Chapter 1 #6
“Buone!” replied the Baronessa, adding that the clams had come straight from the Adriatic.
These cries of “buone!” and “buono!” and so on were a particular affectation of conversation at Villa Coco; later, I was to realize it was an aspect of Italian conversation in general.
It meant “delicious,” referring to the food just mentioned, and it did not matter if the talk was of a death in the family, a crisis of the heart, or the Titanic disaster—if one noted that the penultimate dish served to the ill-fated passengers had been foie gras, the very mention of the delicacy would bring cries of “buono!”
“You know this story, Lisabetta. That I once…had the princess’s mother,” Pippa remarked.
Her voice startled me, both rough and smooth—like a bottle of whiskey set in front of a princess.
Her accent was startlingly British. I was slow to understand that the princess’s mother would be the Queen of England.
“And she admired…something of mine. That spelled disaster! You know if the Queen admires…something of yours…of course you have to give it to her. Usually it’s a bowl.
A serving spoon. Just my luck…that she took a liking to my sofa. ”
The Baronessa said that of course she knew this story!
But Pippa went on: “Naturally I could not give it to her! It was…Gustavian!”
I laughed as if I understood a thing she was saying.
Pippa lifted one beringed finger in the air. “So I had one of my masterstrokes!”
She turned to me and I blinked in expectation.
“I had it copied!” she said grandly. “Copied by an infamous falsario…a counterfeiter. I sent the copy to the Queen…and kept my own. I’m sure she never knew the difference.”
The Baronessa winked and stated that the princess was an inspiration to others.
“Maybe she was testing you.”
I was the one who said this, and both women turned to stare at me. I could see the petals shivering in Pippa’s hair.
“I am certain you are saying something very interesting, young man,” she told me in her clipped accent, “and that we would grow to become friends, but I am afraid I only understand…the King’s English.
” She gave me a warm smile and put her hand on mine as she spoke very carefully. “The American dialect…Is. Beyond. Me.”
Imagine the effect on an arrogant young American, who has never bothered to learn a single word outside his language, a nightingale who thought he spoke in the sharp, clear language of all birds, only to awaken inside a cage of cockatoos.
I sat there absolutely still as Nimali set down a soup beside the princess and began to ladle it into her bowl.
A silence held the room in suspension. I saw the Baronessa’s eyes go to Pippa and then to me.
“Then I will translate!” she announced.
The rest of the dinner was as absurd an event as I have ever attended.
I would ask the princess a question, for instance, “Where did you last travel?” and then, like a food taster passing an approved dish to the king, the Baronessa would lean politely and repeat my question to her friend, who listened intently: “Pippa, he’s asking about your time in Zanzibar.
” Then the ridiculous process would be reversed—even though I made it clear I could understand the princess perfectly—“Tell him I found great love and great disappointment,” and the Baronessa would turn to me, light flashing on her pendant, and say: “Pippa says she found great love and great disappointment.” This had the effect of doubling the experience for everyone but Pippa.
Nimali stood with a platter of roast pork, her eyes wide in alarm; even someone who spoke no English could understand the absurd back-and-forthing, like a hostage negotiation.
Eventually they wandered into their own conversation, leaving me behind.
The Baronessa related the entire story of the pozzo, which surprised me, as it seemed as inappropriate a topic as I could imagine.
“I know you are an early riser, so perhaps you can inaugurate it!” the Baronessa offered, and Pippa seemed to take this as a great honor.
Then their talk became more intimate; of course they had forgotten I was there.
“He’s very handsome,” Pippa said, specifically looking away from me. “But what will you do with an American?”
The Baronessa said Americans could be taught.
“They can be taught to speak English, even be English, perhaps,” Pippa replied, “but not to be Italian.”
My employer agreed that this was so and said I was called Giovedì. Like a girl Friday. “My man Thursday!” she said with delight. “He is here to…count the spoons, as you suggested. But my bedroom and other rooms are not ready. We await Oscar.”
“Ah yes!” Pippa said mysteriously. “And has the…other gentleman approved?”
