Juliet (32 page)

He shrugged. “Siena is a small place.”

“I thought you said you didn’t grow up here.”

“True.” He tapped his fingers on the table a few times, clearly annoyed at my perseverance. “But I spent my summers here, with my grandparents. I told you. Me and my cousins played in the Marescotti vineyard every day. We were always afraid of being discovered. It was part of the fun. Everyone was afraid of old man Marescotti. Except Romeo, of course.”

I nearly knocked over my wineglass. “You mean,
the
Romeo? The one that my cousin Peppo talked about, who might have stolen the cencio?” When Alessandro did not reply, I went on, more quietly, “I see. So, that’s how it hangs together. You were childhood friends.”

He grimaced. “Not exactly friends.” Seeing that I was bursting to ask more questions, he handed me the menu. “Here. Time to think of sweet things.”

Over dessert, dipping almond cookies—cantucci—in vin santo, I tried to circle back to the issue of Romeo, but Alessandro did not want to go there. Instead, he asked about my own childhood, and what had triggered my involvement with the antiwar movement. “Come on,” he said, clearly amused by my scowl, “it can’t all be your sister’s fault.”

“I never said it was. We just have very different priorities.”

“Let me guess …” He pushed the cookies towards me. “Your sister is in the military? She went to Iraq?”

“Ha!” I helped myself to more cantucci. “Janice couldn’t find Iraq on a foam puzzle. She thinks life is all about … having fun.”

“Shame on her.” Alessandro shook his head. “Enjoying life.”

I exhaled sharply. “I knew you wouldn’t understand! When we—”

“I do understand,” he cut me off. “She is having fun, so you can’t have fun. She is enjoying life, so you can’t enjoy life. It’s too bad someone carved that in stone.”

“Look”—I swirled my empty wineglass, not willing to give him the
point—“the most important person in the world to Janice Jacobs is Janice Jacobs. She will skewer anybody to score a point. She’s the kind of person who—” I stopped myself, realizing that I, too, didn’t want to conjure the ugly past on this pleasant evening.

“And what about Julie Jacobs?” Alessandro filled up my glass. “Who is the most important person to her?”

I looked at his smile, not sure if he was still making fun of me.

“Let me guess.” He gave me a playful once-over. “Julie Jacobs wants to save the world and make everybody happy—”

“But in the process, she makes everybody miserable,” I went on, hijacking his morality tale, “including herself. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that the ends don’t justify the means, and that sawing the heads off little mermaids is not how you make wars go away. I know that. I know it all.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I didn’t! It wasn’t supposed to be that way.” I looked at him to see if we could possibly forget that I had mentioned the Little Mermaid and move on to a happier subject. But we couldn’t. Even though he was half smiling, his eyes told me this was an issue that could be postponed no longer.

“Okay,” I sighed, “this is what happened. I thought we were going to dress her up in army fatigues, and the Danish press would come and take pictures—”

“Which they did.”

“I know! But I never wanted to cut her head off—”

“You were holding the saw.”

“That was an accident!” I buried my face in my hands. “We didn’t realize she was so small. It’s a tiny little statue. The clothes didn’t fit. And then someone—some moron—pulled out a saw—” I couldn’t go on.

We sat for a moment in silence, until I peeked out through my fingers to see if he still looked disgusted. He didn’t. In fact, he looked mildly amused. Although he wasn’t actually smiling, there was that little sparkle in his eye.

“What’s so funny?” I grumbled.

“You,” said Alessandro. “You really are a Tolomei. Remember? … ‘I will show myself a tyrant; when I have fought with the men I will be civil with the maids, I will cut off their heads.’” When he saw that I recognized
the quotation, he finally smiled. “‘Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads; take it in what sense thou wilt.’”

I let my hands drop to my lap, partly relieved and partly embarrassed by the shift in our conversation. “You surprise me. I didn’t realize you knew
Romeo and Juliet
by heart.”

He shook his head. “Only the fighting parts. I hope that’s not a disappointment.”

