The Conversion (12 page)

But Ed, unmoved by my candor, was becoming increasingly more wound up over his own insecurities. “So, you totally cut loose with him. Whereas you’ve been so scrupulous, so careful, so vigilant with me.” This was said bitterly.

“Stop doing this!”

“Why? There are so many things in bed that you refuse to do.”

I let the harsh complaint seep into me. Looking at Ed in a blousy
navy-blue
sweater with white piping around the cuffs and neck, I thought guiltily that his jealous scowl not only made him look poorly, it made him suddenly appear even older than his years. And this scared me in an entirely new way: Would Ed actually expect me to dedicate myself to taking care of him when the time came? “Are you actually saying you’d want me to put myself at risk?”

“No, but you’ve always taken that
extra
measure of precaution with me. Whereas I bet there was nothing that you wouldn’t do with him.”

I said nothing in response.

Ed went on. “We’re talking about love here and attraction. We’re talking about rejection and repulsion. No matter how accomplished or self-confident people are, they still have the basic hunger to want and be wanted by somebody else.”

I now think of the young college student with whom Ed had had the affair of his life, somebody who probably loved him but who then, in an alcoholic stupor, had tragically fallen off the roof of a fraternity house.

“Let me ask you just one question,” Ed resumed, raking aside some hair that had tumbled into his eyes. “What would have happened if the result was … if you’d found out you’d been infected. Would that have changed the way you make love to me?”

I looked at him, incredulous. He knew as well as I that it would have changed nothing. So why ask such a question? “You really want me to try to imagine that? Now?”

Was it here that I really failed to understand his great distress? Did this obvious hedging of what we both knew to be the truth end up insulting him even more profoundly? He got up again and stoked the fire violently with a black iron poker that had been leaning against the limestone fireplace. Remaining standing, he turned to face me. “It was always your excuse to avoid any real intimacy.”

“Sex is just one part of any relationship,” I stated the obvious.

“Yes,” he said sadly, and then made a pinching gesture with his thumb and forefinger. “And a tiny part of this one. Because you don’t find me attractive … probably because I’m not young enough.”

“That’s absolutely not true.”

“Then what is it?”

I tried to warn him. “You’ll feel terrible about this part of the
conversation
later on.”

Now I see this as yet another remark that might have deeply offended him. Because he looked at me askance and his voice quieted into a
tremulous
rage. “Feel terrible about it later
on?
I feel terrible about it
now
, Russell,” he hissed. “I’ve fallen in love with somebody who cannot return my affection. I’m aware of it constantly. Don’t you understand? It’s torture. If I could take a pill to reverse it, that would let me wake up tomorrow free of you, I’d swallow it in a second.”

And of course I had to sympathize. Because, after all, I knew this feeling; I’d searched high and low for an antidote to Michel. And now, weeks after Ed’s death, I find myself wondering if he truly realized that his feelings for me were in their own way as utopian as my feelings for Michel Soyer.

“One day,” he said arrogantly, “mark my words, the same thing will happen to you. You’ll understand firsthand what I’m going through now.”

“Don’t you think I’ve gone through something like this already?”

“No, I mean how it feels when you lose your power, when suddenly there’s not quite enough—
quite
is the operative word here—to sustain yourself in somebody else’s affections. Believe it or not, I once had a lot of power, too.”

“I’m sure you could have had anybody you wanted.”

As though not hearing me, he said, “At thirty-one you’re at the peak of it. But that loss is inescapable, as inescapable as death. And it happens to every man, straight or gay.”

“Yes and no. There are lots of younger guys who’d lust after a hot older man like you.”

“Older man?”

“You’re fifty-nine years old, Ed,” I gently reminded him.

He forced a smile. “So it
is
true. If I
were
younger things would be different.”

“I really don’t believe so.”

“You don’t
believe
so.” He stared at me, his eyes watery with emotion. He suddenly looked afraid and went on more quietly, “Russell, I realize there’s nearly a thirty-year age difference between us. And in fact, whenever I used to see a much older man with a much younger guy, I was … well, actually disdainful. But this, what I feel for you, is something that has taken me completely by surprise. I can’t believe it. I don’t
understand
it. And yet I can’t drag myself away from it. To be quite honest …” He sighed. “I have absolutely no idea why you’re even with me.” The words stumbled out.

I tried to gather my thoughts for a moment. And then I said, “Ed, I admire you enormously. But, as you well know, chemistry is chemistry. I can’t help that and I can’t change it, either. But leave that aside for a moment. I’ve never been so close to anybody whose writing is so
powerful
and so beautiful. Just like you say, whatever attractiveness I have will fade. But your writing, which is a huge part of your life, has only gotten stronger and greater as you’ve gotten older.”