“Giovedì has a degree in archives,” the Baronessa said, and this seemed to settle whatever strange matter they were talking about.
I pretended to be occupied with my wine, which was remarkably sour, and began to enter my own thoughts, my discomfort at being treated like a servant by this houseguest, when I heard a new direction of the conversation: “And, Lisabetta, speaking of great loves, what about yours? Have you made contact?”
I did not lift my gaze. I could hear my employer shuffling restlessly beside me.
Pippa: “You told me you would try Venice—”
“In Venice, it may be I have met some success,” the Baronessa announced. “But there are serious obstacles. And there is some urgency.”
Pippa leaned across the table with a fork in her hand. “Do not give up, Lisabetta! We must act while we are young!”
I am afraid to say I snorted a little at this remark. The table looked at me while I struggled seriously with my salad. I caught the cook’s eye. Then I saw a mouse run across the kitchen counter. Nobody else seemed to notice.
The Baronessa changed the subject to one of local tragedy: a woman in the nearby town of Rignano had been discovered dead in her own home, a woman approaching the age of our two ladies, cut down, as the Baronessa said, in the “prime of her life” as owner of a restaurant where she made her own tiramisù—
A cry from Pippa: “Buono!”
“How do you like my friend Pippa?”
We were on the stairs to the upper hall, which the Baronessa took briskly for a person her age. Pippa had gone into a bedroom in some lower quadrant, and we were left alone.
“I…” I grasped for a phrase that would not seem too rude: “I can’t say what I think.”
She looked at me shrewdly. “She’s a terrible snob! But she has the most creative and persuasive schemes. You will have to learn Italian.”
“I will?”
She continued her march up the stairs. “Three things. The first is to learn to dress for dinner. There is a place we will visit in Rignano, called La Formica, which has what you need. I visit it every week or so. The second is to learn Italian. In the house you may speak American, but in the car it is to be Italian. In macchina, italiano! The third is to learn history and culture so we may speak at the dinner table. I will give you some books and you will visit Firenze and other towns. Clothes, Italian, and culture. You must promise these things.”
“So I’m going to stay?”
We stood before her doorway and she looked hard into my eyes but did not answer me directly. “I have one kindness to ask of you,” she said. “Please do not put a hat on the bed. It brings destruction and death.”
This catastrophism startled me. My only response was that I did not have a hat.
“Also, never drive down the hill. The road is washed away and we will fall to our death and that is not how I plan to go.”
I said I had no intention of doing so. I was not aware I was to drive at all.
“Then we’re safe,” she said. A smile. “Something I am now remembering is that we have two pozzi. But something I am not remembering is where.”
I said, “There must be another manhole somewhere.”
“No matter,” she said, looking at the vines painted down the hallway. “Someday, someday…it will find us.”
Her eyebrows rose dramatically.
“Buona notte,” she said before closing her door.
The last I recall of that evening is undressing and putting myself to bed.
I did not entirely fit, head to toe, because of the ornate decorations of doves at the foot, so I lay diagonally, and even the hard lumps of the mattress could not prevent me from feeling peace and contentment.
I had opened the window to the night; it had no screen, but I felt protected by its iron bars, which were embellished with ivy.
From beyond those bars I heard the whispering of bamboo in the night breeze.
Words of Italian buzzed in my brain, all nonsense, but something like the sensations of the stomach digesting new foods; perhaps already the language was being assimilated into my being, and I would awaken with supreme fluency.
I might even know how to dress for dinner.
From beside the bed, the young man in the antique photo looked down: lean-faced with slightly parted lips and a sense of vulnerability in his eyes.
When I imagined away the musketeer whiskers, he seemed almost contemporary, and I could picture a man staring at me that way from across a crowded bar.
I reminded myself of my vow. No entanglements, not even with dead men in photographs.
And then I recognized him: he was the spitting image of the man in the lizard-green Fiat we had passed on our way in.
And yet the photograph was surely fifty years old or more. Another mystery.