The Watercolourist

Contents

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

A Note from the Author

Her other self, silent and composed, watches from afar. Her eyes are pools of pity.
Why pity? What if this is actually what it is like? What if it is supposed to be like this?
She
doesn’t know any more.

She continues to listen to the agony stampeding inside her, nailing her to the wall, snatching from her very throat a sound that doesn’t belong to her. It isn’t her voice; it is
neither laughter nor lament. It is a horrible sound, the sound of a wild beast suffering, nothing more.
How long will it go on? Will it ever stop?

And later, when it is finally over, the question lingers: is this love?

Six years later

There is a queue in front of Santa Caterina. She arrives in a rush and out of breath, tripping over her own feet, now and then turning around to look behind her. She stops and
hides behind a pillar. She is not alone.

In front of her, a short, thickset fellow takes a quiet and unmoving bundle out from under his cloak and, without hesitating, places it inside the wooden pass-through in one smooth and careful
movement. As if he has done it before. He doesn’t linger but turns around and walks away, the hem of his cloak flapping at his back. Like smoke vanishing into the darkness.

Next is a woman who wears no bonnet. The dim light of the street lamp is bright enough to illuminate her face as she places her tiny, shaking, angry bundle in the sliding drawer. It is not a cry
that emerges; it is a wail, a bleating. The woman hesitates, leans forward towards the infant and is herself almost swallowed up by the drawer. Her shoulders shake. She straightens up, turns around
and walks off, bareheaded, poor, in tears. She is likely a seamstress, mending hems. She is very young, almost a girl. Not a maid, though. It must have been her first time but it probably
won’t be her last.

It is her turn now. She herself has nothing to entrust to the city’s custody, nothing from which to free herself with anger, relief or sorrow. She knocks on the wooden door and waits. The
door swings open and a large, ample woman comes out, wiping her hands on her apron. As it closes behind her, she leans against the doorway.

‘You got the money?’ she asks, without preamble.

The girl nods. She holds out a pouch, trying in vain to meet the woman’s gaze.

‘So, is she all right?’

‘She’s fine, fine.’

The woman snatches the pouch, her eyes downcast, and slips it into her open, damp blouse, her large breasts drooping like the ears of a dog. She spits on the ground like a man.

‘She’s healthy. She’s fine. The supervisor went to see her last month. It’s just that the woman died.’

‘Oh.’ The girl holds her breath. ‘Now what?’

‘Now nothing. She’s been moved to another family. But don’t worry, she’s fine.’

‘Is she big? Is she well behaved?’

She knows it is silly to ask such questions. This spitting, milk-oozing woman doesn’t know a thing. She won’t know if her little girl’s skin has been ravaged by smallpox or if
she has escaped the outbreaks entirely; if she has started drawing her first letters or if there is no one there to teach them to her. It is a miracle in itself that the woman is able to tell her
that her daughter is still alive. And she knows that this, too, could be a lie.

The fat woman grows impatient.

‘I have to go. I got seven new ones last night. Plus the ones from today. Three have died already. It’s better that way, though, because I’ve got almost no milk left. I would
have had to start feeding them cow’s milk, and they would have died anyway. Cow’s milk isn’t good for little ones.’

The girl pretends not to hear the woman.

‘I’ll come again when I can. How is your child?’ she adds politely.

‘Ha! I’ve sent mine off to the countryside. Just like yours.’ The fat woman laughs a horrible laugh, turns, opens the door and disappears back inside.

Alone now, the girl looks up at the moon without seeing it. Lowering her gaze, she sighs, adjusts her bonnet, and leaves. She doesn’t cry. She stopped crying long ago. But her grief and
doubt are an obsession and the woman’s few words have done nothing to soothe them.

Inside the carriage there is the overwhelming smell of sweet vinegar, perspiration and possibility. Bianca looks out of the dirty window and sees the sprawl of Bergamo: its
trees, walls and towers, red mixed with green, green mixed with red. Then a new scent, an earthy one. Probably from those low trees with slender trunks, thick foliage and supple thorns that claw at
the sides of the carriage as they pass by. Springtime. The best season for travelling, except when rain transforms the roads into swamps. Bianca is lucky, though: hers isn’t a very long
journey. One night at an inn isn’t enough to call it an adventure. She knows where she is going. There is no mystery involved.