I remember how he looked at me with guarded fondness. “Well put,” he said to me that day. “Bravo. Alas, this is why I love to be with you. And it’s also why I
love
you,” he’d said boldly, knowing I wouldn’t be able to respond.

Now I find myself thinking of Michel and how I lived from day to day, wishing to hear such words from him.

That day, I said to Ed, “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe for me, this editing I’m doing for you
is
like making a contribution to your
literary
legacy? And that it helps to shield me against the thought that my own work probably won’t amount to much?”

Ed smiled. “Yes, I’ve thought that. And I’ve been
afraid
that wanting to do this is all that’s holding you to me.”

The echo of truth in his words silenced me for a while. We both stared at the fire. Finally Ed said, “Well, you know, despite everything I say, I still want you to stay with me. That’s really the problem.”

I thanked him and, feeling a bit more resolute, replied, “Then I guess you’ll just have to accept my limitations. And not punish me for them.”

“I try not to, Russell. I really do. But … well, I guess punishing you is painfully compulsive on my part.”

At the time I didn’t understand the true meaning of Ed’s feeling goaded to punish me. I believed that he was merely rebuking me for my lack of romantic involvement in his life, for my lackluster physical
attraction
to him. Now I realize Ed was implying he’d already done my life some serious injury by lying to ensure that Michel Soyer would steer clear of me forever.

The only request that Marina has ever made about my staying at Villa Guidi is that if I ever write anything about it, I will fictionalize the location. “You could easily say, for example, that it is a village quite close to a major Tuscan town. And you certainly have your choice among those. It might be near Volterra, for instance, or San Gimignano. It could be near Siena, Pisa, Santo Stefano, or even San Vincenzo in the Maremma. Besides, two contemporary works of fiction should never take place at the same house. It would be literary redundancy, not to mention that, after all, I do guard my privacy.”

Ironically, her novel
Conversion
, of which I have now read the first hundred pages, makes the location of the villa rather obvious. An account of the Nazi occupation of the villa and the story of the Jewish family who converts to Catholicism is wonderfully controlled, written with great elegance and imagination. However, in the midst of her virtuosity for invention, Marina never bothers to fictionalize the surroundings. She describes, for example, the coral-colored chapel that was erected two hundred years after the villa was built. She details the secret passageway that runs perpendicular to the villa’s most southern wall and surfaces near the stone embankment that circumscribes the entire property. An afternoon’s walk up to the convent where Puccini’s sister lived is even described in marvelous detail. Reading this latter passage, most opera fans would easily identify the region. She has also written that the villa itself is a half-hour walk from the ramparts of an entirely walled city. There are few cities in Italy entirely enclosed by walls, and only one of them is in Tuscany.

Today I have received two letters: one from the executrix and the other from Ed’s New York lawyer, with whom I’d once had dinner in Paris. Annie informs me that she has failed to locate a copy of Ed’s “work-
in-progress
” in the pile of mail left at his rented house in the Berkshires. The letter concludes, “After our last conversation I remain unconvinced that you are completely in the dark as to where a copy of this manuscript might be. And thus I urge you either to get your hands on it or to come
up with a more tolerable explanation as to why it’s impossible for you to locate something that Ed was working on when he died.”

Quite right. Annie, after all, is no fool.

The lawyer’s letter is a shocker. He informs me that two months before he died, Ed, in front of a Parisian attorney, made a change on his
life-insurance
policy and had named me as the new beneficiary. The letter goes on to say that the manner of how the change was made still needs to be investigated in order to make sure that it was done with “American legality.” If proper procedures were indeed followed, I will receive the benefit of $150,000, independent of probate.

Good news for somebody who lives on a modest income, and of course I can’t help but be gratefully shocked. But I also realize that this bequest is only going to make things more complicated for the simple reason that before this change was made, Annie Calhoun (I’m almost certain) had been the life-insurance policy’s beneficiary.

I can even imagine that Ed had a premonition of his own death and wanted to place a few wild balls in play in order to force his friends to engage in a scrambling endgame. Yes, he might have complained to me about Annie, but surely she deserved to reap some financial reward for her thirty years of dedication and support—especially since Ed had no real money to speak of to leave anybody. Annie had been his sounding board, a comfort to him when the student lover died or, for that matter, when any of his love affairs went south. So then why had Ed switched his
insurance
policy to name me?

