The Invitation(73)

‘He tell me that he wants to take my photograph. He thinks I have a certain “look”, he says … the quint … the quinta-something.’

‘Quintessential?’

‘Yes … yes, the quintosensual Italian goddess. I do not tell him then – or ever – that I am Roma. I think that might spoil his idea of me. Anyway, he tell me that he work for a new business, exporting olive oil to the United States, and they need a “face”. He can’t promise anything, but he will take some photos and send them off, and we will see what happen.’

‘So you let him take the photos?’

Giulietta raises her eyebrows, as though she cannot believe the stupidity of the question. ‘Yes – of course. I was a little rat, running around stealing crumbs in the Piazza del Duomo. Anything would have been better than that.’

‘What were they like?’

‘Terrible. I do not want to talk about that part – it is too ugly. But I think of it now as like … you know how some monks wear shirts of hair, or starve themselves, in order to become holy? I think of it like that. That man, who probably like to think he “made me”. He want to marry me, you know. I laughed in his face. I left him far far below me, looking for his next prey.’

She flicks the ash from her cigarette, and Hal has to quickly slide a foot out of the way to avoid it falling on his shoe. She takes a long, pensive drag upon it and as she does, lost – apparently – in the memory of the inauspicious start to her career, Hal studies her face. Some of her features, on their own, taken out of context, veer towards ugliness. The nose is a little too long, the eyebrows thick and dark – almost mannish. And yet there is something magnificent in these peculiarities, in their audacity. If one had the talent, Hal thinks, it is the sort of face that could be drawn with a thick stub of charcoal in a few seconds, and the essential character of it would be immediately recognizable.

Giulietta looks up at him, catches him watching her, and blows a thin stream of smoke into his face. He coughs and looks away. The same sort of reckoning could be applied to her personality too, he thinks: she is at once repugnant and strangely alluring.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘You see now why I laugh at you when you call me spoiled?’

‘I suppose so.’

She draws on her cigarette, eyes narrowed. ‘You remember, when you asked me, how it feel, to be called “Italy’s finest export”?’

‘Yes.’

‘I will tell you truly. I feel pleased, and angry, all at the same time. But most of all, I feel triumphant. And you know why?’

‘Why?’

‘Because at one time, they told my family: “In this country, you don’t belong. You are less than us, you are low-down beings.” And now, when they say to me, “Oh, signora, you are perfect, you are all that is good about this country,” I want to celebrate, and punch the air, and sometimes … sometimes, I want to spit in their faces.’

So war is in her story too. And while the rest of us, thinks Hal, are doing a passable job of simply surviving, she has forged something from it, has made it a part of her success. This is not to be scorned.

After letting this sink in, she says, ‘You understand why I don’t like you telling me what to say, for your article? It is because I am not una burratina – a puppet – you know? But Mrs Truss, she is such a puppet.’

‘No,’ Hal says, quickly, almost instinctively. ‘She isn’t. You don’t know anything of it.’

There is something cruel in her smile now. ‘You try to protect her.’ She bites her lip. ‘A little like,’ she pauses, as though searching for the perfect word, ‘… a son.’

‘She is only a few years older—’ he says, and then stops himself.

‘Only a few years?’ she raises her eyebrows. ‘I would have thought more.’

For a few moments they sit in silence. And then Hal feels a warm pressure on the bare skin of his ankle. He glances down and sees her small, tanned foot caressing him. The toenails are painted a dark, glossy red. His first reaction is involuntary – a leap of uncomplicated desire. But almost as quickly it is quashed by the sense that he is committing some betrayal. He knows that it is absurd but the feeling remains, all the same. He extricates his leg.

‘You should come to my room,’ she says, in murmured Italian now, ‘after supper. I’d like to practise my English further with you.’

It is a terrible line, but perhaps such an approach to seduction is effective if one is a goddess of the silver screen.

‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Thank you, but no.’

She frowns – not so much with annoyance, more as though his response makes no sense to her.

What is wrong with him? One of the ‘most desirable women in the world today’ – according to Life magazine – is making herself available to him, and yet he wants nothing of it. He is a single man, with no tie to another soul.

Giulietta flings her cigarette into the shrubbery, where it smokes ominously for a few seconds before dying out. She stands, and, with a toss of her dark head that says she refuses to waste another second on such a hopeless case, she takes her leave of him. Hal pours the remainder of the bottle into his glass, and, like a man taking his medicine, knocks it back in a single gulp.