“Paolo and Francesca,” I tell Mara as the maître d’ seats us at a small table underneath a grape arbor. Each one of the tables is in its own small bower to ensure privacy.
“Well, this is pretty,” Mara admits, sinking into her chair and letting her shopping bags settle to the ground around her, the layers of tissue paper inside rustling like roosting pigeons.
I order us a bottle of sparkling mineral water and a carafe of the house red. “There’s no menu,” I tell Mara, “but I remember they made a wonderful pasta with cream and grated orange peel. Oh, but I forgot—you don’t eat dairy.” Or drink, I remember as the waiter returns and pours us each a glass.
“Oh, well, when in Rome,” Mara says, taking a sip of the wine. “Order whatever’s best. I’m exhausted. Shopping always makes me tired.”
I can see why. The energy that had propelled Mara through her purchases had a frantic quality to it—a compulsive quality—and now that it’s abandoned her, she seems somehow deflated.
“But what good bargains we got,” she says. “I know those scarves cost over three hundred dollars at home, and here they were only two-eighty.”
The waiter has appeared so I don’t answer right away. I order us both salads and the pasta del giorno. When he goes I take a sip of mineral water and say, “Well, actually, Mara, that was in euros. With the current exchange rate, that makes it well over three hundred dollars.”
“Oh,” she says, waving her hand again. “Oh, well. I suppose I’ll have to listen to Gene rant and rave when he gets the Amex bill, but at least he can’t make me return anything without sending me back to Florence.” She smiles conspiratorially and clinks her glass of red wine against mine as if I were her comrade in deceiving her husband. I’m alarmed to see that she’s finished the glass and I wonder whether it’s a sign of guilt over concealing the truth about Robin’s death. “And he really shouldn’t complain. My parents bought us the house we live in, so it’s not like we’ve got a big mortgage, and it’s not my fault academics make so little. When we met he told me he was going to make movies. I thought it sounded so glamorous, but I should have listened to my mother and married a doctor or at least an orthodontist. Do you have any idea what Ned’s braces cost us?”
Thankfully, our salads arrive and Mara takes a break to exclaim over the nearly translucent shavings of parmesan, the crisp white fennel, and the sweet figs. “What did you say this restaurant was called again? I want to tell my friends about it.”
“I honestly can’t remember. The name had something to do with Paolo and Francesca, though.”
“Who?”
“Two lovers Dante met in the underworld. Francesca tells Dante how they fell in love while reading the tale of Lancelot and Guinevere, how when they got to the moment where Lancelot kisses Guinevere, Paolo kissed her. ‘La bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.’ All trembling, he kissed my mouth. It’s very sensual in the Italian…”
I pause because the waiter has brought our pasta—cream-drenched tagliatelle flecked with tiny orange specks and garnished with purple nasturtiums. A dish, I suddenly remember, called Pasta alla Francesca.
“I’m not sure I should eat all this dairy…” Mara says, but she’s already twirling the gleaming noodles and bringing a forkful to her mouth. She closes her eyes at the first bite and moans. “Oh, my God, that is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. So, tell me, why are Paula and Francesca in hell?”
“Well, Francesca was married to Paolo’s brother, Gianciotto.”
“Ah, so they were adulterers,” Mara says, wiping a dab of cream from her chin.
“Yes, but in their defense, there’s a story that Gianciotto sent Paolo to Ravenna to bring Francesca back to Rimini to marry him, and Francesca fell in love with Paolo thinking he was her husband-to-be.”
“Still,” Mara says, “once she knew…”
“Yes, well, they are in hell,” I say, annoyed with the way Mara always turns everything into her story—the story of the aggrieved wife of a philanderer—but then I realize that I can perhaps use the story to serve my own purposes. “But the husband, Gianciotto, is in a lower circle for killing Paolo and Francesca. Dante organizes the circles of hell so that the worst sinners receive the worst punishment. The figures we saw coming in, for instance, were of people who saw evil but did nothing to stop it. Like the citizens who did nothing to stop the fascists from killing the Jews here in Italy.”
