She had turned up at Marcello Crozza's studio at ten o'clock one morning and, feigning a determination that had cost her three walks around the block, had said I want to learn the trade, could you take me on as an apprentice? Crozza, who was sitting by the automatic developer, had nodded. Then he had turned around and, looking her straight in the eyes, had said I can't pay you. He hadn't wanted to say forget it, because he'd done the same thing himself many years before and the memory of the courage it had taken him was all that was left of his passion for photography. In spite of all his disappointments, he wouldn't have denied anyone that sensation.
They were mostly vacation photos. Families of three or four people, by the sea or in tourist destinations, hugging in the middle of St. Mark's Square or under the Eiffel Tower, with their feet cut off and always in the same pose. Photographs taken with automatic cameras, overexposed or out of focus. Alice didn't even look at them anymore: she developed them and then slipped them all into the paper envelope with the yellow and red Kodak logo.
It was mostly a matter of being in the shop, receiving rolls of twenty-four or thirty-six shots, shut away in their little plastic containers, of marking the customer's name on the slip and telling them they'll be ready tomorrow, of printing out receipts and saying thank you, good-bye.
Sometimes, on Saturdays, there were weddings. Crozza picked her up from home at a quarter to nine, always in the same suit and without his tie, because in the end he was the photographer, not a guest.
In church they had to set up the two lights, and on one of the first occasions Alice had dropped one and it had smashed on the steps of the altar and she had looked at Crozza in terror. He had pulled a face as if one of the pieces of glass had gotten stuck in his leg, but then he had said never mind, just clean it up.
He was fond of her and didn't know why. Perhaps because he had no children, or because since Alice had been working there he was able to go to the bar at eleven o'clock and check his lottery numbers and when he came back to the shop she smiled at him and asked him so, are we rich? Perhaps because she had that bad leg and lacked a mother as he lacked a wife and all lacks are pretty much the same. Or because he was sure that she would soon get tired of him and in the evening he would pull down the security gate on his own again and set off for home where no one was waiting, with his head empty and yet so very heavy.
Instead, after a year and a half, Alice was still there. Now that she had the keys she arrived before him in the morning and Crozza found her on the sidewalk in front of the shop, chatting with the lady from the grocer's next door, with whom he had never exchanged more than a "Good morning." He paid her under the table, five hundred euros a month. If they did weddings together he would drop her outside the door of the Della Rocca house and, with the engine of his Lancia still running, take out his wallet and hand her an extra fifty, saying see you Monday.
Sometimes she brought him her own snapshots and asked his opinion, even though it was clear to both of them that he had nothing more to teach her. They sat down at the desk and Crozza looked at the photographs, holding them up to the light, and gave her some advice about exposure time, or how best to use the shutter. He let her use his Nikon whenever she wanted and had secretly decided that he would give it to her as a present the day she left.
"We're getting married on Saturday," said Crozza. It was his way of saying they had a job.
Alice was putting on her denim jacket. Fabio would be there to pick her up at any moment.
"Okay," she said. "Where?"
"At the Gran Madre. Then there's a reception in a private villa in the hills. Rich folks' stuff," commented Crozza with a touch of disdain, immediately regretting it because he knew that Alice came from that world too.
"Hmm," she murmured. "Do you know who they are?"
"They sent the invitation. I've put it over there somewhere," said Crozza, pointing to the shelf under the cash register.
Alice looked in her bag for a rubber band and pulled back her hair. Crozza watched from across the shop. Once he had masturbated thinking about her, kneeling in the gloom after they'd lowered the security gate, but then he had felt so dreadful that he hadn't eaten and the next day he had sent her home saying you've got the day off today, I don't want anyone underfoot.
Alice rummaged among the sheets of paper stacked under the counter, more to fill the time while waiting than out of genuine interest. She found the envelope with the invitation, stiff and imposingly large. She opened it and the name leaped off the page in a gilded cursive, full of flourishes.
Ferruccio Carlo Bai and Maria Luisa Bai are delighted to announce the marriage of their daughter Viola…
Her eyes darkened before she went any further. A metallic taste flooded her mouth. She swallowed and it was like gulping down that fruit candy from the locker room all over again. She closed the envelope and waved it in the air for a moment, thinking.
"Can I go alone?" she ventured at last, her back still turned to Crozza.
He shut the drawer of the cash register with a rattle and a ding.
"What?" he asked.
Alice turned around and her eyes were wide open and bright with something and Crozza couldn't help smiling, they were so beautiful.
"I've learned how by now, haven't I?" said Alice, walking over to him. "I can do it. Otherwise I'll never be able to manage on my own."
