The Girl with the Crystal Eyes (2 page)

    'You
were obedient, too,' she says, before turning her back on him and leaving.

    She
takes a last look in the gilded mirror, a mirror that wouldn't be out of place
in a fairytale - a fairytale that's frightening but where she's the fairest of
them all. Beautiful just as she is, smelling of blood.

    What
did you get up to last night?' Viola asks, without looking at him.

    He
doesn't answer her, as he carries on cutting his rare steak.

    'What'd
you do last night?' She glances at him fleetingly. Her blue eyes appear black because
of her anger, because of the doubt that has taken root inside her.

    'You're
so insecure. I can't stand insecure people, you know?' He pushes back his hair
without putting down his fork. The fork smells of blood.

    'You're
what makes me insecure. I wasn't like this before I met you,' she lies.

    Viola
is beautiful and has a good figure, and she always smells nice - naturally. She
has good skin. 'I'll ask you one last time, and then I'm going.' And she
stresses every word, as if she's reciting some magic spell that will open a
secret door behind which is hidden priceless buried treasure. 'What did you do
last night'

    He
stops chewing his steak and raises his eyes from his plate to look at her. She
has big breasts, squeezed into that stretchy top that she got from the
'everything two Euros' stall in the market. He still fancies her, he decides,
and he'd happily fuck her right now if he could. He swallows his mouthful of
steak. 'I was at Luca's, watching the match. We had a few beers and then fell
asleep on the sofa, you know.' He puts a big chunk of meat in his mouth and
smiles. 'That's all, baby. That's all.'

    She
feels able to breathe again, but her words stick in her throat, fixed there by
fear.

    'I
don't like it when you do that,' is all she manages to say. And she covers her
face to hide two single tears, the tears she never manages to hold back when
they argue.

    They're
always the same tears; she realises that. The same tears that appear without
fail every time they have a fight. Right from the first time they'd argued, the
day of their first date outside the Quadrifoglio Pizzeria, when his hands
seemed to be everywhere at once and she had had to stop him.

    'Gently,'
she had murmured. In a fit of rage, he had exploded suddenly, like a
firecracker too full of powder, leaving her terrified. In the end, she had
burst into tears, and only then had he calmed down and had hugged her, making a
vague and clumsy show of kindness.

    Marco
was a truly average man. A man with clichés in his veins instead of blood.

    'Would
you like anything else?' asks the waiter. He has been keeping an eye on them,
waiting for them to calm down, not wanting to risk losing the usually generous
tip that Marco leaves when he's in good company and also in a good mood.

    'Yes,
a coffee. A coffee with Sambuca,' he replies. When Marco says certain words -
like coffee - there's still a trace of his southern accent.

    The
waiter looks to Viola. She's the most beautiful of the girls he's seen with The
Thug. They call him that in this restaurant because of what he looks like, but
also because of the way he speaks, a bit aggressive and never showing any
respect.

    'Nothing
for me, thanks,' she answers politely.

    Marco
leaves his usual tip, and winks at the waiter. That wink means he's going to
sleep with the girl he's now with.

    'I've
scored again, Giacomi,' he always says, slapping the waiter on the back as he
gets up from the table, eyeing up the arse of whichever girl he's with this
time, while she heads towards the door.

    Eva
gazes at the small white daisy, its petals edged with pink, which keeps her
company, sitting on the overcrowded desk, a constant reminder of an overwhelming
workload.

    She
doesn't know it yet but, while she sits there, every day a little piece of her
dream deserts her, a dream she's had since she was only small. She tells
herself that tomorrow will be different, that it won't always be like this,
that soon they'll take her ideas seriously and she'll have her big chance. To
help herself believe it, every now and then she lets her mind drift away as she
contemplates the fresh flowers placed on duty on her desk, adding colour to
that grey corner of the office, and she loses herself in daydreams as
intangible as the smell of snow.

    When
she was a kid she adored adverts - she loved them almost more than cartoons.
She liked the characters in adverts: the chicken Calimero because he was shy
and clumsy, Coccolino the teddy bear because he was gentle and could talk, and
she even thought the freckly kid who ate milk chocolate was really nice. On the
other hand, bad adverts got on her nerves. What point was there in talking
about quality or savings while walking round a supermarket in a bathrobe, or
stuffing yourself from a plate piled high with snacks before you went to work?

    So
she'd always known what job she wanted to do when she grew up. After a quick
degree in communications, here she is bent over a desk at Art &Work, an
advertising agency in Bologna. Always arriving at least ten minutes early every
morning, with a ready smile and a great deal of imagination. Gradually, as time
went on, she saw that she always ended up doing the same lowly, unskilled job
and, instead of getting closer, her dreams drifted further and further away. As
in an advert, she saw her dreams fly higher, while she, tiny as an ant, jumped
up and stretched out her arms but never managed to grab hold of them.

    Eva
does the cut-outs of photographs. Eva researches products. Eva photocopies at
the speed of light. Eva is a wizard with the scanner and saves mountains of
images on autopilot.

