The Italian Affair

by Helen Crossfield

  When finally Issy stood before him, she hoped he couldn’t hear the blood pumping through her arteries and up into her heart which had started to slam against her chest. Not even Jeremy had done this to her. The feelings she’d had for him were immediate but mysterious and rather furtive. Bruno on the other hand made her feel a zest for life and for living. And nothing not even Dan’s caution was going to ever diminish that.

  As the Adonis leant in to kiss her on both her cheeks, he took both her arms and brought her slowly towards his torso. After the second kiss on her cheek, Issy lingered in the small of his neck drawn in by the same seductive aroma she had been intoxicated by the first time they had met. “How odd,” Issy had thought to herself “that she could change from being emotionally fractured because of Jeremy and feel like this so soon afterwards.”

  Jeremy’s attraction had been his presence his voice and an imperious aura that always made him seem more sophisticated than other mortals, someone towards whom men and women were both sexually and intellectually attracted.

  And here she was today beginning to feel totally infatuated with Bruno who was definitely more Heathcliff than Charles Ryder, with his dark brooding looks and slightly wild and impromptu way of behaving.

  “What was Bruno’s smell?” Issy wondered as it lingered in the warm air around them. She wanted to bottle it up and keep it with her at all times. He smelt as if he had been marinated in citrus oils with a hint of something spicy over-layered with nicotine and coffee.

  A highly seductive and sensual aroma – that drew her into the web he seemed to be spinning to catch her. Given the looks Bruno was giving her she dared to believe they were now involved in the Mediterranean process of seduction which was highly charged and exciting. Not too quick and not too slow, there were flirtatious and sexually loaded glances followed by touch at the right moment to get the pulse racing just that little bit faster.

  And that night the seduction process had not taken long to work its magic. Issy was already his after that first embrace. He really did not have to do much more.

  As they stood talking, Bruno ran his fingers down her bare arm and lingered a bit longer than he needed to as he reached her hands creating a highly charged static between them.

  Issy just wanted to stay attached to him like a piece of velcro, but they were in full public gaze, in front of her language school and no doubt some of her students were milling about as they always did talking, smoking and reluctant to go home.

  As she prised herself away from his arm she got an eye-full of his chest.

  It was masculine and strong and a deep shade of chestnut from years of sun. She wanted to touch it and own it but out of one corner of her eye she could see Dan arriving on his yellow Vespa. “What incredibly bad timing,” Issy thought as she watched him look over at them both with a reproachful look on his face.

  Bruno turned round as he followed Issy’s eyes. On seeing Dan, his body arched and his face started to resemble that of un-castrated male cat on the prowl.

  In retrospect, and given the amount of static between the both of them, which had not yet subsided, Issy had to silently admit it was probably not the ideal date for Dan to be acting as chaperone. However close they had become.

  Issy noticed the knitting of Bruno’s eyebrows and the deepening of three or four furrows across the centre of his forehead – a glimpse of her father’s face in times of worry. She decided it was probably best just to act as if it was still a perfectly normal English custom, to invite someone else along on a date.

  “Bruno, I‘d like to introduce you to my very dear friend Dan, who works at the school with me I hope you don‘t mind but he wasn’t busy tonight so I invited him along?”

  “God,” she thought. “What the hell was she saying? She sounded like someone who’d just walked out from the pages of a Jane Austen novel.”

  “Ciao Dan. It is a pleasure” Bruno said his face looking like he was anything but pleased.

  Issy sensed the stand-off and anxious to get the evening started said. “Ok. Where are we going Bruno? You mentioned pizza, Dan’s favourite, which is why I didn’t think you’d mind if he came along.”

  To give Bruno credit he didn’t look aghast for too long. After briefly looking down to clear his throat he started to usher them both in the direction of a dark blue clapped out but convertible Cinque Cento and in the spirit of friendship he replied. “But of course. We go now together in my car to my restaurant.”

