The Sixteen Pleasures Page 8

  “Leave me alone,” she snaps in clear, crisp Italian. “You’re wasting your time.” She enunciates each word, as if she were speaking to a foreigner—Non mi scocciare!—leaving him in the embarrassing position of having to ask to be forgiven. But what has he done?

  She glances to the right and to the left, where a Roman soldier by Giambologna, attired in a sort of thong that exposes the buttocks entirely, hoists a struggling Sabine woman. The Sabine woman wears nothing at all.

  A little sigh escapes him involuntarily. “Forgive me,” he repeats, “for intruding. But perhaps you don’t recognize me without my umbrella?”

  She stops, turns, looks him over with gray-green eyes.

  “You’re the man with the umbrella. The mysterious stranger.”

  “Ecce!” He bows slightly. “Arrêtez cet homme. Il a volé mon parapluie.”

  She doesn’t smile. There is an invisible barrier between them. But Dottor Postiglione, who is as familiar with these invisible barriers as a locksmith is with locks, smiles. Not a deceptive smile masking ulterior motives, but a genuine expression of his sense of well-being, his pleasure in the present moment.

  “You have a way with dogs,” he says, still in English, which he speaks with a slight British accent. “I was very impressed.”

  “Yes, I have a German shepherd,” she replies in Italian. “He reminded me of my dog.”

  “A wonderful breed. We always had shepherds. My favorite was named Ovid, after the poet.”

  She says nothing, and he feels the need to explain. “Ovid—the poet, not the dog—was born in Sulmona. He was a Paligno, one of the mountain people, very independent. They’re the ones who come down to the cities to play their bagpipes just before Christmas.”

  “Why are you telling me these things?” She continues to speak Italian.

  “Because,” he says in English, “Sulmona is my home, too. It’s poor but very beautiful.” His home is not, in fact, Sulmona but Montemuro. But it’s close enough—why split hairs?—and besides, who’s ever heard of Montemuro, which is a mountain village the size of a small neighborhood with one of most things and none of some things: one delicatessen, one dairy, one bakery, and so on. One bar. One restaurant. One cartoleria, now owned by his brother. If he had a picture, he would show her: the steep hillsides, the naked peaks above the timberline, the converted olive oil factory in which his parents still live with his sister, a widow, and her children, and a cat and tame pigeons and two dogs; the cartoleria with its reams of different papers, its mechanical pencils and ballpoint pens and drawing instruments and school supplies.

  “I can’t produce blue-blooded ancestors to impress you,” he says, quoting Ovid. “My father’s plain middle class.”

  Her silence is thoughtful rather than hostile, but like a driver who’s gone off the road onto the shoulder, he gives the steering wheel a little jerk.

  “And what do you call your dog?”

  “Si chiama Bruno.”

  “Bruno? An Italian German shepherd, how wonderful.”

  “Si,” she says. “È molto intelligente. He can open the fence gates, so we have to keep them locked. And he’s learned to open the porch door from the outside, so he can come and go as he pleases. We have a husky, too, my father’s dog.”

  It soon becomes clear that she is as determined to speak Italian as he is to speak English. More determined. He can feel not only the strength of her will, but its shape as well, like someone—an attractive someone—shoving past him in a crowded bus. If he resists her it is not to prevent her from getting past him but simply to feel her shoving.

  “Arrêtez cet homme,” he repeats, giving the conversational wheel another little correction. “Il a volé mon parapluie.” And modulating through French to Italian, he surrenders graciously: “Che cosa . . . What on earth prompted you to say such a thing? I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind.” There is in this surrender nothing humiliating. It’s a distinctly pleasant moment, as if the sun were about to emerge from behind a cloud and illuminate the piazza, as it often does, even in winter, in Florence.

  “It’s a long story,” she says, smiling.

  The invisible barrier having been removed, he ventures the familiar form: “Ti vai un caffè?”

  “Perché no?”

  Their first cup of coffee is strong and sweet, like a handshake or a promise.

