The Conversion

by Joseph Olshan

  “We looked for a person, or a strange car. We found nothing.”

  I wait a moment and then ask, “Why didn’t you go with them to the hospital?” knowing that Carla would feel a lot better if she could be near Stefano.

  Unable to look at me, she says, “I didn’t want to leave the house with no one in it.” She hesitates. “And I’m not his wife. It would not be right.”

  “But you’re … his dear friend and caretaker.”

  “You don’t understand these things,” she says sadly.

  Indeed. Harkening back to my conversation with Lorenzo, I want to tell her at least I am beginning to, but I know that pressing Carla like this will make her feel even more wretched.

  I walk to the library, where one pane of a huge window is completely missing. There are no shards of broken glass left on the floor; Carla must have already swept them away. Who threw the rock and why did they throw it? I sense that this might not be so easily explained, and therefore the threat of future incidents will hardly be so handily dismissed. Yet another mystery like the hotel-room break-in. I get a sudden pang: What if I learn nothing more about who the intruders were and why they threatened us? This is unfathomable to me.

  Around five in the afternoon, Marina phones Carla to say that Stefano’s fever has gone down somewhat but still has not broken and that in the midst of a battery of tests, he, true to form, is behaving like the ornery man he is. No matter what, he will remain in the hospital for a few days, and she has no idea when she might return home. When Carla knocks on my door to relay this information, I ask if there is any way that I might contact “the signora” myself; after all, I need to warn Marina of the subpoena that will be served tomorrow by Lorenzo and the American attaché. Carla goes away and returns with a shred of paper scrawled with a mobile phone number.

  Marina answers after the first ring. I apologize profusely, inquire about Stefano, and once I hear the same report Carla gave me, quickly explain about the subpoena.

  “I already know this,” she informs me. Her friend, the capo of the carabinieri, has already contacted her. “Just before I realized that Stefano is unwell. They were to come tomorrow, but now they will not be able to.”

  “I’m sorry to add all this to what’s already going on.”

  “This is your problem, Russell,” she says tersely. “Not mine. You are my guest and you also know my feelings about this business.”

  I do, indeed. Before signing off, I ask Marina what she makes of the broken window.

  She pauses for a moment as I hear her muffling the phone. Then she says, “I really don’t know. The rock could be thrown by anyone, even by stupid kids from in town. But I can’t try to figure it out now. I’m worried about Stefano. His health has always been so fragile. And seeing him like this makes me …” She doesn’t finish the sentence. “Ah, the doctor is here,” she says. “I must go now.”

  That evening, after spending a few hours with Lorenzo in the Garfagnana, I let myself into the house to the sounds of sobbing. I find Carla in the kitchen, her head on the table, weeping inconsolably. Sensing I am there, she peers up at me and in a tremulous voice announces that Stefano has died. And that Marina is in her room and has asked not to be disturbed. Bleary-eyed and with a look of complete misery, Carla lays her head back on the table and stares into space. This is the true face of grief, I realize, the immediate response that comes from deep devotion to another. There is no mantle of numbness, no knee-jerk, self-protective disassociation, but rather the agony of loss, as pure as water. I can’t help but think of my slow realization and acceptance of Ed’s death and that I never descended to this level of inconsolable distress. I think of the painting I saw earlier in the cathedral and Saint Augustine’s pitiful confusion at the news of the death of Saint Jerome. Feeling terribly awkward in the midst of Carla’s grief, I offer my sincere condolences and ask her to tell me if there is anything I can do.

  “Yes,” she says immediately as she sits upright and swipes the tears from her eyes. “You can help.”

  “Tell me how.”

  “You can do something about his books being in English.”

  Baffled, I stare at her and wonder if somehow Marina has put her up to this. “I can try,” I say, not very convincing.

  “More than try, do something!” Carla insists. “Being in English was important to him. And he says you knew somebody who would not help,” she emphasizes.

  “Me? I knew somebody?”

  “Yes.” She is staring at me with bloodshot eyes.

  “Somebody who would not help?” I repeat to make sure I’ve heard correctly.

  “Don’t I say this?”

  “And his or her name?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. Stefano just told me one day.”

  Wondering who this person might be, I wander from the kitchen into the dining room; from the dining room, I cross into the library that leads to Marina’s bedroom and end up standing right next to her door. I hear no keening, no conversation at all except for what is blaring from the television. And yet I can still make out Carla once again weeping in the kitchen. I glance over to the place where the rock crashed through the window. The broken pane has been replaced with a lozenge of wood. Cringing, I listen to the televised voices filtering from Marina’s bedroom; she is watching a movie, an American movie. And I think: It has been quite a while since I’ve heard native speakers from my own country.

  But then everything switches to Italian, some sort of announcement or news bulletin. I now put my ear against the door and listen to an eerie story of an Italian soldier killed by a roadside bomb in the Middle East and how his fiancée was so distraught at the news that she went and drowned herself in a lake right next to his family’s home. “Dio Santo,” I can hear Marina saying. “This is like Shakespeare.”

  Thirteen

  “It’s all quite simple, really,” Marina explains to me two weeks later. “You let the official come here. You give him your computer, which will be investigated and nothing found. And then it’s finished. You go on with your life.”

