Persecution (9781609458744) (14 page)

 

And all because Camilla had chosen a bizarre and compromising way of thanking him. For his support, I mean.

Why should we be surprised? That girl was really an eccentric. The only thing Camilla shared with her contemporaries was age. Compared with the female friends of his sons whom Leo ran into every so often, and compared with the girls in his unit, Camilla stood out like one of those odd-shaped tomatoes thrown into a heap of shiny, plastic-looking, but also unfortunately tasteless ones, thanks to some industrial adulteration. Camilla was the type of girl for whom the antithetical assessments “She's older than her age” and “She's younger than her age” are both valid. Compared to her the others resembled each other in a depressing way, all with carefully brushed blond hair that made them grotesquely similar to the flawless girls whom Leo had found in his class in the early fifties and for whom he felt no nostalgia.

Was the world going backward instead of progressing? Was it the excess of sex in the past twenty years that had produced this type of renaissance in the magic world of adolescence? The sensation Leo had had one afternoon, coming home earlier than usual to make an appearance at Samuel's birthday party, was so malicious and anachronistic: balloons, paper cups and plastic forks, big bottles of Fanta and Coca-Cola, and all those teen-agers intimidated by any suggestion of promiscuity, with the girls on one side of the living room and the boys on the other, as in synagogue. But, holy Jesus, what had happened to the sexual revolution? And alcohol? And marijuana? Of course, Leo hadn't expected an orgy, or anything like that. Nor had he hoped for it, at least not in his house. And yet not such a pervasive sense of vagueness and irresolution.

Most intolerable was the enclave of blondes with pink hairbands, tight jeans trimmed with paisley, and large shapeless sweaters, as if pilfered from a potbellied father. They seemed more like Teddy bears than like girls. Yes, nothing but dressed-up Teddy bears. So that in his own mind he had nicknamed them Teddy-bear girls.

A type widespread not only in his social class but more or less everywhere: you just had to make a little trip to the center of Rome on Saturday afternoon to run into slightly more vulgar clones of that type of girl. The world was becoming uniform. Aesthetically, anyway, class differences were disappearing, and fashions, although respectful of a pyramidal trend, were discovering the advantage of ecumenicalism.

Let's say that a perceptive shopkeeper, having acquired a stock of white or pink sweatshirts with large writing on the front, had managed to convince the most up-to-date girls of the most fashionable neighborhood that those pieces of fabric were really cool, well, you could be certain that in a few months that sweatshirt would have invaded the streets of Rome like a lethal epidemic, in a week spreading through the whole country and infecting millions of girls. So: the Teddy-bear girls who were overflowing Leo's living room and yard that afternoon could be considered, in view of their social origin, true unifiers of public taste.

Furthermore, these were well-brought-up and respectful girls, whose only fault (that is, if it could be considered one) was that they were rebelling against twenty years of rebellion, taking refuge in a conformism that, unlike that of their progenitors, had at least the good faith to appear as such. It's strange how so often the most conformist periods are also the least hypocritical.

And yet it pleased Leo (and in a certain sense Rachel, too) that the first girl their Semi brought home was not a Teddy-bear girl. The mind of the Pontecorvo spouses was philistine enough to believe that originality was in itself something good and instructive.

If there was an art at which that girl excelled it was an extraordinary capacity to disappear. To not be noticed. There was nothing in her person that did not seem to indicate a frantic quest for anonymity: the color of her clothes (sober and modest), which alternated between gray and dove-gray. Her elastic, supple body, like licorice: a thinness so excruciating that it made you think of certain diaphanous poetesses of the early part of the century but also of malnourished Pakistani girls. Her soft luxuriant hair, so red that the little Maoist was forced to restrain it in a peasant-style bun. The color of her skin—milk in dust—that seemed at the same time anonymous and restful. Not to mention an obtuse, obstinate silence, behind which she withdrew like a turtle in its shell.

