Eva Sleeps (2 page)

“Poor thing . . . ” Carlo says, kissing my hair. Not a reproach but an observation.

“Why? He was a nice gentleman”

“‘Eva's nice gentlemen,'” he sighs. “A category of the spirit.”

“He let me rest on his shoulder during the entire flight.”

“And what did he do for nine hours with your lovely weight upon him?”

“He picked up the blanket when it slid off me, drank spirits, and told me about his unhappy marriage.”

“Actually, the exact category is ‘the nice gentlemen who tell Eva about their unhappy marriages.'”

He squeezes my shoulders, all lovely and male, the doubt never even crossing his mind that he might belong to this despicable category. I must say it's true that he doesn't belong to it at all. After all, Carlo never mentions his marriage, so I have no way of judging whether it's a happy or unhappy one. Not that I care, actually.

He's pushed the cart to his car and loaded the baggage. A baby blue three-piece set I just bought in New York: trolley suitcase, holdall and beauty case—and with such handy compartments too. My mother would like it. In fact, I'm thinking it's a color that suits her rather than me and that I'll probably take them to her when I go there for Easter lunch, the day after tomorrow. I remain on the sidewalk with the computer case over my shoulder—I never let anyone take that from me. I like it when a man does muscular, physical work for me. Like lifting and arranging suitcases in the trunk. I assume a calm, patient air and enjoy the moment, looking away from Carlo so he doesn't think I'm rushing him. There's a man coming toward me on the sidewalk, heading to the taxi rank. A little younger than I, in a steel-gray, freshly pressed, woolen pinstripe suit, with an overnight bag that suggests he's flying on business. German, but not Bavarian, rather a Northerner: from Hamburg, perhaps, or Hanover. When I catch his eye, his pupils dilate and he assumes that expression men have when I look them in the eye—that unmistakable blend of rapacity and yearning. Desire makes them bold but also vulnerable and I become the keeper of a secret: chances are, their mother has never seen that look in their eyes—at least I hope not.

Carlo slams the trunk shut and sits down behind the wheel. I open the passenger door and, as I sit down, crossing my legs, I look up at the man who may be from Hamburg or Hanover, and who is now walking past me. I don't smile at him but barely squeeze my eyelids, the way thirteen-year-old fashion models do when they want to make their expression more intense. Then I slam the door, and Carlo starts the car.

 

I'm not beautiful. Nice-looking, but nothing special. There are so many other tall blond women.

I'm not even young anymore. There are many girls around young enough to be my daughters, with fresher bodies, smoother faces, and a more desirable innocence. And yet men still look at me. I inherited my mother's features but in an approximate version. Her Russian aristocratic cheekbones have been passed on to me with a more rustic cut. Her lips have an elegant design to them, while mine have something of the
maso
, of fresh, still warm milk, of butter. Like her, I have slim legs, a full bust, and North-European height, but when it comes to bearing, we're poles apart. Gerda Huber spent her life sweating over cookers and chopping boards while I wear Armani and organize society events. And yet between the two of us, she's the one who looks more like a queen.

 

It's a three-hour drive and two borders from Munich airport to my home. When I was a girl, I found this double frontier behind our land very exciting. It made me feel close to a big wide world, to other places, to the unknown. It was back in the days when Schengen was just a small town in Luxembourg no one had ever heard of; when European customs houses were indicated by real red and white grade crossings, and humorless men in uniform who looked like they could deny you access and even arrest you. And then there was the Brenner Pass, which certainly made quite an impression as a border: dark, oppressive, with its cavernous railroad station like something out of a spy movie. The thrill of those days is gone. Now, when you go through the narrow doorway that leads from Northern Europe to Italy, they don't even check your car tax disc.

Well, almost. After Sterzing/Vipiteno, just before Franzensfeste/Fortezza, Carlo stops at the
Autobahnraststätte
/
Autogrill
and we have a
belegtes Brötchen/panini
. Then we leave the Autobahn/autostrada and pay the toll at the
Mautstelle/casello
. All this while driving his Volvo which, thankfully, is Swedish so doesn't have to be translated into German or Italian. Welcome to Südtirol/Alto Adige, the land of bilingualism.

