The Conversion (9 page)

Ed, who’d managed to read the novella before we met, claimed to admire the writing. But later on he told me quite pointedly that he felt that I had yet to find my real subject matter. I asked him: If writing about a harrowing event in my life wasn’t my true subject matter, then what was? He shook his head and shrugged and wouldn’t pursue the
conversation
any further. This only helped to deepen my worry that I just didn’t have it.

Marina grabs hold of both my arms. “What I want to say is that you must carry on, because there is insight there and intelligence. Your best work will come when you’re feeling more confident. If I hadn’t liked what I read, I would have just sent it back to Ferrara without saying anything. The fact I speak of it means something.”

“I appreciate your making the effort to read it.”

“Oh, stop it. I wanted to, of course.” She takes a step backward and looks at me appraisingly. “Look, Russell, we all want our work to be loved unconditionally. Just as
we
want to be loved, just as we want our
children
to be loved. And our
dogs
, for that matter.”

“And when it’s not?”

“There’s always the next book.”

“I don’t know if the next book is ever going to happen.”

“It must happen!”

“Can we just go to the
carabinieri
now?” I say in exasperation.

Marina gives up. “Certainly we can go.”

We wedge ourselves into Marina’s tiny Renault and start down the long driveway and through the tall entry gates, then take a narrow road that follows the perimeter of a stone wall contouring the property line. We
cross a small stream on a metal bridge wide enough for only one car and begin looping through backstreets, passing suburban-looking tracts of homes and apartments built since the Second World War that resemble the faux Mediterranean housing one finds in more arid regions of the United States. Still feeling a bit deflated following our brief discussion of the novella, I speak little, and Marina wisely decides to avoid pressing me into conversation.

We approach a railroad crossing that is momentarily barricaded to traffic and wait until a local train from Florence lumbers past on its way to Pisa. Teenaged passengers are hanging out the windows, grinning like monkeys, smoking cigarettes, which are now forbidden onboard. I’ve ridden these trains all over Tuscany and even now can conjure up their tang of cigarettes and rank body odor and motor fumes.

We are finally heading toward the city’s high brick walls, which are forty feet high and more than three hundred years old. There are walls in the interior that date back to the time of the Romans, including the remnants of a small amphitheater that was once used for competitions and spectacles. Wide green lawns surround these battlements, and there are five or six portals all the way around that allow foot traffic and cars with permits to enter and leave the city. We don’t venture inside the city, but rather join the throng of snarling traffic that keeps encircling ramparts that protect a core of sandalwood-colored buildings ranging in age from two hundred to eleven hundred years old.

Honking cars follow within inches of one another, motor scooters desperately weaving in and out. Most Italians seem to drive with
inexplicable
urgency. This is ironic in that they also seem to have written the manual on how to relax and be leisurely—so this automotive madness is at once schizophrenic and inscrutable. And it’s not just the men who drive insanely. I’ve seen ladies leaning heavily on their horns, making the obscene two-fingered gesture for cuckold and then going on to execute perilous maneuvers. Down in the Maremma in the southern part of Tuscany, I once saw a woman who had to be at least eighty years old pass a cluster of five slower-moving cars on a two-lane straightaway. Driving in the middle of the pack, I watched her whiz past and neatly tuck herself back on the proper side of the road, barely avoiding a head-on collision with an enormous truck. Nobody this ancient relic passed honked at her. Everybody seemed to take her momentary madness in stride.

Marina, by contrast, is a more vigilant driver who suffers the constant indignity of having other cars honking and cutting in front of her. She registers displeasure but doesn’t seem to care about being a slowpoke. She’ll live longer with this attitude, I decide.

