The Lessons Read online

  With a quarter of a mile to go to the top of the hill, I watched as they bought gelati and entered the hall beneath the campanile, where one buys tickets for five euros to make the trip to the top. I said to myself, why am I doing this? I thought, I am trying to escape from my own life by burying myself in someone else’s. I am doing what I have always done, following a stranger in the hope of finding a way out of my own maze. The woman is nothing more than a symbol. It is ridiculous. I continued.

  I reached the top of the hill and made one brief circuit of the buildings, searching for them. I imagined what her face might look like if she turned and I could see it from beneath her wide-brimmed hat, imagined that it might be a revelation, the kind of revelation that I have always been waiting for. And what would I do if it were? They were not here. They had bought their tickets and were, even now, slowly making their way to the top of the tower. I imagined them urging each other on with gentle camaraderie, relishing the burning in their thighs as they continued the ascent.

  And I could have waited. There are two thin staircases, one going up and one coming down. I could have waited by the ‘down’ staircase as it disgorged the tourists one by one. It might have been an hour or two – people generally like to admire the view once they reach the top – but I could have sat on the bank, bought myself a gelato and waited for them to return. My first instinct was to do so, but the thought of sitting waiting, of allowing those clouds to return to my mind, of the aimless hours I might be here filled me with sudden horror. It was very clear to me – up the tower or back to the hotel – nothing else was possible.

  I purchased my ticket from the middle-aged woman with dyed black hair behind the counter. She looked at me, flicking her eyes up and down, noting my stick and my bruises. I could hear her thinking, who is this stupid Englishman who thinks he can climb the tower with a stick? She tapped the sign taped to the glass in front of her which said, in several languages, ‘Warning: there are 487 steps to the tip of the tower’. I nodded. She gave me a weak, amused smile as if to say, ah, now I understand. The stick is an affectation. You are not crippled but a poseur. She slid a small blue ticket under her window and I took it, rubbing the soft edges of the cardboard along my fingertips. I thought: is this madness? Have I finally succumbed?

  The stairwell was cool and dim, a pleasant relief from the wet heat of the day outside. As my eyes adjusted I looked up the staircase, a stone spiral starting broad but becoming rapidly thin, with deep wells worn into the centre of every step by centuries of footfalls. Here, again, were the warning signs in several languages. And what if I heeded the instructions and stepped back? Again, the thought was intolerable. I knew that this was not right, that there must be some other solution, some way that did not involve climbing too many stairs, more than I could reasonably expect to achieve without pain. And yet sometimes, though one knows there must be another solution, one cannot find it. And so we take the only choice we see. Up the stairs.

  The stairs were crowded. While I had waited at their foot, another ten or fifteen people had passed me heading upwards: backpacking teenagers and middle-aged couples, families of husband, wife and small children carried on shoulders, even three sprightly women in their seventies, each wearing shorts exposing their various veins, varicose and thread. The good-humoured confidence with which they approached the stairs gave me comfort – the thing surely could not be so difficult? And indeed, the first 100 steps or so (the numbers carefully carved into the walls at intervals) were fairly pleasant, a deep and satisfying form of exercise, causing me to reach down into my lungs for oxygen, past all cotton wool and thought.

  At 125 or thereabouts, an awkward step, a deeper than usual dip in its centre, threw me slightly to one side. My knee wrenched and keened, a thrum through my body as of a ligament painfully plucked. I felt the joint misalign and then right itself. I became a little nauseated. I went on a few more steps slowly. The back packers behind me slowed down too, and I heard a tutting further back, past the bend in the staircase. For a while, I stepped up only with my good leg, keeping the other leg straight to let the knee recover. Some space opened up between me and the middle-aged couple I was following. After ten or twenty steps in this fashion, I went on slowly with both legs. Every time I pushed up with my injured knee the joint gave a lick of pain, dull at first, then sharper and sharper, as if a thread of metal were being worked into the flesh.