Not entirely sure whether he was flirting with me or just making fun, I started fiddling with the dagger again. “It’s strange,” I said, “but I know the whole play. I always did. Even before I understood what it was. It was like a voice in my head—” I started laughing. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“Because,” said Alessandro plainly, “you’ve only just discovered who you are. And it’s all finally beginning to make sense. Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve chosen not to do … now you understand. This is what people call destiny.”

I looked up to find him staring not at me, but at the dagger. “And you?” I asked. “Have you discovered your destiny?”

He took in air. “I’ve known it all along. And if I forget, Eva Maria will quickly remind me. But I never liked the idea that your future is already made. All my life, I tried to run away from my destiny.”

“Did you succeed?”

He thought about it. “For a while. But, you know, it always catches up with you. No matter how far away you go.”

“And did you go far?”

He nodded, but just once. “Very far. To the edge.”

“You’re making me curious,” I said lightly, hoping he would elaborate. But he didn’t. Judging from the frown on his forehead, it was no happy subject. Dying to know more about him, but without wanting to spoil the evening, I merely asked, “And are you planning to go back there?”

He almost smiled. “Why? Do you want to come?”

I shrugged, absentmindedly spinning the dagger on the tablecloth between us. “I’m not trying to run away from my destiny.”

When I didn’t meet his eyes, he put a hand gently on top of the weapon to stop it from spinning. “Maybe you should.”

“I think,” I countered, teasingly inching out my treasure from beneath his palm, “I prefer to stay and fight.”

…

AFTER DINNER, ALESSANDRO
insisted on walking me back to the hotel. Seeing that he had already won the battle over the restaurant bill, I didn’t resist. Besides, even if Bruno Carrera was now behind bars, there was still a misfit on a motorcycle at large in town, preying on scaredy-mice like me.

“You know,” he said, while we walked though the darkness together, “I used to be just like you. I used to think you had to fight for peace, and that, between you and a perfect world, there would always be sacrifice. Now I know better.” He glanced at me. “Leave the world alone.”

“Don’t try to make it better?”

“Don’t force people to be perfect. You’ll die trying.”

I couldn’t help smiling at his mundane conclusion. “Notwithstanding the fact that my cousin is in the hospital, being slapped around by female doctors, I’m having such a good time. It’s too bad we can’t be friends.”

This was news to Alessandro. “We can’t?”

“Obviously not,” I said. “What would all your other friends say? You’re a Salimbeni, I’m a Tolomei. We’re destined to be enemies.”

His smile returned. “Or lovers.”

I started laughing, mostly with surprise. “Oh, no! You are a Salimbeni, and as it turns out, Salimbeni was Shakespeare’s Paris, the rich guy who wanted to marry Juliet
after
she had secretly married Romeo!”

Alessandro took the news in stride. “Ah yes, now I remember: the rich, handsome Paris. That’s me?”

“Looks like it.” I let out a theatrical sigh. “Lest we forget, my ancestor, Giulietta Tolomei, was in love with Romeo Marescotti, but was forced into an engagement with the evil Salimbeni,
your
ancestor! She was trapped in a lovers’ triangle, just like Shakespeare’s Juliet.”

“I am evil, too?” Alessandro liked the story better and better. “Rich, handsome, and evil. Not a bad role.” He thought about it for a moment, then added, more quietly, “You know, between you and me, I always thought Paris was a much better man than Romeo. In my opinion, Juliet was an idiot.”

I stopped in the middle of the street. “Excuse me?”

Alessandro stopped, too. “Think about it. If Juliet had met Paris first, she would have fallen in love with him instead. And they would have lived happily ever after. She was ready to fall in love.”

“Not so!” I countered. “Romeo was cute …”

“Cute?” Alessandro rolled his eyes. “What kind of man is
cute?”

“… and an excellent dancer …”

“Romeo had feet of lead! He said so himself!”

“… but most importantly,” I concluded, “he had nice hands!”