We finally pull up to a modern building of white stone and glass windows unadorned with the characteristic Tuscan shutters. Milling in and out of the entrance are men dressed in red-and-navy uniforms with sashes and trousers that are more militarily stylized and form-fitting than those worn by their American policemen counterparts. Several
carabinieri
seem to recognize Marina and say hello. At first I can’t understand why she is so readily identifiable. Could it actually be because she is an
award-winning
writer? After all, she did win the Strega Prize, a dark-horse favorite who beat out the great Alberto Moravia, an upset victory that was broadcast on Italian national television. But I will soon learn there is a more pertinent reason: The local head of the
carabinieri
was her schoolmate at the
liceo
, and has remained a close friend.

She turns to me. “You know the difference between
carabinieri
and
polizia
, don’t you?”

“The
carabinieri
are national police, aren’t they?”

“Precisely. They are of the state.”

While one of the older
carabinieri
leads us to the interrogation room where they are holding the man who broke into the
dependence
, I manage to catch the glance of a tall, muscular
carabiniere
with a deep tan and startling pale green eyes—this is the face of complete heartbreak, I think to myself. It’s not a face that is totally unfamiliar to me, either. I’ve seen this sort of mien before in Italy, the refined features that one expects to see in a European combined with an American openness, broadness, and natural masculinity. The dazzling eyes really pierce through me. And then he actually smiles.

Marina and I are brought to the small interrogation room. Viewed through a thick glass window, it is large enough to fit a rectangular table and a small bookshelf filled with thick manuals of, I imagine, police code. Suddenly, euphoria: The handsome
carabiniere
is standing next to me, his veined masculine hands fiddling with a ring of keys to open the door. As the three of us go in, I wonder how I’m possibly going to concentrate.

The prisoner is huddled over a book that looks like a religious text, probably the Koran. He runs his fingers across columns of print, lips
trembling with unintelligible words. Finally he glances up at us. From the accident he has a large purple contusion on his forehead. His complexion is dark with rough patches of acne, his hair thick and glossy and wavy black, his beard unkempt. And although we lock eyes for a moment, there is no familiar flicker of recognition on his part, no extrasensory inkling that we’ve come in contact in the recent past. Not that I expected there to be. He glances away quickly, a tremor of agitation knitting his features. His cowering could mean something, or it could mean nothing at all.

Taking off his official jacket, the
carabiniere
instructs us to sit down at the table. His forearms, lightly dusted with hair, are broad. His biceps swell against the conservative cut of his light blue short-sleeved shirt. He’s too preoccupied with his duties, he’s too unself-conscious, and I inwardly wager that he’s got to be incorruptibly straight. Alas, I have found that this sort of easygoing masculinity is rarely a characteristic of a man who is sexually interested in other men.

“You
do
speak Italian, don’t you?” Marina presumptively addresses the prisoner. She has already informed me that Albanian immigrants usually have a good command of the language from having watched so many Italian programs on Albanian satellite television.

The man nods.

“Good. Why don’t you tell me how long you’ve been in Italy.”

The man holds up one hand, fingers spread wide.

“Answer her!” the
carabiniere
orders him.

“Five years.”

“And where do you live now?”

“In the camp by the river,” the man says.

“The warehouses, you mean?”

He nods.

Marina shakes her head. “Terrible conditions there,” she remarks to the
carabiniere
. Then to the prisoner, “Does the van belong to you?”

“Borrowed it.”

“And have you lived in this camp since you came from Albania?”

“Yes.”

“And you came to Italy by boat, presumably?”

“Yes, by boat.”

“We know which dwelling is his in the camp,
Signora
,” the
carabiniere
informs her.

Marina turns to him. “So you could check and see if there is anything—”

“I was the one. I did it last year, too,” says the man.

“Ah …” Marina glances sharply at the
carabiniere
, who calmly explains that the man has already confessed this. “That’s what I came to find out for my own personal reasons.” She turns to me and, seeming relieved, says in English, “Nothing to worry about now,” but doesn’t elaborate. Then she once again addresses the man in Italian, but sounds more lighthearted when she explains to him, “My outer buildings have been burglarized far too often—much more than the villas surrounding me. As there is hardly anything in them, it makes no sense to me.”

Eyes down, the man nervously shuffles his feet back and forth under his metal chair. Finally he looks up at Marina balefully. “But they said you are rich.”

