The Sonnet Lover

by Carol Goodman

  “Open your eyes,” he said.

  When I did I was dazzled by the brightness. The light that poured through the falling snow was distilled, crystallized into liquid pearl that coated each leaf and petal and turned the hanging lemons into glowing orbs like a million candles burning in a dark church.

  “I want you to remember this,” Bruno said, “if you ever wonder if I loved you. Like the promise of spring buried beneath the winter’s snow, I’ll love you even when it most seems I don’t.”

  Even when I’ve gone back to my wife, he might have said.

  He didn’t have to. I’d known then what he was going to do, and still I made love to him that day in the limonaia, beneath the lemon trees on the cold terra-cotta tiles, our bodies crushing the dried lemon flowers that had fallen to the ground so that afterward my skin smelled like lemons. Sometimes even now I imagine I can still smell their scent on my skin.

  I open my eyes and realize that I do, in fact, smell lemon flowers. The scent is coming from my purse. Maybe it’s some perfume that Mara uses that spilled on the Kleenexes from her purse. But no, Mara uses a cloying tea rose perfume without a hint of citrus in it. The scent is coming from the envelope that Robin gave me last night.

  I sit up and hold the envelope to my face and breathe in the smell. When I tear the paper, a shower of cream-colored slivers drifts into my lap, a lemon-scented snow. A single sheet of paper is wrapped around my watch, a sheet of thick old parchment—the same cream color as the dried lemon petals. As I unroll it I see that it’s bordered by an intricate pen-and-ink drawing of flowering lemon trees around a fourteen-line poem—I’ve read enough sonnets to instantly take in the quantity without having to count. The ink is so faded and the penmanship so antiquated that at first I can’t read it, but then slowly, like a photographic image resolving in a tray of chemicals, the words emerge.

  It’s the poem that ended Robin’s film. It looks like a genuine Renaissance manuscript, but I know such things can be forged. It’s hard for me to believe that Robin would have the expertise, but perhaps he met someone at La Civetta who did. But what would be the purpose? To pretend the poem was written by Shakespeare’s Dark Lady to sell his screenplay? Is that what this poem’s supposed to be? The Dark Lady’s invitation to Shakespeare to come to Italy?

  When I hold the poem up, another sheet of paper, so thin it had clung to the back of the parchment, flutters to the bed. It’s covered in script, but this handwriting I recognize as Robin’s. It’s a note addressed to me.

  Dear Dr. Asher,

  When I put this poem in my film I never dreamed how much trouble it would cause or how many people it would upset. I found it at the villa along with some other old poems and letters, but I left those where I found them because I didn’t want to be accused of stealing. This was the only one I took, but I think now that I shouldn’t have taken even this one. It must be very valuable—too valuable for me to hold on to. Would you keep it for me, please? I know that if you could read all the poems you would understand. If you could only come to Italy this summer, I could show them to you. There’s another reason I think you should come, but I’ll explain that later. Meanwhile, would you at least think about coming? Just read this poem. How can you resist going back there?

  —Robin

  I put down the note and read the poem again. It’s a beautiful poem and quite possibly written by a Renaissance poet, perhaps by Ginevra de Laura, but there’s no reason on earth to imagine it’s addressed to William Shakespeare. But Robin said there were letters with the poems as well. Might they indicate whom the poems were written to? Would that explain why Robin thought the poems were so valuable—so valuable he was afraid to keep this one on his person? Valuable enough, perhaps, that someone would kill for one?

  Was it possible that Orlando Brunelli had wanted this poem so badly that he pushed Robin from the balcony to get it? But Mark had said he hadn’t pushed him…that Robin had deliberately jumped. Why would he say that if he wasn’t sure…?

  Unless he was thinking about the lawsuit. What if Mark hadn’t accused Orlando of pushing Robin because he was afraid that the Brunelli family would claim he was trying to discredit their lawsuit? Could he have been afraid that accusing Orlando would drag the lawsuit into the press? Hadn’t he urged the faculty today not to talk about the connection between Robin’s death and the Brunelli family? It’s hard for me to believe that Mark would care more about good press than about the truth behind Robin’s death, but then I know how much the fate of the college matters to Mark. He might even have been able to convince himself that he hadn’t seen Orlando push Robin. And that look he thought he saw in Robin’s eyes…maybe he had misread fear for despair.

