Recollection

By Pauline Macadré

Summer 2001, Tuscany.
Matthew, alone, wanders around aimlessly. A theatre company rehearses Romeo and Juliet in the stifling heat.
In the middle of the Tuscan countryside, visiting old churches and finding unexpected comfort in ruins, they wrestle with the inability to explain how love should feel.
Years later, they remember, and realise how much that summer has left its mark on their lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pauline Macadré
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005804688

Book preview

Prologue

The cold sunlight burst against the glass he’d been leaning on, startling him awake. Outside, the panorama had changed, the trees greener, the mountains higher, more definite in the evening light. He had hoped to see their silhouette blur against a background of unstoppable darkness, willing to see the distant summits merge with the clouds and vanish in the same autumn haze that had already started to creep up on them, some nights, back in Tuscany. He had hoped that the journey back would lead him into blissful oblivion, that the geographical distance confirmed by the constant metamorphoses of the landscape would bring him the comfort of numbness, perhaps even a feeling of glorious anticipation at the prospect of a return that had already been postponed beyond what he himself knew to be reasonable. Travelling through the impressive Alps, he had imagined that his own gloomy thoughts would inscribe themselves onto the slopes and that he would leave them there, shed them as the train entered the blind tunnel, and be cleansed by the voyage through the entrails of the earth.

He was reminded of a pitch-black passage supposed to symbolize the womb of Buddha’s mother, underneath a temple in Kyoto, and the eerie feeling of keeping his eyes wide open without being able to see anything, without getting used to the darkness enough to start making out something, anything. He had walked through it, unable to assess the distance, without knowing if his eyes were indeed open or shut or if the darkness had made him blind, until there, in the middle, glowed a stone supposed to grant wishes. As the train neared the mountains, the sunlight lent a golden hue to everything, and whatever he saw burnt straight into his eyes each time he dared look out the window, making him regret his wish.

There had been an elderly lady with him when he got on the train in Milan, but now the compartment was empty. He fidgeted, stood up to stretch his legs and slumped back down on the opposite seat, helplessly looking on as Italy escaped his grasp. He could not face what lay ahead, not in this light, not when the mountains against which the long serpent of a train was now precipitated looked so threatening. Better look back. He kept thinking of a sentence he’d read upon his arrival in Italy, and heaved a scornful sigh when he remembered how smug he had felt back then. ‘C’est un endroit où l’on attrape le bonheur comme dans d’autres on attrape la peste.’ No. He just didn’t have the guts to deal with it, not yet. Outside, engulfed in the waning light of the sunset, the landscape was slowly slipping away, swallowed by the looming, incandescent mountains. Already the shadows were lengthening, until everything became shadow. The sky was still bright, but if you looked further away, it was almost night already. He checked his watch.

Who had written that? He’d been reading some of his favourite writers’ notes on Italy, Stendhal, D. H. Lawrence, along with others. He had laughed at their infatuation with the country, expecting to be disappointed, using their words as one would read a guidebook all the while expecting to be better than them, and now the price he paid seemed too dear, and now he hated them for being right. But most of all he blamed Giono. He had always loved Giono’s descriptions that took you on a journey through desert forests and sunburnt fields, riding alongside Angelo or crawling under the shade of maples stained with blood like butchers. He shivered at the thought. Giono had infected him with unreasonable expectations. Happiness was catching, the writer had tricked him into believing. Like a blessing, a treasure, or a disease. The part Giono had left out was how to deal with that happiness once you caught it, how to survive those expectations when reality not only lived up and matched but even surpassed them. What Giono had forgotten to say was that, going through the border when you left the country, you had to give it all back.

Matthew thought of what he was leaving behind. His lips twitched.

***

Even crossing the street was a struggle. He had pictured himself strolling through empty streets deserted by those who feared the stifling heat of the summer, but Florence was bustling as ever and made him feel like a proper fool. It had been but a couple of days and already he longed to go back to British summer rains, and tea, and everything he had been running away from. He had thought of himself as a literary traveller, not one of those stereotypical tourists that packed into museums and churches waiting to be amazed; and there he was, feeling tall and awkward and cramped, elbowing his way through the Piazza del Duomo like everybody else, sweating in his stupid flannels and wearing a panama. Two days in and he had forgotten why he had come to Italy in the first place. Peace and quiet, and inspiration. And solitude. Tranquillity of mind, above all else. He was walking in the footprints of Forster, drawn and fascinated and disgusted by Italy. He had given in, fallen for the usual Italian seduction and now he found himself gulping down espressos standing at the counter, greeting people he didn’t know with an artificially perfunctory ‘ciao’ he emphasized too much, and making absolutely no attempt whatsoever at learning a single word of Italian.

