Infrared

MONDAY

Rovine

France is in ruins — a landscape like Baghdad or Mogadishu — heaps of rubble, wandering shadows — scenes of unspeakable horror…Right afterwards, I’m supposed to give birth to a baby — apparently a boy. His mother(??) gave him to me and asked me to do this as a favour to her. The delivery itself is swift and easy — but the child comes out motionless and caked in fat, looking like a lump of duck conserve — not only that, but it’s in two pieces. Horrified at having given birth to a stillborn baby, I call Alioune. He joins me…‘No,’ he says, picking up the larger of the two pieces and gently unfolding it. ‘No, look. The baby’s alive, it’s magnificent!’ I take the tiny boy in my arms. He’s beautiful indeed. He smiles up at me, staring straight into my eyes…Then I have to run and find the mother, to tell her that her baby is born and that everything went fine — it was an incredibly easy delivery, I didn’t suffer at all — ah! — compared to the birth of my own children! Alioune and I are amazed at the baby’s innate capacity to smile. We’re so happy…Then, just as we’re preparing to leave, I remember that the country is war torn…

No problem interpreting France as a country at war — the images I saw last night more than suffice. But the baby. Who is that baby? Myself? ‘Apparently a boy.’ Half dead. The dream doesn’t say what happens to the other half, the part no one bothers to unfold or take in their arms, the part no one smiles at. It’s there, too, though. I mean, we can’t just toss it onto the garbage heap. Why does the mother take no interest in it?

Who is that mother? asks Subra.

Parting the bedroom curtains, Rena sees that Sunday’s limpid brilliance has given way to a chilly, steel-grey Monday — as if the Creator himself were reluctant to head back to work after His day of rest. A thick fog has invaded Chianti, narrowing the universe, effacing the distant hills and blurring even the contours of the garden. Only nearby objects are visible, and even they look dull and lustreless.

It’s only eight o’clock but Gaia has told them she needs to lock up the house by nine-thirty at the latest. How will they ever manage to extricate themselves in time?

Determined not to go stir-crazy waiting for Simon and Ingrid, Rena flips through the beautiful edition of The Divine Comedy in Gaia’s library, admiring Gustave Doré’s illustrations, and stumbles on a passage about bodies metamorphosing…

The two heads were by now to one comprest, When there before our eyes two forms begin To mix in one where neither could be traced. Two arms were made where the four bands had been; The belly and chest and with the legs the thighs Became such members as were never seen…

Hard to believe this passage was written seven centuries before movie cameras were invented, Rena says to herself. You’d think it was describing special effects for the next Harry Potter film.

This house is so lovely…

Still no sign of Simon and Ingrid. Maybe when they come down she’ll tell them to take the Megane and continue the trip without her; she’s decided to stay here. She wants to live with Gaia until the end of her days, absorbing her wisdom, making fruit jam, drying flowers, planting vegetables in the earth…

Her mobile rings. It’s Schroeder.

‘Patrice! How are you?’

‘I’m not calling to make small talk, Rena.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘I don’t know if you’ve been keeping abreast of…’

‘Yes, I finally caught some footage last night. It’s…’

‘What about this morning?’

A wave of fear washes through her.

‘Not yet. Is there…’

‘Rena, listen. There’s a civil war going on here. Aziz tells me he asked you to cut your holiday short and you said no. Don’t you think you’re going a bit far? I mean, you’re not Salgado, you know? You’re replaceable. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but I want to be sure you understand. Rena, you’ve got to come back today. That’s an ultimatum. If you decide not to, I won’t be able to renew your contract.’

‘Is Aziz with you?’

‘Did you hear me? On the Fringe won’t be able to publish your photos anymore.’

‘Could you put him on? I’ll talk to you again right afterwards.’

A silence. Her brain is shrouded in the same fog as the landscape.

‘Yeah.’

Aziz. His bad-day voice.

‘What’s going on, love? What have I done to deserve this overdose of silence?’

No, that’s not the right approach — she shouldn’t force him to discuss their love life in front of their boss. It will only make him feel trapped, cornered, tricked. But she can’t help it.

‘You’re thinking about replacing me, too, is that it?’

What a stupid thing to say. The worst possible tactic. She can practically see his shoulders shrugging to shake her off.

Schroeder has taken the phone back.

‘Well, Rena. What’s your decision?’

‘Ciao, Patrice.’

There. I’ve lost my job. Good start to the day. Let’s see what else can happen before the sun goes down.

