Sheila Connolly - Reunion with Death

by Sheila Connolly

  We wandered up the hill, stopping to admire a weed with pretty flowers, a group of sheep, and yet another view. We both took pictures of all three. It didn’t take much longer to reach the church at the top of the hill. It was deserted, but the door was open. However, the inside was disappointing. St. Cresci might have had his head chopped off, but there was little evidence of his gruesome martyrdom visible. Still, it was cool inside, so we sat quietly for a few minutes.

  “Too bad that thing with the professor had to happen,” I ventured almost reluctantly, since I’d been enjoying just talking with Bonnie without any ulterior motive.

  “He had it coming,” Bonnie said with a venom that surprised me. “The gods are just.”

  “What do you mean?” I turned in my pew to face her.

  “Well, I never took a class from him, but one of my roommates did. She told me he was a real sleazeball.”

  “Like he came on to her?”

  “He did that with every girl—excuse me, woman—who didn’t have a hunchback and only one eye. But it got worse. If you turned him down, he made a point of cutting you down for as long as the class lasted. He all but called you stupid in front of everyone. You know how insecure we all were back then—it really stung.”

  “And nobody ever said anything to anyone?”

  “Who would they tell? I don’t think they’d invented the term bully then, for that kind of behavior. Worse, I think we all felt we were at the college by accident, and we didn’t want to make waves. As far as I know, nobody ever said anything.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, is that roommate here on this trip?”

  “No. She kind of cut off all contact with the college and the class after she graduated. But it’s certainly possible that someone else he treated like that is here. I can’t be sure because nobody has talked about it, at least not when I could hear it. Maybe I’ve already said too much, but I won’t pretend that I’m sorry he’s dead. You weren’t one of his ‘girls,’ were you?”

  “Not me. I never took his class, never met the man until yesterday, and didn’t like what little I saw of him. I guess that’s a good thing. You ready to start down the hill?”

  “Sure. I hear there’s a special farewell dinner tonight. With meat.”

  When I thought back, I realized that we had been eating a lot of pasta here. In any case, the subject of the professor was closed, and Bonnie and I enjoyed a leisurely walk down the hill from the church, then up the hill to the villa. We paused partway up to catch our breath.

  “Looks positively medieval, doesn’t it?” Bonnie said. “If you ignore a few electrical wires and that tractor over there, it could be any era at all.”

  “You’re right. This whole area feels kind of timeless, until you go into a town, with those fancy modern things like streetlights and trains.” I looked up at the villa and worked out where the swimming pool lay. Unlike in the States, there was no fence, no guardrail. Just a flagstone and concrete pavement surrounding the pool that went up to the edge—and to the hill that fell straight down twenty or more feet. But wouldn’t a falling body have rolled? Bounced? Wouldn’t Anthony Gilbert have tried to stop his fall? Maybe not, if he was drunk or drugged or dead when he went over the edge. “Let’s get moving—I think I smell grilling meat.”

  I stopped by the room to change into a slightly “nicer” shirt, in honor of the occasion, and found Cynthia there. She looked up from her tablet.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked.

  “I took a nature walk, believe it or not. Bonnie and I went up to look at the church.”

  “Anything interesting up there?”

  “Not really. Some pretty flowers and some sheep. You ready to go down the hill to dinner?”

  She held up one finger, then tapped the screen a few times and shut it down. “There. I watched to capture a thought before it evaporated. Yes, I’m ready. I can’t believe we’ll be leaving here tomorrow. This place is beginning to feel like home.”

  “I know what you mean. And I’m not looking forward to packing, or rather, jamming everything back into my suitcase. How do you manage to travel so light?”

  “Practice. Everything I own is black, so it all matches. And I’ve trained myself not to sweat.”

  “Yeah, right,” I muttered. “Let’s go, then.”

