“Up,” I said automatically. “I’m afraid I did, Pete.”

  “Up.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to correct you.”

  “No. You tell me when I say it wrong. I must not forget.” His voice rose. “I will not forget!”

  I had heard that note in a child’s voice before. I said casually, “I hope you won’t, because it’s great to be able to speak two languages. I wish I could. Tell you what; you teach me Italian, and I’ll correct you when you go wrong with English. It’ll be harder for you than for me.”

  His face lit up like a candle. “Are you not going away?”

  “Well…I’ll be here for a while, I guess. Till I stop throwing out.”

  He could laugh at himself; I suspected it was a rare quality in a Morandini. Then he sobered. “Is it in here”—he pointed—“that you hurt?”

  “Right.”

  “Was it—it is that—I hit you there.”

  “The football?” I managed to laugh. “Oh, no, Pete, it wasn’t that. What kind of receiver would I be if a ball in the midsection made me sick? My brothers would have kicked me off the team if I let a little thing like that bother me.”

  “Tell me about the brothers. Where do they play the football?”

  I had to admit they weren’t with the Raiders or the Redskins or even the Pats. It was a blow, but Pete took it bravely. We were deep in a discussion of last year’s playoffs when the door opened, without a knock of warning. He flinched, literally and actually, one hand lifting as if to ward off a blow.

  Standing in the doorway was the woman who had brought him to the sitting room. She had also helped put me to bed. The contessa had addressed her as Emilia.

  She touched a switch and a light went on, somewhere in the galactic reaches of the ceiling. The boy had been sitting on the side of the bed. Now he shrank back into the shadow of the curtains, but the woman saw him and spoke to him in the same harshly accented Italian the man at the gate had used.

  “She says for me to get off the bed,” Pete whispered. “She says I should not be here.”

  “Tell her I want you to stay.”

  When he did so, the woman’s scowl darkened. Her eyebrows had not been plucked within recorded history. Some of the hairs were so long they curled back on themselves, and others stood out like the antennae of an insect. She turned on her heel and marched out, leaving the door open.

  The boy hastily got down off the bed. “She will bring the contessa. I go now.”

  I didn’t try to detain him. I was feeling queasy again. “Come back and see me later, will you, Pete?”

  “You want me?”

  “I want you very much. Please.”

  “Okay.” As he spoke he was edging toward the door. “If I don’t come, it is that they lock me in.”

  He heard the approaching footsteps before I did, and was out the door like a flash.

  I lay back against the pillow, trying to control the rising tides of nausea and indignation. It would be foolish of me to overreact. Any boy that age needs discipline, and locking him in his room was a comparatively mild punishment. No doubt the contessa favored good, old-fashioned methods of child-rearing. I might not agree with those methods, but they did not constitute child abuse.

  I had been teaching for three years. Not long—but long enough. If, in that length of time, a teacher hasn’t caught on to the tricks of her students, she had better find another profession. I knew all the devious wiles the young devise to win sympathy. I knew there were usually—not always, usually—two sides to every question. So why did this situation bother me?

  When the contessa appeared and I pleaded the culprit’s case, she confounded me by agreeing that he should not be punished for disobedience. “I did not actually forbid him to see you,” she said. “I did not suppose you would want him here.”

  I could believe that. She didn’t want him. As she stood there by the bed, she looked as calm and perfect as a wax mannequin in the window of an expensive shop. The folds of her soft wool crepe dress fell in perfect symmetry around her perfect size-six body.

  However, when I began making polite noises about getting out of her bed, her house, and her life, she responded with unexpected warmth. “We will discuss that tomorrow. Now you must rest. Call Emilia if you want anything. She understands English, though she speaks it poorly. You are better, I think, but you must not take unnecessary risks.”

  That was my second chance to set the matter straight. I could have done it then with a minimum of awkwardness—a casual reference to the hazards of travel. I smiled wanly and told her she was very kind.

