The Watercolourist (36 page)

Dinner is torture. Innes seems angry and doesn’t say a word to her or to anyone. The absence of his conversational grace, which usually fills the pauses and dissipates the
conflicts, weighs over the entire table. Bianca cannot even look at Donna Julie. Don Titta is distracted. Tommaso hasn’t come down, apparently unwell. Donna Clara begins a soliloquy based on
the preaching of Don Dionisio, the only merit of which is that it fills the silence, interrupted on occasion by the clink of china and crystal. It is sad to eat in divided company.

They disband in a hurry after dinner. Before disappearing upstairs, Innes looks at her in pained anger. She ignores him and immediately forgets it. The women disappear to the
sitting room. Bianca starts to follow them but then returns to the library to recover her personal copy of Shakespeare that she has left on a side table. Don Titta is there, leafing through one of
his magazines. She takes the book and holds it tightly, as if it carries her salvation. This is where she wants to be. She needs to try again, to be clearer this time. She has feared and desired a
situation like this for so long. Instead of leaving, she looks over at him. He, provoked by the power of her eyes, puts down the newspaper and returns her stare. It isn’t the right time for
words to muddle the situation. How different this silence feels compared to the one in the dining room. How much purer and more profound; it is a kind of water that provokes thirst, then appeases
and renews her. Bianca stands there for a long time, hanging onto that gaze that tells her everything she needs to understand, perhaps even more.

But in a large house one is never alone. There are shutters that need closing and curtains to draw, and almost invisible beings appear to complete these duties. The order of each day depends on
them. They enter rooms, ignoring the glances that extend like taut strings between the other people, the people who have a place in the world. The beings tread over these strings or skirt around
them, but don’t trip on them since they don’t really see them. Their duties break the tension.

More than a minute has passed – a long, yet fleeting minute – and then it is over. Bianca walks away without saying a word. She is sure that she has said in silence everything that
she has wanted to verbalize. She is sure she has received the correct answer too, the only possible and acceptable one. It is the misunderstanding of silence.

She climbs the stairs in a hurry, clutching her book like a buoy. Once in her room she leans against the wall and lets herself drop down to the floor. The book slips out of her hands and falls
open. Bianca picks it up. In the dim candlelight that one of those invisible beings has lit, she searches for a message in the words on the page.
Tolle et lege.
If only, if only there is a
little note, a letter, something.

Nothing. The open page merely says things that she isn’t willing to understand:

No, wait, something
is
there. A piece of paper pokes out like a bookmark. Cautiously, Bianca picks it out with two fingers. It is what she least expected to find: a portrait of her
mother at the age of twenty. Beautiful and remote, this is how she needs to be remembered. Her father used to use these commemorative portraits on sepia-coloured paper as bookmarks; he took notes
on their backs, and caressed them secretly with the tips of his fingers. It isn’t surprising to find one inside this book.
Would you, Mother, whom I did not know well enough, would you
understand? If you were still here, perhaps I wouldn’t be searching for other people’s mothers. Would you judge me harshly? Are you judging me now, your paper eyes piercing me from
afar? Are you condemning my passion because it is insulting, illegitimate, and useless? Or perhaps you’re just holding me in your arms without saying a thing?

The face stares back at her, unperturbed. Bianca remembers her mother just like that, as a woman who didn’t smile. Or was that a mask? She closes the book on her mother’s face.
Enough. You’re a stranger. You have no right to scold me like that. You aren’t here.
And meanwhile the moment has been ruined. The night of discontent will be a long one.

The days pass and nothing happens. The steady stream of secret gifts ends. Don Titta leaves again and takes Innes with him. The house full of children and women feels like a
prison. Bianca forces herself to catch up on her work and make up for the time she has spent fantasizing. Work is good for her. It numbs her and rids her of thoughts; it leaves her feeling
exhausted and empty, while her folders fill up and the money rolls in.
Will I end up like this: rich and unhappy?
She fastens her purse strings without even counting her money. She is far
from being either rich or happy – what she feels is physical exhaustion.

