Juliet's Answer

by Glenn Dixon

  When I entered the piazza, I saw Jolyon and Manuela coming from the other direction. Jolyon had a tape recorder in a satchel over his shoulder. In his right hand he held a microphone with a large furry windbreak. He wore a ball cap, and over that a set of headphones. He was listening intently, holding up the mic in various directions. Manuela walked beside him, explaining, gesturing with her hands at the magnificent buildings all around.

  “Buon giorno,” she called when she saw me.

  “Hi,” I said. “I wanted to see where we’d be reading our letters,” I began. “It’s beautiful here.”

  “Oh,” said Manuela, “but it will not be exactly here.”

  “No? I thought—”

  “There is a smaller square, even more lovely.” She stopped. Jolyon lowered his microphone. “Come,” she said. “Please, you can follow me.”

  We trailed after her through a smaller passageway between two buildings. The narrow alley ran off to the left and we ducked through it into a much smaller square. High above us rose a medieval bell tower.

  “Here,” said Manuela, “is the Torre dei Lamberti.”

  We craned our necks up. The tower rose like a square chimney of pale red bricks. At the top, high above us, a shining white cupola stabbed into the blue sky.

  “The Lamberti Tower was begun in 1140. It is the tallest tower in Verona,” said Manuela.

  “Brilliant,” said Jolyon.

  “Now, please,” said Manuela, “you will look at the stairs leading up to the entrance.”

  We both turned.

  If heaven had a staircase, it would be modeled after this one. A soft pink balustrade angled up the side of the building, its limestone buttresses glowing like the inside of a seashell. The steps rose steeply, then turned ninety degrees at a landing and continued up another flight to the tower entrance. The arches were supported by fluted columns, and in the stone pediments above the columns were faces carved into the stone, peering down like peasants in a Brueghel painting.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “It is here,” said Manuela, “that we will read the letters. This is called Scala della Ragione—the Stairs of Reason.”

  * * *

  Desiree and I had agreed to meet at Juliet’s house, but when I arrived, the crowds were bunching up at the tunnel leading into the courtyard. I saw Desiree searching for me, bobbing in the river of people. She wore a white, Gypsy-style shirt and a long blue-gray peasant skirt. Her hair shone golden and my heart gave a little lurch.

  I waded through the throng to her. “Wow, you look dazzling.”

  “Thanks,” she said, over the noise of the bustling crowd. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s starting.”

  “I just saw Anna go by,” she said. “She’s already inside.”

  “Quick, then. Through the sewing shop,” I said.

  “Who are you? James Bond?” She grabbed my hand and we swung into the sewing shop door, past the displays of heart-shaped cushions and monogrammed tea towels. An older lady, her white hair in a tight bun, worked at a sewing machine near the back. She didn’t even look up as we flashed by. The back door let us out beside the red letter box in the corner of the courtyard; across the cobblestones, a semicircle of people had formed under Juliet’s balcony.

  Anna stood on a step near the entrance to the house, a microphone in her hand. She was reading from a piece of paper, welcoming the crowd. Near the front of the semicircle, I could see Jolyon, his bald head still shielded under the ball cap, his big, bug-like headphones pulled down over his ears. Soa had muscled her way to the front too and was standing near Anna.

  And under the balcony, in the clearing, stood Romeo. Or, at least, a young man dressed as Romeo. He wore a dark purple shirt with white puffy sleeves, and he had a red velvet cape carelessly slung over his shoulder. His pantaloons ballooned at his thighs but tapered down into knee-high leather boots. He was about eighteen, square-jawed, and handsome, Italian handsome, his hair pomaded into a swaggering wave above his forehead.

  Desiree and I stayed at the back door of the shop as Anna clicked on a ghetto blaster. A swell of orchestral music filled the courtyard and the crowd hushed. Our young Romeo strode back and forth on the bare cobblestones, looking pensively up at the balcony above him.

  “Here it comes,” I said.