  I reread Robin’s note. “I know that if you could read all the poems, you would understand.” If the poems hidden in the villa could explain what happened to Robin, I owe it to Robin to go there and try to find them. And I owe it to Saul Weiss, who will go through the rest of his life thinking he somehow failed his son, that it was his fault Robin killed himself. Perhaps, too, I owe it to myself. I’ve avoided the villa, Florence, in truth all of Italy, since my junior year of college because of an unhappy love affair. Surely I’ve gotten over whatever lingering feelings I nurtured for Bruno Brunelli. Wouldn’t it be better to go back and face the scene of our love affair—even face him—and know that I was over him and that I was ready to settle down with Mark?

  I lie back in bed and read the poem over again. At the line “To be reborn amidst spring’s gentle breeze” I feel something kindle inside of me. Whoever wrote this meant it not just as a promise and a gift, but also as an invitation. Robin is right; who could resist such a summons? I’ve received my third invitation to La Civetta.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE NEW YORK GETS A SPRING THAT REMINDS US THAT our per annum rainfall is higher than Seattle’s. The spring of Robin’s death is one of those springs. It rained through Robin’s funeral, turning the yellow soil that Saul Weiss shoveled over his son’s grave into a viscous soup that stained the mourners’ shoes a jaundiced hue. There was a high turnout among the faculty at the cemetery in Queens and I thought I detected in the following week that yellow mud tracked on the floors of the college: the ghostly yellow footprints a badge of mourning like the strips of torn cloth pinned over our hearts to show that something had been rent. Chihiro, who had never attended a Jewish funeral, was so fascinated by this practice that she decided to write a paper on the uses of textiles in mourning rituals.

  It rained on graduation day, driving the ceremony indoors into an overcrowded and humid auditorium. When Mark came to the place where Robin’s name would have been called (between Yung-ying Wei and Naomi Weissberg), we observed a moment of silence. Walking back home, I saw a circle of students standing in the fountain basin in Washington Square Park holding hands. When I came closer, Zoe Demarchis recognized me and broke the circle to let me in.

  “We’re singing songs that Robin liked,” she explained to me. After a warbly rendition of “Hey Jude,” there’s a pause into which I find myself interjecting sonnet number 65, another of Shakespeare’s assertions of writing’s power to confer immortality. At the last lines, though—“O none, unless this miracle have might, / That in black ink my love may still shine bright”—I couldn’t help but remember Robin’s question that day in class, and when I closed my eyes I saw the yellow dirt falling on Robin’s coffin and I knew how useless a trade it was—the living flesh for empty words. I would gladly have given up all the poems and all the plays in all the world for Robin to be standing there in that circle.

  That night I have dinner with Mark at our favorite restaurant—Po, on Cornelia Street—and I tell him that I’ve decided to go to Italy after all. He’s so happy that I feel churlish in having turned down his first offer and I’m glad to give him some good news. Since Robin’s death he’s been distracted and distant.

  “I only wish you had told me earlier so you could have flown with m
e tomorrow,” he says, reaching across the table to take my hand. “I could have found a way to get the college to pay for your airfare.”

  “Actually,” I say, taking a sip of the Prosecco Mark has ordered, “that won’t be necessary. I’ve accepted Leo Balthasar’s offer to work as a consultant on Robin’s screenplay. They’re flying me to Florence next week. First class.”

  The smile on Mark’s face doesn’t change, but his hand tightens on mine. “Really?” he says. “That’s…well, I’m impressed with Leo Balthasar’s judgment. I hope he’s paying you well.” Mark’s eyes flick away from me. I’m afraid that he’s hurt that I’ve accepted the offer without consulting him, but then I see it’s just that he’s trying to attract the attention of the waiter. “Take this Prosecco away,” he tells him when he comes to our table. “We’ll have champagne instead—to celebrate,” he says, turning back to me, “your good fortune.”

  “Our good fortune,” I remind him. “Now we’ll be able to spend the summer together. And I can have a look through Lucy Graham’s archives like you wanted me to in the first place. Perhaps that’s where Robin found the poems by Ginevra de Laura. Finding them would be a significant addition to my book on the Renaissance sonnet and a help to Graham’s defense against the lawsuit. It would certainly establish Lucy as a collector of note if she had found the poems.”

