Chapter 3 #4
“I had not known you cared so much,” she said, rising with the help of her cane.
“Another time. You have much to do here before Christmas, as you so often point out to me. And Nimali and Vinsanto are gone all Sunday.” She seemed to be using everything at hand to prevent my departure.
She was also letting me know not to count on a ride from Vinsanda, as he would be gone along with his truck.
And why? Mere spite, at having lost some of my attention to her cousin?
Territorial behavior like her pugs, barking from her side?
All to lay claim to a mere American? It seemed absurd.
“He asked me to meet his wife!”
“Nimali?”
“No,” I said, growing infuriated by her little jokes. “Giacomo has asked me to meet his wife!”
“Eh?”
Now I lost it by shouting: “HIS WIFE! I have to meet his wife!”
“We all have our problems,” she said tartly, then added: “You don’t need to wear the horrible colors to dinner. Cinghiale hunting season is over.”
I was furious. There may come a point when you want to leave, Oscar had said to me on our first meeting.
But I had missed something; I was so caught up in my own concerns that I had not seen those of the Baronessa, nor was she adept at communicating them.
I had not thought of old age and its particular cares.
It was only much later that I understood.
To tell the truth, what struck me about the whole exchange was not merely her unfeeling attitude toward my affairs, or her stubborn show of how thoroughly she had me under her control, or even the white lies and jabs and slights.
It was that I had not known, either, that I cared so much.
And—furious, freezing, startled, sweating—I stumbled to my room, fell upon my bed, and wondered why I did.
And then it snowed.
I had walked to Estelle’s many times before, though I got very damp this time tramping through the snow, so I was relieved to see her near the window, staring at a canvas.
She was happy to see me, and when I told her about the car she said: “I don’t think it’s about Giacomo.
She’s been worried recently.” I said that didn’t excuse her keeping me trapped at Villa Coco, and it was a weekend and my day off and by God I was going to take it…
and the train station was too far to walk and could I borrow Estelle’s car?
She laughed, because of course we both knew her “car” was not a car at all but the Ape I had seen shuddering along the road since my first days.
And it was in this Ape—motor hiccuping, exhaust sputtering, suspension shaking me to pieces—that I arrived, in a triumph of fluttering ticker tape snow, into Florence.
The domes and towers of Florence were like the silvered bottles and brushes of a watercolor painter, set before the paper of the sky, and something about the stately outline of the city in the dove-gray snowscape, as I approached in my putt-putting vehicle, made me into a peasant arriving by mule before the gates of some vast kingdom.
I had to park outside the city’s old wall and walk, from there, along the Arno to the hotel.
Americans are so proud of our old things—“This inn has been here a hundred years!”—but we are absurd youngsters showing off their apartment, with its brand-new furniture, to an old couple who live in paneled rooms with cobwebbed chandeliers, and who have not bought a chair for generations.
An inheritance of beauty, but also of stagnancy and neglect.
Nothing more beautiful would ever happen here than what had happened long ago.
And yet—how could one resist the pang in one’s heart at such magnificence?
And there he was in the lobby of the Porta Rossa.
So tall! Looking at his watch, at the grandfather clock, until he heard my voice.
As it turned out, there was no time for the crowded Uffizi.
Instead, Giacomo offered a more subdued experience: Fra Angelico’s frescoes decorating the cells of his own convent at San Marco.
I understood why the Baronessa had made me read Vasari; I saw there the “rare and perfect talent” he described.
I stood for a long time before the annunciating angel, winged like a tropical bird, and an unusually austere and bookless Mary hearing the news with seeming terror.
I saw, also, the cell of Savonarola and imagined the Baronessa whispering: There is no escaping Savonarola.
I had come all the way to Italy to escape my own Savonarola, and indeed had failed.
All the time, I was noting Giacomo’s hand on my arm as he led me down an alley.
On my elbow as he pointed to a cherub in the corner of a fresco.
On my shoulder as he brushed away the sugar dust of snow.
His nervous smile as he cast his eyes downward.
He was like a man with a delightful secret. Was it me?
