The Centauress - New Work In Progress.

Rodin:  The Centauress
This is the really scary bit - I've just finished the first draft of a fictional project I've been working on for a while.  A difficult story with a complicated plot, set in Istria - a traditionally Italian area of Croatia.  The two central figures are an elderly painter, Xenobia, who has led a controversial life, and her biographer, Alex, recently bereaved and trying to find the narrative of her own life again. I have no idea whether it will interest anyone other than myself.  I've been so immersed in it, I haven't been able to stop to think about what anyone else might think!  So, before I spend precious weeks re-writing and editing, I need to know if a reader would be interested enough to read on after the opening pages. These first pages are critical in any book - if you're not hooked by page 3 you usually give up.   That's why I'm pasting them below and would really appreciate honest, straight-forward comments from my lovely blog-readers.  Would you want to read on?  Or would you not?  You don't have to be tactful!

The Centauress (working title)

Chapter One

Trieste, 2005

       In an unfamiliar hotel room in Trieste, at the junction of three worlds - Italy, Northern Europe and the East -  Alessandra Forbes is sitting up in bed, propped  by a pile of baroque cushions.   Her dark hair - the legacy of an Italian grandfather -  swings shoulder length against the straps of her nightdress, and her blue - very English - eyes are focused on the page in front of her. She is writing in her journal, trying to put her feelings for Xenia into words that might be quoted in a press release.  'There are certain people who have the power to change your life for ever,' she writes, 'even though you only meet them once or twice.  Xenobia de Braganza was one of those people.'    But the phrases seem weak and inadequate to convey how dramatically Xenia had changed Alex herself  from a self-pitying zombie into a human being once more capable of feeling joy and love.
        It's nearly two years now since Xenia died, but she  is still as strong and turbulent in Alex's memory as she had been when she was alive, and much more so here in Xenia's birthplace.  This house had, before the economic collapses of the nineteen twenties, belonged to Xenia's father.  Since then it's been an office complex and an apartment block and is currently a boutique hotel owned by a Swiss businesswoman.  Alex has tried to make sense of the rooms, to discover any traces of Xenia's childhood geography, but after a world war, so many alterations, and the recent ravages of a German architect,  it's transformation has been too ruthless.
       Xenia is also on Alex's mind because a week  ago on a visit to London to talk to her publisher about a paperback edition of the biography, she had bumped into Xenia's former companion,  Freddi Baker-Thompson, in the Charing Cross Road.  It was  the first time Alex had seen her since the funeral and  Freddi looked strained, fragile, older.   Her blonde hair had streaks of grey.    She paused in front of Alex for a second on the pavement, opened her mouth as if to respond to Alex's smiling hello, but then abruptly turned and darted away into the traffic without looking,  as if she'd seen some monster she had to flee from.  Mutual friends have told Alex that Freddi perfectly understands that she had to tell the truth, to honour her promise to Xenia, but she hates Alex for it just the same.   Alex understands Freddi's unhappiness.  Two years ago Alex had been in the same place - lonely and grieving.   It doesn't seem right that she should now be in bliss while Freddi suffers.

       In  Istria at the Kaštela, after Xenia's death,  Freddi had come to Alex's room and tried to make her promise to keep her own name out of  Xenia's biography.
       'You have to, Alessandra,' she had said. It was significant that Freddi had used her full name. Freddi's eyes were red with crying.   'I don't want to be mentioned.'
        Alex had been appalled.  'How can I do that? You've been such an important part of her life.  I have to mention you even if it's just to say, "Freddi Baker-Thompson, her companion for ten, fifteen years" - however long you've been together.'
       'Fourteen.  Fourteen wonderful, difficult years.    The heaven and hell of living with Xenia. There were always two ways of looking at things with her.' 
       'But that's what I need from you.  No one else can tell me how that feels.'
       'Absolutely not!  Do you know what people might say?'
   
       That was eighteen months ago.  Since then Alex has been back to the Kaštela only once - an impulsive mistake she had made yesterday,  when driving up from Zagreb to Trieste. Mutual acquaintances had warned her, but Alex had wanted to see for herself, to make one last connection with Xenia.  It had been a distressing experience.  The avenue of lemon trees had been cut down and the ancient fortress had been altered beyond recognition.  A large notice in red and white said 'Proprieta Privata' and then underneath, in Croat,  'Privatno Vlasnistvo'.  Alex thought grimly  that Xenia would have approved the double languages if not the sentiment.  True to Xenia's communist principles Alex had ignored the notice but was accosted before she'd even reached the terrace by a security guard with a rifle slung over his shoulder who swore at her in Croat with a strong Russian accent. He stood at the entrance, a dark threatening figure in black and green fatigues,  to watch her depart.   Alex knew then that she would never go back there again.

       In the night Alex dreamt that she was listening to Xenia's voice on the tapes she'd made before Xenia died, on that first, nervous visit to Kaštela Visoko.  They had been sitting in the shade of the loggia on an airless autumn afternoon with a bottle of wine open on the table.   It was one of her bad days.  Alex had asked Xenia about her childhood, her family, her home, and found her evasive and uncooperative.  Xenia had retreated into some small internal space and closed the door.    Even encouraged by Freddi, she could not, or would not, answer Alex's questions, turning her face obstinately away, talking about the olive harvest, the problem of finding girls to work for the tourist season, Concetta's marital difficulties.  Anything but the one subject Alex wanted her to talk about - herself.    Then, almost out of desperation, Alex had asked, 'What's the first thing you remember?'   
       For a moment Xenia had  picked at the hem of her linen jacket with her fingers in an angry kind of way, and Alex thought she was going to ignore this question as she'd ignored all the others.   But then her face changed; her eyes began to flicker with images that only she could see and her mouth relaxed, beginning to shape the words to fit.   It was like turning the key to a very ancient lock.  Alex could almost hear the stiff tumblers clicking over, one by one, until the door unlatched and you could walk through.   Xenia's voice on the tape was very deep, almost  masculine, but also musical, each syllable separately pitched and accorded its own variations of tone and colour. 
       When she spoke  it was as if she was dreaming aloud.   When Alex closed her eyes it was as if she was inside Xenia's memory.
           
