When they started a new life and moved here, the master was at a loss as to how to teach the mute girl to read and write. He even hired a specialist, but the girl flatly refused to learn sign language. Who would she even talk to that way? The master and the servants would have to learn it, too. Dada wrote all this down on a piece of paper to inform him. It turned out that the girl had already learned to read and write long ago. She could write and read perfectly well. She was also fluent with the keys. Though she could not sing, she had an excellent ear and played beautifully—and here, too, she had another peculiarity: she absolutely hated looking at sheet music. By the time she finished deciphering a piece, she already knew it by heart, and she no longer needed the notes.
The master often gave her beautiful notebooks as gifts. He hoped that perhaps the girl would at least write down her real name and surname somewhere, but Dada seemed stubbornly silent about her past; it never even crossed her mind to write anything that would shed even the slightest light on her old, mist-shrouded life. The girl filled the beautiful notebooks with sketches, adding only two or three words to any given drawing. For a while, the master watched her, but then he gave up and grew accustomed to Dada’s eccentricities. It was a cloudy day. Dada was following the stone-paved paths in the courtyard, occasionally looking up at the sky to see if it was about to rain, then continuing her walk along the path. The yard was quite large. The garden, laid out according to Dada’s own design, formed ornamental patterns and wrapped around the house almost like a belt. The flower beds, bundled up against the cold, were waiting for the onset of winter.
Suddenly, it thundered so loudly that the ground almost shook. Dada wasn't even afraid; she looked up at the sky with a cheerful expression. Large raindrops dampened her face. The rain intensified. In a moment, the girl would have been soaked through, had someone not grabbed her hand and shielded her in a place protected from the rain. Dada looked as if she were offended that her time in the rain had been interrupted. She glared at her savior with a pouting expression.
- You'll get soaked and then you'll catch a cold. - the Gardener said in a low voice.
Dada looked out at the rain. Muddy water was already flowing along the ground like tiny streams. The rain intensified, and soon a wind picked up. The rainwater was hitting them straight in the face. There was no other choice; they had to find a new shelter until it let up. The house was quite a distance away. The Gardener pulled his wide jacket over Dada’s head, took her by the hand, and hurried with her at full speed toward his hut.
Usually, the servants' quarters were located in a single building, but for some reason, the gardener’s was separate—tucked away on the other side of the garden, far from the main house, at the edge of the courtyard. It had an earthen floor, a bed made from wooden crates, a chair-like object in the same style, and a wider crate that served as a table.
Dada did not find such a poor shack strange at all; she felt quite at home. She looked around cheerfully and noticed a hair clip lying by the bed. It felt familiar; she had seen it in someone's hair, likely elsewhere on the estate. However, she didn't dwell on why it was there; she simply recognized it, and the sight of a familiar object didn't make her suspicious, but rather cheered her up. She picked it up immediately to pin back her wet hair, then began searching for a mirror, but could not find one anywhere. There was nothing in the hut other than the furniture made of crates. She tossed the hair clip onto a dresser-like crate and sat down on the bed.
The Gardener's jacket had gotten soaked while protecting Dada from the rain, and he himself, left in just his shirt, was completely drenched. Without any ceremony or apology, he pulled off his wet shirt, wrung it out, and hung it on a rope next to the jacket.
Dada watched his athletic torso with wide eyes. She had only seen him from a distance while spying on him from the hill, but now she had the chance to examine his body up close.
The Gardener smiled:
- I don't feel shy around you anymore. You've already seen me bare-chested plenty of times.
Dada smiled back at him even more broadly. The girl was stunningly beautiful. A smile made her face look even more radiant. The Gardener approached and looked into her eyes. Dada seemed startled by this gaze; the Gardener’s eyes appeared much deeper, as if their depths were hiding something. Beyond the simple, poverty-stricken gardener, one could feel a strange, hidden light...
"No! The gardener doesn't seem like a dangerous man at all! When it was necessary, he even protected me from the rain. Besides, if he wanted to harm me, he has been here for over a year now, and he could have done it many times over! And what could he possibly do to me?.. And why?.. What does he want from me?"
Dada was startled from these thoughts by the Gardener's soft voice:
- My name is Ugo. I think you know that, don't you?
Dada nodded. Then, she scanned the miserable shack once again. She noticed nothing interesting or entertaining. And what was she supposed to see? What did she expect to find in this wretched place?
The girl soon grew bored. The smile faded from her face. She looked at the rain with melancholy. The rain showed no signs of stopping; on the contrary, it grew stronger and stronger. Little streams had already begun to seep into the hut. The puddle forming by the bed was growing so fast that Dada tucked her feet up onto the bed.
Ugo tried to reassure her:
- Don't be afraid. It’s an earthen hut; it won't fill with water that easily.
Dada gave him a sad look. Then, she rested her head on something like a pillow and stared mindlessly at a single point.
The Gardener watched the rain through the small window of the hut. Later, the rain subsided significantly. It seemed it would soon stop completely. Ugo turned toward Dada, wanting to cheer her up with the news that she would soon be able to go back to her house, but Dada was sleeping sweetly with a peaceful expression. She was stunningly beautiful. The wretched hut and the place covered in stiffened rags, improvised as a bed, only made her look even more beautiful as she slept there. The Gardener stared as if enchanted. Holding his breath, he did not even dare to take a step to wake the girl up.
Suddenly, the door opened. A young maid appeared on the threshold. She lifted the hem of her wet dress, almost exposing her legs, and wrung it out right there in the doorway. As soon as she stepped inside, her eyes fell upon the sleeping Dada, and she cast a terribly jealous look at the bare-chested gardener. Ugo huddled like a culprit and signaled with his hand not to wake her. The furious woman let go of her dress hem. Then, she caught sight of her hair clip lying on the crate, snatched it up, and immediately pinned it into her hair. She gave the gardener one more wrathful look and silently stepped back out. Ugo let out a sigh of relief. Dada, however, had heard nothing and continued to sleep peacefully.
LEX · Thursday, February 4, 2016
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