She rang the bell at number 6, admiring the heavy iron door handle shaped like a horse head. No one answered.
Disappointed, Scottie walked slowly back toward Piazza della Signoria. Everything felt like a dead end.
Under the statue of David, pigeons circling overhead, Carlo’s face lit up when he saw her, and she suddenly felt right again. An old woman selling scarves held an armful out to them as Scottie wordlessly took Carlo’s offered arm. “Per sua bella ragazza.” For your beautiful girl.
Memories of their afternoon at San Galgano flitted across her consciousness. The feel of his hands on her body. His mouth on hers. It was as if her belly and breasts were not swelling with the child, but with something else that was growing inside her.
8.
Michael sat in his office, reading the paper and writing a report to send to Rome. He hoped Scottie was having a good day in Florence. On one of his visits to Rome, Duncan had pressed him, and Michael had confessed that he was not exactly “doing his duty” with regard to Scottie.
“She’s pregnant!” Michael protested, glancing around the bar to make sure no one was listening. “You’re not supposed to be in … there … when they’re pregnant, are you?” He hated these conversations—they felt so disloyal to Scottie, and God knows they were embarrassing—but Duncan loved them. He loved to tease Michael.
“You have seen Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze illustrating the Ode to Joy in Vienna? One of the figures is a pregnant woman in a beautiful skirt, her naked breasts distended and her naked belly huge, her wrists in golden jeweled cuffs. She is surrounded by red-haired sexualized sirens who seem to be in a state of perpetual orgasm, and she gazes at a comical huge brown hairy beast with buttons for eyes.”
“And? What does Klimt have to do with us?”
Duncan laughed and sipped his martini. “They say she is meant to symbolize wantonness. Back in 1902, it was one of the most scandalous images ever exhibited. Can’t you picture the nice Viennese ladies fainting at the sight of it?”
“Yes. I feel faint myself.”
“No one wants to see a pregnant woman as a sexual being. It violates something primal in us. But there’s something you should know. They want sex when they’re pregnant. They crave it.”
Michael realized he had no idea whether Duncan was lying to him or not. Sex was the part of marriage that was hardest for him. He felt terrible about this, wondered if Scottie noticed anything wrong.
He hoped she was buying herself something nice in Florence.
9.
“I went to Gordon’s office, but he wasn’t there.” Scottie and Carlo were walking across another bridge toward the Oltr’arno side of the city, one bridge down from the Ponte Vecchio, scooters zooming past them. The river was broad and placid, with several fishermen down in the current, and shorebirds wading in the shallows.
“I know where he lives. You could stalk your prey to ground.”
“He doesn’t have a telephone?”
“Out in the country? I doubt it.”
Scottie considered this. “Would it be terribly rude to just show up there?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Why don’t we stop on our way home?”
Home. She didn’t want this day to end. They’d been avoiding each other’s eyes all day, pretending to be people who did not think the things they were thinking. They were good people who loved their spouses no matter what their flaws were. That was what marriage was. Loyalty. Absolute loyalty to someone else.
“One thing I want to do before we go,” he said. They strolled arm in arm, and she could feel the heat of his skin through the jacket sleeve. He pointed out the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens with wry asides about Savonarola and Dante and the Medicis. But he wasn’t a lecturer like Michael—he asked her about things. “Do you find that building harmonious? What do you think that woman thinks she looks like? Where in America is your favorite place of all?” She was laughing, chatting, relaxed, telling him about her evil childhood pony, and her father’s addiction to baby lamb chops. But always, there was an undercurrent of electricity.
“Sometimes I wonder if my memories are even memories at all, or just things I wish happened,” she said.
Carlo told her about something called Sehnsucht. It was a German word that he said had no real equivalent in English or Italian. “A pervasive sense of longing,” he said to her. “A yearning for something lost, but something you never really had.”
“Like white Christmases?”
“Yes. And it can be cultural as well as personal. England between the wars. America’s longing for a West where cowboys kept you safe.”