  “Yes, it would be killing two birds with one stone,” Mark says. I try not to cringe at the idiom he’s chosen, remembering that it’s what Leo Balthasar said to Orlando. What had Orlando answered? That it wouldn’t be necessary to kill anyone?

  “Or three, actually,” Mark adds, beaming now. “Since the poems would substantiate Robin’s screenplay. I gather you haven’t found anything in the papers Robin’s father gave you.”

  “No,” I say. Technically I am telling the truth. The poem and letter from Robin weren’t in the shopping bag Saul Weiss gave me. “Mostly there were just drafts of old term papers and some notebooks filled with poetry—all free verse—nothing in formal verse like the last sonnet of the movie.”

  “That’s too bad,” Mark says, “but perhaps you’ll have better luck in Italy. I would like to ask one favor.”

  “Well, just one,” I say, teasingly. “It is our last night together for a week. Are you sure you want to use it up now?”

  Under the table Mark’s leg presses against mine. “I’ll have to count on my charms for later…but this is really important. If you find anything…any letters attached to the poems…say, by Lucy or Sir Lionel…would you show them to me before sharing them with Balthasar or anyone else?”

  “You’re worried about where the Grahams might have come by the poems?” I ask.

  “Something like that. I just wouldn’t want anything else to complicate the lawsuit right now. Those Brunellis are relentless. I’d just like to have first look.” Mark looks tired again, bowed down by the myriad details he’s had to take care of in these last few weeks, and I regret that this worry is tainting our last night together. I regret, too, that I haven’t shared the poem Robin gave me, or his letter, or my worries that Orlando might have been trying to get the poem from Robin when he fell. But Mark’s made it clear that he doesn’t want to accuse Orlando Brunelli of pushing Robin off that balcony, and I don’t want to ruin our last night together by voicing theories I can’t prove yet.

  “Of course,” I say, rubbing my foot against his leg. “I’ll show you anything I find first.” It’s an easy promise to make. After all, a cache of Renaissance sonnets might be a priceless discovery for me, but could it really decide the disposition of a billion-dollar villa? It doesn’t seem likely. But then, as our appetizers are served, I remember that Robin had thought the poems were so important that just having one put him in danger. And he may have been right.

  I decide, though, a week later on my last night in New York, to share Robin’s letter and the poem with Chihiro over take-out Chinese food and a bottle of Australian Shiraz. First, though, we exchange going-away presents.

  “So you don’t freeze up north,” I say, giving her a North Face rain slicker for her trip to the English Lake District, where she is spending the summer doing research on Dorothy Wordsworth.

  “And here’s something in an actual color to brighten up your usual nun-like wardrobe,” she tells me, tucking a package wrapped in bright orange tissue paper into the zippered compartment of my suitcase.

  “Speaking of nuns,” I say, “have a look at this and tell me if it sounds like something written by a woman who spent the last years of her life locked away in a nunnery.”

  I hand her the poem and she puts on her lavender-rimmed cat’s-eyes glasses to read it. “Well, she’s obviously guilty about something she did to this guy. So guilty she’s willing to hand over her villa—or at least the limonaia—to make it up to him. So, I’d say she’s halfway to the nunnery already. Where’d you get this?”

  I explain how I came by the poem and give her the letter as well. She reads the letter with as much attention and care as the poem. It’s something I admire in Chihiro—she’ll give as much textual analysis to a manga volume as to a poem by Wordsworth—but right now I’m anxious to get her verdict.

  “He’s playing with you,” she says at last, “teasing you with little bits of information. Luring you to come to Italy. It’s hard to say what he’s really up to. After what I’ve heard about Robin Weiss, I could believe he made the whole thing up. Poems and all.”

  “So, you don’t think I should be worried about someone trying to kill me for this poem,” I say, laughing, making a joke of it.

  “I didn’t say that,” Chihiro answers, looking serious despite her silly glasses. “If Robin’s masquerade was successful and convinced someone the poems were real, you could be killed for a fake poem as easily as for a real one. It would just be…you know…a tiny bit more pathetic.”