  As long as they don’t send it back to America to be searched, I point out. In that case I would be unable to finish my translation project.

  Dressed in a thin black cashmere sweater and dark gray slacks, Marina sits on one of the sofas in the library, legs crossed, holding one temple of her reading glasses. She looks forlorn but determined, as though she’s spoken for her own edification as well as mine. I’m amazed at her stoicism, at the way she carries on her life, dealing with the villa’s considerable daily activities without faltering. Although grief is noticeably written on her face in a frown, in a downward cast of features, articulated in her body by a slightly forward slump, she has spoken very little about Stefano’s death. This is surprising; after all, they were together for fifteen years.

  She resumes, “Why would anyone bother sending a computer back to America? It’s only a machine, after all. That can be scanned and diagnosed and even fixed—like a car. The modern world, for some reason, loves to lend it an animus. Stefano says that these computer experts can even tell if you’ve had something on your computer and then removed it.” She pauses, realizing she has referred to Stefano as though still living, and is sobered into silence. Not quite gathered together, she goes on with a quavering voice, “Computers … may seem mysterious to somebody like me, but they are not, after all, nearly as complicated as the human psyche.” At last I see a tear dripping down her cheek.

  As though needing an activity to dispel her sudden melancholy, Marina strolls over to the enormous fireplace and, grabbing a poker, taps underneath. Chunks of soot spew out, and I can hear the sounds of beating wings and the dull thud of birds colliding in the chimney. “Oh, God, the chimney swifts!” She warbles the last two words in English, as though I won’t recognize their equivalent in Italian. “But wait, it’s September. They shouldn’t be nesting now.”

  “Why are you testing the fireplace?”

  She looks at me sharply a
nd says, “Because it’s supposed to be chilly tonight. Cold for September in Tuscany. The weather has certainly changed the short time we’ve been away.”

  Marina is referring to the journey that she and Carla made to Milan, the city of Stefano’s birth and where he requested a burial. After making the necessary arrangements, they drove the three hours and were met by Marina’s daughter, who flew in from London, and by her son, who shuttled up from Rome. Oddly, neither child returned to Tuscany.

  “They seemed relieved I didn’t ask them to come back,” she informs me when I inquire why neither child accompanied her home. “They are used to me being a tough cookie,” she says in English, which happens to be one of her favorite expressions. “They know I don’t like to be taken care of.”

  “Well, you might need to be at some point in time.”

  Glowering at me, she says, “Why bring this up now of all times? I will cross this bridge when it comes.” Continuing in English for some inexplicable reason, “As you probably figured out, I prefer taking care of people rather than vice versa.”

  I reflect that because Stefano had been such a recluse, so far his death doesn’t seem to make all that much difference in the order of life at the Villa Guidi. The dogs roam the rooms and the grounds at whim, a chorus of barking and howling erupting several times a day. The workmen still arrive and depart, repairing pipes in far-flung bathrooms, replastering cracks in walls, unclogging roof drains, tinkering with faulty wiring. Marina deals with them with characteristic noblesse oblige; in most cases Stefano’s death is not referred to.

  But now, in the midst of our discussion, the plumber arrives and there’s a touching commotion; he actually becomes weepy when he gives Marina his condolences. She, in turn, moved by his compassion, sheds a few more tears herself. “He is a fine fellow,” she explains after the plumber leaves the room. “A very capable man. Stefano wrote about him, a very famous article that was reprinted all over Italy.”

  Marina further explains that there was a time, during the sixties and seventies, when many intellectuals from Italy were emigrating to America and taking up posts at universities: linguistics professors, literary theorists, contemporary philosophers. In his article, Stefano noted these various departures and then boldly claimed that Italy could spare them because the universities would always seed a new galaxy of bright stars. “But now, for example, this man you’ve just met is the third generation of plumbers who have worked at the villa.” In his article Stefano reveres these wise old plumbers and electricians who know the old villas and palazzi, can divine the antiquated systems of energy and waste removal. Theirs is a rare knowledge passed down to them from their fathers, who, in turn, came from a long line of electricians and plumbers dating back to the advent of electricity and, before that, when modern plumbing was developed. And so once these people died off, if their understanding was not passed along, the knowledge of how to run Italy’s old buildings would die with them. “Stefano said, ‘Let the intellectuals go. Italy doesn’t need them. She requires her plumbers and electricians.’”

  After a substantial pause Marina says to me regretfully, “You wouldn’t even know he was gone, would you?”

  I remind her that I hardly ever saw Stefano.

  “A funny man.” She sighs—I imagine at a torrent of memories. “He changed a lot over the last ten years. He used to be not so removed from everyone and everything.”

  “You said his seclusion was a symptom of depression.”

  She nods. “This is true. But more important, Stefano considered himself a failure.” I obviously must look skeptical because she becomes more emphatic. “Yes, he always did, which made him try harder and probably was the reason why he developed such a first-rate mind. I know you didn’t really get a chance to speak to him because he was so walled in, but if you had you would have marveled at his intelligence.