 

We pass various exits before getting off the highway and entering a wide valley full of light, that is welcoming even now after the first thaw has made the sunlit slopes muddy and patches of brown are already discoloring the mountain pastures still covered in snow. All around, the slopes are thick with larches, fir trees, birches, and dense forests that don't, however, threaten human activity on the valley floor. On the contrary, their impenetrable nature almost seems to frame the civilization of work—the
masi
with large lawns, bridges over the still-torrential river, and churches with their bulb-shaped bell towers. It's in this valley that I was born.

 

Carlo takes me home. We make love the way we usually do, with the usual gestures. It's the advantage of eleven years of secrecy: sex follows established, reassuring patterns, like in a marriage, but doesn't end up being taken for granted, or become a duty. This blend of habit and precariousness suits me. Afterwards, the two vertical lines between Carlo's eyebrows always relax a little, letting in less shade. I first noticed it eleven years ago, in this very bed, and it has been happening ever since. So this, I tell myself, is my power over him. I'm the one who smooths his forehead, I'm his personal anti-wrinkle cream. It's a comforting thought because the older he gets, the more he'll need it.

We remain in each other's arms between the linen sheets. White ones. I can't bear to have my sleep—scarce enough as it is—surrounded by colors. Carlo turns on his side and wraps me from behind. He smells my hair.

“You travel too much, you,” he says.

I smile. When he talks like that, I know he means it. The phone rings. Carlo holds me tight. Don't go, his arms are saying. I don't go, and the Telecom answerphone kicks in. “This is the answering service for zero, four, seven . . . ”

An excited, adolescent voice with a strong Roman accent, says, “Listen, it's coming now . . . ”

The answerphone continues, unperturbed, in German now, “
Hier spricht der Anrufbeantworter der Nummer Null Vier Sieben Vier . . .
”

“What's that—German?” a second voice says. A slightly clucking voice that hesitates between high and low tones. Fourteen—fifteen years old at most. Perhaps younger.

“Hey, how long does it go on for?”

“ . . .
Hinterlassen Sie bitte eine Nachricht nach dem Signal
.”

At this point the two boys are guffawing and the first one has started screaming into the receiver, “Krauts! Krauts!”

“
Actùn, cartoffen, capùt . . .
!”

The other one has joined in but is laughing so hard he can't carry on. My back remains glued to Carlo's stomach, his arms around my chest. We stay there, listening without moving.

“Go back to Germany!” the first one screams, then hangs up.

“Again!” I say. “Don't they ever get fed up?”

 

There's a scene in all the TV soaps my mother watches every day after lunch. The married man knots his tie while standing at the foot of his mistress's bed, gives her a kiss on the forehead, then leaves, while she remains lying on an unmade bed, staring sadly at the door that has closed behind him. Often, she'll hug her knees and put her chin on them, always modestly covered by the sheet. In eleven years, it's never been like that with Carlo. Before he says goodbye, even if he's in a rush, he always takes the time to move from the bed to the sofa, or the kitchen, or balcony, in other words somewhere that isn't the place of pleasure, to allow me also to get dressed or at least put on a robe. Then we have a coffee, a chat, a laugh. I feel that's quite a lot.

This time, before leaving, he helps me unpack my bags. Together, we leaf through the catalogues of the exhibitions I saw in New York. Gerhard Richter at MOMA. A young Korean artist in a gallery in Chelsea—twenty-two years old and he's already selling his paintings to billionaires on the East Side. An exhibition of wood art by the people of Dogon. I've seen more than one African statue in my clients' homes, often family castles redecorated with skillful additions of glass and steel. The South Tyrol rich like ethnic art. It makes them feel like citizens of the world.

Before he leaves, Carlo says, “After Easter Monday, if you like, I'll come inside.”

“That would be great,” I answer.

Don't panic. We haven't suddenly decided, on the spur of the moment, to have a child together. All he's saying is that, after the holidays, he'll come back to me, inside my valley, from Bolzano, where he lives. If you're from Alto Adige—even if, like him, you have Venetian and Calabrian blood—you translate into Italian many of our German dialect idioms. You go inside—
inni
—when you go into valleys that run outside—
aussi
—towards the plains and the big wide world.

