Kissing in Italian

by Lauren Henderson

  Formally, he holds out his hand for me to shake.

  “Benvenuta, sorella mia,” he says.

  “Welcome, sister.”

  This Is Our Future

  As I stare at Luca, I feel like Elisa just now, her mouth flapping like a fish as she frantically thought of what to say. I hate hearing him call me “sister” so seriously, with such acceptance of the situation, and I want to protest. But simultaneously, I’m so taken aback that the first thing that comes out of my mouth is:

  “How did you know about—this?” I gesture around the room. “How did you know about the portrait?”

  “Portrait?” He frowns, not understanding.

  “Picture,” I say. “The picture of the girl in this room.”

  “Her name is Fiammetta di Vesperi,” he says, walking over to the windowsill—the one on which, in the portrait, Fiammetta’s ginger cat was lying. A wide ray of golden sunshine is streaming onto the slab of stone, warming it, just as it did centuries ago, for the cat to bask in. Luca picks up a piece of paper from the sill and hands it to me.

  It’s a color photocopy of the portrait. I stare at it, taking in all the details. Before, when I’ve looked at this image, I’ve obsessed about her face, Fiammetta’s face: because it’s mine. Now that the mystery has been solved, I’m released to absorb all the other parts of the picture; the room, the view outside.…

  “It’s identical,” I say, looking at the window in front of me and then back down to the photocopy. “The view. It hasn’t changed in hundreds of years.”

  He shrugs.

  “Why would it? We have changed nothing. We make wine now, we grow the grapes, just like always.”

  “Those aren’t the same vines,” I say incredulously.

  He laughs. “No, that would not be possible. But the trees are the same. The cipressi.”

  I stare at the stone frame of the window and, through it, the cypresses marching down the hill in two lines. To think that they’re the same trees that stood there over three hundred years ago is mind-boggling. The sheer history overwhelms me for a moment, the knowledge that I’m a descendant of this family, which has owned this castle, these lands for many more than three hundred years.…

  Luca lets it sink in, leaning back against the wall, propping his shoulders on the brick, crossing his legs at the ankles. The way he was standing when I first saw him, just a month and a half ago, at the Casa del Popolo. I think I fell in love with him that very moment.

  “How did you know?” I eventually ask again. “That I’d seen this picture, I mean?”

  “I see you come out of the library with Kelly,” he says, looking a little embarrassed. “And I am curious. What do two English girls do at an Italian library? So later I go in and I ask Sandra, who works there, what you want, and she says, ‘Oh, they do ricerche—’ ”

  “Research,” I prompt.

  “Yes. On your family, she says. And she shows me the book they have with the di Vesperi in it.” He shrugs again. “We have a copy of course, but I never look in it. But I open it and there it is. A picture of Fiammetta. Of you.”

  He looks straight at me for a moment, his eyes a clear blue, filled with acceptance of what he thinks is the truth.

  “And I do my own ricerche in my family documents, and I see that there is another picture of Fiammetta in a museo in London. So I understand a lot of things.” He swallows; I see his Adam’s apple bobbing. “I do not maybe understand why you did not tell me. Before we kissed. Before we start to feel …”

  He breaks off, staring down at his shoes. Luca never wears sneakers; they’re navy suede loafers, very Italian dandy.

  “You kissed me,” I remind him softly.

  He wriggles like a snake pinned to a wall.

  “There is no point in talking about this!” he says angrily, kicking back against the brick with the heel of one loafer and probably hurting his foot in the process.

  I don’t remind him that he started it. I say instead: “So you found this room?”

  “Yes,” he says sullenly. “I see from the window, the view, where it is in the castello. But many rooms were closed, you know, for many years, while my mamma was here with just Maria and me. This one, it was—there was wood on the door—”

  “It was boarded up,” I prompt, remembering the wood, the nails, the claw hammer downstairs.

  “Yes, with nails. I take them off and I come upstairs, carefully, because maybe it is not safe. But it is all good here, the floor, the stairs, no problem. Who knows why it was closed? But now you can see it. My gift to you, as part of our family. To see where Fiammetta painted her pictures.”

