They left at the speed of a Special Forces operation. There were phone calls to L.A., with Ben’s assistant booking tickets to Pantelleria via Rome, bags were packed and more phone calls were made to arrange the details of their arrival at the other end. It turned out that Ben’s lover had rented a villa next to Giorgio Armani’s on the secluded, volcanic, inhospitable but extremely chic island that lay halfway between Sicily and North Africa. Probably a husband, boyfriend or a not-so-trustworthy friend had just left, so that Ben and his faithful buddy Leo could make the final leap across the Mediterranean. For a moment Lara contemplated saying to her brother “I get it now: basically you two sat in my house as in a parking lot optimizing your wait by working on your wardrobes” but she was tired of being thought of as hostile, negative or, in this case, completely paranoid.
Mina’s last package came an hour later, still warm from the ironing board. It was a beautiful linen jacket in a cream color. While Leo was busy loading the car, Ben unfolded it and held it in front of Lara with the tips of his fingers, as if he were showing her the Turin Shroud. Mina had come herself in case last-minute alterations were needed. She helped him slide his arms into the sleeves, frowning slightly as she adjusted the lapels, pulled the front, brushed the back with her palms, straightened the collar. Her light touch had a magic; she made the fabric do exactly what she wanted, till it flattened and fell just the way it was supposed to.
“It’s a beauty,” Ben declared in front of his audience. “Come Prada, no?”
Mina nodded, pretending to know what he meant. She adjusted the front of the jacket once more and stepped back to look at her finished capolavoro.
“Sembri il principe di Inghilterra.”
Ben laughed. He turned around in a pirouette and grabbed Mina, hugged her tightly and kissed her on both cheeks.
Mina turned scarlet. For a moment she was so disoriented—how long since a man had touched her, let alone kissed her with such impetus? Perhaps she was used to receiving from men only the damp, marble-cold kisses that people exchanged at funerals. Her schoolmistress mask dissolved and in its place came the face of a ravished awkward schoolgirl with a bad haircut.
That night, after Leo and Ben left, Lara stood alone in the kitchen by the sink eating a nonfat yogurt as her dinner, her gaze fixed on the opposite wall. She ate slowly, savoring every spoonful, just as her book on meditation described. The yogurt tasted especially pure—how could anything white be harmful?—then she opened the fridge and looked at the massive food supply she had hoarded for her guests over the course of the previous days. The vegetables were neatly grouped by color on the bottom shelf, leftovers in identical glass containers were stacked in the middle, jars were arranged by size on the top, whereas all the dairy products were confined in a box with a smiling cow on the lid.
The summer heat gradually intensified and reached its peak in mid-July—the scorching sun forced the whole village behind closed shutters for a good part of the day. Lara realized one had to be sturdy to endure that kind of temperature and that she probably didn’t have the required stamina. There were days when she felt she was hiding from a raging war. The thick walls of the house protected her, but the moment she opened the door the sun scalded her skin like a burn from the stove. It didn’t even feel like heat, it was more like nuclear radiation, an assault of mysterious force from outer space. The true nature of the place had emerged at last and its face was merciless. Her hydrangeas, roses and clematis, which had looked so happy until June, now lay incinerated in their pots. Her pretty courtyard had turned into a cemetery. She finally got it: this was cactus country, all thorns and spikes; it had no patience for anything soft or pastel.
She went swimming at seven each morning, when the small pebbled beach was empty and the water still retained a hint of coolness from the night. Already by eight there would be lines of people, streaming antlike from every direction, holding children, inflatable mattresses, folding chairs, umbrellas, plastic coolers, and by nine the place was swarming with people crammed in a small space, surrounded by their ugly, brightly colored belongings. The mingling of their thighs, hairy chests, stomachs, flabby arms smeared in lotion, plus the loud chorus of their voices, was unbearable. How was it possible that the oasis of peace and solitude she had experienced at the onset of summer had turned into this living hell? Was the dream of her new life in the village yet another mistake she’d made?
When the farmacia opened again after the afternoon siesta Lara pleaded with the chemist to let her have a Xanax even without a prescription.
“I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask you if this wasn’t an emergency,” she said quietly.
Toward the middle of August the glare began to dwindle, till it dimmed, anticipating the soft September light. Lara could open the shutters and let the breeze in at last.
Curtains, she thought. Some billowing linen curtains were what she needed. She should have thought about this before when the light had been harsher. She decided it was time to pay Mina a visit—she hadn’t seen her for weeks—to ask her where she could get the right material.
She waited for the bells’ toll to announce the end of the evening Mass, then opened the door and went outside, watching the procession of her street’s signore walk back together from church. The evening prayer was their one big outing of the day. It was not to be missed.
