The Messenger (2 page)

There was the luxury of having the television on at all times. And food, wonderful foods, fantastic smells. And out the windows were other young people. Boys and girls together. By the end of the summer, she could even get along in Italian, and they moved once again.

It hurt to say goodbye to Penny, but one thing they are in her new family is brave. There were no tears. Neither of them would
allow it. Penny left, going to wherever people like her go, while Daria began her next academic adventure.

School in Florence that first year begins miserably. There are four girls in each room, and they all have decided to hate her. With good reason, she supposes, since the distance from Palermo to Florence is farther than the moon. She is intimidated by the older students and their brazen attitudes. She is a clown, none of her clothes are fashionable, and she comes to the crushing realization that she is truly ignorant and guileless, an embarrassment, and therefore everyone’s enemy.

She takes refuge in her books, listens, learns, and practices her accent. Survival means not only learning Italian and English but also diving into a series of survey courses in the liberal arts. Aware that she has gotten off to a late start, she has to work at her lessons and concentrate. Florence being what it used to be, there are regular field trips—to museums, galleries, concerts, ruins. It’s Michelangelo and the Medici, and the rise of Europe and the Holy Roman Empire, and everything is paid for in euros.

As much as possible the students shy away from the prefects and try to make a life for themselves in the streets and clubs. Now she can revel in her permission to be like the others.

She smokes a cigarette, she rides on the back of a motorcycle. She falls in love for the first time with Tété, who is from Dubai and talks with a drawl that makes her heart quicken, and when he dances likes to glide like Michael Jackson. Anytime they can find a dark corner, he wants to kiss, and they begin their love affair in a rush. She puts him off for weeks, but after a pause for sulking he always returns with cheerful persistence.

When they do it, it is in an apartment that one of the boys from the American school uses as a pad on the weekends. It’s raining and dank and the city is chilled and stinking. Tété has made some deal or promise with his Western friend, and they pick up the key and, hand in hand, rush over there and turn on the heater.

It is over … far too soon, she thinks. Tété with his head collapsed on her shoulder. Wet kisses of thanks. He jumps right off her, mindful of the condom and its dangerous contents. She watches him walk in and out of the bathroom, his long bones, still feeling the scratch of his beard on her breast. He makes jokes, does odd little jerky dances to keep her laughing. They become lovers all through the spring and summer and it is … an unexpected heaven.

She is one of them now, she decides.

No one teases her now. The other girls look at her with something like respect. She enjoys learning the Euro slang and hanging out. She likes the courses and most of her teachers. The school is a sort of finishing school, a rich person’s solution to the problem of child rearing. There are summer programs designed to prepare the students for entry into university. The teachers are of the highest quality, well paid. Boys and girls from all over the world board there, and everyone has money.

Freedom. The memory of it brings a tear. Her final year has won her the most freedom of all. It’s meant to be occupational, a series of apprenticeships. Other schools in the city send their students to do the same. In addition to being a debut into the ranks of the executive class, it’s party central.

Be like the others, Daria has been told, and she does so. As part of her protective Italian coloration, she masquerades as a Catholic but finds it like a gaudy zombie movie, all the ritual and the lore and the … fetish of it. The fragments of bone and hair, a withered finger, wine changing into blood, and crackers standing in for the body of the Messiah. How stupid can people be! And the statues that are everywhere; the bleeding, flaming hearts, Jesus with his eyes rolled up to heaven. Stab wounds between the ribs, nails through the palms. Garish ecstasy—the gaping mouths, the sunken cheeks, the nonstop blood, the white skin and supermodel-vacant stare of the Virgin. Of course, she feels like screaming—it is as logical as Kris Kringle, and nothing more than plaster idolatry that will crumble with the first artillery shell.

The Pope? A ridiculous old pervert, and an ex-Nazi at that. And everyone is supposed to ignore it? She would happily be a suicide
bomber if they would let her pick the Vatican. She would be disguised as a nun … and can see herself kneeling, kissing the old man’s ring. The mere touch of a button, hidden in her clothing … She would do it.