  Pete didn’t come back. I spent the rest of the day dozing, in between trips to the neatly appointed bathroom adjoining my room. Not surprisingly, I did not sleep soundly that night. I woke several times, thinking I had heard voices talking or laughing. But when I went to the door and opened it, there was no sound at all.

  III

  My malady turned out to be one of those twenty-four-hour bugs. It lasted just long enough to encourage the contessa’s delusion, and then cleared up as rapidly as it had begun. By noon the next day I felt fine. I wondered what she would think when the “morning sickness” didn’t appear on schedule. Ah, well, these things are unpredictable.

  To say that I had reached a conscious, considered decision about how to resolve the dilemma in which I found myself would not be strictly accurate. At some point I simply knew what I was going to do.

  Nothing.

  It wasn’t my fault if the woman had jumped to the wrong conclusions. The purpose for which I had come to Italy was now accomplished, and if it had raised more questions than it had resolved, that was another problem—my problem. I only lie to other people; I’m reasonably honest with myself. I knew my real reason for visiting Bart’s childhood home had nothing to do with his aunt’s needs.

  I had known him such a short time. He was already fading, slipping back into a limbo of nonexistence. For weeks after he died I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing his face, sharp-cut as a colored photograph. Now the image was only a featureless blur. I had never really accepted his death. That, said Dr. Baldwin pontifically, was one of my problems.

  So I knew that. I knew what the other problems were. Unlike the patients in those super-psychology books, I had not solved the problem by identifying it. How I envied those patients, and their moment of truth: “Hey, that’s right, Doc, my dad hit me on the head at nine-fourteen on the morning of December 10, 1965.” Click, snap, crack, all the pieces whiz into place, and the patient is whole. I knew what had hit me; but there had been no click, snap, crack. Maybe here, in Bart’s world, the pieces would start to fit together. That was why I had come—not to console a bereaved old woman, but to heal myself. Whether the visit had done any good remained to be seen. It would be a long time before I knew. But I had made the gesture, and now I could go. Once I got home, I would write the contessa and tell her about my miscarriage. I might even have the courage to tell her the truth.

  One thing psychologists tell you is true—any decision, even a wrong decision, is better than none. I stood at the window of my palatial room that bright noontime, feeling an incredible surge of relief.

  As if in approval the spring weather presented me with a seductive picture of what Italy had to offer. The sky was the soft, clear blue Fra Angelico used for the robes of his Madonnas, with a few plump clouds hovering like fluffy-winged cherubs. The surrounding hills, decked in young green, resembled one of those dreamy Tuscan landscapes that form the setting for so many paintings of the Cinquecento. Cutting across the foreground was the wall enclosing the villa and its gardens. It should not have been there; nothing straight and geometric should have marred that scene of soft color and gentle rolling curves. In the garden below my window I could make out the pattern of formal beds and walks. Shrubs heavy with rose-pink and scarlet blossoms flung their boughs across the weedy, graveled paths. My windows were closed; Emilia probably had antiquated ideas about the dangers of fresh air. I wrestled with the catch, opened the windows, and stepped out onto a small, iron-railed balcony.

  Immediately below was a flagstoned terrace with a fountain at one end. The fountain was dry; in its center a winged figure, streaked with verdigris and bird droppings, stood on tiptoe, offering a bowl to some dead god.

  I left the windows open and was about to turn back into the room when the shrubs at the far end of the garden shivered and shook. Through them came the man I had seen at the gate. He thrust the branches aside with a careless sweep of the stick he was carrying; petals dropped, covering the ground with a silky pink carpet.

  Dark clothes, black scowl on his face, gray cap pulled low over his brow, he was as unseemly in that gentle pastel garden as an ink stain on a Chinese watercolor. He seemed to be pulling something heavy and resistant; his left arm was stretched out behind him, and when I looked more closely I saw he was holding a heavy chain. He gave it a jerk and snapped out a word that sounded like an epithet rather than a command.