“Oh, it’s just too awful to think about,” Mara says, wiping the cream from her lips. “You know, I read Anne Frank’s diary four times in the year I was preparing for my bat mitzvah. It had such a big impact on me that I brought it up in my dvar Torah speech. I’d gotten the worst Haftorah portion—that part of Leviticus with all the gross sacrifices? But then my Hebrew tutor pointed out that it was all about responsibility and I was able to relate it to Anne Frank and the rabbi said it was one of the best dvar Torahs he had ever heard. There wasn’t a dry eye in Temple Beth-El.”
“Yes, I can imagine that was a very powerful subject,” I say, delighted that Mara has grasped the concept of bystander guilt so quickly. I think, from my own dim memories of Hebrew school, that the passage of Leviticus she’s talking about (the one with all the “gross sacrifices”) actually says something about a witness’s obligation to report what he has seen. Now I just have to connect that lesson to her responsibility to report what she knows happened on the balcony in New York before she starts in with her bat mitzvah theme and color scheme.
“Accountability is something I’ve thought a lot about since Robin’s death,” I say. “You see, I was inside, so I didn’t see what happened. But you were out on the balcony. Maybe you saw something then that didn’t really register—”
“I didn’t see anything,” Mara says abruptly. “Gene pulled me away.”
“But Gene saw what happened…Is he sure Robin jumped?”
Mara has been twirling the same forkful of pasta for the last thirty seconds, staring at the strands as if they had turned to snakes. “What difference does it make?” she asks, putting down her fork. “I mean, the boy’s dead. What difference does it make if he killed himself or someone pushed him?”
“Well, for one thing, Saul Weiss, Robin’s father, wouldn’t have to go through the rest of his life thinking that his son killed himself. Imagine if it were Ned—”
“Ned would never hurt himself. I’ve made sure he’s had all the best therapists, and when they wanted him to go on Prozac last year I said no because of the cases of teenagers on antidepressants killing themselves. We put him on Wellbutrin instead. It has a much lower incidence of suicidal thoughts and it helps you lose weight at the same time.”
I realize I’ve touched a nerve more sensitive than I’d counted on and I feel a twinge of guilt using Mara’s maternal protectiveness to make her come forward with what Gene told her. I also realize how much pain I’ll be causing Bruno if Mara does accuse Orlando of pushing Robin off the balcony. For a moment I wonder whether it’s worth it—trading one parent’s grief for another’s, but then I think that Bruno might well have sent Orlando to New York to get those poems. Why should I spare him? And as for Mara, she hasn’t just concealed the truth surrounding Robin’s death; she stands to profit from it. She’s just gone shopping on it.
“So, think how you would feel,” I say, “if after everything you did, you thought Ned had taken his own life. If it weren’t true—if it had been Ned who was pushed off that balcony—wouldn’t you want to know the truth?”
Mara nods her head meekly. She looks suddenly very young. I can picture her at thirteen delivering her dvar Torah to the congregation of Temple Beth-El. “I really didn’t see anything,” she says, sounding for all the world like a schoolgirl caught cheating, “but Gene…” She stops, reluctant, I imagine, to give too much away to me. A full confession is more than I need, though, as long as she convinces Gene to come forward with what he saw on the balcony. I put my hand on hers. “If Gene saw something that’s different from what Mark to
ld the police, he should say so.”
Mara nods. “Well, I’ll talk to him about it,” she says weakly. “I suppose we ought to be getting back. Garçon!” She summons the waiter and wiggles her hand in the air to indicate that she wants the check. We lapse into silence waiting for it. Mara, I hope, is busy thinking of how she will tell Gene that they need to tell the police about Orlando, and I’m reluctant to push her any further.
“Oh, sweetie, could you put this on your card?” she says when the bill arrives. “I don’t want Gene having a hemorrhage over our balance. You’re so lucky that you don’t have anyone looking over your bills.”
Or paying them, I think, laying my MasterCard on the silver tray. Since I may have just sabotaged the Silvermans’ lucrative film deal with Leo Balthasar, I figure the least I can do is pay for lunch. In order to stoop to such a deal, the Silvermans must be fairly desperate for the cash. Which isn’t hard to fathom if Mara regularly shops like this on an academic’s salary.
