The Truth About Death (29 page)

Severino had given me a ticket for two o’clock at the Uffizi, so I wouldn’t have to stand in line. I stopped for pizza on the way.
“Vorrei due,”
I said—two slices, not two pizzas—and then farther down the street, I
vorrei
ed some ice cream.

I kept my map in my backpack, in case I got lost, but I didn’t really need it. I had a pretty good idea of how to get to the Uffizi, but I practiced asking directions anyway:
“Dov’è l’Uffizi?”

Stage 3: Going to Museums

I liked going to the museums because I’m an artist, and I like art. I know that not everyone does. No one in Carthage does, except Mr. Bronson, the art teacher at the high school. And because I like being on my own. And besides, art gave me something to talk about in the evenings. Besides gaskets.

Severino knew all about gaskets, but he knew all about art too. It seemed like I hadn’t really seen anything till I’d talked to Severino at dinner and he’d started asking questions and I’d remember things like I was standing right in front of them—the haloes that look like deluxe Frisbees, the angels that go barefoot, the Virgin Mary who’s got her thumb stuck in the book she’s reading to keep her place while the Angel Gabriel’s telling her she’s preggers.

“Do you think a person can be changed by experiencing a great work of art?” I asked. I was conscious (as always) of trying to make myself interesting, but it was a real question too. I wanted to know.

I was wearing one of my new dresses, a sleeveless dress with little slits at the front and back to give it some toughness, and studded hardware for accents. Severino couldn’t
not
notice.

“Imported,” my aunt had said. “From China.” She’d looked at the label while I was in the shower.

“Most people see what they want to see,” he said. “They can interpret anything so that it fits in with what they already believe.”

“But I’m not most people,” I said.

“Obviously,” he said.
“Your
job right now is to take chances, to open yourself to the possibility that you can be changed. It’s risky.”

“How about you?” I asked. “Have you ever been changed?”

“Go to the Bargello tomorrow,” he said. “Look at Donatello’s
David
and then tell me what you think.”

Eating in an Italian restaurant gave me a sense of well-being that I’d never felt at home. I think my aunt felt it too. There was nothing like it in Carthage. There were a couple of good restaurants in Carthage, but they were so dark you could hardly see your food. The restaurants in Florence were well lit. You started with bread and wine. Then maybe an antipasto, and then your
primo,
which was like a whole meal at home, and then you sit back and relax and the waiter comes and you order your
secondo.
No more squid in its own ink for me, but all sorts of wonderful things that I’m going to leave out, because I want to get to Donatello’s
David
.

There was a long line at the Bargello, but Severino had given me a ticket, so I didn’t have to wait too long. I went straight to the
David
on the second floor, and right away I could feel myself changing. David looked just like Severino, but a little younger, and I thought:
this
is what he’d wanted
me to
see.
All my feelings for Severino boiled up inside me. This was beyond what I’d thought of as love. I knew that the
David
was the first freestanding life-sized nude bronze of the Renaissance, and I knew that there’d never been anything else quite like it. But even so it wasn’t what I had expected. I thought I’d been awakened sexually by Howard Franklin, but that was a snooze. Circling round the
David
I could feel my stomach churning. I was flooded with a desire to do all sorts of things that I’d heard about but had always found pretty disgusting. I wanted to take his penis into my mouth, his balls too. I opened my mouth as wide as I could to see if they’d fit. There was no barrier, no ropes like the ropes in movie theaters around the bronze statue. I had to restrain myself to keep from touching him, from licking him, from running my hands over his bare buttocks, from tearing his helmet off and putting it on my own head, from taking a shoe off and rolling Goliath’s head back and forth under my bare foot, from imagining that Goliath’s head was really my aunt Lydia’s head.

So this is what it’s all about,
I thought. I’d always thought it was about something else.

That afternoon I wrote a letter to Severino on Hotel Mona Lisa stationery. His address was on the business card in my wallet. I told him in great detail everything that had happened and said that I’d like to talk to him about it privately. I figured that since he was an Italian, he’d be able to figure out what to do next. I wrote quickly, stuffed the letter in an envelope, and gave it to the woman at the front desk, who said she’d mail it immediately. Then I lay down in my bed and played with myself while I waited for my aunt to come back from Sesto. I’d always been able to talk to my aunt about anything, things that I couldn’t talk to my mother about. But Severino was my secret.

