Episode 91 | Old wounds in the family

previous episode

"Yes. He is gorgeous." I agreed with Carlo, though not feeling truly thrilled. "And everybody seems to be very impressed with his beauty." That, to be honest, I feared could be considered a bit vulgar. But maybe it was just his way of dressing -- or showing off. Why exhibit the crack of his round butt, or his pubic hair, as blond as mine, when Gabriel had a golden smile that radiated confidence? Should I fear his appearance at the vernissage? Had I invited the waiter, but instead a porn actor would show up?   

 Carlo had been blinded by Gabriel's beauty, just like Ted -- he who once alerted me about a guy I had shown up at the museum with, who he knew was into drug dealing. But Carlo, though he wouldn't demonstrate it, was alarmed with my sex life, and how he thought I risked my health. He was still to give me his lecture on my responsibility in going to bed with married or compromised men, on the next couple of days to come, that we would spend together in Vice City. 

That visit to my exhibition had left Carlo dazed and fearful, and perhaps feeling guilty or even remorseful. He had more than once asked if I had really had sex with all those guys I had portrayed, willing that at some moment I would say it had been just a fantasy. He was also trying to understand where my suffering and what he reputed as a destructive behavior came from -- and I had to talk him off and around my secret, always trying to make Angelo seem the main reason of my attempted revenge on men.

Neither preachy nor romantic, Carlo was also trying, on the other hand, to talk me into a stable relationship with Gabriel. Without mentioning it, he had seen my confusion, how lost I was in the paths of my heart, and he thought Gabriel would do as a good enough guy to help me settle down a bit. And I guess I wanted to be talked into romance at that point in my life, I have to confess. I also wanted to see Carlo in his fatherly role again, and I wasn't minding what in other times and terms I might have considered an intrusion.

In the past, at those early hours, I would either be searching for breakfast, after having danced the night away or spent it in someone's bed, or be jogging at the beach -- and I thought I might go back to that healthy habit if I was to again spend more time in Vice City, because of Gabriel and my lectures and workshops scheduled at the museum after the opening. And by 'healthy', I mean the jogging.

Walking along the corridors of the museum, calmly making our way to the exit, escorted by Ted -- who couldn't hide his happiness in seeing me in the company of my father, after having heard no screams nor anything that would have indicated a quarrel during the whole time we spent at The Dark Room --, Carlo had invited me to have breakfast with him, at the small guesthouse where he was staying. He had had one of his paintings sold for a million dollars, yet, he had remained very humble, a man of simple habits. After all those years, I wondered if his passion for sports cars had subsided, too. But I had more pertinent questions to ask.

I thought I might reach and touch my father's hand, to bring him back to the taxi. But I still felt a physical barrier between us. It was remarkable that he had hugged Gabriel, whom he had just met, but not me. Instead, I simply cleared the throat.

"Did you try to contact Armand while you were in London?" Or maybe even from France, I thought. Why not? "He never belonged here. He had to go live his own kind of life, which did not include us", Catherine had said about my father's departure. She might be thinking of Armand, and how she had interrupted their love affair. But from what Carlo had told me, she was actually talking about Jaella, the gipsy girl, and her son -- that was Carlo's parallel life, back then. But was there really a Jaella?, I wondered. I had no whatsoever recollections about a gipsy girl in our house.

"No, I didn't, Laurent."

"But do you know where he is living now? I mean, he is still alive, isn't he?"  Few years ago, Armand Purlux Drurien had won the Pritzker Prize, that's the only thing I knew about him. I had always admired his work, even without knowing he was my uncle.

"I'm not sure where he is living now... But your mother should know. At least, her lawyers should know it."

"Would you mind," My father wasn't very enthusiastically talking about Armand, and I tried to be tactful, "if I try to contact him, Carlo?"

"These are old wounds in the family, son." Carlo sighed, and looked away through the window. We going past one of the marinas, and noisily encircling one of the approaching boats, seagulls were every now and then dive bombing. "I hope you understand that." Though sitting next to me, his voice seemed to arrive from another dimension. "Give yourself some time and afterthought before you do anything. These wounds have existed prior to your birth. Maybe there is nothing you can do about them. And talk to your mother, first. That's all I ask from you, Laurent. But no, I won't try to prevent you from talking to Armand."

That was final, and I understood it from Carlo's tone. He wasn't willing to add anything else to that. 

To me, it sounded like he was talking about himself somehow, too. Those 'family wounds' had existed prior to his clumsy participation in the De Montbelle affair. He had not simply gotten entangled, he had actually worsened things when he left Armand for Catherine -- or ultimately, for me. That's what was striking me hardest at the moment. That I had parted my father from his only and true love.

