Bella Figura

by Kamin Mohammadi

  6

  JUNE

  ·

  Perduta

  or HOW TO LOSE YOUR HEAD

  PRODUCE IN SEASON · watermelon

  SCENT OF THE CITY · jasmine

  ITALIAN MOMENT · a Renaissance football match

  ITALIAN WORD OF THE MONTH · estate

  I was practically skipping to the market on Saturday morning. Dino had promised to stay tonight, and that meant the whole weekend together. The only time we had spent the whole night together was that turbulent first night in the hotel in Monteriggioni.

  I shopped carefully for tomorrow morning’s breakfast. Oranges to juice, fresh bread from the forno, cherry jam from Cibreo, creamy full-fat milk for our cappuccinos. I filled up on fruit and vegetables and bought packs of fresh pasta in case he wanted to cook at home. I ducked away from Beppe’s kisses as I passed Cibreo and walked through the narrow streets leading to the center, smiling at everyone I passed. I stopped by Pegna to buy a can of bright yellow butter, only pausing to give Francesca, the humming checkout girl with the sad eyes, a quick hug. Outside the door, sweet transcendent voices on the breeze stopped me in my tracks; it was floating over from the back of the Duomo. Francesca joined me on the doorstep, her sad eyes lit up with the beauty of the music as we listened together in silence.

  “It’s the cathedral choir,” she said in Italian. “They are practicing. One day we sing there together, okay?”

  I agreed happily. Walking through the sun-drenched streets, dodging the tourists, crossing my ungraceful bridge of graces, looking up at the terraces of the Bardini Gardens that stretched up the slope behind the palazzos, I took a deep breath, trying to inhale it all in—all that beauty, the fresh produce in my bag, the music still ringing in my ears—this place where I lived.

  * * *

  —

  On the way to dinner I had seen a black leather washbag on the backseat of the car and now, strolling back to the apartment, Dino was carrying it along with a preternaturally giant watermelon that he had bought from a white van parked just outside the city walls. I congratulated myself for my patience and for not being “insistatious,” as he called it.

  The scent of flowers and blossoms hit us at the door. “Amore ma quanto sei carina!” he cried, spotting the bed I had strewn with rose petals from Old Roberto’s garden, the candles all around. I smiled shyly as he lit them.

  “Well, you are here. I wanted it to be special.”

  We made love, crushing the rose petals under us. Afterward he got up and sliced some watermelon, petals stuck to his moist back, and we sat in bed chatting and eating the sweet and juicy fruit. We snuggled up like a real couple. I relaxed against him and snoozed off. So when I woke to see him getting up later, I imagined he was going to the loo—Dino had a penchant for washing himself so fastidiously after sex that I had even bought his penis its own little towel. After this, he had taken to entertaining me by wrapping his penis towel around himself in various styles—a turban, a sailor’s cap, even a keffiyeh encircled at the top with one of Christobel’s kids’ hair elastics.

  Now he walked in naked, folding the tiny towel into a mini bandana and placing it over the head of his penis.

  “Look, amore, doesn’t this look just like Stefano, the chef at Nello?”

  Stefano was a bald man who wore a white bandana wrapped around his head. Dino’s penis did look uncannily like Stefano, and we were both laughing so much that when I saw him picking up his clothes it took me a minute to realize that he was not just arranging them on the chair but getting dressed.

  “Allora, amore.” He perched on the edge of the bed, from where I regarded him, dumbfounded. “So now I kiss you and I see you tomorrow.”

  “Wait!” My tone startled us both. “Are you joking? You told me you were staying—”

  “Amore, no, you are mistaken. I have to go meet a friend now—”

  “It’s two in the morning, who on earth are you meeting at two in the morning?” My voice was rising.

  A story poured out about a friend who had just landed from Paris. Just at that moment, a text pinged on his phone. He made a call and I heard him talking to a male voice that I could hear through the handset. Putting the phone down, he said, “He just got in from Pisa and now his taxi is bringing him here.”

