“Sarah!” I said, despite myself.
“Sarah, yes. Forget Sarah. You never belonged with Sarah. It was not a mistake, but mere propinquity. You’ll do far better in life without her. Far better in all ways.”
“That’s hardly possible. Her family’s terribly affluent. Whereas I…”
“Please.” Ercole softly tapped my fingers still. “Do not contradict.” He put a finger to his lips. When I looked at his female companion, she too had a finger to her lips, and she even winked at me. Meaning what? That I was to humor the old woman?
“Your fortune, when it comes,” the old Principessa went on, “will be far more considerable than poor Sarah’s. It is linked to a man. A man you haven’t yet met. You’ll encounter him in the corridor of a railroad sleeper.”
She paused, or fell silent.
As though she hadn’t spoken at all, the others smiled, sipped their drinks. When the young woman spoke again, it was to say, “Tourists seldom find their way to our charming little piazza,” which, following what the old woman had uttered, was a trifle banal.
She looked to me for response, as did Ercole. Unnerved by the sham conversation, I still managed to get out: “Too bad, as it’s a spectacular lookout.”
“Ercole said before he thought that he heard others also coming.” She pointed to the steeply sloping road I’d clambered.
“A tour group. Searching for some ancient chapel,” I explained. “You know it?”
They didn’t seem to. “Few find their way here,” Ercole said, I thought almost sadly. “Were you looking for the chapel yourself? Or for the others?”
“I’m not really sure what I was looking for,” I admitted. “You live here?”
“Oh, no,” the young woman answered with a laugh, as though a spectacular view, like too many sweets, simply wouldn’t do. “Nearby.”
“In a palazzo?” I wondered. I’d look it up later in the guidebook.
“A very small palazzo,” she admitted, playfully stroking my fingers. Meaning I’d be unlikely to find it listed, nor discover thereby the ancient Principessa’s name.
I was about to ask where the little palazzo was located, not that I was trying to inveigle an invitation, when the old woman began speaking again.
“The man in the sleeping car will be immensely wealthy, extraordinarily powerful, and vastly influential. He will take an immediate and consuming interest in you. You will rebuff him, but he will persist. Finally, you will agree to dine with him.”
What she said seemed so unlikely, so absurd even, that I let her words wash over me, uncontested. After all, I had this lovely company, this view, this marvelous drink—whatever it might be.
The old woman seemed to chuckle. “Just at the moment that you do decide to throw your lot in with his, the man will make certain demands of you.” She laughed in a particularly smarmy manner, all the more lubricious coming from someone so proper. “Ah, how shame will blossom on your young cheeks as you perform what he requires of you. First shame. Then acquiescence. And finally, delight in your sordidness.”
Well, really!
“I don’t quite see the point in—” I tried.
Ercole and his companion hushed me.
“You’ll think it sordid,” the old woman said. “I, of course, make no such moral judgments. You, however, will think it very low. And you will then enjoy it all the more for how low you think it.”
Her voice had grown weaker, her words softer.
“He will transform your life…” she added, by now in a whisper. “And eventually…you’ll come to…thank him…. to thank…this…Sandra…Sarah…even…more…” Her words trailed off.
I was suddenly aware of the sound of my breathing. I suppose I was waiting—dreading was more like it—for her to start up again.
When Ercole began to speak, I was almost rude in hushing him.
“No, my friend,” he insisted gently. “There is no more she will speak. Now, the Grandmama sleeps.”
Indeed, her light, irregular snoring could soon be heard, made the more resonant by her hooded chair. I was both relieved and I admit now, disappointed. I’d wanted her to go on, to say more, balderdash though it seemed.
After several minutes more of silence, Ercole rose like a column of smoke and appeared to float to the flower boxes atop the low wall that overlooked the valley.
As though she’d been watching from indoors, awaiting this very move, the peasant woman who served us appeared again and began to clear the table. As she worked, she sang a lilting, wordless little tune.
