Whats your trouble, Tooley? I asked.
I forgot the damn pill and I havent had the curse for six weeks[128]. I nearly talked to your mother last night
My aunt, I corrected her. You ought to speak to her. I dont really know about these things.
But I want to talk to a man, Tooley said. I mean Im sort of shy of women. I dont get on terms with them fast the way I do with men. The trouble is men are so ignorant now. In the old days a girl never knew what to do, and now its the men who dont know, Julian said it was my fault he trusted me.
Julian is the boy-friend? I asked.
He was angry because I forgot the pill. He wanted to hitch-hike to Istanbul. He said it might do the trick.
I thought he wanted to go third-class.
That was before I told him. And before he met a man with a truck going to Vienna. Then he gave me an ultimatum. We were in this café in the Place Saint Michel and he said, Weve got to leave now or never, and I said, No, and he said, Find your own fucking way then.
Where is he now?
Somewhere between here and Istanbul.
How will you find him?
Theyll know at the Gulhane.
Whats that?
Its near the Blue Mosque. Everyone knows where everyone is at the Gulhane. She began to remove carefully the traces of tears. Then she looked at her huge watch with the four numbers and said, Its nearly lunchtime. Im as hungry as a dog. I hope Im not feeding two. Want some chocolate?
Ill wait until Milan, I said.
Have another cigarette?
No, thank you.
I will. It might do the trick.[129] She began to smile again. Its funny the ideas I get. 1 mean, I think almost anything might do the trick. I drank brandy and ginger ale in Paris because at school they said ginger did the trick. And I had sauna baths too. Its funny when all you really need is a curettage. Wordsworth said hed find me a doctor, but he said hed need a few days to find him, and then Id have to lay up a little, and it wouldnt be much good getting to the Gulhane and finding Julian gone. Gone where? I ask you. I met a boy in Paris who said they were turning us all out of Katmandu and Vientiane was the place now. Not for Americans, of course, because of the draft.
There were moments when she gave the impression that all the world was travelling.
Tooley said, I slept with a boy in Paris when Julian walked out because I thought, well, it might stir things up a bit. I mean the curse comes that way sometimes right on top of the orgasm, but I didnt get any orgasm. I guess I was worrying about Julian, because I dont often have difficulty that way.
I think you ought to go straight back home and tell your parents.
In the singular, she said. I dont count Mom, and I dont exactly know where Father is. He travels an awful lot. Secret missions. He might be in Vientiane for all I know they say its lousy with CIA.
Havent you anywhere you call home? I asked her.
Julian and me felt like home, but then he got angry about my forgetting the pill. Hes very quick-tempered. If I have to remind you all the time, he said, it takes away my spontaneity, dont you understand that? Hes got a theory women want to castrate their men, and one way is to take away their spontaneity.
And you felt at home with him?
We could discuss just everything, she said with a happy and reminiscent smile as the pot began to work again. Art and sex and James Joyce[130] and psychology.
And you felt at home with him?
We could discuss just everything, she said with a happy and reminiscent smile as the pot began to work again. Art and sex and James Joyce[130] and psychology.
You oughtnt to smoke that stuff, I protested.
Pot? Why? Theres no harm in pot. Acids another thing. Julian wanted me to try acid, but I said no. I mean, I dont want to warp my chromosomes.
There were moments when I didnt understand a word she said, and yet it seemed to me that I could listen to her for a long while without wearying. There was something gentle and sweet about her which reminded me of Miss Keene. It was an absurd comparison to make, of course, and perhaps this was what she meant by being turned on.
Chapter 13
When a train pulls into a great city I am reminded of the closing moments of an overture. All the rural and urban themes of our long journey were picked up again: a factory was followed by a meadow, a patch of autostrada by a country road, a gas-works by a modern church: the houses began to tread on each others heels, advertisements for Fiat cars swarmed closer together, the conductor who had brought breakfast passed, working intensely down the corridor to rouse some important passenger, the last fields were squeezed out and at last there were only houses, houses, houses, and MILANO flashed the signs, MILANO.
I said to Tooley, Weve arrived. Wed better get lunch.
Its our last chance to get a square meal
Your mother Tooley began.
Aunt Augusta shes here.
The conductor had preceded her down the corridor (I should have realized who the important passenger was) and now she stood in the doorway of our compartment wrinkling her nose. What have you two been up to? she asked.
Smoking and talking, I said.
You seem extraordinarily cheerful, Henry. Its not quite like you. She sniffed again. I can almost believe that poor Wordsworth is with us still.
