took what he wanted and expected me to do the same. 'You are a
strong person, like me,' he said once. A faint pulse of alarm murmured
at the back of my head – surely that meant he didn't know me at all? –
but it hushed as soon as he held me in his arms. He made me feel like
Wonder Woman. It was a relief, like being on holiday.

This was how they made people in Italy, I thought, that place
where people kiss when they meet, cry out, throw their arms around
each other, take emotional risks like paragliding, swooping off cliff s
with abandon, never even glimpsing the abyss of possible failure
below.

I wanted to do that too. Not be afraid. Or sorry.

Later, years after we were married, I learnt – along with how to
make pasta al dente and espresso coffee – that you can easily mistake
insensitivity for strength.

Guido didn't seem to want to talk about needs, or to indulge in long
confessional talks. Even though I would have liked to, I didn't know
where to begin. To say what you wanted had always seemed rude
to me. 'I want' was so bald, like a swearword. At my place only the
orphans ever said it. And then, only some of them. The orphans had
shattering needs. 'There's a big difference between wants and needs,
Rachel,' my mother explained. 'You may
want
a new skirt like Joanna's,
but do you need it?'