  By 250, I was counting each step as I trod it. The pain was becoming more intense. I thought, this is absurd. I really should not go on. But the thought of traversing the distance I had already come going down, of pushing past these people, even if such a thing could be done, of squeezing by them, of tripping on their feet or the trailing straps of their rucksacks, of falling again – and here I could feel the sensation of falling in the tendons of my neck and the muscles of my stomach – of injuring myself even more. All these thoughts kept me moving onward, kept me counting the steps.

  By 350, I was telling myself at each step that if I just did one more I could turn back. With each step I said it again. One more and I will turn back.

  At 400 steps, the pain in my knee was excruciating. Every step was like damp fire, a squelching, wrenching boggy pain. I thought, if I collapse now, they’ll carry me to the summit. I wondered how I would be taken down. I imagined a helicopter floating above the roof of the campanile, or teams of abseilers bearing me between them to the ground. I tried to move my attention away from my knee, to focus on my hand instead, or my head, or the bridge of my nose – still aching. But every other step drew me back again to the knee, the bright red pain banging like a fire engine, shouting like a child. With twenty steps to go, I felt something collapse and sag in it, a hollow, desiccated feeling, as though I had put my foot down expecting a step and found none. I knew I could not put any more weight on it. I hauled myself up the last few steps towards daylight with my arms and my one good leg. I thought perhaps I was sweating or groaning, but the pain was so intense it was hard to make anything else out.

  As I came out into the sunlight and wind at the top of the bell tower I collapsed with a grunt on the floor in front of the steps. Other tourists gasped and turned to look at me. I crouched on the floor, my injured leg stretched out rigidly. People coming up the stairs behind me stared and walked around me. I heard voices muttering in Italian, asking – when I grabbed a few words from the air and translated them – for a doctor, or what was wrong. And then, mysteriously, I was sure I heard my name. A woman’s voice, saying, ‘James?’ I shook my head. It came again. ‘James?’

  I looked up. The woman with the broad-brimmed hat was leaning over me, saying my name. She was directly in front of the sun, her face silhouetted. I held my hand over my eyes to look at her.

  She said, ‘James, are you all right?’

  It was Jess.

  25

  She made all the arrangements smooth, as is so often her way. I said, ‘Is it you? Is it really you?’ and little else. She arranged for the guide at the top of the tower to radio down to those at the bottom of the tower to stop incoming and outgoing traffic while we gingerly, with stiff legs and braced arms, made our way down. I said, ‘But is it you? How are you here?’ And she said, ‘Yes. Yes, it is. Now concentrate.’ Her boyfriend, Seth, a double bass player, an Australian, offered to support me. I refused initially, but when it became obvious I wasn’t going to be walking anywhere without help he slipped an arm around my waist and took part of the weight of my body. He appeared fairly good-natured about this enterprise, telling me I hardly weighed more than his instrument. I couldn’t think of any appropriate response to this news.

  At the bottom of the tower, we collapsed on the grass – I found I could support myself fairly well with my stick on the level – and Seth brought gelati and packs of crisps.

  ‘So, James,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  I nodded and attempted a smile.

  ‘Are you the one who’s a quazillionaire?’

  Jess
touched his arm lightly. Her skin was paler than his, the contrast clear when her fingers rested in the springy blond hair on his forearm.

  ‘No, darling,’ she said, ‘that’s Mark. He also lives in Italy though. Or is that still right?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘we live here.’

  I looked at Seth, with his disarmingly open features topped by a mass of dirty blond hair. He reminded me in looks of Jess’s first boyfriend, Christian, whose picture I had seen in a scrapbook in her bedroom. I tried to remember what the first violin from her orchestra had looked like. I wondered if the memory I came up with, of a ham-faced man with a pug nose, ruddy features but, yes, blond hair, was of the right man. Had I been the only aberration in her collection?

  ‘James?’ said Jess.

  ‘Hmmm?’ I had evidently missed something while contemplating Seth.