He led her through a warren of narrow streets to a small doorway that led to an even smaller upholstery shop that also had every size and shape of lamp shade, from tiny to enormous. She slipped Ecco’s leash over the iron hook outside the door, and he drank from the small dish beneath it. Carlo dropped her arm and talked to the owner while she wandered the aisles, admiring beautifully fringed pillows and bolts of brocade and striped silks, tassels and braid. She wandered all the way to the back of the shop.
Carlo found her there. “Ready?” he asked.
“No,” she said softly, and took his hand. She pulled him close, and they kissed. She could hear the shopkeeper moving about up front. Just one more kiss, she thought, leaning into him, her knees weak.
She heard the front door jingle, and a voice call out, “Carlo, I’m running out to get a coffee. Watch the shop, would you?”
Carlo’s sì was hoarse.
He engulfed her with his arms, his chest. She floated on a wave, higher, higher, higher, hoping the crest never came.
10.
Trying to sniff out if the theft had been tied to Robertino, and if Robertino had been tied to him beyond just his lessons with Scottie, Michael called Rodolfo and invited him to lunch on the pretext of asking him to explain the current agricultural situation. If things went well, he would bring out the contract in his briefcase offering Rodolfo a few thousand dollars a month in exchange for articles that were pro-Catholic and pro-America. Just a little PR, he would say. Laying the groundwork for doing business here.
“I don’t really understand what this strike is about,” Michael confessed in complete honesty as they sat down outdoors at Ristorante Papei in Piazza del Mercato. Though the fish market had ended by ten, a faint whiff of pesce floated on the hot air, reminding him of Fridays at home with his parents and making him slightly nauseated. The papers were full of news about an ongoing strike of agricultural workers. As the ostensible owner of a tractor franchise, Michael felt it was part of his cover to be fluent in farm issues, but instead of simple talk about weather and crop yields, as it was back home, the news here was all a mass of acronyms: CSIL, CGIL, UNI. Michael longed for an encyclopedia of Italian culture so that he would not have to ask stupid questions. On the other hand, in this case a stupid question was a way to get Rodolfo to open up to him.
Before they could proceed with lunch, there was the obligatory verbal sparring between Rodolfo and the waiter about yesterday’s Palio and the next one. Michael saw it as very similar to the tiresome way college boys talked about football, a way for men to converse and show friendship without vulnerability. Since the contrade had begun as militias, the Palio was in essence a war game, a definition Michael applied to all organized sports, a way to convert the natural human desire to fight into play and pageantry. He had no patience for a fake war when he was fighting a real one.
Without looking at the menu, Rodolfo ordered a plate of pici cacio e pepe and a glass of red wine. Michael did the same.
“What is the Confagricoltura?” Michael asked as the waiter brought their wine.
“To understand this you must understand the history of farming in Italy,” Rodolfo said.
This was not an uncommon way of beginning a conversation, Michael had learned. Italians always wanted to give you the big picture, and every single one of them, right down to the mechanic who had repa
ired the Fairlane and had knowledgeably discussed the Battle of Montaperti in 1260 and the origins of Siena’s rivalry with Florence, seemed to have a passion for history and be able to quote Dante from memory. It was hard for Michael to picture a random gas station attendant in Missouri (or a university student in New Haven) describing the details of British bureaucracy in pre-Revolutionary America or quoting Chaucer at length. Rodolfo proceeded to give Michael an overview that touched lightly on the Etruscans and Romans, moved to the 1500s with Cosimo de Medici and the growth of cities, the expansion of feudalism into the surrounding countryside, the rise of mezzadria, or sharecropping, the bonifica, or improvements to the canals in the Maremma under Mussolini, and eventually, as they finished their pasta and the waiter poured them each a second glass of wine and brought out trays of eggplant and zucchini, as well as a pair of tender pork cutlets, outlined the postwar organization of unions and chambers of commerce that regulated the current agricultural system.