Capriccio

Going upstairs to pack, she passes Ingrid coming down for breakfast. Simon isn’t hungry, she informs Rena. But they’re almost ready…

Rena brings down her suitcase, moves the car to the doorstep, and settles down to wait in the living room with Gaia.

The minutes inch by like slobbery, amorphous slugs. They swell up into obese quarter-hours, ugly and useless as gobs of saliva.

Gaia puts a sympathetic arm around her shoulders and tells her in a low voice that her father was depressive, too. So many failed Galileos! So many immature Zeuses! So many Commanders in bathrobes! Why did no one warn us about this?

Using hand gestures and her modicum of Italian, Rena conveys to her hostess that the little mice are fed up with tiptoeing around their big, depressed lion-daddies. Gaia bursts out laughing.

At long last, Ingrid comes down and tells her they’re all set. Rena goes up to help Simon with their suitcases…But first he wants to carry down the plates, glasses, cups and saucers Gaia brought them for their various snacks.

‘Leave it, Daddy, please. Don’t worry, Gaia will take care of it. It’s her job.’

Simon thinks it would be more polite, more generous, indeed, more feminist of them to take care of it themselves. The debate goes on for a good five minutes; downstairs, Gaia must be losing patience. Rena gives in and carries down the tray.

The car is waiting at the doorstep; the luggage is in the trunk; now what’s holding them up?

Oh, right. Life.

Simon has come to a halt in the middle of the living room. A step. A pause. A question — insoluble, as always. A sigh. Encroaching darkness. His hands go up to cover his face. Blackout. Endgame. They’ll go nowhere. They’ve been struck motionless, like the party guests in Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

Finally Gaia breaks the spell. Striding across the room, she kindly, smilingly—’Arrivederci’—but firmly—‘Ciao! Ciao!’—kicks them out of her house.

God bless her — if, that is, He’s still able to lift a finger.

They’re off. Naturally, though, their troubles are far from over.

‘Looks like we took a wrong turn,’ Rena says after a while, braking gently. ‘We’re headed for the highway, not the Chiantigiana.’

Simon studies the little map Gaia sketched for them. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But if we keep on going, I think we can catch up with it a bit further on.’

‘I don’t think so,’ says Rena, stopping at the side of the road to make a U-turn.

‘Fine!’ Simon says, slamming his palms down onto the open map of Tuscany on his lap. ‘No point in my reading the maps, then — just do as you please!’

Zeus does the Zeus thing, Subra says. What do you expect? He rants, raves, and thunders, reducing all to ash.

Listen, Zeus, I’m fed up to the teeth with your temper tantrums, do you hear me? You’d better watch out or I’ll warm your bum!

Rena forces herself to take a deep breath, behave like an adult, control her voice. ‘Okay, show me.’

Trembling with the same contained rage, the two of them study the map together. Rena is right. She turns around and drives back through the invisible hills at top speed.

A while later, on the Chiantigiana, she feels suddenly euphoric.

When you come right down to it, she says to herself, I’m a manic-depressive with ultra-short phases.

Miserabili

When they reach Siena at morning’s end, she parks in the Via Curta-tone near San Domenico’s — illegally, but only slightly so — and the three of them start wandering through the lovely streets of the old city, feeling perfectly miserable. Neither Ingrid nor Simon have said a word since the altercation at the side of the road. Rena banishes from her brain the images of herself as a young woman discovering Siena at Xavier’s side — tired old memories that are now stretching their limbs and rubbing their eyes, trying to wake up…Don’t bother, she tells them. Go back to sleep, I don’t need you. I prefer to create new memories!

A bit farther on, Simon tugs at her sleeve—’Rena, look.’

His voice is low, his tone ominous. It startles her.

Turning, she sees a newspaper stand and the headlines leap out at her, silently shouting the same thing in a dozen different languages: France, France, France, they say. Paris, Paris, Paris. Fire, fire, fire. She sees photographs. Chaotic crowds of teenage boys, ranks of anti-riot police. Flames. Helmets. Shields. Stones. Flames. Riots spreading. Three hundred cars burned. Her Canon dangles uselessly between her breasts.

‘I know,’ she says lamely to Simon.

He purchases some newspapers in English and starts flipping through them as they walk. ‘Hey,’ he mutters in a worried voice. ‘Isn’t that the place Aziz comes from?’

‘Yes, it is,’ she says. ‘It’s also where Victor Hugo wrote Les Misérables.’

‘Oh, Les Misérables!’ exclaims Ingrid. ‘We saw the musical comedy at the Place des Arts a few years ago. It was terrific, wasn’t it, Dad?’

