“There is something worse,” he said. “And I’m going to tell you about it now. What I used to do before was much worse, not that I’m going to do this for ever, but it’s all right to be going on with until something else turns up, and you have no idea how great it is compared with what I used to do before.”
“What did you used to do, then? Did someone throw knives at you in a circus?”
I don’t know why I said that. I suppose it must have sounded offensive as if the actor Lorenzo must, inevitably, have come from the lowest sphere of the entertainment world. After all, I was only doing what he was doing, and I’d merely lost my job two years ago and had an ex-husband who had disappeared, gone missing, and a daughter to look after. He probably had a daughter too. And besides, they don’t have shows like that now, that’s old hat, there aren’t even many circuses any more.
“Look, smartypants,” he said, but without sounding in the least reproachful and without intending to wound me, I’m not sure if that was simply because he was very tolerant or because he didn’t know how to. He said it the way children say it at schooclass="underline" “No, smartypants. I was a guardian.”
“A guardian? What do you mean a ‘guardian’? A guardian of what?” That was the last word I’d expected to hear from his lips and I couldn’t conceal my surprise, which may have seemed offensive. I looked him full in the face, a guardian, he looked more like someone out of a spaghetti western.
He touched the brim of his hat uneasily, as if straightening it.
“Well, I mean, I had someone under my guardianship, under my protection. Like being a bodyguard, only different.”
“Oh, a bodyguard,” I said, pulling a face, as if placing him further down the hierarchy. “And what was so bad about that? Were you constantly having to come between your boss and the bullets or something?” I had no reason to get stroppy with him, but I just kept coming out with these impertinent replies, perhaps I was beginning to feel sickened by the idea of soon having to suck him off with no preliminaries, time was moving on. Involuntarily I looked at his crotch, and immediately looked away again. I thought it again using that verb, ‘suck him off’, this modern age is making us all foul-mouthed, or perhaps we don’t much care if we are, or perhaps it’s just poverty: the less money you have, the fewer scruples too. And the older we get, the less life there is, there’s not that long left.
“No, I wasn’t that kind of bodyguard, I’m not a goon,” he said, not at all put out by my sarcasm, but speaking seriously, frankly, transparently. “I had to keep watch over a person who was ill, to stop her harming herself, it’s very difficult. You have to watch them twenty-four hours a day, be alert all the time and you can’t always manage it.”
“Who was she? What happened to her?”
Loren took off his hat and stroked the top of it with his right forearm, the way cowboys do in films. Perhaps it was a gesture of respect. His hair was thinning.
“She was the daughter of a rich guy, a multimillionaire, unbelievable, one of those businessmen who doesn’t even know how much money he’s got. You’d know his name, but I’d best not tell you. The daughter was crazy, a hysteric with suicidal tendencies, every so often she’d try and kill herself. For weeks at a time, she would lead an apparently normal life and then, suddenly, with no prior warning, she’d slit her wrists in the bath. She was completely nuts. They didn’t want to hospitalize her because that would be too cruel and because the whole world and his wife would end up finding out about it, whereas only a few people, the people who were close to her, knew about the suicide attempts. So they took me on in order to stop it happening, so, yes, I was a bodyguard but not to protect her from others, as a bodyguard would normally do, but to protect her from herself. Her friends took me for a normal bodyguard, but I wasn’t. My job was different, it was more like being a custodian.”
I thought that he probably knew that word because he had taken the trouble to find one that would describe his role. He would have recognized it when he found it.
“I see,” I said. “And that was worse than this. How old was she? Why didn’t they get a nurse to look after her?”
Loren passed the back of his hand under his chin, against the grain, as if he had suddenly realized he wasn’t properly shaven. He was going to have to kiss me everywhere. But he seemed well-shaven enough to me, I was tempted to touch his face myself, but I didn’t dare, he might have taken it for a caress.