Ercole’s companion arose as liquidly as he had, and also, from awkwardness I guess, so did I. She strode over to where he stood and slid a tanned arm over his shoulder. Brother and sister—or were they cousins? lovers?—remained still and silent, out of reach of my many questions, looking over the valley. When they turned and separated, Ercole went directly to the wicker-work chair, which I only then noticed was mounted upon wheels. He tilted the chair gently, waiting. His companion came to where I stood.
I have to admit I was still so perplexed by the old woman, and even more by the suddenness of their departure, I thought I must ask at least one more question: any one would do, as long as it were answered.
“In the flask?” I asked. “What was it we drank?”
“Water. From a spring near our little palazzo.” She laughed and moved away from me in a flutter of soft clothing across the piazza, toward a large, pre-war limousine I’d not noticed until that moment. Its huge back door was open, its darkly clad driver stood against the sweeping side fender, his hat brim shadowing his face.
Ciaos were tossed at me, and answered by the peasant woman, busily folding up the big umbrella and wiping off the table.
The driver, Ercole, his companion, the wicker wheelchair and its occupant were all inside the car before I could move. The car doors were closed and the limo seemed to glide down the narrow hilltop street, vanishing in a silken putter.
“Fortunato lei,” said the peasant woman: Lucky me.
When I asked her why, she pulled down the lid of one eye with a finger—a gesture I thought astonishingly odd—and replied, “Parla La Cumaia.”
“La Cumadre?” I asked back, not certain I’d heard her correctly, wondering if she meant that I was lucky to have spoken to the Principessa, who was her cumadre, some sort of honored relation of hers.
“No, no,” she corrected me, and repeated, “La Cumaia,” syllable by syllable. As I was still baffled, she shrugged and still humming that careless tune, she went back inside.
I remained at the parapet, looking over the magnificent view another five minutes or so, embarrassment rising inside me. That Commedia dell’ Arte gesture of the peasant woman, the absurd questions about chocolate, and finally the old woman’s obvious delectation in spelling out in some detail an unsavory future for her own countryman—it all seemed some elaborate and tasteless joke, with myself the unwitting victim.
To hell with her! With all of them! Beautiful or not!
I traipsed angrily out of the piazza and stumbled back down through the town. I didn’t encounter the tour group again, and didn’t see another human being. When I located my Renault again, I drove out of the mountains and west toward the sea coast, headed for Genoa. I don’t know why exactly. I guess I just felt like getting away from these damned hills and their bizarre denizens.
Later that night, I arrived at the pensione where I’d planned to be with Sarah. Although I was five days earlier than my reservation, they took me in. They also handed me a letter from Paris. Sarah had to leave me, she wrote, and she had to live her own life at last. She couldn’t continue living a lie. She adored Eugen. She liked me as a friend. She hoped she hadn’t ruined Italy for me. She would try to explain it all to me more fully someday.
After dinner, I went to an American movie playing nearby. It was subtitled in English, which I thought odd, but that dose of pure, unaccented English made me feel considerably better somehow. It also convinced me that I�
�d had enough of Europe for a while. It was time to go home.
On my way out of the cinema, I passed, then walked back to and into, a bookstore. To my surprise, I found some not-too-dated American newspapers and even a magazine. I scooped them up greedily, feeling a bit less homesick. I was now certain everything would be better when I left Italy. Sarah could do whatever she wanted, with Eugen or with whomever. I no longer cared.
About that, at least, the old woman had been right: Sarah and I didn’t really belong together. We’d simply been thrown together early on in our lives and had hit it off and little by little we’d been persuaded by others that we were a couple, eventually persuading ourselves and each other that we belonged together and ought to be married. Why? We’d never been madly—not even tepidly—in love. Merely comfortable together. That might be fine if we were forty-five years old, or seventy-five. We were still young. There was nothing to stop either of us from having a perfectly marvelous life apart. And if I had been betrayed by her, well, better now than after we married. I would return home a “wronged man”—never a bad position to be in. And, after all, it was a new experience being dumped. One of many experiences I hoped to now acquire.
