Italian Fever

by Valerie Martin

  “Yes. I gave it up. All the inferior pictures are locked away. I do not come here very often anymore. This picture has become a reproach to me. But because of what you told me, Lucia, I saw that you are wiser than I am, and I knew you could appreciate this great painting without your life being destroyed.”

  Lucy laughed. “I do appreciate it,” she said. “But it isn’t wisdom that keeps me safe. I can’t draw a box.”

  He accepted this, nodding his head with his habitual air of bored resignation. “Now we will go and have something to eat,” he said. “The restaurant is nearby.”

  Outside the museum the day was warm and sunny, and the streets were thronged with shoppers, their arms laden with packages, for the closing hour was near. Lucy walked beside Antonio, enjoying the scene as well as her ability to stroll through it without external support. Her ankle had survived the treacherous streets of Rome and seemed, in fact, strengthened by the ordeal. Antonio walked so slowly, she was in no danger of stumbling or falling behind. His confession had surprised and pleased her, and she viewed him now in an entirely different light.

  His attraction to Catherine had surely been something more complex and esoteric than the crude lust she had imagined. Perhaps, she speculated, he really was Catherine’s patron and nothing more. She chided herself for having been so small-minded as to think the only reason a wealthy man would invest in a beautiful woman was to gratify some base desire for possession. No, Antonio had recognized in Catherine the full blaze of the spark he had tended so diligently and hopefully in himself. He had observed how things stood with DV, how incapable he was of giving Catherine the one thing she required, which was liberty. So he had stepped in where he saw the opportunity. He was not an artist, but he had served on that altar, he had participated in the sacred rites, and he had seen in Catherine a fellow initiate, one who could, if she were only given the chance, ascend into the blessed company of the saints.

  Lucy was restored to earth from this rhetorical flight by their arrival at the trattoria Antonio had chosen. It was a simple room with exposed beams, stone floors, and good linen cloths on the scattering of tables. Antonio was evidently well known and much respected here, for no sooner were they seated than two waiters, followed by the chef himself, descended upon them to discuss the refinements of the meal. It was noted that Antonio’s guest was an American who was leaving for her own country on the morrow, and it was determined that she should not be allowed to go without tasting the true Tuscan cuisine. Lucy owned herself willing to eat whatever was set in front of her, and, almost immediately, the procession of dishes began. Antonio examined, tasted, and approved each one, but Lucy noticed the only thing he actually ate was a quail. He lives on little birds, she thought, stabbing a piece of sausage on the platter of roasted meats. The wine was a hearty local red, and Antonio pressed it upon her, filling her glass twice as often as he filled his own. It doesn’t matter, she thought. She could have a nap when she got back to the farmhouse. Wine did not flow this freely in Brooklyn.

  Their conversation rambled, interrupted by the enthusiastic waiters and Lucy’s exclamations of pleasure at each new dish. Antonio was more at ease in this atmosphere, Lucy noticed, than he was in his own home. He was even capable of a certain dry humor, though no one would ever call him gay. They talked of the food, the town, her plans for her return to the States, the perfect weather. At last, the plates were cleared away and the waiter brought two cups of black espresso, and, at Lucy’s request, a pitcher of hot milk, followed by two narrow flutes of a rosy strawberry dessert wine made, he confided, by his family and not available for sale.

  The subject had drifted back to Rome; Lucy wasn’t sure which of them had brought it up. She was careful not to mention Massimo, and the studied omission of his name felt like a shadow cast over the conversation. Antonio expressed regret that she had not seen more art there, and she was not able to explain that this was partly because she had spent so much time in bed with Massimo. “I tried,” she said. “But everything always seemed to be closing just when I arrived.”

  “And of course you had your business affairs to carry out.”

  “Right,” she agreed, studying her cup so that he wouldn’t see her guilty confusion. He had noted it, had, in fact, brought up the transparent excuse they both knew was a lie, just for the pleasure of seeing it. She decided it was then perfectly fair for her to introduce a subject she knew would make him equally uncomfortable. “I did see Catherine Bultman,” she said.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “So you found her there in her little shop?”