I sign the credit card slip and leave a generous tip in cash. When I’m folding my receipt I notice the name of the restaurant printed on the top: Il Galeotto. Of course. It’s the Italian name for the Arthurian knight who encouraged the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere. In The Inferno Francesca calls the very book she and Paolo read from a “Galeotto”—the go-between that prompted their unlawful love. Bruno told me that the restaurant took its name because it was a place where Jewish refugees could go to make contact with antifascists, and then, after the war, it became a place where lovers met. The owners didn’t have to advertise the name, relying on tradition, word of mouth, and, most of all, discretion, to provide their clientele.
As we walk back down the hall of those souls who lived without praise or blame, I try to feel that having just maneuvered Mara into making her husband confess what he saw on the balcony, I’ve avoided at least one sort of purgatory.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
WHEN WE COME OUT OF IL GALEOTTO I LOSE MY SENSE OF DIRECTION ONCE again, and instead of heading toward one of the major streets where we stand a better chance of getting a cab, we find ourselves wandering through the streets just south of the Duomo. I realize how close we are to the Duomo when we turn onto the Via dello Studio, so named because it housed the workshop for the artisans who worked on the great church.
“I’m sorry, Mara, I don’t see any cabs, but we can get a bus on the other side of the Duomo. It will take us right up to the villa gates.”
To my surprise, Mara agrees. “At least I can tell Gene I took the bus,” she says. “He’s always complaining I take too many taxis in New York.” Poor Mara. I feel like I’m sending her into the lion’s den. If Mara really does confront Gene, he’s unlikely to take the news that Mara wants to break off their deal with Balthasar better because she saved on cab fare.
“We just have to buy a ticket in a tabaccheria,” I tell her. “I think I saw one on the last block.”
Mara nods but I see that her attention has drifted to a paper goods store—one of the few shops that haven’t closed for the riposo. “I just want to get a few of those darling little paper boxes to bring home for gifts for the maid and Ned’s tutors and all. Why don’t you meet me back here?”
“Okay,” I tell her, amazed that she still has the will to shop. Maybe, though, it’s her way of calming herself in preparation for her showdown with Gene. I only hope she hasn’t changed her mind about talking to Gene. I go back to the tabaccheria on the Borgo degli Albizi and buy a book of tickets. After what I’ve spent on clothes today, I should take the bus for the rest of the summer.
When I come out of the tabaccheria I notice the art store directly across the way. It’s the same store where the art students at La Civetta bought their supplies back when I was a student. Figuring that Mara’s probably not done with her shopping yet, I wander in, drawn by the shelves of powdered tints that line the back wall. It’s as if all the colors in the Uffizi—the golden hair of Botticelli’s Venus, the limpid blue mantles of Fra Lippo Lippi’s translucent madonnas, the rich red velvet cloaks of Raphael’s noblemen—had filtered through the air and settled into the glass jars. I remember being sorry when I came in here that I wasn’t a painter.
But Bruno said I was lucky. The art students often went home overwhelmed by the centuries of genius crammed into this small city on the Arno. The stacks of drawing pads they bought here (embossed with the name of the art shop and a drawing of the Via dello Studio) would remain blank. Not that their time in Florence would be wasted, Bruno said when I protested that he was being too cynical; they would become teachers or curators or maybe just well-educated tourists bringing their own children to visit their favorite paintings at the Uffizi. Only a handful would absorb the lessons of the masters, take what they needed, discard the rest, and continue painting. Of course, it could happen to writers, too, Bruno told me. The literary critics even had a name for it: anxiety of influence.
I leave the art store, but instead of going back to the paper store, I turn back down the street to the little church of Santa Margherita and go inside. It’s a plain medieval church, a single rectangular room with little of architectural interest, its only real claim to fame being that Beatrice Portinari, Dante’s beloved, is buried here and that it was here that Dante first glimpsed her.
