Contemporary Gay Romances (6 page)

Once Sarah and the train were gone in the other direction, I sat in the rented car until the train barrier was lifted from the road in front of me. The cars behind me honked for me to move on and so I did. I drove to Florence, just as we’d planned, Sarah and I, in our carefully-mapped-out itinerary made months ago on the front lawn of her father’s bayfront summer house.

I’d then continued to travel through Italy, following that itinerary. Not as though Sarah were still with me, naturally, but as though I couldn’t admit that she was gone. I suppose in some way I expected to be stopped at another crossroads or train trestle and have Sarah as suddenly step out of a car with her two pieces of luggage and hop right into the Renault again, to continue our journey, without a hint of explanation. That would be unlike her, of course. But what she’d already done was so utterly unlike her, what difference would that make? And should that occur, I’d never ask for an explanation either.

I kept to our plan. I stayed at our decided-upon
pensiones
, I walked the foreplanned narrow alleys of Florence, purchased silver stuffs and tooled leather book jackets on the
Ponte Vecchio
exactly as we said we would, and I mailed them home from the American Express office near the Spanish Steps, a week later, to announce my arrival in Rome. No letter, not a hint of a note to our parents about what had happened.

Once, only once in those weeks did the full realization of Sarah’s deed impinge upon me fully—sickeningly. I was sipping Pernod and water and picking at some local variation of Nesselrode pie in an outdoor café on the Via Veneto. It was sunset, and all Rome appeared bathed in the final hot flush of twilight. Up the via, the Borghese Gardens had already flamed up and dimmed into moody shadows. But a small street perfectly perpendicular to where I sat was an eye-hurting red-orange, as though that half of the city was engulfed in fire.

The café was sparsely peopled, as most Romans were returned to work or home after their midafternoon siestas. But a lovely young Scandinavian woman swerved off the via into the café and sat opposite me. She spoke in what I took to be Norwegian.

When I tried to tell her I didn’t understand a word, she reached into a colorful woven carryall and pulled out a dozen or so frothy looking cookies, each wrapped in tissue paper. She unwrapped each sweet, popped it into her mouth, and offered me a few too, which I enjoyed. When we’d eaten them all, she lined up the parti-colored tissues on the edge of the table, crushed each in such a way it stood up, struck a match, and set fire to its upper tip. First one, then all the other papers lifted up off the table as they burned, flaming as they fluttered, rising a foot or more perfectly vertical in the air, and evaporating into lilac-colored smoke; not a jot of ash descended. Then she stood up and without a word walked off.

I was so delighted by the little performance, and the mystery of the papers rising as they burned, that I turned to my left and said, “Wasn’t that strange and wonderful and exactly what you would have wanted to happen at dusk on the Via Veneto?”…And Sarah wasn’t there.

Of course not. She hadn’t been there in some time.

I remember seeing a documentary film about the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, some years before. At one point, an accuser suddenly stops testifying. Holding on to the edge of the podium, the witness looks around the courtroom, then slides off, crumpling onto the floor, as men rush to his side. Explaining the incident to the camera later on in the film, the man—who’d suffered everything short of death in one of the Nazi camps—explained, “I realized all of a sudden that Eichmann was just a man. Only a man. But if one man could do that, well, then
any man
could. I could too. You too.”

Something on the order of his sudden realization leading to an instant and overpowering emotion happened to me at that café table. William James called it a “vastation,” a lovely turn-of-the-century word, don’t you think? I stood up to leave the table and I realized not only that Sarah was not with me, hadn’t been with me, and would probably never again be with me, but that I was alone: in Rome, in the world, in the universe, and I would probably always be alone. I reacted as that Polish Jew at the trial had, as William James said that he and his father before him had done: I fainted back into my chair.

Amazingly, I didn’t hurt myself, and I came to soon after, thanks to the ministrations of the waiters.