"You are my only and true love, Laurent, haven't you understood it yet?" I would hear Carlo's heartfelt clarification a few years later, but just not yet, not in that taxi, not only a little over twelve hours since we had reconnected, after a twenty years separation.

"Does Armand know about me?" My voice trembled as I asked that. They had hidden my uncle from me, and I expected they would have hidden me from my uncle as well. Otherwise, he would be in the known all those years, yet ignoring me. Pretty much like he had done with my mother, his half-sister, avoiding her after he had learned about her existence. For a moment, I could grasp what Catherine had felt, the humiliation that Armand's silence and indifference distilled.

"I believe so. I should think your mother has done everything to ensure Armand knows about your existence." Though it might not have been my father's intention, he had made it sound like I was a piece of propaganda in a war.

A De Montbelle heir! I didn't care about the princely name -- although, of course, Laurent D'Allegro et de Montbelle sounded awfully nice, regal even!  Nor did I care about the fortune I was entitled to, no matter how humongous it might be -- Celeste's inheritance was more than enough for a lifetime, and we hadn't sold a single painting from her exquisite collection. With part of her money, I had built my dream house overlooking the Pacific Ocean -- yes, towards the direction where Punaouilo was -- and I wasn't cogitating living in a palace, not yet. The Château de Montbelle was not in my plans, nor did I feel I should avenge my grandmother, who had never occupied it. What I actually cared about was my recently expanded family, my newly acquired history and ascendancy. I cared about my uncle. But the answers I now longed for would not come from Carlo. 

I wondered what Catherine would say about my father's story. Would she deny it? What parts would she try to twist in an unexpected way to serve her own purposes? And what were those purposes? Why lie? Would she come up with new lies? Had she had them in stock, already? Catherine was a writer, and sometimes it seemed to me she was a professional liar, not quite realizing the boundaries between her imaginary world and real life -- since she went about life burdened by the lives of many people inside her head and heart. 

She must have been pondering about that for the last thirty three years. I mean, what she would tell me when the truth was revealed? That's probably why Catherine had called me so many times during that afternoon, prior to Carlo's arrival. She could not extensively know what Carlo would tell me, but she had a good hint. And that's why she must have been so anguished as to try to reach me at the Nirvana Lounge during the wee hours.

Carlo and I had again fallen silent, each with his own thoughts.

It was not a heavy, annoying nor tense silence, that enveloped us in the taxi. 

I had been exposed to that kind of peaceful quietude before, and I knew that Carlo was concentrating on his breathing, calming his feelings and his thinking. I  was aware I should be doing the same, but questions and doubts were restlessly fossicking in my mind, unfinished thoughts colliding and creating more confusion.

From among them, a memory sprung. As a child, I used to be intrigued when my father, at the end of each day, would retreat to the back of the mansion's garden, but on the opposite side of where our little cottage was, and after sitting, retreat even further -- into silence and immobility, into himself. There was no other adult doing that in Punaouilo, and I found it rather curious.

And the more intrigued I was, when Catherine's reactions to those sitting periods of Carlo's were always so strongly negative. 

"Go hide yourself, Carlo!" She would shout at my father, without even lifting her eyes from the text she might be reading or writing, as he stepped out onto the garden.

Of course, I had followed him to check where he was going to hide. But he just sit in the open, silent and immovable, day after day, in a place of the garden where everybody could spot him, from the distance even. How could someone hide and yet be seen by everyone?

"Your mother thinks I'm hiding because she believes I'm trying to escape reality when I do meditation." Of course, my next question was what meditation was, and what was it for? "To calm my mind and my heart." And I had to ask what the mind and the heart were. "They are the rooms of the house where your thoughts live, and where your feelings live..." Our questions and answers sessions on the topic went on and on, until we were called for dinner by Joanna.

"Won't you die, dad? Won't you become stupid?"

I was concerned when my father said he was trying to silence the thoughts in his mind.

"One might become livelier, Laurent. And more intelligent, with a clearer and sharper mind, by meditating."

 I'll never forget how he had demonstrated it. First, he requested me to thoroughly paint and draw and scribble a single leaf of blank paper. Then, when the paper was full, he instructed me to add a new drawing that had to be more beautiful than anything else that already existed on that piece of paper. Obviously, there was no space left, and when I tried to draw on top of everything else, it became blurred, unclear, dirty. "Now, if you erase one corner, you'll find that space... And the more empty space you make, the more room you have for new things to come up... In your mind and your heart, equally."