The same ladies who, only a couple of months earlier, had populated her vision merely as extras in the background now had names; they were Lina, Ada, Teresa and Assunta. Lara greeted them one by one. The women all had the same rectangular shape as Mina, they all wore similar housedresses in various shades of brown and gray, hair cut short, and held their small handbags close to their chests. They smiled back and waved; they probably didn’t approve of the fact that she never attended Mass, not even on Sunday—but Lara felt she had gained their trust in other ways, and that they were even beginning to like her. She waited for Mina to appear, but there was no sign of her within the slow procession, which was unusual, since she was a devoted churchgoer. So she walked over to her house. The door, as usual, was open.
There was fabric all over the place, folded cuts of light merino wool, thick tweeds, dark blue cashmere; shirts, jackets, trousers, coats in various stages of their making were hanging from the backs of the chairs, from the open door of the armoire, from nails on the walls. The proprietor of this vast winter collection was unmistakable: his initials were embroidered inside the collar, on the inner pockets, in a royal swirl. The B and the J entwined in a knot, in golden thread. Mina sat by the window, sewing, barefoot and disheveled, gray roots showing on the top of her head, a big oily stain on her shirt just above her left breast. The house smelled stuffy and unclean.
“My God, what have you been up to?” Lara asked.
Mina gestured toward the clothes hanging about the room.
“Ben has been sending me the fabrics from America. With DHL.”
She pronounced DHL with particular pride. International courier service was clearly a novelty for her (the truck with the logo, the guy in uniform, the printed shipping envelope, how exciting was that? Surely nobody in this tiny village had ever DHLed anything anywhere).
Lara touched the merino wool spread on the table next to a couple of DVDs. She noticed they were both Ben’s old movies.
“I’ve had no time to do anything else but work. No time to water the garden, look … everything died, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers. Tutto morto.” Mina shook her head, pretending to be worried, but Lara could see that she was gleaming underneath.
In the adjacent room, through the half-opened door, Lara glanced at a flat TV screen. She could swear it had never been there before.
“Ben has to go to Venice for the film festival and he wants this ready for the press conference,” Mina said, holding a light gray linen jacket. “I have been up two nights in a row, the courier comes to pick it up tomorrow.”
Things had changed indeed, in the brief space of one summer: even Mina knew about film festivals and press conferences now.
Lara lowered herself into a chair. “That’s very exciting, Mina. Listen, though, do you think you could make me some curtains? Very simple job, I’ll give you the measurements and all you have to do is the hem at the bottom and—”
“Are you kidding? Eh no, bella mia!” Mina stopped her in mid-sentence, raising her hand. “See how much work I have to do? Look, he sent me a coat he wants me to copy. I’ll show you, it’s very expensive, molto signorile, it’s made in America …”
She opened the armoire and pulled out a huge black coat on a wooden hanger. She turned to Lara and brushed its lapels with an automatic gesture.
“He wants me to make him two of these—two!” She laughed. “He says all his friends compliment him on the clothes I make and now he wants me to stitch his whole winter wardrobe. Look at this …”
Mina put the ends of the sleeves of one of the jackets she’d made under Lara’s nose, pointing to the minute work around the buttons.
“These days nobody hand stitches like this anymore, it’s all machine work. By Chinese people! Ha!” She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture.
“Right. I see. Well, I guess you have no time for the curtains, then.”
“How? Look at me: I haven’t had time to do my hair, cook a decent meal. I am so tired, sometimes I fall asleep right at the sewing machine!”
Her throaty laugh went up an octave.
Lara stood and made a move toward the door.
“Okay, well … I guess this is good for you, Mina. I mean, it’ll bring you lots of work.”
Mina stood up from her chair and grabbed Lara’s elbow tightly. She lowered her voice. “Ben is going to buy that house I told him about. I had my cousin take pictures and I sent him the photos—you know, for his architect to see. He calls me and says, ‘Mina, I don’t need to see it again, I trust you, how much do they need for down payment? Ten percent? No problem.’ ”
Lara didn’t say anything.
“I made him cut a very good deal. He’s getting a local price, no tourist price.”
“Mina, he’s a millionaire!” Lara cried.
“Yes, of course. He’s very elegant, very stylish,” Mina replied, not picking up on the irony.
Lara stood motionless for a moment. She felt betrayed in a way that was difficult to explain. It wasn’t just the curtains. It seemed unfair that, while she had been lying in the shade of her rooms, feeling weak and indolent, just trying to stay in the moment, everyone else’s alliances had been speeding forward. And in her very own backyard at that. She disentangled her elbow from Mina’s grip.
“Okay then, see you around, Mina.”
Mina was already back at the table, her glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose, threading a needle. She barely looked at Lara when she said goodbye. She didn’t seem interested in her anymore, now that she had found a suitable replacement for the barons of her luminous past.