Chapter 3 #5
“Giacomo,” I said. “I’m sorry I was so mad last night. But I already came out of the closet. I don’t want a new closet. Even in the oldest hotel in—”
He said it would never happen again, that it was a fluke, and with Laurine being pregnant her family was—
“That wasn’t a surprise I enjoyed,” I said. “You and your wife—”
He explained that it was his child, of course, but that they hadn’t—that is, eh, ahem—there was a doctor and a clinic and so forth and so on…
“I like you, Giacomo,” I said firmly.
He exhaled with relief. “This is…eh, ahem, good to hear.”
“I like you, but what am I doing here? What am I doing here?”
“I thought…I thought…”
“I’m confused,” I said. “Before, I was your American until Christmas. But this is—”
“You could be my American…also after Christmas.”
I stated the obvious: “You’re going to be a father.”
“Yes.”
“And you are asking me to stay in Italy after your child is born?”
“Yes, I suppose,” he said, then seemed full of intensity as he said, again, “Yes!”
It was clear to me now that Giacomo knew himself, and what he wanted, so little that, like a magician’s apprentice, he had simply put everything potent in the pot—his wife, his American, his future child—and waited to see what might be conjured.
It had conjured, as they say in Italy, a pasticcio.
A kind of baked dish but also: a mess. And yet, as my anger began to transmute into pity, I thought of what he was saying.
To stay in Italy with him after his child was born.
Forget the pasticcio of the night before, the Pulcinella show I had been forced to participate in.
Was he offering a solution to my time at Villa Coco ending?
A way to prolong this strange dream or, rather, enter a yet stranger one?
My rage was abating; I told myself I must consider it.
I thought of Oscar’s words. Perhaps this was exactly what he meant; a lifetime of experience had taught him not to let an offer like this pass by.
Not to be lazy in love. Perhaps: the secret to a lavish life, a satiated heart.
Giacomo took a deep breath and began: “I have wanted to tell you our idea—”
“Signore?”
We had not noticed a slim mustached man from the hotel holding a sleek black rotary phone. He said my name, and I nodded. Giacomo turned away. The mustached man extended the phone and said there was a call for me.
“For me?” I asked.
“It is a gentleman named Hassle.”
“Hassle?” I asked.
“Hassle.”
I glanced over at Giacomo, then at the man, then, absurdly, at the phone. I saw my face reflected there, stretched like chewing gum. Then suddenly I looked up and said: “Gazelle!”
Apparently Ghazel knew I would be staying at the Porta Rossa, but how he had managed to report my proper name to the hotel clerk is beyond me; perhaps he understood his employer’s nicknames as well as any of us.
“BARONESSA!” he shouted on the other end of the line.
I asked him what he was talking about. Surely he had not called thinking I was the Baronessa. My mind was clearly still on Giacomo.
More shouting: “BARONESSA! TORNARE!”
I said the Baronessa had no need to return. She was in the house.
“TU TORNARE!”
I was to return. Well, of course she would demand this.
“CAGARE!” he said firmly. “CAGARE!”
This was a surprisingly obscene verb, and I was certain either he or I had it wrong.
I pressed for more information and learned it was “cadere.” To fall.
Understanding came over me; the worst had happened.
Here was a woman of ninety-two who insisted on living in a house of stairs and rooms like a rummage sale, with pugs always underfoot, and the rest of us had been too timid to protest—or too focused on ourselves.
For had I not abandoned her, left her alone for the night with no one but Ghazel?
She had been right; I should have stayed.
All this time I had been hectoring her about my day off, worrying about completing my catalog, when I should have offered my arm. I should have noticed she was afraid.
I asked him about her condition, but he merely answered with one word:
“OSPEDALE!”
Hospital. I thought of her words from months before: I do not want to die in some terrible hospital with boring people and someone screaming in the next room. Of course this was how things were always going to end. I had been too young to think of it.
“YALLAH!”
Estelle’s Ape seemed even clumsier on my return.
I left Giacomo quickly, saying I needed time to think about all this.
I packed my few belongings and walked to where I’d parked the truck.
It was late morning by then, and I was juddering so violently along the streets, I thought the vehicle would fall to pieces over the hour’s journey from Florence.
