Free Portrait of a Girl by Dörthe Binkert Page B

without succes s . . . ”
    “I’m aware of that. Nice for you. And so where’s the problem?” Edward asked. A skirt-chaser like James could apparently never get enough.
    “Well, the lady is marrie d . . . ”
    “But, you’re not bringing her here to share a room with me! And I still don’t know what you’re getting at,” Edward said.
    “You’ll understand in a minute. I would like you to meet Kate. After all, you’re my friend. And that’s not all. There are two other ladies staying at the same place, this Spa Hotel Maloja where Segantini wants to meet. The other two ladies, so I am told, are an aunt and her niece.”
    “Well, and so?”
    “Don’t be so unimaginative.”
    James pointed directly at Edward’s heart.
    “The niece is very pretty. She has blue eyes, and she’s sh y . . . well, actually not shy, just youn g . . . ”
    Edward was on the verge of saying something, but held back.
    “Anyway, they’re both blonde and blue-eyed. Kate is older, maybe twenty-five, and to put it bluntly, pretty shrewd. She monopolizes me as if I were her slave. We play tennis and golf and eat with her friends. She’s constantly provoking me, even in front of her husband, and—well, it’s quite titillating, and I think she isn’t prudish.”
    James paused. “I think I’ll soon be at a point with he r . . . ”
    “And you need an official blessing that I’m supposed to give you,” said Edward, whose dealings with women were much more reserved.
    “That, yes, in any case. No, it’s only that Kate keeps pushing me toward the younger one, and I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. It’s as if she wants me to keep proving to her that I prefer her, Kate, above anyone else. And I think she likes to play with fire. She can see that the young girl is falling in love with me. Yet the aunt sticks to her like a postage stamp.”
    Edward sensed that he was supposed to perform additional blessings.
    “But if you have just the slightest spark of decency, Kate is the only one you can have an affair with.”
    “You know that I have no sense of decency,” James said.

Love and Desire
    Segantini dressed with great care. He chose a white shirt, he combed his hair, he checked to see if his shoes were polished, something he often forgot to do. Then he stood at the mirror and looked deeply into his own eyes where the melancholy of his childhood could never be erased.
    “I won’t need you today, Baba,” he said to the servant girl as he stepped into the kitchen. “I won’t be painting today.”
    Bice was standing by the window with her back to him. He turned her around to face him. Her light eyes did not reveal what she was thinking, even less what she was feeling. Then he kissed her forehead. She asked no questions; briefly, gratefully, he stroked her cheek and left the house.
    Signor Robustelli had kept his word. Segantini knew the Spa Hotel Maloja’s gardener. He had talked with him now and then when he walked past the hotel. Now he could see him from afar. The girl was with him, her reddish-blonde hair escaping from under the headscarf she had knotted at the back of her neck. She was nodding at the gardener’s words. He seemed to be explaining something to her.
    Segantini reached the two, but the gardener unhurriedly finished his explanation. “The stone pines are also called Swiss pines. This is the time they bloom, now, in June and July. And as you can see stone pines like to grow near larche s . . . ”
    Nika showed no sign of the shock she felt when Segantini came up to them. She had learned his identity not long after their first memorable run-in on the street; this man with the black curls and dark eyes was the famous painter Segantini. She had run into him occasionally in the village.
    Once, in the laundry, Giuseppina talked about him. “He is a gentleman. Different from us. He came up here from Savognin with his family. They say he had a pile of debts back there and wanted to get away from