I sit down in the last pew in back in a dark corner, grateful for the cool gray stone, the dimness, and the silence. I remember coming here one day after Bruno had told me about the anxiety of influence and thinking, yes, I could feel it here where Dante first met Beatrice. I could hear it: the whispering of the poets from Ovid to Petrarch to Shakespeare uncoiling down the narrow streets along the rough-scored paving stones like a mist rising to envelope me. I imagined I could see the high-water marks, like the plaques commemorating Florence’s floods, but instead of feeling overwhelmed I had thought that if Shakespeare could take what he wanted (the influence of the sonnet tradition, Ovid’s stories, and Renaissance Italian sources), why couldn’t I?
I wonder whether that’s what Robin thought when he found Ginevra de Laura’s poems—that he could appropriate the legacy of the past and so link his voice to the chorus that I heard in these streets when I was his age. Little did he know that taking the poems would lead to his death.
Although I’m not particularly religious, I bow my head and try to pray for Robin. I tell him that I’m sorry I didn’t listen to him the night of the film show and that I’m sorry I wasn’t able to rescue him as he asked me to. I promise that I’ll do everything I can to find out the truth of what happened to him and make it known—publicly, but most of all, to his father. And then I whisper out loud, because it feels like these heavy walls are the best audience for the admission, “I’m sorry, Robin.”
I’m startled to hear his name echo in the church. I look up and see that two people, a man and a woman, have entered the church and are wandering along the wall farthest from where I’m sitting, looking at a display of paintings that depict the meeting of Dante and Beatrice. It takes me only another second to realize that the woman is Claudia Brunelli and the man is Mark Abrams.
I immediately duck my head again, leaning my forehead against the back of the next pew, and shield my face behind clasped hands so that I can listen to their conversation unobserved.
“I don’t know why we couldn’t have met at the villa,” Mark says. “Do you think Cyril’s got it bugged?”
“Of course not,” Claudia answers, “but La Civetta was built for spying. There are hidden niches covered by tapestries and stairs behind shelves and false cabinets leading to secret rooms. Cyril knows them all.”
“And you wouldn’t want Cyril to hear that you’re willing to settle out of court?” Mark asks.
“I think it best we don’t involve Cyril in this at all.”
“That’s probably wise. I imagine you wouldn’t want your husband knowing either. He doesn’t know anything about this, does he?”
“Don’t worry about Bruno—he’s bee
n punishing himself for that fling he had with Rose Asher for twenty years now. He’s really become quite boring. I could never have gotten him to see the wisdom of my plan. No, I sent Orlando to New York, so of course I feel partially responsible—that’s why I thought we should talk. After all, the boy’s dead. We can’t bring him back. I see no reason why anyone else should be made to suffer, capisce?”
“I understand completely. I’m sure we can come to an agreement, but why not over a glass of wine? I find these gloomy old churches depressing.”
I hear their footsteps pass down the aisle into the noise of the street. Still I keep my head pressed against the back of the wooden pew in front of me. There’s a slight depression in the wood, worn smooth by generations of supplicants, that feels oddly comforting—like a hand pressed to my forehead. I’m reluctant to leave it, but then I remember Mara in the paper shop. She must think I’ve abandoned her.
I leave the church and head back toward the Duomo. When I get to the paper store I see with relief that Mara’s just paying for her purchases. As I come into the shop, the salesgirl is handing two heavy shopping bags across the counter. “There you are,” Mara says when she sees me. “I was just wondering how I was going to carry all this.”
Since I already have two bags from our earlier shopping expedition, I’m not sure how we’re going to manage, either. When we emerge onto the Via dello Studio I feel as if we’re taking up half the narrow street with our large rustling bags fanning out around us like hoopskirts. I look nervously up and down the street for Mark and Claudia, afraid they’ll see us. Why I should be afraid to be spotted by them, when they’re the ones who seem to be bartering truth for money, I’m not sure, but I’m relieved when we get around the Duomo and see the bus waiting that we’re getting out of the city without running into them. Mark is unlikely to take the bus since he got his pocket picked the last time he was in Italy. And besides, he and Claudia are in some cafe. I imagine that they’re working out how much Claudia is willing to reduce her lawsuit in exchange for Mark’s silence about what he saw on the balcony. With any luck he should be able to get her to drop the suit entirely to ensure her son’s safety. This must be what Gene referred to as Mark’s “own reasons” for not accusing Orlando of killing Robin.
The Sonnet Lover Page 22
