Giorgio Scerbanenco - A Private Venus

‘What happened?’ she asked, conspiratorially, but politely.

‘It keeps flashing,’ the photographer said. In his hands he had one of the black leads from the lamps, it was broken and the plug was on the floor. ‘I have to fix it.’

He hadn’t looked at her even for a moment: she would have liked to know what a homosexual thinks about the female nude. She saw him go out, he was away for a few minutes, then he came back with some Scotch tape and a pair of scissors, and standing there he started adjusting the lead, which had come away from the plug just as he had been inserting it in the socket. Standing by the chair, she watched him in silence, then she remembered that the manual had ordered her to make conversation, a woman who doesn’t talk is a woman who arouses suspicion.

‘Do you play chess?’ she said.

‘By myself,’ he replied. The mere word chess must have opened the secret doors of what, reluctantly, referring to such an individual, had to be called his soul. ‘Almost nobody plays it these days.’

‘I study the championship games, or I play with my father.’ It was true, or almost, not that she spent her days playing chess, but that her father had taught her the game when she was a teenager, and chess was very congenial to her character. She saw the young man raise his head for a moment and look at her, not as a naked woman, but as an entity that understood chess. But he didn’t say anything. So she continued, because it’s useful to show your adversary that you share the same passions, ‘Just a few days ago I saw a beautiful three-knight game in Le Monde.’

‘It wasn’t three days ago, it was more than a month ago, it was the game where Neukirch from Leipzig played white and Zinn from Berlin black.’

‘Yes, that’s the one, my father takes Le Monde because there’s a chess section, and he keeps every issue, it may well have been a month ago, I played it last Monday or Tuesday.’

‘I also take Le Monde for the chess section.’ As he fixed the lead, he seemed to be pondering whether he should suggest to her that they play a game of chess.

‘Do you remember the endgame? Black has had to move his king, then white moves his knight, threatening the bishop, black is forced to protect himself with the rook, but then white pushes the pawn forward and there’s nothing more to be done, the next move is checkmate.’

‘Yes, I remember very well,’ and again he raised his head, a hint of joy in his eyes, almost that of the classical music lover who suddenly hears his favourite piece being played, and at the same time surprise that a woman should know so much about the magical world of chess. ‘But I don’t like knight games, they’re too restricting.’

‘Too cautious,’ she replied, ‘but they say it’s only on the surface, at a certain point there’s always a battle in the middle of the chessboard …’ she said a few more phrases to complete the idea, but she had to control herself because she felt like laughing: here they were, a naked woman in a room with a homosexual fixing a lead, and they were talking about chess.

‘Just a moment, please,’ the photographer said. He had finished fixing the lead, but then something else had happened: they had heard the dull sound of a bell. The man dropped the wire on the floor, left the room, closed the door and in the hall picked up the Entryphone and lifted it to his ear.

‘Open up,’ a voice said.

So he pressed the button that opened the front door downstairs and waited, after a minute the door opened and in the corridor he saw the man get out of the lift, in a very light hazel-coloured suit, a shade of hazel just a little lighter than his hair. He closed the door behind him.

‘How’s it going?’ the man asked. He, too, was young, but there was an air of suppressed violence about him that made him seem less youthful than the photographer.

‘I don’t like her,’ the first man said.

‘Why?’ The man spoke very quietly and very aggressively.

‘I don’t know, I just don’t like her.’

‘I never saw anyone. She came straight here without talking to anyone.’

‘I still don’t like her.’

‘There must be a reason.’

‘I don’t know. She wanted the money first.’ The photographer was whining a little now.

‘Strange, I wouldn’t have thought it. Sol said she was quite refined.’ He was starting to have his suspicions now, too.

‘Plus, she plays chess, like the one last year,’ the man said, confessing the real reason. The previous year, that damned brunette had tricked him to such an extent that they had had to move everyone out, all because of his weakness for chess. And now this one here was also an expert on chess, and had been about to charm him, she even remembered the Neukirch game, but at the same time she had made him suspicious, where did all these female chess champions come from, when most people today only knew how to do the football pools or collect the prize figurines in boxes of detergents and cheese?

‘I’ll take a look.’

When they entered the room, Livia was in the corner, where the big photograph of the sea wave was, as if she was looking at the floodlights, but it was only so that she could be closer to the door and hear what was happening in the hall, although she hadn’t been able to hear anything. She was pleased to see this other man, almost young, probably a little short-sighted. He was another of them, they would both be caught in the trap, but she pretended to be nervous. ‘I didn’t know there’d be anybody watching,’ she said, ‘I don’t want anyone here apart from the photographer.’

‘Of course, you’re right, I’m going now,’ the man said in a gentle voice, ‘but first I’d like to ask you a few questions.’ With his hand he swept away, not gently at all, everything that was on the chair, chessboard, chess pieces, magazines, and sat down.

‘You’re drunk, I’ve never seen you before and I have no desire to answer questions from a drunk.’

‘But you’re going to answer, because you’re a nice person. Luigi, get a chair for the young lady.’ He turned back to her as the other man went out. ‘I’ve been told some nice things about you, I hear you’re a graduate. Is that true?’

‘Yes.’ The most important instruction Signor Lamberti had given her was not to cause trouble, to make sure that everything happened simply and calmly. If she insisted on not wanting to answer, it would be dangerous.

‘A graduate in what?’

The photographer came back in with the chair, but she gestured, no, she would never put her private parts on anything belonging to these people, even though it wasn’t very pleasant standing there naked in front of the two of them. ‘History and philosophy.’

‘Do you teach?’

‘No, I’m just a graduate.’

‘And how do you live?’

‘I do translations.’

‘From what language?’

‘I prefer to translate from English, but I can also translate from German and French.’

‘Do these translations pay well?’

‘Not really.’

‘In other words, not enough to live on.’

‘No. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.’

A pallid smile from the man. ‘That’s true. What does your father do?’

The mention of her father, in this place, in this situation, so exposed to the fortunately not lustful looks of the two men, hurt her like a whiplash, but she restrained herself. It was obvious that they suspected her, and she had to convince them they were wrong. ‘He’s a watchmaker, he repairs watches, especially antique ones,’ she said calmly.

‘He must have spent a lot of money on you, you with a degree and all.’

‘I think he did.’

The man touched his right earlobe. ‘But what I don’t understand is how a person with your class would want to do something like this.’ He seemed to be just chatting, as if in a fashionable drawing-room, so that it didn’t seem like the brutal interrogation it was. ‘I mean, you come from an honest family, your father has made sacrifices to let you study, you’re cultured and have a good education, you know four languages, you translate books that are probably difficult, I’ve even heard you’re an expert chess player. Don’t you find it strange that, for a bit of money, a woman like you ends up streetwalking late at night in the Corso Buenos Aires?’