Kissing in Italian

by Lauren Henderson

  “He seems really, really nice,” I say.

  “Oh, he is,” she assures me as we greet Giulio and explain about Paige staying on.

  As expected, Giulio reacts to this information by shrugging and grunting, “Moh! Cazzi vostri,” which we know by now is a rather coarse way of saying “Who cares? It’s your business.”

  So I hug Paige hard, which would have raised Giulio’s suspicions if he had any natural curiosity, because why on earth am I hugging her like this when she’s just going shopping? I follow Giulio out of the station, and just as we’re about to turn down the walkway that leads to the underground car park, I look back. Sure enough, there are Paige and Miguel by McDonald’s, kissing again, Paige’s blond curls clearly visible, both of them still oblivious to the fact that every single passerby is slowing down to gaze and comment approvingly on this excellent demonstration of l’amore being bello. I’m horribly jealous, to be honest.

  “Allora, prima la villa?” Giulio says as we get into the Range Rover.

  “No, direttamente al Castello di Vesperi,” I say. We’re going straight to the castello. And as I say the words, I feel my heart leap and bound in my chest.

  Not long now. Not long at all.

  Forty-five minutes later, we’re bumping up the zigzag of cypress-lined driveway, around the castle, in through the portico, barely even slowing down, though there can’t be more than a few inches’ clearance for the Range Rover on either side; a month and a half ago, I would have been gripping the armrests in fear, but I’m so used to Italian driving right now that I don’t break a bead of sweat.

  “Eccoci,” Giulio says economically, screeching to a halt a bare foot from the castle’s internal wall. “We’re here.”

  I heave open the door, clamber down, get out. He’s backing through the open gates almost as soon as I slam the door again. My ride’s gone; no way back. But that’s okay. I’ve never wanted anything in my life as much as I want to go forward right now.

  I run up the walkway into the castle. The doors are open, letting in light and air, and a maid is up on a high stepladder in the hallway, dusting the hanging crystal light fittings.

  “Il signore?” I ask. “Luca? Dov’è?”

  “Where’s Luca?” I’m asking. I’m so close. I’m trembling as she says:

  “Non lo so, signorina. Mi dispiace.”

  She doesn’t know: oh well. I don’t care if I have to comb the entire castle for him.

  “Prova su di sopra,” she adds, jabbing the ceiling with her duster; he’s somewhere upstairs.

  Oh well, that narrows it down. Only about twenty thousand square feet to search, rather than thirty thousand.

  “Grazie,” I say over my shoulder as I start to run up the big central Gone with the Wind staircase. I take the search systematically, starting with the picture gallery, covering the south wing first, where there are a lot of public rooms. I don’t want to run around calling his name; but as I find myself pushing open the double doors that obviously lead to the family’s private quarters, I decide that, if I won’t call out for him, I’ll knock on every closed door. The last thing I want is to barge in on Luca doing something private and start this massively important conversation on a completely wrong note.

  I pass another maid waxing the wooden floors, and ask her if she’s seen Luca. She, too, has no idea where he is. Never mind: I know he’s here. The principessa made sure of that. And I’ll find him if it takes all day. I enter a suite of rooms with pale-blue-painted paneling and gorgeous molded golden ceilings, and I guess straight away that these are the principessa’s. There’s something about the formality of this sitting room, the neat piles of books and magazines, the silver tissue box on the coffee table and the perfectly arranged flowers on the side tables, that indicates the principessa immediately.

  Luca won’t be in his mother’s rooms when she’s not here. I pivot to go, but then I hear sounds next door and think it might be another maid I could ask about his whereabouts.

  The door’s ajar. It leads to the dressing room that adjoins the principessa’s bedroom, which I can see reflected in the mirrored cupboards behind the dressing table: a big canopied bed, hung with pale-blue draperies, pale-green rugs that echo the color of the fitted carpet in here. It’s enviably pretty and serene, everything built-in, the dressing table stacked with a matching set of white leather jewelry boxes, the kind that lift up and slide open and have lots of little separate drawers and ring stands and different velvet-lined compartments, so you can view all the jewelry you possess, almost at once.