I did not try meditation until many years later, and I'm not sure I actually recalled the insights Carlo had shared with me when I was a child.

After having learned of Laura's existence, I was very desperate at the last months of my relationship with Angelo, fearing  the end was near -- and someone had suggested I tried meditation. I don't remember who it was, but I do remember my first retreat of total silence, and how after a few hours I had been annoyed by my own mental voice, continuously commenting and complaining and endlessly chatting in my mind -- and how I had told myself, quite unwise and impolitely, to shut up.

Nothing ever helped me to overcome my grief and that feeling of being hollow like meditation did -- and the realization that I was actually empty, too, my mind just like a blank screen were many projections came and went by, thoughts, perceptions, feelings -- sadness being just one of them, and just as impermanent and unstable like all others. Feelings of inadequacy and rejection, suicidal thoughts, the urge of revenge -- everything came and went, as I watched my mind like a vaster blank screen that nothing could never quite fill. And suffering lost its power to take hold of me.

Over the years, I quit meditation. Because it made me feel detached, parting me from the young and wild crowd of my own age, who was into partying, drinking, dancing and having sex. As much as it brought me peace and put me in contact with the timeless present, meditation had made me feel displaced, old, and out of my own time -- and I don't know why I pictured dwelling in timeless peace a bad thing to come upon me. 

For meditation was very effective in lessening not only my suffering -- it also was decreasing my lust. But instead of persisting in that path of mental liberation, I had joyfully and carelessly chosen to join the lively and loud gay crowd for ten years. Blame it on my youth?

But in the back seat of that taxi, by my father's side, in touch with his peaceful silence, contrasting the turmoil in my own mind and heart, I again felt like getting in touch with that aspect of myself I had pushed aside.

Mostly because I perceived meditation as something ultimately linking me to Armand, and consequently to my De Montbelle blood. A noble transmission -- coming through Carlo -- I had never dreamt of. I actually wanted to ask whether my uncle, that surprising wonderful new presence in my life, had remained being my father's only master on the so called spiritual path. 

And an idea, that would become my mission in the years to come, bloomed in my heart -- I wanted to locate and visit the Île du Blanchomme, the island of my conception, where I had been first of all an apparition during my father's meditation sessions at sunrise. Would he help me locate it?

I guess we were both tired and weary from such a long conversation, to be willing to still carry it on. It had been unexpectedly peaceful, and neither Carlo nor I wanted to dig any deeper than that, for the moment, because we were treading on mined terrain. Both he and I knew Catherine would have to be summoned upon stage. There were too many things I had to take in, and I'd probably need to be on my own to start that digestive process. But by having accepted my father's invitation for breakfast, a step had been taken into the future, into a new common future, that's how I felt it now, moving farther away from the shattered past. There was no need for calculations -- we hadn't had a breakfast together for twenty years.

It was simply a meal, but also a confirmation that our relationship had been reestablished, without the need for words, nor any formal treaty -- that was the soothing sentiment that filled me, as I followed Carlo up the stairs to  the dining hall of his hotel. More like a guesthouse, really, with a very homely feeling to it, fading family photographs in peeling enamel frames and lots of artcraft and other handmade stuff as decoration, that made an odd collection and ode to kitsch.

next episode

Episode 88 | Belittled lives

previous episode

My father and mother would often disagree. Since the very beginning in Punaouilo (actually, all had begun on the Île du Blanchomme, I now had to adapt my memories), I feared their explosions -- Catherine's rage and Carlo's indignation. It escalated from quarreling to bickering to serious arguing until they were fighting -- though never physically. In France, it had not been different, and their disputes even worsened. 

And when my father and I had returned from the Apennines, they started having fights every day, often many times a day. Now I was getting to understand the reasons.

Carlo and Catherine rarely agreed on anything concerning our daily life. While Carlo loved cooking and eating pasta, she hated it -- only many years later would Catherine learn to enjoy it, when it was Edoardo cooking. Maybe she had eaten it solely to please him, whom she loved.

But my parents had especially disagreed on my education, disputing about my happiness. Carlo would even link the two words, and spoke of an "education for happiness". Catherine retorted that it was "new age bullshit", and stood up for the traditional education.

"Our son is not happy here, Catherine." That's how many of their quarrels often started -- when I was the main subject. Their errands and rather different daily routines would keep them apart for hours or even days, when Catherine started her studies and later teaching in Belgium, so that their room -- the bed, more specifically -- was the only place my parents knew they would meet.