Michael was fairly sure he would remember none of this tomorrow, especially since the entire time Rodolfo was talking, Michael was trying to figure out how to genially convince him to write an article that would spread malicious rumors about Ugo Rosini, and also perhaps to say something nice about Ambassador Luce, to please Duncan.
“Sad about Mayor Manganelli,” Michael said.
“This insanity with the cars,” Rodolfo said. “Before the war you were happy if you had a bicycle. Now everyone has a car but no one is competent to drive one. We should stick with horses.”
“Who do you think will be elected in November?”
Rodolfo shrugged. “The priests will encourage one side, and the unions the other. But probably people will vote for who their fathers voted for. What did you think of Vestri?”
Michael was cautious. “I don’t know enough about him. But Siena’s growing fast. We’re having these same issues in American towns, the postwar boom. It’s important to pick leaders who understand how to navigate expansion, who give business owners room to grow.”
Rodolfo sighed and lit a cigarette. He leaned back in his chair.
“You must understand. Italians are resistant to being governed. Every invading force has thought ‘these people do not even fight us.’ But eventually we throw them off because we do fight, just not openly, because this is suicide. We subvert, we evade, we undermine. This is something that is frustrating, but is also beautiful, like the way insects consume a corpse. Unlike Americans, we believe that every politician is corrupt. Every law is to be circumvented. We are startled when we meet someone who is truly good. Like your wife.”
“Scottie?”
“She is looking for this boy. The police made a show of it, but they have moved on to other things. She will not stop, will she?”
“I don’t know about that. She’s in Florence shopping today. The only thing she’s hunting is a bamboo bag at Gucci.” Michael rolled his eyes.
Rodolfo laughed and shook his head. “Gucci? I bet she’s tracking down Gordon.”
“Gordon?”
“I told her the other night that Robertino posed for Lord Sebastian Gordon. Gordon works for Gucci. She has probably gone to talk to him. Under cover of shopping.” He laughed again, as Michael’s stomach churned.
“And Robertino is of no benefit to her. He is not her child. But she devotes herself to this, because it is right, and because no one else is doing it. This shames us, because we all wish to be this way, like the heroes in comic books.”
Somehow it didn’t seem like the right moment to offer money in exchange for an article suggesting that the left had bumped off Manganelli.
“Yes,” Michael said. “She is an innocent.”
Rodolfo took a drag on his cigarette and looked at Michael. “No, I do not agree. Two nights ago she was practically throwing punches. She is very vispa.” While Michael smiled, agreeing that Scottie was “spirited,” Rodolfo added, lowering his voice, “Listen, you mentioned Manganelli’s death.”
“Yes?”
“I heard something the other day. A rumor. It may explain why no one is buying your tractors.”
It was true. No one had come to buy a tractor this week. Brigante, who was selling one a day, was crowing about it.
“What?”
“That Manganelli’s death was not an accident. That the CIA was behind it.”
Michael’s jaw dropped.
“I know, it sounds crazy. But you would be surprised. It would not be the first time that a foreign power decided to intervene in Italian politics.”
Michael blinked. “But … no offense, Siena is a very small town. As we say, there are bigger fish to fry.”
“True. But if you wanted to decapitate the Communist Party, this would be the place to start.”
Did he know? Michael told himself to breathe. “Manganelli wasn’t a Communist.”
“No, but he was friendly to them. He was talking about working with all of the parties to move Siena forward in a way that honored the past but also advanced quality of life for all. He was friendly to the unions, and like Rosini was resistant to some key developers. American developers.”
“American developers?” This was the first Michael had heard of it. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know. But I know Vestri will practically suck their dicks. He’s from the far right wing of the Catholics, one step away from fascism. Anyway, I know that probably you have not sold many tractors, and I thought you should know why, that it’s not personal.”
“Thank you for telling me. I can assure you the rumor is not true.”
“Can you? How?”
“That’s not how Americans behave,” said Michael, amazed by his own flat tone. “Oh, I have a scoop for you,” he added. “Heard it through the grapevine at Ford in Rome the other day. Ambassador Luce will attend the August Palio.”