  Juliet emerged onto the balcony high above the crowds, leaning wistfully, just like the graphic on the envelopes. She was young and beautiful, wearing a pale dress the color of the sky. Her sleeves billowed out and a strand of her dark hair was braided around her head, like a tiara. She leaned her cheek on her hand. “Oh Romeo, Romeo,” she called and the crowd below the balcony went perfectly still. “Perchè sei tu Romeo.”

  “It’s in Italian,” I said. “And they skipped some bits,” I said.

  “Glenn, shhh!”

  The actors played out the scene until the moment when Romeo is supposed to climb up and kiss her. I don’t think they’d thought this through, because they both paused then, each waiting for the other to do something. Then Romeo unfurled his cape, improvising, and he pushed through the crowd, making a break for the front entrance to Juliet’s house. He swept past Anna and disappeared inside. Anna began to applaud, and the crowd picked up her cue. That seemed to be the end of the first event of the day, though none of this was on Barbara’s agenda.

  “You know,” I said, “I can’t quite imagine it.”

  “Imagine what?” Desiree asked.

  “What it was like here seven hundred years ago.”

  “Well, it is probably her house. We know that.”

  “Yes, but the play says Romeo climbed the wall and came down into a garden. I don’t see any garden.”

  “You’re taking it too literally,” said Desiree.

  Anna began ushering people out the archway. She saw us and waved just before she herself disappeared under it. The crowds funneled out behind her.

  “No one can really know what happened here,” said Desiree.

  “True.”

  “If there was a Romeo and Juliet,” she said, “I mean a real Romeo and Juliet, then they’re the only ones who knew what actually took place.”

  “There probably wasn’t a balcony.”

  “Maybe not, but it makes for a better story.”

  She was right, of course. “I guess,” I said. “I just want to believe that the main points are still true—that true love existed here, a love strong enough to defeat a centuries-old hatred.”

  We both considered the ancient courtyard for a moment. It had largely emptied of people, and the old house rose up before us. The chalk-red bricks were weathered with age, and in a window to the right of the balcony, a face peered down at us, largely obscured by the dark glass. Then it retreated into the shadows and I took in a breath.

  “What?” Desiree asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Maybe we should head for the piazza. The show will be starting soon.”

  * * *

  The reading of the letters was to begin at three o’clock. Desiree and I strolled through the Piazza delle Erbe, past the Roman statue and the fountain. We veered right, through the market stalls, in between two buildings, the archway above them hung with the rib of a whale.

  “Where are we going?” Desiree asked.

  “The Piazza dei Signori. Through here,” I said. “This is where we’re reading the letters.”

  We ducked through the passage into the square. Climbing up along the wall to our right was the Scala della Ragione. The Lamberti Tower loomed above everything and I could see why they’d decided on three o’clock. The sun was behind the tower, and the shadows now were deep and cool.

  Barbara stood behind a folding table. She was arranging stacks of postcards. She smiled at us almost wistfully. Everything would either come together now or it wouldn’t, and there was nothing more she could do. They’d set up a plywood podium painted to look like Juliet’s balcony. A boom microphone was set up, and everything looked ready to go.

 
In the shadow of the highest arch under the stairs, the actors mingled, speaking with one another in a tight circle, though my actor, the Oktoberfest man, stroked his beard and paced back and forth, rehearsing his lines. I checked my watch. It was half past two. The crowd was growing in the square. Manuela plodded through the passageway with Jolyon. The oversize furry microphone was still in his hand but his headphones hung around his neck.

  “Where’s your letter?” Desiree asked.

  “My letter?”

  “The one you have to read. Didn’t you say it needed some editing?”

  I pulled it from my back pocket and passed it to Desiree. At the table where Barbara had been standing, there was an empty chair. Desiree sat and smoothed the letter in front of her. She reached for a pen.

  Jolyon sidled in beside me. “Everything ready?” he asked.

  “I hope so.”

  “You know, they gave me some letters to answer.”

  I waited for him to go on.