  And certainly, the person I heard in here is busy seeing all the jewelry the principessa possesses. It looks as if every lid is raised, every drawer pulled open, every padded, hinged door ajar to reveal its contents. Around the arch of the dressing table are a whole array of built-in concealed lights, which are all illuminated, the faceted jewels sparkling temptingly.

  Lit up, reflected again and again in the angled mirrors, is Elisa. She’s sitting on the pale-green velvet low-backed chair, bracelets on the wrist of the hand she’s holding up, arrested in the process of clipping on a huge emerald earring, pearls and diamonds around her neck, rings on her fingers—and, on her face, the most horrified, busted expression I have ever seen another girl wear.

  I’ve Gone Mad

  Elisa is dumbstruck. I, most definitely, am not.

  “What are you doing?” I exclaim, staring at her in shock.

  Her mouth is open. She flaps her lips like a fish in a tank when it swims up to you looking for food. And, just like a fish behind glass, no sound comes out.

  “That’s the principessa’s jewelry!” I continue. “No way do you have permission to try that on!”

  “Sì, invece,” she manages finally. “I do. She tells me I can come in here to wear them.”

  I can absolutely one hundred percent tell she’s lying. Her eyes, set in their heavily black-penciled sockets, are flickering from side to side, avoiding mine; her hands, which have dropped to the marble shelf in front of her, are twisting together in a fit of nerves.

  “Right,” I say witheringly. “You’re making that up.”

  She jumps up and turns to face me.

  “I am not,” she says utterly unconvincingly, her eyes still flickering; I can tell she’s trying to think of a way to get out of this huge hole she’s in.

  “Why are you here?” she adds, going for the attack-is-the-best-defense strategy. “You are not welcome in this house! You come in to spy through the principessa’s jewels! If you go now, I will not say that you come in here, and you will be safe—”

  “Oh please,” I say contemptuously.

  “You should go now,” she says feebly, her hands on her hips. “Luca tells me to wear this,” she adds defiantly, gathering courage as she works out the best way to get out of it. “He says I may wear his mother’s jewelry when I choose. Because he likes me, not you. If you go now, I don’t tell him that you come in here to spy her jewels.”

  I know she’s lying about Luca; that doesn’t even ping my radar.

  “Nice try,” I say, almost absently, because my attention’s distracted by something about her. The light is catching the jewelry she’s wearing, blazing off the diamonds and emeralds in her ears, more diamonds at her neck where she’s layered a lot of necklaces, pearls glowing against the bare, darkly tanned skin, and …

  Wait.

  I stare at her throat. That’s the exact same pearl necklace the girl in the portrait is wearing, the portrait in Sir John Soane’s Museum I saw in London this spring; the girl who looks so like me she could be my double. And who, thanks to the book in the Greve library, I know was called Fiammetta. It’s extraordinary to think that the very same necklace Fiammetta wore centuries ago, to have her picture painted, has been passed down through the generations to the current principessa as part of the family jewel collection; that it hasn’t been lost, or altered in any way. I recognize it because of the small cameo that hangs from it, a carving of a woman’s head, her
hair piled high in curls at the back. The stone is set in a delicate, diamond-studded gold frame, and there are diamonds placed at intervals through the string of pearls. It’s unmistakable.

  What strikes me most profoundly is how accurately the necklace was depicted in the portrait. It looks exactly the same. I imagine the painter studying it with great care to make sure it was reproduced perfectly. The precision is breathtaking.

  I take a couple of steps forward to look more closely at the necklace, marveling at it; Elisa sees me staring at her neck and raises a hand to her throat protectively. As if the necklace is hers, and she’s defending it from me.

  Which makes me really angry.

  Before I can think about what I’m going to say, the words burst out of my mouth.

  “Take that off, now!” I practically command her, pointing at the necklace in a way that, looking back, I can see was over-the-top dramatic. But by now I identify with Fiammetta, with the necklace; I’m part of this family, which means the necklace is part of my heritage. And seeing it around Elisa’s neck is the last straw for me.

