Lucca Read online

  She knew she had been good that night, better than ever before. The words had come of their own volition, as if they had formulated themselves, and they had left her mouth with no effort, without need of thought. She had forgotten herself and merely followed the movements of the role, yielded to them, given over to them, totally attentive. He talked about that, Harry Wiener, her presence on stage. She had caught sight of him during the performance, but strangely enough that had not made her nervous. She knew she could not do it any other way, and the feeling of exposing herself was not at all unnerving. It was like admitting something painful, while thinking that now one has nothing more to lose. The same strange calm.

  She had never spoken to him before, only seen him in pictures and in the distance at a first night. His grey hair, combed back from his tanned forehead, was long and curly at the neck. There was something resigned about his face with its vertical lines and narrow lips, as if he looked upon the world through the bitter wisdom of a hard-won experience of life. But perhaps this was just how people came to look with the years, whether or not they grew wiser or more stupid. He was always elegant, wearing a camel-hair coat and Italian suit or letting himself be photographed during a rehearsal in a T-shirt and baggy chinos, with his spectacles on a cord round his neck and his narrow eyes on the stage. He was on his fourth marriage, but that did not prevent him from playing the part of seducer left and right. For a few months each year he retired to his house on a mountain in Andalucia, where he was said to be writing his memoirs.

  The Gypsy King. It was Otto who had come up with that, and since then he had been called nothing else. It was not kindly meant, but king he certainly was. No one could surpass Harry Wiener. Otto had had a part in one of his Ibsen productions and could raise a laugh with his stories of brutal humiliations and hysterical attacks of weeping when the Gypsy King cracked his invisible whip. The actors feared him and dreamed of nothing else but getting a part with him. To be directed by Harry Wiener was like dipping your toes in eternity.

  Otto was not impressed, it seemed as if he was determined not to be. In his opinion the Gypsy King’s productions were no more than mundane theatrical gastronomy for the culturally hungry bourgeois, weighted with psychophile symbolism. That was yet another expression he had coined, psychophile. And why was it, in fact, that the Gypsy King only put on gilt-edged classics? When had he last stuck his neck out with a piece of new drama, where he could not automatically rely on his audience flocking in with reverently folded hands? Otto would much rather make films, he had already won several leading parts and come close to winning a Bodil award.

  Lucca wasn’t sure. She could see what he meant, yes, and she had once sprayed a whole mouthful of red wine over him laughing when he parodied the Gypsy King giving a demonstration of how to play Shylock. With all the drawers open at once, juggling with the whole of Judaism, as Otto had said. All the same, she had been gripped, almost secretly, when she and Otto had been to see one of the Gypsy King’s shows. She was thinking of that on the spring evening when, after the performance, she was sitting at her mirror taking off her make-up, and caught sight of Harry Wiener in the dressing-room doorway.

  He was different, that was the first thing she had thought, different from the person she had imagined. He seemed almost shy as he stood hesitantly on the threshold. He looked like an apology for himself and his colourful reputation. Might he interrupt? The other actors gaped like shepherds who had caught sight of their guiding star, and it had been Lucca who pulled herself together first, smiling and unconcerned, to offer him a chair. He just wanted to come and tell them how outstanding they had been. The word he used was superb. Lucca’s cheeks burned when he looked at her and said a few things about her interpretation, words of a kind she had never heard anyone use before.

  They sat listening in a semi-circle around Harry Wiener while he commented on their performance. Lucca thought it was only now she understood what she had been doing on stage during the past few weeks. He had a good deal of criticism of the text itself, but their production had not merely released the best aspects of it, they had managed to imbue a deeper psychological resonance into it as well. Harry Wiener’s words sounded old-fashioned and stately, like old silver fish knives lying each in their perfectly demarcated space, wrapped in moss green baize. He had not taken off his camel-hair coat, perhaps because no one had asked him to. Underneath it he wore a dark blue T-shirt and black jeans, but he sported real crocodile moccasins. The right mix of elegance and something informal, now he had come to see what the young actors had to offer. She could just hear Otto.

  She looked round at her colleagues. They were all ears. They barely managed to keep their mouths shut, and she was glad Otto was not there. He would have derided them for feeling so honoured by a visit from this illustrious guest and being the recipients of his gracious words of praise. Like a cub scout pack given an audience with Baden Powell himself. But what about Otto? How could it be that he was so horrified and sarcastic as soon as the conversation took on an emotional tone? Was he actually a bit ashamed of being an actor? Maybe that was why he always had to make a laughing stock of the old theatre chiefs and their silk scarves and gas lamp diction, which he could mimic to make you fall about with streaming eyes. In his heart he probably dreamed of appearing with a bare torso in some action-packed American gun-slinging film.

  At a certain point Harry Wiener caught her eye in one of the mirrors, and she smiled a little ironic smile which was both lightly conspiratorial and sexily challenging in an aloof way. As if she wished to keep a certain distance and yet make herself known. Possibly she noticed a particular interest in his brief glance, which seemed to read her in a flash before he looked away again. Perhaps she was flirting a little. It was too fleeting to reflect on more closely, it was just a glance, and he removed it so quickly. There was something modest about him, and she tightened the belt of her dressing gown, suddenly conscious of having nothing on underneath. She had just come out of the shower when he turned up, but then he must be used to that.