  I had forgotten about the dog. It emerged from the low-hanging branches in a sudden rush, snarling. It was as big as a calf, all black except for a white patch on the chest. The man struck it over the head with his stick. The dog stopped, cringing. Another blow; a harsh command; slowly, grudgingly, the animal dropped down and sat still. The handler’s thick lips stretched in a smile. The next command must have been “Heel.” He walked off, swinging his stick, and the dog fell in behind him. They crossed the garden, treading indiscriminately on gravel and on budding flowers, and passed out of sight.

  I let my breath out. It had been a nasty little scene. The dog wasn’t a Doberman, it was even bigger, with a massive chest and huge jaws. Had I but known such a creature lurked behind the wall I wouldn’t have been so quick to climb over it.

  But the man was worse than the dog. I had known a lot of dogs in my time; every stray in the neighborhood gravitated to our house, with or without assistance from Mike and Jim. “Hey, look, Ma, he followed me home.” Many had been abandoned, some had been mistreated, a few nurtured a deep and justified suspicion of human beings, but after a few days of good food and kindness they had been slobbering all over us and trying to climb on our laps. I suppose there are some psychotic dogs, just as there are some psychotic people, but in general dogs (and people) aren’t vicious unless they are consistently, thoroughly abused, over a long period of time. No doubt the human brute justified his behavior under the pretense of “training” the dog. It wasn’t training, it was sadism, ugly and inexcusable.

  I had been invited to lunch with the contessa—a formal invitation, written in a delicate, precise hand on notepaper bearing a gilt crest and delivered on a silver tray by Emilia. I’d have dressed up for the occasion if I had had anything appropriate, but I didn’t—only the suit I had worn the day before. It had been sponged and pressed; my lingerie and blouse had been neatly laundered. Even my shoes had been shined—and they needed it. The nightgown I had been wearing obviously belonged to the contessa. She was about my size, but a few inches taller; I had to lift the trailing silken skirts when I walked. I had never seen clothes like hers except in windows of fancy shops in New York and Boston. According to Bart, the Morandinis were as poor as church mice, but I was beginning to suspect that “poor” was a relative term. Yet the grounds were untended, the staff inadequate for a place of this size…. It was an anomaly, and not the least of the ones that puzzled me.

  After I got dressed I stood around waiting for someone to come and escort me to the presence. Nobody came, and after a while I got very bored. I had already inspected the room. It was interesting, like something in a museum. The bed was a magnificent piece of furniture, every inch of its surface carved into intricate patterns, including the posts. For all its splendor it was not very comfortable. The mattress was thin and hard, and a musty smell pervaded it. The dark-green hangings had been looped back, but the effect was rather like lying in a cave whose entrance was fringed with thick grass, a cave in which something had died long ago, leaving a ghostly aroma of decay. This might be the state bedroom, where a long line of counts had breathed their last. I wasn’t sure of that, though. Villas and palaces were not my ambience; for all I knew, this could be a minor guest chamber reserved for spinster aunts and unmarried daughters.

  The room appeared scantily furnished, but that may have been because it was so big. A huge armoire of heavy dark wood, summoning up Poesian images of hidden corpses—it was large enough to hold half a dozen unwanted wives; a couple of straight chairs with cushioned seats and backs carved so vigorously a person couldn’t lean back in them; a single overstuffed chair, covered in faded chintz; a Persian rug or two; a few tables; and a desk-secretary inlaid in ivory—that was about it. The bookcase section of the secretary actually contained books. The glass doors were locked.

  I was extremely bored by that time, or I wouldn’t have tried to open the glass doors. It was not polite to investigate cupboards and drawers in other people’s houses. My mother had drilled that into me at an early age, after she took me to visit Aunt Mary and found me removing that lady’s long underwear from a drawer and festooning it over the furniture. “Look but don’t touch….” No wonder I had not been an outstanding student. My juvenile mind had been so stuffed with aphorisms and admonitions, by a variety of mentors, there was no room left in it for facts.