  She’s very funny, he thinks, and full of surprises, and Dottor Postiglione is not a man easily surprised by young women: “Arrêtez cet homme. Il a volé mon parapluie.” The phrase rises to his lips again, bringing a smile with it.

  “It’s a phrase from my French grammar,” she explains. “It was the only thing I could think of when you spoke to me in French. I’ve found that its very useful.”

  “How so?”

  She tells him a story about a train, and some American women, and a wonderful dinner.

  “Remarkable. I’ve never cared for the French myself, but they do eat well, there’s no point in denying it.”

  There is a lull in the conversation, and the dottore orders two more coffees.

  “So, you’ve come to Italia in our hour of need.”

  “Yes. I’m a book conservator. I thought I might be able to do something useful.”

  “And you’ve found satisfactory accommodations?”

  “Not exactly. In fact I’ll probably have to leave soon. The pensione I’m in is too expensive, and I have nowhere else to go. I have friends, but I don’t know how to contact them. Besides, it’s been a long time.”

  “Surely your colleagues will accommodate you. I Tatti has plenty of money.”

  She shrugs.

  “What about that clever fellow you were translating for? Only an American would have thought of drying books in the tobacco barns. Surely he has some influence.”

  He can see from her reaction that something has passed between them.

  She touches her cheekbone with the tip of her finger and pulls down gently, exposing the white of her eye: “He’s not half as clever as he makes himself out to be. He doesn’t know a thing about book conservation, to begin with, and the idea to use the tobacco barns was the driver’s, not his. The driver ought to get the credit.”

  Dottor Postiglione adds sugar to his coffee and stirs. “That’s something that ought to be rectified.”

  She shrugs her shoulders again: “Non vale il pene.”

  In any relationship there are decisive moments, often apparently inconsequential but which in reality determine the future, just as a rock or a fallen tree up in the mountains may determine the course of a stream. This is, in its way, such a moment. She blushes; not a gradual flushing of the face and neck, but a violent rush of pigment, as if someone had thrown a bucket of cinnabar red in her face, enough for a large canvas by Titian. Dottor Postiglione has witnessed many blushes, but none of this magnitude. He looks away, down at his coffee, out the window at a troop of schoolboys following a priest across the piazza. He can’t help but smile at this little surprise, this lapsus linguae in one so proud of her Italian, a gaping hole in her linguistic armor. She has surprised him again, and for the first time in years he is at a loss for words, as if he were one of the schoolboys approaching the café.

  “Giacomo,” he calls to the waiter, “due caffè, per favore.”

  Giacomo, who has been listening, smiles as he fills the espresso holder. The entire bar is silent. An old man rattles a copy of La Nazione, which has been printed in Bologna since the flood. A young man holds six small cups on a tray, motionless, waiting for change.

  “Magari, Signorina, it’s a mistake anyone could make, believe me.”

  “It’s not the first time,” she says, pushing away the fresh cup of coffee that Giacomo has placed in front of her. “And probably won’t be the last. But I can’t drink any more coffee. Really, this is my third cup.”

  “I
thought it might help.”

  “I know what you mean. It’s something I used to say when I first came to Italy. It always had quite an effect on people.”

  “Yes,” he says, “understandably. There’s a famous story about an Englishman who once asked for marmalade with contraceptives.”

  Once the stream of conversation has been diverted to this dry bed, it begins to flow unimpeded.

  She looks out the window at the troop of schoolboys. “Why do Italian men touch themselves so often?”

  “Touch themselves?” Dottor Postiglione holds his cup at his lips. “What do you mean?”

  “Touch themselves. You know.”

  “Sciocchezza! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do too. Look at those schoolboys.”

  The schoolboys, all in uniform, are heading toward the bar, shepherded by the priest who is holding up his long cassock to keep it from dragging in the mud. Like tourists in the habit of touching their billfolds, the boys seem to make periodic checks of their male organs.

  “Che bestialità!” Postiglione is discomfited.

  “Even the priest. Look.”

  “He’s just adjusting his cassock.”

  “That’s what I mean. And you, too. I’ve noticed.”

  “Madonna! It’s from sitting at a table with a beautiful woman. A man has to make certain adjustments, it’s true. But tell me something. Where did you learn to talk like this?”

