One evening when everyone else was out, I strode into Matthew’s bedroom, grabbed him by the collar and dragged him up to my room. Fuming with rage, I brandished my skipping rope under his nose, pointed to a roll of Scotch tape on my desk, and said, ‘If you don’t shut up right this minute, I’ll bind you hand and foot and tape your mouth shut. Do you hear me?’ Matthew blushed and gulped and started shaking like a leaf.
Never had my words had such a powerful effect on another person. I found it thrilling. I wanted more. ‘S.T.A.R.,’ I went on. ‘Scotch Tape And Rope. That’s what’s in store for you if you don’t shut up. Now get out of here!’—and, so saying, I shoved him out into the hallway. He stood there gesticulating and blushing, so frightened he couldn’t budge. Then he peed his pants. The piss puddled around his feet on the hardwood floor and I told him to clean it up…But just as he was filling a basin with water at the kitchen sink, Lucille burst in and gave him the dressing-down of his life.
In the course of the ensuing months, I whispered the word S.T.A.R. to Matthew on an almost daily basis and it never failed to scare him out of his wits. I got a huge kick out of watching his cheeks go from white to red in the space of a…
Rena retches.
Remembering this story in detail between the Piazza della Repubblica and the Via Guelfa has brought her to the verge of vomiting.
Piccoli problemi
Alone at last in Room 25, she listens to the messages that have accumulated on her mobile since the day before — a good dozen of them, including two from Patrice Schroeder, her employer at On the Fringe, and three (the only ones she cares about) from Aziz.
‘Call me back.’ ‘Rena, please call me back.’ ‘Rena, what the hell is going on? Will you call me back, please? Make it snappy.’
She puts the call through, undressing as she does so. ‘My love.’
‘About time!’
There’s something odd about Aziz’s voice, a tone she’s never heard before. Inwardly, she steels herself to hear bad news.
‘Is anything wrong? You’re shaking, love.’
Often, as he approaches orgasm, Aziz’s whole body starts to shake. But she can tell that right now he’s trembling not with pleasure but with rage, reactivating the stammer that had plagued him throughout childhood.
‘All hell is b-b-b-breaking loose here, Rena. Have you been following what’s going on?’
‘No, I haven’t had a second to watch the news.’
Spluttering and stuttering, Aziz quotes to her the French government’s latest outrageous remarks about the projects north of Paris, a neighbourhood they both know well since Aziz was born there, his mother and sisters still live there, and Rena has done numerous reportages in the area. Rena listens closely, but finds it hard to connect his words with what she’s currently enduring in Florence.
‘Don’t they have TV in Italy?’ Aziz says at last. ‘Everybody’s talking about it.’
‘Of course they’ve got TV! But the Italians don’t care about France’s little problems.’
‘Little problems? You think this is a little problem?’
‘No, I think it’s a big problem, but that’s because I’m French. Maybe they’ll mention it on the news tomorrow morning — I’ll look out for it. Meanwhile, how’s my man doing?’
‘He’s eating his heart away.’
‘Hey, love, why is that?’ (She doesn’t tell Aziz you can’t eat your heart away, only out.)
‘’Cause his lady’s a thousand miles away and his heart is wasted.’
‘So why doesn’t he play his lady a song on the guitar?’
‘Oh, Rena, this week will last a year! I can’t help imagining things…’
‘Seriously…get your guitar and sing me a lullaby. I need it.’
‘Why? Are the old folks giving you a hard time of it?’ ‘Not exactly, but…Oh, please, Aziz…Sing to me.’ ‘All right, hold on…’
Before long she hears chords being strummed, before long she hears her beloved Aziz singing songs that revive and enhance the folktales his mother Aicha told him as a child, in Arabic, a language that to Rena’s ears is as sensuous as it is opaque, before long her cheeks are bathed in tears, before long she thanks Aziz in a low voice and before long she is sound asleep.
THURSDAY
‘I see the divineness in ordinary things.’
Pietà
Two young adults, a brother and a sister. They’re in some foreign country — Israel, perhaps — where the political tension is palpable and intimidating. Two circles have been drawn on the ground, one for believers, the other for non-believers. Saying he’s a believer, the boy walks over to stand inside that circle. The girl announces that she believes only in her love for her brother. To punish her, the authorities give her a gun and order her to kill him. As he slumps lifeless to the ground, her brother falls into the circle of non-believers.
No idea why my brain would suggest that version of my relationship with Rowan.
Still in bed, Rena grabs the remote control and surfs channels for a while — but there are only half a dozen of them, all in Italian, and she learns nothing of what’s been going on in the projects around Paris.
When she knocks at the door to Room 23, Ingrid, still in her nightgown, sticks out her head and whispers to her that Simon spent most of the night reading Galileo’s Daughter and didn’t get to sleep until about an hour ago. It would probably be best for Rena to do some visiting by herself, and for them to meet up at noon. Where? The Ponte Vecchio? Right.
Filled with evil delight at this new prospect of freedom, Rena runs all the way to the Piazza del Duomo, enters the Museum of the Works of Santa Maria dei Fiori, buys a ticket and draws up short, heart thumping, in front of Michelangelo’s Pietà.
A sign explains that this actually isn’t a Pietà but a Descent from the Cross, and that the old man standing behind Christ’s body — bearded, hooded, his face twisted in pain — is actually not Nicodemus but the artist himself. ‘Aged eighty at the time,’ the sign goes on, ‘suffering from increasingly acute bouts of depression, Michelangelo was obsessed with death; the statue was meant to decorate his tomb.’
Oh, all these moping, miserable men, Rena sighs. Jesus, Nicodemus, Michelangelo, my dad…If only I could pick them up and bounce them on my knees! ‘Come to me, one and all!’ Rocking them and singing to them…Lullaby and good-night, With old age bedight…La, la, la, I’d hum and croon to them, time is but a lullaby…Mary knew this well, having held her son on her lap first as a baby, then as a corpse…But men insist on pursuing lofty goals. Each wants to make his mark — God by creating the world, Jesus by saving it, Nicodemus by carrying Christ’s dead body, Michelangelo by sculpting the whole mess, my father by understanding it. They all try so hard! None will achieve his goal. Instead of complying with their wishes, reality resists. Buonarotti worked on this statue for eight years and winded up hating it. The poor-quality marble gave off sparks when his chisel bit into it. Furious, Buonarotti struck out at his creation, mutilated it, and turned away. God, too — strikes out, mutilates, turns away. My father too — strikes out, mutilates, turns away.