"Writing to Gisella" (1)
Extract from a story told almost entirely through the letters of the main character. Here's the first missive...
There are two things I should say about this extract before you read it. The first is that it is preceded by around 28 pages of traditional first person past tense narrative which sets up the main characters and the key events in 1987. Given that, I realise that you will reading the first letter ‘blind’ - but 28 pages is far too much to put in a Substack post. I wouldn’t be so arrogant…
And secondly, this was written a long time ago - and with that in mind, beware the odd typo! Inevitably my style will have changed since then, so if I was writing it today it would be slightly different. Having said that, the last letter in the sequence still makes me cry..!
Writing to Gisella now appears as one of three novellas in Losing Moby Dick and Other Stories, all written in around the same era.
LONDON – September 1991
Gisella,
I received your letter a couple of days ago and to be honest I didn’t really know what to do with it. I know you sent it a while back and I guess it only managed to catch up with me thanks to people forwarding it on. I haven’t lived at the house in Bristol you sent it to for at least a couple of years now. Luckily the people who now live there are still in contact with one of my old house-mates and he sent it on to my parents… Anyway, I got it on Thursday.
The not knowing what to do with it part… I read it several times over. It was probably one of the biggest surprises I’d ever had; I mean, I was never expecting to hear from you again – certainly not after all this time. What is it, four years nearly? And I wasn’t sure if I should reply or simply… But then I decided I couldn’t ignore it. So I woke up this morning – Saturday – with the express aim of writing this letter back to you. Even now, I’m not sure where it will take me…
So many questions. So many questions.
But then maybe just one real question, when you boil it down. What happened? What happened after I left Lucca?
I came home like a man reborn. It was a Thursday, wasn’t it? The plane was late leaving Pisa, which meant I was stuck in the airport for hours; then it was really rough flying on the way home. They nearly diverted the flight, though God knows where to. Given the emotional state I was already in when I awoke in Jackson’s flat (after an awful night of not sleeping), all I needed was a dreadful journey. By the time I got back I was shattered.
The next morning I wrote to you. Probably the letter had a longer description of my travels from Lucca to Bristol. Maybe it was abominably boring, I don’t know. I sent it to the address you gave me and then waited. I know I included my address (again) and phone number (again). That weekend I rang Jackson to let him know I was back safely – and to ask if he’d seen you. I knew my letter wouldn’t have arrived with you yet, but I just wanted some kind of confirmation I suppose. And Jackson was my only conduit. He seemed fine, but said he hadn’t seen you.
I waited a few days and wrote again. Was that unreasonable of me? I’m surprised I waited that long to be honest. I felt suddenly like I’d been cast adrift, a lone sailor with no sight of the shore and longing for home. I rang Jackson – at least I tried to ring him – that following weekend. I eventually got hold of him a few days later. Had he seen you? Yes, you had been in lessons. How were you? Did you get my letters? He couldn’t answer the second question – and answered the first one pretty badly too. I asked him (maybe begged him) to get you to contact me.
I have wondered often – and four years ago, nearly all the time – what happened. The simplest explanation would be that you didn’t get my letters. Is that it? If you didn’t get them, did you assume that I didn’t care, that I was going to break your heart after all? (Mine was already crumbling!) But that notion didn’t work for me. If you hadn’t heard, then why didn’t you get in touch through Jackson? Why didn’t you call me? Or write to me?
And then that led me to my second explanation: that you didn’t care. That you were the one who was going to do the heart breaking. But somehow I couldn’t believe that, not after our last day together. I couldn’t.
So what else did that leave? You’d had an accident – or been captured by white slave traders – or you’d won the Italian lottery or met a millionaire and didn’t need me any more… I came up with all sorts of permutations. But none of them worked. And the reason they didn’t work was that Jackson would have told me: “Gisella’s been in a car crash”, “Gisella’s been smuggled out to Algiers”, “Gisella’s run off to Milan with a Prince”…. But he didn’t say any of those things.
Actually – and I don’t know how much you are aware of this – after a while Jackson stopped saying anything at all. Oh it was months later, but he went silent on me too. He’d said a couple of weird things about Mita, and made reference to wanting to see what the rest of Italy was like – but I’ve no idea what happened to him. Someone told me that they’d heard he was in Florence – or was it Rome? Anyway, when he was no longer in Lucca, and no longer on that phone number, my only link to you – if you weren’t talking to me – had vanished. I was no longer a lone sailor out of sight of shore, I was now a castaway on an uninhabited island…
At some point I gave up. You may think that was wrong of me, I don’t know; that if I cared as much as I said I did, then I wouldn’t have given up. Ever. But what was I supposed to do? I’d tried the avenues that were open to me – other than jumping on a plane and wandering the streets of Lucca until I found you – and they were all now dead ends. I didn’t decide one day to not care, to give you up; it was never that calculated. You just get worn out.
And I got a job. You asked in your letter about my job. I kind of fell into one, maybe about 3 months or so after I got back. It didn’t look like much at first – a nondescript role in a marketing company – but it was the first real offer I’d had, so I took it. The fact that it was based in London meant I had to leave Bristol, so I was breaking ties there. Maybe the job was coincident with me assuming I would never hear from you again. Perhaps I thought the job and London was the ideal ‘fresh start’.
I lived in Greenford for a while (I know the place names won’t mean anything to you… it sounds nice, but it’s a dump!) and then to Kensal Rise (another dump!) and then to Camden – which is where I am now. The job actually went pretty well. I seemed to find a niche for myself supporting promotional road shows for our customers, working on the technical side. This has meant that I’m rapidly becoming a seasoned traveller: I’m off to Amsterdam and Sienna before Christmas (my first time back in Italy) and then for sure New York in the new year. Sounds more glamorous than it is: airport, hotel, venue, hotel, airport is usually the routine, though I try and get about as much as I can.
I’m still young. It’s a life. It’s not a career; I’m going to get bored with it in a while I’m sure, but for now it’s kind of fun and interesting. I’ve idea what happens after.
You didn’t say anything in your letter about what has happened to you. I see the postmark is Lucca, so does that mean you didn’t make it to university in Pisa yet – or that you’ve finished there? There’s part of me that would like to know if Luca’s OK; do you know? And Mita too. And maybe you can shed some light on what actually happened to Jackson; you’re my only source for news on him now, much as he was my only source for you…
And I am interested to know how you are and what you are doing. A lot can happen in four years. And I know it’s a long time… You may not want to tell me, I don’t know. But you did write to me. Why did you write to me Gisella? There must be a part of you that wants – I don’t know – to know something about where I am and what I’m doing, even if it’s just for old time’s sake. You asked about my job…
So if you want to write back, then that’s just fine. I’ll put my new address at the end of the letter so anything can come straight to me next time. And if you do write back, I’m going to keep asking you what happened four years ago; asking until I know. So at some point you’ll need to tell me. Not next time maybe, but when you’re ready.
I’m sure there’s a lot that’s happened to both of us since I was there. I guess we both need to work out how much of it we want to share.
Take care,
Rick