  The mood in the big dining room was hard to read. Everyone was there early, no doubt drawn by the good smells of grilling pork and beef, as I had been. We were midway through our trip, so there was still some excitement about what was to come. But at the same time there was a tinge of sadness: we all knew this part of the trip was ending, and, as Cyn had said, it had come to feel familiar. From what little I’d seen from the handouts, the next home base would be very different. Still, I guessed that people would be glad to put the shadow of the professor’s death behind them. Maybe some people more than others?

  Dinner was, as usual, delicious, served this time by a trio of young trainee chefs who were getting some on-the-job training. I watched the bartender as he winked at Cyn, and she gave him a bright smile. I had to say, her bucket list was a whole lot more interesting than mine.

  Once again the wine flowed freely, and at the end of the meal we mangled singing the college’s alma mater (nobody could ever remember the words). Once again I was struck by the strange intersection of past and present: who among us could have foreseen this moment, all those years ago?

  And who could have foreseen that we might harbor a killer in our midst? No, Laura, I chided myself, don’t think like that. There was no tangible reason to believe that Professor Gilbert’s death was anything but an accidental fall … except for a few little facts that didn’t quite add up, like that late bottle of wine delivered to his room. Nobody had admitted to seeing him after dinner (except me)—but then, nobody had been asked, because his death had been declared an accident from the start. If there were alibis to be had, memories were fading fast, and at this rate nobody would remember where they’d been only a day or two before. Still, it was not my problem, so why was I gnawing at it? I wanted more than anything to relax and enjoy the evening; I had certainly enjoyed most of our time in Tuscany.

  It was close to eleven when Jane and Jean stood up and gave one last try at clinking glasses for attention. It took a while for the din to die down. When it was finally quiet, Jean said, “I hope you’ve all enjoyed your special dinner tonight. Let’s give our chefs a round of applause.” Everybody complied very happily.

  Then Jane took over. “As you all know, we’ll be leaving the villa tomorrow. We’ll be stopping at the lovely walled city of Lucca, where we’ll have lunch, and then we’ll be driving north to the Cinque Terre, which is an amazing part of this country. That’s where my family originated. There’s a religious procession taking place in the heart of the village, and you’re welcome to join in if you wish, if we arrive in time. In the evening we have planned a wonderful dinner at a seaside restaurant, which I’m sure you’ll all enjoy.”

  Jane and Jean exchanged glances. “It doesn’t seem right to end the evening without at least a brief mention of Professor Gilbert,” Jane said. “He touched so many of our lives when we were in college.”

  I choked back a snort: I was pretty sure he’d touched a bit more than that.

  Jane went on, “But if there’s any silver lining to his, uh, passing, it’s that he died doing what he loved—teaching eager students—in the country he had chosen to call home. Let us share a moment of silence in his memory.”

  Heads were bowed—but not all of them. A couple of people looked openly defiant, or looked away. Jane sensed that she should cut the “moment” short, so she said, “Now, let’s all get a good night’s sleep, because we have another busy day tomorrow. Breakfast will be at eight, and the vans will be leaving at nine, so be sure you’re packed and ready to go. Buona notte.”

  People straggled out of the building, into the dark, reluctant to let the night end. Cyn caught up with me just outside the door.

&n
bsp; “What, no tryst with the twins tonight?” I twitted her.

  “Nope. Once was enough. No regrets, though.”

  I envied Cynthia her ability to leave her baggage behind and move forward. I’d always had a tendency to wallow in those blasted what-ifs about what I could have done better, or at least differently, and in some ways I’d come to count on her to drag me out of my introspection. I’d kind of missed that, when our lives had diverged—and my husband hadn’t filled the void. But when I’d had to put a good face on things for my daughter, it was Cynthia’s model that I usually followed, and sometimes the act became the reality.

  As we strolled up the hill, I inhaled the scented night air. “I’m going to miss this.”

  “It’s not over, you know. There are more wonders yet to be seen.”

  “I know, but I like it here. And it’s been interesting, getting to talk to so many people I never knew well. I mean, we share a chunk of the same history, but it’s been a long time. I keep trying to step back and look at us objectively. Do we come across as one of those groups of silly old ladies in funny hats to the rest of the world?”