That night, I didn’t follow the itinerary Sarah and I had planned for our third night in the city—the Coliseum by moonlight (we’d even checked to be certain it would be a full moon) followed by dancing in one of the ancient Roman baths converted into a discotheque. Instead I remained in the room of my
pensione
and I pondered. I slept poorly. The morning following that, I checked out, obtained a road map, and left Rome for the hills, deliberately headed north and east, when our plan had meant for us to go south, to Naples and Capri.

From then on I would follow no itinerary. I would wander. I’d drive around at large, waste time, try to discover what I had done so wrong that Sarah had walked away from me without a word. Failing that, I would be miserable.

I’d left Rome two days before and I still remained haunted by questions. Earlier this morning, I’d awakened in a hotel in Lucca, walked out onto the terrace where a half dozen other Americans happened to be breakfasting, and I’d allowed myself to be talked into being part of their group on their visit to this particular town—Spiegato, was it? No, that meant mirror, didn’t it?

Whatever its name, the town was completely off the beaten track for tourists and contained, they assured me, but a single attraction, an underground chapel dating from early Christian times. The Americans weren’t a church group, so I never discovered why exactly they’d hit on this specific village and its single feature. But so they had. I’d followed their van for a few kilometers, then lost them. Once arrived, I’d circumnavigated the lower part of the little place in fruitless search of the tour group, their ecru van, the ruins, or anything at all interesting. One time, I’d thought I’d seen two from the group strolling high up a road too narrow for the Renault to traverse, so I’d parked and followed them on foot, and eventually arrived here.

“No?” the beautiful woman questioned me. “You don’t at all adore our country. Not even a little?”

“Right now I do,” I allowed. “Here. Now.”

“Ah!” Relief flooded her face, sending her from a momentary anxiety, leaning forward across the table toward me, back into her chair back smiling.

“He likes the place fine. He has a dilemma.”

The accent of the sentences was American. Rather specifically New England American. And the voice had issued from the depths of the hooded chair.

“Grandmama hears great sadness in your voice,” the young woman said. I wondered if the old Principessa was blind, but didn’t dare look closely at her to check.

“Hesitations,” Ercole added. “A tragedy, perhaps!” He said it not to me, but to the air.

“No. No tragedy,” the prim old voice declared with utter certainty.

If this was the family’s idea of social chatter, I found it peculiar indeed. Even more peculiar when the old woman spoke again:

“She’s gone back to Paris. To the man who seduced her.”

I sputtered into my drink.

“You didn’t know?” she went on. “It happened in an elevator. One of those large, over-elaborate pneumatic lifts. But he’ll soon throw her over, of course. Her name begins with an S. Sandra. Susan…”

“Sarah!” I said, despite myself.

“Sarah, yes. Forget Sarah. You never belonged with Sarah. It was not a mistake, but mere propinquity. You’ll do far better in life without her. Far better in all ways.”

“That’s hardly possible. Her family’s terribly affluent. Whereas I…”

“Please.” Ercole softly tapped my fingers still. “Do not contradict.” He put a finger to his lips. When I looked at his female companion, she too had a finger to her lips, and she even winked at me. Meaning what? That I was to humor the old woman?

“Your fortune, when it comes,” the old Principessa went on, “will be far more considerable than poor Sarah’s. It is linked to a man. A man you haven’t yet met. You’ll encounter him in the corridor of a railroad sleeper.”

She paused, or fell silent.

As though she hadn’t spoken at all, the others smiled, sipped their drinks. When the young woman spoke again, it was to say, “Tourists seldom find their way to our charming little piazza,” which, following what the old woman had uttered, was a trifle banal.

She looked to me for response, as did Ercole. Unnerved by the sham conversation, I still managed to get out: “Too bad, as it’s a spectacular lookout.”

“Ercole said before he thought that he heard others also coming.” She pointed to the steeply sloping road I’d clambered.

“A tour group. Searching for some ancient chapel,” I explained. “You know it?”

