He paused briefly.
So I thought I would be relieved at the idea that you, too, might learn about some circumstances that you are unaware of, and yet that have had and still have a great influence on the life of the Family, and in particular on mine.
The young Bride looked up, displaying an amazement that she had shown no hint of in hearing about her father.
Are you about to tell me a secret? she asked.
No, I wouldn’t be able to. And then I tend to avoid situations that are too emotionally demanding, for reasons of medical prudence, as you can perhaps understand.
The young Bride gave a slight nod of agreement.
The Father continued.
I believe that the best system is for you to come with me where I’m taking you; it’s a place where someone will be able to tell you what I feel is important for you to know.
Concentrating on a cuff link, he sought the exact words.
I must warn you that at first it will appear to you a less than appropriate place, especially after the news you’ve just received, but I’ve thought about it for a long time and I have the presumption to believe that you are a girl not much inclined to cliché, and so I’m sure that it won’t disturb you, and in the end you’ll see that there was no other way.
The young Bride seemed for a moment to have something to say, then she merely turned her gaze to the window. She saw that the big station was swallowing them up with its palate of iron and glass.
And what do you do in all this solitude? L. asked me, while she inspected, horrified, the maniacal orderliness of my house.
I’m writing my book, I answered.
And what did you come to do in this solitude of mine? I asked her, noting that her lips were the same as before, lips difficult to understand.
To read your book, she answered.
But with that look I know. Everyone has it, a little, everyone around you, when you’ve been working on a book for months, maybe years, that no one has read yet. Deep down they all think that you’re not really writing. What they expect is to find a mountain of pages stuck in a drawer with The morning has gold in its mouth written on them thousands of times. You should see their surprise, when they discover that you’ve written the book, seriously. Assholes.
I handed her the printed pages, she stretched out on a sofa and, smoking, began to read.
I had known her, years ago. Once she had intimated that she was dying, but maybe it was only unhappiness, or incompetent doctors. Now she has two children and a husband. She said intelligent things about what I was writing, while we escaped into hotel rooms to love each other, devious but obstinate. She always said intelligent things, too, about people who live and sometimes about how we lived. Maybe I expected her to reopen the map of the Earth and show me where I was — I knew that, if she did, she would do it with a particular beauty in her gestures, because that was inevitable with her. That was why I answered her, when she wrote, re-emerging from the void into which she had disappeared. It’s not something I’ve done, lately. I don’t answer anyone. I don’t ask anything of anyone. I mustn’t think about it, otherwise I become unable to breathe, for the horror.
Now she was lying on the sofa reading what was printed on those pages, instead of The morning has gold in its mouth. It must have taken an hour — a bit more. I looked at her the whole time, searching for a name for that film that remains on women we have loved when time has passed, and we haven’t ever really left each other, or hated each other, or fought — we simply separated. It shouldn’t matter to me much, now that I hardly have names for anything, but the truth is that I have a score to settle with that name, it’s been escaping me for years. When I’m a hairsbreadth from catching it, it enters an invisible crack in the wall. Then there’s no way to make it come out. It remains the fragrance of a nameless attraction, and what is nameless is unnerving.
Finally she stretched, placed the sheets of paper on the floor, and turned on her side to look at me carefully. She was still beautiful, about this there was no doubt.
Where the hell does he take her?
She wanted to know about the Father and the young Bride.
I told you where he took her.
To a brothel? she asked, not convinced.
Very elegant, I answered. You have to imagine a large room, lit by dim and artfully placed lamps, and a lot of people standing around or sitting on couches, waiters in the corners, trays, crystal, you might have taken it for a very respectable party, but the normality was marred by the fact that there was often so little distance between the faces — the hands initiated inappropriate gestures, like a palm sliding under the hem of a skirt, or the fingers moving to play with a curl, an earring. They were details, but they clashed with the rest, and no one seemed to realize it, or to be disturbed by it. The necklines did not conceal, the couches were tilted in precarious positions, the cigarettes traveled from mouth to mouth. One would have said that some urgency had brought back to the surface traces of a shamelessness that usually lay buried beneath conventions: just as an archeological dig might have brought to the surface patches of an obscene mosaic in the pavement of a basilica. The young Bride was dazzled by the sight. From the fact that some couples rose, and from the fact that they disappeared behind doors that opened and closed behind them, she sensed that the big room was an inclined plane and the destination of all those gestures a labyrinthine elsewhere hidden somewhere in the building.
Why did you bring me here? she asked.
It’s a very particular place, the Father said.
I understand. But what is it?
A sort of club, let’s say.
Are all the people real?
I’m not sure I understand the question.
Are they actors, is it a play, or what?
Oh, if that’s what you meant, no, absolutely not. That’s not the purpose.
So it’s what I think.
Probably. But do you see that very elegant woman who is coming toward us, smiling? There, I’m sure she’ll have a way of explaining everything to you and of putting you at your ease.
The elegant Woman was holding a champagne glass in her hand, and when she reached them she leaned forward to kiss the Father, murmuring something secret in his ear. Then she turned to the young Bride.
I’ve heard a lot about you, she said, and then she leaned forward to kiss her once, on one cheek. She had evidently been very beautiful, when she was young, and now she seemed to have no need to demonstrate anything anymore. She was wearing a gorgeous dress, but high-necked, and in her hair she wore jewels that to the young Bride seemed ancient trophies.
Because I imagined — I said to L. — this elegant Woman and the young Bride, at that big ambiguous party, sitting on a small divan, a little apart from the others, and sheltered by subdued, indirect lighting, as if enclosed in a special bubble, near the reckless joy of the others, but blown in the glass of their words. I always saw them drinking something, wine or champagne, and I know that every so often they cast a glance around, but without seeing. I know that it would not have occurred to anyone to approach them. The elegant Woman had a job to do, but she wasn’t in a hurry, and a story to tell, but carefully. She spoke slowly and pronounced the names of things without embarrassment, because that was part of her profession.
What profession? L. asked me.
The elegant Woman laughed, with a lovely, crystalline laugh. What do you mean, what profession, girl. The only one practiced here.
What’s that?
Men pay to go to bed with me. I’m simplifying a little, obviously.