"Oh, not that speech again, Carlo!" Catherine snorted, showing her impatience. She kept her head buried in her books, ignoring Carlo's presence unless he provoked her. "He just needs time to adapt. He'll learn to like it here in France. Anyways, Laurent is a child, and he has to be where we are. He has no choice. It is as simple as that."

"You really don't care about his happiness, do you?"

"Don't be unfair, Carlo!" Catherine replied, shutting her book, ready for battle. "Of course I do. And that's why I know he has to stay in France. He'll get the best education, here. A proper education. In Punaouilo he was just learning how to be a third class citizen."

"It's not just about education!" My father would insist. Not so much defending his points of view, he was standing for what he thought was good for me. "It's about his happiness! Laurent is increasingly sad here..."

"So what? Do we send him back to that island? To Aunt Joanna?" She laughed disdainfully. "Plus, Laurent has always been sad. Such a melancholic boy, isn't he? I hope he'll make friends with other boys his age here in France, and become less dependent from our company... It's not good for a child to be constantly with adults only."

"I could go back to Punao--"

Catherine did not let him finish the sentence, nor pronounce the awful name. 

"Then you'll go back all on your own, Carlo! My son is staying here with me!"

My heart fluttered as my parents played tug of war with my destiny. Our rooms were on the second floor of the house, opening onto a veranda so large that held several pots of flowers and a bench for three, offering lovely views of mountains in the distance, groves interposed to cultivated fields all around, and the rural road that ended at our front garden. There was even a table with three chairs, that we had never sat at as a family. The doors to our rooms opening onto the veranda were hardly shut in the summer evenings, and to my desperation I could hear my parents arguing next doors. Depending on the breeze, or lack of, I could understand their words quite distinctly -- until one of them, usually Carlo, closed their door, or I put on my walkman.

"Catherine, don't you ever miss Punao--?"

"Not ever. Not the least." She made a very peculiar gesture with her hands, sharply slicing the air, that indicated the discussion was over for her. Punaouilo and her involuntary exile had become an episode in her life she would avoid mentioning in her biographies.

Because, to the heavenly aroma of tropical flowers, that attracted myriads of insects and birds, Catherine preferred the latest in French perfumery, that she would get overseas as gifts from Celeste -- and one day she had asked Uncle Will to simply cut down all the bushes around the small cottage of my childhood. People around the world dreamed of the ring of indivisible beaches stretching all around the island, green palm trees, fine white sand and the translucent blue of the Pacific Ocean -- that Catherine avoided, since she hated walking barefoot and having her hair undone and made greasy from the salty breeze and the daily showers. How she must have missed the beauty saloons!  In Punaouilo, she had dreamed of strolling the Parisian boulevards on her high heels, going back to the Sorbonne and the Cinematéque, returning to her beloved 6e arrondessiment.     

They did not agree even on the house in which we lived. Carlo wanted to build a pool for me, but Catherine did not want to invest in a home that she considered "too middle class". 

"It's a lovely home, Catherine. Don't you think so? I thought you had chosen it yourself."

"Oh yes, of course I chose it... among the options that Celeste gave me, all of them, far away from Paris!" My mother had enjoyed living again in Paris, even if it had been just as my grandmother's guest, in the room she had occupied since childhood, but to which she had "lost the right", Celeste had stated. My mother regarded our rural house as another exile, an exile within France itself. "This house is so ordinary. But at least we don't have a middle class neighborhood around here. I could not stand being invited to those middle class dinners and weekend lunches that are the routine of the ordinary middle class neighborhood. So at last yes, being secluded, this was the least worse house from the options that I had..."

I began to truly worry about my parents relationship when, after their quarrels, they started sleeping apart. One early morning, before dawn, thinking I had heard a noise outside the house during the night, I went to check. I thought it could be my dad -- he always liked to work late into the night. But his studio was empty.

I found him in the small room attached to the studio, that we used as a guest room. In fact, I was the most common guest there -- whenever we had illustrious guests, usually famous writers or movie directors or actors Catherine would invite, they slept in my room, which was much larger and more comfortable, and I occupied the small bedroom next to the studio. 

For me, it was like sleeping out, since it was in a separate building from the main house -- it used to be a deposit, that Carlo had adapted to be his studio. 

 I was too young to properly benefit from the presence of Mr. Chabrol and other illustrious guests from Catherine, with their highly cultivated conversations that often left Carlo out, but I was always thankful that they would send me away from my own room.

On those last weeks before leaving home forever, Carlo would occupy that room every night. Still, I figured it was a passing period. Or at least I hoped -- but the prospect of becoming another child with divorced parents, like so many in my class, seemed to draw dangerously close on me.

