Portrait of a Girl (33 page)

“Come on now, Andrina, tell me where you got it!”

“It belongs to Nika. She hid it among her things. I just intended to borrow it, to look pretty when you introduced me to your mothe
r . . .
”

Robustelli, whose reputation and self-respect was based on his correctness, shook his head. “You didn’t borrow it, you stole it. Or did you ask Nika for permission?”

Andrina was angry at her fiancé. He was behaving like a teacher or a priest. That was hard to take considering that he himself was obviously in love with the
straniera
, just like Segantini. Go to hell with the bitch, she almost cried out. But then she thought better of it. “I didn’t ask her. She hides it from everybody. But Luca told me that she had it. She was wearing it when Gian and Luca found her. I was going to put it right back in her bureau.”

“You won’t be doing that now.” Signor Robustelli was pacing up and down and thinking.

“I’m going to keep the locket here.”

Achille Robustelli did not believe in divine Providence. His Christian faith was not strong enough for that. Not did he believe in coincidence. He believed in precision, prudence, clever foresight, sober logic, and above all, the importance of proper and decent behavior. Yet now, he began to feel doubt. For suddenly, unbelievable currents of feeling struggled inside him. He felt pursued by coincidence, and if he had been superstitious—given all these meaningful omens—he wouldn’t have known how to save himself.

Here he was now, holding Nika’s locket, her one treasure, and the secret of her life’s story that she herself couldn’t decipher. She needed someone to help her. And of all people, it was Andrina who had put the locket into his hands, forcing him to think about Nika—Nika, whom
she
couldn’t stand and considered her rival.

And indeed, as luck would have it, he had recognized the damask rose with the ruby. One of the soldiers from his old unit, a fellow officer, had been a member of an old Venetian family, and this was their coat of arms. They hadn’t been close friends, and Achille wasn’t sure whether he remembered the name right. If he wasn’t mistaken, it was Damaskinos—yes, a Greek name—Damaskinos.

Achille examined the piece of jewelry, but he didn’t open the locket. It belonged to Nika, and he had neither the right nor any desire to open it. He was morally upright, even if there was no one present.

But the negative side of holding the locket was that all the feelings he had learned to suppress now swept over him, and put him in turmoil. Now the thought of marrying Andrina made him sad and unhappy. He felt full of inner conflict, consumed by an ill-fated affection for Nika who loved another and would never reciprocate his feelings.

Achille Robustelli, who had been praised in the military for his objectivity, common sense, and strategic perspicacity, was hopelessly caught in the tangle of his own emotions.

“Oh, Baba,” Andrina said, stopping Segantini’s servant on the village street. “I haven’t seen you in ages! I’m just coming from the hotel, and you can imagine how demanding the hotel guests are.” Baba was in a hurry and wanted to keep going, but Andrina held on to her arm. “Baba, just one moment. There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you for a long time. Does Signora Bice know that Signor Segantini constantly goes to see the
straniera
?”

Everybody in the village knew who the
straniera
was.

“It’s really none of my business,” Andrina continued, “but everyone at the hotel knows about it. A guest, a very influential lady, told me the other day, that she had met the two in St. Moritz. Well, I don’t think that’s right and proper. But no doubt, there was some reason for the outing, and your signora didn’t mind.”

Baba’s face froze. She didn’t like Andrina. Everybody said that Andrina wanted to be somebody she wasn’t. Poor Benedetta; she really had back luck with her children—Gian, who wasn’t all there, Luca, dead, and this girl here, who was never satisfied.

“I’m sure the signora knows about it,” Baba answered, dismissively. “I have to go now. The hotel isn’t the only place where people have work to do.” She released her arm from Andrina’s grip and hurried off.

Baba hadn’t let on that Andrina’s words had left their mark. Wasn’t she his faithful confidante? Didn’t she carry his paints everywhere for him, wasn’t she the one who read aloud to him, and with whom he shared his ideas? Yes, and hadn’t she even been the model for many of his pictures and the one who devotedly cared for his family, even if her meager monthly salary was often paid late? Didn’t she sacrifice everything for him? What was he looking for from the
straniera
?

She would have preferred not to believe Andrina. But she knew better. She herself had wondered why Signor Segantini sometimes sent her directly home while he made a detour.

Nika stood in front of the enlarged photographs that Fabrizio Bonin had hung in the Spa Hotel Maloja, furtively glancing at them. The photographs fascinated her and she kept secretly going back whenever there were no guests around. They were not color photographs, and yet they captured the light and shadow in many incredible ways. The photos showed scenes from the everyday life of Venice, a city that Nika knew nothing about. The city seemed to be rising out of the water; canals crisscrossed it the way streets did in other cities. And it was the water with its reflections that created the great abundance of light and shadow, movement and stillness. Nika was enraptured. The photographs resembled paintings, but they seemed more alive, more present; it was almost as if at any moment the people in them would move and begin to speak, even step out of the picture.

“Do you like the photographs, Signorina?” a voice behind her asked.