“Who said?”

“People in my camp.”

“Relative to them I suppose I am. But truthfully we have very few things that will resell very well.”

The man shrugs.

“Shame about the statue,
Signora
,” says the
carabiniere
. “I was told—”

“Let’s hope it can be repaired,” Marina remarks. Then, turning back to the prisoner, she says, “Do you have a family?” The man explains there is a wife and two daughters. Shaking her head, she turns to the
carabiniere
, “If you can find out and let me know where they are, I will make sure they get food and some money.” Then back to the prisoner: “And what you stole last year—”

“Sold most of it,” the man says simply, looking at Marina with great solemnity.

“Of course you did. To live you sold it. I should’ve assumed that.”

When the interview is finally concluded, we get up and file out of the cell and Marina excuses herself to say hello to her friend, the head of the
carabinieri
.

After a stretch of stiff silence the handsome
carabiniere
says to me, “She’s bringing food to the family? That’s kind of her. But then she comes from a family of do-gooders.” He shakes his head. “Sad situation. I just wish these people could know how difficult it’s going to be before they get on those overcrowded boats and cross the sea.” 

“They get hooked on the illusion of paradise.”

“Yes, this is true.” He suddenly grins, folding his arms across his chest. “So you’re American, aren’t you?”

The gesture, which seems flirtatious, leaves me a bit light-headed. I nod.

“Your Italian is pretty good; I wouldn’t necessarily know that you were American. Except that you’re built in that American way. Most Italian men are slimmer. Even the ones who go to the gym.” He frowns. “And why don’t I see you at the gym?”

“I need to find one.” I’m having difficulty maintaining eye contact with him without blushing.

“I will take you. My gym is actually not far from where you live.”

I wonder stupidly how he knows where I live and this must register on my face because he says, “Villa Guidi. Everybody knows the Villa Guidi.”

He gives me the gym’s address, assuring me that Marina will know it, and invites me to meet him there at five o’clock the following day. I follow him to a waiting room outside a closed office where I can hear Marina arguing vociferously. “My name is Lorenzo,” he says, smiling.

“Russell,” I reply. We shake hands and he walks away.

Watching him, I am reminded that here in Italy, my sexual signal-reading is consigned to a very low frequency. Body gestures, innuendos,
double-meanings
are cultural specifics that take years of living in a country to decipher. In America, I would know definitively if this man was trying to pick me up. In Italy, I haven’t a clue, although I do have my hopes.

Moments later Marina comes storming out of the office and says haughtily, “Let’s go.” Once we get outside and are making our way to the car, she fumes, “I’m here because of Stefano. I am here to make sure this man is not one of those who threatened to harm him. He isn’t. He’s merely and only a thief. And yet he has to stay in jail. His trial won’t be for at least six months. Which is a problem because his family will go hungry.”

“Well, he
was
caught stealing. Aren’t there social services to help his dependents?” I ask as we get into the car and Marina begins driving us home.

“Of course there are, but never enough. I don’t want to be responsible for a mother and children who starve. The problem is I expect nothing less than for this man to steal. Nobody gives these people jobs or education.”

Marina gets distracted for a moment as she maneuvers to change lanes in a stream of traffic. “I suppose I should just be relieved that this was the
man who robbed us last year rather than one of the people who may have threatened my husband.”

After a few moments of silence, I say, “Marina, could you tell me specifically what it is that Stefano writes that puts him in danger?”

She nods and then slams her horn at an audacious Mercedes
convertible
. “Well, first of all, Stefano’s mother died when he was ten, and his father ended up marrying a cultivated, very beautiful woman from Syria. From her, Stefano learned Arabic so that he can speak with some of the Muslims who live in Italy. And he has been warned time and again by the moderate Muslims trying to make a life here that the government should cooperate with
them
and be advised on which mosques in Italy are being used to spawn jihadists and that the government should, in fact, shut these mosques down. And Stefano has written precisely this.”