The Sculptor

1 FIRENZE

Standing at the bar in the local café a small, slim woman, in her twenties, sips an espresso. Her expression is hidden behind serious-looking reading glasses. The woman, whose name is Gina, finishes her coffee and runs a hand nervously through her short, dark hair.

Leaving the bar, she turns awkwardly, and the large bundle of papers she is holding drops onto the floor.

As she stoops to pick them up, a woman bends to help her.

"Oh thank you...grazie," stammers Gina.

"My pleasure. It looks like you've got a big subject there."

Gina is surprised to hear the woman answer in English.

"Oh, yes, it's my thesis. I'm trying to write about pre-Etruscan art...it's for my PhD."

"Pre-Etruscan art, a difficult topic to keep hold of."

"You're right," Gina replies with a smile, "just when I think I have a grip on it, it seems to slip away from me."

"Well, if you'd like a new handle on it, I'd be happy to help. I've learned quite a bit about Italian art over the years. I'm married to a local sculptor, Giacomo D'Angelo...you may have heard of him."

Gina studies the woman. She's tall and willowy with long frizzy, greying hair, barely controlled by a ponytail.

She's the first person in Firenze who's spoken to Gina in English for months, and her offer of help is irresistible.

"Oh, I'm Patricia, by the way, Patricia D'Angelo."

"You're married to Giacomo D'Angelo?"

"Yes."

"So you must live at Cipressa?"

"That's right, we do."

During her research Gina has heard about Cipressa, a sixteenth century monastery on a hilltop just north of Firenze. She knows of Giacomo's work in marble and bronze. His clients include many of Italy's most influential collectors and galleries.

"It must be an inspiring place to live," says Gina.

"The place certainly is charming although it's largely in ruins," replies Patricia. "Years ago we restored one area, to make a liveable space. And Giacomo has converted the barn into his studio."

Patricia explains that while they were working on the renovations, she spoke to a retired priest who lived nearby. He told her that Cipressa had been built over an older site, believed to date back to the Etruscans, and possibly much earlier.

Patricia and Giacomo were sceptical until one day, when they were clearing away some rubble, Patricia picked up a small, heavily eroded and interestingly shaped piece of limestone.

About the size of her fist, it was a headless female figure with a narrow waist, broad hips, and plump thighs below.

They recognised it immediately as a venus, an ancient pre-Etruscan fertility icon, precious and unique.

Gina is fascinated by Patricia's story.

"What did you do with it?" she asks.

"Well, we decided to keep it," Patricia replies. "We thought it might be a good omen. You see, we'd been trying to start a family for several years without success, so we put it on a shelf in our bedroom, in the hope that it might bless our efforts."

"And did it?" asks Gina.

"No, unfortunately we were never blessed."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. We have a happy life together. Giacomo's work is the most important thing in both our lives. It turns out that he has the problem, not me."

"Anyway," she continues, "I'd be happy to give you a look at our little pre-Etruscan treasure, and some advice on your thesis, if you'd like to come up for lunch some time."

Gina eagerly agrees and Patricia offers to pick her up the following day.

---

Cipressa is situated at the end of a bumpy dirt road.

Alighting from the car, Gina is delighted by the breathtaking views stretching to the distant alps.

She looks at Patricia with admiration and envy. "You really are blessed here," she says.

"I'll just go and check on Giacomo," says Patricia, "Then we can eat."

While Patricia is busy with Giacomo, Gina wanders around the garden. She is completely captivated by the quiet, decaying beauty of the place and the fragrant breeze that rustles the old trees. It stirs up cool, damp air from pockets of deep shade and mixes it with warmer air rising from the valley below.

It feels to Gina as though the distant past is being mixed with the present. The heady potion makes her feel slightly dizzy.

In her wanderings she comes upon groups of quirky bronze figures dotted around the garden. Some are animals, some are human figures, and some leave her wondering. She finds them all fascinating.

Patricia serves a delightful lunch on a table in the garden but Giacomo doesn't join them. The two women chat happily and enjoy several glasses of local wine. Giacomo finally arrives just as the women are finishing the meal.

He is an impressively tall, heavily built man with large hands, black hair streaked with grey, a tanned, lined face and a dark, rather forbidding expression. He wears dusty overalls and workman's boots.

Patricia introduces Gina.