‘Well, it’s been playing non-stop in that city for the past hundred and fifty years,’ Rena says. ‘Thousands of Jean Valjeans have been locked up for stealing a loaf of bread, or for less.’

She doesn’t tell them how many times Aziz has been held in custody overnight, or that his brother has spent the past eighteen months in the Villepinte penitentiary…Knowing that Ingrid thinks her native Rotterdam is in the process of becoming a second Kabul, she has no wish to get her started on the subject of the Muslim threat.

Instead, feigning gaiety, she chirps, ‘Why don’t we check out the cathedral?’

Duomo

Their disappointment is instantaneous.

The façade is under renovation, concealed beneath a tarpaulin on which its red, white and black striped marble has been painted in trompe-l’œil.

‘Hey!’ says Simon. ‘That almost looks like a copy!’

He’s not joking. Afflicted with near-sightedness, far-sightedness and perhaps a bit of astigmatism as well, he’s convinced he’s looking at the real thing, sun-flattened. Those who tourists do become…This time Ingrid goes about unfooling her husband’s eye.

They file slowly across the threshold, into the penumbra of the enormous cathedral. Seeing their twin fedoras, an employee gestures to Simon to take his off (in places of Catholic worship, as everyone knows, women’s heads should be covered and men’s uncovered). Without missing a beat — condensing humour and insolence, obedience and insult into a single act, eliciting Rena’s reluctant admiration and the employee’s acute annoyance — Simon removes his hat and plunks it on his wife’s head.

Innocenti

Unlike San Lorenzo in Florence, the space here is crowded, congested, fairly dripping with hybrid decoration. Fearing they’ll be overwhelmed, they decide to concentrate on the coloured marble pavements — twenty-five thousand square feet of Biblical scenes. Despite this restriction, Rena soon finds herself in the grip of familiar anxiety: how much should I try to understand? How can I be here, truly here and now — for it’s today, not tomorrow, that we’re visiting the cathedral of Siena? Determined to engrave the floor mosaics in her memory once and for all, she moves a little ahead of the others.

Here is The Slaughter of the Innocents…How many times, in paintings, drawings, photos, movies or documentaries, have we seen the emblematic image of a mother screaming as she struggles to wrest her living baby from a man bent on killing it, or wailing in despair as she holds up her dead baby?

What about you? whispers Subra. The dead half-baby in your dream…who will weep for you?

Just last April, fourteen people, including an old woman and two little girls, were massacred at a false roadblock near Larbaa. Over the past few years, more than one hundred and fifty thousand people have been murdered in Algeria, Aziz’s parents’ native land. And who are the assassins, if not our own sons? Yes, our boys — forever marching off to war, eager to suffer and spill rivers of blood, dying, killing, screaming, hating, marching, singing, putting on uniforms, saluting, seeking unison, destroying the bodies of other mothers’ sons with daggers, lances, swords, bombs, bullets, poisons and laser rays…

Feeling a sudden vibration on her left thigh, she starts as if a stranger had just pinched her.

No. Her mobile. A phone call.

Digging the phone (Aziz?) out of her tight jeans (Aziz?) with some difficulty (Aziz?), she glances at the screen. No, it’s Kerstin.

‘How are you doing?’ she whispers, heading for the cathedral door.

‘What about you — still kicking?’

‘Barely.’

‘I’ve got some bad news.’

‘Ah.’

‘Bad for me, anyway.’

‘Then it is for me, too.’

‘Well…even for me, it’s not that bad, but…’

‘Cut the suspense. Who’s dead?’

‘Alain-Marie.’

‘Oh.’

‘Heart attack — bang, gone. Yesterday. His sister called to tell me. Since then I’ve talked to a number of his friends and learned the details…He was with a young woman…’

‘Twenty-four?’

‘Something like that. And…don’t laugh, Rena…’

‘Oh, no, let me guess…An overdose of Viagra?’

‘Isn’t that awful? He was just my age, sixty-one. It’s so weird, you know? The veterans of May ‘68 are starting to die…Weirder still, Pierre is devastated. He says I prevented him from getting to know his real father. He wants to learn all he can about Alain-Marie; he’s even composing piano music for his funer—’

As if in imitation of Alain-Marie’s heart attack, Rena’s mobile emits a series of panicky beeps and suddenly the screen goes blank. Silence. Even though Siena’s cathedral was wired with electricity in the late nineteenth century, she doubts they’d let her use it to recharge her phone battery.

She goes back to join the others.