  All the time, he was moving rapidly toward the front door, carrying the washbag. Still naked, I followed him. “Dino”—I was trying to keep my voice even—“you said you would stay, you promised. You have seen everything I bought for breakfast…”

  “Amore, no. I never promised, non é possibile because I was always going to go and see my friend. Dai, don’t be boring, don’t be so insistatious…”

  “I don’t understand! Look”—I pointed to the washbag clutched in his hand as evidence. “You brought this. You obviously intended to stay, why have you changed your mind?” What did I do wrong? I wanted to say, but I bit back the words. Fury was beginning to burn through my confusion. He was lying and I couldn’t stand it.

  “Amore, I spend time with my friend now and tomorrow I will be with him, so there is no possibility.” He turned to go, giving me his back, not looking at me as he walked out. “Go to bed, you are upset and you insist too much. I call you in the morning.”

  He ran down the stairs without a backward glance and I slammed the door so hard that flakes of green paint fell at my feet. Furious, I picked up my phone and stabbed out a message.

  this is bullshit u r a liar don’t ever come back

  I threw myself on the bed and sobbed into the rose petals, all my carefully constructed fantasies of the weekend—of our future together—shattering around me.

  * * *

  —

  “He’s scared!” speculated Luigo. “He knows you will leave and he doesn’t want his heart broken.”

  Luigo had trotted out his favorite theory every time Dino had called late, canceled, or not stayed the night. I had played along but now I could no longer pretend. I had not heard from Dino for a few days after sending the text, and initially my anger had carried me through, but with uncanny timing, just as I was beginning to miss him, to feel remorseful, he rang me, his tone light and affectionate, as if nothing had happened. I had swallowed my questions, my doubts. I had decided to forgive him even though he hadn’t apologized.

  That night he had been at my door as usual and we hadn’t mentioned the other night. I tried to carry on as normal but I now had a more critical perspective of Dino and our “story.”

  I noted Dino’s early promises of weekends away exploring Tuscany had never materialized and that our encounters involved him cutting in to the routine of my days with promises to come around that weren’t always fulfilled. He would find me when I was on one of my long walks and drive me home, make love to me on the sofa, and then leave. These appearances left me feeling discombobulated, empty. I was sorry to have my ramblings disturbed only to find myself left again abruptly alone once he had taken his pleasure. I started to wish that we could make proper dates that he would stick to so that I could relish my time alone again. His constant changes and random appearances were beginning to feel like a tyranny. We did have a few evenings together, but I was growing tired of being left in the dead of night as he disappeared cheerfully into the dark.

  Now I was propping up Luigo’s bar alone on a Saturday evening.

  “He canceled again,” I told Luigo, resigned. “Dinner with some aristocrat he knows from his tennis club. He said it would be rude to say no, he’s very influential. And maybe he has a house on his estate in the country that is for rent…”

  Luigo was changing the CD. “Did he ask you to join him?”

  “He did but I said no. He was just being polite, he didn’t mean it.”

  “Well, bella, next time, say yes!” Luigo suggested.

  I trailed off to the restroom, feeling depressed. Luigo was right. I would call Dino’s bluff. I heard Luigo singing along to Duran Duran’s “Rio” in the bar and I dried my hands quickly, chee
ring up—this song had been the anthem of 1981. I rushed out and landed in the bar just in time to join in with the chorus. We belted it out together, dancing our way around the bar. And we laughed so much that I forgot about Dino for a while.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, I was dressed and waiting for Dino by ten o’clock, looking forward to a day out of the city as promised—my reward for the last-minute cancelation of the night before. Summer was creeping up on us and Florence was heating up, emptying on the weekends as the locals headed out to the beach or to the countryside, leaving their city to red-faced tourists. Dino himself had been away the last few weekends, our relationship, I had noticed with dismay, now relegated to weeknights only.

