Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (79 page)

“I have two more cookies, that’s all,” Eleanora said grumpily.

“Give them to me. And don’t save idiotic things like that. It’s ridiculous.”

“All
right!
” The child yielded the other couple of cookies, much the worse for wear.

“And don’t presume to look at me like that.”

The mother returned to her place at the table, while the child made a long face. Gianni said, teasingly,
“Comica, lei.”

“Non sono comica!”
the little girl flashed back.

“Si.”

“No!”

“That will do, both of you,” the Principessa said, but by this time Eleanora was laughing; Gianni had brought her out of her sulks. “How do you feel. Benno?” Francesca asked her husband, who shrugged and said, “Ah …
bene …
”

“Don’t you think you had better get to work?”

He yawned, belatedly putting a hand over his mouth. “What time is it?”

I saw the Principe reach into a vest pocket and then, making a wry face, took his hand away. “You won’t find your watch,
caro
,” the Principessa said.

“No, perhaps not,” he said sadly. “It is gone forever.”

“Then let me buy you a new one,” she said impatiently. “You keep reaching in your pocket. I don’t like to see it.”

She made a little sound of annoyance between her teeth, but then gave him a fond and forgiving look. “Never mind, never mind, it’s all right, my dear,” she said, and took his hand for a minute. Benedetto, reluctantly it seemed to me, threw down his napkin and stood up.

“All right, I go,” he said, and gave his wife a peck on the cheek, waved to the rest of us and strode off. Francesca, when he was gone, explained to me that her husband worked for La Nazione, the newspaper, but that he had taken the morning off because of a headache.

The elder Monteverdi had appreciated his son’s discarded newssheet; now he rose and, bowing to me, said he had been most happy to meet me, that he would see me again, and now he was going to read the day’s news. “Very bad, I am afraid … it always is …”

He touched his wife’s shoulder gently, as he passed her, and made his way across the lawn. I saw how tall he was, what a firm, strong-looking man, erect and almost soldierly in his bearing. And then he vanished into the house: a short while later I saw him sitting at an open upstairs window facing the garden, turning the pages of the paper.

“More coffee, signorina?” the Principessa asked.

“Yes, please.”

My cup was filled. I said,
“Grazie, signora,”
and looked at the people who were sitting blithely in the shade of the large, flowered umbrella, taking their ease at twelve in the morning. I was puzzled at their indolence. Signore Predelli had given out that they were very poor. Surely Benedetto didn’t support the whole kit and kaboodle with his job on a newspaper? Yet none of them appeared to have a care in the world.

I decided that they must live rent-free, that my Aunt Mercedes had demanded nothing of them, and that their sole concern was food and clothing. And perhaps Benedetto, who gambled, didn’t always lose, but brought home an occasional bonanza. In any event, they seemed casual and worry-free; perhaps with the exception of Francesca, who had, if not a lean and hungry look, at least exhibited vague signs of discontent in her beautiful eyes. She seemed to me a woman who would have liked the freedom to be imperious. And in such case might be quite a demanding sort. In fact I thought I detected a certain vulgarity about her, a kind of little finger crooked in defense of origins that might not be as high-born as those of the Monteverdis.

But she was certainly wonderful looking. And had given a great deal of her beauty to her child, Eleanora, whose hair, in the bright sun, shone like gold. The child sat on the grass, her dreaming eyes almost vacant. Not stupidly so, but turned inward, as if she saw things the rest of us didn’t. For a moment I wondered if she was not simply fey, but faintly retarded. There was an un-childishness about her: for a bizarre moment I was reminded of a midget, those old young persons whose deceptive, beguiling charm masks hardcore reality … they are as pragmatic and cruel as the rest of us, though we long to cuddle them.

And then she smiled up at me, her adorable mouth pink and pretty. “You are not drinking your coffee,” she said.

“Eleanora, that is impolite,” the Principessa said, but not sharply. Turning to me she asked me to tell her something about myself. “Are you in school still?”

“Oh no. I’ve been out of college for three years. I have a job, with a publishing house, which I like very much.”

“Publishing?” she repeated. “That means literature.”

