7
Lucca met Otto eighteen months after she left drama school. She had heard about him and seen him at cafés and bars when out with her friends. He was already then a star in the making, an underground star if such exists. He had been interviewed in a woman’s magazine as the rumbustious puppy of young film, and if he showed up at a party you could be sure of fireworks. He had been in a relationship with a well-known rock singer and in general was the type girls kept a watch on out of the corners of their eyes over their cappuccinos and looked away from with a chilly, unapproachable air. They always referred to him in ironical terms if one of their group lost her grip and naïvely gave way to her curiosity. In their opinion he was already established although according to the usual standards he was still only promising. And Lucca thought he seemed to fancy himself a bit too much when he swaggered around in a football shirt, knitted cap and flip-flops, or whatever he hit on, scanning the bar.
When she was offered a part in a television serial in which Otto was also appearing she felt surprised at first that he could be bothered with such a job, although she naturally accepted. He had just got out of prison, she was his girl, and while he was banged up she had naturally fallen for the cop who had run him in. It was a totally fatuous script, but Otto was good and that made her better than she would otherwise have been. He was kind to her, he calmed her down with a smile or made her laugh when she was nervous, and she was surprised at his discipline. He could sit and read the newspaper or tell stories until the moment before they had to go into action and then make his entry and throw himself into his part as if with a snap of the fingers he became one with it.
In fact, he did not act. He was always himself, a fictitious edition of himself, as he would have been if chance had shaped his life along the lines of the script. He summoned the aspects demanded of the role with ease and carried everything off with his drawling diction and adroit muscular physique. They sat chatting among the lamp stands and rolls of cable in a corner of the studio while the cameramen set up their lights. Otto had never been to drama school and wasn’t planning to do so. He couldn’t be bothered to spend three years lying on the floor touching people and breathing deeply. She might well have protested, but she didn’t.
How did it start? As such things do start, as vague notions, playful fantasies, a special feeling aroused merely by sitting beside him, listening to his voice and feeling his eyes. His presence was reflected in all her words and movements, even when she turned her back on him and talked to someone else. One moment she could be really dissatisfied with herself, with her appearance, her voice and what she said, and the next she could have a sneaking feeling of not being quite what she thought she was. As if she hid a secret version of herself, so secret that she was unable to make out who she actually might be, the other woman behind her distrustful reflection.
He provoked her with his self-assurance and cool dispassion. She felt he could see through her ironic aloofness. When she tried out a sharp comment he quite simply appeared not to have heard her, unless he stared straight in her eyes so that his silence seemed a grosser insult than the most offensive reply. She admired his insolence, but kept her mask on. She waited for him to relax for a second, open up a chink.
One day when she arrived at the studio he was sitting outside in the sun studying his script. A toy-shop carrier bag lay beside him. She glanced inside it without asking leave and found a transparent box containing a red toy car. She asked him if he still played with cars. He said it was for his son. She sat down beside him, how old was his son? Six, he replied, putting down the script. He leaned his head back against the red-painted planking wall of the studio and closed his eyes. He must have been very young to be a dad. He shrugged his shoulders, she felt stupid. What was his name, then? Lester… that was an unusual name. He looked across the courtyard. He hadn’t seen his son since he was born. He had met the mother when he was living in the States, she had fallen pregnant by accident. They hadn’t been able to make a go of it. He said this dryly as if just describing what he had done on Sunday.
The following week Lucca and Otto were filming at night in a marina. It was the last scene they were acting together. They had a long wait before the lights were set up. He had to fall into the water during a fight in a speedboat, and he fell again and again, but she was the one who got cold, although it was the middle of July. He lent her his jacket. Later they shared a taxi into town. They spoke of the difference between making a film and acting in a theatre and about one of their older colleagues who behaved like a silent film star even when he was in close-up. He shook her hand, a bit formally, she thought, and said it had been good to work together. She agreed. Standing in the street when the taxi had gone she discovered she still had his jacket on. It was a motor cycle jacket with a zip, the sleeves were too short. That made her smile, as if it was touching. She had not even noticed she was taller than him. She put her nose under the collar and caught the scent of his strange smell.
She called him next day about the jacket. He sounded as if she had woken him up. She was sorry. She asked him to forgive her. He said she could just come round. His apartment was in a side street. She rang several times and was about to go when he finally opened the door. He wore a shabby bath robe with claret-coloured stripes like the ones old men wear for the beach. She couldn’t help smiling and he smiled back. Smart, wasn’t it? She didn’t know if he meant the bath robe or the jacket he had let her keep. Then he pulled her inside, pushed the door to and kissed her. She closed her eyes and pressed herself against him with a sudden force that surprised her, as if she had to make haste not to be paralysed by the strangeness of the situation.
* * *
From the windows you looked down on a building site covered with weeds and rubble, haunted in winter by street girls and local pushers who warmed themselves at a fire in a rusty oil barrel. The flat was sparsely equipped with junk furniture which looked as if it had come from a house clearance. Some time in the Fifties it must have been in a working-class home with ambitions for higher things, and now it had been resurrected thanks to Otto’s slightly perverse but extremely chic feeling for teak and moquette. On one of the walls hung a huge, hand-drawn poster for a Sergio Leone film, and in the window a reversed neon sign in fiery red letters announced Fish is healthy. She sometimes wondered whether the junkies down on the building site brushed back their greasy fringes and raised their heavy eyes to Otto’s window. She pondered whether the message in their stoned brains seemed like a revelation or a studied insult.
The street offered a Turkish greengrocer, an Egyptian restaurant with belly dancers, a paraffin merchant, a Halal butcher and one or two massage salons. The entrance was dark and scruffy, it smelled of gas and cooking and wet dogs, and sometimes she surprised a bent figure on the stairs having a fix. She rather liked the atmosphere of kinky sex and shady dealings, the exotic scents, men with black moustaches and little knitted caps who spoke Turkish and Arabic, and women with their heads covered, wearing long coats. She had even grown used to the junkies and prostitutes. They knew her and scrounged cigarettes from her, and she had come to feel she belonged there as much as they did. But in their eyes she no doubt still seemed an upper-class git who had lost her way in town, strutting off with long steps and chin in the air.
When she wore high-heeled shoes she was almost a head taller than Otto, but he didn’t seem to mind that. If he had they would hardly have been lovers. She was a tall woman, but always wore high heels. She liked glancing at her legs, reflected in shop windows as she strode along the pavement and could still feel like a little girl playing at being a lady, hardly realising she was supposed to be grown up, although she had long ago taught herself to walk on high heels without looking awkward. As a teenager she had been clumsy, hadn’t known what to do with her long arms and legs, constantly tripping over furniture and knocking over glasses and china. She was still like a bean pole, her face was long and narrow, even her nose, and when she was in a bad mood she thought she looked like a horse. But that wasn’t the worst thing to be. Her hair was coarse and as fair as straw, with a reddish tinge, her eyes were green and her lips were full and kissable. Anyway that was what Otto said when for once he was playing the gallant.