Chapter 1 #7
That was when I turned to the window and saw, bracing itself against the iron bars, a monster from my deepest fears: cat-sized, with a dark belly and snow-white throat, a tense shaggy tail, an apricot nose, and small rounded ears, the creature bared its sharp teeth and stared at me with eyes like drops of black poison.
It all happened too fast to notice retractile claws.
I screamed. Nobody came. I screamed again.
Nobody came. The creature flicked its tail brazenly and flew off into the night.
I screamed even after it was gone, closed the window, and locked it.
Nobody came. I was shaking with terror. This, I would later realize, was our sworn enemy: the marten.
I screamed again.
Nobody came.
I awoke too early, blaming the time difference between the East Coast and Florence, got myself out of bed, and with a cautious hand opened the window; it was creature-free, festooned with ivy, spangled in sunlight, but smelled a bit like cat urine.
The room was supplied with a shabby yellow robe, and though it was too short for me and clashed with my light blue pajamas, I felt like a baron myself walking down to the kitchen and making coffee.
Not a soul was awake to see my failures with the coffeepot, and I emerged into the courtyard with my final success.
Free now of pugs, baronessas, and septic problems, I was able to enjoy the dimensions of the outdoor space.
It was bordered on two sides by the house itself—the veranda in which I now stood, enjoying my coffee, and a high stone wall to my left.
The side to my right was occupied by a small stone building (I knew the garage to be on the lower level), from whose upper story came the sound of a radio playing what I took to be Southeast Asian music (I assumed this to be the home of Nimali and Vinsanda), connected to the main house by a narrow stone arch.
The fourth side—there was no fourth side; it was a panorama of the Tuscan hills behind a mulberry tree.
Within the quadrangle thus delineated sat a thick stone table, like a sacrificial altar, and four wrought-iron chairs.
In the middle of the table sat a bowl of purple petunias, so dark they were nearly black.
It was only when I was turning back to the arcade that I noticed, set at the corner of the villa, a small marble column, carved down its length with at least a dozen names: Hector, Claudius, Lucrezia, Barone, and so on.
The names were in red, and a few were marked with asterisks.
“Buon. Giorno,” came a voice from behind me. I was so startled I nearly dropped my coffee.
It was the princess, who sat at a marble table with a pot of coffee, bread, and jam; she had been hidden by a garland of ivy.
She had changed her flower from last night for a pink one; an expression of optimism, I thought.
I noticed she wore light blue pajamas with a yellow robe.
Somehow, I had managed to dress like a princess.
She took no notice of our identical apparel. “I,” she said. “Am. Leaving.” She pronounced each word very clearly for the idiot before her. “Train. Station.”
I nodded as would an idiot.
“Tell. Lisabetta. Thank. You.”
Another nod.
Then she stood and produced a small envelope. “This. For you. Until we meet again.”
She placed the envelope in my hand and made her gracious way into the house.
Hypnotized, I put the envelope in the robe’s pocket.
Soon Vinsanda appeared from the villa, like an actor directed to balance the scene, carrying two old-fashioned suitcases with leather straps.
He looked hungover or simply weary from this world.
To me, this American in a small robe in the courtyard, he said nothing.
In a moment, I heard a car engine start and stutter its way up the road.
I decided not to embarrass myself further, drank my coffee, and went back upstairs.
I found a bathroom that, perhaps to compensate for its lack of windows, was completely wallpapered with small medieval beasts, and I began to run myself a bath (there was no shower).
Apparently I was to bathe with a jug. Only when removing my robe did I remember the envelope.
I pulled it out and opened it; somehow I had expected either a confession of love or an apology for taking me for a servant. Instead: a stack of Italian lira notes.
I had been tipped.
“Koo-koo!”
It was almost eleven when the Baronessa appeared on her balcony overlooking the courtyard, clutching a book.
She seemed to be wearing an enormous blue linen blouse over a white cotton skirt, perhaps a salute to the heat wave.
All around, the world was still humming as if it were high summer, and pots of geraniums bloomed around her so that the Baronessa floated on a purple cloud, in which tiny bees were darting.
To my surprise, her first question was about the bed in my room.
“It’s fine,” I said, straining to look up at her from the courtyard. “Thank you. But last night—”
“It isn’t grumeleux? Full of…” And here she cupped her free hand and tapped it across the railing.
I could not guess what she was trying to say. “Mice?” I asked.
She sighed. “Not mice. Little hard parts that interrupt the sleep.”
“Lumpy! Well, to be honest—”
She hit the railing with her fist, surprising some bees from the folds of their flowers. “I suspected. It is very old. I’ll have a woman come in and fix it. I should have done that before, but I hadn’t thought about it. Where’s Pippa?”
“The princess is gone. Vinsanda drove her to the station.” I took a deep breath of indignation before I told her I believed the princess had given me a servant’s tip—
“She is a nuisance,” the Baronessa said with a wave of her hand, and began walking toward what I realized must be the top of an external staircase, hidden behind the wall.
“But a genius. My friend Oscar will be here shortly, thanks God. An artist of some talent and a delizia. Everything I do is for him. And my cousin Giacomo…” She disappeared from view, then emerged near me at the bottom still talking: “…papers I don’t understand. Do you have the fish oil?”
I wondered what part of her monologue I had missed that we had arrived at fish oil. I told her I would grab it from the kitchen where I had delivered it, and when I returned she nodded with satisfaction.
“My young cousin Giacomo, related in too complex a way to interest you,” she said, returning somehow to the earlier topic as she walked across the courtyard.
“Estelle calls him Giacomo-Giacomo. How do I explain? I do not know the word in English. You know when you climb up a very tall mountain, as I used to do in my seventies, and you reach the top, and your legs they go…” She made a very convincing attempt at making them quiver, which alarmed me, as she was leaning on her cane. “We call this Giacomo-Giacomo!”
I shook my head in confusion.
She repeated the demonstration. “Giacomo-Giacomo!” She seemed to be amusing herself.
“Giacomo-Giacomo,” I said.
“What is the phrase in English?”
“I have no idea.”
“Anyway, Giacomo-Giacomo, he will be by sometime next month. He is the only relative I speak to. He is from Vicenza and possibly works in publishing, and when he visits he brings Asiago cheese, which I remember from my childhood. He once lived with me, but I was unable to corrupt him.” She laughed.
“And we may have Estelle. I have brought you a hat to wear and a book.” She handed me a straw hat and a worn hardcover along with the basket of her belongings.
“It is on how to prune roses. This is very important to get right, as we have a number of roses to get wrong.”
I thanked her, as this was indeed in the job description, though not what I expected to be my main duty.
I put on the hat (slightly too small) and opened the book to illustrations of the flowers in bud and bloom.
It seemed to be from the nineteenth century.
It also seemed to be in Italian, of which I informed my employer.
She raised a finger gravely. “You promised you would learn.”
I sputtered with a response. It seemed my transformation from “too American” was meant to be instant.
I thought it was time to change topics to one burning in my mind: “Baronessa,” I said, as firmly as I could and trying to keep up with her as she descended, cane in hand, the stone steps behind Vinsanda’s apartment, to a little opening in which some white clothes hung on a line.
There was a twitter of birds in a nearby rosemary bush, whose fragrance filled the air.
“We should talk about the catalog. Time is very limited, and if I am to be thorough—”
“Eh?”
“I said time is limited.”
With her cane she pushed a hanging shirt out of her way. “Limited? I am barely in my nineties—”
“You said your deadline was Christmas.”
“Only if you learn Italian! And learn to—”
“I will need to know what to include, the date, the provenance—”
“Eh?”
“If you please, what am I compiling this inventory for?”
She stopped her brisk walk and stood regarding me as she might a piece of furniture that had suddenly begun to talk. I wondered if she was deciding how much to trust me. And then she said something very mysterious:
“I have put something in motion from which there will soon be no returning.”
I waited. Two birds made a racket in the eaves. We stood in a silence that added no more to my understanding.
I said, “We keep being distracted by things like the pozzo. And the roses.”
She laughed and began walking again. “It is beneath you?”
“I am not,” I said carefully, “trained for these.”
“Who is? No no, we must take what comes, you and I. Hiring you was a necessity.” Then she added, with a sly smile: “Crusoe had his Friday. You are my man Thursday.”
I sputtered in frustration, seeing my days lost to roses and chaos. “But the catalog—”