  “What a cute little car,” said Dan as he slid onto one of the tiny cracked red leather seats in the back, putting his knees up under his chin to allow Issy to get into the front beside Bruno. “It’s exactly the sort of car I would like to own in fact” he added.

  “You like?” answered Bruno putting the car into gear and revving his accelerator. “Ok, we now go to the best restaurant in Napoli “Le Stelle delle Notte“ it eez not the pizzeria Dan … is it still ok for you?”

  “Fine for me” said Dan hastily “I‘m really looking forward to it – the Stars of the Night sounds like a great restaurant and I don’t mind skipping pizza for one night so let’s go. It sounds just what the doctor ordered after a long day in the classroom.”

  “You need a doctor” asked Bruno stopping the car and looking hugely confused as he dragged on a cigarette he’d just lit.

  “No, no,” Dan laughed. “It is just a strange English saying and probably doesn’t translate. I don’t need a doctor. Not yet anyway. Let’s get going.”

  As Bruno continued to reverse the Cinque Cento he displayed the same kind of driving technique as Gennaro – best described as totally crazy.

  The car shook into life as he changed gears to go forward driving past the bar and down Via Maria Magdala – the recent events of which no-one mentioned – and then into a tree lined avenue with a steep incline with refined looking palazzo’s standing tall on both sides.

  The tiny Cinque Centro started to struggle again as Bruno pressed hard on the accelerator once again this time to get it to climb all the way to the top of the city. “Do you think we’ll get to the top?” Dan asked as the engine tugged and the car almost came to a standstill.

  “Si,” Bruno exclaimed quite indignantly. “It is Fiat car. No problem for me.”

  The balmy evening air hung with expectancy as they got closer to their destination and upon arrival, Bruno leapt out of the car to open the passenger seat for Issy before leading them both into The Stars of the Night, a large restaurant that twinkled with hundreds of little candles.

  Before being seated, Bruno spoke in a non-translatable dialect to a short stocky Neapolitan man with a huge belly that protruded many inches over his waistband. From his demeanour and frequently shouted orders, he looked and sounded like the owner and a walking advertisement for the food being served.

  After some discussion, a lot of hand gestures and some re-arrangement of the furniture, Bruno was shown to a table which, without doubt, was the best seat in the house with the most fabulous view of the Bay of Naples.

  Up above them, the sky had started to prepare itself for the night and was streaked orange and pink from the residual heat of the setting sun. The light it created bathed the restaurant and the city with a kind of salmon gold dust.

  “What an amazing place” said Dan as he sat himself down “I’ve never been up here before but the views are spectacular and the food looks equally magnificent.”

  “Si” said Bruno. “Naples is magnificent from here?” He puffed his chest out – a sign of the pride he had for his beloved city – another trait he had in common with Gennaro.

  “Thank you for bringing us here Bruno,” Issy said wishing that it was just the two of them.

  “It eez ok,” Bruno replied smiling at her before pulling out his small red plastic lighter to light himself another cigarette.

  As Bruno inhaled, Dan took a good look around the restaurant. “It must be a really popular place. Just look over there at that incredible gastronomic sight,” he said as copio
us amounts of food came out of the kitchen on large platters hoisted high on the shoulders of white suited waiters. “Piles of fresh shell fish and exquisite looking lobsters looking just how I like them – just take a peek a boo at that” he exclaimed as a huge deep salmon pink lobster was carried out of the kitchen on a large aluminum base covered with ice with Neapolitan pride.

  In quick succession, waiters brought out further delights. There were vividly colourful dishes full of roasted vegetables, salads consisting of tomato, mozzarella drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and garnished with oversized basil leaves. And then there was the bitter rocket salads and whole baked fish with garnishes of thyme and wedges of fresh lemon.

  Without having to order, a bottle of Prosecco arrived with three glasses at the table, and as the waiter poured Dan got straight down to business – his inhibitions relaxing as he watched the alcohol flow.