I can only come up with one reason, flimsy at best: His decision was motivated by guilt for having lied to me and meddled in my affairs with Michel. So I don’t know how I feel about this gift, if I should allow myself to receive this money, or if I even want it. But then I have to ask myself, would I take this money, turn around and give it to the person who really deserves it, much less donate it to some charitable organization? Probably not. And so I allow myself just one fantasy: of being able to return to New York City with solvency and give up my far-flung Gravesend flat in Brooklyn for an apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

What concerns me now: Does Annie already know about his
last-minute
change of heart? I try to imagine the reverberating insult of having Ed disregard their thirty-year-old allegiance for a man he’d known for merely a year.

It would have to deeply stain her attitude toward me.

I return to Annie’s letter and reread it. It is officiously turned out, completely correct in its tone; in short, there is nothing that immediately belies any outrage or resentment.

Disconcerted and confused, I leave my room with the idea of finding Marina and telling all. Hands clasped around a vase full of freshly cut chrysanthemums, she’s standing in the library, a room substantially warmer in décor than the gilded formal dining room. The library is the only public room in the villa whose walls are wood paneled rather than stucco. The bookshelves are twenty feet high, there are comfortable wingback chairs for reading, and the sofa is upholstered in ruby-red velvet. Marina sets down the flowers and then goes to one of the bookshelves where she removes a gargantuan hardcover that appears to be some kind of Latin reference book; she places it on the table next to the vase. Here is where I interrupt to tell her about the letters I’ve just received.

She brightens and claps her hands together. “
Cazzo
, Russell, what a good turn for you.”

“Well, after knowing how unfulfilled he was, I can’t imagine why he’d be so generous.”

Marina smiles sagaciously. “Maybe he thought you needed it more than this other lady. But we might also consider that he figured that if and when you actually did leave him, he’d easily be able to change the name of the beneficiary yet again.” She pauses for a moment and then says, “Who knows? Perhaps he intended to hold this over your head, to let you know how generous he could be so you’d think twice before rejecting him and moving on to somebody else. People will do this to seize power in a love affair, to make the other person behave as they wish them to.”

A very cynical, downgrading assessment, which, I must admit, does sound plausible. As I have yet to tell Marina about Ed’s interfering with Michel and lying about my health, it makes me wonder if she has something personal against Ed that I am unaware of.

“Permit me to change the subject for a moment.” She leads me across the room to an antique writing desk with a leather top upon which a coffee-table book of notable Italian villas has been opened to a photo of the Villa Guidi. She flips the page to a picture of herself perched at this very same writing desk holding a marked-up work-in-progress, a pair of elegant metal reading glasses dangling from a chain around her neck.
“Look at me here,” she says mockingly. “Don’t I look virtuously literary? So posed … and so
fake?
” she emphasizes. “I can’t believe the people who did the picture book convinced me to sit like this in such a pose.”

“Why not?” Admiring the desk, I tell her that it must be a lovely place to work.

“But I never do … use this desk. It’s too grand for me. I actually only write in bed.”

“Seriously?”

“Surrounded by all my dog angels. This lady has strange work habits. And I write so little each day. I get distracted by everything that happens here. By the weddings, by the faxes for the weddings, by coordinating the caterers for the weddings, by the dogs and their petty dramas—their wounds, their illnesses, their disappearances, and their reappearances. I even get distracted by my television and so many old American movies, which are my favorite films of all. I try to do some work early in the morning. But it’s not so easy. And I find that as I get older it becomes more and more difficult to finish a book.”

“Yes, but you do finish them,” I point out. “However erratic and
inefficient
your method, you’ve been publishing a book every three years or so.”

“Yes, I suppose this is also true. But now I need to tell you that I have come to a conclusion.” She pauses for effect. “That your deceased friend, God rest his soul, was keeping—and is still keeping—you from doing your own work.”

“Maybe I don’t want to do my own work,” I say. “Maybe that’s why I hold on to
his
… have you even considered that?”

Marina laughs. “Of course. To deliberately sidetrack yourself.”

Both Marina and Ed, despite their assurances to the contrary, have during difficult times been able to hunker down and cleave to their work; whereas I, under any sort of duress, find myself cast adrift, unable to moor myself in a creative ritual.

Marina continues, “The problem with having some money will be that, if you choose, you can become even
more
sidetracked by this
unfinished
manuscript that you keep worrying about. And the more these demands and communications arrive, the more distracted you will become.”

“That’s a point,” I concede.

“Why not get back to your own thoughts and your own fantasies?”

“And if there are none?”

“I don’t believe you. You didn’t just dry up.”

I shake my head. “Neither you nor Ed understands that some people may not have more than one book in them.”