  “She painted?” I goggle at him.

  “Ma sì! She was a pittrice. A painter. You did not know?” Luca asks. “That is a picture of herself. What do you call it?”

  “A self-portrait,” I whisper, staring at the paper in my hand.

  Of course. Behind her, there’s an easel with a landscape painting on it; a wooden palette is propped on the shelf below. She’s telling the viewer that this is what she does: she’s an artist. That’s how these portraits worked back then. Kelly’s been studying it. They were like stories, telling you things about the subject, conveying their lives as well as their images.

  I was so busy trying to work out who Fiammetta was, what the connection was between her family and mine, that it never even occurred to me to read the clues in the painting, to realize it was a self-portrait. That I might have inherited my desire to become an artist from her, a long-dead distant relative who also loved to paint.

  “It was not usual then for a woman,” Luca tells me, still propped against the wall. “I think this is why she works up here, so far away from people. To hide a little, to be secret. Private. Her father probably tells her he doesn’t like that she is a painter. That she has to marry and make babies instead.”

  “She didn’t marry, though,” I say, still looking at her face. My face. “She died young.”

  “Yes, the tifoide,” Luca says. “I see that in the book. So she died, she did not have children, and her picture was sold to an English lord. With other pictures that the family did not value so much.” He grimaces apologetically. “Italy was much more poor then. We needed the money. It is all in the family papers, I found it. I can show you if you like.”

  I walk slowly across the room, my legs wobbly, and half sit, half collapse, on the windowsill. The idea that I’m so intimately linked to the di Vesperi family that I’ve maybe, actually, inherited some sort of talent from Fiammetta is overpowering. I’m not saying that I’m as good as her, of course not. This picture is amazing, way beyond anything I can do.

  But I only just started to learn, I tell myself. I’ll keep going and keep going. I’ll go to art school and study really hard and maybe, one day, I’ll be able to do a portrait half as good as this one.

  “Violetta?” Luca’s looking at me, his mouth twisted with concern. “You are okay? I want to do something to welcome you. To show you the room in the picture.” He pauses for a moment, and then says bravely: “To say, I know you are my sister.”

  I see his hands have tightened into fists as he says the last sentence. And I can’t wait any longer. I pat the windowsill next to me.

  “Come and sit down,” I say.

  “No!” he says with great vehemence, shaking his head. He pushes off from the wall, pacing across to the other side of the round turret room.

  And now the moment’s almost here, I have to admit that I’m relishing this, his resistance at being close to me. Because the violence of his refusal speaks volumes about his feelings for me. His attraction to me.

  “Luca, please,” I say strongly. “You need to sit down to hear what I’m going to tell you. I won’t touch you,” I add, and I can’t help smiling a bit when I say that. “I promise I won’t touch you. But I came here to tell you something really important, and you have to listen.”

  He glares at me, clearly thinking I’m not taking seriously enough the fact that we’re
related. Gingerly, as if he thinks I’ll bite, he walks slowly across the room and lowers himself into the very far corner of the windowsill, legs straight out in front of him, his haughty handsome profile turned to me.

  “Allora?” he snaps.

  “So, I was in Venice,” I begin, picking my way through this carefully. “With my mum and dad, and your parents. And you know what they told me, that my aunt and your dad are actually my biological parents. But that’s not the whole story.”

  He nods stiffly, a quick, unhappy jerk of his head.

  “For me,” I say, “my mum and dad will always be my mum and dad. They brought me up, they’re my parents, and I love them to death. My aunt gave birth to me, but they’re my parents.”

  “Certamente,” he says more gently. “È normale.”

  He glances at me briefly.

  “Mi dispiace,” he says. “I’m sorry for my father. He is a playboy, like I tell you before. I’m sorry he makes such a casino. A mess. He does only what he wants and he is always hurting people.”

  I bite my lip.

