The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online Page A

widows and homosexuals bought silver-backed brushes and gold cigarette cases, stacked beside souvenirs of Pompeii.
    Now, day-trippers from Sorrento, on package-holiday outings, clog up the smooth flow of money and goods from trader to shopper. The beautiful ageless women and their slightly sinister iron-haired men have to compete at the luxury windowswith red legs and bad haircuts, as the migrant shorts population wonders out loud how much everything costs before moving on to another ice cream.
    At night, Capri partly reclaimed by the rich, the paparazzi hang about the entrance to the Quisisana, waiting to snap a film star or a scandal or, better still, both together.
    A young hopeful stands in her evening wear in the doorway. She carries a silk handbag and her hair is dark as the sea. She’s nobody. The cameras look the other way.
    The Quisisana. The hotel where Oscar Wilde came after his release from prison. Signing himself as Sebastian Melmoth, he sat down wearily to eat his dinner, only to be asked by the manager to leave.
    Those waiters in their white coats, those managers in their dark suits, the traders in linen dresses and hand-sewn shirts, know how much everyone is worth, and what something is worth to everyone. The balance between deference and manipulation is as timed to the second as the release brake on the funicular railway. Such tensions allow thesystem to run smoothly. The island itself is a tension between land and sea, height and depth. Poverty and riches have always lived on either side of the olive tree. The paradox of innocence and knowingness is in the faces of the young boys and the laughter of the girls. For Capri, the secret of success has been found in maintaining these tensions.
    Not too slack, not too tight, that’s Capri.
    I was sitting at a bar in the square. Actually I was sitting in the square itself, so far had the bar extended its territory of bamboo chairs tucked beneath bamboo tables the size of saucers.
    I had my laptop on my knee—there was nowhere else to put it—and I was drinking espresso with a slice of
torta Caprese
, when I saw you, just beyond the reach of the bar, crossing the square.
    You were wearing a sleeveless dress and sandals, and I realised that you were one of those beautiful ageless women, and that the man with you, slightly sinister, has iron-grey hair. I know what I am—small, disappearing, an outsider—nobody would look at me twice even if theynoticed me once. You were used to being looked at, I could see that.
    You paused outside a shop selling heavy amethyst jewellery. The assistant appeared like a genie and soon had you bottled inside. That gave me the time I needed to pay my bill, pack my laptop and observe your husband. If it was your husband.
    He had his hands in his pockets. Then he checked his watch. Then he put on his sunglasses. Then he went to look down over the harbour. Then he came back and paced outside the shop. Then he went and put a coin in the telescope. I guessed this was a man who went through life with remote control, constantly flicking the channels. Finding nothing to interest him, he switched off and stared into space.
    You came out of the shop and smiled like a movie star. You had a package. You took his arm. You talked all the time, pointing out this and that, and he nodded briefly, saw for a second, remembered consciously to enjoy himself.
    I followed you both, not far, down to theQuisisana, and hid myself behind a gang of Americans and their tour leader. You were waiting at the lift, when suddenly you turned back and went towards the front desk. This was my chance—not to speak to you but to find out your room number. I got into the lift with your husband, got out with him on the third floor, and walked purposefully past him as he let himself into Room 29.
    All right.
    Now all I had to do was wait.
    It was evening. The air like a kiss.
    I was sitting on a low wall opposite the Quisisana. The paparazzi were joking with one another. A