  “Bloody difficult,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I told Anna that under no circumstances should anyone take relationship advice from me.”

  “I felt pretty much the same way when I started.”

  “Listen,” he said, reaching into his satchel, “would you mind terribly if I asked you a few questions, for Radio Four?” He yanked the headphones onto his ears again and gave me a warning look, like I should prepare myself. He dug in his satchel and flicked a switch, and a tiny red light popped on before I had a chance to say no.

  “On the day of Juliet’s birthday,” he began, “I met Glenn Dixon, who appeared to be the only man answering letters.” He turned to face me, the microphone hovering between us. “Do you think you answer the letters differently because you’re male?”

  “Oh,” I said. I should have known this question was coming. “I think that everyone feels pretty much the same thing when it comes to love. Most of the letters are from young women, that’s true, but the ones I saw from men, they weren’t really that different.”

  “But don’t you feel compelled to dole out advice? Isn’t that supposed to be the male tendency?”

  “Sometimes,” I said. “I talk with the other secretaries about how to answer. Sometimes you really want to tell these people to get it together, to smarten up—but of course you can’t say that. That’s not what they want to hear.”

  “And what do they want to hear?” Jolyon lifted a hand to his headphones.

  “Mostly, they just want to tell their stories, to be listened to. They write because they still want to believe in love, you know? They want to believe in Juliet.”

  “I would imagine that everyone wants to believe in true love.”

  “One of the secretaries once told me that every time I answer a letter, I’m really answering myself.”

  Jolyon raised his eyebrows. “And what do you tell yourself?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “that you can choose to be happy. Maybe that what you need to do is love yourself first. Then, I guess, others can follow your example.” I paused. “Another secretary told me that one.”

  I heard my name being called. Jolyon grimaced and flicked off the tape recorder. “I think you’re wanted,” he said.

  I wish now that I’d had more time to respond but, really, it would take a whole book to answer the questions of love. What is the elusive cure for heartbreak and why do we cling so fervently to the objects of our desire? Well, they say that when one door closes, another will open, but I don’t think that’s strictly true. The secret is to open yourself up, to open yourself to entirely new possibilities. For thousands of years people believed that the sun circled around the earth—because that’s what it looked like. The sun rose in the east and arced across the sky. Only it doesn’t. The sun doesn’t move at all. And it takes that kind of Copernican shift to see what is truly real.

  It’s we who are caught in the gravitational pull of love. But it’s also up to us to know how to deal with it, to know when to leap off and when to fly.

  “Glenn!”

  Barbara was waving at me from the fake balcony. She had the others lined up behind her like they were about to be chosen for a team on sports day. Desiree was in the middle. She too was waving at me to hurry over.

  Giovanna and her father stood to the side, under the stairwell. Giulio wasn’t wearing a tie, just a dark blue sweater vest over a collared shirt. He tipped his head at me as I rushed past. I took that as a note of encouragement.

  I reached Desiree. “It’s boy, girl, boy, girl,” she said. “You’re going first.”

  “First? Why me?”

  “Because you’re a boy. Go!” She gave me a gentle shove to the front of the line. “Wait,” she said. “Your letter.” She handed me her edits, scribbled quickly on the page. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s the best I could do.” She smiled and squeezed my arm. “In bocca al lupo,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Literally, ‘in the mouth of the wolf.’ ”

  “What?”

  “It means good luck.” She laughed.

  The actors had gathered under the landing. By the stairs, Manuela’s daughter, the ballerina, was warming up, her slippered foot on a step, her arm sweeping gracefully over it in a slow arc. I raced past her to take my place in line just in front of Soa. “Hey, where are your glasses?” I asked Soa.

  “I don’t like to wear them in public,” she said. “People say I look like Katniss without them—you know, from The Hunger Games.”

  “You do.”

  She smiled at that. I could picture her with a bow and arrow, some kind of deadly ninja cupid.

  Anna swept down the row, chirping a good luck to everyone.

