In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje [74]
Finally he found the couple he wanted. In their early forties, drinking hard, a flirtatious wife and a bully of a husband. He danced with his eyes against hers singing “Night and Day.”
“Vicina o lontana da me
non importa mia cara, dove sei …”
She was impressed by his Italian, which he claimed to have picked up in Tuscany the previous summer. His fingers circled her shoulder blade. She leaned back.
– Do you see my husband over there near the chandelier propositioning that girl? He’s probably suggesting the yacht.
– A yacht here?
– Yes, we came in one, across the bay. Did you?
– No. I never sail.
– We’ll take you.
He laughed, dropping a half-smoked cigarette onto the floor.
– That’s my shy sister over there.
She glanced across the room to the hollow glare of Giannetta who held onto Patrick’s arm.
– Perhaps she could join us too.
Taking the bus down to the dock earlier that evening, Caravaggio had said, “Let me tell you about the rich – they have a way of laughing.” And Patrick thought, Alice had said that. The exact words. “The only thing that holds the rich to the earth is property,” Caravaggio continued, “their bureaus, their marble tables, their jewellery.…” Patrick had been quiet, not even bothering to laugh.
There was an image he remembered of Caravaggio, waving goodbye with a blue hand as he hung on the prison roof. And when Patrick had come out of jail he traced the thief down through his Blue Cellar compatriots. “Mr. Wilful Destruction of Property saved my life,” Caravaggio had explained to Giannetta. They showed him the city, where everything was five years older, and they became his friends. Late into those spring nights they had talked about each other’s lives.
On reconnaissance the week before the Yacht Club dance, Giannetta had watched Patrick get drunk, and during the ride back on the ferry she had held him, his head in her lap. She leaned over him in the darkness, her hand in his hair. He looked up. There was a tenderness in this sky of her warm face he hadn’t noticed before. Then everything had leapt from focus as Giannetta and Caravaggio lifted him off the ferry and brought him home to sleep on their living-room floor.
Now they step from the last stages of the costume ball out onto the dock: Caravaggio, his two rich friends, his dog, his ‘sister,’ and Patrick, who is supposedly her escort for the evening.
“… notte e giorno
Questo … mmm …
mi segue ovunque io vada”
Caravaggio sings to the night, a bottle like a pendulum in his fingers, his arm sprawled over the woman’s shoulder. He pours out monologues about cut glass and bevelled mirrors and rubs her nipple to the beat of his singing as her husband unlaces the boat from its moorings. Patrick walks behind dressed as a thief in black, a red scarf floating behind him and carrying a bag of tools with SWAG written across it.
Boarding the couple’s yacht, The Annalisa, Caravaggio flings himself down the stairs laughing, looking for alcohol. He is beyond order. He and the husband uncork several bottles and climb back up on deck. The wife winds up the gramophone, the silk dress with a thousand sequins fluttering upon her. Giannetta leans against the rail receiving the air while the husband unleashes the sails and they break loose out into the bay – from the island towards the city. Bunny Berigan pierces the air with his trumpet whirling up in scales, leaving the orchestras of the Yacht Club behind. They are off. Rich.
Caravaggio claims helplessness with ropes and asks the wife to dance. He is charmed by her flippant sexuality. They fumble against each other with the motion of the waves, Giannetta and Patrick somewhere by the prow. The boat tacks back and forth towards the city a mile away. Caravaggio and the husband and the wife drink fast. The wife winds up the gramophone and “I Can’t Get Started” emerges again under the hiss of the needle.
Caravaggio catches Patrick’s eye and raises his glass. “Here’s to impatience,” he toasts, “here’s to H.G. Wells,