A Private Venus

2

It all happened very quickly: the little emperor with the narrow trousers had grown weary again, he came out with a few more lines, like an exhausted actor, his son would do the honours, he said, he was sorry he couldn’t stay, he seemed reluctant to even look at his son, he said goodbye to him with his back turned, then held out his hand to say goodbye to Duca and said, ‘Phone if you have to, but it won’t be so easy to reach me for a while,’ which was probably just a polite way of saying that he didn’t want to be disturbed. ‘Thank you very much, Dr. Lamberti,’ and only as he was about to disappear into the garden did he look for a moment at the gigantic young man who was his son, and in that look there was a bit of everything, just like in a supermarket: compassion, hate, fierce love, irony, contempt, a painful fatherly affection.

Then the crunch of his steps on the gravel, then silence, then the muted roar of an engine, the dull sound of tyres on the drive, then nothing.

They stood for a while in silence, barely looking at each other. Davide Auseri swayed only twice in all that time, but elegantly: there was nothing vulgar about his drunkenness, especially as far as his face was concerned. What was the expression on that face? Duca tried to figure it out, and then realised: it was the face of a schoolboy at a major exam who can’t answer a question: a mixture of anguish and shyness, and a few wretched attempts to appear natural.

It was a gentle face, a pageboy’s face, and yet manly, as yet unravaged by the alcohol. Elegant, too, was the parting on one side of his dark blond hair, the stubble on his cheeks, the white shirt with the long sleeves rolled up on his big arms with their coating of down, the black cotton trousers, the opaque black shoes: the model of a respectable young Milanese, with an echo of British style, as if Milan was somehow, morally, part of the Commonwealth.

‘Let’s sit down,’ Duca said to Davide, who swayed one last time, then eased himself into an armchair. He said it to him sternly, because even though he had been in prison he still had a heart, in the form not so much of a cardiac muscle, but like one of those hearts you still see drawn on greetings cards. Sternness masks your own emotion, your own weakness. Even a doctor can be upset by a moral disease, and this young man was morally ill. ‘Who’s in the villa apart from us?’ he asked him, again sternly.

‘In the villa, let’s see,’ the exam question wasn’t difficult, not as difficult as the mere fact of speaking to a stranger must have been for the young man, ‘in this villa, let’s call it a house, well, there’s the maid, who’s the wife of the gardener, there’s a butler, and then there’s the cook, she’s making dinner right now, even daddy says you can’t really call her a cook, but these days you just have to make do …’ He was smiling as he spoke, playing beautifully the part of a brilliant young conversationalist.

‘Anyone else?’ Duca cut in, harshly.

The giant young man’s eyes clouded over with fear. ‘Nobody,’ he said immediately.

It was a difficult case. He mustn’t make a mistake in establishing a rapport: the young man was drunk, but quite lucid. ‘Try not to be afraid of me, or we won’t get anywhere.’

‘I’m not afraid,’ Davide said, swallowing with fear.

‘It’s only natural for you to be afraid, you’ve never seen me before and you know you’re going to have to do everything I say. It’s not the most pleasant of situations, but it’s what your father wanted. I’d like to start my work by speaking ill of your father, if you’ll allow me.’ The young man did not smile at all, a teacher’s witticisms never makes the frightened examinee smile. ‘Your father has crushed you, he’s always imposed his will on you, he’s stopped you becoming a man. I’m here to help you kick the drink habit, and I can do that easily, but it’s not your real illness. You don’t treat a son as if he was still a child who has to sit quietly at the table. Your father made that mistake and I can’t remedy that, and won’t even try. When you’ve got out of the habit of drinking, I’ll leave you, and it’ll be a relief for both of us. So you should try to be as little afraid as possible. Apart from anything else, it bothers me when people are afraid of me.’

‘I’m not afraid, doctor.’ He seemed more afraid than ever.

‘Drop that. And drop the “doctor.” I don’t like being too familiar too soon, but in this case it’s necessary. We’ll call each other by our first names.’ It would be a mistake trying to become his friend, to lure him in: the young man was intelligent, sensitive, he would never believe such a sudden friendship. Better the truth, even though he could still hear his defence lawyer whispering in his ear: never, never, never the truth, better death.