That night, over vin santo and biscotti di Prato, I gave Severino and my aunt an edited version of my impressions of
David.
But as usual, I soon felt that I hadn’t seen it at all. Where I’d seen a helmet, Severino saw a woman’s hat. Where I’d seen a hard-bodied young man, Severino saw a young woman’s prepubescent breasts. About the size of my own breasts, I realized when I looked at the statue in my imagination. On and on. The buttocks I’d wanted to lick were a young woman’s buttocks. A young woman only five feet tall. Shorter than me. And what about the penis and balls that I’d wanted to hold in my mouth? Where had all those fantasies come from? The statue had in fact been condemned by the Church, Severino said, and Donatello was lucky he hadn’t been burned at the stake. Donatello’s
David
wasn’t just a transvestite; it was a
donnauomo
or a
femminauomo.

“How would you say that in English?” Severino asked, as he was paying the bill with his gasket-company credit card.

I didn’t have to think too hard. “How about a ‘sheman,’ ” I said, “or a ‘shemale’?”

“Bennissimo,”
he said.

The event: Describe exactly what happened. What did you do? What did other characters do?

By the end of the week I was desperate. If Severino had received my letter, he gave no sign of it. I watched him like a hawk, waiting, trying to resign myself to an unspoken love that could only be expressed through meaningful glances, like the love between Rose and Jack in
Titanic
, but still competing with my aunt for Severino’s attention by interjecting Italian phrases into the conversation and by introducing my
observations about the works of art that I’d seen. Anything but gaskets.

On Saturday night we ate again at the Osteria dei Pazzi. We shared a
tris
, which is three different kinds of pasta served family style, and then
bistecca alla fiorentina
. It was our last night in Florence, and I couldn’t bear to let go. On the way back to the hotel I said, “Let’s go up to Piazzale Michelangelo again.” I looked at Severino, and Severino looked at my aunt. We waited for a number thirteen bus at the stop by the post office. The first bus that came was a number twenty-three. “Let’s take the number twenty-three,” I said, “and ride all the way to the end of the line and then back. It will be an adventure.” I was imagining myself sitting next to Severino. (I wasn’t imagining Aunt Lydia at all.)

I got on the bus, punched my ticket in the ticket machine, and looked around for a good seat. The moment I sat down I realized that Aunt Lydia and Severino were not on the bus, which had already started to move. Out my window I caught a glimpse of Severino tying his shoe. Aunt Lydia was looking down at him, intently, as if she’d never seen anyone tie a shoe before.

This is
sooo
stupid,
I thought.

I could have gotten off at the next stop, in front of the big Feltrinelli bookstore, but I was too annoyed. I could have gotten off at the station and found my way home easily. But by this time I was convinced that what had happened was not a stupid mistake; it was deliberate. I should have gotten off the bus and rushed back to the hotel, but something stopped me: what if they’d gone up to Piazzale Michelangelo without me?

Once we were past the station, I was in unfamiliar territory. I thought I recognized the street where the American Church
was located, but I couldn’t be sure. After that, everything looked the same—the same shops over and over again, the same piazzas. The same but not the same. And then we were entering a different Florence. Definitely not the Florence you see pictured in the guidebooks. We stopped in piazzas and on poorly lit streets and then we plunged into the dark. No more piazzas. Just … factories? I couldn’t be sure. It was too dark to see. Housing developments? But why weren’t there any lights on? The driver kept making stops. People kept getting off. But no one was getting on. Finally I was the only one left on the bus.

I was angry now. At boiling point. How could they have done this to me? The bus was going faster and faster, not making any more stops. Even so, it was another fifteen minutes before we came to the end of the line. I was sitting by the back door, behind the ticket machine, waiting for the bus to start up again and head back into town. I think the driver didn’t see me at first. When he did, he came to the back of the bus and told me I had to get off, making his meaning clear with his hands.