  “From my mother.”

  “How interesting. Tell me about your mother.”

  “She loved everything Italian.”

  “Did she come to Italy?”

  “Yes. She came by herself one summer, and we then spent a year here together when I was fifteen. She was the director of a program for American students.”

  “And that’s how you learned Italian?”

  “Yes. I went to the Liceo Morgagni, and then I came back to do the ultimo anno with my class.”

  “And your father? He didn’t object? To your mother’s coming, I mean.”

  “No. I don’t think he was very happy about it, but he didn’t object.”

  “What do you suppose your mother was looking for?”

  “I’ve never been sure. Fatal charm, I suppose.”

  “Carisma fatale? How wonderful. Yes, I suppose Italy has always been a refuge for Anglo-Saxons. You come to taste the sweet life, to swim in the nude, to drink the wine, to live close to nature, to experiment. Everything is permitted. Love is no sin.”

  “Yes.” She seems to be on the edge of saying more, but the troop of schoolboys bursts into the bar, calling for coffee and hot chocolate.

  “Have you studied English?” Dottor Postiglione inquires of one of the boys. (All Italian schoolchildren study either English or French.)

  “Si, si. ‘An Italian friend is looking for a good restaurant where they prepare typical food.’”

  Others join in with phrases from their schoolbooks: “At this restaurant they prepare good hamburgers and excellent beefsteaks.” “At the white restaurant with the red door the prices are very reasonable.”

  “Boys, boys,” the priest calls after them. “Don’t bother the patrons with your nonsense.”

  “No trouble at all, Padre,” says the dottore. “My friend is an americana. She’s here to help with the books that have been damaged.”

  “In that case,” says the priest, “we should give her a song, a typical American song. What do you say, boys? How about ‘Home on the Range’?”

  The boys crowd around the americana and after several false starts manage to get through the first verse and two choruses of “Home on the Range”:

  ’ome, ’ome on the range

  Where the deer and the antelope play

  Where seldom is ’eard

  A discouraging word

  And the skies are not cloudy all day.

  The americana applauds enthusiastically.

  “Just like home?” Dottor Postiglione asks her.

  “Just like home,” she says.

  *

  I’ve never been superstitious, but my heart sank when Dottor Postiglione suggested that I look for a position at the Carmelite convent in the Piazza San Pier Maggiore, at the end of Borgo Pinti, not far from the apartment that Mama and I had lived in.

  “The abbess is my cousin, and I happen to know that they will need help with their precious library. I can’t imagine that they managed to remove the books in time.”

  Surely, I thought, the need for conservators in Florence was great enough that I wouldn’t be reduced to living in a convent, something I could imagine only as a last resort. Look at the good work we’d accomplished already. The disasters averted at Prato and Pistoia, the thousands of books being dried in the tobacco barns in Perugia, and now in Arezzo too. And yet, although I was determined not to spend another day with Professor Eugene Chapin how could I go back to I Tatti and ask for another assignment? What would I say? How would I explain?

  “But I’m not at all religious,” I said. “I haven’t been to church since . . . I can’t remember. And then it was a Protestant church. Surely they wouldn’t want someone like me around.”

  “Of course, of course. But my cousin is a remarkable woman, a woman with a late vocation. A woman with a gift for business, very successful in the world, lots of money. Very beautiful, too. I couldn’t have been more surprised when she decided to become a nun. I think you would find it very interesting. I’ll arrange everything, but it will take two or three days. Do you have enough money to last that long?”

  Without waiting for an answer he took out a pair of glasses, put them on, and wrote something on the back of a business card, like a doctor writing out a prescription.

  “Call me at this number in two days.”

  “But what would I wear?”

  “What would you wear?” He laughed. “What does it matter? It’s not a salon or a fashion show, or a fancy restaurant.”

  Translation: There aren’t any men around.

  “I mean, would I have to wear a habit? And a . . . a . . . a . . . how do you say . . . ?” I was looking for the word for wimple, which I tried to describe with my hands.

