Lucca was completely exhausted after the rehearsals, and when she woke up in the evening having slept for an hour or two, she discovered she had spent yet another day without thinking of Otto. Thinking of him brought no particular feelings. She felt as if she’d had a local anaesthetic, and on the nights she had dinner with Else she hardly listened to what her mother said. Most of the time they left each other in peace, and there were days when they just met in the hall if one was leaving and the other coming home. Miriam called now and then, but if Lucca started to tell her anything she always noticed a shadow of envy beneath her friend’s enthusiasm. For a year Miriam had had nothing but a minor part in a television series for children, disguised as a kangaroo. She had laughed at herself, but nevertheless she tried to present the role in a serious light when she explained how hard it actually was to hop around in a costume like that, legs together. She had been highly praised for it.
When Miriam thought they had talked enough about Strindberg and Harry Wiener she asked if Lucca still thought about Otto and, as if to make the most of it, she announced one day that after all there didn’t seem to have been so much between Otto and the mulatto model he had been seen with. Lucca could sense Miriam didn’t believe her when she said she hardly thought of him any more. She ought to go on suffering when everything else was going so well. Or had she fallen for the Gypsy King, in fact? When Miriam hinted at that for the third time Lucca shut her up. There was really more to life than everlastingly falling in love, she said, surprised to hear herself quoting Else. Work, for instance, she went on. That made Miriam change the subject.
Only at rehearsals did she felt completely alert. She no longer doubted that she had been given the role because Harry Wiener had faith in her talent. She had been reassured when she went to tea with him in his rooftop apartment, and her trust in him increased when he sometimes took her hand or put an arm round her shoulder as they talked. There was nothing in the least suggestive or underhand in his touch, it came as a natural extension of the conversation and his explanations when he went through a scene and showed her how he visualised her entrance and where she should stop.
She never spoke to him about anything but her part, and he left as soon as the day’s rehearsal was finished. Nothing in his professional manner betrayed that she had sat on his sofa one afternoon talking about herself while outside thunder crashed and rain fell. It strengthened her feeling of laying herself bare on the stage, delivered to his eyes down in the semi-darkness of the auditorium. There was a small lamp on his desk, but its light illuminated only his torso, not his face. She wondered whether the other actors had been to tea with him too, and if he knew as much about their lives as he did about hers.
One day she was in the canteen with the captain and the diva, the two of them enjoying a teasing, comradely banter. They must have known each other since youth. Lucca felt an outsider. It was still strange to have lunch with them, although they were her colleagues. She had known their faces since she was a child, and here she was watching the diva pick up shrimps from her plate with her red nails and pop them between her red, red lips. She and the captain couldn’t agree whether Harry Wiener’s present wife was number three or four, and they helped each other count up the names of the women he had married, and those he’d had on the side. They even argued over the order. He changes wives as others change their cars, said the diva. She had been friends with the previous wife, that is, number two or three. Wasn’t there one they had forgotten?
The captain filled up his beer glass. Anyway, Wiener would soon have to look around for a new one. He had foam on his nose when drinking. The diva removed it with an affectionate finger. Well, you are exquisitely sympathetic, she laughed with her moist lips and turned to Lucca. She had better take care or she would be the next! But maybe the crafty old bugger had already tried it on? Lucca felt her cheeks burn. Well, they’d better not go into that now! The captain made a poker face and raised an index finger at his friend. The young weren’t like that — any more! The diva let out a whinny. One-love, she said and gasped for breath with a groan of ecstasy. But what was it he had called Wiener, that time they did A Midsummer Night’s Dream… Yes, come on now! She gave his arm a pat of encouragement. The captain scratched his neck and raised his glass. She picked up the remaining shrimps from her plate and sucked mayonnaise from her fingers, looking at him expectantly. We call him the Gypsy King, said Lucca. The captain held out his glass and bent forwards as if his beer was going down the wrong way. They laughed.
As she cycled home she felt irritated with herself for blushing when the diva asked if Harry Wiener had made a pass at her. Had they seen through her? Was that how he tracked down new talent? But why then had she got the part? Was it only because it would be too painful if she put it around town how she had sent off such an old ape? Not because he was ashamed of his approaches, but because he was ashamed at being rejected. Had he given her the part simply to keep her mouth shut? That seemed too complicated, she thought and regretted having angled for such a cheap laugh with the hackneyed nickname. She had slipped that in to assure them she had not been to bed with him. But why was everyone convinced she had, Otto and Miriam and now the diva and the captain as well?
She could not make the image of the notorious womaniser match her impression of the calm, concentrated man with the lined face. Nor could she make her own image of him match the episode in his Mercedes when he had driven her home and quite openly made advances. Probably he had just felt lonely. His wife was incurably ill and he didn’t know how long she had to lie suffering. Was it any wonder that he lost his bearings for a moment? Looking back at it now she felt he had opened a crack into something human in his otherwise controlled and impenetrable façade. Just as when he received her a month later, confused and half asleep in a frail and touching way.
Suddenly she pictured him again clearly, in the car when they stopped at the kerb outside the Egyptian restaurant. The vulnerable look in his eyes when he bravely gave himself away and asked for a kiss. He must have known what he was exposing himself to, the gossip and ridicule, but he had not cared. She kept on going back to the mixture of courage and vulnerability there had been in his expression. She couldn’t possibly be just a firm young cunt, yet another in the series, if you were to believe the diva and the captain.
She recalled what he had said. That she was both talented and attractive, and she was wrong if she believed one had nothing to do with the other. When he said that she had thought he was merely trying to manipulate her or overwhelm her with his cynicism. But perhaps there was no difference, with a man like Harry Wiener. Maybe he had wanted to test her and see if she had sufficient substance and ability to resist. He must have seen something more in her that night. He must have seen the same thing he had patiently waited for from the start of rehearsals, down at his desk in the semi-darkness, until she too began to see it in the bright light up on the stage, as she gradually took possession of her part. Another side of herself which so far had remained hidden.
She slowly turned off the hot water until it became icy cold. For a moment her heart seemed to stop beating. She gasped but forced herself to stand still, eyes closed, completely stunned by cold. When she had turned off the water she stepped in front of the wide mirror fitted into the wall between the Moorish tiles. The window behind her was open, the mosquito net reflected the sun and the mountains faded behind a white fog. She had gained a little weight, her hips were rounder and her breasts bigger. For once she was brown all over, without the usual pale strips from her bikini. She lay naked, sunning herself on the terrace in the afternoons. No one could see her except Harry when he sat in the shade reading. The scratching sound of cicadas intensified outside the window, escalating rhythmically. She rubbed her face with her hands and pressed water out of her black hair.