Italian Fever (7 page)

Lucy stood at the head of the grave, or perhaps it was the foot—she had no way of knowing which end of the plain coffin was which—between Massimo and Stanton Cutler, feeling ill. It occurred to her that she had felt steadily worse since her arrival. Her throat was sore, her joints ached, and she was uncomfortable and hot, though the air was delightfully cool and fragrant. The scent of fresh-cut hay drifted over the cemetery wall from the fields just beyond.

Paolo Braggio was to speak, translated by Massimo; then Stanton Cutler would follow. Lucy had declined the opportunity to comment on her employer’s life and death. Someone, probably Stanton, had managed to get a few large flower arrangements sent out, one of which nearly covered the lid of the coffin. Two more stood on wire frames at the far end. They were grandiose, elaborate, expensive bouquets; the local florist must have hung up the phone with a shout of joy when the order came in.

Paolo Braggio began to speak, slowly and sonorously, pausing at the end of each sentence for Massimo to translate. This was a sad occasion, he observed, though he did not appear to be cast down; rather, he radiated life, good health, energy. He was a man who loved to speak and always had something to say; his tongue never failed him. Lucy observed the other mourners, buoyed by his self-confidence, listening attentively. Even the ancient Signora Cini, whose keen eyes never seemed to rest, looked him up and down with satisfaction. Massimo was more animated than Lucy had seen him before; his translations were exact. He paused now and then to
choose the precise English word. His light eyes flashed when they met hers, as if to rivet her wandering attention. Braggio was going on about the relationship between American and Italian letters, the excitement of being, as he was, in a position to create an exchange of ideas between two important cultures, the one embodying the wisdom of the past, the other the hope of the future. DV, he believed, had been drawn to Italy, to this landscape, at this time, as American writers had been drawn before—here he named a few—and would be again.

One of the names was Henry James, which he and Massimo both pronounced as one word:
Enrijahmbs
. The absurdity of this sound coupled with the outrage of mentioning the great chronicler of American innocence and experience in the same breath with DV made Lucy smile. She cast her eyes down, struggling to suppress her amusement. Summoning seriousness, she forced herself to concentrate on the coffin and to remember that its contents had once been her employer.

And this worked; she was instantly sober, so much so that she noticed once again that she felt ill. Signor Braggio droned on, but she was no longer listening.

There would be no talk of faith at this burial, no hints about the afterlife or reminders of the promises made to us by one who was rumored to have conquered the limitless kingdom of death. DV’s view—and in this, Lucy was for once in agreement with him—had been that all notions of an afterlife were wishful thinking. It would be so satisfying, so reassuring if the end of our busy lives were the beginning of something else. Nature herself seemed to make the case for death and resurrection; the seasons declared it, and so did the endless cycle of days and nights. To be, as DV was now, a rubble of bone and sinew, senseless and inanimate, DV’s form emptied of the conscious force that had been DV, this was an imponderable
mystery, cruel, bitter, insupportable. That we must all be empty bodies, Lucy thought, envisioning the mortal mess inside the coffin, and never see the beautiful world again—no, anything was preferable to that.

Anything but hell.

Perhaps just down this road, Dante had stumbled upon his guided tour of the infernal regions, where the shades of the eternally damned raised their agonized howls to make vain inquiry after the living. There was a gate to hell, she recalled, somewhere in Tuscany.

Paolo Braggio concluded his remarks with the fervent hope that DV’s countrymen would make the pilgrimage to this peaceful valley, this simple village, this humble grave, which had called DV, unbeknownst to him, from across the ocean.

He made it sound as if DV had been lucky to fall down the well, Lucy thought. The group was quiet. She stared coldly at Signor Braggio, but he was looking down, keeping a respectful silence, which was clearly difficult for him, until Stanton Cutler should feel moved to speak.