  “Un soggolo,” he said, smiling to express his satisfaction.

  I noticed that Dottor Postiglione himself was impeccably dressed. Nothing flashy, no pointy shoes that Italian men are so fond of, but everything handsome. A silk tie. Starched collar. Topcoat over his shoulder like a cape. Gold ring. Gold watch. All sparkling. He looked perfectly fresh and comfortable in the uncomfortable bar chair. He knew just how to sit in it.

  “There are some remarkable frescoes, too, that are going to need attention. I’ve offered to look at them myself in the past, but of course no men are allowed.”

  “What are they?”

  “No one really knows anything about them except that they were painted by a woman, Lucia de’ Medici. Lucia practically bankrolled the convent in the seventeenth century. She was a remarkable woman too. But I don’t know anyone except my cousin who has actually seen the frescoes, and she’s not very communicative on the subject.”

  “Do you talk to her often?”

  “Not often. Two or three times a year, since she’s become the abbess. Before that, almost never. It’s a contemplative order, you know. They don’t have the sisters scurrying all over the city like the Franciscans. And they have no telephone. You have to write in advance and make arrangements, and then you speak through a grille. It can be quite disconcerting.”

  I was still searching for (and suggesting) possible alternatives when Dottor Postiglione asked Giacomo for the time, though he had a watch on his wrist, and rose to leave.

  “Maybe I could find something in the Archivio di Stato.”

  “Signorina, you know I will do what I can to help you, but nothing is eas
y, and I may not be able to arrange it in any case, unless you wish to become an angelo di fango and sleep in a boxcar behind the railroad station. If you had money or if I had money”—he smiled—“or if you could stay with some of your friends . . . then it would be easy. But without money nothing is easy. Coraggio.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to seem ungrateful.” After all, he was under no obligation to help me. What bothered me, I think, was the feeling that once again I had ventured out into the world of men, the rough-and-tumble world of adult sexuality, only to fail, to be found wanting, inadequate. And now I was being sent away to a safe place where I wouldn’t hurt myself or make a nuisance of myself.

  Jed came to my room again that night, about nine o’clock. He’d been drinking and had a bottle of scotch with him but was still coherent. And horny. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pried his shoes off without untying them, and then he poured some scotch into a used water glass on the table next to the bed.

  “You’ll ruin your shoes that way,” I said.

  It wasn’t too late to change my mind. Actually I hadn’t even made up my mind, hadn’t burned any bridges. In fact, the sound of music and laughter in the lounge had been tempting me to go downstairs, where there would be dancing and word games, at which I always did well. Nothing irrevocable had been done, I told myself, but I felt unclean, used, and the body sitting on the bed undressing itself seemed particularly repulsive, like a large, smelly sack of garbage that had somehow come alive.

  He swallowed some scotch and handed the glass to me. “Have a real drink,” he said.

  What was I afraid of? Poverty? Chastity? Obedience? Not really. It was boredom that terrified me. There were too many blank spaces in my image of convent life. I couldn’t fill them in. I was like the girls who used to come for a sleepover when I was a teenager and panicked when they learned we didn’t have a TV. All of a sudden the evening stretched out before them like an uninhabited desert.

  Not having a TV was Mama’s idea. She was scornful of people who didn’t have sufficient inner resources to get through an evening without a TV to distract them, to fill their heads with junk. But by inner resources she meant the ability to amuse oneself by reading a book or writing a letter, or playing the piano or the guitar, or making something, or drawing a picture or doing a puzzle. She didn’t mean meditation or praying or saying the rosary, or whatever nuns do to fill up the day. And the night. It was simply beyond my comprehension. Dottor Postiglione had said it was a contemplative order. So much the worse. What did they contemplate? I had read, in my Italian class, Dante’s Paradiso, and our teacher, Professor Martelli, had tried to bully us into liking it as much as we liked the Inferno. Eager to please, I’d done my best, and for a while it seemed to be working, but the effort was too great, and in the end I had to admit that like most readers with whom I’ve compared notes, I found it excruciatingly boring. Screamingly boring. You couldn’t pay me to reread it.