    'Roberto,
excuse me, can I say something?' she had once said to the creative director,
overcoming her shyness. The creative director was someone who turned up every
morning preceded by a fake smile, his fedora worn at an angle, and sporting one
of his opart ties that made your eyes hurt.

    'Of
course you can.'.

    'Sorry,
but I couldn't help noticing the sketch you've done for that prunes advert,
and…' She paused for a moment.

    'And?'

    Pluck
up the courage and tell him,
she thought to herself.

    'It's
brown.'

    'It's
brown?'

    'Yes,
it's brown.'

    'And
what's the problem?'

    'Brown,
prunes, laxatives.'

    'Eva…'
A pause for him to gather his words and fire them at her, like an action hero
firing bullets from a machine-gun. 'Eva, first, it isn't brown; it's a khaki
colour. Second, I've worked in advertising for years and I've been behind
successful campaigns, and I think I can manage without your advice, don't you?'
He stopped, his two raised fingers open in a giant 'v' that seemed ready to
swallow her - or rather a huge victory sign about to crush her.

    Roberto
is fucking Mariangela.

    Overtime
means fucking Mariangela in every possible position.

    Mariangela
is married to a much older man, very rich, who presented her with the
advertising agency to give her something to do outside the house - her lovers
being an added extra with the package.

    After
having won and married her, everything changed for them. Sex, for example.
'Before you have a woman, you imagine how she makes love, how she moves when
she's under you, what noises she makes when she comes. You're generous as a lover,'
he liked to say - often - to his few friends, 'but then everything changes. Two
fucks and you're like brother and sister.' For his sister, he had opened a shoe
shop - he really was generous to his relatives, Mr Dicarmine.

    The
day the publicity campaign for the laxative prunes was to be presented to the
client, Eva joined in the hearty congratulations paid to the great creative
talent who had produced an advert of such good taste and originality. The
sun-dried prunes, against a background of beautiful bright yellow, made you
think of the Californian sun and conveyed the idea of wholesomeness, of a
product good to eat.

    'Eva,
you'd like my job, wouldn't you? Tell me, what colour background would you have
used to advertise these prunes?' Roberto had asked, just to humiliate her,
certain that she wouldn't dare say a word. 'Perhaps a nice brown?' he had
added, without giving her time to speak and provoking, unsurprisingly, a burst
of laughter from everyone else.

    Eva
had clenched her fists and had then gone back to her scanning, and had lost
herself in the potted violet sitting on her desk.

    A
violet far too perfumed to be condemned to die on that grey desk. Grey like her
shattered dreams.

    
I
feel empty.

    
Empty
like a night without him.

    
He
has gone out again this evening. He splashed on some aftershave and smoothed
gel into his hair, put on his light-coloured jeans and a tight white T-shirt. I
hadn't even seen that T-shirt before. It must be new. He must have bought it
without me, and he didn't even show it to me.

    
And
me, I'm stuck here alone on the sofa, in my pyjamas.

    
I'm
just a pair of pyjamas with a soul.

    
I'm
feeling so, so tired. And I was twenty only a week ago.

    She
closes her eyes to lose herself in her memories, those memories of when she was
small. Her father. The week of her birthday. Seven days full of music and
surprises. Yes, there was always music in the background.

    It
was the rule.

    'Birthdays
are the personal celebrations we all have.

    Which
means they're the most important. Do you follow me, Viola?'

    'Yes.'

    'Listen
to me carefully. Everyone celebrates Christmas, and at Easter every child gets
their chocolate egg, the ones with a surprise inside…'

    'Yes.'
She was then hardly more than a metre tall.

    'But
a birthday, that's just yours,
your
day, the day when you're a princess
and we all have to pay lots of attention to you.' And he would bow to her.

    She
used to laugh and gaze up at him.

    'One
day isn't long enough to celebrate such an important event; we need at least
seven days…' That was the rule. Seven days, not a single one less.

    Her
father used to listen to the records of Franco Battiato.

    Perhaps
it's because of this indulgence that she doesn't have a permanent centre of
gravity, and she's always changing her opinion about things and about people.
How happy she was when her father was there, the man in her life.

    She
cries.

    She
often cries, perhaps every day, at least for a minute.

    She's
never understood why she cries so much.

    Too
much.

    Today
she has cried twice. The first time when she woke up, after having made love
with him, and she found a love bite on Marco's neck - it turned out to be a
bruise.

    'A
bruise,' she says out loud.

    And
the second time - now - while she listens to Battiato on her own, seated on the
sofa in her pyjamas.

    
I'm
alone and I turned twenty less than a week ago.

    
Twenty
years to realise that perhaps Mr Right, the man every girl is waiting for, was
there for me as soon as I was born, but with a sell-by date.

    It
lasted ten years. That's what was written on the box.

    She
cries.

    Battiato's
Bandiera Bianca -
'White Flag' - is playing in the background.

    She
falls asleep while the white flag flutters on the bridge.