Dacia Maraini - Train to Budapest

‘You never change. All you want is freedom without responsibility.’

‘Have you come here to criticise me?’

‘I’ve come because you said it was urgent, that you needed to talk to me.’

‘And who says that’s not the truth!?’

‘All right. Talk to me when you feel up to it. How are you feeling? I haven’t even asked you that. What bad manners.’

‘Not so much bad-mannered as slipping off. There’s something else on your mind. Have you got a man?’

‘No.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘On the contrary, you ought to be sorry I haven’t got a man to travel with me and make love to me.’

‘You know what I think, Amara …’ but the sentence stays unfinished. Silence descends between their two tense bodies.

‘What did you want to tell me, Luca?’ Amara asks after a long pause during which he takes her hand and squeezes it between his own.

‘I wanted to say we should come together again, you and me. You need a man to love and look after. I need a woman …’

‘To look after you, I know. Luca, you’re too explicit. You can’t even lie elegantly.’

‘You were born to look after people, you were. You’re a failed mother.’

‘Failed? I intend to marry again and have at least two children.’

‘You never will, Amara, you’re too fond of dreaming. Dreaming and caring for people.’

‘Dreaming and caring for people? Wrong. I shall find myself a husband, as I say, and start a family.’

As she speaks she can feel the warmth of those hands she has loved: large, smooth and tender. She closes her eyes. A moment of reckoning. This man who caresses really does know how to caress. It’s as if he’s pulling her by the arm along a very smooth chute or slide towards an obscure garden of delights. She pulls back her hand with an abrupt gesture that irritates her ex-husband.

‘Your hands are as wonderful as ever, but stop trying to seduce me. It won’t work.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Very sure.’

‘Then listen: you shall have complete liberty. I’m not thinking of a typical husband and wife situation, but an agreement between equals. You in your part of the house, I in mine. You can even have lovers; I shan’t say a word. You’ll be free to do whatever you like. In exchange all I ask of you is your company. Just a bit of company. A presence. Eating together and chatting about this and that. To touch your hand, that’s all I ask of you, every now and then maybe to make love; d’you remember we used to be rather good at that, us two? I don’t think it’s too much to ask. What do you say?’

‘I’d like to remind you that it was you who told me you’d fallen in love with another woman, even younger than me.’

‘I know, I know. But then you went away. We could so easily have gone on living together without making love. But now everything’s different, I’ve discovered how weak I am and how fragile my body is, that I need rest and good company. I’ve had enough of sex. Can you believe that? It nauseates me. I want to dedicate myself to painting, you know I’ve always been a painter.’

‘All this because you’ve had a minor heart attack and it’s scared you.’

‘Nature has given me a warning. And I want to stop drinking, stop smoking and stop searching for young bodies. My life will change completely, in fact it has already changed, do you believe me?’

‘No.’

‘Why are you so distrustful?’

‘I’ve heard you talk like this before. I’m not saying you don’t mean what you say. But then you forget. The problem is, I don’t love you any more. I’m no longer interested in descending to pacts.’

‘I thought you had another man and were hiding that from me. Can you understand that it offends me that you no longer think me worthy of your confidence?’

‘The simple fact is I don’t love you. Does that seem so absurd?’

‘I may be a megalomaniac but I need to feel the women I’ve loved can never forget me. I shall put it even more strongly: I know you still love me. I’m certain of it or you wouldn’t have hurried so quickly to my side.’

‘Haven’t you just told me that I’m motivated by dreams and a need to care for others? Well, this need to care for others is what brought me here. A need that I accept is archaic and profoundly unfashionable.’

‘But the point is: you are here. That’s all that matters now. I don’t want to argue. Please give me your hand again, I shan’t ask anything more of you. Not even to come back tomorrow. When are you leaving?’

‘I thought you were dying.’

‘Not yet. Aren’t you pleased?’

‘Let’s just say you deceived me with that urgent letter.’

‘Okay, let’s say I deceived you. So what? I wanted to see you, that’s the point. I believe I still love you, very much. And do you know something? Love is contagious. When you love someone, you end up infecting the other person like with an illness.’

‘I shall stay three days. Time to see you out of hospital. Then I’m going back to Vienna.’

‘But what on earth can there be for you to do in Vienna, that ugly half-dead city?’

‘You could say Florence is half-dead too. But it isn’t.’

‘I’m jealous. Are you in love with an Austrian?’

‘I’m looking for a child.’

‘A child?’

‘A child who disappeared in 1943.’

Suzy comes to the door dressed in black, carrot-coloured curls round her neck and forehead. Amara can’t remember her looking so beautiful and vivacious before. Her radiant eyes are the colour of cocoa. She’s in high-heels, her manicured nails varnished with oxblood. They embrace. Suzy hands her a mauve-coloured aperitif with an olive in it and invites her to sit down at table. She hurries into the kitchen and immediately reappears, holding high in gloved hands a blue ceramic baking-dish that she places carefully on the tablecloth, but not before slipping a wicker mat under it. The promised pasta al forno.

‘This is all there is, help yourself.’

She smiles with satisfaction. Amara notices two of her front teeth have been rebuilt. Seen close to, her eyes look tired and slightly drunk.

‘Vannino?’

‘With his father. Every so often he agrees to do his duty and take him for a day or two. Then he brings him back worn out.’

‘So the two of you are on good terms?’

‘Every month he forgets to pay the maintenance he owes. I have to write, phone him, insist the boy is also his. He delays and delays and sometimes misses a whole month. Children need a father as well as a mother, don’t you think? Luckily, even in the worst moments, I’ve never spoken badly of his father to Vannino. I’m not stupid. The child’s growing up nicely, well-balanced if a bit sickly but that’s not my fault. He was born at seven months and has never fully made up for the two months he lost. But what did that madman Luca tell you?’

‘He wants me to go back to him.’

‘A sensible idea at last. And you?’

‘I said no.’

‘No, absolutely no?’

‘No.’

‘Wouldn’t you like him to give you a child? He’d be an excellent father.’

‘I don’t want that.’

‘Pity. I would have liked to keep you in the family. You know I like you.’

‘I like you too.’

‘But we’ll stay sisters-in-law?’

‘Of course.’

‘Have you found a new love?’

‘Is it impossible even for you to understand that a woman might want to live on her own?’

‘At twenty-six you should be thinking of the future. Are you going back to Vienna?’

‘In three days.’

‘What on earth can there be for you to do in that half-dead city?’

‘You and Luca seem to think with one brain. You say the same things.’