Fear of the Known

I came out of Marcel’s bathroom to find Laura and Clara gone.  Only Marcel remained, and he was locking the front door.  He turned to look at me as his fingers flipped the bolt, and I saw that he was smiling: his eyes were narrowed, and his mouth was twisted into a half-grin, half-snarl.  It was the smile of a predator.  Maybe his smile was always like that, and I had just failed to notice.  My heart began to race.

Just a couple hours ago, I had been sitting in the park, enjoying the sun and Italian culture that surrounded me.  I had been shopping that afternoon at the bancarelle, a sea of stalls with clothes, jewelry, various household items and novelties displayed for sale.  Sunglasses and bracelets and necklaces were strewn across tables and hung from wires.  Dresses, jeans, skirts, and blouses were strung up in every corner.  I suppose by Italian standards this weekly installment of booths and vans and tents would be considered tacky; to me, it still felt dense with thousands of years of civilized history, centuries of art and culture and language bred into the buildings, the trees, the people.  Even the zingari, with their long skirts and unkempt hair, seemed more polished and sophisticated to me than your average Canadian Joe or Jane.

Laura and Clara were meeting me for a beer in the park.  Back home, this would mean having to hide, all shifty-like, trying to be discreet about consuming alcohol in public and feeling unnecessarily deviant the whole time.  In Italy, even a teenager could waltz up to the nearest bar or café, order a couple birre to go, sit on the church steps with a few friends and, undisturbed and guilt-free, watch the piazza bustle with people and pigeons. 

I rummaged through my purchases while waiting: a pair of jeans in a style that no one else would own yet back home, but would be the trend in a couple years; a red scarf to tie in my hair, or wear around my neck like a real European; a pair of orange pants, made from hemp and as comfortable as pyjamas; and a long skirt that hung to my ankles and was comprised of swabs of mismatched fabric, almost like a light cotton quilt.  I have worn the jeans, the scarf, and the pants countless times in the years since that April afternoon in Padova, but the skirt I’ve only worn once.  I wore it the day that Marco and and Francesca and their kids and I went to Pompeii, but it reminded me too much of Marcel and his predatory smile.  The way he had held it up to his waist, laughing, and kicking up his legs like he was dancing in it.  For every step that I took throughout the remains of that wasted ancient city, my skirt would billow before me just like it did during Marcel’s pathetic can-can.  I’ve never worn that skirt again.  I still have it in my closet, though, buried at the bottom of the bin that holds my winter sweaters.     

I had met Clara and Laura the night before at a bar.  I was there with Gina’s brother and his friends, since Gina was in a depressive slump for most of my two week stay in Padova and had hardly wanted to go out at all.  Clara and Laura were at the table next to us, and as the boys got deep into an argument about football, I grew tired of having to concentrate on following the rapid-fire Italian, especially when the subject matter interested me so little.  I turned to the girls beside me and introduced myself.  We talked and drank and smoked Marlboros for the next couple hours, and when the boys were finished with their football, they were interested in meeting my new friends as well.  By the end of the night, Clara and Laura and I had decided to meet at the park by the bancarelle the next afternoon.

And now, now where were those girls?  Where had they gone, in such a rush that they couldn’t wait to say good-bye?  I hadn’t taken that long in the bathroom, had I?  Marcel was walking towards me, his arms outstretched.  My heart leapt into my throat.  He stopped about a meter away, turned and sat down on the faded burgundy leather couch.  “Let’s smoke another joint, oui?” he asked in French.

“Ou sont les autres?” I replied.  “Where did they go?”

“Ah, they had to leave.  Forgot about an appointment or something.  Why, you don’t like to be alone with me?”

Now here was a loaded question.  I had known Marcel for about an hour at this point.  If I told him that yes, as a matter of fact, he did make me nervous, how would he react?  I don’t know anything about this guy, I realized with a growing sense of dread.  I don’t know how stable or unstable he might be, or what an admission of discomfort might trigger in him.  But I also didn’t want to seem inviting by lying and telling him that I felt perfectly fine being locked in a tenth story apartment in a foreign city with a virtual stranger who smiled like a predatory beast.  How the fuck did I end up here, anyway?  Am I really stupid enough to end up alone in a strange man’s apartment, while the only people who know that I’m here just met me less than twenty-four hours ago and don’t even know my last name?

It’s finally caught up with me, I thought.  My longing for adventure, my need to prove my autonomy to myself and everyone else, my attraction to the unknown, my trust in the universe to take care of me because I was a good person. I had been fooling myself, I now realized.  I had believed that I would be somehow immune to harm since I tried to never intend any myself.  We don’t fear what we know, someone once said, and I had believed it, had made it my personal philosophy.  It was why I talked to strangers, always greeted others with an open mind, reserved judgment and lived life with the belief that you get what you expect from people.  Expect the best, and people will rise to the occasion.  Had I really been lucky enough to have spent the first twenty-five years of my life relatively unharmed by this foolishly naïve, pie in the sky approach? 

But perhaps I was just overreacting.  Perhaps I was misinterpreting the situation entirely; after all, this was a foreign country to me.  As much as I liked to believe that I could navigate Italian norms and customs with an impressive ease, there were times when I still felt disoriented and confused.  And Marcel was originally from Africa.  That meant there was a whole other layer of culture to confuse things, to muddle communication, and result in tense, unfamiliar situations like this.  I was just misreading his intentions, and my central nervous system’s explosive response to being alone with Marcel was just a result of growing up in a culture that feared the unknown.  Well, I didn’t fear the unknown; I embraced it.  We don’t fear what we know.  And I just don’t know Marcel very well, I told myself.  He probably just locked the door because he wanted to smoke another joint without anyone barging in.  I was actually safer with the door locked, I tried to convince myself.  Relax.

Marcel’s laughter brought me back to my present situation.  I looked at him sitting on the couch, his fingers pinching off flakes of the dried weed and dropping them into the rolling paper that was spread open on the coffee table in front of him.  He worked without having to look down; his eyes were fixed on me, and as he laughed he showed a mouthful of perfectly white teeth that met gums as pink as my own.  I may be white, and you may be brown, but both our hearts are red.  I had heard a guest on Oprah say that a few months ago during a show on racism and ignorance.  Now, I held onto that thought as though it were a life preserver in this present sea of unknowns: this unknown man, his unknown motives, and my own unknown reaction to the question that Marcel had just finished repeating.

“Eh, ma fille? You don’t like to be alone with me?”  His smile was still there, but his eyes flashed with an accusatory glare that I hadn’t noticed before.  Marcel put the finished joint between his lips, lit the end, and inhaled deeply.  “Come, sit here.  It will be easier to pass this spino back and forth,” Marcel said as he patted the deflated-looking cushion beside him.  Thick smoke floated around his head, hung there for a moment before being dispersed by the ceiling fan that whirred above us.  He extended his arm, offering me the soppy end of the joint, wet from being pressed between his lips.

“No, no,” I began, with a laugh that sounded so forced and tinny that I wanted to cringe.  “I’m still buzzed from the last one, I’m going to sit this one out.”  I began to move toward the door, concentrating on making a casual exit that wouldn’t expose my anxiety.  “Actually, I should probably head out, they’re expecting me at-”

Marcel’s laughter cut me off, as if he had been waiting for me to make an excuse to leave.  “No, no, no.  Not yet,” he said.  He took another toke, leaned forward, and dropped ashes from the end of the joint into an empty Fanta can. He looked up at me through the heavy haze that hung between us.  His smile had disappeared, and I couldn’t see his gums at all as he told me, “No, you don’t leave yet.”