The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro

by Paul Theroux

  Haroun said he would come with me. We walked to the ornamental lily pond. Haroun picked a flower and held it to his nose.

  I said, “He's right. It is bellina.”

  Haroun shrugged. “The flowers, yes. But the trees. The frantoio. The storage and cellars.” He crumpled his face, which meant, I am not impressed. “It is not great quality. Toscano is better. But this villa is charming—very comfortable. And the Gräfin wants it. She likes the business.” He made a gesture of uncorking a bottle and pouring. “`This is my olive oil. I grow it. I press it. You eat it’—she is a romantic, you see?”

  He had a way, in speaking of Gräfin, of being able to turn his criticism into a compliment, which made me admire him for his loyalty.

  I plucked the petals from the flower I was holding and said in a stilted way—I had been practicing the speech: “This is nice, very pleasant. And you have been very kind to me. But—forgive me if I’m wrong—I feel you expect something from me. That you are arranging something. That you want me for some purpose. Tell me.”

  I was glad we were outside, alone. I would never have been able to say this back in Taormina, at the palazzo, where he had made me a guest. This setting, the olive groves, made me confident.

  Haroun looked away. “See how they dig and scratch the roots to fertilize the tree. Some of these trees are hundreds of years old. Maybe here in Norman times.” He walked ahead of me, and he glanced back at the villa in which Gräfin had vanished with the elegant olive man.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You are very intelligent,” he said. “I like that. Very quick. Bold, too, I can say.”

  Two things struck me about this speech. The first was that he wasn’t telling me what he really felt—that my intelligence made him uneasy. Second, even then I knew that when someone complimented me in that way, he was about to ask a favor.

  As a way of defying him, and taking a gratuitous risk, I told him this.

  “You are my guest, so you should be a little more polite to me,” he said, laughing in a peculiar mirthless way to show me he was offended.

  So I knew then that what I had said was true and that his reply was a reprimand. Given the fact that I had accepted his hospitality, I should have felt put in my place, but I resisted, wishing to feel free to say anything I liked.

  He said, “What do you think of the Gräfin?”

  “I don't know anything about her.”

  “Exactly. You are right,” he said. “She is a great mystery. That is why I love her.” He came closer to me. I seldom noticed anything more about Haroun than his beaky nose, yet his nose was so big and expressive it was all I needed to notice. “But when you see the Gräfin, what do you feel?”

  What did this man want? I said, “I feel curious. I feel she is very nice.”

  “She is fantastic,” he said, another reprimand. “She has everything. But do you believe me when I say to you she is lonely?”

  “I believe you.”

  “Because you are intelligent. You can see.”

  “But you’re her friend. So how can she be lonely?”

  “That’s the mystery, you see,” Haroun said. “I am her friend, yes. I am also her doctor. I qualified in Baghdad, I studied more in Beirut. I went to Germany for further study. I did my residence in Freiburg. And I stayed there. The Gräfin became my patient.”

  We had begun to kick through the avenues between the rows of olive trees. Men were trimming the trees, lopping branches, fussing with ladders and buckets.

  “A doctor can be friendly with a patient, but not intimate,” he said. “So we travel, and I take care of her. But it ends there.”

  “What a shame,” I said, hoping for more.

  “But you see, even if I were not her doctor I could not help her,” he said. He was looking away. “I am of a different disposition.” His gaze fell upon a strapping bare-chested man with a pruning hook, and Haroun glanced back as we walked on, seeming to hold a conversation with his eyes alone, the bare-chested man, too, responding with a subtly animated and replying gaze.

  “What a shame.”

  “It is how God made me.”

  “I think you want me to be her friend.”

  “More than friend, maybe.”

  “I see.”

  As though he too had been practicing sentences, he said, “I desire you to woo her.”

  The expression made me smile.

  “Do you find her attractive?”