  ‘I said, if we get a cab into town, do you think you could sit comfortably on the ride?’

  I could hardly bend my knee. Still, I would have to go back to the town eventually. I nodded.

  They looked well together, Jess and Seth, relaxed in one another’s company. He was at least twice as broad in the shoulder as she – I imagined what he must look like when performing. Like a gorilla in evening dress, constantly threatening to burst the buttons and beat on his chest like Tarzan. I thought again of what Mark had told me, about Jess’s infidelity. It seemed that Jess had sprung directly from my thoughts, like a demon summoned by a magician to answer a particular question.

  It was only when we were in the car that I thought to pose the question myself. I was in the front passenger seat. I pulled down the vanity mirror and peered at them in it. His arm was resting casually on her thigh, her hand on top of his.

  ‘Why are you here?’ I said.

  They glanced at each other, then Jess smiled.

  ‘Sightseeing,’ she said.

  Seth looked at her.

  ‘We have a couple of weeks’ rehearsal break and we thought we’d do churches and cathedrals of southern Italy. How amazing that we should run into you!’

  And did you, I wanted to ask, sleep with the first violin of your orchestra, what was his name, something like Rudolph, in Michaelmas term of our third year?

  I imagined asking the question. I imagined what she would do in response. Would she blush? Would she deny it? Would her denials be honest? Would I be able to tell?

  It occurred to me that she might deny nothing. She might say, ‘Yes, I did. What right have you to ask? You slept with Mark.’ But it was impossible to ask the question of her.

  We found a place in a restaurant on the square. Jess asked me again whether I wanted to find a doctor to look at my knee but I repeated that I did not. Seth looked between us, a mildly interested expression on his clear, broad face. We ordered food, then Jess excused herself for a moment, leaving Seth and me alone.

  I looked at him surreptitiously while pretending to peruse the menu. His strength was visible in his broad shoulders and powerful calves. In his T-shirt and shorts he looked as though he might have strolled in from a weightlifting competition. I wondered how he managed to play his instrument without smashing it to matchwood.

  ‘So what do you do then, James?’ he asked.

  A waiter brought us beers and antipasti.

  ‘I teach,’ I said. I speared a prawn with my fork and bit into it.

  ‘Ah, right,’ he said. ‘In a school?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. I could feel my mouth becoming tighter. ‘I teach English to private pupils.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Seth, and took a mouthful of beer, foam just touching his upper lip. ‘And you live with the quazillionaire?’

  I nodded.

  Seth smiled broadly. ‘Pay much, does it, teaching?’

  ‘Not a lot, no.’

  Seth nodded and took another swig.

  ‘That must be kind of tough for you. Living with someone so rich. When you’re not rich yourself, that is.’ He popped three olives into his mouth at once.

  I found myself wishing, for the first time in twenty-four hours, that Mark was there. His presence always discourages these macho pissing contests. No one wants to compare wallet size with him. Jess precluded further such conversation by returning to the table.

  ‘James,’ she said, sitting down and smoothing her trousers with her characteristic, stiff-handed gesture, ‘you must tell me all your news.’

  News, I thought, news. What a curious concept. Of course, other people’s lives moved on in this way. There was news – of promotions, of marriages and children, of new purchases longingly saved for, of holidays planned, business ventures undertaken, dreams brought closer or abandoned. So much of ‘news’ is really about money. The getting of it, the spending of it, the hoarding and increasing of it. Once all possible money has been obtained, what is left of news? Only love affairs, procreation and the passing enthusiasms which substitute for other people’s employment.

  ‘We’re planning a trip to the mountains,’ I said, knowing how little it was to show for several years of my life. ‘In the autumn, probably. We’ll rent a chalet near the border.’

  ‘Sounds nice,’ said Jess, stirring her coffee. ‘Do you travel a lot?’