Then the elderly maid came in. She looked more like a peasant woman who had entered the villa by mistake and was disconcerted to see them there. She asked sourly if she should lay the table, and for how many. ‘It’s half past eight,’ she added, almost with derision.

Even this question brought anxiety into the pageboy’s sad eyes, and Duca had to resolve it. ‘Let’s eat out. Tell the staff they can have the evening off.’

‘We’re eating out,’ Davide said to the sour woman, who looked at them mockingly for a moment then disappeared from the room as randomly as she had entered it.

But before taking the young man out, Duca decided he needed to give him a medical examination, and so he asked Davide to take him upstairs to his room, and there told him to undress. Davide stripped down to his pants but Duca gestured to him to take them off. He was even more impressive naked than clothed, and Duca felt as if he was in Florence, looking at Michelangelo’s David, grown a little fat, but only a little.

‘I know it’s a bother, but turn around and walk.’

Davide obeyed like a child, worse, like a laboratory mouse following a pre-arranged path according to the impulses received, except that he couldn’t turn with much precision and swayed more than before.

‘That’s enough. Now lie down on the bed.’ Apart from these motor disorders due to his drunken state, his walk presented no abnormalities. When he was on the bed, Duca felt his liver, and for what such a rudimentary examination was worth, it could have been a teetotaller’s liver. He looked at his tongue: perfect; he examined his skin centimetre by centimetre: perfect, although the texture was undoubtedly masculine, it was as limpid and elastic as that of a beautiful woman. Even alcohol would take time to eat away at this physical monument.

There might be some failure elsewhere. ‘Stay there on the bed,’ he said, ‘just tell me where I can find a pair of scissors.’

‘In the bathroom, just go out in the corridor, it’s next door.’

He came back from the bathroom with the scissors and began pricking Davide’s feet, his calves, his legs, with one or both of the points of the scissors. The answers were always clear: young Davide was a drinker on whom alcohol had so far had absolutely no effect.

‘You can get dressed again, then we’ll go to dinner. I think there’s a place near Inverigo.’ He looked out of the window while Davide dressed, then said, ‘Your father may have told you I’m only just out of prison.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’m sure you’ll understand. We’ll start the treatment tomorrow. Tonight I’d like to relax. Quite apart from the surroundings, a prison diet is depressing. Tonight you’ll be the one to keep me company.’

Before they went out, Duca made Davide stop under the light and passed two fingers over his left cheek, where there was what looked like a coal smudge, only it wasn’t coal.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Yes.’ He seemed less afraid. ‘Not much, only at night. It’s best if I don’t sleep on that side.’

‘Hitting you with a poker was a bit extreme.’

For the first time Davide smiled. ‘I’d drunk a bit too much that night.’ He was excusing his father, he thought the punishment was just, he would have turned the other cheek for a second blow.

The strange young man’s car was a Giulietta, dark blue obviously, and obviously with a grey interior, obviously without a radio or any other accessory: that would have been vulgar. It wasn’t far from the hill where the villa stood to Inverigo, but in no time at all after Davide had sat down behind the wheel, Duca saw the villa rise up into the sky, then the road below almost hit him in the face, there were a series of jolts, blinding lights, presumably the lights of the other cars, and the Giulietta stopped: they had arrived.

‘Your father told me how fast you drive,’ he said, ‘but he didn’t tell me how well.’ The road was narrow and full of bends, and there was a lot of traffic at this time of year: you had to be a really good driver to do that journey so quickly.

He continued working on his difficult patient, but it was like trying to make friends with a blank, talking into a void, coaxing a desert. Davide never spoke of his own accord, he only answered questions, and where possible answered only ‘yes.’ First, he took him to the bar. ‘Go ahead and have a whisky, we’ll start the treatment tomorrow.’