So when he ended up at the station as if by accident, he did not exactly make a conscious decision to take a train to Lucca. He had rather felt compelled to flee the city where Stendhal had suggested young women would swoon just by looking at the walls of Santa Croce and, he had inferred, would likely end up into his arms. That had appeared to him as the easy way out, a kind of proactive forgetting of everything that was sure to have happened if he had stayed in Nottingham – but he would not think of that. A narrow escape indeed. After shoving all his stuff in his bag, he had popped into the church of Santa Maria Novella long enough to be amazed by the beauty of the frescoes – he had not fainted, but the heat, and the light, and the beauty were overwhelming; he had understood then what Stendhal had meant – and hopped onto the first train at the neighbouring station, feeling a wave of relief as soon as he found himself sitting in a carriage that was nearly empty. Alone at last, he mused. A couple of tourists, seemingly as exhausted by the heat and crowd of Florence as he was, were already nodding off and drooling in their sleep at the other end of the train. That would do. What had he been thinking, going to Florence in July. Self-deluded fool. Right now, as the train whizzed through the scorched Tuscan countryside, he once again felt exquisitely smug.

When the train stopped in Lucca, he simply got out and started walking. There was a music festival around town, and here also the streets were crowded, but the mood felt lighter. Most people seemed genuinely Italian, for one thing. Strings of girls were giggling as they passed by, some guy in his twenties sat in front of a church with his guitar, playing acoustic versions of whatever old American pop song, couples in their fifties shared a cup of ice-cream, sitting nearby and idly listening, exchanging satisfied glances filled with years of companionship. The air was milder, less stuffy. Perhaps the main difference with Florence was how happy everybody looked, happy and relaxed, not running after their own self-imposed tight schedule, not trying to fit in a visit of the towers of the Duomo in time before their guided tour of the historical centre. People lounged as if they had all the time in the world to be as happy as possible. Matthew had no idea what he was doing here. He had had no idea there would be a festival. He had never felt so lonely.

He listened for a while to the sound of the guitar, lost in his own thoughts as he vaguely contemplated giving up altogether and just going back. Where to? Florence was out of the question. England as well, perhaps even more so. Somewhere with the sea. Marseille maybe? An image of himself playing pétanque on the Old Port arose before his eyes. Then he remembered Hemingway’s Basque country in Spain, and idly wondered if he was too late for the fiesta, having no intention of actually going anywhere. Did they still run in the streets with the bulls? He was distracted by some hushed whispers in Italian and glimpsed the group of tittering girls returning, looking both excited and anxious as if stumbling upon their crush. They reminded him of his own students, but they might have been only teenagers for all he knew; it was hard to tell in the evening light. The giggles were the same. They were stealing timid glances in his direction, pretending not to look. He raised his eyebrow and flashed a confident smile in their general direction. The smile ricocheted amongst them and resonated back to him in the riot of renewed giggles and barely suppressed shrieks it earned him. A wave of guilty satisfaction washed over him. That much still worked, then.

‘Ciao tesoro’, one of the girls boldly replied, stepping closer.

He held up his hands apologetically and ambled away.

***

He heard the familiar clatter of knives and forks, of breakfast being laid on the table, before he even opened his eyes. It took him a moment to focus, he had no idea where he was. He listened more closely still before he would actually allow himself to look around. There were voices coming from a room in the distance, as if from another world. A man and a woman, quietly arguing. Then laughter. Coffee being grinded. The familiar smell. He opened his eyes and stared, unable to make out any familiar furniture. The room was spacious and clean, which ruled out most of his friends’ places, tastefully furnished and bright, which ruled out his own. For a minute there, he thought he was back in Lucca, the way the sunlight washed the walls. But then he remembered.