  “It’s not just that,” I say. “Listen carefully, okay? There’s more.”

  “More?” The anger in Luca’s voice is chilling. “Dio mio, there are more children? He has made more children?”

  To my horror, he turns, his hand clenched again into a fist, and goes to punch the brickwork. I lunge over and grab his wrist a split second before it lands.

  “No!” I say, struggling with him. “Luca, no, you could break your hand—stop it—”

  “Lasciami!” he says. “Let me go!”

  But I can’t let him hurt himself. I wrestle with him for another moment, before his arm goes limp and he slumps back against the window frame. I look at his face, and see there are tears in his eyes.

  “Look what he has done,” he mumbles. “My father. Our father!” he says with terrible bitterness. “Look at how he has made us so unhappy.”

  I still have his hand in both of mine, and now I keep hold of it, grateful that I’m touching him after all. I think he’s going to need comfort for what I have to tell him.

  “That’s the thing, Luca,” I say quickly. “Did you not wonder what I’m doing here? Why I came back from Venice by myself? Why your mum rang and told you to wait for me here?”

  “To tell me that we are brother and sister.” Tears start to run down his pale cheeks.

  “No! It’s because of something your mother told me. About you.”

  Slowly, he turns to look at me.

  “My mother?”

  “Yes!”

  His handsome face blurs and becomes his mother’s. They’re so very like each other, with their pale skin, their high cheekbones, their fine bones. I see the principessa in front of me, her pale face, one hand raised to shade her eyes from the bright sunlight, the other smoothing down the front of her skirt as she perches awkwardly on the seat beside me in the balustrade of the Hotel Cipriani yesterday afternoon. I hear her voice as she tells me, slowly, hesitantly, what she followed me outside to say, and I feel my eyes widening, my jaw dropping, as she recounts her story.

  “You have to tell Luca!” I exclaim, almost before she’s finished. Impetuously I lean forward, grasping the hand on her lap, enfolding it between both of mine. It’s a gesture that would normally be far too forward of me, considering how very formal and reserved the principessa is, but after hearing what she’s just confided in me, I did it without thinking. She responds, to my great surprise, by clasping my hands tightly in both of hers.

  “I am so frightened to tell Luca!” she says quickly, her fingers wound around mine. “I am not brave. I ’ave tried before, to tell ’im, but I never can.”

  “But now you have to,” I say, trying not to panic. This is vital to me, to my whole life. Luca has to be made aware, immediately, now, in a phone call, of this crucial information. “Don’t you see? Now that we’ve found out about me—”

  “Sì, sì, lo so!” she says. “I know.” Tears are forming in her eyes. “Lo so bene! Ma …”

  She draws in a long breath, swallowing back the tears. Sits up straight on the seat, her hands still wrapped around mine.

  “I will go and tell ’im, but what will ’e think of me? I am so afraid!”

  I gape at her, unable to say a word. “He has to be told,” I say. “Please, as soon as possible. It’s only fair to him.” To us.

  “Luca comes ’ere to see us yesterday,” she continues softly. “I ask ’im to come. We are waiting for your parents to arrive. I think I am brave enough to tell ’im, but I do not find the courage. So I tell ’im instead about you, that you are the daughter of my ’usband, and ’e is very angry and ’e will not stay, ’e goes away. ’E says he will go to the aeroporto and fly to somewhere far away for a very long time. ’E shouts, ’e cries, my ’usband cries too. Terribile, orrendo. They are always like this, Luca and Salvatore. The shouts, the cries. Very bad. But I see one thing, very important. I see that Luca is not smoking no more. I say to ’im, ‘I am very ’appy that you do not smoke.’ And ’e says, ‘It is Violetta. She tell me not to smoke, she say it is schifoso. So I stop.’ ”

  I think about this. Luca not only gave up smoking because I didn’t like it; he told his mother that I was the reason he did it. That I was important enough to him for him to listen to me. It gives me the bravery the principessa lacks.

  “Let me tell Luca,” I offer.

