Persecution (9781609458744) (15 page)

The reason Camilla spoke that language so confidently and with a beautiful accent was that, since the start of her schooldays, she had attended the French school at the Villa Borghese named for Chateaubriand. You shouldn't be surprised that they had sent her to that school: since it was a very fashionable institution, for those poor devils loaded with money but disastrously ignorant the idea that their daughter should go to the Chateaubriand, speak French almost like the French, and spend time with the children of ambassadors and similar things was moving to the point of tears. So that when she was six they asked her to speak to them in French just for the pleasure of hearing her speak French.

For some years after that, they had had, in the small villa in the Argentario where they spent a good part of the summer—a villa acquired by Camilla's father thanks to his colorful leather-goods shops in the center of Rome—a so-called au-pair. A Sabine, a Monique, a Charlotte, whose only job was to practice French with the girl. The trouble is that, increasingly over the years, the girl in question, taking advantage of that ephemeral presence, had excluded her parents from her life through a language that to their ears sounded like an enigmatic music. To the point where once, at the beach, when Camilla and her au pair Monique wouldn't stop chattering to each other, her father, at the height of irritation, had yelled “Shit, that's enough!”

From then on Camilla had got in the habit of speaking French to her father whenever she felt the need, and he, who wouldn't have hit her for anything in the world, of taking it meekly.

Evidently that moment with the Pontecorvos was a propitious one. The context was among the less appropriate, but (and this was the most disturbing fact) the sentences were, after all, apt for the circumstance, like: “
Oui, Papa, la fête a été magnifique!,
” “
On y va, Maman? Je suis fatiguée
.”

Leo, who knew nothing about that whole business of the French, wondered what in the world had got into her. Why was she talking to her parents in French? To get out of that impasse in a situational way? To draw attention to herself and annihilate forever the objects of her shame? Or, more simply, was it a way of embarrassing her parents so much that they would leave and take her with them as quickly as possible, putting an end to the nightmare? Leo didn't know, but if the last was the explanation and if such were its purposes, then Camilla's strategy had worked perfectly. Since her parents, with the swiftness of Cinderella when she abandons the prince, had said goodbye and hurried off, while that small eccentric continued to speak to them in a delightful ancien-régime French. The moment was so unpleasant that Leo couldn't even find the courage to ask Semi what the hell had got into his girlfriend. And yet Samuel's indifference to that bizarre scene might lead you to think that to him it was nothing special.

Since then, Leo hadn't thought of Camilla and her eccentricity. At least, not until he was informed by Rachel that their second-born had set as a condition on his presence in Switzerland Camilla's inclusion in the party. So Leo had begun to suspect that that girl, besides being a little strange, was also a precocious manipulator. But he had thought it with good-humored amusement. If there was something he was proud of it was his own tolerance.

Samuel, that sweetheart of a kid, that exemplary twelve-year-old, dictates conditions? Confronts his parents with an either-or? With blackmail that he has neither the authority nor the balls to carry out? Unbelievable! Delightful nonsense!

What could Leo do if he found all this partly laughable and partly touching? If he couldn't share all the worries that seemed to torture Rachel? If Rachel's attitude seemed to him an upsurge of maternal jealousy?

About the fact that it had been Camilla who inspired Samuel with the idea of taking her to Switzerland there was no doubt. Samuel certainly was not so enterprising as to come up with such a thought. But while for Rachel that influence represented a subject for anxious reflection, for Leo it was something amusing and adorable. To see Samuel at the mercy of that strange girl was a sight . . . In light of her behavior with her parents, it made sense that Camilla wanted to avoid immersion in the usual Christmas vacation: the company of relatives she hated, completely taken up with unwrapping monstrously expensive gifts and stuffing themselves with food. Yes, the idea of being able to avoid this nightmare was really too alluring for her. And that the Pontecorvos, apart from certain freedoms that Leo took (some presents for the boys in order not to make them feel too alone in this boundless world of impenitent Catholics), did not, for obvious reasons, celebrate Christmas, was for her marvelous. She couldn't let this opportunity get away. And so she had conceived her “operation Anzère.”