Generally, after quarreling, Carlo and Catherine would reconcile in bed. The physical attraction they felt for each other was true and strong still. And as I would later learn -- an adult and sexually very active myself, in the period after Edoardo's death, when Catherine and I were sharing about our lovers --, not only had Carlo had an attractive body, fit and manly and hairy like my mother preferred, and been well endowed; he had also been well trained by Catherine for her own needs, growing from a clumsy virgin to an expert in giving her pleasure. He performed in bed aiming only to please her ever demanding ways, and quench her sexual thirst -- often holding back his orgasms obediently, until Catherine was satisfied or grew tired and allowed him to finish, too. Other times, the game was Catherine trying to make Carlo quickly ejaculate, while he resisted. In a time when several artists and other famous personalities advocated tantric sex, I was convinced my parents were adepts. Our house was never as peaceful as during their sexual marathons, and it must have been satisfying for both. Carlo just couldn't offer Catherine the spiced variety she seemed to enjoy while having several lovers, of several ages and nationalities, and he had silently learned to cope with that -- mainly, it seemed, to maintain our household going.

Instead of feeling ashamed or some sort of awkward curiosity about the sounds of my parent's love making, I felt relief whenever it followed their quarrels. I'd rather wake up to their muffled moans and the bedhead banging against the wall that divided our rooms, than with their screams and shouts. 

But a time came when not even sex would reconcile them. Thinking in retrospect, during my father's last months in our home, Catherine must be making it out with the young officer from the Tax Authorities, and that's how Carlo had lost his main access to my mother. And she might be leaving him out of her bed and their room because of the gipsy girl, Jaella, and that other supposed son of my father's.

*****

"No, you don't have any half brother, Laurent! Even you shall doubt me, son?" Carlo had replied, clearly hurt. Apparently, he hadn't realized I was joking, and that, after discovering my mother had a half brother, I wouldn't be shocked discovering I had one myself. But Carlo was too earnest, "faithful like a dog", Angelo would have commented, to cope with a joke about his fidelity. "I've said it already... I never had any other woman in my life who was not Catherine. As it was proved, later, all tests taken, that the child was not mine. It could never have been..."

Catherine, however, could not, and did not want to believe otherwise. From her own perspective and experience, a second family was something perfectly possible -- and thus weary and traumatized, she did not want to see it repeated in her story.

"Go live with that gypsy girl, Carlo! Go live with your other son! I can perfectly take care of mine on my own! I don't need no man paying me wage." 

It was no use swearing to Catherine that I had never touched that girl -- nor any other woman. Catherine thought I was avenging myself, because of her own infidelity that had started in Punaouilo still.

"By no means, Laurent, would your mother see that she had herself planted those lies in Jaella's mind. It resulted in a story that resembled the plots of her own books, more than real life. It became as if she was reading something, without recognizing she had written it herself. And that's why our fights were more usual than before, with an alarming and increasing seriousness."

"And Catherine asked me several times that I leave the house. But I could not leave home... I could not contemplate living without you, my son. After all, what would I do all day without having you to give a ride, to feed you, to go shopping with you and for you..."

Since moving to France, Carlo had taken upon himself all the household chores, that in Punaouilo had been Joanna's. It was he who bought the groceries and even cooked -- not because he was a natural cooker, but Catherine wouldn't even break an egg. It was he who went to the bank and to the post office, it was he who picked me up in the club, after the training, when due to one reason or another I could not go home by bus or bike.

"And, of course, Catherine did not want to give up the right of having your custody, not even sharing it. For I sometimes pictured you and me living together in Italy... I engaged in these reveries of a better, calmer life as a means to escape that hellish daily routine that my life with your mother had turned into."

"You have belittled our lives, Carlo!" Catherine would scream, accusingly. Sometimes, she clapped her hands at the end of her sentences, like Tibetan monks do. But while they want to emphasize their statements, she wished to underline her rage, when it was at its fullest already. "For you yourself are a small man! Do you realize that? Your interests and your tastes are so limited! Your opinions are even narrower, and so unassertive! That you care more about the weather than for politics, that you pay attention to the moon but has never read Schopenhauer... It tells so much about the size of your mind. Your presence in our lives is limiting, Carlo! Everything around you becomes weak, blurred, humble, ignoble. Even me, Carlo. I feel underprivileged by your side. Look at our meek lives! This unpretentious, middle class house that you seem to enjoy so much! Look how you've debased our lives! Look what you did to me! Take a good look at what you are doing to Laurent, belittling his life with your low-born idea of contentment!"

