Escape (23 page)

'You English, all quiet and polite, oh yes,' heaved Guido, 'with
your please and thank you but underneath you are savages! You are
not a civilised person, Rachel, you act like the maniac! An idiot
child
!
There, you use this handkerchief and wipe up this mess.
Cristo dio, che
disgusto!
'

We stood staring at the boot the way you'd stare at a car accident,
with Guido pointing and shouting, until Clara ran out of the shop,
having been given a Baci chocolate by the shopman. 'Don't shout,
Daddy, please. Ooh, Mummy, what a mess, who did that?'

Clara's look of fear as she peered into the car, and back at my face,
made me want to die.

'Mummy, Mummy?' Clara tugged at my sleeve. 'What's wrong?
Are you sick?'

I buckled Clara into the back seat. I tried to smile at her but my
face had set like stone. I imagined going home and unpacking the
groceries, filing them into compartments in the fridge and pantry.
Then I would iron Guido's thirteen shirts while he lay on the sofa and
watched the soccer. After I'd cooked the dinner we would go to our
rooms and even if we lay in my queen-size bed we would roll each to
the far side and breathe quietly like two mute animals from different
species. I knew that, even if I wanted to, I couldn't die now. I knew it
with the same certainty I knew the sun would rise tomorrow. Once
you became a parent, you weren't allowed to escape; you had to be
alive for as long as you were needed, and then some. You were the
enduring part; the painted background across which your child could
safely run, the ground under their feet. You could never abandon your
child, your own true love. It was a terrible thing not to have a choice
any more, but it was a wonderful thing to see, when you rearranged
your mouth into normal lines, how quickly that little face brightened
and smiled back, as if nothing in the world had happened. It was a
reprieve. Another chance.

After that Saturday, I decided it would be best if I did the shopping
alone. Frequently, when I hauled in three or four big cardboard boxes,
Guido would be dissatisfied with my purchases. 'Look at this cheese,
what is it, stracchino?'

'But you asked me to buy it—'

'
Sì
, but you must examine it first – if it is not properly
stagionato
,
you know, cured, is without taste.
Cara
, when I go to the shop I look
carefully at all the things first, then decide. Is an art, the shopping. You
do it too quickly, like a job, not with
amore.
'

He was right. I'd just wanted to get it over with. I hated the
creeping traffic, the anxiety of choosing, the waiting behind broad
backs of loud-voiced women who knew what they wanted, the two or
three trips to the car with arm-aching boxes.

'You should ask the boy from the shop to take them,' Guido said,
'that is what 'e is there for.'

I
hated
it. But I should have taken more care. I should have thought
how my husband's face might light up at my selections, how those
assagi
could make our evenings more pleasant. A proper woman, an Italian
maybe, would know how to do this. She was probably born knowing
how to satisfy a man. When he called me
amore
like that, stroking the
little vowel on the end of his tongue, I still felt a stab of longing. But
it was a distant sort of yearning, like admiring a marvellous present
that a friend might have received. You could look, but it would never
be yours to hold. My inability to make my husband happy loomed as
my greatest failure, as big as Mount Etna, his satisfaction something as
unattainable as serving a perfect dish of gnocchi.

But I think Guido was happy the day he came home and
announced that his book of poems had been accepted by Galaxy
Publishing. He strode up the hall and slapped down the letter of
acceptance on the big oak desk as if it were a declaration of war, or
an ultimatum. 'You see, I am a
poet
!' He gave a shout of victory. 'Read
it!' And he went into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine.
He slammed the fridge door so hard I heard the little yoghurt tubs
tumbling off the top shelf into the vegetable crisper below.

'Congratulations!' I called into the kitchen, reading the letter. But
I felt frightened somehow by his entry into the house; he was sharp as
a flung arrow. He seemed more angry than pleased, as if he'd wrung
this triumph from the world despite towering forces of opposition,
such as his wife. He seemed to be on the attack rather than expansive
with good news. But maybe that was just me.

'Isn't it wonderful?' I called.