  He was downright clumsy, she discovered, when he looked around for an ashtray and happened to upset a box of powder over his elegant coat. He smiled and talked on while brushing it off with the back of his hand. There was not much of the gypsy king about him there in that messy dressing room. He spoke quietly and seriously in his deep, hoarse voice about the stage as a mental space in which we keep a tryst with our inner demons. Lucca took pleasure in listening to his voice and looking at him as he spoke. He sounded like someone who knew what he was talking about, someone who had paid for every single one of his insights.

  Now she understood why all the actors he had worked with spoke about him as they did. With the exception of Otto. When Harry Wiener now and then looked at her she felt he saw something she was not aware of herself, as if there was more in her than she realised. He spoke meticulously and hesitantly, searching for words, almost as if he were thinking aloud, while he looked down at the toes of his shoes or the cigarette between his tanned fingers. His hands were surprisingly delicate. He interrupted himself in the middle of a sentence and smiled apologetically as he asked if they were thirsty.

  They went to a nearby café, he ordered champagne, the exaggerated gesture embarrassed them. He regaled them with anecdotes about well-known actors, both living and dead. He made them laugh and was even ironic without seeming affected. He listened too, when they dared voice their own reflections and feelings, and gave good advice without being didactic, as if he just wanted to share his experiences with them and his wonder at all the questions for which even he had not found answers. The next day they asked each other why he had bothered to spend a whole evening with them. Maybe he had simply been relaxing, taking a break from the role of peripatetic myth. Maybe he took pleasure in their enthusiasm because it reminded him of the deeper reasons he himself had had for going on, year after year, instead of resting on his laurels.

  When the café closed only Lucca, her friend Miriam and Harry Wi
ener were left. They stood for a few moments on the pavement talking, while a waiter piled chairs on tables. Miriam unlocked her bicycle and kissed Lucca on the cheek, fairly demonstratively, she thought, as her friend waved and disappeared round the corner. But suddenly she was standing with the Gypsy King in front of a closed café after midnight, in a square on the edge of the city centre. He turned up his coat collar and offered her a cigarette. She accepted it without considering whether she wanted to smoke or not, and he lit his silver lighter, looking curiously at her, as if now the initiative rested with her alone.

  Later she had to admit to herself that his simple and direct way of handling things was impressive. There was no longer any constraint about him. He asked if she was hungry. He had a flat he used for work in town, they could go along there and have a snack. He said this with suitable innocence and yet with a droll look she couldn’t help smiling at. She was tired, she said. But then the least he could do was drive her home! His car was a street or two away.

  As they walked along the quiet side streets she wondered at their walking there together, she and Harry Wiener. He said he had wanted to see her on stage for a long time. He had seen photographs of her. They had interested him, the photos, she had a distinctive face. He looked at her. She didn’t need to be sorry about that! He spoke of photography, about how photographs reveal what we can never see with the naked eye because our eyes are always seeking a mirror of our ideas. How photography can reveal a reality that is otherwise inaccessible to us, how faces become visible in all their startling and fascinating strangeness. She had never thought about it like that before.

  It was an old Mercedes cabriolet, silver-grey with a beige-coloured leather trim. She wondered if he might have chosen that colour because it matched his grey hair. Everything about Harry Wiener was tinged with silver. She sat with her hands between her thighs in the thin dress. Now and then he threw a glance at her knees in their black tights under the hem, beside his hand resting on the gear lever, but she felt it would be absurd to cover them. She listened to the hum of the motor and looked out at the illuminated town turning and turning around her. It seemed slightly foreign, the town, seen from his car. She told him where to turn off and asked him to stop a few doors from her own. He switched off the engine and turned towards her. Again she was astonished at his directness. He would like to kiss her, would she permit him? She smiled and shook her head. She was both very talented and very attractive, he said, and she was wrong if she thought the two things had nothing to do with each other.

  After she got out she bent forward with another smile. He hoped they would meet again. She thanked him for the evening and slammed the door. His front lights threw a hard beam on the pavement slabs. The cats’ eyes on the bicycles leaning against the wall shone red, and her long shadow rose abruptly and swung over the façade as he passed. She caught a brief glimpse of his silhouette in the back window before he turned and was out of sight. Otto had gone to bed. She took off her shoes in the hall and undressed without switching on the light. She imagined Harry Wiener thinking of her while he drove through the town. A strange thought. She lay down close to Otto’s back, so they lay skin to skin beneath the duvet, pleased with herself.