Marina smiles winningly. “This is true; I know that you’re afraid that you don’t have more than one book in you. But I can tell you that I believe that you do, and now is the time to get on with building a body of your own work. Fifteen years from now, you’ll be older and less ambitious and less hungry.” Marina sits down in front of the picture book of Italian villas, leans back in her chair, and finally glances up at me. “I feel you should just send the manuscript back to those vultures and be done with it once and for all.”

“But how can I do that? Knowing that he didn’t want it published until it was finished?”

Marina rolls her eyes with impatience. “You’re being dishonest, Russell. You can’t possibly be worried about his reputation. His final work isn’t up to his usual standards? So what? Haven’t you heard the adage that a literary reputation is hard to tarnish?”

Churning and upset, I begin pacing the room in front of her. I continue in English. “Okay, then, I don’t want it published because of all his criticisms of me—of my so-called vanity and my coldness and the fact that I was only with him because he was a well-known writer and I wanted to draft off his success to help myself. That I’m some kind of user.” Then I go on to elaborate Ed’s description of his machinations to keep Michel and me apart, his lying confession to Michel that he’d infected me without explaining (in his own narrative) that what he said was actually untrue. All of this I would hate to be read by the public.

Marina looks startled, and yet she says, “Why not? Yes, I understand how upsetting it is. But I also must say this is the risk one takes when one gets involved with a working author. Being written about, being complained about, being distorted—and it all begins innocently with the subject’s self-serving daydream of inspiring the writer’s work, their, shall I say, lyric.” She grins. “Don’t tell me you didn’t imagine this!”

“Not consciously,” I try to defend myself.

“Oh, come on! Look at that beautiful poem he wrote about Venice. One could only assume that he was writing about you. And the result? You’ve inspired literature. It is probably one of the greatest
foreigner’s
poems about a city that has been written about ad infinitum. Perhaps no other Anglo has ever written so well about Venice except for the great Ruskin. Not even my darling Henry James.”

Hesitating a moment, I say, “Funny, Ed happened to mention you think James didn’t really understand the Italian temperament.”

“Caro mio!”
Marina exclaims. “I would never say that James
didn’t
understand Italians. I probably said that his understanding of Italians was perhaps hardly as profound as some other European writers, such as … well, Stendhal, for instance. James’s forte, after all, was writing about Americans in Europe, including those who lived in Italy. His Italians are, shall we say, his lesser creations.”

We both fall ruminatively silent. “How about this,” Marina says at last. “Send the book back to Annie Calhoun. Tell her when and where he lies and fabricates. And while you’re at it, send them a doctor’s report to negate his telling that you have the infection he claims you have and also to prove that he has lied at least once in his own memoir. Then let his longtime editors figure out how to publish the material.”

“But why would
they
care if he lies? They only care about what he wrote.”

“You’re a living person whose reputation can be damaged. If you contact them to say something isn’t true and argue that it would hurt you if it was published without at least acknowledging that the writer lies, then you will have grounds for a lawsuit.”

“I would never trust Annie Calhoun to set things straight. Especially now that she’s been taken off the insurance policy.”

Marina looks at me with disapproval. “Not only did the man hinder you in life, he is now hindering you in death. Don’t misunderstand. I think his death is a pity. But I have come to the conclusion that it wasn’t a good thing for you to be with him. And nothing to do with his illness, either!” she emphasizes. “If, as you say, he was concerned that you were with him for his literary connections, it just proves my point that he was addicted to celebrity and fame. Probably he would have ultimately been too selfish to truly help the career of the person closest to him.”

“That’s absolutely untrue,” I argue. “He loved me. It was only sexual jealousy that compelled him to misbehave.”

“That’s no excuse at all!”

“But I know if I’d stayed with him, he would’ve helped my career. He always said he wanted to.”

Marina doesn’t respond at first. Finally, skeptically, she says, “Then you should believe what your instinct tells you. My point here is that celebrity is known to distort and corrupt common values. It is far better for actors and politicians and maybe even contemporary painters, but it’s not what a true writer should be about. I’ll tell you a little story. When they were making the movie version of
The Portrait of a Lady
, they filmed it here in the region. And an American producer actually called and asked me to let him film the interiors of the Palazzo Roccanera here at the Villa Guidi—because of the large rooms. I asked how much they would pay and this man—who sounded intelligent, mind you—explained that it was an
independent
production. He said they didn’t have a great deal of money and assured me that my villa was their first choice because of the size of the rooms. If I allowed them to make their film for a payment that turned out to be next to nothing, it would give us—the villa, he meant—a lot more prestige. I was shocked at his incredible stupidity, his audacity. And do you know what I told him? Very politely I said, ‘No, thanks. We already have enough prestige in this house.’”