Bringing it to a successful conclusion.

 

In Switzerland, in the odd company that created a situation so unprecedented yet basically congenial to her nature, Camilla had felt the need to thank the person who had helped her make a dream come true.

That thank-you had taken the form of a little letter.

The first of those letters, thinks our prisoner, now that—having washed his face, taking care not to meet the eyes of his greenish double in the mirror—he has started pacing the room again, dreaming of a cup of coffee the way the man lost in the desert dreams of the refreshing jet of a fountain.

Certainly, even before the letter made its appearance, Leo had been able to observe how right his wife had been about everything. Camilla's presence had inevitably spoiled the tried-and-true Helvetic mechanism. Filippo had protested about having to sleep on the sofa bed with his brother. And Samuel, although he was unable to protest in turn (being responsible for the inconvenience), had since they arrived suffered from insomnia, out of a sense of guilt at having caused distress to his brother, who needed more space to perform the rite (beating his head on the pillow in time to music) by which, ever since he was in swaddling clothes, he had invoked sleep.

Then, there was the fact that Camilla not only didn't ski but had no intention of learning. Which meant that Rachel had to be with her all morning. Not to mention the more dangerous issue, that Camilla suffered from asthma (the information had been provided to the Pontecorvos after they had already given their controversial assent to Camilla's coming). The parents had appealed to them. Which drove Rachel to take special care in the cleaning in the morning. To keep always within sight and reach the little inhaler containing adrenalin, and, in the case of a more violent attack than usual, the syringes and the vial of hydrocortisone. Not counting that at the last minute Telma, the maid, had defaulted and hadn't come to Switzerland with her employers, as she usually did. And so Rachel found herself compelled to take responsibility for the domestic duties that the tiny Filipina's sweet presence usually relieved her of.

Leo for his part had had to sacrifice the most pleasurable, solitary part of the day in the mountains. From the start, he no longer found his seat on the throne and his endless shower thrilling. How could he enjoy himself knowing that, beyond the door—in the warm, damp living room, where the fire, with some difficulty, crackled amid sighs and sobs—there was that girl? Who he felt was waiting for him. If the idea of appearing in front of her in his bathrobe wasn't so terrible (Leo came from the type of open family where no state of undress is met with censure), entertaining her was tremendously difficult. Finding something reasonable to say to her. And in any case that possible conversation would ruin the rest of the program (walk with Rachel, newspapers, buying the
petits cadeaux
et cetera).

From the first day Rachel wanted to give Leo a taste of his afternoons for the next two weeks.

The second her husband returned from the ski slopes, in fact, Rachel went out, not before reminding him to watch Camilla's asthma. And Leo knew his wife well enough to know that the message directed at him as she left the house, slamming the door, went more or less like this: “See, you wanted to bring her with us? Now you deal with her.”

How could he blame her? It must not be easy to always be right and never be listened to.

So, apparently, it was his job to take charge of his son's girlfriend every afternoon. Of that freckled nuisance called Camilla. A real problem. A problem from every point of view, which Leo hadn't taken account of.

Although he had two sons more or less the same age as Camilla, although his unit was swarming with kids, although he was used to being around the twenty-year-olds who packed his classroom at the university, Leo wasn't sure how to deal with a teenager.

Basically all his ties with the world of childhood and adolescence were governed, so to speak, by a comfortable social order, in which he occupied a set role. The secret lay in the solidity of his position, which was as immutable as that of all the other parties.

Although his relationship with his sons was not marked by the taciturn formality adopted toward him by his father (the seraphic Professor Pontecorvo senior), nonetheless even a relationship that intimate had all the requirements necessary to be described as “old-school.” When Fili and Semi were very small, Leo loved to play the part of the father who doesn't want to have the children around. So Rachel had affectionately nicknamed him Herod: a nickname and a reputation that Our Man didn't dislike, in fact he liked to confirm it with remarks such as “With the type of work I do, for me vacation means not having screaming kids underfoot.”