Pestilenza

They’re seated on a bench across from an enormous fresco. Ingrid is leaning forward to rub her ankles; Simon’s eyes are closed. Standing next to them are four tall, blond individuals dressed in white: clearly a happy, closely knit Scandinavian family. The mother is analysing the painting; the father is nodding his interest; their teenage son and daughter are asking intelligent questions.

In desperation, Rena opens the Guide bleu. What can she tell Simon and Ingrid about this cathedral that will bring it alive for them?

You’re not the only one, Father, to have had your plans thwarted and your dreams defeated by the ups and downs of fate…Look at Siena! The original project was to build the biggest church in the world right on this spot (the present Duomo was just the transept!). In 1348, however, construction ground to a halt as the city’s population was reduced by two-thirds. Mounds and mounds of dead bodies. Disgusting, purulent, stinking corpses. Black buboes, people moaning, women screaming in agony, babies tossed at random into common graves…The whole European continent writhing in the same pestilence…There…That make you feel better?

Naturally, she holds her tongue.

Kannon

The minute they leave the Duomo, Ingrid begs for a lunch break — yes, now, in the first café they come upon. Hoping to find a terrace in the sunlight, Rena convinces her to wait a bit — and suddenly they find themselves in Il Campo. Ah yes: she remembers this splendid, scallop-shell-shaped square, each of whose nine pavements represents one of the communes that made up the independent republic of Siena in the twelfth century, before it became the Ghibel-line enemy of Guelfan Florence. Something like that, yes, something along those lines. They find restaurant tables on the sunny side of the square, and, preoccupied not with Siena’s heroic past but with their own petty problems, just as the inhabitants of twelfth-century Siena were preoccupied with theirs, and so it goes, they order sandwiches, salads, acqua gassata.

A self-styled clown is circulating among the tables, heckling the customers, offering to imitate them. Finding him unpleasantly reminiscent of the other night’s dictator in Florence, Rena brushes him off unceremoniously: ‘Non voglio niente, niente!’ Ingrid stares at her, eyebrows raised, taken aback by her violence.

Relax, little one, Subra murmurs in her head. Look around you, take a deep breath, calm down. Life is lovely.

‘You look lovely today,’ says Simon out of the blue. Rena jumps at the coincidence between his actual utterance of the word and Subra’s imaginary one. ‘Can I take your photo?’

‘You haven’t been taking many pictures, Rena,’ Ingrid points out, as Rena hands the camera to her father.

‘Hard to compete with the postcards,’ she mutters sarcastically.

‘True.’

Rena finds it troubling to see the Canon in her father’s age-speckled hands. It’s as if he were holding one of her own limbs, a detached but living part of her body. After examining it with great care, he positions it, aims it, and presses the shutter. Once, twice…

‘Don’t you want to smile, Rena?’ asks Ingrid.

‘Not particularly. Do I have to?’

‘No,’ says Simon. ‘You’re fine just as you are. With your dark glasses, fedora hat and leather jacket, you look like a movie star incognito.’

‘Movie stars aren’t what they used to be,’ says Ingrid.

Rena shouts with laughter. Ingrid hesitates, then joins in.

You’re the exact opposite of Marilyn Monroe, teases Subra. She was happy only when looked at; and you, only when looking.

Their orders arrive, and Simon passes the camera back to her with a flourish. ‘Do you know who Canon cameras are named after?’ he asks.

‘Jimmy Canon, the sworn enemy of Bill Kodak and Bob Nikon? No, I have no idea.’

‘K-A-N-N-O-N,’ Simon spells out. ‘An exceeding strange Japanese bodhisattva.’

‘Why strange?’ queries Rena, stabbing a number of aqueous little shrimps with her fork and slipping them into her mouth.

‘Because the Japanese made a woman of her, whereas in India she was a man. And not just any man: Guanyin, the most popular bodhisattva of the Great Vehicle. I happened to see an article about it a while ago…’

‘Really?’ Rena says in surprise. So her father is still interested in Buddhism? ‘And what is Kannon’s specialty?’

‘Compassion. She’s the…hang on a sec, I jotted it down somewhere…’

Her surprise turning to stupefaction, Rena watches as her father riffles through his wallet and comes up with the appropriate scrap of paper in less than five minutes.

‘“She who listens to and receives the pain of whole world,”’ he reads aloud, ‘“and responds to it with one giant word of compassion that encompasses all in an ocean of infinite joy.”’

‘A bit like the Virgin of Divine Mercy?’ suggests Ingrid.

‘You don’t know how right you are,’ Simon nods. ‘Japanese Christians bow down before statues they call Maria Kannon. Isn’t that incredible? And Canon, the Japanese company, was named after that very bodhisattva. You remind me of her.’