“Not really,” I answered, smiling. “I don’t work for a very prestigious firm, I’m afraid. But of course I have my small ambitions. Literature, in fact, is very much on my mind. Maybe sooner or later I’ll graduate from the lower depths.”

“You are an admirer of fine writers?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Are you acquainted with our Italian writers?”

“To some extent yes. I’ve read all of Moravia. And — ”

“Moravia? That’s a good start. I read and re-read him. Some day I would like to meet him. He knows something about women, that man.” She smiled wryly. “Most men know little about women.”

“I thought Italian men knew women very well,” I put in, and saw her amused glance. “The outside, not the inside,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “I have read about the movement in your country, Feminine Liberation. It will be a long time, I fear, before Italian women can voice their frustrations. Bed and kitchen is the fate of women here. Bearing and raising children. Cooking. And closing their eyes to mistresses kept in charming little apartments.”

“But we can get divorces now,” Francesca said, popping a cube of sugar into her mouth.

The Principessa shook her head. “It won’t work,” she said positively. “The man doesn’t want a divorce. He wants a mistress, not another wife.” She swept me with an ironic glance. “They want their cake and eat it too, and it will remain that way. Divorce? No, signorina, not as in America. Things will stay the way they have for hundreds of years, because no one is really hurt by the arrangement system. It is only a slap at religion. To anger the poor Pope. But it doesn’t mean anything.”

She crushed out her cigarette and Gianni, laughing, said his mother was right. “We are slow to change,” he told me. “And we don’t really want to.”

“Why should we?” Francesca asked. “Everything is fine the way it always was. I have nothing to complain about.”

“If you can keep your husband from the gaming tables, you should have nothing to complain about,” the Principessa said in a hard voice, and there was an angry engagement of eyes between the two women. But the daughter-in-law didn’t say anything; she simply looked away, a little flushed, and in order to break a sudden uncomfortable silence I said, “I don’t know whether you were told, but my aunt Mercedes left me some money in her will. It was a great surprise, because I’d never met her.”

“What a pity,” the Principessa said, ignoring the mention of my bequest. “We knew her for many years. She was an unusual woman, for an American.”

I had the distinct feeling that she had meant to underline the word “American,” and that her almost instant addition to it only served to stress it more.

“By that I mean,” she went on, “she was almost
not
American, you see. She spoke Italian fluently, and preferred our language. She was not by any means an intellectual, but she was a well-informed woman. We had many talks together.”

“So did we, she and I,” Gianni said, and Eleanora piped up.

“And me too.”

The Principessa laughed. “It’s true. The signora liked children. Gianni and Eleanora.”

Gianni blew smoke, from a small cigar he was smoking, into the air. When he looked back at his mother his face was angered.
“Scusi,”
he said, and I knew he was put out. “I stopped being a child many years ago. Or haven’t you realized that, Mama?”

“Perhaps,” she said coolly. “Perhaps.”

I looked from him to his mother, and then back at him again. Well, I thought, the Principessa was fascinating, I had to admire her poise, grace and aplomb … but I certainly wouldn’t want her for a mother. I put a finger through a smoke ring Gianni was blowing, and in this way showed that I sided with the son, not the mother. It was not the generation gap … it was the casual cruelty with which she had aligned him with a little girl, called him, for all practical purposes, a child.

“Now we are engaged,” he said, as the smoke ring circled round my finger.

“Don’t be too sure of it,” I answered, and Eleanora, enchanted, tried to spiral the next smoke ring. But it was an imperfect one, and she failed.

He laughed, and took a sideswipe at her hair. She crawled into his lap. “But you know, Gianni,” she said, “It’s time to paint.”

“Paint? Sure it’s time to paint. Why don’t you buy a whip, little slave-driver?”

“Whip? I wouldn’t hurt you, you know that, Gianni.”

He growled something and pretended to bite her nose off. “Are you a painter?” I asked, and he said yes, it was the best he could do. “But that’s wonderful.” I said, and he laughed. “You tell my family that,” he said, and pushed the little girl off his lap. “
Per favore
, tell them that.”