The place, which, like the villa, was on the side of a hill, had pretentions to being a nightclub, though it was more like a dance hall. The dance floor was on a veranda overlooking the garden. It was almost empty, a few couples of modest weekday sinners could be seen in the dim lighting. For the moment, two young people were dancing to the music of the jukebox. According to a poster, a fabulous orchestra would be playing at ten o’clock, which rather suggested about fifty musicians, but there were only four instruments on the stand.

On a little terrace there were a few laid tables: that was the restaurant. In less than an hour they ate ham that tasted of the refrigerator, chicken in aspic which by way of contrast was very well cooked, and a mediocre capricciosa salad. The best thing was the mild, slightly damp air and the view, through the darkness, of all those dots of light, houses and cottages and street lamps, sloping down towards the Milanese plain.

Davide ate, but it was clear he was making an effort, he hadn’t drunk even half a glass of wine, and he wasn’t speaking, so before he finished the salad Duca stood up, went to the bar and found three kinds of whisky. He brought the three bottles back to the table. ‘Choose the kind you prefer, I don’t mind which one.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘Then we’ll keep the biggest bottle. I didn’t ask for ice or soda because I didn’t think you needed them.’

‘I always drink it straight.’

‘So do I.’ He poured some whisky into Davide’s wine glass. ‘From now on, any time you want a drink, help yourself. I’m absent-minded, and besides, I have a lot of things to talk to you about.’

And he resumed his questions, which was the only way to talk to his companion, the only way to get a few sentences out of him. Every now and again he would ask a question, and every now and again Davide would reply, and every now and again the music of the band would drift through from the dance floor, and there were actually stars over the little terrace.

Yes, his mother was very tall, that was the answer to one question. His mother was from Cremona, another answer. No, he didn’t like the sea, but his mother did, she liked it a lot, they had a house in Viareggio but since his mother’s death they had only been there once; no, he’d never had a steady girlfriend: this was in answer to the question, ‘Can you tell me about your first girlfriend?’

‘Steady is just a manner of speaking,’ Duca insisted, ‘a girl to go out with for a few days, a week.’

Answer: ‘No.’

It was a bit tiresome. Duca poured Davide a drink: stoically, once the first round was over, he hadn’t served himself again, and he almost over-filled the young man’s glass. ‘It isn’t good, but this way we spare ourselves the trouble of pouring twenty times. Then maybe you’ll contribute a bit to the conversation. I want to talk about women, and not just talk about them. The last time I touched a girl’s arm was forty-one months ago. I woke up next to her and realised I had my hand on her arm, she was still asleep, then she woke up and took her arm away. Since then forty-one months have passed. I don’t think I can carry on any longer with this involuntary abstinence.’ If he did, he felt he would end up in the same kind of bunker in which Davide had taken refuge.

‘You may not have much luck here,’ Davide said. Coming from him, it was quite a long sentence.

‘I don’t know, I’m going to see.’ He left him alone on the little terrace under the stars and walked through the bar to the dance floor. It had filled up a little, and there weren’t many men, although the few there were were making quite a racket. He examined the refined young ladies one by one: the ones from Milan all had companions and were all got up to look like Princess Soraya, the others had a homely air, with plastic necklaces, hairdos done by their apprentice hairdresser friends, and weird gold-coloured sandals. But he had long ago stopped believing in that homely air. He went back to the little terrace, where he was pleased to see that Davide had finished his glass of whisky, and led him to the dance floor. He wasn’t swaying much more than before; once you’ve had a certain amount of alcohol, you either regain your balance or fall asleep.

‘I can’t dance,’ Davide said. They sat down at a table a long way from the band, in one of the most private and least well-lit corners of the place.

‘Well, I dance very well.’ Having satisfied the eager waiter with an order of whisky, he stood up and went and asked one of the girls for a dance: one of the homeliest, she wasn’t even wearing make-up. At the end of the dance, the girl accepted an orange juice at their table. ‘I can’t stay very late. My father lets me stay out until eleven, I can go home at midnight, but if he wakes up I’ll be for it.’

‘What a pity,’ he said. ‘My friend has a villa here, and he has a hi-fi and some wonderful records.’

