Italian Fever (20 page)

“That’s true,” Lucy agreed. “The waiter who brought me coffee just now looked like Michelangelo’s
David
.”

Catherine contemplated Lucy momentarily, as if she found her an interesting specimen. “I hope you’re not in love with him,” she said.

Lucy smiled, looking past her down the street, but Massimo had disappeared. “No,” she said. “I’m not in love.”

“Good,” Catherine declared. “That could be disastrous.” Then she turned back to the gallery and Lucy followed, pulling the door shut behind her. “Let’s go upstairs,” Catherine said. “And have a talk.”

Chapter 16

B
Y THE TIME
Lucy held out her glass to receive a refill of the exceptional red wine Catherine was serving, she was entirely off her guard. The pleasure of conversation was as intoxicating as the wine, for it had been some time since she had spoken to another American and, more important, another woman. As she helped herself to an olive from the bowl on the table between them, her eyes wandered over the furnishings of Catherine’s crowded atelier. There was a lot to look at. There was the big easel facing the window, flanked by two sturdy tables covered with all the paraphernalia of the artist—brushes, piles of paint tubes, stacks of tin pans for mixing colors, liter cans of thinner, smaller cans of spray fixatives, boxes of pastels and charcoal, all manner of knives, clamps, and tools for stretching canvas. Next to these was a folding screen painted over with a scene of two scantily clad figures, Adam and Eve perhaps, walking hand in hand through a dense thicket of leaves, too dark and forbiding
to be paradise. The screen partially concealed the kitchen corner, deemed unfit for viewing. Lucy could make out a rusty two-burner stove and a half-size refrigerator. Beyond that, along the far wall, were paintings carefully stacked, all facing in, all sizes, five or six deep. An archway near the stairs opened into a small dining alcove with a round wooden table surrounded by old caned chairs. The back wall was a mural, cleverly painted to look like a window with a view of low hills dotted with cypress trees. The sitting area, where she and Catherine lounged in comfortable velvet armchairs, was set off from the rest of the room by its carpet, a venerable Oriental of deep winy hues. Lucy deposited the olive pit into the brass dish her hostess had provided for that purpose. She had told Catherine everything about DV’s funeral, her own illness, and the affair with Massimo. She had made light of her fantasy that the Cinis had murdered DV and possibly Catherine herself, and that she was to be their next victim.

“It’s not so far-fetched,” Catherine said. “They are a sinister family.”

“Do you really think so?”

“There’s the ghost,” she suggested.

“The dead partisan. But that wasn’t sinister. He was killed by fascists during the war.”

Catherine shrugged. “If every Italian who says he was a partisan really was one, Mussolini would have been the only fascist in Italy.” She sipped her wine, then fished an olive out of the bowl. “But that’s what DV thought.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “That’s the story the family puts out.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

“That there’s a ghost? No. I’m not superstitious.” She chewed the olive thoughtfully. “Another story I heard is that the ghost was killed by his own brother.”

“The old man!” Lucy exclaimed. “He certainly looks like he would be up to it.”

“It was a quarrel over a woman. He found out his younger brother was sleeping with his fiancée.”

“Wow,” Lucy said. “How did you hear this?”

“Antonio told me,” she said. “Just before I left.”

“I see,” Lucy said, though she didn’t. Now was the time to bring up the letter, but she was disarmed by Catherine’s frankness. Her lighthearted, confidential manner made Lucy feel as if she was a part of some warm, amusing, and dangerous female conspiracy. She didn’t want to accuse Catherine of anything. “Why did you leave?” she asked, her eyes carefully averted.

Catherine took the olive pit from her pursed lips and dropped it into the bowl. She can even make that look appealing, Lucy thought. “DV and I didn’t get along. I found him”—she shrugged—“oppressive.”

“He was a difficult man,” Lucy agreed.

“And then I read his novel.”

“The ghost novel?”

Catherine nodded. “And that did it.”

Lucy laughed, albeit guiltily; she thought it cruel to be merry at DV’s expense. Catherine laughed, too, nodding and rolling her eyes heavenward with an exaggerated expression of pain and pleading that delighted Lucy; it so perfectly expressed what she felt when she read DV’s prose. “Oh,” she whimpered, struggling against a rising giddiness. She failed in this effort and succumbed to a gale of laughter, which started Catherine up, and then they both laughed until tears stood in their eyes.

