Still Life

by Sarah Winman

Two people pulling each other into Salvation is the only theme I find worthwhile. —E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book

One of the primary objects of the enlightened traveler in Italy is usually to form some acquaintance with its treasures of art. Even those whose usual avocations are of the most prosaic nature unconsciously become admirers of poetry and art in Italy. The traveler here finds them so interwoven with scenes of everyday life, that he encounters their influence at every step, and involuntarily becomes susceptible to their power. —Karl Baedeker, Italy: Handbook for Travelers, 1899

Man as the Measure of All Things 1944

Weren’t we all like that? Yes, I suppose we were, said Evelyn, and she picked up a fig and pressed her thumbs against the soft, yielding skin. I suppose we were, she repeated quietly. She tore the fruit in half and glanced down at the erotic sight of its vivid flesh. She blushed and would blame it on the shift to evening light, on the effect of the wine and the grappa and the cigarettes, but in her heart, in the unseen, most guarded part of her, a memory undid her, slowly—very slowly—like a zip.

Only later did I come to understand what she was offering. Oh? And what was she offering? A door into her world. Priceless. Margaret poured out another glass of grappa and sipped it. Her mouth was tight. She said, You’ve never told me this story before. Have I not? I think I’d remember. Why now? Yes, why now? thought Evelyn, and she said, The rabbit. The rabbit? Yes. Have you not had rabbit since? And the music. What music? The overture to Spontini’s La Vestale. The signore played it this morning. A simple memory of the Teatro Verdi.

We just need to know what the heart’s capable of, Evelyn. And do you know what it’s capable of? I do. Grace and fury.

It’s what we’ve always done. Left a mark on a cave, or on a page. Showing who we are, sharing our view of the world, the life we’re made to bear. Our turmoil is revealed in those painted faces—sometimes tenderly, sometimes grotesquely, but art becomes a mirror. All the symbolism and the paradox, ours to interpret. That’s how it becomes part of us. And as counterpoint to our suffering, we have beauty.

Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgment. Captures forever that which is fleeting. A meager stain in the corridors of history, that’s all we are. A little mark of scuff. One hundred and fifty years ago Napoleon breathed the same air as we do now. The battalion of time marches on. Art versus humanity is not the question, Ulysses. One doesn’t exist without the other. Art is the antidote. Is that enough to make it important? Well yes, I think it is.

It was a classy restaurant. Violins played and a waiter flapped out her napkin and laid it in her lap. Even called her madam, which was a bloody cut above. Eddie beamed at her, teeth polished and breath like mint. His handsomeness shot straight to her knickers.

“Luce intellettual, piena d’amore.” What’s that mean, sir? Light of the mind, full of love. Nice. Isn’t it? One of yours, sir? No! Dante. The belief that a combination of intellect and beauty can make the world a better place.

The scale of man—spatially—is about midway between the atom and the star.

How Evelyn had laughed at the snobbery of art, said that the responsibility of privilege must always be to raise others up.

Dismissing pain with a whiplash flick of her wrist and casting it into the gutter to join a thousand other heart-raw tales. Right left, right left, her hips sway like a dirty dream and orange embers flare at her unpainted mouth. You could hang yourself off her every word and many a man has tried. The sound of her footsteps through the streets. The dark shape of the gasometers and always the smell of coal dust and a ripe canal rippling. These are the elements of her home. And she knows she will never leave.

There are moments in life so monumental and still that the memory can never be retrieved without a catch to the throat or an interruption to the beat of the heart. Can never be retrieved without the rumbling disquiet of how close that moment came to not having happened at all.

Tree said, Thanks for everything. It’s been nice knowing you. You too, said Cress. Will you be OK? I’m a tree. I’ve done this a thousand times before. Done what? Good-byes. Really? Think about it. Leaves.

A final look into Cressy’s large suitcase revealed nothing but a small selection of clothes—two open-neck shirts, underwear and undershirts, a flannel suit, a shaving kit, toothbrush and paste, knitting needles and wool, liniment, old boots and three books: the 1899 Baedeker Italy: Handbook for Travelers, Bradshaw’s Complete Anglo-Italian Phrase-book, and a novel—a rare choice for facts-man Cress—E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. First edition but with the back cover missing.

Cress? said Ulysses again. It’s done. You can put your stuff away, the bloke’s not interested. Cress closed the lid of his large suitcase and secured the catches. The false bottom containing several hundred pounds of the Fanny win had remained concealed. And, more important, the small suitcase in his hand had gone unchecked. What you looking so pleased about? said Ulysses. Cress shrugged and walked Zen-like toward the car.

Cress sat down with the suitcase on his lap. The hours spent reading about psychophysical magic had been worth it, he thought. To render the visible invisible had been one of his greatest achievements.

