Evangelista's Fan Read Free

presence of this person, he remembered how the sight of a particular woman could move him and terrify him at the same time, so that he’d feel exactly as he’d felt as a boy and imagined his life as a grown-up – wanting it and not wanting it, touched by possibilities, excited yet afraid.
    In his still-imperfect English, Salvatore asked the woman how he might serve her. He thought that he saw her smile, but it was difficult to be certain, because on this warm day she had brought with her a fan and she held this fan, barely moving it, very close to her mouth.
    â€˜Oh,’ she said, ‘well, I’ve come as ambassador – ambassadress would be the correct term, but I think there are no ambassadresses on earth, are there? – for my clock.’
    â€˜Ah,’ said Salvatore.
    â€˜It’s a Dutch bracket clock, made by Huygens. The background to the dial is red velvet, slightly faded. The dial is brass and supported by a winged and naked figure of a man I’ve always taken to be God, or at least a god. It stands above the fireplace in my bedroom and I’m very fond of it indeed. A velvet background is unusual, isn’t it? I couldn’t say why I like it so much, except that it has always been there, ever since I can remember, ever since I could see .’
    â€˜And your clock is broken, Signorina?’ asked Salvatore. He said this with great tenderness. His fear of the young woman had left him and only his longing remained.
    â€˜Well,’ she said, ‘it says twenty-seven minutes past one. It’s paused there. The god still holds up the dial proudly, so it’s possible that either he’s showing me the time of the end of the world or else he hasn’t noticed that his world has stopped. What do you think?’
    Salvatore found much of this difficult to understand. He recognised a way of talking somewhat different from that of many young women, a kind of self-mockery in the speech, which he found seductive and he knew that she had asked him a question, but he really hadn’t the least idea how to answer it. She looked at him expectantly for a moment, then smiled and hurried on: ‘Take no notice of me! My mind is like a cloud, my father says, always drifting. And I expect it’s because of my drifting mind that I’ve done what I’ve done. But it has upset me so much.’
    â€˜What have you done?’ asked Salvatore, moving a step nearer to the young woman and snatching at the air with his nostrils to inhale more deeply a sweet perfume, which was either the smell of her body or the smell of the roses in her hat or a mingling of the two. She lowered her eyes. ‘I’ve lost the winder key,’ she said. ‘I’ve ransacked the house for it. I’ve looked inside the grand piano – everywhere . . .’
    Salvatore’s eyes now rested on her small gloved hand holding up the fan. He wanted to take the hand and hold it against his face.
    â€˜. . . in every one of my shoes . . . in my father’s pockets . . . under my bed . . .’
    â€˜But it has departed?’
    â€˜I believe it must be there, in the house, but no one can see it. There are certain things, of course, that are there and cannot be seen, but a winder key isn’t usually one of them, is it? You come from Italy, I suppose?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Italy is one of countless places that I’ve never seen, despite the fact that they exist and are there. But I have no doubt that Italy is more beautiful than almost anywhere on earth. Is it?’
    Salvatore thought: I would like to go up into the sky with her, in a hot-air balloon, and float down on Piedmont, onto my parents’ roof . . .
    â€˜I don’t know,’ he said, ‘because I do not know the earth.’
    At this moment, a church clock struck the hour of four and the young woman hurried to the door, saying that because