If the vagina were an erogenous zone we’d have heard about it by now, she says to herself. How would women be able to stuff tampons into it four times a day, six days a month, twelve months a year without feeling at least an occasional twinge of pleasure? But no. Not one of my women friends has ever blushingly confessed to getting her kicks that way…Memory of myself at fourteen, having finally reached puberty after two years of faking it, twisting and turning on the bathroom floor at my best friend Jennifer’s place, legs akimbo, desperately trying to insert a tampon as Jennifer shouted advice to me from beyond the door—’Relax, Rena. You gotta relax. If you tense up, it won’t go in. Don’t worry, you won’t lose your virginity or anything.’ Naturally, I wouldn’t have dreamed of enlightening her as to the state of my hymen.
The car rental is on Borgo Ognissanti, All-Saints Street — same name as Toussaint, her older son. She decides to interpret this as a good omen.
People are often puzzled that a virgophobic atheist like myself would have named her son Toussaint — but it’s because my beloved Fabrice idolised Toussaint Louverture, the great leader of the Haitian Revolution in 1802, and his dying wish was that our son be named after him.
Louverture himself was anything but a saint, Subra points out.
Yeah, his folks probably just had him baptised on November 1st and gave him the name they found on the Catholic calendar that day…Could have been worse. Other kids in France’s former colonies wound up with names like Epiphany or Armistice.
Here we are — Ognissanti.
Guidare
Rena fills out the necessary forms with the Auto-Escape employee. He insists on speaking French to her, and she answers him in Italian: under pretence of being deferential, both are in fact showing off. At last he entrusts her with a red Megane.
‘This, madame,’ he explains unnecessarily, showing her the remote control attached to the key chain, ‘is for locking and unlocking the car doors. Do you understand?’
‘Si, certo, signore,’ she retorts. ‘Non sono nata ieri.’
At her first manœuvre on the Piazza Ognissanti, she manages to stall. On the verge of hysteria, she wonders if she should interpret this superstitiously, as Aziz would. Allah does not want me to rent a car; he does not want me to spend four days traipsing around Tuscany with my father and stepmother. He wants me to obey my husband’s subtly expressed command: head straight for Amerigo Vespucci airport and jump on the first plane for Paris.
On her third try, unfortunately, the car takes off like a fireball and she finds herself hurtling willy-nilly through the sumptuous Renaissance city of Florence, Italy.
Reading glasses perched on her nose, Rena attempts to keep her left eye on the road while darting desperate glances with her right eye at the city map on the passenger seat, where the itinerary to Via Guelfa has been highlighted in green by Auto-Escape’s elegant employee. ‘Because of all the one-way streets,’ the man had told her in his excellent French, ‘you’ll need to make a big detour — like this, see? You get on this ring road north of city centre — be careful, it has three different names — then take a right here, in Via Santa Caterina.’ A piece of cake!
Sweating profusely, zooming along the Viale F. Strozzi at sixty miles per hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic, she hears her mobile ring.
Maybe it’s my father…Maybe they’re in some sort of trouble… Maybe someone really did make off with their precious sacco this time…
Digging the phone out of her jeans pocket, she tosses it onto the seat beside her and the map slides to the floor.
Oh God, it’s Aziz! Heart aflutter, she leans over to make sure it really is his name on the screen; as she does so the car drifts leftward and narrowly escapes a collision.
‘Aziz!’ she says, clamping the telephone between her ear and shoulder.
‘Yes.’
‘Hang on a minute!’
‘What do you mean, hang on? We haven’t spoken for days, and when I finally get you on the phone you tell me to hang on?’
‘Just a second, love, I’m driving…’
She slows down, setting off a cacophony of honking horns behind her. Having cut the connection with Aziz, she spews epithets in French and English at the Fiats and their impatient, aggressive macho drivers, nods perfunctorily at a giant fortress to her left and its probable thousands of dead of whom she knows nothing, and finally, perspiring and palpitating, pulls over to the kerb at the corner of Santa Caterina.
‘Aziz. Sorry, love. Driving alone in a foreign city can be a little nerve-wracking.’
‘Rena, you’ve got to come home.’
‘What?’
‘Drop everything and come back to Paris. Things are getting too serious.’
‘You…I…Aziz…’
‘Stop stammering. Are you trying to make fun of me?’
‘No, of course not…Listen, I just rented a car, my father and stepmother are waiting for me in the street, I can’t just leave them in the lurch…Schroeder’s the one who gave me this week’s holiday…’
‘I’m not talking about Schroeder. Hey, Rena, listen to me, okay? I’ve been up here working for three days and three nights non-stop, we’re trying to hold things together but the place is on the verge of exploding. The media are already rushing in to do their sensationalist crap. We need intelligent night photos for the magazine. The point of view of someone who has a little background, a minimal understanding of what’s going on, you know what I mean? I can’t put it more clearly than that. Rena, get your ass back here.’
‘No, I…’
‘Okay, forget it.’
Aziz cuts off the connection. As she inches down the Via Santa Caterina, Rena shoves her hat back to keep the hairs on the nape of her neck from bristling.
To her surprise, Simon and Ingrid actually are standing in front of the hotel with their luggage, ready and waiting on time. They load up the car. Ingrid climbs into the back seat and Simon settles in at Rena’s side; it’s almost as if she had dreamed that abominable phone call.
‘I’ll take charge of the maps,’ her father says. ‘I’ll be your guide.’
‘Okay, look…we’re right…here.’
It was your job to show me the way, Daddy. It was your job to help me. You’re the one who taught me to drive. You weren’t supposed to get hopelessly lost in life’s dark labyrinths. Lousy Virgil, Daddy! Lousy Virgil…Why so tense now, sitting next to me in the car?
Tell me, Subra says.
When I was little, Simon would sometimes take me to visit his sister Deborah in the Eastern Townships. When we got onto one of those long straight roads, he’d tuck me between his thighs and let me steer. It thrilled me to think that my tiny hands were controlling the big black Volvo. Every time an oncoming truck pulled out to pass, hurtling straight at us, I’d let go of the steering-wheel and bury my face in my Daddy’s chest. And he’d always make things come out all right, in a great burst of laughter. I couldn’t help boasting to Lisa about it afterwards. ‘I drove the car all by myself, Mommy!’ Pale with rage, she’d light into Simon for having risked my life.
Where transgression was concerned, Subra says, you were always on your Daddy’s side.
Yeah…sitting between his thighs, mad with excitement. Mad with excitement, sitting between his thighs…
And your father…?
Hmm. I don’t recall his having given my older brother that sort of driving lesson. All I remember is that when Rowan had a minor scooter accident at age sixteen, Simon confiscated his licence for a month.