Tell me, Subra says.
Gérard had been sentenced to — and done — ten years for the hard-porn films he’d produced and posted on the net in the mid-nineties. Because they were banned, those films are worth a mint today. He had hired the best lawyers in Paris to draw up a contract for him, and convinced a dozen young women to sign it. I agree, the contract said in substance, to remain naked in front of a camera for two hours and let two men do whatever they want to me. ‘The films really got interesting, Rena,’ Gérard told me, ‘when the girls changed their minds.’ He didn’t offer and I didn’t request details as to the reason for this reversal. With a firm contract, Gérard knew he was legally covered, so he paid no attention when the women begged him to call the whole thing off. Staring at the man’s handsome face just a few inches from my own, I realised I’d have to renounce taking his picture. Gérard is one of the few people I’ve been unable to photograph — that is, to love. He was beyond the pale.
Never could he have told me what was done to him, long ago. Forever obliterated, the memory of his mother — a young, exhausted single woman, her nerves on edge — teasing and mocking him when he was a boy of two, making him sob, then hitting him to make him sob louder — Hey Gérard, stop crying you little baby, you little asshole, you little cocksucker — slapping his face, then really getting into it, raining blows down on his head, giddy with the possibility of killing him — you little asshole — and he, Gérard, so tiny, helpless, utterly at her mercy. The more he begged her to stop, the more she felt like bullying him, breaking him. The more ear-shattering his cries grew, the more she wanted to get rid of him. They were alone in the apartment — just as, later on, Gérard would be alone in a soundproofed basement of Paris’s ninth arrondissement with the beautiful, reckless, masochistic, penniless young women who, for money, had agreed to take off their clothes in front of a camera. It excited him to have them at his mercy, just as children are at their mothers’ mercy. When they sobbed he felt a rush of euphoria, and when they begged him to stop he motioned to the cameraman to keep shooting: that was when the very best scenes got shot, the ones that caused the most sperm and money to flow. Men who hate themselves — and they are legion, as Gérard well knew — are more than willing to pay to ejaculate. The more they pay, the more they feel they’re worth. In Washington, Moscow, Paris, and Tokyo, big shots who are still little boys deep down are prepared to part with ten thousand dollars for a single coitus with a call-girl; they’re sure to come then, because they’ve paid a fortune to do so.
Back when Gérard was producing those films, his wife had guessed he must be involved in something fishy because suddenly they were rolling in it — but, happy to be able to buy mink coats and go on holidays in Majorca, she hadn’t asked too many questions. Then everything fell apart. Of the dozen young women Gérard had paid to be savagely raped in front of a camera, four decided to sue.
Just the sort of case Ms Lisa Heyward might have handled, Subra puts in.
True…Gérard was sent to prison, and his wife left him. Dolore, dolore, he lost everything. ‘I’ll never understand, Rena,’ he told me, at least fifteen times in the three hours we spent together. ‘I didn’t break a single law!’ Like Eichmann’s, his incomprehension was sincere. I’ll bet anything Eichmann’s mother tortured him, too. Impossible to understand your punishment, afterwards. What little boy would ever dream of dragging his mom to court?
They ascend the grand staircase together.
Buon Governo
Still radiant from their recent exchange over the shrimp, they stand side by side in front of the famous Ambrogio Lorenzetti frescoes. Next to them, an elderly Englishwoman is giving explanations to a young man, probably her son.
My sons! Where are my sons? Suddenly Rena misses Toussaint and Thierno terribly. If I take a trip with them a quarter of a century down the line, when I’m seventy years old, will they be as tormented by guilt, impatience and fury as I’ve been with my father over the past few days?
‘What are the prerequisites of Good Government?’ asks the pedagogical Brit. ‘Reading the painting as if it were a book, from left to right and from top to bottom, you can find the answer. There have to be strong bonds, first between heavenly angels and Lady Justice, then between Lady Justice and Lady Concord. Concord goes on to weave those bonds into a rope and the rope gets passed from one burgher to the next, eventually coming out over here, where it moves upwards to become a sceptre…’
‘…in the hands of the king!’ the young man guesses.
‘No,’ his mother corrects him gently. ‘He’s not a king, that’s what’s so amazing. For the space of seventy years, in the twelfth century, Siena wasn’t a monarchy at all, but a republic. So this man is the governor.’
‘Still, the republic wasn’t exactly a bowl of cherries,’ Ingrid whispers. ‘Look over there, in the bottom right-hand corner: men in chains. Prisoners-of-war. I wonder where they come from!’
‘Good question,’ concedes Rena. Again she remembers Jean Valjean condemned to the galleys, and the fury that overcomes Aziz every time the police make him pull over because he looks like an Arab. ‘Shut up, turn around, hands on the boot of the car.’ ‘Hey, what’s up? What did you stop me for?’ ‘Are you resisting arrest, you little prick? Just wait, you’ll be sorry…’ And they take him in and lock him up and frisk him. They make him strip, squat down in front of them and cough three times, ostensibly to check for dope in his anus but really just to humiliate him and make sure he knows who’s in charge. He comes home from those nights pale with rage, a little more deeply wounded every time…
Turning to the wall on their right, they study The Effects of Good Government: flourishing countryside, graceful women dancing, students listening to their professor. Work and rest, order and joy, prosperity and peace. On the wall to their left, on the other hand, are The Effects of Bad Government: the beautiful statue of Justice toppled and smashed, cities burned, fields gone sterile, distress and disorder, violence running amok. That fresco, moreover, is less well preserved than the other — as if the citizens’ misdeeds had corroded the very wall on which they were painted.
To the right, murmurs Subra, the landscape you’ve been traipsing through with Simon and Ingrid. To the left: Aziz’s universe, teetering on the brink of an abyss. These days you’re split between the two — your body here, your mind over there.
You said it, Rena sighs. My holiday was badly timed, as it turns out. I’m only beginning to realise what it’s going to cost me.
Motorini
Back in Il Campo, she unfolds the map of Siena and spreads it out in front of Ingrid. ‘You wanted to see the ramparts? I suggest we head up this way, then along from here to there, then here, and come back around to the car like this. What do you think?’
‘I didn’t bring my glasses,’ Ingrid answers, ‘but I trust you. Fine, Let’s go.’
The two women strike out, with Simon close behind. But the hills are steeper than they had expected; the narrow streets twist and turn, stubbornly refusing to lead them to the ramparts.
When they reach the barrier called San Lorenzo (him again!), Ingrid tells her they have to stop off at a pharmacy. Simon has a headache. He wants to buy…no, not aspirin, he’s not allowed to take aspirin, but some sort of analgesic.