Near San Marco we sat on a bench and ate the Asiago he had brought; nearby, a radio played a song by the famous Nina we had seen perform, and Giacomo sang along.
We bought gelato and found, to my delight, that a little rolling cabin had been set up in the square and was beginning a puppet show.
A crackling sound system sang “Pulcinella Pulcinella Pulcinella!” to gather children around, and when it had stopped, up popped two puppets—surely the solo puppeteer’s two hands.
Understanding nothing, I watched as our white-clothed, black-masked hero foolishly quarreled with his master, slapping his hands together loudly, and finally they descended into an all-out assault on each other.
This was followed by the appearance of Pulcinella’s wife.
Rather than the feuding Punch and Judy of my youth, these two seemed to be accomplices in some wild scheme, and before she vanished below, they shared a papier-maché kiss.
“Do you call it Pulcinella’s secret?” asked Giacomo beside me, finishing his chocolate gelato.
I said I had no idea what he was talking about.
“You don’t have this? But it is famous! Pulcinella’s secret is something everybody knows.
It is no secret. But everyone decides to call it a secret.
The only person you can’t mention it to is Pulcinella. ” He turned back to his gelato.
“How is the novel?” I asked.
He immediately became bashful. “It’s tricky to do romance in…eh, ahem, fiction. I got my characters as far as escaping by carriage,” he said. “And then I realized…I do not know where they are going!”
I laughed and so did he.
And then it was time to head to the train station.
We were a little tipsy on wine, walking arms-over-shoulders across the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella; shadows were long across the broad square, castellated to the east and west by hotel rooftops, making a kind of upper and lower jaw open to expose the great fangs of its twin obelisks before the vanilla swirl of its church.
“You will love her,” Giacomo said huskily. “And she will love you.”
At the platform, at precisely the correct time, the train arrived. Giacomo called her name, for there she was:
A beauty—almost unnaturally white-blond hair in soft curls around her shoulders, widely set eyes of an antelope or other wild, quiet creature contrasting with her sharp smile as she saw me, the grin of a wife who knows more than she should—and as she stepped from the train beside a tall woman in a beret and belted safari jacket (presumably Carlotta), Laurine’s shining raincoat billowed out, revealing tailored trousers and dark leather boots, a silver chain around her neck bouncing on her white satin blouse, her little jump onto the platform with a checkered weekend bag in one hand and the other waving merrily beside her girlfriend, but all this is utter nonsense to write because it ignores the only important fact about her, the only point worth mentioning, the obvious thing that brought understanding of everything about this Laurine and her husband and myself.
You see, it was this simple: she was pregnant.
Every house and lover has a fatal flaw, as an eccentric friend once told me.
It was only the next morning that I was able to speak properly with Giacomo.
The rest of the evening had gone from dinner with the two women, during which I found it impossible to focus on the promised bistecca alla fiorentina and, once the conversation slid into Italian, found myself compensating with too much red wine, after which things unraveled rapidly.
We had returned to the hotel, and, loaded with wine and doubt, I was eager to get Giacomo alone, but just as we two couples were saying buona notte at the doors to our respective rooms, a surprise: “Laurine!” came a shout from down the hall.
It was her elderly aunts, staying in a room down at the other end.
Why had Giacomo not picked a less famous hotel?
The chiacchierata of chatting went on endlessly, and I realized the pair would not leave us until we had gone off with our “wives.” This meant Giacomo and Laurine heading off as he cast me a pleading look and Carlotta and I finding ourselves as roommates.
We shared a bottle of prosecco and a meal of complaints in Italian before a weak knock came at the door: Laurine.
I switched rooms with her and found Giacomo apologetic in his pajamas.
I was furious; I would not speak to him.
I slept very little. I got up early for breakfast and that was where he found me, on my third cup of coffee.
He led me to an alcove near the breakfast room, bright red wallpaper all around us and a display of truffles behind glass.
He was pressed against the wall, a pained expression on his face.
He looked like a wadded-up fifty-thousand-lira note.
He apologized again, and tried to explain and explain about Laurine and her family and—