"That's funny, Catherine!" Carlo wouldn't lose his temper often, but when he did, "What I usually hear from you is Oh, you're so big! God, you're so big..." 

Carlo mocked Catherine's moaning voice in bed.

"Oh, you're too rude!" Catherine replied, disdaining his mockery, walking towards the bathroom, where she would stay until she heard Carlo leave the room, his heavy footsteps clearly echoing along the corridor, past my own door and down the stairs. "But you're right. Your dick is the only big thing that you have!"

"Please!" Carlo was running out of argumentation, and he had started pleading. "You can not make me leave my son, Catherine!" But once she had locked herself in the bathroom, Carlo was uncertain she had even heard his plea. When he was sad -- and he was devastated at the idea of losing me -- he could not scream, and his voice waned.

next episode

Episode 87 | Just another ordinary day

previous episode

"That was supposed to be just another ordinary day." It would be typical from my father, if he might not remember what year it was. I needed not ask, for I knew it perfectly well -- 1988. I was thirteen years old. "But it became a memorable morning in my life." I couldn't agree more, as Carlo began reminiscing.

"I was feeling lazy, and I did not want to leave the house. But I had so many errands to do in town... go to the post, pay bills, shop for groceries... I usually got bored doing them, and talking to people did not entice me much. But I did enjoy driving my sports car around, and those ordinary things were actually the only justification I had to go out. Otherwise, I'd rather stay in my studio, painting all day long. Sometimes, I wish I were back at my hermitage... the abandoned factory in Paris." Carlo smiled tenderly. As if approaching the past with great care, he spoke very slowly.

He sat at the edge of the sofa, though, and I could see he was not comfortable within himself, and the memories he was about to evoke. The Dark Room was also getting warmer, from our prolonged permanence in it without air conditioning. In other circumstances I might have worried about my paintings, but at that moment, I just hoped Carlo didn't suffer from low blood pressure or something. He looked old, but also healthy, and determined to finally share with me about the day he had left home.  

"I was in the shower," Carlo recalled, "when the phone started ringing insistently. Worried it might be something important or urgent, I ran downstairs and picked the receiver, if just to silence it."

"Carlo! Get out of the house! NOW!" Catherine sounded very agitated.

"What's happened, Catherine?" I could sense her urgency, and I immediately knew the dreaded moment had arrived.

"They are coming after you!" She was screaming, and I could hear her high heels hitting the pavement on the other side of the line. Catherine must be walking very fast, almost running, as if she was the one being chased. "An order for arrest and imprisonment has been issued against you! They might be on their way, already. You have to leave! NOW!"

I gasped. "Arrested, Carlo?" After I spoke, I had to dry my mouth with the back of my hand, because like a child I had drooled. "What for?" It was surprising and confusing. I hadn't expected anything like that. And I could not imagine my father revealing that, after all, he was a drug dealer, or a mafioso. Nor that he had murdered someone.  He probably just didn't have a valid passport or something like that.

"Tax defrauding." My father spoke so low that I felt like approaching him, going to sit by his side on the sofa. But I could not move, afraid of the abyss that still opened its gargantuan mouth between us. "From the very first time, when I had sent the paintings over to Davez in London, I had failed to declare and pay taxes. I confess that, having been so poor, and a simpleton like your mother liked to point out, I did not even cogitate about things like that. And for our remaining two years in Punaouilo, after Davez launched my career, and then in France, when I got frequent commissions, I continued doing it, since no one had never pointed any problem. I sent my paintings overseas, I received the money -- and to me, that was that."

"When we were in the Apennines, Laurent, visiting Tarso in our ancestral farm, two officers visited Catherine at home. They said they had tried to contact me many times -- but I never got any notification, because I still held Punaouilo as my official address. With the passing of years, the amount I owed ​​to the Tax Authorities had become quite astonishing. Since in the records I had always avoided court, I was not plainly under investigation any longer -- I was to receive exemplary punishment, in an attempt to frighten other offenders."

"Catherine made ​​friends," That's how Carlo would commonly refer to Catherine's lovers, "with one of the officers, and thus the investigation slowed down a little bit. And prolonged, since it was in the young man's interest to have free and justifiable access to our house, as often as possible. Not to investigate anything, of course. The man had been married, and a formal alibi was much appreciated. But because I was a foreigner, my case turned into an international affair and was taken to a different office, where Catherine's friend could not get hold of things anymore."

"That one morning, the 'friendly' officer had learned I was going to be arrested. He phoned Catherine, and she phoned me. I left the house with just my passport and a bag of dirty clothes I had planed to leave at the laundry that afternoon. For hours and hours I drove straight away to the Northern coast, where I crossed to England."

