Rodin's Debutante (29 page)

Laura and I returned to the living room where the party was in its last moments. Anand and Jill had departed. Hopkins was gone. Dr. Petitbon was long gone. Those who remained were conspicuously tipsy, including Harold and June and my parents. Laura went off to say goodbye to someone, leaving me to cast an eye around the room, which always seemed to me like one of those reconstructed rooms you saw in museums. This one was filled with Bauhaus furniture, all wood and leather and here and there a chrome lamp. One of the chairs had been conceived and constructed by Marcel Breuer himself. The walls were crowded with German and French art and on a little table next to the fireplace my own Number Nine. It seemed more or less at home on the table. Absent the jazz trio, Harold had put Gustav Mahler's fifth symphony on the phonograph. All in all, the room had a between-the-wars feel to it, meaning a sense of apprehension, a provisional room consistent with the ambiance of Hyde Park. I watched Laura as she talked to Professor Altschuler, the old man blushing slightly at whatever she was saying to him. Harold and my father were in close conversation, gesticulating so that champagne spilled from their glasses. This was all too much. I was eager to get away with Laura, go back to our apartment and pack for the long day and night ahead. One of Laura's friends came to say goodbye and thanks and what a marvelous time she had had, none better, and good luck. That struck a false note—what did luck have to do with anything?—but I thanked her for coming. She said,
Ciao.

Then my father was at my elbow, breathing hard. His hair was mussed.

I said, You had a good time.

He put his hand on my shoulder. Time of my life, he said. Where have you been?

Laura and I had a moment alone.

Time enough for that, he said.

I guess there will be.

I had a nice chat with your friend Petitbon. Nice fellow.

What did Petitbon say?

He told me about your work at his clinic. I didn't know you worked at a clinic.

It wasn't a particular success, I said.

He thought it was. He thought you'd learned something.

I suppose I did, I said. I don't remember what.

My father smiled and handed me an envelope. He said, For Italy. Have fun.

We will, for sure. Thank you.

Lee, he said and paused a moment. Call me right away when you get back.

WE DOCKED AT NAPLES
in a fierce rainstorm and heavy wind from the Tyrrhenian Sea. Laura and I went at once to the hotel, situated in a narrow street near the port. The hotel dated from the nineteenth century and looked as if it had had a bad war, perhaps more than one. The carpet on the floor of the reception room was threadbare. A steep marble staircase led to the upper floors, rising and disappearing into the gloom of forty-watt lightbulbs. The woman at the desk was voluble, remarking on the filthy weather and advising that the rain would last three days. It always did, owing to the merciless west wind. The Tyrrhenian Sea was merciless also, and had been since antiquity. Yet how fortunate you are to be in Naples as opposed to Rome and its self-regard. There are those who disagree but I believe we have a lighter spirit in Naples. We are accustomed to adversity. We are continually discriminated against in Naples! They think we are peasants. Bah! she said. The reception room smelled of old wood and tobacco and, unaccountably, peaches. In an armchair in the corner an old man snoozed. Alas, the woman said, the lift was out of order but she had put us into a fine room but one flight up. She offered a brilliant smile as she pointed to the stairs. You are honeymooners, she said. Laura agreed that we were. There have been many honeymooners in room twelve, she said. None have complained!

We managed to wrestle our luggage up the treacherous staircase but when we reached the room we were enchanted. It was very large with a high ceiling and a window that looked out on a tiny piazza. A bottle of Prosecco was chilling in a bucket. I opened the window to give us air and also to listen to the rain drumming on the flagstones of the piazza. In its utter privacy and strangeness, its breadth and height, its atmosphere of twilight, its great age and sense of occasion, the room was erotic. Laura felt it too. From one of the windows above the piazza we heard a burst of song and someone laughing. I poured two glasses of Prosecco and we undressed and sat on the windowsill and watched the rain fall and collect into puddles on the flagstones below. We were alone on our honeymoon in a place unspeakably exotic, remote as the farthest star in the heavens. We knew no one here and no one knew us. Laura and I tumbled into bed and did not leave the room for twenty-four hours, ordering dinner in that night and lunch the next day, the desk woman remarking each time how pleased she was that we liked our room; and we were not the first. There was no good reason to leave it, at least not until the afternoon, when the rain ceased and the sun arrived and we thought we owed it to ourselves to see a church or a palace. Debt paid, we found an open-air restaurant near the Piazza Dante and dined wonderfully on fish and two bottles of Prosecco. The stone horseman across the street from the restaurant was pockmarked from bullets and shrapnel from Allied bombing, all of it vividly described by the woman at the hotel. The Italian campaign, she said sourly, graveyard of the reputations of American generals. Our graveyard also, she went on, including her own niece and nephew, killed when bombs fell on their apartment. Naples was badly wounded in the Italian campaign, a useless enterprise, but war in general was a useless enterprise, would we not agree? When she asked us where we were from in America, and we said Chicago, she laughed and imitated a hoodlum firing a machine gun; Chicago's lurid reputation always preceded us. I remembered the war games I had played as a boy, never for a moment thinking of the Italian campaign or a pockmarked horseman or dead nieces or nephews.

The next day we went in search of Vico's birthplace but never found it, waylaid as we were by two churches and a long lunch followed by a visit to the archaeological museum. Laura said she didn't care about our Vico failure. Vico seemed far away, even from Naples. Vico could wait until our next visit. The following day we departed for Rome on an ancient train that arrived exactly on schedule. We shared a compartment with two priests who chatted merrily for the entire journey, laughing frequently and rolling their eyes. I was convinced they were talking about girls, but of course that was most unlikely.

Ten days later we found ourselves in Florence, Laura down with a nasty summer cold. She waved her hand feebly: Go away. See the sights. Report back. I wandered across the river to look at the Boboli Gardens, then strolled back again to the Piazza del Duomo. Everywhere I went I scrutinized the statuary and the interiors of churches, thinking they might give me an idea for a fresh project when I returned to my studio in Hyde Park. I photographed constantly with my Kodak but tried to keep what I saw in my memory too. I was trying to retain all of Italy and failing badly, the nation concealed behind the hedges of an unfamiliar language and an ambiance that was at once approachable and enigmatic, not unlike my marbles.

I found a shapely square with a café and stopped for a Prosecco and a double espresso. The hotel was close by and I wished Laura were with me. I liked listening to Italian voices all around me, understanding little but the enthusiasm of their speech. The day was bright, a Wednesday, three in the afternoon. The square was crowded and I wondered if anyone actually worked in Italy besides cooks and waiters. Bus drivers. The policeman directing traffic and the tobacco vendors. Many of the shops round and about were
chiuso.
I lit a cigarette and sat back with my Prosecco, quite content in idleness and anonymity. Across the square was a very old building that looked to contain apartments, its windows as blank as the entrances to caves. I looked at it a long time, a building six stories high, chimney pots at the top. It seemed to have the dimensions of a perfect square, of wooden construction. The door looked heavy enough to withstand a battering ram. No one was visible at the windows. The interior appeared to be as still as the square was lively, its stern face signaling a seigneurial disapproval. The people at the tables took no notice. The apartment building had been there for centuries and, I reckoned, had become more or less invisible, as invisible as I was, a lone American on his first voyage abroad attempting and mostly succeeding in becoming one with the surroundings. Not speaking the language was an advantage because I had no desire for conversation.

Then I felt a hand on my arm, the girl at the next table asking me in English if I could spare a cigarette for her and her friend. I passed them two cigarettes and a box of matches and when she said
grazie
and asked if I was American, and I said yes, the Canadian portion. She lost interest and after a brief smile returned to her tête-à-tête. I did notice her eyes blink when she saw my scar, but it may have been the mime, bone-white face and red stocking cap, moving among the tables and stopping every few moments to strike a pose. He carried a cup for the coins anyone wished to give him. I returned to my contemplation of the apartment building, thinking that Canadians were luckier than they knew. Now I had the idea that the apartment building was in fact a private house, a palace no less, and I guessed the family fortune had disappeared many years before. Probably it had not survived the first war. The building was in need of serious repair, the slatted shutters of the windows on the upper floors hanging drunkenly. I imagined the rooms crowded with artworks and every few years one would be put up for auction, here a Titian, there a Tintoretto, the proceeds from the auction allowing the family to maintain itself from one decade to the next. A daughter might marry an American millionaire and the millionaire would carry them for a while until he got tired of it or tired of the daughter or she with him. I made two photographs with my Kodak and ordered another Prosecco and meantime sipped my coffee.