“Oh, Lord,” Catherine said at last, when they were too weak to go on and lay panting for breath in their armchairs.
She held out the wine bottle, which Lucy accepted, pouring her own this time. “You see,” Catherine continued, “I’d never read anything of his before. I don’t know why I hadn’t. I don’t read as much as I’d like.…” She gestured toward the wall of paintings—there was her reason. “I knew he was a popular writer, so I wasn’t expecting Proust, but …”

“He really had no gift,” Lucy suggested.

“Oh, it was worse than that,” Catherine protested. “It was embarrassing. And so mawkish, so self-indulgent, all that stuff about how the Italians love this guy, this Max Manx—was that it?—my God, what a ridiculous name. Do people really buy that stuff?”

“Well,” Lucy explained. “He had a good editor. But the answer to your question is yes, they do, by the millions. And not just in America, either.”

“I don’t understand it.”

“No,” Lucy agreed. “I don’t, either.” They fell silent for a moment, musing over this impenetrable mystery, the popularity of shabby work. DV wasn’t really taking advantage of anyone, Lucy reflected. He gave his audience exactly what they wanted and he always did the best he could. He worked hard; he got excited about his work. When any criticism came his way, he fretted over it, but of course for the most part that didn’t happen because he was protected from it by the combined efforts of his publisher, his editor, his agent, and Lucy herself. She had always understood it was part of her job not to discourage him, to allow him the carefully maintained illusion that he was, in every important sense, the real thing. “Did you tell him what you thought?” she asked.

“I did,” Catherine said. “How could I not? I was appalled.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him he should stop. I told him he was a hack, a prostitute, that he should do something else, sell real estate, or just something useful, like gardening.”

“Jesus,” Lucy said. “How did he take it?”

“He was furious. He said I was just a neurotic painter who didn’t understand his work, which was really laughable. What was there to understand? I said, ‘I understand it perfectly. You make up stories about how you wish your life was, about what a sensitive, interesting guy you are, and how much everyone likes you, how much Italians like you, for God’s sake. Now that is really rich, because Italians can’t stand you. Italians do not like drunks.’ ”

“Oh, Jesus,” Lucy said again.

“So his response to that was to get drunk for several days and we had to go through all the scenes, the anger, the tears, the threats, the promises. I was really sick to death of him by the time I got out of there and I didn’t care what happened to him—though I didn’t want him to die, of course. I thought he would just go home and write another stupid book about how I was crazy and he was crucified on the altar of love.”

Lucy smiled ruefully. “He never went home,” she said.

“No,” Catherine agreed. “He never went home.”

“And he never finished the book. I’ve looked, but there’s nothing.”

Catherine’s eyes flickered away, settling on the bowl of olive pits. “It doesn’t seem a great loss,” she said.

“No. I suppose not,” Lucy agreed. “But his editor finds it odd, and I do, too, that there wasn’t more. DV never had trouble writing. He usually wrote a thousand pages a year.”

“Maybe if he’d written less, it would have been better.”

“Doubtless,” Lucy said. Catherine ate another olive. She
looked petulant; perhaps she was bored. Lucy decided it was time for a leading question. “So Antonio Cini helped you to get away,” she said.

Catherine gave her a guarded look. “Yes, Antonio helped me. He knows people here who helped me to get set up. I would have preferred Florence, but there were various reasons not to go there. Too easy for DV to get to me, for one thing. All the interesting artists are in Florence. The show I have up now, the gray men in the doorways, he’s a Florentine. Rome is really something of a backwater.”

“Did DV know you were here?”

“Oh yes. I fully expected him to show up sooner or later, but he didn’t. I was angry at first; later I didn’t care. It certainly never occurred to me that he was dead.”

“He knew you would leave,” Lucy said. “He predicted it in the novel. Did you read that part?”

“Yes,” Catherine said.

“I thought that part wasn’t bad.”

“He knew I would leave because he was suffocating me,” Catherine protested, so hotly that Lucy assumed she felt guilty. “I wasn’t working and he was always on me about it, though the truth was that he couldn’t have cared less about my painting.”

“I see,” Lucy said.

“I had no choice, really,” she concluded. “I could not survive as an artist in such an environment.”

Lucy was silent for a moment, looking about the charming, comfortable, light-filled environment in which, it seemed, Catherine was able to survive. “So you’ll stay here awhile?” she said.

“I think so. I’m working a lot, all the time, actually. I’ve never worked so well. That’s the most important thing to me.
I’d live in hell if it meant I could work. It’s really all that matters anymore.”