He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed Cress was cradling the suitcase like it was a baby. On deck the horn blared and the wind whipped up something rotten. They waved good-bye to the white cliffs. Good-bye, England! Good-bye forever! Ulysses thought about Peg, and Cress thought about Peg, and the kid thought about lunch.

Florence suddenly appeared in the Arno valley, resplendent under golden June light. Ulysses stopped the car and got out. He raised his hat and saluted the city as Darnley had done before. Claude took flight, and the blue of his feathers against the terra-cotta rooftops was an electrifying sight. They’d traveled more than a thousand miles, had eaten twenty plates of spaghetti, nine stews, seventeen baguettes, a crop of apricots and a wheel of cheese. They had drunk forty coffees and eight bottles of wine and seven beers and two brandies. Nights in a bed: One. The first. They had seen wild boar and falcons and stars falling across the Alps. And they’d come to rely on one another because they were all they had.

Two words for you: ley lines. Ley lines? Straight lines of electromagnetic energy crisscrossing the Earth at special sites, drawing men and women—and ideas—to their mysterious pulse. We were drawn here, Temps. No two ways about it. As many have been before. That Baedeker book? You know what it said? Go on. That “even those whose usual avocations are of the most prosaic nature unconsciously become admirers of poetry and art in Italy.” Would that be so bad? To become an admirer of poetry and art? Until we figure it all out. It wouldn’t, Cress.

The following morning, the square was abuzz. You seen who’s back? they all said as they entered Michele’s café. Clara the baker had told the butcher, who had told the priest during confession. Gloria Cardinale who sold haberdashery was lighting a candle in the church and had overheard the butcher tell the priest. She couldn’t wait to tell her neighbor the tripe seller, who told Signor Malfatti who sold cheese. And of course, Signor Malfatti couldn’t wait to tell me, said the elderly contessa, who was having a very public spat with the man over the contested weight of a single ball of ricotta.

He looks less boyish, no? said Signora Mimmi. A little more drawn here. And she ran her hand down her cheeks. But he still has his dimples. And is that his father with him? His father has a certain—

Sunlight dazzled, casting rays onto the pale cream stucco of the church. The sky was blue, the roofs were red, the trees green. For years they’d moved about in a palette of gray and deprivation. And now this . . . The air was saturated with the sounds and smells of the market, and the steamy waft from the tripe seller crept around the corner and punched them in the guts. Claude flew to the white marble statue of Cosimo Ridolfi and settled on his head. He would stay there and shit on him all morning.

Cress exclaimed at the abundance of produce—the “cornucopia of delight” were his exact words, classic Cressy. Ulysses headed straight over to an outside table at Michele’s and sat down. He lit a cigarette and wondered how he could make another man’s life his own. Over here! he shouted when coffee was on its way. Coming! said Cress, who had just acquired a watermelon as big as his head.

Col shouts, How can we be called the Stoat if we don’t have a bloody stoat? How about we call it the Queen’s Head? says Gwyneth. How about the Queen’s Legs? says Col. Open all hours.

That night Ulysses lay next to her until she fell asleep. He looked about at her room. She’d chosen it because of the red and green wallpaper that had images of macaws and trees, a right ol’ jungle. These were the decisions she, as an eight-year-old, made. The way her mind worked, what interested her. Over there, a hook on which hung her swimming costume and diving mask. The side table where she kept her sunglasses and sketchbook. The dried shell of a sea urchin on the dressing table. Her guitar at the foot of her bed. The sign they’d made together to advertise the pensione. These things are the sum of her life now. And she will grow up and leave, he thinks.

Life in all its exaltation and complexity will devour her. She will love deeply to the exclusion of all else. And he wants to know everything about her before that happens, but wonders if you can ever know anyone truly.

I’ve left her, she said, plopping an olive in her mouth. Ah. I was wondering, said Evelyn, exhaling loudly. Caroline Beevor-Candy was the woman in question. Not her real name, obviously, because Dotty was too discreet to reveal the identities of all her paramours. But the story followed an ever-familiar pattern—that of Dotty’s penchant for young married women.

No matter what protestations Dotty made about the difference in age (often significant), she invariably fell in love with love and the inspiration it brought. To see a beautiful woman writhe in climax beneath her made her incredibly productive, and canvas after canvas shot through the Cork Street coffers in those early days of lust. Evelyn often wondered if the gallery itself procured prospective lovers for her friend, a guarantee against the artistic equivalent of writer’s block.

The kid picked up Ulysses’s beer and brought it to her lips. She still didn’t like it, she just wanted to grow up fast. She tore a piece of bread in half and ate ravenously. She wanted to leave school and beat up the boys who laughed at her. She wanted to speak Italian fluently and get a job and take a train like Evelyn and look back at countless miles of late nights and adventures. She couldn’t imagine herself old, but she could imagine herself no longer young.