The nuns. They are the worst, she decides. Horrible winged creatures, with dumb faces, recruited from the ranks of retarded children and delivered to the Church from failing farms, ugly girls who will never get a husband. Well, a convent is the best place for them, probably. They should all die.

But by now she has become almost a complete Italian. She knows how to genuflect, she thinks Ferraris are the fastest cars in the world, and she craves her espresso in the morning.

As a student she’s not the best, nor the worst. She finds English easier than Italian, which is too bad, since she’s supposed to be an adopted child of Turin. In a perverse way, her accent makes her more popular. Exotic. Her skin a little darker, her jet-black hair a little more curly than the Italian girls’. From the south for sure, and you know what those girls are like. All sin.

She is called out of class early one day for one of Cousin Ali’s visits. She spends an hour on her hair, another on deciding what to wear. She has a crush on Ali now, and tries to hide it by being cool and aloof, and putting him down whenever she can. He takes her to dinner at a grown-up restaurant. The men look at her now. Italian men will whistle at anything, but she is not unattractive, she realizes.

“Enjoy it,” says Ali over
una tagliata di manzo
, his napkin tucked into the front of his fine suit. “Enjoy it, but remember who you are.”

“I will,” she says.

He wants to know how she’s getting along, so she talks about the school and her friends. The pranks, the absurdities, the unreasonable demands that are made on them by the administration. Ali listens and smiles and encourages her, but always reminds her that her family and a great many others are depending on her.

“Yes, Daria. Have a good time, but you must be hardworking and not fail.” He stops for a moment. Looks severely at her, cocks his head to one side as if he has suddenly discovered something worrisome. “Tell me truthfully, do you want to stop?” he asks.

When they make the movie, this is the part where Natalie will have a hesitation. But then she will recover and assure Ali that no, no … she’s still ready. Willing. Eager to give her life for God.

“It’s completely normal to enjoy all this,” Ali says. He looks around at the posh restaurant. “It’s made to be enjoyed. Rich food. Nice clothes. Everything is comfortable. Who wouldn’t like to live like this?” They laugh.

“It’s decadent. It’s wasteful. Every morsel is made off the sweat of some peasant’s slave labor. It’s destroying the earth, the atmosphere. It is powered by money. Money going up, up, up into the pockets of Jews and Americans. It looks like heaven, but really it’s hell.”

At this point Natalie will look around, not quite understanding.

“They have manufactured a complete illusion. All the unpleasantness, all the bad parts have been bleached out of it. Very good,” Ali says, appraising the restaurant. “Bravo. Very good indeed.”

Ali has explained that on paper she is an orphan, adopted by the Vermiglios, an Italian family
simpatica
. He even takes her to meet them in Turin, cautioning her beforehand to say nothing unless she is asked by Signor Vermiglio directly.

Their house is ancient and moss covered. Signor Vermiglio is old and walks with the aid of a silver cane, beautiful, but marred by the addition of a neon-blue plastic boot on its end. He invites Ali inside, but leaves her on the porch. It hasn’t been swept in some time and there are leaves rotting in the corners of the balcony. When they come out, the old man is laughing, but Ali is very serious. Tired of him already, she decides.

“Signor Vermiglio wants to get to know you a little better, Daria,” Ali tells her.

The old man stands there, then reaches out and grasps her shoulder with his bony hands. “Beautiful,” he says.

“Grazie … Papa,”
she replies, and they all smile. He asks questions
but doesn’t seem to be able to hear her answers. Ali has to repeat everything. By the end of it, they are almost laughing at the old man. Altogether the interview with her paper guardian lasts a mere fifteen minutes.

They drive back into the city, joking about him. They have been able to make the deal with the old Italian because he is dying, Ali explains. “He has nothing to lose …”

Ali drops her at the hotel and abandons her to room service and television, only returning at midnight to check if she’s sneaked out and gone clubbing. She pretends to wake up when he opens the door. A little moan as she turns over.

“Go to sleep, little one,” she hears him whisper at the door.

“Is that you?”

“Yes, go to sleep.”

“Did you have fun? Did you go out?”