Crozza looked at her suspiciously. She rested her elbows on the desk, right in front of him, and leaned toward him. She was only a few inches from his nose and that gleam in her eyes begged him to say yes and not to ask for explanations.
"I don't know if-"
"Please," Alice broke in.
Crozza stroked his earlobe and was forced to look away.
"All right, then," he gave in. He didn't understand why he was whispering. "But don't screw it up."
"I promise," Alice said, making her translucent lips disappear into a smile.
Then she pushed herself forward on her elbows and gave him a kiss, which tickled Crozza's three-day beard.
"Go on, go on," he said, dismissing her with his hand.
Alice laughed and the sound of it scattered through the air as she left with that sinuous, rhythmic gait of hers.
That evening Crozza stayed a little longer than usual in the shop, doing nothing. He looked at the things around him and noticed that they had more presence, as they had many years before when they seemed to be asking him to take their picture.
He took the camera out of the bag, where Alice always put it back after giving all the lenses and mechanisms a good clean. He screwed on the lens and aimed it at the first object that came into view, the umbrella stand by the entrance. He enlarged part of the rounded edge until it looked like something else, like the crater of an extinct volcano. But then he didn't take the picture.
He put the camera away, picked up his jacket, turned out the lights, and left. He closed the security gate with the padlock and headed in the opposite direction from his usual one. He couldn't seem to wipe the stupid smile from his face and he really had no desire to go home.
The church was decorated with two enormous bouquets of lilies and daisies, arranged on either side of the altar, and with dozens of miniature copies of the same bouquet at the end of each pew. Alice set up the lights and arranged the reflector panel. Then she sat in the first row and waited. A lady was running the vacuum cleaner over the red carpet that Viola would walk down in an hour. Alice thought about when she and Viola used to sit on the railings and talk. She couldn't remember what they had talked about, only that she had looked at her rapt from a place just behind her eyes, a place full of jumbled thoughts that she had kept to herself even then.
Over the next half hour all the pews filled up and people accumulated at the back, where they stood fanning themselves with the order of service.
Alice went outside and waited on the cobblestones for the bride's car to arrive. High in the sky the sun warmed her hands and its rays seemed to pass right through them. As a little girl she had liked looking at her palms against the light, the red peeking through her closed fingers. Once she had shown it to her father and he had kissed her fingertips, pretending to eat them.
Viola arrived in a gleaming gray Porsche, and the driver had to help her out and pick up her cumbersome train. Alice madly snapped away, more to hide her face behind the camera than anything else. Then, when the bride passed by, she lowered it deliberately and smiled at her.
They looked at each other for only a moment and Viola caught her breath. Alice couldn't study her expression, because the bride had already passed her and was entering the church on her father's arm. For some reason Alice had always imagined him taller.
She was careful not to lose so much as a moment. She took various close-ups of the happy couple and their families. She immortalized the exchange of rings, the reading of the promises, the communion, the kiss, and the signing of the register. She was the only one moving in the whole church. It seemed to Alice that Viola's shoulders stiffened slightly when she was near her. She increased the exposure time still further, to obtain the blurry quality that, according to Crozza, suggested eternity.
As the couple left the church, Alice walked ahead of them, limping backward, bending slightly so as not to alter her height with a low perspective. Through the lens she became aware that Viola was looking at her with a frightened half-smile, as if she were the only one who could see a ghost. Alice exploded the flash in her face at regular intervals, about fifteen times, until the bride was forced to narrow her eyes.
She watched them get into the car and Viola darted her a glance from behind the window. She was sure she would immediately start talking to her husband about her, about how strange it was to have come across her there. She would describe her as the class anorexic, the cripple, someone she had never hung out with. She wouldn't mention the candy or the party or all the rest. Alice smiled at the thought that it might be their first half-truth as a married couple, the first of the tiny cracks that would eventually converge into a gaping hole.
"Miss, the bride and groom are waiting on the riverbank for you to photograph them," said a voice behind her.
Alice turned around and recognized one of the witnesses.
"Certainly. I'll be right there," she replied.
She quickly went into the church to dismantle her equipment. She was still putting the various pieces of the camera in the rectangular case when she heard someone calling to her.
"Alice?"
She turned around, already sure who had been speaking.
"Yes?"
Standing in front of her were Giada Savarino and Giulia Mirandi.
"Hi," said Giada ostentatiously, approaching Alice to kiss her on both cheeks.
Giulia stayed where she was, staring at her feet as she had done at school.
Alice barely brushed Giada's cheek with her own pursed lips.
"What on earth are you doing here?" shrieked Giada.
Alice thought it was a stupid question and couldn't help smiling.
"I'm taking photographs," she replied.
Giada responded with a smile, showing the same dimples she had had at seventeen.