Nika was startled and turned around. The young man with the brown eyes was standing directly behind her. Warily Nika looked everywhere, but the hallway was empty. “Yes, I like them very much!” she said softly, adding even more softly, “I’m not allowed to talk with the guests.”

Fabrizio Bonin shook his head. “What peculiar rules,” he said, whispering in turn, which made Nika laugh. “But you must be allowed to answer their questions. If not, it would make you a very impolite employee.”

The whispering lent their conversation a note of confidentiality, and they both had to laugh.

“I have to get back to work now,” Nika said, covering her mouth, “but I like the pictures very much. They are as beautiful as works of art.”

“Photography
is
an art,” Fabrizio said, “a new art with a great future and unimaginable possibilities. And unlike painting, you can even make a good living with it if you do it right. Look, do you see how wonderfully light and shadow are depicted here?”

He pointed to one of the photographs and was tempted to take her hand, to lead it to the one he meant. But he didn’t.

Nika nodded enthusiastically. “And you really think that photographers can make a living with their art?”

“I
know
they can. Venice is a photographer’s city. And how about the city?” asked Bonin, still whispering as if he enjoyed the secrecy and confidentiality of their whispered exchange. “Do you like the city too? It’s my home. I live there.”

“Yes, the city too,” Nika said, smiling. “But now I really have t
o . . .
”

“All right, all right, just one more moment,” he begged her. “I want to tell you how proud I am of my city. There is no other city that has so much light yet is so full of shadows, or captures the sky in the mirror of its wate
r . . .
”

Nika looked at him. “I could listen to you forever,” she whispered and hurried off.

“I would like to show you Venice,” Fabrizio said softly. But she didn’t hear him. He gestured as if to wave to her, and when she turned quickly, she saw the gesture and smiled at him.

Segantini intercepted Nika outside the hotel. He said, “I have to speak with you. Let’s go down by the lake.”

He went on ahead, not waiting for her answer. Rowboats floated quietly on the water, the first shadows were forming on the plateau.

“I don’t have much time,” Nika said. “I have to be in the dining room.”

She was still angry with Segantini because the painting had been so little about her. But it wasn’t just injured vanity that she felt. She didn’t understand the idea behind the picture. Segantini’s thoughts were foreign to her. “The picture shows a girl standing at the threshold to womanhood,” he had said, and then, he had added a monster. In her life, Nika had never had much opportunity for being vain, for self-absorbed gazing into mirrors, and so she didn’t understand his loathing of it.

“Come sit down with me on this bench. It’s important,” Segantini said. He didn’t seem to be feeling well, nervously crossing and uncrossing his legs, and fiddling with his vest.

She reluctantly sat down next to him. Why was he always talking to her as if she were a child or as if he had to order her to do something?

“It would be better if you left this place,” he said without any transition.

Nika’s ears began to ring. It was as if a storm were breaking out, as if a shrill, whistling wind were approaching with such force that she couldn’t breathe. Then the present came back into focus. Yes, there was Segantini, but everything was still revolving. It took moments for things to come to a standstill again.

“Aren’t you well?” Segantini asked, taking her arm.

“No, I don’t feel well,” Nika mumbled, getting up. Segantini pulled her back onto the bench.

“Wait, Nika. I want to tell you about what happened. Andrina Biancotti went to Baba and told her you were brazenly flirting with me. And that it had already gone so far that I came to see you whenever possible.”

Nika listened apathetically.

“Nika,” he shook her. “Baba didn’t come to tell me; she went to Bice with the story. And of course, she wasn’t happy about that. I love Bice, and I need her. You have to leave. Bice is demanding it, even though I’ve told her a thousand times that nothing ever happened between us. Nika?”

Nika didn’t move.

“It’s better if you leave. I do keep thinking of you,” he said haltingly. “That much is true, but it isn’t good. For none of us. Say something!”

She shook her head.

“I know your story,” he went on. “I wanted to do something for you. You have talent; you deserve another life than the one that’s become your lot. I know full well what that’s like.” He tried to look into her eyes. “My life was saved by a man in the reform school in Milan where they sent me after the police picked me up for vagranc
y . . .
I was saved by a man there who recognized my talent for drawing and painting. They wanted to train me as a shoemaker, except I was no good at putting soles on shoes. But he made it possible for me to draw. And that way, you see, art became my home. I wanted to show you that people like you can find a home in art. You know my story. My brother died the same year I was born; then my chronically ill mother died, and then my father left me in horrible Milan with a bitter stranger who didn’t know what to do with me.”

Segantini’s gaze became unfocused, distant. Shadows gradually fell over the Maloja basin. How well he knew all that; how many thousands of times had he watched it. “Back then, as a child, I ran away over and over again, looking for a place where I could feel good, searching for a homeland. Just like you. And then—of all places, in the reform school, in the Riformatorio Marchiondi—someone realized that I had talent. That in this talent I could find my home. I found the only remedy there is against loneliness; believe me, Nika. Love is good for a lot of things, but it doesn’t help against this ultimate, profound loneliness. But every human being has some gift. For people like us, it’s especially important to discover it.”