Mimi's Ghost Read Free

hadn’t known he was going to come out with this sort of sick drivel at all. On the other hand, one of the things that most gratified him, that most convinced him he must be something of an artist deep down, was the way he never ceased to surprise himself. He wasn’t getting old and stale at all. On the contrary, his train of thought was ever richer.
    The fog pressed down on the car, seemed to clutch and catch at it as it flew past.
    ...so that I couldn’t really have killed you at all, could I, Mimi?’
    Suddenly finding a pink blur of tail lights only feet ahead, Morris braked hard and geared down violently. But it wasn’t enough. To avoid a collision, he swung left to overtake into absolute grey blindness. Immediately headlights appeared. The local bus skidded towards him. Morris squeezed round a 126 to a chorus of klaxons.
    He picked up the receiver from the passenger seat where it had fallen. ‘. . . And I just thought, Mimi, I thought, if you could give me some sign, or something, you know, that you’re alive and well, it would mean so much to me. Any sign. So long as I really know it’s you. And that you’ve forgiven me.’
    Morris frowned. For, of course, the worst part of recognising her in that Madonna by the Renaissance painter had been remembering how the post-mortem had shown she was pregnant. Mimi was pregnant and he had killed his own child, their love-child, a saviour perhaps. This horrible fact could still occasionally rise to the surface of Morris’s consciousness, bringing with it a sense of nausea and profound unease. Though again, this was actually rather gratifying in a way, since otherwise one might have been concerned that one had no sensibility at all. Experience suggested it was a common enough failing.
    â€˜Will you do that for me, Mimi? Give me a sign? I don’t care what form it takes, just that it be clear.’
    Again he imagined her saying: Sì, Morri, sì,’ in that most accommodating voice she had had. Certainly Massimina could never have been accused of having addressed him as Mo or having invited him to jump into the sack and give her a poke. Sex had been something special with her, something holy. Mimi, had he had the good fortune to marry her, would never have been so selfish as not to want to have children. Then all at once an idea had him laughing. What a funny old bloke I am, he thought. Get Paola pregnant despite herself is what I should do. Give her a purpose in life. Before she becomes a mere fashionable parasite. She’ll thank me for it in the end. Wasn’t that the purpose of marriage, as declared in the wedding service?
    Amidst these and other thoughts, some of them only half- conscious perhaps, Morris suddenly changed his mind. Acting on one of those intuitions he had learnt to trust over the years, he chose not to go straight to the florist’s to pick up the huge wreath he had ordered, but turned right, up the Valpantena, on the fast road into the hills where the family had its winery.
    He came out of the fog shortly above Quinto and drove very fast on this holiday morning as far as Grezzana. In grey winter light the valley was rather ugly, with its ribbon development of light industry and second-rate housing projects, many of which had a disturbingly English flavour to them. Certainly it wasn’t the Italy his spirit had yearned for when he had decided to marry into one of their rich families. He had talked this over at length with Forbes: the race was obviously degenerating. They still produced and loved beautiful things, and this was very important for Morris, who could imagine few other reasons for being alive; but they didn’t seem to care if they made their country ugly in the doing of it, and they appeared to think of beauty more as a consumer product than something of spiritual value, a question of owning a particular shirt and tie, a particular style in furnishing. Many of them had no idea at all