  I remembered the time, about three years earlier, when, after watching a late-night National Geographic programme Mark had developed a burning desire to see Peru. For days he was full of excitement about Machu Picchu and the sites of human sacrifice, talking with glee about the marvellous Incas and the wicked Spanish who had forced them to stop their wholly excellent practices. He booked plane tickets within the week, and paid for hotels and excursions from Lima, but the day before we were due to go to Rome to start the first leg of the journey he changed his mind. Sulking, he said that he’d rather stay home after all, and no persuasion of mine could move him from his bed. When the time came the next day for the planes we were supposed to be on to depart I thought of how I would have behaved if I had paid for the tickets with my own money, if I had had to scrimp and save to afford them, to dream for months of the trip. This is a feature of wealth: by allowing one to do more, it prevents one from doing anything.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘we don’t travel a great deal.’

  There was a long silence.

  Eventually, realizing it was expected, I said, ‘What about you? Do you have news? How are your family? How’s Franny?’

  Jess smiled. ‘Hmmm … news.’ She put her hand to her lips; her nails were neatly manicured, with pale pink polish, perfect half-moons of white at the tips of her fingers.

  ‘You know Simon asked Franny to marry him?’

  I shook my head. It was like hearing about events on Mars. I could hardly believe that lives continued in this sensible, joyful fashion.

  ‘She said no. Well, first she said yes and then she said no, so it was a bit difficult. They got back together after, well, you know –’ she looked down – ‘after Daisy. She said it was too much, too fast, too intense. I understood what she meant, but Simon obviously didn’t take it well. In a way, I can see what he meant too. I mean, they’ve known each other for more than ten years, so it’s hardly too fast, is it?’

  I shook my head, unsure of how to respond.

  ‘Anyway, it’s all done now. Franny’s teaching something clever at Harvard: psychology of consumption. Oh, and I think she’s a lesbian now. Or bisexual. She’s in a relationship with a neuroscientist woman anyway. Her name’s … ummm … Rachel something. She wrote a very popular book – How to Work Your Brain? Something like that.’

  ‘And Simon?’

  She pursed her lips. ‘He’s back to the usual. Working all hours – I think he’s in Rio now. The last time I saw him he brought along a French lawyer called Béatrice – very glamorous, about six feet tall. But I can’t see it lasting really.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Emmanuella’s become rather unexpected. You remember she was seeing that man with fifteen titles and a pedigree back to the thirteenth century?’

&nbs
p; ‘Mmm-hmmm.’

  ‘Well, she broke it off. No one quite knows what happened, because he was absolutely the best catch her parents could have envisaged. I think they were pretty cross. She went a bit strange, actually – it was a few months after … after you and Mark left the country. She kept sending me bits of cloth blessed by saints, and now she’s gone off to volunteer in Africa. With nuns, if you can believe it, working with AIDS patients.’

  I blinked. I tried to imagine glamorous Emmanuella working with the terminally ill in Africa.

  ‘Oh!’ said Jess suddenly. ‘Do you remember Leo? Simon’s little brother? The one Mark rescued from drowning?’

  How could I possibly not remember Leo? He was Mark’s one good deed, his saving grace.

  ‘Can you believe he’s off to college next year?’

  ‘God, not Oxford?’

  Jess laughed, then stopped and flicked her eyes towards Seth and then back to me again.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not Oxford. Agricultural college. In Wales. He’s turned out rather the healthy outdoors sort.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I said, and meant it. I found this thought pleasing – of little Leo grown to manhood, healthy and strong.

  ‘And how,’ said Jess, ‘is Mark? How are you and Mark?’

  I looked down at the table, then up at Seth, his smooth face still blandly interested.

  ‘We’re fine,’ I said brightly. ‘Still the same, just fine. Nothing much to report.’

  She looked at me and chewed on her upper lip. The clock in the square tolled out the quarter-hour with sonorous slowness.

  ‘Seth, darling,’ she said. ‘James and I have a few things to talk through. Could you maybe get me some of those soaps we saw in the little shop by the harbour this morning? I want to give some to Granny.’