He got up, and realised he was fully dressed. He must have crashed and fallen right to sleep, although he could not remember how much they had had to drink last night. His shoes were nowhere to be found, neither were his socks. He remembered but didn’t want to rejoice just yet, as he tiptoed out of the room, cringing when his bare feet hit the cool hardwood floor. The events from the day before had started flashing before his eyes, but he had to make sure the deep voice that echoed through the corridor really belonged to the face he was mentally associating it with. The floor creaked, but the voices didn’t stop, coming from a room whose door stood slightly ajar, shedding a splinter of light that reached his foot when he paused, locating his dirty sneakers in the hallway. He hesitated. He recognized the unmistakably British accent, the warmth, the posh manner he’d resented at first, the way the sentences lingered on as the voice left them hanging on a noncommittal ‘I s’ppose.’ Bracing himself, he walked on, slowing down as he approached what seemed to be the kitchen, peeped through the slit of the door and froze.

There he stood. Casually leaning against the work surface, already clean-shaven of course, his strong jaw perfectly delineated, his hair still wet, slicked back. Samuel, unable to move, could not see the man’s face from the threshold that held his steps back and prevented him from trespassing into a territory that was now disclosed yet still forbidden. Nor could he see the woman who must have been in the dining-room – how big was this flat? Were they still even in Paris? They were talking about something Samuel had no notion of, the words failing to make sense to him, as if they’d been speaking French. They were speaking English, though, and kept up a slight banter betraying warmth, intimacy, and resentment. Neither of them had noticed the intrusion yet, and for a brief moment Samuel imagined himself standing there for ever, silently spying on the couple’s life and intently watching the man as he talked, and leant, and smirked, and ran his hand through the soft waves of his hair, but just then, as if he’d said that out loud, Matthew turned around and greeted him with a smile.

‘You’re up.’

Matthew’s t-shirt clung to his broad shoulders exactly as it had when Samuel had first seen him.

‘So it would seem’, Samuel said. Then he added: ‘unless I’m dreaming’, and regretted it instantly, trying to cover his tracks, ‘I seem to have misplaced my socks.’

Matthew glanced at his feet and burst out laughing, crinkling his impossibly blue eyes – they were still the same warm shade of blue they had been – and plunging them straight into Samuel’s before turning them back to the woman who was still invisible in the other room.

‘Young people can’t handle their liquor nowadays’, he said to her, adorable dimples appearing in the hollows of his cheeks. Then to him, holding out his hand as an invitation, ‘Come meet my wife, Penelope.’ High heels clicking on the ancient hardwood floors signalled Penelope had stood from the breakfast table. For a brief second, Samuel wondered about the kind of woman who’d wear heels for breakfast. To her, Matthew added: ‘This is Samuel, who crashed into our spare room last night. Tell me, darling, did we use to be that reckless?’

A tall, lean woman in her early thirties came into view, a bright smile spread across her face, ‘How d’you do.’

Samuel’s heart sank as he leant forward and took the hand she had extended.

‘What a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ma’am’, he brought it to his face and brushed his lips against her skin in a soft kiss.

She let out a high-pitched laughter and turned to Matthew. ‘Your friend is extremely well-mannered, husband. I’m glad you bumped into him, you might learn a thing or two.’

‘Mmh’, came Matthew’s low grumble, but he couldn’t stop smiling.

***

There was something in Samuel’s smile that morning – the bus inched its way through the weekend crowds – something that had always disturbed her. She had climbed on the top storey of the double-decker bus, hoping to give in to the Christmas spirit, already feeling like a child as she had taken her seat on the front row, only to find herself facing Samuel’s obnoxious frown, on the poster of an independent movie which now taunted her from the back of the bus right in front of her. Matthew had mentioned him before, perhaps too dismissively, but she’d never expected to find him, in the flesh, as if he had magically materialised out of thin air, in their flat one morning. He had just turned up, out of the blue, barefooted, so young and hungover, his hair all messy and sleep in his eyes, an adorable child, and they had immediately seemed so at ease with one another, as if they had been friends for years – which they had, in a way. The way he looked at her, and kissed her hand, charming and flirtatious even with her. His smile had seemed falsely shy, contrived, too confident, or so she had thought that day. With hindsight she wondered if it had been rather predatory, appealing to some part of Matthew she had neither glimpsed nor ever even suspected but which had always been there, carefully hidden, and had never ceased to tether them to one another. It wasn’t just the night before, it was that the two men seemed to share a knowledge she would always be excluded from. Which they did, most probably. They all did, all those who’d spent that wretched summer in Tuscany. The same predatory smile had spread on Matthew’s face that morning and introduced her to a new feeling she struggled to recognize at first, because it had never occurred to her before – jealousy.