My neighbors at the next table departed with an amiable
ciao.
The girl and her friend floated through the tables in a stride so languid and unforced that they reminded me of cats, and at the last moment they executed a little sidestep to elude the mime, whose arm had suddenly barred their way. America had never seemed so far away, Hyde Park as remote as Ultima Thule, New Jesper the far side of the moon. I had difficulty recollecting the American ambiance, not that I was trying very hard. I thought of myself witnessing an avant-garde theater production where the audience was part of the show. All this was soon to disappear: our boat was due to sail in three days. Laura was already fretting about the freshman class she was teaching, her syllabus now in the hands of Professor Altschuler. They would teach the class together and that gave Laura the jitters. I grew drowsy in the bright sunlight. The door of the palace across the street opened to reveal a nun in full habit, looking cautiously around the square, locking the door with an enormous key and scuttling off, but not before she had glanced at the red-hatted mime standing statue-still a few feet away. It occurred to me that I had never seen a nun on the streets of Hyde Park, nor a mime. And then I heard a low laugh and a soft voice.

I knew I would find you here, Laura said.

I kissed her and said she looked better.

Am better, she said. And I'm tired of staying in my room.

The waiter arrived with my Prosecco. I gave it to Laura and asked the waiter for one more and two espressos. We sat a moment in affectionate silence and then I explained my speculations concerning the palace that I had first identified as an apartment house and turned out to be a nunnery. Unless I was mistaken once again. I pointed out the mime, who now appeared to be imitating the Statue of Liberty. Laura extracted a handkerchief from her purse and blew her nose. She said, I'm ready to go now.

You haven't touched your drink. And I have one on the way.

No, she said. I mean, I'm ready to go home to Hyde Park. I wish we were leaving tonight. I've had a wonderful time in Italy with you. But I've seen enough. I can't look at unfamiliar things anymore, the churches, the galleries. I'm tired of being among strangers. Don't you miss it? Our apartment, your studio. The grit and bang of Chicago? That's where we belong. Italy is an interlude.

Well, yes, I said.

We've had a great time but it's over now. Don't you agree?

I did not reply right away. I supposed I did agree but I wasn't sure. I had been an observer my whole life and there was plenty to look at in sunny Italy. I liked the idea of a nation in decline for two thousand years and not caring. I liked the idea of the mime and the nun. But Italy wasn't going anywhere. It would be here tomorrow and the next day and the day after.

I said, We could take the night train to Naples and stay at our old hotel. God knows there are plenty of unoccupied rooms. Maybe we could get our old one back. I looked up as the waiter deposited my Prosecco and two espressos. I asked for the check.

That was quick, she said. We clinked glasses and Laura took a long swallow.

She said, Are you sure you want to?

I didn't think I did. But I do now.

You don't mind changing plans?

They're our plans, I said, and we can change them if we want to.

I'd like to spend our last days in Naples. Naples is familiar.

It surely is, I said. And we can take an afternoon in Pompeii.

THIS WAS A PATTERN
that would repeat itself habitually during our long life together. It didn't matter if we were staying somewhere for a week or a month; two or three days before we were due to depart we had had enough and began to yearn for home, meaning Hyde Park. This happened in Paris and Athens and St. Petersburg and Vienna and Bucharest and Los Angeles and, much later, in China. China seemed much larger and more populous than any nation had a right to be. The journey was exhausting. In Xi'an, looking at the terracotta warriors, Laura assigned each of them the name of a faculty member at the university. She got to fifty or so before she ran out of names. That was the signal that we were done in Xi'an, done with China, done with unfamiliar food and strangers swarming wherever we looked. China was fabulous but the true pulse of life eluded us. At any event, we were always happy leaving Chicago and even happier returning.