  There’s a moment when it could all have been averted. I see her deciding what to do. And, unfortunately for her, she makes the wrong decision. She pulls herself up to her full height, raises her hand, and hits mine away, hissing:

  “Stai lontana, stronza.”

  “Stay away from me, bitch.”

  That is it. This girl’s been the bitch, not me, not any of us four foreigners. She insulted us the first day we arrived, and she hasn’t stopped since. I’ve busted her sneakily trying on the principessa’s jewelry, which I’m absolutely sure she doesn’t have permission to do, and she’s giving herself airs instead of just copping to it and taking it off, like I told her to.

  Which I have a total right to do.

  And she just whacked my hand.

  Before I know it, my hands are on her shoulders and I’m shaking her as if I’m trying to actually detach her head. It wobbles madly; one huge, heavy emerald earring flies off and lands on the carpet. Elisa’s hands grip mine, trying to pull them off, her nails digging in. I push against her and she staggers back with me following her, my hands closing around her neck.

  I’ve gone mad, I admit it. Completely mad. I’m trying to get the necklace off her, find the clasp, undo it; crazy, because you don’t do that from the front, of course, but from the back. And naturally Elisa misunderstands. She thinks I’m trying to strangle her. She starts screaming really loudly, a hysterical, help-me-she’s-trying-to-kill-me screech, and her hands flap and slap and pound against me in a desperate attempt to get me off. We rock backward and forward, me scrabbling for the fastening of the strand of pearls, Elisa trying to wriggle free, shrieking like a banshee, howling and wailing at a deafening pitch, but all I can think of is ripping that necklace off her.

  She scrambles away, tumbles over on a heel, and tips over onto the carpet. My hands are still tangled in the necklaces and I can’t get them free in time. So I fall too, crashing down on top of her body. I will freely admit that I weigh quite a lot more than bony skinny Elisa, and my extra thirty pounds or so land on her like a ton of bricks. The breath is squashed out of her for a moment; I hear her exhale in a violent whoosh. My hands are trapped under the back of her neck and I’m struggling to pull them free; Elisa gets her second wind, manages to inhale, and starts the screeching again, thrashing under me, writhing around like a possessed bag of bones in a horror film.

  Suddenly I feel hands close around my waist and pull me off her bodily. My fingers snag on a necklace as I’m dragged back and a strand bursts, a chain breaking with the force; it’s that or my finger. I’m being lifted up; I manage to get my feet under me on the carpet, standing up again, and for a moment I lean back against the person behind me to get my balance.

  I know instantly it’s Luca. There’s a reaction that happens whenever he touches me, an electric current, fizzing and unmistakable. I catch my breath as my back presses against his chest, feeling his long fingers wrapped around my waist, my head nestling into his shoulder for a brief wonderful moment. I hear him draw in his breath too. And then his hands drag away from me. He steps back and barks:

  “Ma che cosa succede qui? Siete impazzite, voi due?” “What’s happening here? Have you both gone mad?”

  “È lei!” Elisa screams from the carpet. “Lei è impazzita!”

  “Right,” I say contemptuously, taking a step back so I can see them both. “I’m the crazy one.”

  The sight of Luca takes my breath away. It always does when I haven’t seen him in a while. His hair’s so black, his eyes so blue, his skin so white, his mouth so red. He’s like a boy from a fairy tale, a prince from a winter country. It’s his beauty that shocks me: the fact that he’s glaring at me doesn’t faze me at all. I point down at Elisa.

  “Look, Luca,” I say. “She’s wearing your mum’s jewelry. I came in here and found her trying it on.”

  Elisa is quickly wrenching off the bracelets as she starts to sit up, but it’s too little too late. The strand that broke was part of another necklace, pearl and lapis lazuli, and there are pearls and dark-blue beads scattered all over her and on the carpet around her body. I’ll pick up every one, crawl over the carpet to make sure I’ve found them all.

  “Luca,” she begins, desperately looking for an excuse, “io … guardo, la tua mamma …”

  “Elisa, non ci posso credere,” Luca says flatly, staring at her. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Ma giuro—”

  “I swear,” she’s saying, but he raises one hand and she falls silent, staring up at him as he switches to English, glancing at me to show that the language change is for my benefit.