It was strange to find them here, still alive, with their shared bits of past that suddenly counted for nothing.
"Hi, Giulia," Alice forced herself to say.
Giulia smiled at her and struggled to speak.
"We heard about your mother," she said. "We're really sorry."
Giada nodded repeatedly, to show her agreement.
"Yeah," replied Alice. "Thanks."
She started hastily putting things away. Giada and Giulia looked at each other.
"We'll let you get on with your work," Giada said, touching her shoulder. "You're very busy."
"Okay."
They turned around and walked toward the exit, the crisp click of their heels echoing off the walls of the now empty church.
The couple was waiting in the shade of a big tree standing some feet apart. Alice parked next to their Porsche and got out with the shoulder bag. It was hot and she felt her hair sticking to the back of her neck.
"Hi," she said, walking over.
"Alice," said Viola. "I didn't think-"
"Neither did I," Alice cut in.
They pretended to hug, as if not wanting to rumple their clothes. Viola was even more beautiful than she had been at school. Over the years her features had grown milder, the outlines were softer, and her eyes had lost that imperceptible vibration that made them so terrible. She still had that perfect body.
"This is Carlo," said Viola.
Alice shook his hand and felt how smooth it was.
"Shall we start?" she asked, cutting her short.
Viola nodded and sought her husband's eyes, but he didn't notice.
"Where shall we stand?" she asked.
Alice looked around. The sun was at its zenith and she would have to use the flash to eliminate all the shadows from their faces. She pointed to a bench in full sunlight on the riverbank.
"Sit down there," she said.
She took longer than was necessary to set up the camera. She pretended to busy herself with the flash, mounted one lens and then swapped it for another one. Viola's husband fanned himself with his tie, while she used her finger to try to stop the little drops of sweat trickling down her forehead.
Alice left them to stew for a bit longer as she pretended to find the right distance to take the picture.
Then she started issuing brusque orders. Put your arms around each other, smile, now serious, take her by the hand, rest your head on his shoulder, whisper in her ear, look at each other, closer, toward the river, take your jacket off. Crozza had taught her that you mustn't let your subjects breathe, you mustn't give them time to think, because it takes only a minute for the spontaneity to evaporate.
Viola obeyed, two or three times asking apprehensively is that all right?
"Okay, now let's go into the field," said Alice.
"More?" asked Viola, startled. The red of her flushed cheeks was starting to show through her foundation. Her eyeliner was already slightly smudged, the edges were getting jagged, making her look tired and slightly shabby.
"You pretend to run away and let him chase you across the field," Alice explained.
"What? You want me to run?"
"Yes, run."
"But…" Viola began to protest. She looked at her husband and he shrugged.
She snorted, then lifted up her skirt and began running. Her heels sank a few millimeters into the ground, and kicked up little clumps that dirtied the inside of her white dress. Her husband ran after her.
"You're going too slowly," he said.
Viola turned around all of a sudden with a look that reduced him to ashes, a look that Alice remembered all too well. She let them run after each other for two or three minutes, until Viola freed herself clumsily from her husband's clutches, saying that's enough.
Her hair had come undone on one side and a lock fell down her cheek.
"Yes," said Alice. "Just a few more shots."
She took them to the ice-cream stand and bought two lemon ice pops, which she paid for herself.
"Hold these," she said, extending them to the couple.
They seemed not to understand, and unwrapped them suspiciously. Viola was careful not to get the sticky syrup all over her hands.
They had to pretend to eat them, arms crossed, and then offer the other a lick. Viola's smile was becoming increasingly tense.
When Alice told her to hold on to the street lamp and use it as a pivot to spin around, Viola exploded.
"This is ridiculous," she said.
Her husband looked at her, slightly intimidated, and then looked at Alice, as if to apologize.
Alice smiled. "It's part of the classic album," she explained. "That's what you asked for. But we can skip that sequence."
She forced herself to sound sincere. She felt her tattoo pulsating, as if it wanted to jump out of her skin. Viola stared at her furiously and Alice held her gaze until her eyes burned.
"Have we finished?" said Viola.
Alice nodded.
"Let's go, then," the bride said to her husband.
Before letting himself be dragged away, he came over to Alice and shook her hand politely once more.
"Thanks," he said.
"My pleasure."
Alice watched them climb back up the slight slope to the parking lot. Around her were the usual sounds of Saturday, the laughter of children on the swings and the voices of the mothers looking after them. There was music in the distance and the rush of cars on the road, like a carpet of sound.
She wanted to tell Mattia, because he would have understood. But he was far away now. She thought that Crozza would be furious, but he would forgive her in the end. She was sure of it.
She smiled. She opened the back of the camera, took out the film, and unrolled it completely under the white light of the sun.