"Buongiorno," nods Giacomo in a gruff voice.

He seems preoccupied. He grabs a plate and piles it with bread, prosciutto, gorgonzola cheese and fruit. He mutters something to Patricia who excuses herself from the table and follows him back to the studio.

Once again, Gina is left alone to ponder. She is looking forward to seeing Patricia's little venus. While she has studied many Etruscan and pre-Etruscan treasures in glass cases in museums, she has yet to hold one in her hands.

When Patricia returns several minutes later she smiles brightly but looks tired and a bit sad.

"Is everything OK?" asks Gina. Patricia sighs, nods silently and sits quietly for a few minutes.

Finally she says to Gina, "He's a brilliant man, my husband, but he exhausts me."

Gina says she understands that highly creative people can be moody and difficult to live with.

"It's not so much his creativity or his moods that are the problem," Patricia replies.

"Oh?"

"No, it's mainly his appetite."

"He eats a lot?"

"No," says Patricia with a weary smile. "Well, actually he does eat a lot, but that's not the problem."

She takes a generous sip of wine.

"He fucks a lot."

"Oh I'm so sorry," says Gina, embarrassed.

She's not used to hearing such intimate problems so crudely expressed, particularly from someone she has recently met.

"I used to have a boyfriend like that. He was so unfaithful, I eventually had to leave, I just couldn't tolerate his lies."

"Oh, Giacomo's not unfaithful to me," explains Patricia. "It's just that he wants to have sex several times a day, and often during the night as well."

"And he is totally selfish about it, all he wants is to relieve himself...he hardly thinks about my needs at all. For him sex is just another essential bodily function like eating, sleeping and breathing."

"I must admit I thought he'd mellow with age but he's sixty next month and if anything, his desires are becoming more demanding."

"And yet you stay with him?" asks Gina.

"I love him. With all his appetites and moody brilliance, I've never once thought of leaving. But I'm not so young anymore either....I'm over fifty. Just once I'd like to be able to sleep through the night, or spend a whole day without being fucked."

Gina is surprised to hear that Patricia is so old. And to hear an older person talk so frankly about sex. She doesn't look her age. She looks slim and lithe. Yesterday when they met she had noticed that Patricia had had a spring in her step, a youthful, expressive face and a quick smile.

"Well something's keeping you looking young, Patricia. Maybe it's all the sex!"

Patricia laughs. "It's possible I suppose. Anyway, enough about my problems. Here's what you've come to see."

She puts a wooden box on the table and opens the lid. Inside the felt-lined box is an oddly shaped piece of limestone.

The little figure is heavily eroded but Gina recognises it as definitely pre-Etruscan. She reaches out a hand to touch it, but then pulls back.

"It's OK, you can pick it up," says Patricia.

Gina holds it in both hands, a cool, heavy weight, both smoothly textured and sadly broken. A pair of chubby legs are surmounted by broad, swelling hips, a round belly and ample breasts.

"I've always wondered what significance these figures really had," says Patricia. "People will tell you that they used them to symbolise fertility but I must admit, I'm inclined to suspect they were more to do with lust."

Gina laughs. "You mean, this little figure was an ancient form of pornography. Well, men didn't have the internet in those days...I suppose pre-Etruscan men were pretty much the same as modern men..."

"You mean with all-consuming sexual appetites and no shame whatsoever."

They both giggle.

"Here's to men..." says Patricia. "May they forever keep us on our toes!"

The women continue to talk as the afternoon sun creeps around and the garden grows hot and still and quiet.

Gina explains the problems she's having completing her thesis and how, with the difficulties and recurring home-sickness, she's been thinking of giving up and going home.

Patricia is sympathetic, having been persuaded to come to Italy by Giacomo twenty years ago with no knowledge of the language and no friends.

"I should be heading back to town," says Gina, stretching and yawning.

"Before you go, you must have a look at Giacomo's latest work."

"Oh, I don't want to disturb him if he's busy."

"He won't mind, he asked me to show you around."

The studio is large and airy with tall windows overlooking a breathtaking vista of distant mountains and biscuit coloured fields. Giacomo is working on a life-sized plaster figure of a satyr...a mythical beast with the body of a goat and a human head. The head is unfinished but Gina thinks it's probably female, given that a pair of roughly hewn heavy breasts hang from the creature's chest.