  In the morning Miriam called while Otto was in the bath. Had anything happened? Lucca was irritated. What did she mean, happened? Miriam laughed, that was obvious enough. Lucca protested, he had talked to the others just as much. Miriam laughed again. Lucca sat in an easy chair with a shiny, worn silk cover, pink flowers on a curry yellow background. They had found it in a skip. She was wearing one of Otto’s creased shirts, nothing else, she had just woken up. She pulled her legs up in the chair and looked at herself in the tall mirror leaning against the wall beside the bed. She held the phone between her chin and shoulder as she gathered her hair into a loose knot. It had grown long, half of it fell down again around her cheeks. Otto liked her to put her hair up that way, casually. Miriam talked about her boyfriend, she wanted to have a baby, he was not keen. She was afraid he didn’t love her any more. Lucca let her talk on. A child, that was almost impossible to imagine.

  She looked at her legs. She had nice legs, they were long, and her thighs were narrow and firm. Her cunt was nice too. She had shaved it so only a little tuft was left. That was where the King of the Gypsies would have liked to make his way. It was comical to think of all the wiles he had made use of, with champagne and stories and sage advice drawn from the experience of a long life, all of it to no earthly use. Just because he had seen a picture of her and taken a fancy to such a young, talented cunt.

  She spread her legs so they lay over the chair arm, listening to Miriam going on about the child she so much wanted. Now she looked like the front page of one of the porn magazines she sometimes saw Otto glance at sideways in the all-night kiosk. Imagine if the Gypsy King could see her now. He would go right out of his mind. Be jolted out of his old, flabby, wrinkled skin. It would almost have been worth letting him, just to be able to enjoy his crestfallen face afterwards. Was that all? Yes, your Majesty, that was the lot! She decided not to say anything to Otto. Even though she had been firm he might go on thinking about it all the same. Besides, it irritated her that she had stayed there listening to the Gypsy King and his profundities and allowed him to drive her home in his flash Mercedes.

  When she had put down the receiver she rose and stood for a while in front of the mirror. She unbuttoned the shirt, she had lost weight, her stomach was perfectly flat. She didn’t want any child, for the time being she would keep her stomach to herself. Otto had turned off the shower, she could hear him swishing water down the drain with the rubber swabber. She pushed the duvet on to the floor and lay down on the bed with closed eyes. She felt the air from the open window on her face, stomach and thighs. Music wafted down from one of the other floors, a monotonous thumping bass rhythm. A dog barked down in the street.

  Otto opened the door of the bathroom. In a moment he would be with her. It was a game. She would lie there without moving, and he would walk to and fro as if he were searching for something and had not even noticed her. He would let her wait, the room would grow silent, and in the silence she would be completely exposed to his gaze, unmoving, in an extremity of tension, trying to guess where on her body she would feel his first touch.

  Lucca met Otto eighteen months after she left drama school. She had heard about him and seen him at cafés and bars when out with her friends. He was already then a star in the making, an underground star if such exists. He had been interviewed in a woman’s magazine as the rumbustious puppy of young film, and if he showed up at a party you could be sure of fireworks. He had been in a relationship with a well-known rock singer and in general was the type girls kept a watch on out of the corners of their eyes over their cappuccinos and looked away from with a chilly, unapproachable air. They always referred to him in ironical terms if one of their group lost her grip and naïvely gave way to her curiosity. In their opinion he was already established although according to the usual standards he was still only promising. And Lucca thought he seemed to fancy himself a bit too much when he swaggered around in a football shirt, knitted cap and flip-flops, or whatever he hit on, scanning the bar.

  When she was offered a part in a television serial in which Otto was also appearing she felt surprised at first that he could be bothered with such a job, although she naturally accepted. He had just got out of prison, she was his girl, and while he was banged up she had naturally fallen for the cop who had run him in. It was a totally fatuous script, but Otto was good and that made her better than she would otherwise have been. He was kind to her, he calmed her down with a smile or made her laugh when she was nervous, and she was surprised at his discipline. He could sit and read the newspaper or tell stories until the moment before they had to go into action and then make his entry and throw himself into his part as if with a snap of the fingers he became one with it.

  In fact, he did not act. He was always himself, a fictitious edition of himse
lf, as he would have been if chance had shaped his life along the lines of the script. He summoned the aspects demanded of the role with ease and carried everything off with his drawling diction and adroit muscular physique. They sat chatting among the lamp stands and rolls of cable in a corner of the studio while the cameramen set up their lights. Otto had never been to drama school and wasn’t planning to do so. He couldn’t be bothered to spend three years lying on the floor touching people and breathing deeply. She might well have protested, but she didn’t.

  How did it start? As such things do start, as vague notions, playful fantasies, a special feeling aroused merely by sitting beside him, listening to his voice and feeling his eyes. His presence was reflected in all her words and movements, even when she turned her back on him and talked to someone else. One moment she could be really dissatisfied with herself, with her appearance, her voice and what she said, and the next she could have a sneaking feeling of not being quite what she thought she was. As if she hid a secret version of herself, so secret that she was unable to make out who she actually might be, the other woman behind her distrustful reflection.

  He provoked her with his self-assurance and cool dispassion. She felt he could see through her ironic aloofness. When she tried out a sharp comment he quite simply appeared not to have heard her, unless he stared straight in her eyes so that his silence seemed a grosser insult than the most offensive reply. She admired his insolence, but kept her mask on. She waited for him to relax for a second, open up a chink.