  “I did,” Lucy said. “I had two long conversations with her. She was shocked to learn that DV was dead.”

  Antonio lifted his cup to his lips and tossed back the contents in a motion so sudden, it had an air of desperation about it, like a condemned man downing an emergency dose of cyanide. Then he rested his chin in his palm and gave Lucy a searching, anxious, but not unfriendly look. “No doubt,” he said, “in these conversations, she told you something of her”—the choice of the next word seemed to pain him—“connection to my family.”

  “Actually,” Lucy said, “she was discreet. But I had already guessed something of it. And after what you’ve told me today, I think I understand it.”

  “There is no understanding it.” He sighed. “There is no excuse for it. But I will show you something that will, perhaps, explain a little.” As he spoke, he drew an old leather wallet from inside his jacket and extracted a small faded photograph, which he passed across the table to Lucy.

  The woman who looked out from the photograph leaned against a stone arch Lucy recognized as part of the Cini loggia. She was smiling; her eyes were bright with confidence and gaiety. She had pinned her fair hair back at the nape, but it was so thick and wavy that some short curls had strayed, framing her face in an airy halo. Her nose was aquiline, her strong jaw suggested a tendency to stubbornness, and the large, even, white teeth exposed by her wide smile made her look fierce and merciless, like a cat whose playfulness is both charming and dangerous. She was dressed in a suit with thick shoulder pads and dark trim at the cuffs and collar, tucked in at the waist and flaring at the hips, forties-style. “She looks like Catherine,” Lucy said.

  “So I am told,” Antonio agreed, taking the picture back and restoring it to his wallet. “I do not see it myself. But then my mother died when I was very young. Her name was Elena. I have no memory of her. I have heard from those who did know her that the resemblance is striking and more than physical. It is in the voice, they say, even the gestures. I cannot believe this.”

  “How did she die?”

  “An automobile accident. She was, by all accounts, a reckless driver.”

  Lucy nodded sympathetically. Did the mother’s untimely death explain the son’s infuriating caution behind the wheel? She poured half the pitcher of milk into her espresso and took a sip. Antonio watched her, his hands folded in his lap. He looked different. His aloofness, his air of boredom and contempt had been replaced by an expression that was almost wistful. Was he thinking of his dead mother, or of Catherine? How overwhelming it must have been for him to find a woman who was both the artist he knew he could never be and the image of the beloved mother he had lost so long ago. No, Lucy decided. He wasn’t just Catherine’s patron. He was a man consumed by an irresistible obsession; how could he be otherwise? She recalled the passionate language of the letter, “Carissima, amatissima,” and her heart swelled with pity. “I must tell you,” she confessed. “I saw a letter you sent to Catherine. When I was going through DV’s things, I found it in a drawer. Catherine must have left it.” A new possibility occurred to her. “Or perhaps DV took it and hid it from her.”

  Antonio’s response was to rub his eyes with one hand in what Lucy took to be chagrin and dismay. “What letter could you be talking about, Lucia?” he said.

  She paused. Surely he wouldn’t persist in denying his attachment to Catherine after revealing these two strong motives for his complete s
urrender—his love of art and her resemblance to his mother. “I didn’t read it,” she added. “I couldn’t. I only saw that it was a love letter and that it was signed ‘Antonio.’ ”

  His hand dropped to his mouth and he blinked at her with the unfocused eagerness to comprehend of a man who has just awakened from a deep slumber. Then, gradually, something came clear for him. “Dio,” he said softly. “So you think …” Whatever it was he thought she thought struck him as outrageously funny. She had not seen him laugh before. It was not an agreeable thing to see. His mouth stretched wide in something more like a grimace of pain than an expression of pleasure and his dark eyes over the rictus of his grin were full of wild, unwonted merriment. “Oh Lucia,” he said, rubbing his long face against his palm as if to release an involuntary clenching of his jaw. “What must you think of me?”

  “I think I understand,” Lucy said defensively. “I think I can see why—”

  “No, no,” he said. “Please stop or I will die of laughing.”