‘A goddess of compassion,’ Rena grumbles. ‘What next?’ Tears fill her eyes, fortunately concealed by her dark glasses.

‘Seriously. We went to your Misteries show last April…’

‘You did?’ She feels dizzy.

‘Do you think our daughter could have a show in Montreal without our going to see it? It made a big impression on us.’

‘Yes, it was interesting,’ Ingrid concedes, ‘although I keep hoping you’ll eventually choose a more—’

‘I found it admirable,’ Simon says, interrupting his wife. ‘Not just because you’d obviously put years of work into it, but because…to open up their private lives to you like that, to allow you to get so close to them, those men had to feel you really accepted them…Kannon, see what I mean? A strong show indeed,’ he concludes.

‘I would have seduced Bin Laden,’ says Rena, to lighten the atmosphere.

‘I’ll bet you would!’ Simon laughs.

‘I would have seduced the Pope.’

‘Rena!’ Ingrid says.

‘Sorry. Er…would you believe…the Great Rabbi of Jerusalem?’

A silence ensues, in the course of which Rena directs her full attention to making sure the little beasties of her insalata di mare stay on her fork.

As they’re having coffee a while later, Simon glances through the newspapers he purchased earlier. ‘Wow. Looks as if sparks are flying in France!’

‘Of course sparks are flying. What do you expect? Two kids get their brains fried and the government contents itself with saying they deserve it. I should hope sparks would fly!’

The clown she rebuffed earlier comes up to her. ‘Grazie mille, signora, per il vostro spettacolo,’ he says in a loud voice. ‘Era veramente meraviglioso! Formidabile! Stupendo!’ So saying, he slips a fifty-centime piece into her palm.

‘You guys feel up to visiting the Museo Civico?’ she says, pocketing the coin.

‘Sure thing!’ Simon and Ingrid crow in unison.

What’s going on? wonders Rena. You’d think we loved each other or something.

Dolore

White, nude, gigantic, marble hand pressed to marble brow, looking like a Rodin Thinker who swapped meditation for despair, the man on the museum’s ground floor stares transfixed at the source of his pain. No: the word pain being masculine in Italian, it’s not what he is enduring, it’s what he is.

I’m not saying it’s you, Daddy, I’m not saying it’s you.

In fact the statue reminds her of Gérard, a former prison inmate whom she had decided not to include in Misteries, after an afternoon spent talking with him in his twentieth-arrondissement squat.

His shame at living in such poor surroundings, his stilted conversation, his complete lack of emotion when he took his childhood photos out of an old shoe box to show them to me…Those should all have been warning signs, but somehow I didn’t pick up on them.

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.

‘Look,’ he says, drawing an empty vial out of his pants pocket.

The pharmacist sets about translating the English label into Italian.

Ingrid has glimpsed a post office across the street. ‘Rena, would you mind buying us some stamps while we’re busy in here?’

Yes, I would mind, thinks Rena. I don’t feel like either buying stamps or translating labels. I want Aziz, I want Aziz, I want Aziz.

She exits the pharmacy, slamming the door behind her.

If I can’t remember the word for stamps, I refuse to ask for them. What’s the point in buying stamps for postcards that haven’t been written yet?

Of their own volition, her feet cross the street. Of its own volition, her brain rummages around in its darkest depths. And Rena finds herself standing at the counter like a normal human being, smiling and murmuring, ‘Francobolli, per favore!’

The medical parenthesis lasts and lasts, drawn out by her father’s indecision. Rena waits for Simon and Ingrid outside, determined not to explode with impatience. Kicking her heels at the corner of the Via Garibaldi, she absent-mindedly reads the plaque recounting the Italian patriot’s heroic deeds in Siena…then forgets them at once.

When the couple emerges some thirty-five minutes later, the afternoon turns into a nightmare. In the steep hilly streets near Porta d’Ovile, motor-scooters with no mufflers zoom past them one after another. How can a bunch of pimply teenagers be allowed to inflict such violence on their ears and souls? Forgotten, the bonds woven by Lady Concord! Night is falling and Simon is furious with her for having read the Garibaldi plaque without him…A thick cloud layer has swallowed up the sun…The air is heavy with a thousand human exhalations: poisonous gases, failed aspirations and petty quarrels… Rena’s Canon bangs relentlessly against her solar plexus. Why aren’t you working? it needles her. Why have you stopped looking? Don’t you want me to help you see things anymore? They get lost, wandering at length and at random through smelly Siena. And when at last they find their car: a parking ticket.

A plague upon the planet!