“For the same reason, because a nurse is more obvious, what’s a young girl doing all day with a nurse hanging around? You could understand her having a bodyguard, with her super-rich Daddy. She could lead a normal life, you see, she was going to university, she was twenty years old, she went to parties and to other flash dos, to the psychiatrist as well, of course, but it wasn’t like she was depressed all day or anything, no. She’d be normal for a while, and friendly. Suddenly she’d get an attack and it was always a suicidal one, and you could never tell when it would happen. There were no sharp objects in her bedroom, no scissors, no penknives, nothing, no belts she could hang herself with, no tablets anywhere, not even aspirin; not even high-heeled shoes, her mother was always careful to make sure they weren’t too sharp ever since the time her daughter slashed her own cheekbone with one, they had to give her plastic surgery, you couldn’t tell, but she’d given herself a really nasty gash. She wouldn’t have been allowed to wear the shoes you’ve got on, quite a weapon really. In that sense, they treated her like a prisoner, no dangerous objects allowed. Her father was almost on the point of taking away her sunglasses when he saw Godfather III, in which someone kills another man with his glasses, with the sharp part of the arm, honestly, they’d given the guy a full body search and he goes and cuts the other guy’s throat with that. Have you seen Godfather III?”
“No I haven’t. I saw the first one.”
“If you like, I can lend you the video,” said Loren amiably. “It’s by far the best of the three.”
“I haven’t got a video. Go on,” I said, fearing that at any moment the door would open to reveal the tall face of Mir or the bony face of Custardoy or the short man’s moustache, in order for us to start filming our scenes. We wouldn’t be able to talk during them, not in the same way, we’d have to concentrate, get on with it.
“Anyway, I had to be around her all day and sleep with one eye open, I had the room next to hers, her room and mine were joined by a connecting door to which I had the key, you know, like you get in hotels sometimes, the house was enormous. But, of course, there are countless ways you can hurt yourself, if someone really wants to kill themselves, they’ll do it in the end, just like a murderer, if someone wants to kill someone, they’ll end up doing it however well protected their victim is, even if it’s the Prime Minister, even if it’s the King, if someone is determined to kill and they don’t care about the consequences, they’ll kill whoever they like, there’s nothing you can do about it, they’ve got nothing to lose if they don’t care what happens afterwards. Look at Kennedy, look at India, there’s hardly a politician left alive there. Well, it’s the same thing with someone who wants to murder herself, attempted suicides just make me laugh. The princess would throw herself headfirst down the escalator in a big department store and we’d pick her up with a great gash in her forehead and her legs all grazed, it was just lucky I was there. Or she’d hurl herself against a display cabinet, against a shop window in the middle of the street, you’ve no idea what that’s like, covered in cuts and with hundreds of glass splinters stuck in her, absolute madness, and howling with pain, because if you don’t manage to kill yourself, it really hurts. They couldn’t lock her up either, that wouldn’t have cured her. I got used to seeing danger everywhere, that’s the real horror, seeing the whole world as a threat, nothing is innocent and everything is against you, I saw enemies in the most inoffensive things, my imagination had to anticipate hers, I had to grab her arm every time we were going to cross the street, make sure she didn’t go near any high windows, be very careful in swimming pools, move her out of the path of any workman walking past carrying a pole because she might try and impale herself on it, well, that’s how I came to see things, she was capable of anything, you start to distrust everything, people, objects, walls.” — “That’s how I used to be when my daughter was small,” I thought, “I’m still a bit like that even now, I’m never completely at ease. I know what that’s like. Yes, it is horrible.” — “Once, she tried to throw herself under the horses’ hooves in the final straight at the races, luckily, I managed to grab her by the ankle when she was just about to step onto the track, she took advantage of the fact that I was placing the bets and she slipped away from me, God, the panic I went through until I found her, she was already running towards the horses.” The actor Lorenzo made only a verbal pause, not a mental one, I could see that he was still thinking about what he was telling or going to tell. “I can assure you, that was much worse than this, terrible tension, constant anxiety, especially after I’d fucked her, I fucked her twice: well, connecting door, me having the key, the nights spent always half-awake and jumpy, it was sort of inevitable. Besides, whilst I was there with her there was no danger, nothing could happen to her while I was on top of her with my arms around her, with me on top of her she was safe, you see.” — “Sex is the safest place,” I thought, “you control the other person, you keep them immobilized and safe.” It had been a long time since I’d been in that safe place. — “But of course, you screw a woman a couple of times and you get fond of her. Well, not that fond, I’ve got a girlfriend too, and not because you have to, but it’s different, you’ve touched her, you’ve kissed her and you don’t look at her the same any more, and she treats you affectionately too.” I wondered if I would treat him affectionately after the session awaiting us. Or if he would get fond of me because of that. I didn’t interrupt. “So apart from the tension involved in the work, there was also the worry, not to say panic, I didn’t want anything to happen to her, that was the last thing in the world I wanted. In short, it was a real bummer; beside that, this is a breeze.”