I’d paid for the magazine and papers and almost stepped out of the bookstore when I recalled the word the peasant woman had used to refer to the Principessa. My Italian had never been more than barely utile, but I was curious. I asked a clerk for and was shown to a large Italian-English dictionary.
“La Cumaia,” it read. “Cumaean. Also prophetress. Female seer. Specifically, the Cumaean Sibyl of Ancient times.” Still wondering, I asked the clerk in Italian how commonly used that word was in his language.
Not common at all, he replied. “Strega” was usually used, and sometimes, the higher toned “Sibylla”; the latter now considered antiquated, heard only in Donizetti operas. My word, he pedantically informed me, was rare. A particular seer so ancient, he assured me, that in Virgil’s epic, she had prophesied to Aeneas—fleeing the destruction of Troy—that his descendants would go on to found the city of Rome.
That was all I needed to hear. The old Principessa might be a hair sensitive, I’d even allow her to be slightly psychic—she was not over three thousand years old.
Edified, if unsatisfied, I left the bookstore planning to spend the night in my pensione, reading American periodicals. Passing a kiosk just closing for the night, I made an impulsive purchase of a bar of Cadbury’s. I’d already eaten it when I got to my room. I crumpled the foil wrapper as I entered, tossing it in a high arc into a distant wastebasket. This first return of high spirits cheered me, and I fell asleep an hour later, newspapers splayed over my blankets.
I awakened about four in the morning with the strangest sensations: my mouth was parched. I had a slight headache. My forehead was beaded in sweat from what seemed to be a low-grade fever. I itched in various places on my body—my forearms, around my breastbone, across my backside. No nausea: nothing remotely severe enough to be called food poisoning, never mind enough to dream of awakening the staff and trying to find a doctor at that hour of the night. But I was terrifically thirsty and I felt distinctly weird. When I got up to drink water, I noticed in the light above the antique washstand that I had red welts on my chest, rashes on both arms, and yes, when I checked, blotches on my bottom.
But I’d been lying. I wasn’t allergic to chocolate. At least, I hadn’t been.
I tried to recall that inane, provocative conversation: the old woman’s exact words in her sharp New Hampshire accent. Could she have somehow wished the allergy upon me? Inflicted it in some way, perhaps through the enigmatic drink her grandchildren—if that’s what they really were, and not instead her confederates!—had given me?
Then I had an appalling thought: what if that about the allergy to chocolate had come true, because everything we’d said—all of us—in that magnificent spot, had to be true. And did that mean…What exactly did it mean?
I took a tranquilizer and finally managed to get a few more hours sleep. The following morning I felt better: the symptoms were gone. I had to find out if what had happened was merely a hallucination of the night, so I ordered hot chocolate with my breakfast. Its fumes were enough to make of my mouth a miniature Sahara, to cause my arms to prickle, to cause me to begin to squirm in my seat. A sip would not be needed: Damn if I wasn’t suddenly allergic to chocolate!
Great, I thought: I meet an antediluvian prophetress, the very one who foretold for old Aeneas, and what do I get? A new allergy!
I began to worry. Still, there are ways around predictions, aren’t there? You can’t, for example, meet someone in a train corridor if you aren’t in a train, can you?
I was driving a car. Yet, somehow at the customs shed in Ventimiglia, at the French border, the next morning as I was leaving Italy, I looked in the glove compartment for my international driver’s license, green card for European insurance, and rental car registration, and they were gone. The customs authorities impounded the Renault and phoned the rental agency in Calais who told them yes, I’d rented it, but for two weeks, not three, and they needed it back immediately. The Italians held on to the keys.
I tried hitchhiking. Dangerous on that stretch of road where cars zoom out of long waits at customs. And also, as I quickly discovered, illegal. I barely escaped arrest.
Right near the customs shed was a train stop. Okay, I decided, taking the train would be all right. Only being in a sleeping car would fulfill her prophecy. This was a regular train. Seven cars consisting of seats only. I’d buy a cheap ticket to Paris.