Now, at last, Alessandro looked defeated. “I see. He had nice hands. You got me there. So, that is what great lovers are made of?”

“According to Shakespeare it is.” I glanced at his hands, but he foiled me by sticking them in his pockets.

“And do you really,” he asked, walking again, “want to live your life according to Shakespeare?”

I looked down at the dagger. It was awkward to walk around with it like this, but it was too big to fit in my handbag, and I did not want to ask Alessandro to carry it for me again. “Not necessarily.”

He glanced at the dagger, too, and I knew that we were thinking the same thing. If Shakespeare was right, this was the weapon with which Giulietta Tolomei had killed herself. “Then why don’t you rewrite it?” he proposed. “And change your destiny.”

I glared at him. “You mean, rewrite
Romeo and Juliet?”

He did not meet my eyes, but kept looking straight ahead. “And be my friend.”

I studied his profile in the darkness. We had spent the whole night talking, but I still knew almost nothing about him. “On one condition,” I said. “That you tell me more about Romeo.” But I regretted the words as soon as I had said them, seeing the frustration on his face.

“Romeo, Romeo,” he gibed, “always Romeo. Is that why you came to Siena? To find the cute guy with the dancing feet and the nice hands? Well, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. He’s nothing like the Romeo you think you know. He won’t make love in rhyming couplets. Take it from me: He’s a real bastard. If I were you”—he looked at me at last—“I’d share my balcony with Paris this time around.”

“I have no intention,” I said, tartly, “of sharing my balcony with anyone. All I want is to get the cencio back, and the way I see it, Romeo is the only one with a motive for taking it. If you don’t think he did it, then say so, and I’ll drop the subject.”

“Okay,” said Alessandro. “I don’t think he did it. But that doesn’t
mean he is clean. You heard your cousin: Romeo has evil hands. Everyone would like to think he is dead.”

“What makes you so sure he is not?”

He squinted. “I can feel it.”

“A nose for scumbags?”

He didn’t reply right away. When he finally spoke, it was to himself as much as to me. “A nose for rivals.”

DIRETTOR ROSSINI KISSED
the feet of an imaginary crucifix when he saw me walking through the front door of his hotel that night. “Miss Tolomei! Grazie a Dio! You are safe! Your cousin called from the hospital many times—” Only now did he notice Alessandro behind me, and nodded a brief greeting. “He said that you were in bad company. Where have you been?”

I cringed. “As you can see, I’m in the best of hands.”

“The second best,” Alessandro corrected me, taking an absurd amount of pleasure in the situation. “For now.”

“And he also,” Direttor Rossini continued, “told
me
to tell
you
to put the dagger in a safe place.”

I looked down at the dagger in my hand.

“Give it to me,” said Alessandro. “I’ll take care of it for you.”

“Yes,” urged Direttor Rossini. “Give it to Captain Santini. I don’t want any more break-ins.”

And so I gave Romeo’s dagger to Alessandro, and saw it disappearing once more into his inner pocket. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, “at nine o’clock. Don’t open your door to anyone else.”

“Not even my balcony door?”

“Especially
not your balcony door.”

CRAWLING INTO BED
that night, I curled up with the document from my mother’s box called
Giulietta and Giannozza Family Tree
. I had looked at it before, but had not found it very illuminating. Now, after Eva Maria had more or less confirmed that I was descended from Giulietta Tolomei, it suddenly made much more sense that my mother should have cared about tracing our bloodline.

My room was still a mess, but I did not feel like addressing my baggage just yet. At least the broken glass was gone, and a new pane had been installed while I was out; if someone else wanted to get into my room tonight, he would have to wake me first.

Unrolling the lengthy document on top of the bed, I spent a long time trying to orient myself in its forest of names. It was no ordinary family tree, for it traced our roots exclusively through the female line, and it was only concerned with logging the direct connection between the Giulietta Tolomei of 1340 and me.

I eventually found myself and Janice at the very bottom of the document, right below the names of our parents: