Chapter 2 #6
She returned unsteadily to the table and seemed wrapped in her own thoughts.
Her eyes caught mine, and she gave her signature flash of a grin.
I wondered what worried her now. “If you are still listening to an old lady,” she said, “Madame was once also in a harem in Suez. Before the nose, of course. Though that might have given her a special status!” Had this governess been her role model?
Giacomo asked for olive oil, which we could pass hand to hand, and his touch was another turn of the knob, tightening the tension that would be released later when he crept into my room.
Oscar had said he would come after the olive harvest. My employer several times had me try to reach him by telephone, but he never answered; either I was forced to endure the cheerless Italian ringback tone droning into eternity, or else I was met with a different resistance: when his maid, Maria, answered.
I was very proud of my developing Italian, but, as with a charm to which some are immune, somehow with Maria I was unable to communicate.
At lunch with the Baronessa and Giacomo, I reported my frustrations.
The Baronessa seemed subdued that afternoon.
Her expressions, her responses, even a gesture she usually made for Nimali to start serving (a flourish of her hand) were lesser versions of her ordinary self, like the performance of a singer at a matinee, who, saving her voice for the evening show, omits all the difficult notes for which she is famous.
She did, however, offer a simpler explanation for my troubles with Maria: “You have been spending too much time with Estelle. She speaks a charming Italian but has decided not to pronounce the double consonants. One never knows if she is talking about her hair or her hats.” That is: capelli or cappelli. I still could not hear the difference.
She said no more on the subject. We sat for a few moments in glum silence. Then, to my surprise, Giacomo brought up the story he had so precipitously impeded the other night. “You were talking about Manaus the other day,” he said, looking over at me.
“You have heard the story before,” his cousin said evenly.
“I’m sure Giovedì and I would love to hear about it.” It was strange to hear him using my nickname; he had always called me by my proper name. And why mention this story from days earlier?
I said nothing, wondering how my touchy employer would react. “It is not suitable for a luncheon conversation,” she said, though that had never stopped her before.
“Weren’t there pink dolphins?” He knew this story well. “And a couple? I know you think we are terrible prudes—”
“HO HO HO!” she said, shaking her head and turning to her wine.
“And you were in need of a bathroom…?”
“This is a story for a different audience, and you will both be needed in the groves,” she said, then added: “Siamo alla frutta,” just as Nimali delivered pears to the table, meaning both that we had literally come to the fruit and that our conversation had come to an end.
I did not think too carefully, in that time, about what we were starting, Giacomo and I; those days were like photos taken in an impetuous instant but left until much later to develop.
It was a relief to have someone with whom to share a conversation about his cousin, about the oddities of life at Villa Coco, and about the house itself.
One morning, I drew his attention again to the portrait next to my bed.
Giacomo explained his grandfather was attired for a costume ball. “He is dressed as the sculptor Bernini.”
I mentioned how similar they looked, and he said it was not true; he looked, in fact, similar to Bernini.
He reached to his bedside and, from his wallet, brought out a fifty-thousand-lira note, on which was printed an image of the sculptor that indeed resembled Giacomo enough to be a perfect portrait (if he grew a mustache).
I told him so and he seemed affronted—Bernini parted his hair to the side!
I did not mention it again, though in my mind his own image now became confused with both his grandfather and Bernini on the lira note, so sometimes I forgot who had the little mole above his lip, Giacomo, Bernini, or his grandfather; or, in the early mornings, when he rose to slip back to his room, I was surprised to find him clean-shaven.
Giacomo-Giacomo. He was guarded and shy but also desperate for touch, desperate to laugh with someone.
It took time—but those days were enough.
Like getting to know a horse or a fox, with which you cannot communicate except in broad gestures, and only guess the creature’s meaning.
Desire is always inside the person: mute, invisible, but guiding everything.
But what did he desire? Understanding this was as difficult as understanding Nimali in the morning before coffee.
He tried to teach me Italian; for instance, the word “riccio,” which could mean a hedgehog, a chestnut, a sea urchin, or a curly-haired boy. He said I was all of them. And he did a startling imitation of me one night in bed, bugging out his eyes and shouting: “Oh! Wow! Hey! No! What’s happening?!”
I said I did not talk like that, but of course this statement was itself proceeded by a contradicting “Hey!”
“You see? You can’t help yourself.” He jumped upon me.
“No!” I shouted, pushing him off, but his meek appearance hid an unexpected strength, and he managed to pin me to the bed. A moment later, he howled like a dog and pretended to sink his teeth into my side.
“What’s happening?!”
Oscar had promised to come after the harvest but instead arrived a day before its end.
The Baronessa informed me that because Giacomo, Vinsanda, and Ghazel were busy with the olives, it would be necessary for me to pick him up at the station.
I understood she considered me the least efficient member of the harvest crew.
“What an honor to have you drive me!” Oscar said as he greeted me, raising his fedora with his usual charm but a slightly weakened smile.
He again carried his brown paper packages and insisted on loading them in the trunk himself.
Still a novice at a stick shift, I found myself bursting too fast out of the parking lot, then jerking to a stop, stalling, starting again, and bursting out again until I fell in behind a very slow-moving orange Ape.
Oscar seemed to notice none of this. He asked, “How are you getting along with our baronessa?”
“Oscar, I’m trained in archives and records. Organization. But Villa Coco is nothing but chaos.”
He said, “You find Lisabetta difficult.”
I did not know how to answer such a direct statement, but luckily he answered it himself:
“Of course she’s difficult,” he said. “But you have to think of her as a magic door. Every time you open it, it leads somewhere new. To the Ottoman Empire, for instance. To a princess or a dockworker or a dog.”
I said I had not thought of her that way.
“There was a Greek theater in ancient times,” he said, “so beautiful some listed it among the wonders of the world. And now? There is nothing left. Nothing but a single ticket, made of bone, for a seat in the fourteenth row.”
“And she is that bone ticket,” I said.
“No,” he responded. “She is the holder of that ticket. She has seen the show.” I understood he was speaking of history and time. “Now. I hear you have found a warm dictionary?”
I coughed in surprise at this leap of conversation. We had entered a sun-dappled series of turns, around each of which might lurk some oncoming car, and I took every corner with trepidation. “I don’t…I don’t know if—”
“No need to say more. But it’s why I have arrived early.”
I said I did not understand.
“Lisabetta loves a little…shenanigans, is that the word? What a lovely word. Shenanigans around the house. Youth must have its fling. But it seems the two of you have been neglecting your host.”
“What? We…I mean, I always—”
“She called me in to keep her entertained.”
“I didn’t know. She should have said something.”
“Nobody likes to feel irrelevant. To be the old lady nobody listens to. Especially when she has such extraordinary stories.”
“I’m so sorry—”
“Even ones we have heard many, many times before.”
“Oh, Oscar.”
He patted my knee. “Let us say no more about it. It is my turn to apologize, for I have neglected to buy your slippers. But!” From his bag, he produced a basil plant, wrapped in plastic, and he raised his eyebrows. “I have kept one promise!” he said in delight. “I have brought pesto!”
Once we were in the kitchen of Villa Coco, he placed on the counter a box of pasta, the basil plant, and two large potatoes; he looked like San Drogo with his attributes.
He and Nimali had a very serious conversation, during which she held out an open palm and he a potato and only at the end of the discorso did he bestow it, gently, like a blessing.
I whispered with Estelle, her hair wild and golden again, her collarbone adorned with a jade pendant, and she explained he had brought ingredients for pasta.
“Trofie al pesto,” she called it, adding that I was in for a treat.
Foolishly, I informed her that I had tasted pesto many times before.
“No, you haven’t,” she said, calling over Oscar and telling him what I’d said.
“Ah,” he said. “No no no, it is not pesto if it is not from Genova.”