'Yes, it is wonderful, it is fantastic, this is the right occasion to use
superlatives, no? Let's go out for dinner or better still, why we do not
invite some of my students for dinner, to celebrate?'

'What, tonight? It's already six o'clock – I haven't got anything
ready.'

'Why you always make problems? We don all 'ave to eat at six like
you and Clara. Is ridiculous, even when I was a bambino I am used to
eat at eight. Such a boring life we 'ave 'ere.' He laughed, perhaps to take
the edge off his words, and strode back into the living room. He took
the letter from me. 'Can't you do this small thing for your husband?'

'Yes, of course, it's such fantastic news. But how many people? I
don't know if there is enough—'

'Oh, don worry, I ring up, maybe we will be ten, twelve. We have
good things from the Italian market, you can make pasta.' He glared at
me suddenly. 'You are not happy for me? Rachel, my first book! See, I
am not just the magician, I am a poet! I will be a published writer!'

I smiled and put my arms around him and tried to feel the beat
of his heart and the warmth of his neck. I tried to think only of his
happiness and not about the students coming for dinner and those two
women in particular who Guido said cooked authentic Tuscan food
just as if they had lived there all their lives, and spoke Italian with the
true Florentine accent. I tried to imagine how wonderful Guido would
feel to see his name in print, what a beautiful book it would be, with
the poems in Italian on one side, in English on the other, translated
by a real, qualified person who would do justice to his jewelled words.
Perhaps he would be consulted on the calligraphy, the texture of paper,
the cover picture . . .

'I 'ave to think about a title, is very difficult, the poems 'ave such
range and diversity of mood, subject, experience. This is what my
publisher admires about me, the way I can espress depths of emotion,
using landscape, the physical environment as a symbol. Is what
Shakespeare did, she says, with 'is raging storms which signify the
inner turmoil of his characters.'

'Yes, how perceptive!'

I tried not to mind that when my first book was published neither
of us had really noticed at all. But mine was a children's book about
ants and Guido's was a work of art.

We did have twelve for dinner in the end, and both of the scary
women came, but they were all very kind and so happy for Guido that
I felt swept along on the tide of excitement. I also drank quite a few
glasses of the pinot noir that one of the women had brought. By the
time I could excuse myself to put my daughter to bed and read her
a story, I felt so pleasantly blurred that Clara had to poke me to stop
me falling asleep. 'This is the best
part
,' she protested, 'when Eeyore's
complaining. You didn't do his voice properly.' So I had to read the
page again, dipping my voice down and keeping it flat, like one of
those heart-monitoring screens that indicate the patient is deceased.
I always found this easy to do, just thinking of Saturdays and the
shopping and the long flat line of Parramatta Road that ran all the way
to the horizon. Eeyore didn't have much to look forward to either.

When Clara was asleep I tiptoed out and sidled back into the living
room. It was always an awkward moment, my sudden reappearance
highlighting the fact that I'd abandoned my guests. I never felt right
about absenting myself, or knew for how long was acceptable or
whether it was at all, but I did it just the same. And I always felt torn.

As I crept into the kitchen I heard Guido say, 'Often she falls
asleep in there with Clara. Is very lonely out here for me.'

'Oh, poor Guido!' someone said, and there was a lot of laughter.

I dropped a pot on the stove so that they would know I was in
hearing distance. 'Would anyone like coffee?' I called out lightly.

Guido's publisher gave him a launch eight months later at Fellini's, an
elegant Italian restaurant at Circular Quay. There was a party of twenty,
mainly women, with Guido at the head of the table.

After the main course Guido read a poem. It was so arresting that
people at the other tables hushed and listened too. The winter cold of
the mountains seemed to breathe through the room – my ankles felt
icy just leaning against the metal legs of my chair. When he said the
moon trembled on the water, I saw Sandra Farfalle shiver. The lights
from the chandelier above sparkled in the dark of Guido's eyes, picking
out the silver thread in his suit. I'm sure he was more magnificent than
Dante and the smile he threw around the room as the applause broke
over him was incandescent. He looked like he did the day he decided
to stop being a magician and we'd flown down George Street like
electricity down a wire.