All that brilliant green seems to force itself in through the window. The old woman travelling alongside her, enveloped in a cloud of camphor, starts muttering.

‘What is there to see? It’s just the countryside. Personally, I don’t like the countryside. I prefer the city.’

The fragrance of camphor, mixed with the lady’s bodily odours, which are intensified by the unseasonable heaviness of her black garments, grows stronger with every gesture and suffocates
the smells of nature, ruining them. Bianca opens the window in search of fresh air and breathes in only dust. She coughs.

The old woman ties the ribbon of her hat under her chin. She keeps mumbling to herself, but Bianca has learned not to pay her any attention. She wishes she could push her out of the carriage
door and leave her there, on the ground, enveloped by her own vile odour, in the middle of the fields that she so detests. That way Bianca could continue the trip alone and enjoy the silence that
is not quite silence: the rhythmic pounding of hooves, the creaking of the carriage, the calling voices of peasants outside, the fleeting sound of women singing, a concerto of birds. As she
travels, she becomes someone else, not the person she has always been. Not even the one
they
are expecting. She is in limbo. She always felt this way when she and her father journeyed
together, too. Only their bond defined who they were. But now everything is different.

She looks down and picks a leaf off the sleeve of her turtledove-coloured dress. Bianca’s path has been decided. A powerful magnet pulls the carriage towards the halfway mark of their
journey. Some call it destiny, others duty. And even though she knows that dresses for travelling ought to be dark in order to hide the dirt, she has chosen a light one so that every trace of
change will be evident. This is her last adventure. Once she arrives at her final destination, she will be who they want her to be, or who they
expect
her to be.

Maybe.

The master, Don Titta, isn’t there when she arrives at Brusuglio in the evening. He isn’t in the living room with the rest of them, in any case. His three daughters
sit on the sofa, all dressed in white, their dresses flouncing, their tiny black feet hanging down like musical notes. Donna Clara, the older lady of the house, is dressed in black from head to toe
and, with her marble eyes, looks like a large insect in her shiny satin. Her beauty hangs stubbornly from her cheekbones. The younger lady of the house, Donna Julie, Don Titta’s wife, is
dressed in white. She smiles kindly, though somewhat vaguely, on account of her guest. Lastly, there are two almost identical boys who come and go endlessly.

The living room is pale green and filled with the light of dusk. It seems cool to Bianca after her long, sticky journey. She feels dirty, dusty and out of place. And so she simply gives a slight
bow, which to some may appear rude, but the younger lady understands.

‘I will have Armida attend to you at once,’ she says with a hint of a French accent. ‘Go upstairs now. You must be exhausted. We will have time together tomorrow.’

Bianca climbs the stairs and goes down a long tiled and carpeted corridor. She is shown to her bedroom. It isn’t very spacious but it is charming, with a white and gold sleigh bed. There
is even an unexpected luxury: a bathroom entirely for herself. Armida, a giant of a woman with a solemn but gentle face, has already run her bath.

Bianca tests the water with her fingers. She hasn’t even taken off her bonnet and is already imagining herself submerged.

‘Is it too cold? I’ll bring you a pot of boiling water.’

The woman is halfway down the hall when Bianca stops her.

‘No, thank you. It will be fine.’

Armida comes back with the quick step of an experienced domestic servant.

‘Then let me help you.’

Bianca draws back, embarrassed.

‘I can manage on my own.’

Armida smiles, bows deeply, and then walks back towards the staircase.

Finally Bianca is alone. She frees herself of her travelling dress. She kicks off her undergarments, now grey with dust. She takes a million bobby pins out of her hair, steps into the bath and
crouches down, her knees to her chest, enjoying the sweet feeling of her breasts against her bones. Then she relaxes and settles back. Water seeps into her ears, cancelling out all noises except
for the deep, low sound hidden inside seashells. Bianca has only ever seen the sea at night: twice – once coming in and once going out. It was a yawning nothingness, ferocious, black, cloaked
in fog and frightening. But she still likes water more than anything.

She resurfaces and leans out, dripping wet, for a vase of peach-rose bath salts. She sniffs the pungent scent of artificial flowers and then hears the children playing outside. The boys are
running, kicking up gravel, and arguing over something precious. Their accent is almost foreign: soft and harsh at the same time. She doesn’t like it.