“Go to sleep.”

“Was I good today?”

“You were very good, Daria.” It’s his voice she loves. He talks like a big cat purring. Like a leopard. “The Vermiglio family is very happy to have you with them.”

“Do you have a cigarette?” she asks, propping herself up on one elbow, the sheets held chastely across her breasts. Ali comes in and sits on the edge of the bed. Lights it for her. “You should go to sleep now,” he says.

She lets the silence build, the coal on the end of her cigarette glowing, dimming, glowing again.

“I’m not sleepy, Ali …” she says, and reaches up to touch his cheek.

Ali is different. A man. He knows how to do things and she gives herself completely to him. It is like being whisked into the heart of a thunderstorm. The power of her own body, the energy it contains. This is really her first time, she thinks, and when it is over she sinks into a dreamless sleep.

At breakfast, he looks steadily at her. Is there a smile? He touches her hand. In the elevator, he leans against her and kisses her hair. They make love again after breakfast, and lie there talking. She tells
him all about school, about Tété. He listens and when she asks, “Where were you born?” he only shakes his head.

“This is very dangerous …” he warns her. One hand follows the long curve of her hip. “This is very dangerous … it has to end.” His eyes are appropriately sad. “You understand, don’t you?”

She kisses him and they make love again, and when they are done, lying there listening to the scooters buzzing up and down the street, she turns and pushes her lips into his shoulder. Whispers what he needs to hear: “Yes … I understand.”

Back at school for the final term, she breaks all the rules. She can’t have Ali, and Tété has moved on. It hurts because he truly was a sweet boy and they laughed. She falls into a depression, scratches her brothers’ names in the stone wall of her bedroom. Has conversations, imaginary debates with her father, where she screams at him to fight back. Fight back once in your life.

In her clearer moments she flagellates herself with guilt and does penance by throwing herself into her role. So what if Tété has gone? There are plenty of other boys. They all think she is pretty, or … pretty enough. Enjoy it, then.

She drinks a little. More than a little. Too much. Gets sick. Learns how to cure a hangover. Learns how to dance dirty and learns how to tell the boys no. Everything is available—makeup, cigarettes, and hashish that arrives at odd times, always the result of some conspiracy by boys, and shared out with the girls around candlelit circles, accompanied by coughing fits and laughter.

It’s all permitted if you’re a tool of God. It’s not sin if you are doing it for a reason. In your hidden heart you are simply abasing yourself for the greater glory of the Creator. At night, in the privacy of her own bed—and always alone now, because she is not really a slut, really she is a good girl—in the darkness she asks herself: Do you have any doubts?

No
.

Are you sure? It’s normal to have doubts.

Well …

Well, what? Aren’t you normal? Aren’t you scared?

No
.

You’re sure?

No
.

Aha … Maybe you are normal after all. Well, we’ll see.…

D
aria pays the taxi and walks into Berlin’s sparkling new Brandenburg International Airport.

The ticket they’ve booked for her is with Air France, a flight that will get her to New York in the afternoon, but she has always been fast, always rushed ahead with things. It’s a little touch of panic, she thinks and takes a deep breath. She could change the ticket, get into JFK earlier. There is a Lufthansa flight. She could gain some hours. It would be more effective.

So she moves the ticket, even though it means a two-hour wait. It’s also one less airport through which she will have to pass. There’s a two-hundred-euro penalty, but since she’s swapping two first-class tickets, it gets waived.
Macht nichts
. Nobody has to know. There’s no one who’s meeting her on the other side, so everything’s cool, as they say in America.

She endures the lines, the security procedures, the metal detectors, pat-downs, body scans, and repeated requests to discard all her liquids. She has displayed her passport; she has checked her baggage, and having complied with all requests and requirements, gets to the gate with plenty of time to kill.

Her choices—her hair, clothes, and makeup—have not been entirely
her own and have been made quickly, but she is satisfied with the overall presentation.

“Dress like everyone else, Daria,” she has been instructed. “Wear something comfortable, and”—this last she thinks is almost funny—“remember to take good care of your health.”