“My son has a talent, yes,” the Principessa said, rather stiffly, and I got up, deciding I’d lingered long enough. I told them I must go, that my hostess was expecting me. Gianni got up too, and said he’d walk me over to the other house. The little girl, scrambling up at the same time, announced her intention of coming with us. I thanked the Principessa for the coffee and rolls.

“I hope to see you again, signora,” I said, and she held out a hand.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, signorina.”

And then the three of us walked across the grass.

“So you are going to stay here for a while,” Gianni said, as we walked through the dividing gate.

“Yes, and of course I’m delighted.”

On the other side of the gate, two people were kneeling in the earth. Gianni held up a hand. “Pietro,” he said cheerfully,
“Come sta?”

“Bene, signore …”

They stood up, like militiamen. A man, nudging the boy who was with him, walked over to us, the other following. Gianni held out a hand, where upon the other man, hastily wiping one of his on an earth-stained blue smock, took the slender hand.

He bowed low over it.

“This is our gardener, Pietro,” Gianni said to me. “Pietro, signorina Barbara Loomis is the niece of the Contessa. She will stay here with the signora Wadley.”

The gardener touched his finger to his forehead.

“Buon giorno, signorina”

“Buon giorno, Pietro.”

“This is my son, Emilio.”

“Buon giorno, Emilio”

The boy was only about fourteen. He bobbed his head, mumbled something and then stood silent, a little flushed, and fried to pull his pants higher. They were the only clothing he wore … his lean, brown torso was naked.

“Come sta?”
Gianni asked again.

“Bene. Grazie, signore.”

“You work hard, Pietro. And you, Emilio. Some day you will be rewarded.”

The two bowed, their faces cast down.

“Grazie, signore.”

We passed them, and went on our way. There was an odd look on Gianni’s face. “Good people, good people,” he said, when we were out of earshot “Those who work with the earth are God’s creatures. I envy them, yes, very much,”

He stopped and faced me. There was a dark, bitter expression on his face. His dark, long-lashed eyes looked into mine. “What I just said,” he told me, “I have heard my father say many times. And, as I grew older, I had to hide a smile.”

He laughed suddenly and looked about. “All this,” he said, “the villa and its acres, once belonged to us, the Monteverdis. But times change. So you see, signorina, we take what we can, and don’t question it.” He laughed again. “You have very pretty hair.”

His hand reached up and touched it. Lightly … but I felt a vibration going through me. “So she left you money,” he said, smiling into my eyes. “That’s nice, signorina.”

“It wasn’t very much,” I said, moving away from him.

“For us, nothing,” Gianni murmured. “So I would say you were very fortunate, signorina.”

“But I was given to understand that, eventually, the property will revert back to your family,” I said spiritedly. “Everything, in fact, that once belonged to my aunt.”

He looked at me, then away from me, and then back again.
“Eventually,”
he said. “That could mean anything. For the moment, it is as it has always been. Nothing has changed.”

“But — ” I started to say, and he interrupted me.

“Yet,”
he said quietly, flicking a blade of grass at his feet. His long-lashed eyes were dark and enigmatic. “Nothing has changed
yet.
But of course, from day to day, one never knows.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. It felt heavy there. The little girl stood on one foot, looking up at us, at our adult conversation, which she didn’t comprehend. Which I didn’t really comprehend either.

“I must go now,” I said finally.

He looked at me closely; his eyes, sweeping my face, were inscrutable. “Yes,” he said at last. “You must go. Give the signora my regards. Tell her Gianni said hello.”

He took his hand off my shoulder and walked away, the little girl tagging after him.
“Ciao”
she called back, but Gianni didn’t say anything more, and I watched him treading silently across the grass, flicking a bush now and then, tall, lean, young, dark-haired, aristocratic. The two of them went through the dividing gate, and then they both disappeared from view.

“Well, here you are at last,” the British voice of Elizabeth Wadley said, and her outline swam into view from the dimness of the house. “So you finally got here. Where are your bags? I didn’t hear the taxi.”

“I’ve just had a late breakfast with the Monteverdis,” I admitted. “I ran into the little girl, and she took me round to their garden. I hope you don’t mind.”

“But not a-
tall
,” she said. “Now I shan’t have to do the honors, you already know them. I’m so glad you’re here. I have your room ready. Come, let me show you.”