  I had to admit that I did. She was pretty in a brittle old-fashioned way. She was chic, she was demanding. Yes, she was much older than me—I could not tell how much; thirty-five, perhaps—and I was twenty-one. But strangely, her age did not prejudice me against her. I was attracted to her for it, for the oddness of it. She was certainly unlike any woman I had ever met—in fact, she was a woman; I did not know any women. I had only slept with girls, the nubile, pleading, marriage-minded girls like Fabiola. What did a woman want? Not marriage. Perhaps a woman of such experience as Gräfin wanted everything but marriage, and that included debauchery, and that I craved.

  “But she’s not interested in me.”

  “Because she doesn’t know you,” Haroun said, and I hated him for agreeing with me.

  We walked some more, Haroun steering our course toward more young men trimming the thick twisted olive trees.

  “Another question,” he said. “Do you find Taormina to your taste?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  The prompt way I answered showed that I had been a little reluctant in replying to his first question—the one about her. My sudden eagerness about Taormina made him laugh.

  “What is it about Taormina?” he asked.

  “Taormina has existed continuously for over two thousand years and has always been beautiful. People have gone there for its beauty—great people, famous people. I want to be one of them.”

  “You ask me what I want,” Haroun said. “I want you to be content in Taormina. I want my friend to be content. I think you can find contentment together.”

  I saw exactly what he meant: he was, in a word, pimping for Gräfin. Well, I was not shocked. I was pleased. I was even flattered. I liked the obliqueness that had characterized the beginning—his getting me a room at the Palazzo d’Oro. And I liked the fact that he was petitioning me, soliciting my help in performing a certain specific task, as in a fairy tale’s plot. I liked his asking me to do him this favor; for his strange request gave me some power.

  “You will be my guest,” he said.

  His way of saying that he would support me at the hotel for this romance.

  “And the guest of the Gräfin too.”

  “What a funny name,” I said.

  He half smiled with a distinct alertness, as though divining through a slip I had made that I was not so bright as I appeared.

  “Not a name. Her name is Sabine, but I would never call her that.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked a little shocked, and he stiffened and said, “Because she is the Gräfin. It is her title. You would say Countess.”

  “From her family?”

  “From her husband. The Graf.”

  With that revelation I was dazzled, I was lost. But before I could reply, there was a scurrying sound on the road—a boy summoning us to the house.

  “If the answer is no, you must leave tomorrow,” Haroun said in a very businesslike way, as though trying to conclude a difficult sale, and he started toward the house where the olive man and the Gräfin stood waiting for us.

  3

  The day dawned fine and clear, another Sicilian day of high skies and golden heat, and I loved everything I saw and smelled—the prickly aroma of pine needles and hot bricks, the whiff of salt water from the blue sea, the cool air on my shaded balcony, my freshly laundered clothes, the new espadrilles I had bought in town, my breakfast of fruit and coffee, my feet outstretched on the chaise longue. I was reading Il Gattopardo, a novel—written by a Sicilian prince—recently published, which Fabiola
had given to me so that I would be encouraged to improve my Italian. I read it slowly, using a dictionary with a sort of stealth, as though not wanting to admit I needed help. I had it in mind to visit the villa mentioned in the novel, Donnafugata, another beautiful name to drop. Donnafugata was in Agrigento province, in the village of Santa Margherita di Belice. I would go on a sketching tour, doing the settings of the novel, and I even imagined buying a special sketchbook, titled “Donnafugata,” and filling it with this dramatic topography. In that moment on my balcony, which was full of promise and fragrant with the Taormina morning, I loved my life.

  After breakfast I walked downstairs to the terrace, where I knew the two of them would be.

  “Good morning,” Haroun said.

  “Hello,” I said with as much friendliness as I could muster, trying to look at the Gräfin's face, which of course was turned aside. She was idly examining her gloves, twisting the lacy fingers to give them a tight fit.

  “You mentioned something about leaving Taormina,” Haroun said.

  “I changed my mind. I think I will stay awhile.”

  Haroun smiled, exhaled, and looked away. The Gräfin turned her big blue eyes on me with curiosity, but again peering as though she hardly knew me.

  “Contessa,” I said.