Outside of Lyons, however, we stopped awhile for several cars from another train, including a dining car, to be added on. As I’d missed lunch and it was approaching twilight, I decided to get something to eat. A conductor pointed the way, five cars straight ahead. It was only when I had opened the door and walked a half dozen steps inside that I realized that the third car, which must have been added on along with the dining car, was a sleeper. Panicked, I turned and began to rush back out of it. I ran right into the arms of Achille l’Extringnon, the Belgian electronics billionaire, who almost fell over.
We went to Paris. We dined together, as the Principessa said we would. And Achille offered me a position as his right-hand man in Brussels at an outrageously high salary, and I said I would think about it. I mean, after all, without Sarah, there was no real reason to return to the States immediately, was there? And I’d always been intrigued by electronics.
Naturally, I’ve done some serious thinking about this. Who wouldn’t? And I’ve come to the conclusion that the old woman was only partly right. True, Achille may be unmarried, unattached, but he seems an honorable enough fellow and he doesn’t seem to have the least…how can I put it…insalubrious intentions regarding me. Or if he does, he’s so far kept them to himself. At any rate, at dinner—and what a dinner!—I made my position clear. Or at least I think I did. Yes, I must have, and Achille seemed to accept it. Of course, he’s insistent in some ways. The hotel suite, for example: as I had nowhere to stay in Paris, he insisted on that, and it was quite nice, as I suppose all the suites at the Crillon are. And since he owns it—he seems to own a great many things—he wouldn’t dream of letting me pay for the week we stayed. You know, things like that.
Otherwise it’s great. Of course two little subjects still pestered me. Try as I might, I could no longer recall the old woman’s precise wording—and I was sure that remembering her exact words contained the key to how I must handle myself with Achille.
Second, of course, was that damned business about the chocolate. Some of the finest in the world are made in Belgium, and from the first Achille sent boxes of the most scrumptious-looking delicacies: white and milk and bittersweet, with hazelnut and raspberry cream and champagne-flavored fillings: simply irresistible. I finally told him to take them back, I’m allergic. But Achille had a solution to that little problem and after the briefest of medical tests by one of his doctor friends, I received antihistamines. At l
east I think he said they’re antihistamines. Whatever they are, the pills work wonderfully well and now that I’ve moved into Achille’s palais in Belgium, I can eat all the chocolate truffles I want. In fact, the pills make me feel so generally good all the time that I take four a day, as prescribed, whether I plan to eat chocolate or not.
There he is at the door, now. I should go. He’s got wonderful plans for us for tonight. Every night, if you must know. It’s beyond my dreams. Simply magical…
Oh, by the way, did I mention that I’m absolutely certain that once I’ve fully settled in here, I plan to meet some nice girl and fall in love?
Gift
This is what I know about drowning: some persons can hold their breath longer than others. No one can hold it longer than five minutes seventeen seconds underwater without a special apparatus. Of course there may be someone in the Guinness Book of Records. But I’ve not met him.
This is what I know about Kevin Mark Orange, age seven and three-quarters. He vanished at 2:15 p.m., a Thursday afternoon. As it was late April, it rained twice that evening, obliterating any footprints or tire marks.
That, at least, is what anyone knows who listened to the 6:30 p.m. local (“K-RUF—We’re soft on you!”) television news that also showed two photos of Kevin, one taken a month ago, with his chocolate Labrador, named Bre’r Bear, and one taken over a year ago with his little sister Jean-Eartha Orange, no age given.
This is what I called and told to Sheriff Harold (“Hal”) B. Longish, one hour after that broadcast. “I know where Kevin Mark Orange is. I don’t know the name of the place exactly. I can’t take you there, because I’m only a kid and can’t drive. I never met that boy in my life. I don’t know anyone who does know him. I can’t tell you how I know. I just do!…But I can draw you a map.”
So, of course, after wasting another hour, the sheriff and his deputy arrived. They were naturally doubtful. So I said immediately, “Sheriff Longish, your deputy had a left-hand upper molar pulled this morning. And also your mother’s cat named Harlequin ran away for the sixth time yesterday night and she called and begged you to look for it.”
Contemporary Gay Romances Page 5