I didn’t exactly panic, but I reverted to Spanish:
“Quiero volver,”
I said, showing him my ticket, which should have been good for an hour. And then in English: “I want to go back.”

“Non torna,”
he said.
“Capolinea. Finito. Basta.”

“Tengo que volver,”
I said in Spanish. (“I have to turn back.”) But he shook his head.
“Mi trovo in difficoltà,”
I said. (“I find myself in difficulty.”) A useful phrase I’d learned from Severino. It was Italian, but I don’t know if the driver understood me or not. He just kept shaking his head and waving me off the bus.

Suddenly I was afraid, but my fear was mixed with something else. I
wanted
something bad to happen so that my aunt
would find herself in big
difficoltà
for letting me go off on my own. I got off the bus and watched as it disappeared into the darkness. There were no lights on in the buildings that lined the streets. There was only one streetlight, just enough for me to make out the sign at the bus stop.
CAPOLINEA.
I knew what it meant: head of the line. I’d thought I was at the
end
of the line, but I was at the beginning. I had to think about this for a while.

I thought about it, and I thought about the letter and I thought about all the stupid things I’d said at dinner, trying to make myself interesting, as if I wasn’t interesting enough without jabbering on about Botticelli’s
Primavera
and Piero della Francesca’s
Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro
and about being changed by the Donatello
David
. I didn’t know what to make of it, didn’t know what to make of anything.

What to do? There was nothing there, just dark buildings and a row of parked cars. Somebody must live there, or be around somewhere. Whose cars were they? My fear was like the damp leather that they, whoever they were, had tied around the head of San Severino. The strap was starting to dry out and tighten.

I summoned up my anger to counteract my fear. I should have refused to get off the bus. I should have tried to explain to the driver. He could have called the hotel. Or a taxi.

I started to walk. I’d been walking for about ten minutes when I heard a car start up. Red taillights. Someone was backing out of a parking place. I ran toward the car and stood in the street in front of it, waving my arms. The car stopped. The driver rolled down his window.

“Mi trovo in difficoltà,”
I said, and that was enough.

The driver was a young guy, about twenty-five. I didn’t notice his girlfriend till she opened her door and got into the
backseat. I tried to protest, but she just laughed and motioned me into the front seat. Neither one of them spoke English, but that was all right. I didn’t really want to explain what I’d done.

“Stazione,”
I said. “Hotel Mona Lisa.”

My fear was completely gone by now and I was trying to concentrate on my anger. I wanted to have a showdown with my aunt, but it was hard to hang on to my anger with this cheerful couple talking at me in Italian, asking questions I couldn’t really understand, though I did manage to convey the basic information: I’d come to Florence with my aunt, got on the wrong bus. I didn’t try to explain Severino or the gasket company in Sesto Fiorentino.

I walked back to the hotel from the station. I knew the way. It was the last time I’d be walking this way, but I didn’t make any special effort to memorize the route. I didn’t need to. It was already imprinted on my brain.

Severino was at the hotel. Surprise. Duh! I could see that the bed had been unmade and then loosely made up again, and suddenly everything became clear. No wonder my aunt never got back from Sesto till six o’clock; no wonder she always needed to take a nap when she did get back.

The evaluation: What did you think was happening? What did other people think was happening? Were there any misunderstandings? Did you discuss your responses to what had happened?

What did
I
think was happening? What I was thinking was that it was about as awkward a moment as there could be. I was thinking that Severino had been humping my aunt—not
dry humping her either—and I was thinking that my aunt was afraid. Afraid of me, afraid that she’d broken something that couldn’t be mended. I could see pleading in her eyes, and I realize now that my response at that moment would determine not only our relationship in the future, but also the kind of person I was going to become. It was like having a good angel on one shoulder and an evil angel on the other. The evil angel was telling me to wrap a wet leather strap around my aunt’s head and wait for it to dry and tighten up and crush her skull. The good angel was telling me that I’d been a fool all along, from the moment I first saw Severino in the lobby of the Hotel Mona Lisa. The good angel was telling me to keep my mouth shut.