Stanton was gazing up beyond the grave at a cypress tree swaying slightly at its top in the pleasant breeze. He looked relaxed but alert, his habitual manner. He worked in a world full of hysterics and blowhards, but they never seemed to astonish or offend him. How does he manage it? Lucy wondered. Does his height liberate him from earthly concerns? He looked down upon Paolo Braggio, who was chafing visibly under the silence as he knotted his hands and cleared his throat, craning his neck up over his collar as if to escape an impending fist. Stanton began to speak. His voice was softer than the Italian’s, but it carried beautifully and he spoke slowly, allowing pauses for Massimo’s translation. DV had been his friend, he explained; they had worked together for
many years, and he would feel the loss. He spoke of DV’s generosity and his energy. Lucy noticed he said nothing about his writing. He said DV had loved Italy and admired the Italian people for these same qualities. Lucy thought this was stretching the truth, but not much. DV did love wherever he was and always thought the best of people, the best being his conviction that they admired and trusted him. Perhaps his way was not so bad, though it was almost criminally naïve. This insight was the closest thing to an explanation for the popularity of his novels that Lucy had ever come across. She looked around the grave at the faces of the mourners. Wasn’t it just as well to assume their impenetrable expressions masked only good intentions, agreeable sentiments? The Panatella family kept their eyes on Massimo, who directed his translation to them. The parents were a stolid pair, dressed in faded black, their faces lined by work in all weather. Their hands, rough and reddened from service, hung limply at their sides. Their son, Lucio, looked respectable, a serious bourgeois who had doubtless exceeded his parents’ wildest hopes and directed their lives now with the same passionate interest they had once lavished on him. Facing them, across the grave, the Cini family occupied a different kind of air; they seemed to exhale it and breathe it in again: the air of the landed aristocrat. Lucy’s effort to imagine a docile interior landscape behind these countenances, so studied in arrogance, so vestigially haughty, met with more resistance. No, she concluded. They had not been charmed by DV. They had not been charmed by anything for several centuries. The old man had the bearing and regard of a raptor. The son studied Stanton Cutler with a tired smile; he looked decadent and as full of guile as a snake. Stanton concluded his remarks, thanking the assembled strangers who had gathered to bury another stranger in their midst. The Italians
turned to one another, speaking softly. The grave digger and a dark, foul-smelling young man who must have been his son began to push and pull at the planks holding the casket over the grave. The assembly dispersed, ambling back through the cemetery to the town. They could hear the rough exchanges, the creaking and sliding of boards as the coffin was lowered skillfully into the earth.

At the gate, Stanton and Massimo paused and shook hands with the others. First came the Panatella family, who murmured condolences, which Massimo didn’t bother to translate. Paolo Braggio said quite a bit, but the gist of it was that he was on his way back to Milan and would see Stanton in only a few weeks when they would meet in Frankfurt for the annual book fair. As he ran on, the Cinis stood quietly behind him, waiting their turn. The son, who was near Lucy, exchanged a few words with his father; then, to her surprise, he addressed her in heavily accented English. “Are you the agent of this unfortunate writer?”

“No,” she said. “I’m his assistant.”

“You help him to write?” His eyebrows shot up in dismay.

“No,” Lucy said. The inappropriateness of the present tense grated on her. “I kept track of his business interests—his mail, for example. And I transcribed his novels onto the computer.”

Signor Cini smiled weakly, closing his eyes for a moment as if he’d been subjected to an unexpected obscenity. “Ah, yes,” he said. “The computer.”

His father interrupted at this point with some gruff questioning, which his son answered snappishly with what Lucy took to be the equivalent of “Shut up.” Paolo Braggio had released Stanton’s hand at last and the Cinis moved forward. Lucy was left in the awkward position of facing the scion and his mother, who eyed her warily, unwilling to speak. The son
turned toward her, including her in an invitation to dinner at the villa. “We would be so happy if you would join us,” he concluded. Massimo, who seemed to think this a fine idea, said to Stanton, “I can drive you back to Florence afterward. There will be less traffic, and I am staying the night there, as well.”

It was agreed. Massimo, Stanton, and Lucy would return to the farmhouse, then go on to the villa at nine, which was the Cinis’ dinner hour. There was more handshaking, forced smiles, polite exchanges. They walked out through the gate and back down the dusty road to the piazza. The old couple led the way, followed by Stanton and Massimo, then Lucy and the man she had begun to think of as “son of Cini.”

“I’m afraid in all these introductions your name has become lost to me,” he said as they walked along.

“It’s Lucy,” she said. “Lucy Stark.”

“Lucy,” he repeated, trying it out, but it felt wrong to him. “Will you mind if I call you Lucia?”

“Not at all,” she said.

“Santa Lucia.” He hummed the familiar musical phrase.

“She is always shown carrying her eyes on a plate,” Lucy pointed out.