  Lucy looked about the restaurant, feeling exasperated. The place was nearly empty; no one had noticed that she was the source of great amusement to her dining companion. When she looked back, Antonio had calmed down. In fact, he regarded her with something very like affection. “Lucia,” he said. “Please forgive me. I must explain. You are again the victim of a great misunderstanding.”

  “I don’t really see how,” she said.

  “You will see as soon as I tell you one small detail. I think it has escaped you.”

  “Which is what?” she asked testily, for she had grown impatient with his superior delight.

  “You see, Lucia, I am not the only Antonio in my family.”

  She looked at him steadily, trying to process this salient tip, but for a moment she made no sense of it.

  “I am named after my father,” Antonio said. “He is Giuseppe, but in the war, when he was with the partisans, he took the name Antonio. He still uses this name in the family, and with his friends who know him from that time.”

  Lucy saw again the bold signature at the bottom of the letter: “ti abbraccio, Antonio.” “Your father?” she said, as all the little pieces fell into place. “It was your father who wrote that letter?”

  “I am afraid this must be true, though, of course, I did not know of it until now.”

  “And it’s your father who owns Catherine’s gallery, who supports Catherine.”

  “This, unhappily, I know too well.”

  “And he stole Catherine from DV?”

  “This was not a difficult feat,” Antonio pointed out in his father’s defense. “As soon as Caterina arrived, it was clear that she did not intend to stay very long with your friend. We invited them to dinner only once. They argued the entire evening. I thought her pretentious, without manners, and also very conceited, but my father was enchanted. Caterina had never one moment of interest in me. I have no money, you see; also I am not an admirer of her painting.”

  “I think she’s a pretty good painter,” Lucy said.

  “Please, Lucia.” He held his palm out and pulled his chin in as if to ward off a disagreeable odor. “She paints as she was taught. Her teachers may have had some ability, and she has learned to imitate them.”

  “Does your father think she’s good?”

  “My father is a fool,” he exclaimed. “I do not want to believe this, but he has given me no choice. He has no ideas about her painting, however.”

  “I see,” Lucy said. She finished off her coffee, hoping to clear out the last clinging webs of her confusion with the jolt of it. He was right: There was something academic about Catherine’s painting. It was skillful, even facile. Lucy had been persuaded of its value and originality by Catherine herself, not by anything she had actually seen on the canvas. Antonio interrupted this reappraisal. “But listen, Lucia,” he said. “Did you really imagine that I sent a love letter to this woman?” He looked serious, appalled, yet not entirely displeased by the proposition.

  “I must admit,” she said, “I did find that part hard to picture. But what else could I think?”

  “And in these conversations with her she said nothing that made you think you were mistaken?”

  “No. She acted as if she was independent. I assumed the gallery was hers. But Massimo figured it out because he happened to see your family name on a checkbook.”

  Antonio’s good humor dissipated at this information and something of his habitual impatience surfaced. He pushed his coffee cup aside as if it, too, was annoying him. “Of course,” he said. “Signor Compitelli. He has also been investigating my family?”

  “I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “He didn’t want to do it. I put him up to it. He told me he thought it was improper.”

  “I wonder how he would know.” His eyes engaged hers with a sudden cool effrontery that she could not meet. She examined the tablecloth, a pattern of swans swimming placidly under puffy clouds. “Please don’t say anything awful about Massimo,” she said.

  “There is nothing awful to say, that I know of,” he replied. “He is insignificant, a noioso, a type, I think that is correct.”

  Lucy kept her eyes on the swan. She was conscious of a burning desire to speak of Massimo, just to hear his name, to conjure him up for a few moments with someone who had actually seen him. This would be her last opportunity to do so. Yet she was hesitant in the face of Antonio’s evident disapproval. Antonio had disabused her of several mistaken notions—of the actual and awful manner of DV’s death, of Catherine’s motives and ability, of his own involvement—and she had been willing, even eager, to grasp at whatever enlightenment he had to offer. He was alert and observant—she understood this now—nothing slipped by him. Any judgment he passed upon Massimo would be an informed one.