  “Bruno I am fascinated by your job,” Dan said in a slightly camp and exaggerated way. “Have you sold underpants in Pompeii for long?”

  Issy moved uncomfortably in her seat. “Dan was a really kind person,” she thought as she looked at Bruno’s face for his reaction. “He very obviously wanted the best for her, but to mention Bruno’s underpant business so soon after sitting down seemed unnecessarily harsh whatever his reservations.”

  “Che? What is the underpants?” Bruno said genuinely not being able to translate this word from the Italian.

  “Undergarments,” Dan said helpfully pulling out his pants and pointing at them. “Issy told me you sell underpants on a market stall in Pompeii and I just wondered how long you’d done that for and whether you enjoyed it.”

  Bruno sat back in his chair and looked at Dan in a way which suggested he was slightly disappointed in Dan for asking such a stupid bloody personal question. After a few minutes thought Bruno replied. “I’ve always done it, but what I do for job is not importante. What is importante is what is in my heart and in my soul.”

  As Bruno said these words he beat his chest and the middle of his stomach with a clenched fist. He then got up out of his chair and walked over to a grand piano at one end of the restaurant and sat down on a carved wooden stool in front of the keyboard.

  Bruno remained still for a few moments and looked upwards towards the darkening night sky and the hundreds upon thousands of tiny little stars that had suddenly appeared shining brightly like well cut diamonds. He then started to touch the piano keys. Heaving and arching his body over the piano, he rolled his fingers down and then up the keyboard to make sure they were in tune, the sign of a true maestro.

  Hunching himself ever further down, his fingers hovered over the ivories as he started to play in a frenzied genius kind of way that neither Dan nor Issy was expecting.

  Issy thought about her mother far away in Harrogate and the piano that sat in their living room at home. Piano playing was a big part of who she was and a piano much like the one in front of her had been in her house all the time throughout her childhood. She found it comforting and yet another undeniable connection between herself and the underpant salesman from Pompeii.

  As she listened, she closed her eyes and despite being sat in a restaurant at the top of Naples, she found that her mind had wandered back to the Bronte parsonage and the peaty moors which she’d played on as a child imagining the world of Cathy and Heathcliff.

  Issy had always felt at one with those moors and the rawness of the moorland. She identified with the foreboding landscape that shone in the summer, but during the winter became a desolate and wild terrain where only fools would roam.

  Transporting herself back from the bleak Yorkshire moors to Naples she knew intuitively that Bruno wanted to tell her something through his music as he played.

  She found out from him many years later that this is what his music was trying to tell them both. “You don’t who I am and you don’t know my story. Just because I chose to opt out of the Camorra and, therefore, the life I could have had does not make me less of a person.

  “Just because I sell underpants doesn’t make me an idiot. It means I don’t need to feed my ego. I have removed myself from the machine of life that dictates a certain way of living. I am a non-conformist. My soul is free. Can’t you see? It sweeps and swoons like a bird without a permanent landing. Never ever make the mistake of judging a book by its cover. You don’t know my story and I may never be free enough to tell you everything you need to know to understand my truth. I would play in the best orchestra in the world if I could but my life, my background makes that impossible. I live in a closed world where I know who to trust and the boundaries I can and cannot cross.”

  And after those first dramatic bars of music Bruno started to play Tchiakovsky’s Piano Concerto 1 in B Flat Minor. As soon as Issy recognized it she started to shake her head silently in disbelief. As tears welled in her eyes, Bruno looked over at her as he sang the Freddy Martin song ‘Tonight we Love’ in stilted English.

  Tonight we love while the moon

  Beams down in dream light tonight

  We touch the stars

  Love is ours

  Night winds that sigh

  Embrace the sky

  Tonight we love in the glow

  That glows so softly I know

  This wasn't meant to borrow but tomorrow

  Will it be gone

  Or will it always live on

  Tonight we love

  Each line of the song was accompanied by hand movements as Bruno’s arms reached for the stars and drew down the moon beams one by one, creating a heavenly collision of star dust as his voice and the piano transcended the restaurant and those who dined there.