He was happy.

On the way home we didn't say much. I put my hand on his
knee as we drove and at the traffic lights he put his own over mine,
our fingers weaving together. I wondered if he would ever write about
warm things like hands touching or would his poems only ever be
about the cold? He said the cold was far more interesting and you only
had to read Leopardi to know that isolation and solitude gave rise to
brilliant philosophy. If everybody was 'fantastic' all the time, there
would be no art.

'Which would you rather have, art or love?' I asked. But we were
getting out of the car and Guido had gone to the mailbox.

As I switched on the light in the hallway I saw the letter in his
hand. There was the blue airmail stamp. Heartacher.

'Oh, what a coincidence!' I exclaimed. 'You could send him a
copy of your book. Or if you didn't want to bother, I could, if you like,
I mean—'

Oh, why didn't I think before I spoke? Why did I ever speak
at all?

Guido's face was thunderous in the harsh hall light. 'Why don you
shut up, Rachel? How many times I 'ave told you, I don waste my time
with this man? My life 'as nothing to do with his! Is no concern of
yours, when will you understand that?'

I turned away abruptly. I could feel my eyes filling. That tone of
his punctured my tear banks instantly, like a pin in a balloon.

'I'm sorry,' I whispered.

'
Cristo dio
, and now you cry.
è possibile
? Can't we 'ave one night
where there are not the tears? Why you 'ave to spoil this night with
that idiot man, why you persist like this? You do this to torture me?'

'No, no, I'm so sorry, as if I ever would . . .' I rushed to him and
hugged him fiercely around the waist. I put my head into his back
and kissed his neck and up under his hair. Against my chest I felt his
shoulders drop. His back relaxed.

'Let's go to bed,' I said quickly, and took his hand.

Afterwards, when Guido was asleep, I tried to think about what
he'd said, and how nearly I had spoiled his night. The night he was
truly happy. But how could I stop wondering about this Heartacher
person when Guido always reacted so violently, even just to his
name
. What was it that had happened between them? And why
would Heartacher continue to write, over all these years, when he
never received a response? He'd even taken the trouble to track
Guido down in Australia. That would have been difficult, almost
impossible, given Guido's lack of family. Perhaps they
did
have a
friend in common, a girl, now a woman. Perhaps she was even living
here, in Sydney . . .

I lay awake, twisting in my bed. Whatever the reason was, I
couldn't forget about James Heartacher. He'd become a symbol of
my husband's opacity, the gap that was his past. I couldn't accept that
Guido would never forgive James for his sin. There was something
biblical about the harshness of his judgement. He reminded me of the
god in the Old Testament. In his eyes you were either condemned or
blessed, and there was nothing in between.

I was too restless to sleep, and crept along the hallway to the
kitchen. As I heated some milk, I decided that it must have been hope
that kept me asking questions. As long as there was the possibility that
one day Guido would forgive and acknowledge James Heartacher,
then maybe there would always be hope for me.

In the weeks that followed the launch Guido seemed cross, slightly
deflated, sighing each time he got up to cross the room or start a
conversation. I wanted to ask him if he felt let down after that initial
blaze of news – as if the world should have stopped and yet hadn't,
with ordinary life just rolling on around him as before. Did he look at
his printed poems, set in the dashing new Galliard typeface, and think,
was it me who wrote this, will I ever be able to do it again? Like I did?

When Clara was five and one month, she started school. She was excited
in a breathless way that could, I worried, turn into hyperventilation.
As we drove to school I told her to take four deep breaths and hold
them for four seconds. I'd always found even numbers so reassuring
as a child. But from the first day she waved goodbye in quite a jaunty
manner.

Clara didn't tell me a lot about her days at school. Sometimes she
hardly said a word on the way home. When she did talk to me, her
news didn't include what she'd learnt. I knew they'd been studying sea
animals but she was more interested in TV cartoons and what Saraah
said to Cathy and how it made her cry but it was the truth and why
did
Cathy have that big mole on her cheek and could you catch it?