  But Massimo is gone, she thought. There was no need to know anything more about him. Wouldn’t she be better off embroidering the memory of him in silver thread, untarnished by the skeptical observations of an outsider? She followed the swan’s gracefully curving neck with a speculative fingertip. “What type is that?” she said at last.

  “A man of no property, and no breeding.”

  “His family is very old,” she protested. “They’ve lived in Rome a thousand years.”

  “This is what he told you.” Lucy made no reply, as this remark was not, as far as she could tell, a question. She regarded him anxiously. After a moment, he shrugged. “Well, it may be true. His cousin’s family is very old.”

  “You know his cousin?”

  “I know the family,” he said. “The Tacchino. Their house is not far from here, near the supermarket at Granagno. As Signor Compitelli was so eager to inform us, they can no longer maintain the property. They have sold off the farmhouse and much of the vineyard. Your friend is involved in an unpleasant lawsuit against his cousin. He hopes to profit in some way from the sale of the land, at the same time he discourages his cousin from parting with the house because he likes to stay there. He has no claim to anything, of course. His cousin tolerates him because their fathers were very close, and because Signor Compitelli is so enamored of the house. His great passion is to have a fine villa, though he has no hope of owning even an appartamento.”

  Lucy sipped the sweet wine, considering this new characterization of Massimo: the poor relation, house-poor, blood-proud. He had opened Catherine’s checkbook because he wanted to see what she was worth; this struck her as entirely credible. His great passion, she thought.

  “I don’t like to think that such a person has made you unhappy,” Antonio said.

  Lucy looked up at last. His eyes rested upon her mildly now, with sympathetic interest. “It was my own foolishness,” she said. “I knew what I was doing. And I am not unhappy.”

  “How extraordinary you are, Lucia,” he exclaimed. “I thought so the first time I saw you, at your poor friend’s funeral. You were so calm and thoughtful; you spoke to me of Santa Lucia, do you remember? Every time I have seen you, you have said something to surprise me. To
day when you confided to me your feelings upon seeing the Bernini in Roma, I thought, She is speaking directly to my own suffering and showing me how to bear it.”

  Lucy listened openmouthed to this unexpected praise. “I thought you were contemptuous of me,” she said.

  “No, you must not think that,” he assured her. “It is because I so rarely see anyone I admire that I am confused and cannot show my feelings. For this reason, I have few friends. But it would please me very much to count you among them, Lucia. It would be an honor to me.”

  How ironic, Lucy thought, that the only friend I have made on my trip is this plain man with his crippling family, his failed ambitions, and his ruined life. And he had been her friend from the start, steadfastly standing on the sidelines and wishing her well. He watched her now, his face set in an expression of hopeful expectancy, waiting for her answer to his modest request.

  “For me, too,” she said. “It would be an honor for me, too.”

  Chapter 22

  THE EVENING WAS CLEAR and mild, and when she finished the dinner Signora Panatella had left her, which was like her first meal—cold meat, cheese, spinach, bread, and fruit—Lucy took the pitcher of wine and her glass out onto the terrace, where she sat for some time listening to the night birds and watching the stars grow bright against the blackening sky. Solitude and stillness suited her; she had had little of either since her arrival in Italy, and she welcomed the opportunity for reflection. Scattered impressions, snatches of conversation, half-formed observations and opinions flitted across her thoughts, and a sense of tranquil well-being settled upon her. She was returned to herself, and she had a heightened consciousness of the pleasure of her own company. She leaned back in the iron chair and sipped the wine unhurriedly. What a peaceful, quiet place this is, she thought. She heard Massimo’s skeptical reply, “Quiet? The grave is quiet.” She had recorded his voice, she noted, with astounding accuracy; the pitch, timbre, inflection, it was all there, stored in her memory, capable of intruding into her thoughts without being summoned. He would not, she reckoned, in some future colloquy with himself (indeed, it was unlikely that such a meeting might ever occur) call up willingly or not her own intonations or opinions. It requires a lively curiosity to identify and incorporate other voices than one’s own, and Massimo was in short supply of that. He had, she knew, hardly listened to her voice at all.