When I wake up in the dark the first thing I see is the mirror.   This one not very special, just a long thin glass on the wardrobe door beside my bed.   As soon as I open my eyes I can see my hunched-up body under the bedclothes, then the enameled bedstead.  You have seen those old Italian beds?  Painted with flowers and scrolls of gold leaf - very beautiful.  On the other side of the room I can see the thick brocade drapes across the windows, flared with the shadows of the night-light my governess has left on the bedside table.  Even then, I was fascinated by the play of the light, how it shaped and sculpted and told different stories.    There is a wash stand against the wall and a little chair beside it.   In the mirror I can see the line of light that marks the edge of the door.  It opens into a corridor and at the end of the corridor is the room where my mother is entertaining friends.  Tap, tap, tap.   Their heels echo on the marble floor.   People are coming in and out of the room and as the door opens and closes, there are little pulses of music and laughter.     I cannot bear to be alone here in the darkness.    Basta!  I say to myself.  I cannot stay here.
    It is a great distance from my bed to the floor.   Slowly I slide towards it until I can just touch it with the tips of my big toes.  My mother used to put me in a long cotton nightdress and it  has coiled itself round my armpits, stringing me up like a criminal.   I tug myself free and lower myself onto the marble floor.  How cold it is!  How well I remember that feeling on the soles of my feet.

       Xenia had paused here, running her tongue over her dry lips. Alex had thought she was going to stop  and opened her mouth to prompt her, but Xenia had already begun again, lapsing  into Italian - speaking fluently and fast, her beautiful eyes flashing.   Alex had to struggle to keep up with the flow of language.

       In the corridor the lights were flickering in their bronze sconces.  In my mother's day there were Venetian mirrors in ornate frames on each side.  These were fascinating for a child.   In daylight they showed a series of paintings.   Nature Morte, I suppose I would call them now.  But I had already begun to suspect that behind their surfaces lurked other worlds, with different perspectives.  It was as if the glass was a sheet of water, changing whatever you could see under it.  I used to stare into them for hours.   Reflections of ordinary things - a lamp or a vase of flowers - everything became magnified into something wonderful and strange.  Even my own image came back to me altered.  That was when I first knew that I was a twin.  In the mirror was my other self - a changeling child - my face angelic and obedient - hair curled and be-ribboned by my nurse - clothes immaculate - only my eyes were mine - dark, fierce eyes -  staring at me out of the glass.  
But at night, these mirrors became a terrible ordeal, showing terrible things - distorted fragments - mutilated faces - images of hell.  I knew I must avoid them - or they would steal my soul as I passed.
    And then I am outside my mother's door and I think - how am I to open it?  I am too small to reach the handle and this makes me angry.  I lean against it in a temper and push.   Like magic the heavy door swings open and I am there in all the warmth and the light.  Eccomi!  My mother is leaning against the piano with her head thrown back.  Signor Puccini is sitting on the piano stool with his hands on the keys and another man I do not know is playing the violin.
       'Ah!  Bambina!'  Someone calls and the music stops.  They all turn to look at me.  
       My mother's head swivels towards me and her face is cross.  'I can't get her to stay in her room,' she says angrily.  'What am I to do?'
       'So sweet!' one of the ladies leans forward.  'What's your name?'
       'Xenobia,' I tell her.
       'What a strange name,' she says.  
       It is what everyone says.   The cook says it is like an illness, or a foreign plant.  But of course it was my grandmother's name they had cursed me with.  My father's mother.
       'They call me Xenia,'   I whisper.    She offers me a sweet.  And then I am allowed to sit on her lap and listen to the music.  I fall asleep with my face pressed against the hard sequins of this lady's dress.  The dangling glass beads of her cap glitter above me in the light and as they glance against each other when she moves her head they sound like someone laughing.

        And then suddenly Xenia stopped.   She looked dazed and disorientated.  Alex could hear her voice on the tape asking  'Who is this woman?   What is she doing here?'
       'She's come to write your life into a book,' Freddi said in very literal, awkward Italian, as if explaining to a child.  'She's the biographer.'
What did it mean to Xenia at that moment:  the biographer?  A collector of gossip, of memories, an assortment of facts, tossed together in a matrix of words.  Alex was being paid to cast her life into stone.   
After a pause Alex could hear her own voice on the tape again, soothing, non-committal, hoping to restart the flow of recollection.   'Did you have a good relationship with your mother?' 
       'I was a difficult child,' Xenia replied,  almost sulkily.  Alex  remembered that she had shrugged her shoulders and raised her hands at this point.  'My mother could do nothing with me.'   Then she had looked at Alex with those penetrating, disconcerting eyes.  'Mothers and daughters.  It is the most difficult relationship, is it not?'

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That's Chapter One -  all comments gratefully received.  Now I'm off to England for a brief visit to look after my small grand-daughter Isabella for a few days while my daughter is at a conference.  I'm really looking forward to spending time with her and hoping the English weather will be better than the Italian - which is still below zero.  Some parts of Italy have had 3 metres of snow, as far south as Sicily.  The worst winter in generations - that's what they're calling it.