  “And I must say that our discussions and listening to him speak were some of the great pleasures of my life. Which only makes the fact that I was more successful than he a horrible burden.” Marina pauses, swinging her eyeglasses. “You might find this surprising but often I found myself wishing it was reversed and that he was the more famous, the more celebrated of the two.”

  “I think I realized this after you told me the story of the Strega Prize, how he turned to you and made it seem as though you didn’t deserve it.”

  Marina is startled by my observation. “I suppose you’re right. I suppose I would have preferred to be on his arm and he be the winner.”

  “And so would he. It’s no wonder that you have such mixed feelings about celebrities,” I comment, thinking of her offbeat evaluation of Ed. “You don’t seem to like being one yourself, for example.”

  She admits, “Well, it’s different when you grow up with a well-known father.”

  “Still, you get what I mean,” I say in English, for unassailable emphasis.

  Marina nods.

  “I just hope that this wanting to displace your success on Stefano doesn’t have to do with your being a woman,” I hazard to say.

  “So what if it does?” Marina challenges me. “The feminists would cringe, but you well know I am not one of them. There is part of me that likes to be the woman courted by the man, even to be a little bit overshadowed. Beyond this, I have two children. So I’m very aware of the biological imperative. My male dogs run all over the neighborhood when they smell a bitch in heat. But my girls stay with me. No matter what, they want to stick to the house. These are the properties of the blood that cannot be ignored by the rational mind.”

  “So wait, what are you saying?” I ask, remarking to myself that this statement contradicts what Marina had said the morning after I brought Lorenzo into the villa when she was quoting Goethe.

  “That my life changed with Stefano after I won the Strega. And certainly not for the better. The prize itself ruined our romantic life. Suddenly, no matter what I said or did to reassure him, he felt unworthy of me. That’s why he actually preferred that Carla took care of him.”

  But then, for the same reason you don’t have to feel unworthy of him, I think but cannot bring myself to say.

  Marina goes on. “And that’s why I’ve tried so hard to help his career, to keep his books in print, and especially to have them translated.” She now looks at me keenly.

  And so we arrive at the dreaded discussion of the man’s novels, something I’d hoped, at least for the time being, to avoid. I realize too late that silence is perhaps not the best response; it might infer that I understand exactly why Stefano felt himself a failure.

  “So did you ever get a chance to read any of his work?” Marina asks me quietly at last.

  I tell her I have and without hesitating offer that finding an English-language publisher who will pay translation costs as well as an advance will, alas, be very difficult.

  A bitter smile crosses her lips, and soon her expression is hard and rancorous. “And what if I pay for translation?”

  “I still think it’s going to be a challenge.”

  “So then I should assume you didn’t like what you read?” I agonize for a moment and then she says with gentleness, “Russell, tell me what you think. You know that I always demand honesty.”

  That is what makes it so difficult. I am being honest. I continue, “What I mean is there are certain works of writing that are more, er, let’s say perishable outside their native environment.”

  “You’re saying they don’t transplant well?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Can you specifically tell me why you think his novels will not transplant?”

  I tell her that Emilien has too much of an anecdotal feel. Whereas The Garden seems a bit incestuously literary, perhaps too Italian in its preoccupations to be understood by, say, an American audience.

  Marina stands abruptly, making her way over to the writing desk she claims never to use, and collapses in front of the volume of Tuscan villas opened to the picture of her, something that the last wedding coup
le who’d rented the villa had specifically requested. She turns toward me and pale eyes bore into mine. “When did you actually read them?” she demands at last.

  “Right after you asked me to.”

  “Then why didn’t you say anything then?” She sounds harrowed.

  “I might have had it been something you’d written. But I was worried because I know how much you love and admire Stefano’s work.” After saying this I realize it’s not precisely the truth. Surely I would have balked at criticizing Marina’s work as well.

  Reflecting for a few moments, she says bluntly, “Well, to be honest, what you say is not so very different from what some of the others have said. And as I am sure you can understand, this lack of appreciation was very hurtful to Stefano. It contributed to his feelings of failure.”

  “And to your feelings of helplessness,” I dare to interject.

  She looks rattled for a moment and then manages to respond, “Yes, I suppose this is true.”

  “Then again, you think his work is great. And your opinion certainly is worth reckoning with.”

  Her expression grows sterner still. “You tell me this, while you don’t really believe in my opinion.”

  “Let’s put it this way: I do believe it because I should believe it. I believe it because you present yourself as being objective about these things. That you consider Stefano’s novels as a reader and a fellow writer and not as somebody romantically involved with the author who feels they must love the work because they love the person.”

  “For then I would be as much of a romantic as you, wouldn’t I?” she says with a sly smile.

  “I guess you would.” And then in English, I say, “You’d wear your own pair of rose-colored glasses.”

  “Cosa? What is this?” she asks and I explain.

  “Ah, caspita!” Marina says. “I will certainly remember that one now. Bravo once again for English.”

  Catching a glimpse of her photo staring back, she shuts the picture book of Tuscan villas with a flicker of displeasure. When she finally glances my way, her dismay and her irascibility are gone and the pinched aspect of sadness has returned.