Patricia explains that this piece has been commissioned by a local collector. The plaster figure will be used to make a mould which Giacomo will fill with bronze.

"It is dream creature," says Giacomo, in halting English.

Gina looks around. A fine white dust covers everything in the room. Several shapes are covered in sheets and Patricia explains that these are works in progress.

A collection of old dusty wooden chairs, an oak dining table and an old bar fridge cluster around a huge stone fireplace at one end of the room.

They take their leave of Giacomo and walk down a cool, shady path cut into the side of the hill. Gina can hear water trickling nearby, and soon they come upon a spring, running out of the hillside and splashing into a long narrow pond.

"This is our water supply," explains Patricia. "So far it has never run dry but in the summer we are always careful. It's also supposed to date back to pre-Etruscan times."

The two women cup their hands under the spring and taste the water which is cold and pure.

"Well, that's Cipressa, says Patricia as they walk back to the driveway. What do you think?"

"Oh it's just fascinating," replies Gina. "You're so lucky to live in such a beautiful place."

That night back at her small rented room in Firenze, Gina settles down to work but her thoughts keep drifting back to the strange couple she has met, to the little venus and to Patricia's unusual problem.

It was refreshing to be taken away from her own difficulties for a few hours. Patricia was so forthright about her sexual difficulty. For Gina, sex has been absent for so long, and the memories of intimacy so painful, that she has learned not to tease herself by thinking about it.

Gina had parted company with her first boyfriend when she went away to uni. Since then she had only had one lover. One night, on the eve of the first semester break of her honours year she had been invited to a dinner party with the other honours students and some members of the facility. She remembered feeling tired and ambivalent about the dinner because she was more focused on the long drive home to see her family she would be making the following day.

That was the night she had met Rick.

She had been gazing absently at reflections of candlelight in her glass of red wine when she noticed a tall man being seated directly opposite her. She glanced up casually at him. Then she did a double take. His eyes were looking at her with what seemed to be a piercing gaze. For a second she felt extremely uncomfortable, like someone had just caught her out in a lie. Then he smiled, a broad smile that completely transformed his face.

"Hi, I'm Rick."

"Gina. Pleased to meet you."

He was a forensic pathologist with an interest in archaeology. He explained to her that the university was trying to recruit him to lecture the history students about the role of forensics in archaeology.

Rick looked to be in his early thirties, with curly light brown hair, beginning to recede. His ready laughter, spiky wit and rather bizarre jokes made her relax and respond in kind. At the end of the dinner they left together.

Gina didn't drive home next morning. Instead, after a night of thrilling lovemaking, Rick invited her to join him on a trip to Flores in Indonesia to work on a dig where some interesting human remains had been discovered.

Up until that day Gina had always taken a planned and considered approach to her life, but after wrestling with guilt about letting down her family for about ten seconds, she agreed to go. She had never worked on a dig before and the idea of combining it with two weeks of Rick was irresistible.

Over the next two weeks Rick had her climb a mountain — not just the mountain of Flores, near the peak of which the dig was located — but a mountain of desire and infatuation that often left her weak-kneed and trembling.

By the time their return flight left the runway, their hands clasped, her head snuggled blissfully on Rick's shoulder, she realised she had fallen head first in love.

Unfortunately, the Flores trip turned out to be the pinnacle of the affair. Soon after term started, Rick stopped returning her calls and she heard from friends that he had been seen dating someone else.

She was furious with herself. How could she have been so blind, so taken in?

To add insult to injury, Rick accepted a post at the university and Gina had to sit in his lectures. One afternoon he called to her as she was leaving the lecture theatre.

"Gina, I'm sorry things didn't work out after our trip.." he began. Gina shrugged, choking back tears, "It can't be helped. I guess I just expected more than you did."

"I think you're a very special girl, Gina," Rick went on. "But since I'm lecturing this semester, I can't be seen dating a student, — but what say we get together when the term's over?"

Gina was torn. He had broken her heart once. Was she going to give him a chance to do it again?

The answer was yes. She was. In fact she gave him two more chances at smashing it into smithereens before some deep-seated survival mechanism finally kicked in and she accepted an offer of a posting to Firenze to complete her thesis.