‘It is springtime and we need something to invigorate us,’ Donna Clara announces, convinced that there is no bodily or spiritual discomfort that does not have a chemical solution.
She sends one of her most trusted maids to the herbalist for an infallible recipe. Bianca and Donna Julie, both under her care, are forced to surrender. In the end, it is just a concoction of
boiled herbs to be drunk once a day. The table is set with nutritious food and Donna Clara makes sure that the two young girls, as she calls them, eat everything on their plates, the same way that
Nanny oversees the children. There is something comforting in feeling looked after. Bianca gives in to the concoction, feeling just a tiny bit of residual guilt towards her companion, who is far
more feeble and sick than she. But she puts her guilt aside. In the end, she hasn’t acted on things, she has only
imagined
them, and dreams never harm anyone except those who invent,
cultivate and nurture them.

One thing still bothers her, though, and after it is resolved, she promises herself that she will behave. She will fold her wishes up like a handkerchief and put them away in her pocket, and
that will be the end of it all. She has to clear the air with Pia. She feels the need to tell her. It all began by trying to do what was best for her. She needs to talk to her, to explain herself.
She needs to find the right time and just do it, get it over with. She has to absolve herself sincerely. Bianca has not confronted Pia because it is the simplest thing to do; she does it now
because she knows she won’t be able to escape the trap of the young maid’s gentle lamb-like eyes. She has failed with everyone else but with Pia she cannot afford to.

Pia stares at her for a long time and seems not to understand. For once, she has taken a seat on the sofa and she fumbles with her hands on her lap and kicks her feet, as if she
cannot wait to get up and leave. She looks so dazed that Bianca feels like shaking her.
On the other hand
, she thinks,
what was I expecting from a person who all of a sudden has found
out who her real mother and father are?
It is as if she has been struck by lightning. Bianca smiles encouragingly and gives the girl a gentle pat on the shoulder, waiting.

‘And when you finally understand the situation, we will decide what to do,’ she hears herself say, not knowing how exactly she can help.

The moment couldn’t be more perfect. A cool evening breeze flutters in from the open window in a pale blue wash of light. Pia, bewildered, her lips pursed into an adorable smile, has the
inanimate grace of a Flemish portrait. Bianca observes her promising beauty like an indulgent older sister, with a vague air of consolation. When she finally looks up, Pia does not cry, her voice
does not tremble; she is submissive and serene.

‘You . . . you are confusing me,’ she starts to say, her hands fluttering from her lap into the air, in a childlike gesture.

How strange the words sound to Bianca, as though they have been stolen from one of the books Pia reads in secret, as if the character is speaking to someone she is fond of. But the maid
continues in a different tone.

‘You speak of things that I am owed. You tell me that you are thinking of my well-being. But I do not understand. I am happy like this. What do you expect, Miss Bianca? This is my destiny.
Don Dionisio says that it is the duty of a good Christian to accept what the heavens have laid out for them, and that I should thank heaven for what I have. I look around and see so many people who
have a lot less than I do: young girls, beaten, ignorant and alone. I not only have a bellyful of food, clothes on my back and a roof under which to sleep, but a lot of other things,
too.’

Pia brings her hands down to her lap again and secures one in the other, as if to keep them from flying away.

Bianca is speechless. Is the child ungrateful, after she has spent so much pity on her? The correct answer comes to her slowly. Pia hasn’t asked her to do this. No one has. She has done it
all on her own. And then come waves of anger, a river of fury, because the young girl, as stupid as she sounds at that moment, really and truly does deserve better.

‘Pia, Pia, Pia,’ mutters Bianca finally, unable to contain herself. ‘Are you telling me you don’t care to know?’

Pia doesn’t speak. She just presses her lips shut, raises her eyebrows, and then looks down in apology. But she doesn’t say sorry.

‘Really,’ Bianca insists, ‘are you satisfied with hand-me-down skirts and ribbons and with having to ask for permission to put a book in your pocket now and then? Are you
satisfied with so little in order to be happy?’

‘I don’t know any other kind of happiness apart from the happiness I feel now,’ replies Pia simply. She shrugs, opens her hands in a gesture of surrender, and repeats herself.
‘I am happy just the way I am.’ She crosses her arms in front of her and stares back at Bianca. It is as if her look is saying,
You’re the one who doesn’t have what you
want; you don’t know what you want. You’re the orphan. Don’t unleash your anxieties onto me.
‘May I be excused, Miss Bianca?’

Pia doesn’t wait for a reply. She gets up and leaves, without even turning around. Bianca lowers her head and bites her lip. Pia’s look has said so much, and it hurts Bianca to admit
that the girl has been right.