  She shrugged and lifted her gloved hand again, a fan of fingers that held her attention. And while she was preoccupied I imagined kissing her, holding her head, sucking slowly on her lips, slipping my hands beneath her dress and stroking her body.

  Yes, I was staying. I excused myself by claiming I was poor; not ruthless but desperate. This excuse made me untruthful, it made me willing.

  Haroun had given me the impression that the Gräfin was lonely and desperate. But in spite of that epiphany on my balcony, I was myself lonely, and I was probably feeling more desperation than she had ever known.

  To succeed with her I had to convince myself that I desired her. I had to make her desire me. I did desire her, yet I could see that she was not particularly interested in me. She was vain, she seemed shallow, even her most offhand remarks sounded boastful, she was certainly aloof—now I knew why: not just money, she was an aristocrat.

  Gräfin was a title, not a name. I had just found out her name, but I did not know her well enough to use it when speaking to her. I was still wondering whether to address her by her formal distancing title, for it was impossible for me to use her title without feeling submissive, even groveling.

  Lonely? I did not think so, nor did it seem that she needed me.

  There is wealth that makes people restless and impatient and showy—American wealth, on the whole. But the Gräfin was European. Her wealth had made her passive and presumptuous and oblique, indolent, just a spender, and as a countess she seemed to me regal now, queenly, superior-seeming, slow and somewhat delicate, even fragile.

  I found it hard to get her attention. That morning, pleased by my announcing that I would be staying, Haroun began to devise ways of giving me access to the Gräfin. To me, his ruses were transparent; but she was so bored and inattentive she did not seem to suspect a thing. At the beginning Haroun developed a stomach upset; later that morning he disclosed his infirmity in a solemn, self-mocking way.

  “Africa is taking its revenge upon my entrails.”

  “What are you talking about?” the Gräfin demanded, without seeming to care about Haroun's reply.

  Another obvious trait of very rich European aristocrats was their literal-mindedness, I felt: you didn’t become wealthy by being witty and alliterative, or hyperbolic like Haroun. He was the Gräfin's retainer, a sort of lap dog and flunky, roles I was rehearsing for myself.

  “Africa?” I said.

  “Africa comincia a Napoli,” he said.

  “What revenge?” the Gräfin asked.

  “The Visigoths came here, as you know, and they engaged in systematic plunder, raping and pillaging. And I am being blamed for these misfortunes.”

  “How can that be so? You are Arab.”

  Haroun's toothy smile was a keen expression of pain. But gallantly he said, “Not an Arab, my dear, but a Christian. Chaldean. From Baghdad. We spoke English at home. My father was a distinguished merchant. He had powerful friends.”

  “You are not white. You are semitisch. Arab-speaking.”

  “You are speaking English, dear Gräfin, but are you an Englishwoman?”

  She said to me, “He makes me tired with his arguments, but he is my doctor, so I must listen.”

  “I am a witch doctor,” Haroun said.

  “Idiot!” the Gräfin said. She hated this sort of facetiousness.

  Haroun said sadly, “I am not well.”

  The Gräfin gave him a querying stare, as though he was a clock face showing the wrong time.

  “What will I do now?” she said, twisting her gloved hands in impatience. “This cannot be so.”

  “I will take some medicine.”

  “You really are saying you are sick?” The Gräfin was indignant. “How can the doctor be sick?”

  Tapping his tummy through his shirt buttons, Haroun said, “I shall improve very soon.”

  “What about today?”

  Still, she clung to him. Hearing this exchange, I got a distinct sense of witnessing a father and daughter at odds—an indulgent father, a spoiled daughter. This did not put me off or intimidate me, nor did it diminish the desire I had for her. If she had been highly intelligent and subtle, I would have been more wary, but her diabolical girlishness was something I felt I could deal with. Besides, her air of spiteful superiority was like a goad to me; I found something stimulating in it, a kind of spirit. I saw the Countess on a stallion, galloping through gold shafts of light, smacking the big excited beast with a riding crop and digging her heels into his sweaty flanks.