And maybe this was why Leo and Rachel had scarcely noticed her when, a couple of months before the birthday, Semi had brought her home for the first time. When, during the dinner, just the four of them, that Samuel had compelled them to have, they, in order not to irritate the sensitivities of the two polite little sweethearts, had repressed impulses of tenderness and hilarity, delaying until they were in bed, finally alone. They had barely taken off the dressy clothes that Semi, for some reason, had demanded of all those present at that surreal dinner. And there they were, snuggled in the linen sheets, unable to stop laughing and gossiping:

“Did you see how our dear little boy could hardly breathe? Did you hear how his voice shook? And when he poured her water? And how he placed the napkin on her lap . . . ”

“Did you buy that white jacket? He looked like the dwarf attendant on that TV show the boys torture me with . . . I hate that ugly dwarf! Him and his faggot boss.”

“I can't believe that our Semi . . . ”

“Our Semi what? That's what we male Pontecorvos are like. Precocious, decisive, enterprising, dressed in white and straight for the prize . . . but also extremely well behaved.”

“I nearly grabbed that excited little face and covered it with kisses . . . ”

You see? Not a word about the girl. Why concede any attention to a creature so colorless, when you can gush about your marvelous boy? Dressed like a South American playboy. His wavy blond schoolboy hair. His nose, whose slightly hooked profile betrays his ethnic origin and tempers his beauty, making it amusing, congenial, and in a certain sense romantic.

He was splendid. And Leo and Rachel felt so pleased as they remarked on it. It was so natural to comment on Samuel's behavior and neglect Camilla's. The garrulity that possessed Semi as he enumerated Camilla's various qualities was a thousand times more interesting than the sober and modest behavior with which the girl, her gaze full of incredulity, repulsed all those compliments.

That was why that night in bed, smelling the acidic fragrance of the sheets, which, when it began to get hot, Leo insisted be changed every day, they found themselves commenting on Semi's embarrassment. The nobility of soul that that embarrassment symbolized. And they hadn't seen (how could they?) that right there was a girl destined to annihilate everything (linen sheets included).

 

The first time Leo really noticed Camilla was when he saw her struggling with her parents. He had met them on that occasion, Samuel's birthday, when they came to get her.

At their arrival, Leo still had the camera around his neck. Rachel had insisted, for once, that her husband make available to the family his dilettantish (and very expensive) passion for photography. And she had forced him into the humiliating role of official photographer for that tedious garden party crowded with Teddy-bear girls. Rachel had an outstanding account not only with the mountain of photos taken by her husband in the course of twenty years but also with all the photos that, in that same twenty years, he had refused to take. She couldn't bear the fact that Leo had filled their house with black-and-white landscapes, skyscrapers at sunset, insignificant details: crushed cigarette packs, chipped coffee cups, sandals abandoned on the beach. In other words: still-lifes. Rather, lifeless. That was the right word. Her husband photographed only dead things. And, even worse, he lavished all the care in the world on doing it. But ask him to take a “normal” photograph, who knows, the boys learning to ride a bicycle, his wife in evening dress or posing in front of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, or wherever the hell he wanted? Certainly not, not a chance. When you asked him, the artist felt outraged.

“What's the point,” she asked him, exasperated, when, getting back the pictures from a trip, she was faced with that whole repertoire of whimsical images, “of taking pictures that look like postcards? What sort of souvenir is it if there aren't any people?” A comment that roused in the artist yet another gesture of impatience. As if to say: how vulgar!

But that afternoon Rachel had been clear: “I don't want pictures of rolled-up paper napkins. No floral details. I don't want an entire retrospective devoted to the roof tiles. I want pictures of my sons and the friends of my sons. Understood?” Understood. And the recalcitrant Leo could do nothing but keep scrupulously to the petty directives of the one who had commissioned him, spending the afternoon taking pictures of his sons and the friends of his sons, with special attention to the birthday boy and his little girlfriend.

At least until Leo, seeing that eccentric pair of adults come through the gate and make their way into the garden with a questioning and self-conscious air, had thought with satisfaction: finally, an interesting subject! So much so as to order them: “Stop right there!,” with the authority of the painter who at last, after hours of searching, has glimpsed in the model's face the right expression. And those two strangers, astonished, had responded to the order with military promptness. Allowing Leo to shoot photo after photo with the enthusiasm of a professional photojournalist. It should be said that those two, framed by the perfect rectangle of the lens, made quite an impression.

They were an extremely vigorous young couple. You could be certain that he was the king of jogging and that she ate vegetables and patriotic salads of strawberries, white melon, and kiwi. The knowing wink addressed by the lady to the photographer revealed that good manners were perhaps not her strong point, but certainly when it came to aerobics she was second to no one.