And as for his little patients . . . well, with them Leo could bring out the typical paternalism of the caring doctor, just as for his students he preserved an ironic professorial conventionality.

But what self could he invent to entertain that crazily silent, mysteriously complicated girl? Leo was timid the way certain tall, handsome, absent-minded men are. And confronted by a twelve-year-old with whom he was called on to make light, casual conversation, he was in danger of playing the part of a timid adolescent, and transforming that nuisance of a girl into an experienced and condescending woman. Already he had been entangled in awkward monologues. Yes, the most annoying thing was that what awaited him in the living room, saturated with warm humors—a room that had given him so many solitary pleasures in preceding years—was an unpleasant experience of regressing to adolescence.

The confusion of roles. That was the biggest trap.

For the first two days he had managed by giving her a sort of third degree about Samuel, asking her what type of boy he was, how he behaved with others. Then he had tried to generalize that boring subject by finding out what kids their age did and what their future plans were (really, quite a question to address to a twelve-year-old!).

Camilla's near-silence led to further embarrassment. And then there were her big eyes, with their amber glints, that, although bewildered, were so fearlessly aimed at her adult interlocutor. Something that disturbed Leo in a way he could not explain.

 

By the third day it was clear that they had run out of subjects. He had shot all his arrows. As for Camilla, Leo began to doubt that she had any arrows to shoot. And that was why, that day, he managed to prolong his stay in the bathroom, hoping that the abundant afternoon snowfall would inspire an early return by his sons. But, for the third time in a row, she had managed to annoy him even before he set foot in the living room. With that damn Christmas song. Since they arrived she had not stopped listening to it. She had brought the forty-five with her and had taken possession of the record player that the landlord put at their disposal. And for three days she did nothing but play that song, and only that song. At very short intervals. Constantly. Stubbornly. Leo was an expert in that type of childish compulsion: Filippo, if he fell in love with a song, listened to it ad nauseam. And yet Camilla's obsession was unrivaled. It was that goddam song (now gone down in history) in which a beardless George Michael—who in those days favored a hair style worthy of a Rodeo Drive coiffeur—never stops lamenting some past Christmas or other.

That was the soundtrack that accompanied what used to be Leo's lovely moments in the bathroom. A tune for faggots! If there was something that Leo was intransigent about it was bad musical taste. All to say that she was doing her best to make him angry and herself a nuisance.

In that state of mind Leo, the third day, appeared in the living room already dressed and with his hair wet. And seeing that girl with her nineteenth-century Irish look near the record player and in front of the fire, and not knowing what to say, he had made a remark that sounded so ridiculously literary and antiquated that, after uttering it, he could have killed himself:

“The Goncourt brothers haven't been discouraged by the blizzard?”

Now, to call a “blizzard” that placid snowfall was an even more pathetic exaggeration than to call his sons the “Goncourt brothers.” And yet for the first time Camilla smiled at him. Almost happily.

“Why the Goncourt brothers?” she asked. A question. Finally a question. Too bad Leo had no idea how to respond.

Leo had nicknamed his sons the Goncourt brothers some time ago. When he had confessed to Rachel the irritation that he sometimes felt at the bond between Filippo and Samuel, so close that it bordered on symbiosis.

“You don't worry that Samuel can't get to sleep without his brother? Maybe it wasn't a good idea for them to sleep in the same room together all these years, in that bunk bed.”

“No, Semi is just a little afraid of the dark and the silence. Even though he denies it.”

“Maybe, but Filippo told me that every night Semi asks him not to fall asleep first, otherwise he can't get to sleep. On the other hand, Filippo has to shake his head like an autistic child, or like a Hasid at the Wailing Wall . . . Some pair! Don't you think? Maybe they were born to live separated.”

“I told you. Children—and Semi is still a child—hate darkness and silence.”