Page 25 of I'll Look for You, Everywhere
Driving through Torino was both nostalgic and nauseating. Settled at the foot of the Alps, baroque buildings in shades of beige and off-white are blinding against the morning sun. Early-rising street vendors lazily untie the tarp coverings, settling in for another day of bartering and slow selling. Faces aged by decades of laughing in the sun.
After years of this city, you stop seeing it. By the time I’d hit sixteen I could give a shit less about architectural significance. If the right person would have asked me to pour gasoline on Piazza Solferino and set it on fire, I wouldn’t have thought twice. Behind the Chiesa di Santa Teresa is where we tried cocaine for the first time, and the following Sunday, I kneeled in front of the bishop for my confirmation. I got a blow job inside the archways between San Mariano and Via Tropolo, and threw up on the top of her head while I came.
I park in the spot that says ‘SINCLAIR’, knowing that I’m not the one it’s named after. A pang of jealousy settles deep between my shoulder blades, causing me to hunch forward.
I want what my father has.
The engine cuts off and I sit looking at the museum, unsure of what stops me from going in. Has it changed in the past seven years? My stomach flips when I think about the Statue of Isis anywhere but in the main floor gallery. The ceiling and floor are both black marble, creating a vacuum of onyx that she floats inside. The one truly beautiful thing my father has ever created.
When I walk into the museum, I want it to be as the person I am now, not the idiot boy who did everything so as not to miss out on youth. Heat rolls across my skin as I open the car door but I fight a shiver. A sweat breaks across my neck and the flash of those scenes into a single memory makes me understand why my father hates me. There was a time I would actively do everything he asked me not to. It was the only way I felt anything at all, watching his disappointment deepen each time I fucked up. Every punch of his fist, every lecture, was an escape – absolving me of guilt.
‘Stop being a pussy,’ I say out loud, the only way I’ll actually start walking. Putting my head down, I head towards the back entrance quickly, as if anyone would recognize me at seven in the morning in front of a closed museum.
The walk to the door feels like a funeral procession. Something has died, or ended, or maybe just been defeated. I choose the key from Anika’s keychain without looking, the bite marks memorized as I run it across the pad of my thumb. Slipping the key into the lock, I turn it slowly. It used to be so easy to come here.
The door silently obeys, the frame almost opening on its own. Straightening myself, I walk in slowly. What the fuck am I so afraid of? Everything is dead inside these walls. I smooth my hair behind my ears to gain a semblance of control. It’s a fucking museum, Theo. Just walk.
The long corridor to arrive at the first gallery feels achingly long. The walls are teal and clad with fragments of papyrus scrolls dating back from 2900 BC, sealed behind temperature-controlled plexiglass. The translations are stuck underneath, along with an introduction to the artefacts that visitors are expected to see. I see myself here at six years old, one hand holding a magnifying glass as the other holds his hand. He’s so excited that I want to know more, patting my head with satisfaction.
And I was.
I wanted to know every secret my father would give me. My father is several things. Amore, to my mother. Daddy to Anika. Renowned archaeologist and owner of the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities to the world. Accomplished businessman, dedicated historian, a generous man. A loyal father.
But to me he is only one thing.
A liar.
I reach the first gallery and since the museum isn’t open yet, the room is tented in blackness. Only a single lamp glows in the far-right corner, the ‘ghost lamp’ as Claudio Savoy likes to call it. Meant to keep the artefacts from coming to life.
‘Bad for press,’ he said when he dragged five of them in for each floor of the museum, ‘if a visitor is possessed by a 3,000-year-old Egyptian king.’
A pang of jealousy hits me for Dante, Jo, Lucia and Magdalen, who grew up in the company of Dr Savoy. A true revolutionary in the field of archaeology, awarded for his success in leadership of the two year-long excavations near the Pyramid of Menkaure, on the Giza Plateau. Growing up next door to him was a dream. I used to listen to them dragging in a Christmas tree after a weekend trip to the Alps. Or every 15 August they’d pack the car early in the morning and head to Numana for Ferragosto. Even then, when I loved my father, there was always something missing between us.
So when, one summer, Dr Savoy announced a private excavation he was assisting AERA with, I packed my duffle bag and left the next morning without telling anyone. If my father introduced ancient Egypt to me, Dr Savoy embedded me in it. In the deserts of Saqqara when I was seventeen years old, canvas tents and dried fish for supper. Sweaty and covered in sand, I found a mummified dog and cried from joy.
‘You can hang it on your bedroom wall,’ he said while brushing off the excess debris and patting me on the back. ‘Girls love puppies.’
I laughed so hard I fell down the neighbouring dune and broke my right pinkie toe. Sand was falling out of my shoes for months after our trip and every time I ate anchovies, I thought of him and laughed again. The first time I left home was with him. The next was when I left for good.
I switch on the lamp and my heartbeat settles. Everything is the same; the slick black marble overwhelms the space. For a moment you think you can’t breathe, that you really are in a bottomless vacuum. But soon the sensation disappears, and you’re left breathless from the beauty of the space. I’ve visited museums across the world but it will always be this; black marble and a rusty lamp. My home. Nine statues line the walls, each spotlighted with an overhead light. Four on each side, a mixture of giant lions and panthers carved from limestone guarding the single woman on the far back wall. Eyes follow you as you make the procession towards her, cold stone glaring with heated attention. She consumes the room.
Isis. The Egyptian goddess of love. Daughter of earth and sky. She stands alone, carved in dark granite with mystic seduction. Her head is held high, eyes beckoning you towards her. I walk forward, feeling the same compulsion as I did when I was sixteen. I could destroy this entire city. But her? She was the one thing I would never touch.
I’m standing in front of her, looking at the perfect symmetry of the carved granite, and another face flashes to the front of my mind. I’m still midway down the hall. Green doe eyes follow me, mirroring the feline shape of Isis’s, asking me why I went back to the club. Asking me why I left her at the fucking train station when I should have given her the keys myself and told her to drive anywhere she needs.
Wondering why I punched someone for her.
And that’s the issue, isn’t it? Why did I punch someone for her? Even as I think about how stupid it was to go back to the club and risk my father’s wrath on my first day back, the desire to hurt someone again throbs in my knuckles. Deep anger courses through my chest, down to the heels of my feet, and it feels like my body is on fire. I want to do it again. From how the bone crushed underneath my fist to how the blood spilled from my lip. When the pain is at its peak, I can think straight.
Her face now inches away, Isis stares at me with wonder. My whole body freezes. For the first time in twenty years, I am not in complete awe of her. I try to conjure up some appreciation for her, for this room, for anything but the sound of the passenger door shutting closed, the train approaching the station. Idiot. I stumble backwards. For the first time in twenty years, I feel suffocated by this room. Needing to get out so as not to think about her and the whistle of that train, I make my way upstairs.
Fucking hell. Even the red ochre masks hanging on the wall remind me of that bloody ribbon in her hair. And, before I can suppress the thought, my mind drifts to this morning. The second she slid in the passenger seat, I became too aware of everything about her. It was a simple ride down the street, maybe ten minutes maximum. And I managed to ruin it because I wanted to kiss her. To lock the car door and lower down her seat.
Maybe it’s time to pay Chiara a visit.
‘Just had a late night yesterday.’ The words repeat again. What the fuck was I thinking?
From how silent she was when she sat down, that she didn’t wear a seatbelt. How tight my hands gripped the steering wheel. How short her skirt was. Her legs were enough to set me undone.