As they head towards their B & B on the outskirts of the city, the silence in the car becomes so charged that Rena turns on the radio for the first time and stumbles upon a world news bulletin in Italian. The riots in France are now breaking news. The announcer runs through the statistics at top speed, citing the number of macchine bruciate, carabinieri feriti and ragazzi arrestati in one city after another. Rena doesn’t get it all, but her heartbeat speeds up uncontrollably. Wiped out, Simon and Ingrid sit in the back seat saying nothing.

A bucolic residential suburb. This time they have no trouble finding the place, but (alas!) no Gaia awaits them there. The owner is a young, blonde, and appallingly efficient mother of three. Sure, that’ll be fine, thank you…Shower’s in the hallway…Perfect.

They go back out an hour later. Admire the purity of the full moon (almost full, almost pure — above the Ponte Vecchio — was a century ago). Bundle back into the car to search for a restaurant.

Here? No…There? No…Over there, maybe? U-turn…Hey, there’s one!..Quick, quick, turn left!

The young man on the pedestrian crossing jumps, hastens his step.

‘Don’t do that,’ Simon mutters to Rena. ‘I hate people who do that!’

The phrase hits a nerve. (Flashback to 1975: ‘You hate me!’ ‘No, I don’t. It’s not you I hate, it’s your lies. I hate to see you stealing things, skipping school, lying to me and your mother. Rena, I really think you should see a professional. I have a friend who could at least refer us to someone…’ Simon and I have been at loggerheads for three full decades…)

‘Sorry, Dad,’ she retorts. ‘But I’m driving an unfamiliar car in an unfamiliar city’—guided, moreover, she manages to refrain from saying, by a lousy Virgil…

Simon apologises in turn. He’s getting old, he tells her, and cars often force him to speed up when he’s crossing the street.

Father and daughter are both contrite, and mad as hell.

At last Rena parks and the couple gets out of the car. A few seconds later, Ingrid taps on her window: ‘You can’t park here, Rena, it’s a bus stop. If you get two parking tickets on the same day, they’re liable to press charges.’

Simon points to a spot across the street. Impossible (illegal) to make a U-turn. Rena tries to nose her way around the small square, but far too many cars are parked there and she gets stuck. Instantly, a dozen men rush over and surround the Megane, shouting advice at her in Italian. Flustered, she turns the steering wheel the wrong way as she backs up, grazing the fender of an Audi and eliciting even louder shouts from the men. They sense that she’s a foreigner and start haranguing her in English. This is the last straw: she rolls her window down and makes a most unladylike gesture in their direction.

Having extricated the car from that mess at last, she drives half a mile before finding a place to turn around. Her right leg is shaking so badly that the pressure on the accelerator is spasmodic and the car moves forward in fits and starts. Her chest slams up against the steering wheel, and an electronic beep berates her for not having attached her seatbelt. By the time she finally glides into the parking spot her father has been saving for her, she’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

‘You could have stayed right where you were,’ he tells her, smiling, as she locks the car. ‘Turns out the buses stop at eight.’

Nothing has happened, nothing. Yet she wants to scream, beat this old man over the head, clasp him to her, tell him off, shake him so hard that his teeth fall out, collapse on the ground at his feet.

Fazzoletto

They embark on a lengthy examination of the menu, including the conversion of euros into Canadian dollars and an etymological discussion, possibly the three hundredth of Rena’s life, of the misleading word pepperoni, a type of sausage in North America and a vegetable in Italy. Somehow they manage to place their order.

Suddenly Simon turns to her and says, ‘That’s a lovely scarf!’

Rena freezes. Blanches. Lowers her eyes and murmurs, ‘Thank you — I like it, too…’ The conversation picks up where it left off.

He gave it to you, murmurs Subra. That beautiful velvet scarf in shimmering red and mauve and blue…

Yes, a good ten years ago. He chose it especially for me, wrapped it and mailed it overseas — accompanied, like all his gifts over the years, by a carefully chosen birthday card. Then he waited for my response. In vain. Hurt, he brought it up a few months later: ‘Didn’t you like the scarf?’ ‘What do you mean?’ I protested. ‘I loved it! Didn’t you get my thank you note?’ ‘No…’ His expression made it clear he didn’t believe I’d sent one. Since then, every time I wear this scarf, it brings back not my father’s generosity but his mistrust. I decided to wear it tonight for our last meal in Siena, and now… he’s forgotten it ever existed!

Their pizzas arrive and the conversation grows animated. Perspiring, Rena takes off the scarf.

Back in their B & B — panic. No scarf — must have left it behind in the restaurant. No, I don’t believe it!