  “Of course not,” Cynthia said firmly. “And what if we did? We’re enjoying ourselves. Who cares what other people think? We don’t have to make excuses for anything.”

  Cynthia hadn’t changed—thank God. “I’m glad to hear you say that. Now we’d better go pack. Can I just dig a hole and leave most of my clothes here?”

  “Whatever you want—as long as they’re biodegradable. Can you imagine what future archeologists would think when they unearthed a cache of eternal polyester?”

  I laughed, then intoned, “The artifacts appear to represent an offering to the gods of Synthetic, the focus of a popular cult with many, many followers …”

  “Exactly,” Cynthia said.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning I was glad that someone was picking up the luggage in front of the dining hall, because I seriously doubted my ability to haul my blasted suitcase over the gravel path and up the hill to where the vans were parked. There were a few small benefits to growing older, I was finding, and having someone young and strong volunteer to carry things for you was one of them. Sometimes. I still bristled when someone assumed that I needed help, but in some cases I wasn’t above accepting any help offered. This was one of them.

  Breakfast passed quickly—it felt like everyone was eager to get on the road. Maybe a fast break would make it easier to leave such a lovely location, and since we now knew what the standard for accommodations was, I’m sure we were looking forward to the next site. We loaded up the vans and set forth on schedule, headed for Lucca, another place about which I knew next to nothing. And to think that once I had done homework compulsively. I couldn’t figure out whether I was simply lazy now or whether I wanted to see new places without somebody else’s opinion coloring my reactions.

  In the end, my old compulsions won out. I dug out my handout material and read. Lucca: founded by Etruscans, Roman grid plan, remnants of amphitheater, lots of history, yadda yadda, conquered by Napoleon, who made his sister Elisa “Queen of Etruria” for a while. Main sights: statue of Puccini, his home, some nice churches, surrounding city walls largely intact. Manageable size, not too much traffic. Okay, I was ready; I had a general sense of the scope and location of the important monuments. All I needed was some willing accomplices to enjoy them with.

  We parked the vans in a lot a short distance from the city so we could admire the walls as we approached. Once inside, we got our bearings and were preparing to follow the herd toward the remains of the amphitheater when that plan was immediately disrupted by the sight of a gelateria. My feet veered toward it without any conscious thought—and my partners in gelato, Rebecca and Christine, followed me. My first gelato of the day, and it wasn’t even lunchtime. Funny how food kept trumping art for us—both were so good in Italy.

  After an agonizing selection process, I returned with my companions of the day to the narrow street that led toward the center of Lucca. None of our classmates were in sight, which was curiously liberating. Spooning gelato in small bites, the better to make it last, we strolled toward what we hoped was a large square in the middle of … something, glimpsing occasional views of crenellated towers. Jane had alerted us to the competing towers of Lucca, each one intended to be bigger than the last one built by a rival. Amazing how many they had crowded into a small walled town.

  The square when we found it was large and empty, save for an imposing statue—Napoleon’s lucky sister? What must it be like to be gifted with an entire town of your own? There were parents and small children playing in the square, often accompanied by a dog. This must be a regular play spot, since there was a small carousel in one corner. Other than that, there were ornate flower beds and a wealth of souvenir shops around the perimeter, which of course we had to investigate. Nothing caught our fancy, although I debated briefly about acquiring a very realistic Glock handgun made of plastic but thought I might have trouble carrying it home. After a while we made a stab at finding Puccini’s home—our token nod to local culture—and succeeded in locating his statue in a small square, also surrounded by souvenir vendors. Rebecca entered into intense negotiations with one of them for some lovely cloth-bound notebooks. Christine and I wandered around the corner and sat down at a restaurant shaded by an awning, with a front-row view of the statue of Puccini. This was nice: we didn’t have to be anywhere for a couple of hours, when we were going to meet the rest of the group at the cathedral. Once again I flashed back on my sole hectic trip to Italy forty years ago, when I had felt compelled to fit as many monuments and important sites as possible into as short a time as possible, all the while struggling with a ridiculously small budget. It was hard to believe now that there really had been hotels with rooms for the equivalent of five dollars a night, and they were even more or less respectable for a woman traveling alone.