“You are a student of the saints.” He had a way of making statements that were really questions.

“A little,” she said.

They had arrived at the parked cars. His father and grandmother had already climbed into the backseat, where they waited, looking peevish. Their heir and driver rolled his eyes at Lucy, indicating the tiresomeness of his obligations. She put out her hand, which he took limply. “Until later, Signor Cini,” she said. “I look forward to it.”

“Lucia,” he said, fastening his shifty eyes on hers for the first time in their brief acquaintance. “You must call me Antonio.”

Chapter 6

A
S LUCY STOOD
in the doorway to the Cini family’s dining room, contemplating the expression of boredom and intolerance knit into the lineaments of her host, it occurred to her that beautiful objects do not have an ennobling effect upon the souls of those who possess them. She could, she thought, amuse herself for several hours just in examining the contents of the massive breakfront against which Antonio Cini leaned his aristocratic behind. She recalled St. Teresa of Avila’s comparison of heaven to the Duchess of Alba’s drawing room, where the saint had seen so many things of beauty, such an abundance of silver, gold, precious stones, intricately worked, elaborate tapestries, silks, satins, such colors, textures, and dazzling contrasts of light and dark that she had come away unable to describe any single object, though she was certain the experience had been divine. Massimo, who was not in the least overawed, brushed past her, his hand extended in greeting, which provoked Antonio to
bestir himself and advance with studied diffidence upon his guests. Lucy looked back over her shoulder into the entrance-way, a long, cool, high-ceilinged area, entirely bare but for two life-size statues of naked, though modestly posed, young women flanking an enormous baroquely framed design of the Cini family tree, where Stanton Cutler ambled toward her in his easy, affable way. He made a wry grimace of alarm at the overbearing genealogy. Signora Panatella, who had greeted them at the door with much obsequious bowing and muttering, shuffled along behind him, her eyes inspecting the marble floor minutely and critically, as if she expected to find evidence of unusual wear.

Massimo and Antonio had begun a conversation, which, as Stanton and Lucy joined them, modulated into English. They had been speaking of the farmhouse and of the
agriturismo
, a subject, Lucy observed, that agitated her Roman friend. Like the Cinis, he explained, his own family had sold portions of their holdings to former tenants and retainers, thereby upsetting relationships of long standing that had been beneficial to all concerned. His cousin, Deodato Tacchino, in Sansepolcro, for example, in order to pay taxes as well as the enormous expense of maintaining the ancient villa, had sold off five hundred olive trees and an outbuilding formerly used only to shelter lemon trees in the winter. The buyer, a farmer who was now also a partner in an unsightly supermarket, had claimed that he wanted to renovate the building for his parents. This couple resided in a miserable hovel on a busy road near the supermarket. But once the repairs were done (and they were extensive, expensive, and of the highest quality), the parents persuaded their son that it would be better to rent out the house to the hordes of German tourists that swarmed over the hills almost year-round now, seeking refuge from their own
uncongenial political, social, and physical climates. This plan was an immediate success; the little house was brimming with foreigners throughout the year. There was even a waiting list, and the deutsche marks flowed in without pause. The aging parents looked after the property, which was really nothing more than a hotel now, supplying fresh linens, cooking occasionally, and attending to the various problems of the invaders, who were notoriously difficult to please. The old woman was too frugal to buy a new washing machine, so now, in her retirement, she did laundry from dawn until dark, cooked and cleaned for two households. She worked harder than she ever had in her life. Her family was made miserable, but, of course, this was progress. Why would it be expected to improve the lives of those foolish enough to pursue it?

Lucy listened to this story with interest, though her attention was divided between Massimo, who spun out the details artfully, and Antonio, who received it all with a blank, wondering expression, as if he were listening to a description of life on a distant planet. At the conclusion, she laughed politely, as did Stanton Cutler—it was, after all, a story with strong ironic elements—but Antonio Cini only looked at them all bemusedly. He didn’t get the point, his expression suggested, but he didn’t care. The laughter dissipated quickly and a nervous silence fell over the group. It is going to be a long evening, Lucy thought. She hoped she could be seated next to her fellow American. During the conversation, Signora Panatella had shuffled past them into the kitchen, leaving the door open. The sound of pots and crockery being rattled about, and a delicious aroma of roasting poultry and herbs issued from within—that much, at least, was promising.