They didn’t seem to. “Few find their way here,” Ercole said, I thought almost sadly. “Were you looking for the chapel yourself? Or for the others?”

“I’m not really sure what I was looking for,” I admitted. “You live here?”

“Oh, no,” the young woman answered with a laugh, as though a spectacular view, like too many sweets, simply wouldn’t do. “Nearby.”

“In a
palazzo
?” I wondered. I’d look it up later in the guidebook.

“A very small
palazzo
,” she admitted, playfully stroking my fingers. Meaning I’d be unlikely to find it listed, nor discover thereby the ancient Principessa’s name.

I was about to ask where the little palazzo was located, not that I was trying to inveigle an invitation, when the old woman began speaking again.

“The man in the sleeping car will be immensely wealthy, extraordinarily powerful, and vastly influential. He will take an immediate and consuming interest in you. You will rebuff him, but he will persist. Finally, you will agree to dine with him.”

What she said seemed so unlikely, so absurd even, that I let her words wash over me, uncontested. After all, I had this lovely company, this view, this marvelous drink—whatever it might be.

The old woman seemed to chuckle. “Just at the moment that you do decide to throw your lot in with his, the man will make certain demands of you.” She laughed in a particularly smarmy manner, all the more lubricious coming from someone so proper. “Ah, how shame will blossom on your young cheeks as you perform what he requires of you. First shame. Then acquiescence. And finally, delight in your sordidness.”

Well, really!

“I don’t quite see the point in—” I tried.

Ercole and his companion hushed me.

“
You’ll
think it sordid,” the old woman said. “I, of course, make no such moral judgments. You, however, will think it very low. And you will then enjoy it all the more for how low you think it.”

Her voice had grown weaker, her words softer.

“He will transform your life…” she added, by now in a whisper. “And eventually…you’ll come to…thank him…. to thank…this…Sandra…Sarah…even…more…” Her words trailed off.

I was suddenly aware of the sound of my breathing. I suppose I was waiting—dreading was more like it—for her to start up again.

When Ercole began to speak, I was almost rude in hushing him.

“No, my friend,” he insisted gently. “There is no more she will speak. Now, the Grandmama sleeps.”

Indeed, her light, irregular snoring could soon be heard, made the more resonant by her hooded chair. I was both relieved and I admit now, disappointed. I’d wanted her to go on, to say more, balderdash though it seemed.

After several minutes more of silence, Ercole rose like a column of smoke and appeared to float to the flower boxes atop the low wall that overlooked the valley.

As though she’d been watching from indoors, awaiting this very move, the peasant woman who served us appeared again and began to clear the table. As she worked, she sang a lilting, wordless little tune.

Ercole’s companion arose as liquidly as he had, and also, from awkwardness I guess, so did I. She strode over to where he stood and slid a tanned arm over his shoulder. Brother and sister—or were they cousins? lovers?—remained still and silent, out of reach of my many questions, looking over the valley. When they turned and separated, Ercole went directly to the wicker-work chair, which I only then noticed was mounted upon wheels. He tilted the chair gently, waiting. His companion came to where I stood.

I have to admit I was still so perplexed by the old woman, and even more by the suddenness of their departure, I thought I must ask at least one more question: any one would do, as long as it were answered.

“In the flask?” I asked. “What was it we drank?”

“Water. From a spring near our little
palazzo
.” She laughed and moved away from me in a flutter of soft clothing across the piazza, toward a large, pre-war limousine I’d not noticed until that moment. Its huge back door was open, its darkly clad driver stood against the sweeping side fender, his hat brim shadowing his face.

Ciaos
were tossed at me, and answered by the peasant woman, busily folding up the big umbrella and wiping off the table.

The driver, Ercole, his companion, the wicker wheelchair and its occupant were all inside the car before I could move. The car doors were closed and the limo seemed to glide down the narrow hilltop street, vanishing in a silken putter.