Rodolfo’s eyebrows went up. “Really? That is news. What an honor for our little city.” He downed a coffee that the waiter had brought without being asked and stood up to leave. “Arrivederci,” he said, and strode off.
Michael drank his coffee. He paid the bill and was halfway across the piazza before he heard a yell.
“Signore!”
He turned, and the waiter was holding up his briefcase.
11.
They got lost on the winding gravel roads on the way to the villa. Carlo apologized profusely, said he felt all turned around. She nodded.
This spell they had over each other … What did it mean? Was it the kind of thing you tried to perpetuate? Or was it a dream they would wake from? They could never be together. Her confidence that she was doing the right thing by hunting down Gordon was evaporating, and she was hot and crabby and anxious. She no longer felt beautiful or sexual, but rather hot and bloated and uncomfortable. She was dying to get out of her girdle. Most of the makeup that she had carefully reapplied in a small dusty mirror in the shop seemed to have ended up on her gloves after wiping the sweat off her face. She felt slightly sickened at the memory of how she had wrenched her clothing aside in her haste to feel Carlo inside her, how frantic she was, grabbing him, desperate, clawing at him to pull him deeper and deeper inside herself, rubbing her breasts against him. She and Carlo had rutted like animals. That wasn’t romance. There was something wrong with her, she thought. Michael’s urges were so tidy, so controlled. They made love without even wrinkling the sheets.
She’d made Carlo pull over at one of the roadside gas stations so she could do some respackling on her cosmetics and relieve herself, but the toilet was just a hole in the floor, and the room was filled with the buzz of flies. God in heaven, what had she become? She stank of desire and betrayal, so she had sprayed herself with more perfume, which was now turning her stomach. Yet she wanted Carlo again.
Finally, after they had driven up a long, cypress-lined, rutted gravel road that switchbacked between fields of golden sunflowers closing tight for the night, what Carlo had described as “a pink monstrosity” had indeed appeared in their headl
ights: a large pink-and-mustard-colored villa with graceful arches revealing a loggia, a Grecian triangular pediment held up by columns, two stories of green shuttered windows lit up, and a row of darkened small barred circular windows just below a cornice guarded by Greek statues and topped with a shield bearing a huge crest of arms.
It was a far cry from the tumbledown farmhouses they’d passed on the way, a skinny dog or two growling beneath a laundry line, ageless blank-eyed women gazing from under headscarves as they pruned grapes in the waning daylight.
A wide drive of pea gravel took them up to the front of the villa. As she got closer, Scottie could see even in the fading daylight that the old building’s glamour was a little tattered. Ivy was pulling at the stucco, which had crumbled away in places to reveal stones beneath. The paint was worn through and showed the many layers of color that had been applied over the years.
“Faded glory,” said a very tall man with a long nose that seemed to precede him as he appeared around the corner. Unmistakably English. The man, in his late thirties she guessed, wore a perfectly cut white linen suit, a polka-dotted pale blue handkerchief in the breast pocket, and held a martini glass. With his slicked-back hair, he looked like a film star, Scottie decided. But there was something else. Something about him made her uncomfortable.
“Lord Sebastian Gordon,” said Carlo as the man air-kissed him and her and kept talking as if they were continuing a conversation in midstream.
“I suppose decay happens to the best of us. The place was built by the Medicis in the 1400s, and made its way through the usual accidents of inheritance down to my dear departed mother,” Gordon said. “I blame you for that,” he said, turning to Scottie. Seeing her confused look, he pointed to the ivy. “It’s called vite americana. An import from your neck of the woods. Virginia creeper. The Italians went mad for it in the last century before they realized it’s beautiful but destructive. Gets into every crack and crevice. Someday it will tear the whole place down. Invasive species, you Yanks. We’re all around back,” he said. “By the pool. Follow me.” He walked around the side of the villa through a gate in the hedge.
The Italian Party Page 19