  Finally I opened the door and looked timidly out. The corridor was completely unfamiliar. I hadn’t paid much attention to my surroundings the day before, as I was towed up the stairs and thrust into bed. I saw closed doors and a few odds and ends of furniture, but no stairs. I went looking for them.

  I was lost before I had gone fifty feet. I’m good at getting lost, but in this case there was some excuse. That house was big. One door looked as if it might lead to a landing and the stairs I wanted. But I had not gone far into the regions beyond when I knew I was on the wrong track. This part of the house seemed older than the rest; the ceiling was lower, the windows were shuttered. It was very quiet. I was about to turn back when I heard something that stirred the hairs on the back of my neck—the sound of someone laughing.

  Impulsively I started forward. A door opened and closed, and a moment later Emilia came around a turn in the corridor. She was carrying a tray covered with a white cloth. When she saw me, it shifted in her hands with a clash of china and silver. She recovered herself and hurried toward me, almost running.

  She did know some English. She had not bothered using it before, but in that moment she found the words she wanted. “Go back—out from here! Go—now—quick, quick.”

  She kept on walking as she hissed the words, the tray held out in front of her like a weapon. I could have stood my ground, or tried to get past her, but either would have been awkward—and of course I had no business being there in the first place. I let her nudge me away. I must have imagined that laughter. It had only been an echo down the corridors of time….

  She was careful to close the door after we left the empty wing. Another gesture indicated the direction I was to follow. She stayed behind me, prodding me with the tray when I hesitated.

  The route took us back to the corridor on which my room was located. A few feet farther on, beyond my door, was a wide landing flooded with light, and the stairs. I had gone in the wrong direction.

  At this point Emilia decided it was safe to stop herding me away from the forbidden regions. She preceded me down the stairs. The surroundings began to look vaguely familiar. I had crossed that vast expanse of white marble the day before. This must be the entrance hall, and the door opposite the foot of the stairs, flanked by windows, must be the main entrance. The hall was shell-shaped, with fluted niches where plump nymphs cowered, trying to draw their scanty draperies around their nakedness. The effect was more pathetic than erotic. They looked cold. The temperature in the vast unheated room was arctic, and the icy whiteness of floor and walls made it feel even lower.

  Then I saw something I had not noticed the other day on my trek from the kitchen across the back of the hall. Between the stairs and the front door an inlaid pattern had been set into the floor—the only color in the room, shockingly, vividly brilliant against the ice-white marble. In my proletarian ignorance I assumed the colored shapes were also of marble, natural or tinted, but as I was to learn, they were semiprecious stones. The deep blood-red of jasper, malachite green as summer, pink and yellow agate formed a spray of roses growing from a central stem. Each petal and leaf had been cut separately; the shading, from soft rose-pink to dark amethyst, created a stunningly realistic bouquet. Bart had given me red roses…. They must have had a meaning for him, beyond the conventional language of flowers—red roses for passion, for consummated love.

  The door to the left of the stairs was the one I did remember; it led into the room where the contessa had received me. Emilia paused only long enough to deposit the tray on a carved chest before she opened the door and indicated I should enter.

  A small table had been opened out and set with crystal and china. I decided I wasn’t high-class enough to rate the dining room, or baronial hall, or whatever it was called, but in this I did my hostess an injustice. This was her favorite room, where she spent most of her time. After I had seen the rest of the house I sympathized with her choice. The huge formal salones were cold and dismal; most had been closed up, to save money and labor.

  The contessa was seated on the brocade love seat leafing through a magazine. On the table before her were a decanter and two wineglasses. She greeted me with a cool smile that quickly changed to a look of concern. “Perhaps you should not have come downstairs. You are quite pale.”

  “Thank you, I feel fine.” I had no intention of telling her what had upset me. It had been nothing more than an auditory hallucination—and not the first one, either. But, said a voice deep down in my mind: If there was no one there, why was Emilia carrying a tray of food?

  “I’m afraid I got lost,” I went on, squelching the inner voice. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27