"Italy was closer but I had legal problems there, too, with my Army duties. I had suddenly become a criminal in both countries where I had lived." Carlo sighed, and examined the bruise in his hand, the spot where he had applied a burning frame on his own skin. "And for the second time I saw myself leaving France by sea, with very few belongings. Though, that second time, a car was considerably more valuable than my easel, some 15 years ago."

"I did not think of leaving you a note, Laurent, because I did not have time for considerations. Might I have pondered, it ought have been better to go to jail for one or two nights, maybe a couple of months even, but to have stayed in France to try to solve the problem. But that possibility had been discussed with Catherine, and she did not want to suffer the humiliation of seeing me in jail, she said. She thought you did not deserve it, either, and I had to agree with her."

"How did that happen, Carlo?" I was perplexed. "Why all of a sudden? Did this friend of Catherine denounce you? Or was it... herself?"

"No! Your mother tried to help me!" It seemed odd that Carlo was always so vehemently defending Catherine.  "But someone else might--"

"Who?" I blurted. Though I was actually thinking how Catherine must have helped herself on the young officer, too. It was an interesting diversion for her, who had always preferred artists as lovers -- with the exception of Edoardo, her longest love relationship, who had been a cuoco, an Italian chef.

"Something else, much more wicked, had happenned to me in Punaouilo, Laurent. Remember I told you Danny Douxis, the island's only art dealer, never sold any of my works? I mean, what are just three paintings in almost eight years?! And how he got mad when I had sold them directly to Davez?" Carlo took a deep breath, and catapulted us to the Pacific Ocean. "Will, Joanna's husband, or uncle Will as you'd call him, had already alerted me. We were good mates, and we used to go in the sauna together, almost daily when the owners and guests were not occupying the mansion. His brother worked at Danny's house. I had been curious on who had bought two of my paintings at once... I believe it was in 1978 or 79..." Carlo counted his fingers, like a little boy, and that gesture melted my heart, "...and I know I should remember the date of such an extraordinary event in my otherwise meager career... but when I questioned Danny, he just dismissed me, saying the buyer had demanded secrecy. Well, Will's brother had seen a couple of my paintings at Danny's house... to find out, the next day, the dealer had burned them."

"Burned them!" I gulped, and finally moved closer to my father. I felt like embracing his legs, placing my head on his knees, wishing him to lovingly caress my hair -- like he never had. "Why would he do that?" I didn't remember Douxis, nor ever visiting his gallery in Punaouilo. So much had been kept hidden from me.

"It's inconceivable, right? When Will told me, I had to doubt him, and I guess he was hurt. But when, a couple of years later, another single painting was sold, what I regarded as my best work yet, I asked Will's brother to investigate its destination for me. And he said the painting had never gone elsewhere but Danny Douxis' house... and into his fireplace. Of course I could not confront Danny, because that could have harmed the job of Will's brother. It took me many years to realize the signification of those events. Since I never believed that story, I had almost already forgotten it. Until one day, in London, I met a gentleman who had been to Danny's gallery, while we still lived on the island. And his words were shocking!"

"Unfortunately, I did not buy your painting in Punaouilo, young man. It would certainly have been a good deal. But the dealer disavowed your work, saying it was plain bad, amateurish even, and he would not let me buy it. I insisted, since I thought it a pretty good piece, and wanted to nevertheless acquire it. But the dealer was determined not to sell. An art dealer who doesn't care about money, nor selling the artists he represents? Rather wicked, I thought, but what could I do? I hope Darius is treating you better, here in London.  Yes, I'm sure he is, from the prices he is charging for your works!" And the British gentleman, patting me on the shoulder, had laughed to his tropical holidays best anecdote, while I, being at the center of it, was petrified.

"So I asked for Davez' help. A friend of his, who was an investigator, discovered that, during all those years, Danny Douxis had received sums of money from an account in Switzerland. It could be for any reason, but we believe that Danny was being paid not to sell my paintings." Carlo studied my face to watch my reaction. "He was receiving a salary to boycott me, do you understand it now, Laurent?"

"Mon Dieu..." And, exploding like a flash in my brain, I saw Celeste's astute, white smile full of small teeth in a frame of dark red colored lips. A smile that had fascinated, intrigued and terrorized me, remaining my strongest memory of her. "Was it... my grandmother?"