Rushes to the car, drives like a madwoman, bursts into the restaurant—’Did you by any chance see…?’

Finds it, heads back towards the car, and bursts into tears.

Not tears of relief. No, not exactly.

Sacco di Siena

She waves the remote control in the car’s direction…hmm. Instead of clicking, the car blinks at her.

She seizes up in silly fear.

Stop it, Subra tells her. Too many emotions. Obviously, in your haste, your forgot to lock the car doors two minutes ago.

That must be it, Rena nods. And she opens the door to the driver’s seat.

But. Wait. But. Wait. Stop it. Stop it. No. Think. No. Where’s my bag, what happened to my bag, what the fuck did I do with my backpack?

Rena, calm down, Subra says firmly. You wouldn’t have left it in an unlocked car. It’s in your room.

No, it isn’t. I brought it with me.

Then it’s in the restaurant.

Right. A fair exchange: the waiter gives me my scarf, and to show my gratitude I give him my backpack. No…what the fuck did I do with it?

Long pause, in the course of which her brain is forced to admit the truth.

Did I really do that?

Looks like it, little one, says Subra. After travelling to seventy-five different countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo without losing so much as a hairpin, you’ve actually managed to get your backpack ripped off in Siena.

It’s past midnight. Rena glances around the small square. Clusters of men stand chatting and smoking between parked cars and in front of the two or three cafés still open. Among them, probably, a few of the guys who yelled at her earlier, and in whose direction she made her eloquent gesture.

Now what? she thinks. I can hardly go over to them and say, ‘Uh, did you by any chance notice…?’

If they wanted to tell her, they’d have told her by now.

Okay, Subra says. It’s neither the plague nor the slaughter of the innocents. Think. What was in the bag?

Canon. Notebook. Wallet containing cash, credit card, ID, driver’s licence. Guide bleu. Comb. Condoms. Tampax. Kleenex. Camels.

Is that all?

Yes. No. Mobile.

Okay. Is that all?

Yes, I think so. Not my passport, not my plane ticket, not the keys to Rue des Envierges. All that’s in an inside pocket of my suitcase. Just: Canon, wallet, guide, notebook, mobile.

Not a bad haul.

Rena sits at the wheel, dazed and motionless.

Quick, Subra says: your Visa card. Call to cancel.

My phone’s gone. And the number’s in the notebook.

She goes back to the restaurant, which is about to close. Intercepts the look in the waiter’s eyes when he sees her again: What does that old biddy want now? (Until recently it had been unthinkable for a young man to look at her that way.)

No, the waiter tells her. No, there are no police stations in the neighbourhood. She’d have go to Siena.

You’re going drive back to Siena now? Subra asks. At midnight? Alone? And wander around looking for a police station? Without a driver’s licence?

No, I’m not, Rena says. I’m just going to…um…get some sleep, that’s it. Tomorrow’s another day. Maybe it will all turn out to be a bad dream.

As she drives back to the B & B at a snail’s pace, Subra runs through the pros and cons of the furto.

Aziz won’t be able to reach you anymore…But then, neither will your sons…But then, neither will Schroeder…Between now and tomorrow morning, the thief can reduce your meagre savings to naught…

But I have my ticket and my passport! Rena says. I’ll take off from Amerigo Vespucci Airport the day after tomorrow, that’s all that matters. The rest…well, the rest will sort itself out.

Notturno

Aziz no not Aziz Paris no not Paris her job no she doesn’t have a job anymore Toussaint oh my god Toussaint is going to be a father, he’s only twenty-six, that’s too young to be a father, well, everything is relative, Simon had his two children at twenty-one and twenty-five…Help, Kerstin! Deliver me from my thoughts! A bit of cerebral acupuncture, I beg of you! Two days left. Just two more days. Wait for me, Aziz, I’m coming home to you, I swear. As soon as I get back, we’ll do a reportage together on the situation in France’s impoverished suburbs and sell it, not to On the Fringe, but to the best magazines in the world. That might seem hard to believe, seen from this bedroom on the outskirts of Siena, but…but…

She stretches out on her bed and looks up at the high, slanting mauve ceilings.

I’m attending an opera in an outdoor theatre, a bit like the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. In the middle of the soprano’s most famous solo, I suddenly get up and start hitting the other members of the audience over the head, as hard as I can…

She wakes up. Gets out of bed. Goes over to the window. Stands there, naked.

Mist. A still, silent world. Not even a dog barking. Beneath her window, scarcely visible in the ghostly fog: a vegetable garden. Infrared photo? No. Camera gone.