  “I must go to my room,” Haroun said.

  “You cannot leave me alone.”

  “Gräfin, you are not alone.”

  All this time they were speaking English for my benefit in this stilted way, yet the Gräfin refused to acknowledge my presence. When they were alone—I knew this from my approaches to their terrace table—they spoke German.

  “Would you be so kind?” Haroun said to me. “The Gräfin will need some things from the town. A particular shop near the station.”

  “Mazzarò?”

  “Yes, down there.”

  “What things?”

  The Gräfin behaved as though the question was inappropriate. She pouted and looked annoyed. In her role of little helpless girl she refused to make things easier by naming the things she wanted.

  “Cosmetics, newspapers, some chocolate, a fruit drink, bottled.”

  “Maybe the hotel could send someone.”

  “You see?” the Gräfin said to Haroun. “He does not want to help.”

  “I do want to help,” I said.

  “The boys at the hotel are careless. They hold the chocolate all wrong. They melt it in their hot hands. How can I eat it?”

  Whatever else I did, I would not bring the Countess melted chocolate.

  Haroun said, “You will assist?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll go right away. But I will need a list. I mean, what kind of fruit drink?”

  Haroun took out a prescription pad and wrote the shopping list on it while the Gräfin looked away, seemingly preoccupied—with what? I could not imagine what was in this woman’s mind. She was like another species: I did not discern a single thing we had in common. The paradox was that this sense of difference made me desire her, but not in a way I had ever felt toward a woman. Though I did not fully formulate the thought at the time, I wanted to dominate her, and I saw that our difference gave me an advantage. It was true that I knew nothing of aristocracy, but I was astute enough to understand that she knew absolutely nothing of me or my background. I also guessed that her wealth had made her complacent and unsuspicious—Haroun ran all her errands, like this one he was foisting onto me.

  The shopping list, which
I came to see as a young girl's ritual list, was very specific: mascara, a copy of today’s Bild Zeitung, a large bar of Toblerone (“no nuts”), and Orangina—three small bottles. She believed that the Orangina served at the Palazzo d’Oro was adulterated: her general belief was that Italians were cheats and dolts. She said that she liked Taormina because it was not popular with Italians.

  I was given a string bag and directions to the lower town, Mazzarò, at the seaside—twenty minutes down, forty minutes up. I enjoyed the walk, for it reminded me of my freedom, reminded me especially that there was an adjacent world to the one in which I lived more or less like a house pet, with the same advantages and disadvantages: I was well fed and well housed but I had a master and a mistress jerking at my leash.

  “This should cover it,” Haroun said, handing me a sheaf of new, inky ten-thousand-lire notes. The Gräfin turned away as she always did when someone produced money, or a bill to pay.

  I loved walking down the Via Pirandello into Mazzarò, by the shore below the cliffs of Taormina. The settlement was hardly more than a village and still inhabited by many fishermen. I drank an espresso at the local cafe, exchanged pleasantries with the owner, caught the eye of the pretty girl wiping the tables, and then set off to do the Gräfin’s shopping, a task so simple as to seem unnecessary—but perhaps I was being tested? I didn’t care. The weather was perfect, late August, and the life I had begun to live there was a variation of much of what I had seen in Italian movies.

  In those black-and-white neo-realist movies, a solitary fellow, bright but hard up, encounters some bored wealthy people on the shores of the Mediterranean and is ambiguously adopted—the hitchhiker, the chance meeting, the stranger at the party, the wanderer. What seemed like random and apparently meaningless events were full of tension and complexity and were part of a larger design, which, as the movie advanced, became apparent. The arrangement was not American—it was European, dissolute, heavily textured, unmistakably vicious, with shocking plot twists—Fellini, Antonioni, De Sica, Rossellini. The films featured hot days, long nights, strangers, whispers, risks, excesses, and they were all tantalizingly vague. Even then I thought of these years as the era of the chance encounter. The foreign hitchhiker was picked up by the wealthy jaded Italians and from that moment his life was changed.