  “I like this,” I said to Christine after Rebecca had waved at us then wandered off to shop at yet another of the stalls clustered around the square. “Are we ordering lunch?” It had been only half an hour since the gelato.

  “Of course,” Christine answered promptly, studying the menu. I scanned it quickly: it was clearly tilted toward tourists, but it showed a sense of humor. I ordered what was dubbed a Panini Puccini, along with a carafe of the house wine. If I were to have a sandwich named for me, what would I want in it? Puccini ignored me, staring thoughtfully at the far end of the little plaza. If I’d read the signs correctly, he had lived in a house in the opposite direction, behind his back.

  The sandwich tasted good, and it was fun to roll the name on my tongue—close to a tongue twister, especially after a glass of wine. Rebecca returned to join us, laden with yet more bags, and ordered something to eat. We didn’t speak much, content to sit and watch the world go by. Was this a way of life in Italy? It was, after all, the Romans who had coined the phrase festina lente—make haste slowly. Maybe they’d borrowed it from the Greeks, but it was the Latin version that had caught on—who could pronounce Greek? We observed a few of our classmates strolling past and waved, but they didn’t stop and we weren’t inspired to jump up and follow them.

  “Did either of you ever take a music course in college?” I asked, apropos of Puccini.

  Christine shook her head. “Nope. Never fit in my schedule. Do they still have distribution requirements these days? Because that really made for some odd course choices.”

  “Got me,” I replied. “I went for the art courses, but only sophomore year, after I’d heard everyone else raving about Art 100. By then it was too late to fit in Music 100, so I was doomed to remain ignorant of music forever. I did, however, take astronomy.”

  “I took horticulture,” Rebecca volunteered.

  “And all this diversity of cultural enrichment has made us better people,” I said solemnly. Then we all burst into laughter. That felt good too.

  When we calmed down again, I said, “I wish I knew what I
was supposed to know about Puccini. He wrote La Bohème, right? I’ve only been to two operas in my life.” Too busy going to art museums, I supposed. That had been my priority then, and later life had kind of intervened.

  “That’s two more than I have,” Christine said.

  That made me feel better. “Funny—if that statue is accurate, Puccini looks nothing like I thought he would. I figured he’d be some large guy with a beard, sort of like Luciano Pavarotti. The guy here reminds me of Cole Porter.”

  Christine laughed. “Now I know why I’m hanging out with you—you’re irreverent. You don’t take any of this too seriously.”

  Once I had. Once I had believed that it mattered whether Michelangelo finished Statue A before he started Statue B. I could still tell you in what year each part of Chartres Cathedral was completed. And what impact had all that information, so carefully stored in my brain, had on my life? Hard to say, but from this distant perspective, it hardly seemed worth worrying about. Now I was practicing just smelling the roses, enjoying the moment. Art history was filed away in my distant past.

  Still, I was forced to admit that it gave me a pang each time we walked into a cathedral. Without thinking I’d find myself ticking off the parts: nave, aisle, transept, apse, crypt; column, capital, clerestory; barrel vault, groin vault. I’d learned my lessons well, and then I’d buried them deep, but they were still there. But I had to wonder: had all the time I’d spent absorbing facts and details interfered with my getting to know the extraordinary group of women I was now traveling with? Back then it had been so much easier to deal with “things” than with people. My loss. How would my life have been different if my priorities had been reversed?

  Too late now. Or was it? We’d finished our sandwiches, so I turned to my tablemates and said, “Ready for gelato?”

  Rebecca grinned. “Always! Lead me to it!”

  Friendship based on ice cream. I could do worse.

  • • •