  The principessa leans toward me, her blue eyes—blue as Luca’s—fixed on my face.

  “Oh, wonderful! You are good for ’im,” she says earnestly. “You ’elp ’im. ’E listens to you. I know that if you tell ’im this, ’e will listen. And then I will come to see ’im when ’e knows. Please. I am not brave like you. And Luca—ti vuole bene. Ti vuole veramente bene.”

  “He cares about you. He truly cares about you.”

  My heart fills up. I remember looking into her eyes yesterday, seeing how much she was counting on me. And I look at her son now sitting beside me, frowning, unable to imagine what message his mother might have to deliver. She rang him and told him to go to the castello and wait for me, that I was arriving with something very important to say: but he obviously hasn’t guessed—how would he?—that what I need to tell him isn’t on my own account, but on hers.

  I’ve practiced this over and over in my head, run through every conceivable way to say it. But of course, I couldn’t predict how he would react. I tried to imagine it, but that never really helps. I didn’t, for instance, picture us up here in the turret, with Luca having tried to punch the wall and then bursting into tears.

  “Did you ever wonder why you look so much like your mum?” I begin, having decided this will be a gentle way to ease into the huge revelation that’s approaching. “And not at all like your dad? When, as he says, the di Vesperi face comes down the generations, again and again. I mean, look at me! I could be Fiammetta’s twin. And you don’t look remotely like a di Vesperi.”

  His frown deepens.

  “I am happy I look like my mother,” he says, not getting where I’m going.

  I take a deep breath.

  “Your mother told me that there’s a reason you look so like her, and not at all like the principe,” I continue. “It’s because …”

  I still need to pace this. I can’t blurt it out all in one go. I do understand the principessa finding that she just couldn’t bear to say the words.

  “Luca, the thing is—we’re not related.”

  I look at him, waiting for his reaction, but I see that the words haven’t sunk in. Maybe I babbled them. Maybe it’s just too much of a shock, too impossible to believe, after all we’ve been through.

  “Luca,” I say again, “you and I are not brother and sister. We’re not related.”

  Luca’s staring at me, his features absolutely motionless, his face white as chalk. I hold my breath. Finally, his lips move, and he says:

  “But—Madonna—that is only possible if …”

  His voice trails off. He
can’t say it. I nod vehemently.

  “Your mother had an affair with someone else,” I say. “The principe isn’t your biological father.”

  The words spill out of me. The release is unbelievable; no wonder the principessa seems so tense always, so tightly wound. Carrying this secret for Luca’s whole life must have been the most intolerable burden. At least my mum and dad could share theirs together: she was alone with hers.

  The release for Luca is strong. He grabs me, pulls me toward him, embraces me so tightly that I’m half on his lap. He’s crying and laughing, his arms around me. I reach up, twine my hands around his neck, realize that I’m crying too, laughing too. We stare at each other. Luca’s palms cup my face, his thumbs stroking my jawline gently as he looks at me, and I can’t bear being so close to him and not kissing him. I pull his head down and kiss him, his face, his lips, his eyes, kissing away every single tear, which takes ages, because we’re both still crying. His eyelashes are damp on his cheeks, his mouth soft, his hair silky, his hands, sliding down my back, lifting me and settling me fully on his lap, warm now, making me shiver with excitement.

  And gradually, through the kissing, I realize that the laughter is stronger than the crying. We keep pausing just to look at each other and smile. Luca tilts his head toward me, rests his forehead on mine, whispers:

  “Violetta, Violetta … from the first moment I see you …”

  “Me too,” I whisper back. “Me too.”

  And then we kiss again, and neither of us says a word for a long, long time.

  “So!” he says, much later. We’re sitting on the floor now. The windowsill is narrow and uncomfortable. We don’t care that we may be getting splinters in our bums from the floorboards.

  We’re curled up, me sitting between Luca’s legs, his arms wrapped around my waist, mine around his. His head is leaning on mine, and he’s kissing my hair.

  “You remember that song by Jovanotti I say to you, in the river?” he asks.