  In the cab to JFK the next morning, hungover from the wine we shared, I’m not sure what to be more worried about: the driving rain and limited visibility, terrorism, or the fact that I’m carrying a poem—real or not—that someone might kill me for. I wish now that I’d saved at least one of Mara’s Valiums, but I threw them all away a week ago when I realized I’d grown a bit too dependent on them. On the runway I decide that the thick blanket of cloud cover is definitely the more likely threat, but then, as our plane taxis into the line of aircraft waiting for takeoff, a thin band of gold appears at the horizon and the rain stops. The lowlying sun washes over the wet tarmac, flashes off the silver underbellies of the planes, and turns the gray clouds ink blue. By the time we lift into the stratosphere, I feel cocooned against turbulence, grief, and fear, insulated by the cool blue dusk that surrounds the plane with a cushion as soft as this plush first-class seat I accepted from Leo Balthasar’s production company. Leo himself is sitting across the aisle from me, his seat fully reclined, a silk eye mask over his face, snoring loudly. I might as well take a cue from him and relax, I think, adjusting the footrest and accepting a glass of champagne from the flight attendant.

  I can’t help but compare this flight to the cut-rate Sabena flight I took to Italy twenty years ago, eight hours spent with my knees slammed into my chest because the seats in front of and behind me were occupied by basketball players on their way to a tournament in Brussels. They were so obviously more uncomfortable than I that I didn’t dare recline or complain when the man in front leaned so far back in his flimsy seat that I could smell the Vitalis in his hair. And when the paltry meal was served, I joined in with the team as they donated their dinner rolls and processed cheese wedges to a fellow they all called “Buns.”

  I hadn’t really minded, though. I had made my escape over my mother’s objections (Why do you have to go all the way to Italy to read poetry? They’re shooting people in the kneecaps over there.) and in spite of financial difficulties (I spent so many hours behind the bar at Cafe Lucrezia that there was a permanent ridge of espresso grounds beneath my fingernails) and a last-minute attack of conscience tha
t my mother really wouldn’t be able to cope without me.

  “I’ll take care of her,” Aunt Roz assured me. “You go. You may never have this chance again—who knows how long any of us has?”

  I’ve often wondered whether she had a premonition that she would be the one gone before I came back. Not my long-suffering hypochondriacal mother, but lively Roz killed in a taxi that ran a red light on Lexington Avenue, on her way back from buying a hat at Bloomingdale’s. (I don’t know why she didn’t take the subway, my mother said at her funeral. She always took the subway.)

  But I didn’t know then that my aunt’s death and my mother’s diagnosis of lung cancer would call me back before the year was over. As far as I was concerned during that youthful journey to Europe, I might never come back. I was good at languages. Why not travel around and pick up a few while teaching English to pay my way? I felt as though I were escaping not just my mother’s expectations for me but the self she would fashion me into: the cardigan-wearing, PBS-tote-bag-bearing high school teacher that had been the height of her unrealized ambitions for herself.

  I wonder whether Robin had thought he was escaping the specter of becoming his father, poor stoop-shouldered Saul, who had been so frail at the funeral that he could barely lift the shovel high enough to clear the rim of Robin’s grave. Leaving the cemetery, he had suddenly fallen to his knees and I thought he had fainted, but he was only plucking a few blades of grass from the ground to throw over his shoulder—an ancient Jewish custom to ward off evil spirits, but also, I have always felt, a way of severing ourselves from the dead.

  I take my leave of you, I can imagine Robin thinking as he made his own journey to Italy. The sentiment was apparent in Robin’s screenplay, which Leo Balthasar had sent me last week. In it the young William Shakespeare, burdened by a nagging wife and forced into unemployment when the London theaters are shut down by the plague, receives an invitation from a mysterious woman. There are hints that she’s a long-lost love, but the screenplay is vague on this point. She frames an invitation to her villa in Italy in the shape of a sonnet that proves just as irresistible to the Bard as it had been to me. In fact, it works so well as a catalyst for the action in the script that I find myself siding with Chihiro’s theory that Robin had written the poem himself—or found someone to write it—and pretended that it was a genuine Renaissance sonnet in order to pique Balthasar’s interest in the screenplay. I wonder whether Leo had then demanded the original sonnet as proof of the historical basis of the script. I could try asking him, I think, glancing over at Leo to see whether he’s showing any signs of awakening, but then I hear a familiar voice coming from behind the curtain that separates first class from coach.