Maxim Jakubowski - I Was Waiting for You

“I want to hire you.”

“Hire me?”

“Yes.”

Absolutely the last thing he had expected the man to say…

“To do what?”

He looked deep into Jack’s eyes.

“To find my daughter.”

“Are you sure it’s me you want?”

“Yes, I read about you in the newspaper back at home. I also once heard you on the radio,” he added.

Jack could now place his accent: he was Italian. He let him continue speaking in French, as he had begun.

“Did you?”

The Italian man nodded and lowered his gaze, as if he were now ashamed of looking at him and begging for help. The silence lasted almost a whole minute. Jack broke it.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked the Italian.

“Yes…” the stranger hesitated, “a glass of red wine, I think.”

Jack called over to the bar and ordered the man’s wine and another coffee for himself, a double this time. He somehow guessed he was going to need it, even though another part of him also knew the caffeine overkill would keep him awake all night. But then, what’s new? It had recently been a frequent state of affairs, unaided by coffee.

The stranger grimaced as he drank his first small mouthful of wine.

Jack stirred too much sugar into his coffee cup. The embarrassed silence persisted.

“Tell me,” he suggested.

The Italian man looked up at him once again, nervously tugged on his collar and launched into his explanation.

“I am a doctor. I specialise in gastro-enterology. I am from Rome where I work in a big hospital. Maybe you know it, it’s San Filippo Neri, on the banks of the Tiber. I run the Digestive Endoscopy Department.”

Jack naturally knew nothing about gastro-enterology. But there was a flash of recognition down in the pit of his stomach. A doctor from Italy? Surely not. His face deliberately impassive, he nodded sympathetically as best he could. It was visibly not his turn to ask questions right now. The other man continued.

“I have two children. A girl and a boy. My daughter is called Giulia. She is now 23. I know I shouldn’t be saying this but she was always my favourite. She was a wonderful baby, always happy and cheerful. Dark curly hair from an early age and bright, oh so bright. We have tried to bring our children up right. I am very liberal, but she was always the apple of my eye and of course she soon knew it all too well and quickly became an expert in manipulating me to obtain almost everything she wanted. I didn’t mind, of course.” He wiped a thin tear away from the corner of his left eye. “When she became older, a teenager, both my wife and I were scared she might become too wild and unmanageable. There were a few difficult years, but we scrambled our way through them. In her late teens, she would almost never spend any time at home, apart from sleeping, you know. She was like a gypsy, flitting from friend to friend, playing tennis, studying, seeing films, theatre plays and opera. So that she should not run risks like so many of her classmates riding on a Vespa, we even bought her a small car, even though we knew that some years later we would have to do the same for her younger brother when the time came; a major expense. She became so independent. Yes, we argued a lot. She was spoiled and selfish at times, but I know we were closer than most fathers and daughters usually are, even in Italy, you know.”

The doctor caught his breath, picked up his glass to take another sip, even though it was now empty. He called for another one.

“No, maybe white this time,” he said. “It wasn’t very nice, I must confess… Algerian, I think.” He smiled weakly.

“ Blanc, cette fois, s’il vous plait ,” Jack corrected the order.

“Thank you,” the Italian man said.

“Do you know why she left?” he ventured.

“If only,” he answered. “She wasn’t that much into boys, I know. She found most friends her age too superficial. Remember, she was… is terribly bright. Completed her degree at 21, spoke 5 languages, even began writing film reviews for a small magazine where my wife knew the editor.”

“The reason girls usually leave home is because of love or infatuation,” Jack suggested.

“I know,” the man facing him said. “She seemed to be happier going out with girlfriends or as part of larger groups. Really. But then I suppose all fathers prefer not to think of real life and forget the fact that young girls cannot help but be attracted to sex. It’s our modern society, isn’t it? My wife and I met at college when we were only eighteen and sixteen respectively and married ten years later when we both had jobs and some form of security. She and I have never known others. Newer generations are different, I realise… Anyway, from time to time after she was seventeen or was it eighteen, Giulia would sometimes spend nights away from home, but she would always inform us in advance and we knew where she was staying most times, at a friend’s or some other safe place. If she had a boyfriend, she would never tell us and we just hoped that, once it happened, it would be someone nice that she would bring home in her own time to meet us. But she never did bring a young man home. She was a creature of secrets. I tell you, she had all the opportunities, but she followed her own counsel. Once a year, we go on a camper van holiday somewhere in Europe, all together — Giulia would even help out with the driving — and then spend the rest of the summer in the country house we have an hour away from Rome. She never minded; never suggested she should vacation on her own, or even with friends.”

He took a deep breath, anticipating the next question.

“She never wanted for money. I would always give her enough for her needs, and then she earned a bursary for her studies and worked a few hours a week at the university library. Somehow money never meant a lot to her. She seldom asked for more, unless she had a serious reason for doing so. Later she did suggest she could find a flat for herself and we argued a little about it, but she soon realised that with Rome property prices these days, it was something neither of us could really afford. It’s then I think that she met this man. An older man. I knew nothing about it, of course. She would never tell me. But she did confide in her mother. Although, even to my wife she would not provide any details. Age, name, nationality, profession, all those sort of basic things. I have now learned it lasted over a year. I suspect he was the first proper man in her life, also. Before him, just cheap infatuations and clumsy fumblings but no close… relationship.” He blushed. “But then something went wrong. Neither of us knows exactly what.”

He fell silent, rehashing the events and memories in his mind.

“And?” Jack asked.

“It was visible something disturbing had happened to her. She was no longer the soul and life of the party. She began spending hours alone in her room. Became introverted and anxious, defensive whenever we would try to speak to her. Evidently, there was something wrong.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do?” he said. “She was doing a postgraduate course in journalism and publishing and had mentioned the possibility of an Erasmus exchange with a matching institution in Paris. I wasn’t too pleased with the option of her being on her own in a foreign city, but she had done so a few years earlier when she had spent six months on a language course in Barcelona where I had made sure she stayed in a Catholic hall of residence, supervised by nuns; at any rate, this time I was the one who encouraged her to go to Paris on this course. Maybe I reasoned a change of place would do her good and the Giulia I had always known and cherished would return to us. I was wrong. Within a few weeks of arriving in Paris, she moved out of the apartment of the friend’s family where we had agreed she should stay. Since then, we’ve been trying to reach her on her mobile phone number but she never answers. I still try four or five times a day. Maybe she’s lost it. Or refuses to answer, I don’t know what to think.”