At the word ‘villa’ the girl turned pensive, he took her back onto the dance floor as soon as the band struck up again and spoke to her gently. She seemed like the kind of girl who could understand the aspirations of two men alone on a starry night like tonight, and by the end of the dance she had agreed to two things: she would come to the villa, and she would bring along a friend.

‘But you’ll have to take us home early, half-past at the most,’ she insisted, somewhat unwillingly. She had even extended her schedule by half an hour.

It didn’t take long for the friend to appear, the girl was away for three minutes and came back with another girl just like her, they seemed like two suits of the same cut, one of one colour and the other of another, because the first was blonde, the second was a brunette. Their resemblance wasn’t so much physical, or in the clothes they wore, it was a spiritual resemblance. They both approved his buying a number of small bottles, they were pleased with the Giulietta, and got ready to make conversation during the ride, but at a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour on that road it was beyond them and they didn’t catch their breaths until they pulled up outside the villa. ‘I don’t like going so fast,’ the brunette said: her name was apparently Mariolina, or was Mariolina the other one? ‘Please drive slower on the way back, or we’ll have to walk.’

Davide didn’t sway again for the rest of the party, he was just a little stiff, and didn’t speak, Duca was the one who did the talking, because when you devote yourself to socially redeeming work you have to see it through to the end, isn’t that true, Dr. Duca Lamberti-shake of the head-and you, Dr. Duca Lamberti-shake of the head-are the prince of socially redeeming work, nay, the duke, Duca meant duke, didn’t it, ah, what a sense of humour: yes, he could liberate mankind, embodied for the moment by Davide Auseri, from the scourge of alcoholism; he could liberate mankind from the fear of death, mankind in that case in the form of Signora Sofia Maldrigati whose eyes went purple with terror as soon as the consultant who told dirty jokes came anywhere near her; he could liberate anyone, from any ills, liberation was his profession, and he spoke for almost an hour to the girls and to Davide, he tried to get the hi-fi to work but it was broken and then one of the girls switched on the radio to Roma 2, and he continued speaking, like a presenter now, with dance music in the background.

As he poured the drinks, he told the girls that his friend’s name was Davide and that he was a mute. The girls behaved themselves and didn’t drink too much, the things they told the two men about themselves were somewhat unlikely, but he and Davide accepted these things as if they believed them, and so they all managed to make this little get-together seem not at all vulgar, until Duca took Mariolina aside for a few moments, assuming that it was Mariolina, and explained the situation.

A few minutes later, Mariolina managed to get Davide up out of his armchair and walked sinuously up the stairs with him towards the sleeping quarters on the first floor: even with her high heels and her hairdo she didn’t come up to his shoulder. Once the two young lovers had disappeared, Duca stretched out on the sofa; the other girl, softened up by the music and a couple of drinks, sat down on the floor next to him, and, with her long hair around her face, turned into a sophisticated Françoise Hardy, murmuring the lyrics of a sad song. Then she broke off and said, more concretely and clearly, although passionately, ‘Well, here we are, is there somewhere we can go, too?’ And she turned her gaze towards the upper floor, hoping there was also a bed for her.

He poured her another drink, and drank some more himself. He couldn’t tell the girl that prolonged abstinence generates a kind of mental block, an adjustment to the state of chastity. Basically, chastity was just another vice: once you start being chaste, you can’t get out of the habit and you become even more chaste. But after a question like that from a woman, especially in Italy, a rejection, however skilfully done, was impossible. An honest, conscientious tramp like this Françoise Hardy, who had honestly agreed to keep him company, would never understand: she’d be offended, she’d think he was a cripple, in every sense of the word, she might even think he was queer. He didn’t want to upset such a nice girl from the nice Brianza. ‘It’s better here, but turn off the radio.’ There had been a high-ranking Fascist official during the Spanish Civil War who had liked to make love to a record of Ravel’s Bolero: Duca didn’t want to get to that point.