  “Dan he plays so beautifully,” Issy whispered, through her tears she watched in awe as every sinew of Bruno’s lithe bronzed body focused on delivering a perfect finale.

  “I’ll certainly agree on that particular point” replied Dan. “But playing like a maestro just makes it even stranger that he sells underpants. He could be in any orchestra in the world. What’s he doing playing in this restaurant? However, you must be very flattered to have been serenaded by such an Italian genius piano playing hunk though. It’s never happened to me ever but I hope it does – it’s about the most romantic thing I have ever seen. It has set all the hairs on my body on end. How do you feel now he Bruno has publicly declared his feelings for you?”

  “I know that there is every possibility that I could love him and I mean truly love him,” Issy said without flinching.

  “Issy for God’s sake,” Dan hissed back as Bruno stood up from the piano to a full standing ovation before walking back to the table. “It is just a song. Don’t rush into things. Enjoy the seduction, but don’t let tonight go to your head. He may be a maestro piano player but I’m still not convinced he is an authentic true man. He has the potential to destroy you”

  As soon as Bruno sat down the table swarmed with gold buttoned waiters offering them the most inconceivably extravagant food leaving Dan with no other option than to dive under a waiters arm to grab hold of Bruno’s hand to congratulate him.

  “That was truly magnificent Bruno. Really superb actually” said Dan rather self-consciously embarrassed for having misjudged him so badly.

  “Why you no think it eez possible for the underpant salesman from Pompeii to do this eh?” replied Bruno with a long chuckle.

  Dan looked flustered. “Look you play brilliantly and I really enjoyed it, and if you also enjoy selling underpants far be it from me to make any further comments on that. Oh and thank you for inviting me here to eat as well. I’ve never seen such fantastically huge pink shiny lobsters in my life and I pride myself on knowing a good lobster when I see one.”

  “But of course we are in Napoli. The food here is the best. We eat now,” said Bruno surveying the gastronomic sight in front of him and smiling at Issy.

  As all three of them started eating it was mostly just noises of rapture that came out of their mouths as they sucked the pink fleshy centres ripped
from langoustine after langoustine taking their time to fully savour chewy meat lightly infused with garlic and herbs.

  With the first course over, Issy decided to take a breather from eating. Now Bruno had sung THAT song to her and made his intentions transparent she needed to clear her head.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said “but I’m just going to stand on the balcony for a few minutes. I think I just need a bit of air after all that food.” Walking over to the far side of the restaurant she looked up at the night sky which by now was inky black and saturated with stars. She closed one eye to see if should could get a celestial sign from her father. She did it knowing full well that whatever she saw would probably be an optical illusion but, tonight of all nights, it felt worth giving it a go.

  As she scanned the dark canopy above there right in front of her was a huge star, much bigger than the others. One that glistened and shimmied and winked at her, she smiled at the sign before noticing that Bruno had left the restaurant and had started to walk towards her.

  He reached out and touched her face as it if was a precious jewel and she shuddered at his touch. “What you looking for?” he said softly.

  “I’m looking for my father,” Issy replied very straightforwardly. “He died many years ago and on a night like tonight I always look heavenwards to see if there is any sign of him up there in the sky. It’s just something I do and have done since I was a child. And sometimes I can feel him watching over for me.”

  “How many years you lose your father?” asked Bruno, looking deeply into her eyes.

  “Many many years ago” replied Issy looking back at him sadly.

  “I am so sorry,” Bruno replied taking her into his arms and placing her head into his chest in the exactly the same way he’d done in the Garden of Eden. “But it eez ok, I understand and I am now here for you.”

  As he held Issy she was transported back in time to the morning her father had died. He too had held her tight to his chest at the breakfast table minutes before he’d died and had stroked her hair in exactly the same way Bruno was doing now.