  I was excited about the Italian summer. August: the month that the whole country went to the seaside. Dino, I already knew, would take the whole month off. Never had the summer held such allure or been the subject of so many conversations—I heard them every day around the neighborhood, people planning their August trips, discussing what they would do on the weekend until then. Some of my neighbors had already decamped to il mare, and I was impressed by how vehemently the Italians believed that time by the sea was their birthright. As a Londoner, the notion of a whole season built around fun, leisure, and enjoyment was alien—and deeply seductive too. I thought back to summers past—always working, always alone, always somehow on another deadline even while away. In my mid-thirties it had become harder to find friends to travel with—most were now busy with partners and children, and I had found myself going off on impressively glamorous work trips alone.

  That summer with Nader had been the first one in years that had contained some of the lightness and joy that summer should have. I had rushed home from work every day, forgetting about the machinations of the Big Boss, the stresses of work, as soon as I walked into my apartment. Nader would be waiting for me, sitting on that narrow sofa, smiling, relaxed, a drink prepared. For those three months I’d had someone to come home to. We would go out, wander the streets in the light, long evenings, eat dinner on the pavements of Soho, walk and talk so much we ended up miles away, standing on Waterloo Bridge in front of my favorite view of London.

  That Sunday morning Dino was late as usual so I went to Rifrullo, where I sat outside with my midmorning cappuccino as I waited, battling my irritation. He finally called just before midday. “Amooorreee,” he drawled. “Disaster. I forgot my mother’s birthday! Can you imagine? Mi dispiace, but I stay home for lunch.”

  “Oh, right.” I was deflated.

  “Of course you are very welcome to join us,” he said, smooth, fake.

  “Oh, Dino, well I would love to!” I exclaimed.

  “Ah, amore, how lovely. I would looovvve that. But you know lunch is all prepared, and the guests are all here, I cannot ask them to wait, we are already at the table. And I don’t know how you would get here…”

  The excuses rolled off his tongue. So many lies—how could lunch be on the table? It was only midday and Italians never ate so early. But I said nothing. My silence unnerved him.

  “Amore dai, don’t be upset again. I see you later, I always see you, I see you every day.” He was getting defensive, beginning to whine.

  I boiled over. “Actually, Dino, you don’t. Every day you say you will come and you don’t. And it’s okay, you know, I don’t need to see you every day. But just make a plan and stick to it,” I snapped. “Once a week, just say we will have dinner once a week, and we’ll do that. It’s better than hanging around every day waiting for you to turn up. You eat up all my time like this, it’s not fair.”

  He was taken aback, muttering, “Well, amore, I am like this, if is not okay for you—”

  “Yes, well, and I am like this,” I retorted.

  “Don’t ask me more than I can give, amore,” he said quietly. “I told you how I am.”

  “If you can’t give me one evening a week, then I guess there’s nothing else to say.”

  Everyone had heard me shouting—Rifrullo was full of people taking a pre-lunch prosecco—and I decided to march out my fury, to get away from my neighbors and their curiosity. Boiling with anger, each step brought me another realization of what a fool I had been to believe Dino, to wait for him to stay the night, to form a real relationship.

  Hours later I came back, worn out from an epic walk, to find Dino in his car outside my door.

  “Where have you been?” He looked cross. “I have been waiting.”

  “How was your lunch?” I asked nonchalantly.

  “Dai amore”—he took a step forward—“mi dispiace, don’t be angry.” He hung his head and opened his arms. “We go to the country now, I take you, dai, is only four, is a beautiful day.”

  My head was light and I didn’t have the energy to fight. I stepped into the car. We drove out of the gate of San Miniato, the jazzy notes of an Italian song filling the silence. I recognized the word estate (summer) in particular. It was beautiful and melancholic, the male voice dripping in nostalgia. Dino turned it up and sang along.

  “Estate,” he sang in a rich baritone, putting a hand on my knee. I caught only some words that I knew in the melancholy tune that seemed full of longing: “baci…perduto…amore…passato…cuore…cancellare.” He serenaded me, knitting his brows together for extra drama, his other hand holding a cigarette out of the open window. He steered with his knees. Against my will I felt my mouth twitching into a smile.

  When he was finished, he turned to me with a wide grin, waiting for my approbation.

  “Well, you have quite a voice,” I said.