"Congratulations, Laurent!" Carlo exclaimed, raising his eyebrows, truly haunted. "I confess that I was so very surprised when I found it out... but you don't seem to be. The money was coming from a joint account under the names of Monsieur de Montbelle and Celeste, but that was mainly used by her." Carlo sighed. His burnt hand was hanging limp between his thighs, and I had to refrain from the impulse of kissing it. I had the impression Carlo was a hero, for having survived the joint forces of the Mortinné and the De Montbelle families. "In the last year of his life, Monsieur was senile and could not have made ​​remittances, which leads us to be almost sure that Celeste was the one responsible from them... During all those years, she refused to send money to us in Punaouilo, claiming it was too expensive and complicated. But she had regularly wired it ​​to Danny's account. With the purpose that he did not sell and eventually destroyed my paintings..."

"God! Have you ever told this to Catherine?" The whole scheme was so cunning. I was not surprised that Celeste had ensued it, in order to keep Catherine away from France. Or maybe it had been Monsieur de Montbelle, ultimately imposing his vengeance on my father. Whichever way, it seemed monstrous that we had been kept in a state close to poverty, and my father's talents deliberately downrated, his works being destroyed, to prolong our exile.

"When I found it all out, in London, I finally understood why my paintings were never properly displayed in Douxi's art gallery. But at the time of my discovery, Celeste was already in the early states of demency, and there was no reason to try to confront her. I have actually never met her... you know that, don't you, Laurent? Furthermore, Catherine might have not believed me, despite all the evidence. And above all, I did not want to further indispose Catherine with her mother."

My mind was racing, and I tried to encourage my father's confession. "And do you think it might have been Celeste to report you to the Tax Authorities?" I hadn't known much about my grandmother -- she had always kept us at a distance --, but the impression I had of her did match such slyness.

"I don't know, Laurent." Carlo was not defending Celeste like he would if it were Catherine. But he wasn't accusing her, either. My father seemed incapable of attacking anyone. "Perhaps the process had been running its normal course. And after many years, they just decided to finally act. Maybe it was simple like that, and then it was solely my fault for having been so negligent... And of course, with my escape to England, it looked like I had in fact acted based on ill will."

"And why couldn't you return to France, Carlo?" It was hard to believe that the Tax Authorities and the Police Judiciaire could have separated my father from me for so long. Could a laughable comedy of errors have lasted two decades?

"This was the reason for my sudden flight. But there was something else, that had also been happening for a few years already. In fact, since you and I had arrived in France. You may not remember a gypsy girl who worked at our home for a few months, Jaella... Catherine turned her down, accusing her of stealing some clothes and bijoux."

"I needddy the woerrrrrrrk, madamey!" The girl had cried and begged on her dismissal. aAnd since it had ho effect on Catherine, she was very angry when she had finally gone away.

We had known the girl was pregnant, but Catherine didn't care the least. So I decided to help her. I kept giving her money, even after she had had a son. A lovely baby boy that she named Jair. I thought she was a good girl, but since Catherine disliked her, Jaella only came to our house to receive the money when you and your mother were not at home. 

"Merrrrrrrrrrci beaucouuuuup Carrrrrrrrlu!" The years passed, but her French remained quite simple, and her accent was lovingly musical.

During the weeks you and I were in Italy, Laurent, Jaella reappeared at our house. I had thoroughly forgotten about her, on account of the preparations for our trip. The girl used to call ahead and talk to me to set the day and hour when she could go to my studio. But for the first time she was unable to reach me for several days, and badly needing the money, she decided to show up unannounced. Perhaps fearing that I was trying to dodge her.

"Jaella met Catherine, who thought she had returned to rob us. Catherine ran inside the house to call the police, and Jaella ran after her. With the frightened child in her arms, the girl tried to explain that she had come to receive the money I gave her regularly. What a scene it must have been! And then Catherine -- not simply your mother but mainly the best-seller author --, let her imagination fly and foresaw I could be Jair's father... And when confronted, perhaps guessing this was the greatest idea that she had never had, Jaella decided to confirm the child was mine. Catherine was enraged when she phoned me in the Apennines, accusing me of having a second family. You may remember the serious and tense conversations I had with Tarso during those days, Laurent. A lot was about the threat of losing part of our lands to the National Park, but also on this supposed son I had... Unfortunately, Tarso, just like Catherine, doubted me."

"Do I have a half brother, Carlo?" I almost laughed at the irony of those news. It would not be as tragic as it would be funny. Catherine had a half brother, and throughout life, according to my father, my mother had suffered from feeling relegated as Monsieur de Montbelle's second family. Had my turn arrived? "Did you leave us for that other family, Carlo?"

next episode