  “Oh, look,” Soa said. “There’s Veronica.” Veronica had come in through the passageway. She waved at us. Near her, still in costume, were the two young actors who had played Romeo and Juliet.

  “Quite a circus,” I said. “So much going on.”

  “It’s Juliet’s birthday. Of course there’s a lot going on.”

  Barbara stepped to the microphone. She spoke bravely, confidently, and then she turned to check that I was still behind her. She leaned into the microphone. “Inglese,” she said, and then stepped away.

  The bare podium beckoned. I lurched forward and the microphone gave a squeal of feedback. I held out my letter. Desiree had penned a lot of edits. I should have looked it over first, but I hadn’t had time.

  “ ‘Dear Juliet,’ ” I began. My voice echoed around the square—my voice and yet not my voice anymore. “ ‘I am a thirty-four-year-old man from Helsinki,’ ” I read, “ ‘and I am in love with my sweetheart.’ ” Desiree had fixed the spelling from sweet hard to sweetheart. “ ‘My love is as strong as a mountain.’ ” Good God, who writes this crap? Maybe it sounded better in Finnish. “ ‘I like to see her smile,’ ” I read. “ ‘She is the most beautiful woman in the world. Her eyes melt me like butter. Her touch is like a thousand feathers on my chest. Please let me hold this forever.’ ” I looked for more, but that was the full letter. I nodded to the Oktoberfest man, who started in on the Italian translation. His voice boomed across the square. He finished and stepped back proudly from the microphone. I shuffled to the end of the line. Desiree smiled as I passed her. “That was great,” she said.

  “Czech,” Barbara said into the microphone. Soa plodded forward. “ ‘Drahá Julie,’ ” she began. When she finished, Stefano came forward—a young man who looked nervous, his hands shaking. He read out the Russian letter, his voice becoming stronger as he went. Finally, it was Desiree’s turn. She strode to the microphone. Barbara watched like a proud mother.

  “ ‘Dear Juliet,’ ” Desiree began in English. Her peasant blouse was a brilliant white. So were her watch strap and the bracelet on her right hand. She was luminescent.

  “ ‘I am twenty-six years old, and I have had terrible luck when it comes to love and romance. After four years, my high sc
hool sweetheart called off our wedding and left without any explanation.’ ” Desiree paused.

  “ ‘I would have done anything for him,’ ” she continued. “ ‘I spent many nights crying myself to sleep, wondering if there was something wrong with me. After that, I decided to change my life and focus on myself. I moved into a new house, bought a new car, and joined the town council. I went on holidays and used the time to find out who I really am. I am happy and independent now, but I still want to find love. The truth is, Juliet, I want true love so badly that my heart hurts.’ ”

  She looked up, her eyes searching the crowd until they found mine. “ ‘So Juliet,’ ” Desiree finished, “ ‘whatever influence you might have in the universe, put in a good word for me, because my hope is fading and my heart hurts. Love, April.’ ”

  Desiree rushed around to stand beside me. I felt for her hand and took it in mine. More letters followed. German and French, and then Manuela read the Japanese letter, which resonated with all the same dreams as the ones before it. Love, I thought, truly is universal—its hopes, its joys, its sorrows.

  After the letters, Desiree and I moved out into the crowd, now four or five people deep. I wanted to see what Gloria, Anna’s artist friend, was working on, so we edged our way to the entrance of the grand staircase. Gloria stood in front of an easel, her back to the crowd, but the painting before her was entirely black.

  “I don’t get it,” I said to Desiree.

  “Just wait,” she answered.

  Gloria held a tin can in one hand. She dabbed at it with a paintbrush and applied a liquid to the blackness, but there was nothing to see except a sheen, like water, something wet and clear and shiny. She gave a few more dabs, then knelt down to the cobblestones, reaching into a box at her feet. She drew a fine red powder up in both hands, cupping it like snow before tossing it at the canvas. From the cloud of dust, an image exploded—Juliet’s statue, the head turned demurely, one hand raised, the other lost in the furls of her diaphanous gown.