The Other Language(44)
Mina turned scarlet. For a moment she was so disoriented—how long since a man had touched her, let alone kissed her with such impetus? Perhaps she was used to receiving from men only the damp, marble-cold kisses that people exchanged at funerals. Her schoolmistress mask dissolved and in its place came the face of a ravished awkward schoolgirl with a bad haircut.
That night, after Leo and Ben left, Lara stood alone in the kitchen by the sink eating a nonfat yogurt as her dinner, her gaze fixed on the opposite wall. She ate slowly, savoring every spoonful, just as her book on meditation described. The yogurt tasted especially pure—how could anything white be harmful?—then she opened the fridge and looked at the massive food supply she had hoarded for her guests over the course of the previous days. The vegetables were neatly grouped by color on the bottom shelf, leftovers in identical glass containers were stacked in the middle, jars were arranged by size on the top, whereas all the dairy products were confined in a box with a smiling cow on the lid.
The summer heat gradually intensified and reached its peak in mid-July—the scorching sun forced the whole village behind closed shutters for a good part of the day. Lara realized one had to be sturdy to endure that kind of temperature and that she probably didn’t have the required stamina. There were days when she felt she was hiding from a raging war. The thick walls of the house protected her, but the moment she opened the door the sun scalded her skin like a burn from the stove. It didn’t even feel like heat, it was more like nuclear radiation, an assault of mysterious force from outer space. The true nature of the place had emerged at last and its face was merciless. Her hydrangeas, roses and clematis, which had looked so happy until June, now lay incinerated in their pots. Her pretty courtyard had turned into a cemetery. She finally got it: this was cactus country, all thorns and spikes; it had no patience for anything soft or pastel.
She went swimming at seven each morning, when the small pebbled beach was empty and the water still retained a hint of coolness from the night. Already by eight there would be lines of people, streaming antlike from every direction, holding children, inflatable mattresses, folding chairs, umbrellas, plastic coolers, and by nine the place was swarming with people crammed in a small space, surrounded by their ugly, brightly colored belongings. The mingling of their thighs, hairy chests, stomachs, flabby arms smeared in lotion, plus the loud chorus of their voices, was unbearable. How was it possible that the oasis of peace and solitude she had experienced at the onset of summer had turned into this living hell? Was the dream of her new life in the village yet another mistake she’d made?
When the farmacia opened again after the afternoon siesta Lara pleaded with the chemist to let her have a Xanax even without a prescription.
“I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask you if this wasn’t an emergency,” she said quietly.
Toward the middle of August the glare began to dwindle, till it dimmed, anticipating the soft September light. Lara could open the shutters and let the breeze in at last.
Curtains, she thought. Some billowing linen curtains were what she needed. She should have thought about this before when the light had been harsher. She decided it was time to pay Mina a visit—she hadn’t seen her for weeks—to ask her where she could get the right material.
She waited for the bells’ toll to announce the end of the evening Mass, then opened the door and went outside, watching the procession of her street’s signore walk back together from church. The evening prayer was their one big outing of the day. It was not to be missed.
The same ladies who, only a couple of months earlier, had populated her vision merely as extras in the background now had names; they were Lina, Ada, Teresa and Assunta. Lara greeted them one by one. The women all had the same rectangular shape as Mina, they all wore similar housedresses in various shades of brown and gray, hair cut short, and held their small handbags close to their chests. They smiled back and waved; they probably didn’t approve of the fact that she never attended Mass, not even on Sunday—but Lara felt she had gained their trust in other ways, and that they were even beginning to like her. She waited for Mina to appear, but there was no sign of her within the slow procession, which was unusual, since she was a devoted churchgoer. So she walked over to her house. The door, as usual, was open.
There was fabric all over the place, folded cuts of light merino wool, thick tweeds, dark blue cashmere; shirts, jackets, trousers, coats in various stages of their making were hanging from the backs of the chairs, from the open door of the armoire, from nails on the walls. The proprietor of this vast winter collection was unmistakable: his initials were embroidered inside the collar, on the inner pockets, in a royal swirl. The B and the J entwined in a knot, in golden thread. Mina sat by the window, sewing, barefoot and disheveled, gray roots showing on the top of her head, a big oily stain on her shirt just above her left breast. The house smelled stuffy and unclean.
“My God, what have you been up to?” Lara asked.
Mina gestured toward the clothes hanging about the room.
“Ben has been sending me the fabrics from America. With DHL.”
She pronounced DHL with particular pride. International courier service was clearly a novelty for her (the truck with the logo, the guy in uniform, the printed shipping envelope, how exciting was that? Surely nobody in this tiny village had ever DHLed anything anywhere).
Lara touched the merino wool spread on the table next to a couple of DVDs. She noticed they were both Ben’s old movies.