Now, as she turns off her desk light and slips into her narrow creaky bed, with the noise of Vesper motor scooters bouncing off the old buildings of Firenze, she wonders what happened to the happy, optimistic girl she used to be before Rick.

Next morning, just as Gina's percolator begins bubbling on the stove, her mobile rings and Patricia's on the line.

"Can I come and see you?" She asks.

Gina is surprised to hear from Patricia so soon. She is even more surprised when she hears what Patricia has to ask from her.

2. CIPRESSA

It's the most outrageous idea. But for some reason she doesn't understand, Gina agrees to it.

Patricia has persuaded her to move up to Cipressa and stay with them. Her board and lodgings will be completely taken care of. She will have her own space to work in peace and the use of Patricia's car if she needs to visit the museum in Firenze. Patricia will work with her to help her finish her thesis.

The outrageous idea is Patricia's proposal, with Giacomo's agreement, that Gina takes over Patricia's wifely duties each evening and night, giving Patricia a much-needed break.

From dusk to dawn she will be on call to meet Giacomo's need for sexual release.

Only after packing her things into Patricia's car for the trip does Gina begin to have second thoughts. Giacomo is virtually a stranger. He's married. He's a big strong, mature man and Gina is a small woman, still a girl really, with limited experience of men.

After her disastrous affair, the idea of having purely physical sex, without all the romantic complications is strangely refreshing to Gina. But with another woman's husband?

Patricia senses her unease and gives her a gentle hug as she climbs into the car.

"It'll be OK," she says, "I'll be there to smooth the way, I promise to make things easy for you."

On arrival at Cipressa, Patricia shows Gina to a small study with a desk and chair, and a little window looking over a cobbled courtyard. Patricia explains that there is only one bedroom in the restored part of the monastery and that she will be sharing it with them.

"But it's a big bed," she says, come and look.

The bedroom is large and bright, overlooking the valley. The bed is vast and crowded with brightly coloured pillows. On the stone walls hangs an interesting array of beautifully drawn botanical illustrations.

"My hobby," explains Patricia. "Here, I've made room in the wardrobe for your things."

3. THE SCULPTOR

As evening approaches, Gina becomes quiet and begins her nervous habit of running a hand through her hair. Patricia sits her at the kitchen table and pours her a large glass of prosecco as she chats happily away and prepares dinner.

When the meal is in the oven, Patricia takes her hand and announces that it is time to visit Giacomo in his studio. Gina walks uncertainly with her down the stone path to the studio. Giacomo is already waiting for them, sitting in one of the chairs, drinking a Peroni.

He looks carefully at Gina as if they had not met before, and speaks to Patricia in Italian.

"He wants you to undress."

Gina takes a deep breath, hesitates for a moment, then pulls off her t-shirt, unzips her jeans and steps out of her sandals. She feels Patricia's hands at her back, gently undoing her bra. Her breasts swing free and she instinctively covers them with her hands.

Giacomo waves his hand in the direction of Gina's only remaining clothing, her panties. Patricia slides them down and Gina stands there a few feet from Giacomo, completely naked.

Patricia takes Gina's hands away from her breasts, holds her shoulders and gently pushes her towards her husband.

Gina is both terrified and aroused.

"Sit," says Giacomo, indicating his lap. Gina sits gingerly on his lap and Giacomo puts down his beer and wraps his large hands around her breasts, kneading them firmly, then sliding them over her hips and down her thighs. She smells his beery breath and feels his hands exploring her neck and shoulders, appraising her, familiarising himself with her body.

He mutters again in Italian and Patricia steps forward. She leans down and undoes Giacomo's fly.

Giacomo's cock springs out, trembling, bluish on the tip and absolutely enormous.

"Oh no!" Gina exclaims in horror and jumps to her feet.

He chuckles and places her hand on it. Her fingers only just fit around it and she strokes it gingerly.

"What have I agreed to?" she asks herself.

"Patricia," she cries, "I can't do this. I really can't. This is a mistake. He's far too big."

"He understands...he knows he needs to be gentle."

Gina is in tears now. "I really don't think...."

"Just a little bit at a time. Stand over it facing him...that's the way. Now, in your own time just sit down a bit on it."

Gina lowers herself, sniffling and fearful onto Giacomo's giant cock. Patricia reaches down and eases her buttocks gently apart.