She stands there. Frozen.

Some days (it was before you came along, Subra), the sun would vanish without warning.

‘I love you, Rowan.’ ‘Shut up, you nobody. You crumb. Just shut your face and leave me alone.’ ‘But you promised to help me with my multiplication tables!’ ‘Poor little idiot. She’s nine years old and she still doesn’t know her multiplication tables. How dumb can you get?’ ‘Show me, I can learn. Please, Rowan. Please show me!’ ‘Get the fuck out of my room. Can’t you see I’m busy?’

And the next day: ‘I apologise for bothering you yesterday. Do you forgive me, Rowan? Can I come in? Do you forgive me?’ ‘Are you really sorry?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What will you do to prove it?’ ‘Anything you say.’ ‘Okay, give me your hand. Close your eyes…Come on… follow me…’

The garage again. But this time it was the month of January and the temperature, both out of doors and inside the garage, was twenty below. Our breath visible as steam in the semi-darkness. ‘Take off your clothes.’ I peeled off my coat; then, very slowly, my sweater. ‘Come on, keep going.’ ‘It’s freezing in here, Rowan.’ ‘Is that how weak your love is? It comes to an abrupt halt after a few shivers? I did hear you correctly, didn’t I? You did say you apologised and were eager to prove how much you loved your master, didn’t you?’ ‘Yes, but…’ ‘Then you have to obey him.’ ‘Yes, but what if Mommy or Daddy…?’ ‘They’re both busy. They won’t come out here.’ ‘I’m scared, Rowan.’ ‘Jesus, what a scaredy-cat. You’ll never amount to anything.’ ‘Don’t say that!’ ‘Well, make it snappy.’ ‘Okay…’

Numb fingers fumbling with buttons and zips. At last I was naked, crouching, shivering violently, awed at the greyish-green hue of my own skin in the half-light, skinny arms circling skinny legs in an attempt to conjure up warmth. Fully dressed, Rowan stood there staring down at me. ‘Okay, now lie down.’ Shoulder blades on icy cement floor. ‘Get up…Lie down…Get up, I told you…What are you doing standing up? I told you to lie down.’ ‘Rowan, I’m freezing to death. Please…’ ‘Jesus H. Christ! Talk about the princess and the pea! Well, I guess we’ll just have to build a fire to keep my little princess warm, now, won’t we?’

He lights a cigarette and inhales. When he exhales, the smoke gets mixed with the white steam of his breath. I start to cry, but stop at once because the tears freeze on my cheeks. ‘Cry-baby,’ says Rowan. ‘Grow up. Aww, will you just grow up?’ I fight back the tears and my chest convulses in great, wrenching sobs. ‘Come over here, Rena. Come to your big brother.’ I move into his outstretched arms. He embraces me, clasps me to him, comforts and rocks me, gently blowing the warmth from his mouth and throat onto my neck — then, squeezing harder, imprisoning me, he applies the burning tip of his cigarette to my back. Once…twice…three times. Three screams. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he says, slapping a hand over my mouth. ‘Hey. Are you going to stop screaming?’ I nod wildly and clench my jaws as hard I can. He shoves me away from him. ‘Are you going to stop blubbering, you cry-baby?’ I nod again, then wipe my nose on my naked arm and watch the mucus freeze. ‘It’s all right, Rena. Everything’s all right. It’s all over now. It was just a test to see if you really loved me. You’ve passed the test and now you can put your clothes back on. Now we’re really in it together, aren’t we?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You’ll be rewarded for your obedience. Are you glad?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you proud?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you’ll never breathe a word to anyone about what just happened?’ ‘No, Rowan, of course not.’ ‘You swear?’ ‘I swear.’

But Lucille saw the triangle of angry red welts on my back that evening, when she carried an armful of ironed clothes into my room. She drew up short. ‘What’s that?’ A reverse echo-chamber, the question growing louder each time it was repeated instead of softer — not fading away, not attenuating and disappearing but rising, rising in crescendo. ‘What’s that? Rena, what’s that?’ ‘They look like burns, madame.’ ‘Rena, who did this to you? Simon! Come and look at this!’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘Rena, what happened to you?’ ‘Darling, you have to tell us. Who did this to you?’ ‘Who burned you?’ ‘Did Rowan do this?’ ‘Did Rowan burn you?’ ‘Did he?’ ‘Did he?’

Not a word passed my lips. When I bowed my head, it was neither an acquiescence nor an avowal, simply a way of cowering, shrinking away, trying to disappear…But Rowan was kicked out of the house the very next day.

Double Noctran.