  “I do not believe this, Elisa,” he says, shaking his head. “Incredibile. You come here to see me, I tell you I do not want to talk to you and to please go away. But you come to my mother’s room and put on her jewels! You must be mad! And no,” he cuts in as she tries to repeat what she was saying about his mother. “I know that Mamma does not tell you that you may put them on. Mai. Never. That is a lie. These are di Vesperi jewels, for the family women only. They wear them. Nobody else.”

  He’s very pointedly avoiding looking at me now.

  “Take them all off,” he says angrily. “You must be truly mad.”

  Elisa’s crying as she reaches back and starts to unfasten the clasps of the various necklaces she’s wearing. I ought to feel triumphant, I suppose. This girl has tried to destabilize the four of us since we first got to Italy, make us feel fat and stupid and badly dressed compared to her skinny Italian chic-ness: here’s the ultimate victory, her complete humiliation in front of me and the boy she’s madly keen to get with.

  But all I see, looking at her fumble to pull off the backing to the single earring she’s still wearing, to pick up all her borrowed treasure and put it back on the shelf, is a sad girl who is full of anger at her mum and a desire for a boy who doesn’t want her.

  “She didn’t steal anything. She was just dressing up,” I say, somehow defending her now.

  His shoulders rise and fall slowly under his white shirt. It makes no difference to him what Elisa’s intentions were. She’s violated his beloved mother’s dressing room, and he can’t see any extenuating circumstances at all.

  Elisa’s face is absolutely wet with tears as she turns to leave the room. She can’t look at either of us; her head’s hanging, her messed-up hair tangled into her eyes.

  “We won’t tell anyone,” I say to her, and she whispers:

  “Grazie, Violetta,” in such a pathetic way that I feel even more sorry for her than I did before.

  Luca and I are left alone as Elisa’s slow dragging footsteps echo away down the corridor. I look up at him, bursting with what I have to tell him. But he’s striding to the dressing table, picking up something that Elisa put there, holding it out to show me.

  I gasp. It’s the pearl necklace from the portrait.

  “Luca—” I begin, but he’s already crosse
d back to me and is placing it around my neck. The pearls are cool against my skin; his fingers, doing up the clasp, are even colder. I stare at myself in the mirror, my hand coming up to touch the cameo hanging just at the tip of my collarbone.

  “Sei bellissima,” he says so quietly that I can barely hear him. I think this is the first compliment he’s ever paid me. “Come, Violetta. I have something to show you.”

  “But, Luca—”

  He’s at the door, walking away, expecting me to follow him. I scurry after him, dying to tell him what I’ve come here to say; but I can’t do it on the run, trotting like this. He’s striding so fast I can barely keep up, let alone get anything out that he’ll be able to hear. Along a corridor, around a corner, along another corridor, up a flight of stairs, then another, through a door that he holds till I’ve caught up with him.

  There are a lot of planks stacked against the corridor wall, which I have to navigate past, and in a window embrasure, a pile of long nails and a claw hammer. I follow him up an unexpectedly narrow, low-ceilinged, twisting wooden staircase with creaky old treads, Luca ducking his head as he takes them two at a time.

  Through another door, and into a round room with unvarnished, wide old floorboards and brick walls. A room with windows running around half its circumference, narrow turret windows with bright stunning views of the glorious sunny day outside, of vineyards rich with green leaves and cypress trees planted in lines to frame the road that twists and turns down the hillside …

  My jaw drops. The words that were on my lips fade as I turn around slowly, absorbing the sight of this place where Luca has brought me. It’s the turret room in which Fiammetta di Vesperi, my look-alike, was painted centuries ago. The turret room from the portrait in London, which I didn’t know that Luca had ever seen …

  I come to a halt where I began, staring at Luca, still speechless that he’s led me here, to the place where, in a way, everything began.

  “You are a di Vesperi, Violetta,” he says to me gravely. “I want to show this to you, to welcome you to the family. I see you recognize where we are.”