It had started snowing, much to her dismay. She had dreaded having to come back from London, and she hated it even more now. She had never felt less in the mood for Christmas, and now this. Her hands were shaking, the gold ring on her finger feeling absurd. She tried to reassure herself. Old habits die hard, her mother had told her, give yourself a break. She had bought Matthew a Christmas present, which now felt like it was burning a hole in her pocket and she was mortified just thinking about it.

***

‘You know Matthew’s got an account on Instagram now’, she said matter-of-factly.

She didn’t say she’d been checking her phone, trying to figure out what he was doing out of the puzzle of the scattered pictures he would post randomly, of some street, some book. She didn’t say that some days, she felt the day had not started properly until he’d posted a story or something about his morning run. She didn’t say because she had felt stupid admitting it to herself.

He never showed his face, but that wasn’t the point. It was better even because she preferred the feeling it stirred in her, the indescribable longing that would have been destroyed if her fleeting memories of his face had found themselves confronted and corrected by the reality of the present time. He would have grown older, no doubt, his features aged, perhaps more tired. Seeing things from his perspective made her feel closer to him than she had ever felt, even back then in Italy, and after that. She would look at the most random everyday things, the board of that damned treadmill of his, a country road showered by rain and his invisible laughter resonating in the background, a few lines of poetry – and so, looking at life through his eyes, on the tiny screen of her phone, she could almost see herself as he had seen her back then, at nineteen, sitting on his lap, sitting on that couch, that night. Hélène of Troy he had called her, wallowing in inconsequence, both praising and reproving her, driving men out of their wits, but that was just his way, wasn’t it? Poeticizing everything, intellectualizing everything, always on the verge of giving a lecture as if he were living in a giant classroom and they were all just his disciples.

And how enthralling it all had been. Her entire life still bore the mark he’d left, so that she kept wondering what he would say whenever she saw something beautiful, so that even to this day, years later, she would feel as if she might collapse whenever he failed to post a stupid story on Instagram, as if he were still guarding her path, extending a gentle hand to prevent her from recklessly crossing the road under the wheels of an Italian bus driver. They had reached the Mont Royal, which unexpectedly rose before them, the heart of the city, the Sunday Tam-Tams echoing louder in their ears now.

‘I used to think Daisy was the stupid one’, she blurted. ‘But I get it now. The way she stutters. Don’t you remember? She stutters, and I’ve always wondered why, the way she says she’s p-paralyzed with happiness. Don’t you remember? That’s how it felt.’

‘Hélène, don’t…’ Samuel murmured, but she had brushed his hand away from her face and angrily wiped the tear herself.

‘Don’t you ever feel like Gatsby?’ she told him instead. ‘He’s the idiot. Desperately chasing the past.’

He did not reply, but she had not meant it as a question – she knew he did, they all did.

I

The crude morning light was bathing the room when he finally woke up, his face burning and his mouth dry. The windows had remained wide open but the air already felt too hot on his naked skin. He lay there, motionless, listening to the noises that came from the streets, the morning vendors, the tables being set on the restaurant terraces across the square, the stillness of that transitory moment, when the early morning commuters have gone but the lunch crowd hasn’t been unleashed yet. He focused on his own breathing, then noticed something different about the room, the sheets, the bed.

Last night, on the last night of the festival, Matthew had decided something had to happen. Neil Young was playing. He thought he might as well just go, he could hear everything through the open window anyway. The room he had booked in an old palazzo near the Duomo was incredibly cheap, but it was wasted on him, he felt. He had probably deprived a honeymooning couple from the luxurious, over-the-top interior decoration. Propped against the headboard upholstered in silk, under the painted mouldings whose bright blue and yellow contrasted with the soft ochres of Tuscany, between two gilded religious icons, a lush Persian carpet covering the mosaic patterns of the tiles, he would watch otherworldly American movies he’d missed during the year, Donnie Darko and Mulholland Drive and Magnolia on a computer he had placed on the nineteenth-century walnut and marquetry table, thinking of time passing, loopholes and the plagues of Egypt, waiting for the apocalypse to enshroud him and spit him out, that he might at last find inspiration for the book he was supposed to write. He kept waiting for life to start happening. A single in a double room, and absolutely no one to keep him company, no one to distract him.