This flu virus wouldn’t have touched me if I’d been forty-five, said Evelyn. That would have been the male strain, said Dotty. Evelyn laughed and then coughed. Dotty brought in the soup and confessed she had forgotten to put the bones in. It’s still very tasty, said Evelyn. You must be ill, said Dotty.

The power of still life lies precisely in this triviality. Because it is a world of reliability. Of mutuality between objects that are there, and people who are not. Paused time in ghostly absence.

They have become fixed and unremarkable in this world of habit and we have taken them for granted. Yet within these forms something powerful is retained: Continuity. Memory. Family.

Cress got old quick that summer, but that’s grief for you—that’s what Ulysses said in a call to Col and Pete and Peg.

What can we do for the old Romeo? said Col, and Ulysses said, Be gentle. And that shut Col up quick. Col even apologized in case he was out of line.

I’ll keep you posted, said Ulysses. And we’ll think up something too, said Peg. Tell him he’s my rock. Tell him, you know— I will....

She said that? said Cress. She did. Cress drank his coffee that morning. Even had a pastry, too. Peg’s words, you see—the old fella simply loved her. It would be wrong to say Cress wouldn’t be the same again because he would, but he needed time. So, Ulysses took over the running of the pensione.

Alys even wrote a telegram to see if Ulysses wanted her home. stay put, my sweet, and thrive. He’d never written anything so poetic in his life. She’d keep that telegram all her life.

Twenty years of loving and hoping had broken her and allowed Ted to slip in through the cracks and there was no turning back. I sold my soul, Eddie, and I feel that vacancy every single day. And now our kid, all grown up. At art school! All your talent, you’d be so proud, and she looks like you too, Eddie. Got my smile, they say, but I only see you. And sometimes it hurts to look at her, at her smooth skin and the years she has ahead, and I want to slap her, Eddie, and that’s why I have to keep her at arm’s length, because sometimes she makes me bitter and I don’t want to be bitter because it unseats the love and I just don’t know what to do.

She moved away. Stood in front of a portrait of Alys, a proper drawing, white pencil capturing the light in her eyes, so fierce and intense, and Peg suddenly realized how little the kid was when she’d let her go. She felt an ache in her guts, but she hadn’t eaten so maybe that was it? She lowered her face to the few clothes hanging on a rail. She didn’t know her daughter’s smell, but it was the closest she’d ever felt to her.

Just before ten, however, Ulysses blew out the candles and turned off the lights. He thought they were heading down to Michele’s, but Peg took his hand and led him back upstairs to his room. Peg? She pushed him down on the bed. Through the window, a black and blue marbled sky, a now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t moon and stars and household lights and Col’s laugh rising outside Michele’s. Put these on, she said, reaching into his trouser pocket and pulling out his glasses. She unzipped him, pulled up her dress and straddled him. They didn’t move for a while. A slow pelvic rock till it became unbearable. She pressed both hands onto his mouth to stop his groans. At ten thirty they went down to the square. Peg called out to Cress and the old fella’s face lit up at the sight of her.

Walking out of A Fistful of Dollars, Massimo said, For me, Ennio Morricone has completely redefined the cinematic soundtrack. And Cress and Ulysses wholeheartedly agreed. Massimo said the same thing a year later after watching For a Few Dollars More.

Massimo found Ulysses in the square. The two men held one another till a hundred silent words had passed between them. How’s it your side? said Ulysses. So bad. And Massimo recounted what he’d seen and heard: Embankments had been washed away. The Biblioteca Nazionale was still completely cut off by water and inundated. Santa Croce no one can get inside. Street after street of overturned cars, and dead cattle. The Baptistery doors have been ripped from their frames—the mayor and a film crew are over there now—and panels from the Gates of Paradise are missing.

No one knows how many are dead, he said.

You hear they released all the prisoners from the Murate? said Michele. And now the looting starts!

The door to Ulysses’s workshop was ajar and inside, the walls were blackened. Globes, once the prize of the upper shelves, had been sucked into the eddy; old map books that he’d collected since arriving in the city; Des’s molds; tools; his father’s plates— Outside, a woman wailing, I’ve lost everything. I’ve lost everything. Ulysses felt dizzy. The place stank. The woman’s voice rising with panic.

Ulysses felt Massimo’s hand on his back. He reached into his jacket for cigarettes. Not here, said Massimo gently. It’s all oil, Ulisse. Ulysses staggered out and threw up.

Cress said, The young have brought something intrinsic to the city. Crabs, said the elderly contessa. I was thinking energy and hope, said Cress.

What do you do, Jem? Studying. Medicine. Will you take a look at my foot? (Laughter.) What? It’s been hurting for days! I bet you get asked that all the time, Jem. Not all the time, and I’d be happy to have a look. Although I’m specializing in gynecology. (Laughter.) Alys strummed her guitar and the conversation stopped. Familiar opening bars to what would become the anthem of that time. “God Only Knows” sung over and over, voices parading across the star-packed night.