“But you wouldn’t be able to work if you were in hell,” Lucy pointed out. “That would be how you would know it was hell.”

Catherine gave her a puzzled look. “I guess so,” she said. “Would you like to see some paintings?”

“
Volentieri
,” Lucy replied. Catherine got up and began carefully sliding the last canvas from the stack against the wall. Lucy paused to refill her wineglass. “When I was packing up DV’s things,” she said, “I found a drawing you left behind.”

Catherine looked up from the picture. “What drawing?” she asked.

“It was of DV. It was quite powerful, very scary, actually. He was—”

“Baring all.” Catherine laughed. “I did that one night when he was going on about how much he needed me. He just would not let up.”

“Oh,” Lucy said. “Do you want it back?”

“No. You can keep it.” As Catherine spoke, she turned a large canvas to face the room. It was a forest, very dark; what light there was seemed to be coming from the ground. In the shadows, two figures, a man and a woman—or was it two men?—lurked ominously. Was one in pursuit of the other?

“It makes me think of Adam and Eve, after they got kicked out of the Garden.”

“It’s Dante,” Catherine replied, “lost in the wood.” She pointed to the more shadowy figure in the background. “That’s Virgil,” she added, “about to offer him the guided tour.”

Chapter 17

Y
OU WERE
a long time with your friend, Lucy. Did you find out what you wanted to know?”

She had not been in the hotel room two minutes before the phone rang and Massimo’s world-weary voice greeted her with this question. She threw her purse on the bed and collapsed in the room’s only chair, which was an ugly tufted affair crammed into the tiny space between the phone and the door. “Why did you run off like that?” she said.

“I had some business to attend to.”

There is no point in asking him such questions, Lucy thought. She tried another tack. “Where are you now?” She was, she realized, still giddy from the wine.

“I am in my office.”

“Oh,” she said. She kicked off her shoes and began unwrapping her ankle. “I wish you were here.”

“You have been drinking,” he observed.

“A little,” she admitted. “Not that much. Can you come?”

He was silent for a moment, as if he was consulting some schedule, though Lucy suspected he was only checking the ever-fluctuating barometer of his whim at the moment. “Yes,” he said. “I will be there in ten minutes. But I cannot stay very long.”

“It shouldn’t take too long,” she replied coyly, for the sound of his voice saying her name, the timbre of it, the way he put the stress on the last syllable, had released a tide of desire that was nearly painful. She could feel her blood rushing around trying to accommodate it, gorging in her mouth and groin, draining from her fingertips. And Massimo had heard it, as well, for he said, “I think Rome is going to your head,
tesoro
.”

“It’s a very romantic city,” she agreed.

When she hung up, she sat for a moment savoring the novelty of her situation. She recalled something Catherine had said, when she had confessed—how easily, almost eagerly she had confessed—to this affair: “Well, so you are having an adventure.” It was true. She said it out loud into the empty hotel room: “I’m having an adventure.”

Then, banishing every concern but the imminent arrival of her lover, she went into the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. She looked fine, flushed from her walk, a little fatigued around the eyes. She made a few adjustments, lipstick, penciling of the eyebrows, then decided to change her blouse; it was too severe, too buttoned-up. She chose a thin black sweater with a scooped neck. When she removed the blouse, she caught sight of herself in the dresser mirror. Her bra was one of the three she usually wore for comfort, not unattractive, but rather plain. Rome, she had noticed on her walk, had a lingerie shop every hundred feet and the garments on display in their windows were uniformly expensive and seductive. Nothing
practical was even considered. She went to the dresser and pulled out the black lace underwire bra she had purchased some time ago because it was both beautiful and on sale. She seldom wore it because it was killingly uncomfortable. It was designed to make her small breasts look larger, another feature she had found interesting in the fitting room but impossible on the street. She had worn it once to a party and spent the evening with the unsettling sensation that she was standing behind her breasts, as if she was presenting them for inspection. But this, this hotel room tryst, was the perfect occasion. With any luck, she wouldn’t be wearing it long enough to become uncomfortable. She attached the band around her waist and lifted the stiff cups over her breasts. Why, she wondered, had she packed this thing? Had she had some intuition, or was it just a fantasy, a not entirely unconscious wish that somehow she would be transformed into the kind of woman who would routinely choose allure over comfort? Certainly she hadn’t intended to wear it to DV’s funeral.