Last summer, for instance, I was in Positano. Carlo phoned me. His wife and children had gone away and he was free to fly out of Bolzano.

“I'm coming out tonight,” he said, meaning he was going to join me, not that he would be using a form of contraception approved by the Church.

And now Carlo gives me a kiss (not on my forehead!), then goes home. To his home.

Of course, every so often I get questions. There's always someone—generally a woman—who feels it her duty to communicate that she feels sorry for me. “How can you bear it—so many years with a married man?” they ask. Many, almost all of them, add, “I could never do it.”

Every time, it takes me a little while to remember that there are people out there to whom my situation seems untenable. Sad, if not desperate. Ulli, however, would never have asked me that. He knew there's only one person I can accept being bound to. The only one I can belong to without feeling that I'm sinking into sticky mud, into an unknown marsh. The only one I could, if need be, look after and take care of without feeling trapped. And it's not a man.

 

Shortly before dinner, Zhou comes by to say hello. Ten years old, two pigtails from which small pink plastic strawberries hang, and a dangling molar. Almond-shaped eyes, like a Chinese girl. Well, she is Chinese. She's very clever at school. Her favorite subject: Geometry.

“I saw the light on, so I knew you were back.”

I haven't seen her for a couple of weeks and looking at her face as she talks makes me feel as disorientated as I did the first time. It's like watching a Bruce Lee movie dubbed by a choir of yodeling Alpini.

Signor Song, her father, was the owner of a shoe factory in Shandong, in Southern China. In the late eighties, he sold it to a party official. The total proceeds obtained from the sale of the establishment, including warehouses, machinery, and goods ready to be shipped: two passports with authorization to leave the country—one for himself, and one for his wife. As a memento of China and of his family, which, for a time, was very prominent in the area, he managed to take with him just an ornate wooden box containing the instruments necessary for raising fighting grasshoppers, an activity typical of Shandong, and in which his father was an expert.

After a few months, the Songs arrived in Italy, first in Trieste, then Padua, where their children were born, and, finally, in South Tyrol. That's where Signor Song was living when, during the 2001 census, they asked him to tick one of the following boxes: Italian, German, or Ladin. There was no room for any other option, since these are they only three ethnic groups recognized in South Tyrol. In order to receive the benefits of the Region with special status you had to fill in and sign a declaration of belonging to the language group. The heading on the form said, in German,
Sprachgruppenzugehörigkeitserklärung
.

Signor Song told me he stared at that word for a long time. Thirty-six letters. Eleven syllables.

Although he is a polyglot (Italian, English, Mandarin, and now also some German), his mother-tongue is Shandong dialect: a tonal and especially monosyllabic language. For the first and perhaps only time in his life, he skipped over the practical side of the question and experienced a gut reaction: he could never even have started to speak a language which can form a single word with thirty-six letters and eleven syllables. He considered the possibility of ticking “Ladin.” He knew little about those somewhat marginal people but felt a vague kind of warmth toward them. However, he wasn't planning to relocate to Val Gardena or Val Badia, the only places where that would carry a distinct advantage.

So now, Zhou, as well as her parents and older siblings, is to all intents and purposes ethnically Italian. She keeps me company with her accent that smacks of a North East tavern, while I finish unpacking my bags. When it's time for dinner, she leaves.

On the bookcase, I keep two two photos in pale wooden frames. One is that of a boy with eyelashes that are too long, like those of roebuck, and an apologetic smile: Ulli. The other one is in slightly yellowed black and white. A ten-year-old girl stands between two slightly older children—not sure if they're cousins or more distant relatives. They're on a sunny mountain pasture, slightly against the light. They're minding the cows grazing behind them. The little girl's dress is too short, clearly handed down several times, and exposes bare legs filthy with mud. There are blades of grass and a daisy sprouting between her toes. She looks straight in the eyes of whoever is taking the picture. She's the only one doing so—the other two children are staring at her, stealing a glance, mouths open, in their eyes the terror and awe of someone witnessing a wonder of nature.