Its fabulous, Tooley said, that you know Wordsworth, I mean.
Il y a un monsieur qui vous demande, madame[131], the conductor interrupted, and I saw beyond my aunt, between a trolley of newspapers and a trolley of refreshments, a very tall thin man with exquisite white hair gesticulating with an umbrella.
Oh, its Mario, my aunt said, without bothering to turn. I wrote to him that we should need lunch. He will have ordered it. Come, my dear, come, Henry, theres no time to be lost. She preceded us down the steps and dropped straight into the arms of the white-haired man, who with steely strength held her for a moment suspended. Madre mia, madre mia[132], he said breathlessly and dropped his umbrella as he put her carefully down onto the platform as though she might break the very idea connected with Aunt Augusta was ridiculous.
What on earth is he calling you that for? I whispered. Perhaps it was the effect of the Cannabis, but I had taken an extreme dislike to the man who was now kissing Tooleys hand.
I knew him since he was a baby, Aunt Augusta said. He is Mr. Viscontis son.
He was very good-looking in a histrionic way; he had the appearance of an ageing actor and I didnt like the way he was trying to dazzle Tooley with pieces of his repertoire. After his burst of theatrical emotion with my aunt he was conducting Tooley ahead of us down the platform to the restaurant, holding his umbrella by the ferrule and pointing the crook up like a crozier. With his white hair and his head bent towards Tooley he looked like a hypnotic bishop instructing a neophyte on purity.
What does he do, Aunt Augusta? Is he an actor?
He writes verse dramas.
Can he live on that?[133]
Mr. Visconti settled a little money on him before the war. Luckily, in Swiss francs. I suspect too that he gets money from women.
Rather disgusting at his age, I said.
He can make a woman laugh. Look how Tooley is laughing now. His father was the same. Its the best way, Henry, to win a woman. They are wiser than men. They think of the period that must elapse between one lovemaking and another. In my youth not many women smoked cigarettes. Look out for that trolley.
I could feel in my head the cunning of Cannabis. He must have been born when you knew Mr. Visconti Did you know his mother too?
Not very well.
She must have been a beautiful woman.
I am not a fair judge. I detested her and she detested me. Mario always thought of me as his real mother. Mr. Visconti called her the blond cow. She was German.
Mario Visconti had ordered a saltimbocca Romana for each of us and a bottle of Frascati wine. My aunt began to speak to him in Italian. You must forgive me, my aunt said, but Mario speaks no English, and it is many many years since we have seen each other.
Do you speak Italian? I asked Tooley.
Not a word.
You seemed to be having quite a conversation.
Oh, he was very expressive.
What was he expressing?
He sort of liked me. What does cuore mean?
I looked at Mario Visconti with resentment and saw that he had begun to weep. He was talking a great deal and using his hands in explanation and once he picked up his umbrella and held it above his head. In the short intervals between paragraphs he put a lot of saltimbocca Romana into his mouth, leaning his handsome face forward over the plate, so that the fork only had a short distance to travel and the tears only a little way to fall. It was lucky that the dish was heavily salted already. My aunt lent him a wispy lace handkerchief, which he applied to his eyes and afterwards adjusted becomingly in his breast pocket to show a frilly corner. Then he became dissatisfied with the wine, which seemed very good to me, and called to the waiter to change it. Only after he had tasted a new bottle did he resume his tears. I noticed the waiters were as indifferent to the scene as usherettes at a cinema are to a movie which has been running a week.
I dont like a man who cries, I said to Tooley.
Have you never cried?
No, I said and then added for the sake of accuracy, not in public. The waiter brought us all ice-creams in three colours. They looked dangerous to me and I left mine untasted, but Marios disappeared quickly and I noticed how his tears were quenched as though the ice had frozen the ducts. He gave my aunt a shy boyish smile which went strangely with his white hair[134], and she surreptitiously lent him her purse to pay with.
On the steps of the train I was afraid he would begin to cry again when he embraced her, but instead he gave her a small brown-paper parcel and walked silently away, holding up his crook to hide his emotion or perhaps his lack of it.
So thats that, my aunt said with cool thoughtfulness. Tooley had disappeared I suspected into the lavatory to smoke another cigarette and I decided to tell Aunt Augusta about her trouble.
But I found when I sat down beside her that she wanted to do the talking herself. Mario seems rather an old man, she said, or has he dyed his hair, I wonder? He cannot be more than forty-five. Or six. I am bad about dates.