Both were enveloped in honey-colored fur-lined suède sheepskins: an uncalled-for garment considering the mildness of the spring climate. Leo's eyes lingered more than necessary on the man's hair. It came down to his shoulders: a thing that, after the age of six, should not be allowed to any man (the color of that hair, by the way, explained Camilla's). Equally disconcerting was the contrast between the complexions of these two forty-year-olds, with a sparkling orange patina left by tanning cream, and the moonlike coloring of their pale daughter.

The chromatic difference must have been one of the many by-products of the overall difference that Camilla presented to the individuals who had given her life, and in whom she was unable to recognize herself. She was ashamed of them, just as they were completely unequipped to understand her oddness. Which explained why that evening she was in such a hurry to slip away and they were so eager to linger. To her there was no pleasure in showing her beloved Pontecorvos how inane and ridiculous her parents were, while they wished to understand what the Pontecorvos had that was so special as to lead their only daughter to spend most of her time with them.

In the light of her parents and her reaction to them it was easier for Leo to understand why Camilla, though just as pretty as her contemporaries, was animated by the desire to vanish and hide. If the genie of the lamp had granted her a single desire, she would probably have said simply, “Make me disappear from here.” And the genie, “Where if not here, dear little girl?” “I told you, anywhere but here.” This was what her beautiful eyes expressed, along with her body, which seemed to want to dissolve into a vertical line.

To understand this you had only to see the impatience with which, at that moment, she tried to intervene between the kind Pontecorvos and her parents. As if she wished to cover up, with her magic cloak of invisibility, even the individuals who were closest to her in the world but of whom she was most ashamed. It was clear that if it had been up to her she would have set fire to it all. To her father, to her mother, and to anything that had to do with them: including the out-of-season fleeces, the imperfect diction, the enormous over-accessorized Range Rover waiting outside the gate of the Pontecorvo house. Not to mention her father's manners, which displayed all the ceremoniousness of the boor who wants to impress the renowned professor.

They lost it too soon, Leo caught himself thinking, with the smugness of one who does not share an analogous fate. It's something that can happen. Yes, they've lost everything that Rachel and I have managed, at least for the moment, to hold onto: the affection, the respect of our children. It's something you see even in the hospital. There are fathers and mothers who still have full control of the situation, while others are totally at the mercy of these little monsters. Sometimes I have the impression that I'm still a hero to my sons. This man and woman have suffered a different fate. There's nothing that the daughter, at least to judge from the way she looks at them, would not reproach them for.

Ah yes, this ridiculous guy, with his sailor's tan, his Viking hair, and his Eskimo outfit, hasn't been his daughter's hero for at least five years. And to judge from the sweetness with which he puts the jacket over her shoulders so that she won't feel cold, his daughter's contempt must be the great suffering of his life. Made worse by the fact that it's a suffering he doesn't think he deserves and whose causes and extent he is incapable of perceiving. And shit, probably he has done everything for Camilla, a hundred times more than his parents in his time did for him, and what is the gratitude he gets from her? A look of tremulous embarrassment. And yet this embarrassment is precisely what Camilla is so precociously forming her personality on. But I swear, if one day my sons should look at me like that . . . yes, I swear . . .

So Leo reasoned, with sympathetic pity, after lowering the camera, after politely introducing himself to those two ill-at-ease people, after calling Rachel and asking her, in turn, to call Camilla, and after noticing the expression painted in Camilla's eyes on seeing her parents in conversation with him. Yes, so Leo reasoned, observing with pleasure that, if Camilla was so apprehensive and doing all she could so that he and Rachel wouldn't realize what common clay her parents were made of, that meant that she considered the Pontecorvos people of a certain rank. While Leo reflected on these things, glancing with one pitying eye at Camilla's father and with the other, much more proudly, at himself, Camilla gave evidence for the first time of her oddness, by addressing her father and mother in French. There would have been no harm if, for example, that had been some private game that they habitually played (like characters in a Russian novel). Or if, following another hypothesis, the French nationality of one of her parents had inclined her to that bilingualism which transforms some families into an irritating Tower of Babel. But suppose that neither her mother nor, much less, her father, was French, that neither could utter a single word of French, except perhaps
merci
and the very popular at the time, not to say annoying, “
Oui, je suis Catherine Deneuve
.”