But the Ape endured, and I took it down the long dirt road to Villa Coco, parked it quivering out front, and entered through the kitchen to find Ghazel at the dining room table, before a roaring fire, eating what looked like a turkey leg.
The scene was an engraving by Hogarth. I interrogated him about the Baronessa and the hospital and he seemed unwilling to understand.
I asked about Estelle and he perked up. He used the turkey leg to point above his head.
“SU!” he shouted, and so I headed upstairs.
I took the steps two at a time and, hearing a man’s voice behind the Baronessa’s door, I thought: Dr. Ibrahim is here with Estelle. They are preparing for her return from the hospital. I should be ready for hard news. I paused a moment, smoothing down my shirt, then turned the knob and entered.
No doctor was there. But Estelle was, seated at the foot of the bed—and, to my surprise, so was the Baronessa.
She was fine.
She lay there in a pink silk dress embroidered with golden dragons; she looked as if she’d come from a party.
Pushkin and Gorky sat on a pillow beside her.
The room was full of greenish, underwater light from an impending storm.
All four of them turned to me as I entered, but as I was about to speak—to say something like “I thought something terrible had…”—the Baronessa shushed me loudly.
For there was someone else already speaking: the man’s voice I had heard, coming over the phone in vivavoce, or speakerphone, in husky Italian. I recognized it.
“The best in Genova…”
The Baronessa’s eyes were bright as she listened. I saw Estelle reach out to take her hand.
“They are giving me oxygen…I feel much better…”
My heart tumbled; it was Oscar, not the Baronessa, who had fallen.
I looked from one woman to the other.
From their expressions alone, I could tell that something quite dire had happened, but Oscar’s voice conveyed his determination to remain the pleasant old man who caused nobody any trouble.
“When I am back home…the first night, what will I do? I will have a little gin! You will be so mad at me, Lisabetta!”
When the call was over, I took the phone from the Baronessa, and her expression was reproachful. “A word before you vanished in Estelle’s car might have been kind. We were unsure if you had returned to America.”
“What happened? Is he okay?”
Estelle: “His maid found him in the entry hall this morning. Apparently he had been lying there all night.”
The Baronessa asked: “Did you see this Caravaggio that meant so much to you?”
I accepted the sarcasm: “I did not.”
A raised eyebrow. “Well, I hope you enjoyed your adventure.”
“In fact, I didn’t. I’m sorry I—”
The phone rang again, this time Maria, Oscar’s maid. Again on vivavoce, she asked to speak to the Baronessa privately. My employer gave me a long look before Estelle took me out to the hall so she could be alone.
Estelle led me by the hand to the Baronessa’s parlor. We took seats on the white-linen-covered sofa. Estelle rested her head in her hands for a moment.
She said, “We were certain he would be fine through New Year’s. Christmas. It was all planned.”
“You were expecting this?” I asked. “Has this happened before?”
Estelle lifted her head, and I could see she was quite tired. “We have known he has been getting weak. Ferrara, you know, he couldn’t go because he was quite ill. And Ferrara was important.”
Suddenly I understood how dramatic his absence had been. “But he said he’s okay? Did I hear that correctly?”
She said something in French, then lifted her head. “I do not know. He said they had him in a kind of helmet with oxygen. A diver’s helmet, he told us.” She smiled. “And Coco said, ‘Ah, the Genovese, you are always thinking of the sea!’ ”
I gave an uncomfortable laugh. I asked when Oscar was getting out of the hospital.
There was a pause. “We will wait to hear from Maria. Now, tell me how things went with the cousin.”
I told her as much as I had energy to tell, from arriving in the Ape to the Pulcinella show and Laurine at the train station, to afterward when Laurine’s aunts appeared in the hotel out of nowhere, and the next morning, when I spoke with Giacomo.
At a certain point, Estelle put her hand on my arm and said gently, “Years from now, Giovedì, you will realize this is a funny story.”
I could not imagine what she was talking about.
“I am afraid I have not very good news.” The Baronessa strode into her parlor from her bedroom and said this evenly as she approached, with her hands in the pockets of her emerald quilted housecoat.
The collar of her dress stuck out above, like the frill of a carnation.
She leaned against the sofa’s arm as if she had lost some equilibrium.
“I have talked with Maria. She is an excellent soul. The doctors told her that he is very, very sick.”
“His heart,” I said sadly.