  “Amore, si, at school they called me il piccolo Pavarotti!” he said proudly. I chuckled. “This song,” he explained, “is one of the greatest Italian songs. Is about a sad love story made in the summer. It says the summer is, you know, full of lost kisses, the love that has passed…”

  I looked at him through narrow eyes. “Is this prophetic, Dino?” I asked.

  “Amore, it depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On this…” He leaned over. “Baciami, amore!”

  I’d heard this before, I thought, but then all thoughts were blotted out as he pulled over and kissed me so tenderly and for so long that my head started to spin. With some agility, he snapped my seat back so that I was lying down, and with one swift move, he steered his body over mine. I was not quite sure how it happened, parked in a green glade off the road to Chianti, but Dino managed to make swift but forceful love to me in his Audi and I was so surprised that I let him.

  Afterward, we drove through the sun-dappled hills and valleys of Chianti with its mellow stone houses, façades festooned with red geraniums, the sloping hills decorated with olives and vineyards, fields of sunflowers. I pushed away my earlier irritation, my determination to get away from him. It was beautiful, he was sexy, and we were here. Perhaps this could be enough.

  * * *

  —

  A few nights later my phone rang. It was Dino from his car on the road to Pisa. He was on his way to Spain for a very fancy wedding, a four-day extravaganza of bullfights and balls. His flight was early the next morning and he was going to stay the night with a friend who lived nearby. At least this is what he had told me.

  “Amore, don’t miss me too much,” he purred down the line. I could hear him dragging on his cigarette, picture his elbow on the open window, the road rushing past. “On Monday I am in your arms again.”

  “I will be patient. Will your phone work there?” I was relaxed; after our evening in the country he had been particularly attentive, coming around to cook every night, spending half the night sleeping with me before leaving, and I had nearly forgotten the spat of the weekend before.

  “I call you.” I could hear him smile. “Or text you. Or I Skype you.” His tone was intimate, reassuring. Then, with a flourish: “Anyway, amore, I find a way. If you don’t hear from me, you know I am dead!”

  * * *

  —

  “I thought you
were dead, amore!” exclaimed Antonella sardonically, as she ushered me into the bright interior of her apartment.

  “Permesso,” I said automatically, crossing the threshold and offering up a bouquet of Old Roberto’s roses. Antonella took them graciously, burying her nose in their scent, before turning to me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Oh, Anto,” I cried. “I am so sorry to have disappeared. I’ve been so infatuated with Dino…”

  She waved my protests away with an elegant hand. “Don’t speak more of this,” she said sweetly. “It is good to see you. La mamma and I have missed you! Now come through, the Calcio Storico is about to start!”

  We filed into her bedroom, which was filled with Adonises. She poured me a coffee from a tray already on the table, handing me the china cup and saucer with a tiny silver teaspoon. The Adonises were ranged around the open windows, from outside of which came a roar of voices, cheering and calling out, whistling and shouting Florentine obscenities. The Adonises kissed me in turn and parted to let Antonella and me take prime place at each of the windows. It was the last weekend in June, and Florence was celebrating the festival of its patron saint, San Giovanni, in spectacular style. The Calcio Storico Fiorentino was an ancient soccer game played out among four of Florence’s districts: San Giovanni, Santa Croce, Santo Spirito, and Santa Maria Novella. It was taking place in a makeshift stadium that had been constructed over the past week in Piazza Santa Croce, complete with a sand pitch and raised bleachers for the spectators. I knew I was lucky to get to watch from Antonella’s window for free—tickets had sold out weeks ago.

  The whole city had been in a state of excitement for days. I had bumped into the first procession in anticipation of the Calcio Storico last weekend when, as I returned home from Sant’Ambrogio via the center on Saturday, I saw men in Renaissance costume parading through the Signoria, some on horses hung with livery, blowing long trumpets and showing off their legs in multicolored tights. During the week, Antonella had rung to invite me to watch the football match from her window, instructing me to call her from the street so she could walk me through the security barriers—as a resident, she was allowed guests.