About 1:30, with great refinement, Mariolina came downstairs, alone. Duca and Françoise Hardy had switched the radio on again and, with great refinement, were trying to seem like good friends. Before Mariolina could get all the way downstairs, he went to her and gently sat her down on the bottom step, sat down next to her and requested a friendly explanation. The questions he asked her were very indiscreet, but the girl was intelligent in her way, and he appealed to her sense of understanding.

At question number 1, which was one of the less indelicate, the girl laughed out loud. ‘I also thought he’d fall asleep afterwards, but he didn’t, quite the contrary.’

Question number 2 was more indelicate, and the girl simply answered, ‘No.’

She also answered no to questions 3, 4, and 5. Her friend brought a drink over for her and clearly wanted to stay there, listening, but after hearing questions 6 and 7, and Mariolina’s answers, she seemed offended by their indecency and went back to the sofa next to the radio.

Question number 8 was the last one and Mariolina replied, almost moved, ‘No, he didn’t do that, he switched on the little radio next to the bed, and that was the only light in the room.’ She liked describing the scene: it must have impressed her. ‘He lit a cigarette for me and apologised for not speaking very much, then he asked me if I wanted to spend the night here or if I preferred to be taken home. I told him that I had to go home, I went in the bathroom and when I came back he was already dressed, trousers, shirt, shoes, and he apologised again.’

‘What for?’

‘For not taking me back himself, he told me he felt uncomfortable.’

‘Uncomfortable about what?’

‘About seeing you again.’

The psychosexual investigation was over. Even from that point of view Michelangelo’s David was perfectly normal. Boringly normal. The eight technical and analytical questions he had asked Mariolina had received unequivocal answers. Davide Auseri was a vigorous young man, with an old-fashioned craving for the opposite sex, and without any abstract desires or variants that would have been anomalous for someone of his age. The alcohol, even the high volume he was consuming, had not yet had any effect: there was no failure or irregularity, Mariolina’s expert testimony had been specific on this point.

He got up from the bottom step and helped his sexual informant to her feet. ‘One quick drink, and home we go.’

A few of the banknotes Engineer Auseri had given him were discreetly transferred from his jacket pocket into the girls’ handbags, but then the whole evening had had a tone of refinement about it. Duca dropped the girls outside the restaurant under the stars where they had been picked up, and which was still open, and then drove slowly back to the villa in the Giulietta. At the gate, he was met by a distinguished-looking old gentleman wearing a raincoat over his long nightshirt, who informed him in perfect Italian without even the slightest trace of dialect that he was the butler, apologised for his attire, and told him that he had been asked by young Signor Auseri to show him to his room and provide him with anything he needed for the night.

The cinematic butler led him to the first floor and showed him his room, as well as the bathroom, which he already knew, and after a deferential bow, one hand over his heart to keep his raincoat closed, left him alone.

The room was next door to Davide’s. The layout of the house wasn’t hard to grasp: this was probably the room Engineer Auseri slept in when he came here. Not only was this logical, it was confirmed by the books on a shelf on the wall. There were two histories of the Second World War, a history of the Republic of Salò, a history of Italy from 1860 to 1960, Human Knowledge by Bertrand Russell, a sales brochure in English about non-flammable paint, and issues of the Touring Club’s travel magazine in a couple of binders. Constructive reading for a well-constructed mind like Auseri’s.

He hadn’t brought any luggage with him, not knowing when he had left Milan that he would be staying here. It didn’t matter. In the bathroom, he put a little toothpaste on his tongue and rinsed his mouth, quickly performed his ablutions, and went back to his room wearing nothing but his pants. He wasn’t feeling very happy.

Warm gusts of damp air came in through the window, along with a few mosquitoes, but above all a heavy silence, because there were no more cars passing on the road beneath the villa. His unhappiness increased when, despite his having washed himself, he found a long hair belonging to Françoise Hardy on his neck. In prison, too, these hours in the dead of night had been difficult ones to get through. He was ready for the onslaught of thoughts and memories, but when the wave arrived, it engulfed him, it was even worse than he had feared. But there was nothing he could do.

He had got everything wrong.