The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales (2 page)

Personal dissociation and the failure of communication are themes in “Wisteria.” The hostess Evaline has so isolated herself in the artificial atmosphere of Roman social life as it is lived by transplanted English and Americans that she is perceived as being out of reach by people who knew her in England. Word of her ex-husband’s death has still not reached her a month after the fact; everyone assumes someone else has told her. (This recalls the situation in
Knights and Dragons
of Martha’s never seeing friends from the states anymore, and the confusion over whether or not her husband has been killed.) The artificiality of Evaline’s hair, which looks to her friend Charles Webley “like new aluminum,” symbolizes the unrealistic existence she is leading. Evaline is an Eve figure, whose actions have banished her from the garden of earthly communication.

Charles Webley, on the other hand, needs human communication and attempts to cultivate it (to draw someone into his web?). He finds it in the person of the quiet girl Dorothy, an artist in whom this superficial crowd finds little value. Her art is stuck away where no one can see or appreciate it. Webley is drawn to her rather than to the stunning Italian girl, a fixture at this sort of Roman party. And in
the end a flash of communication—the exchange of knowing glances—does occur between Webley and Dorothy. Like the unexpected fall of the wisteria blossom into his drink, it is a moment of grace.

“The Pincian Gate” revolves around an American artist in Rome, Gowan Palmer, who is just on the brink of recognition but who begins to erode his working time by accepting odd jobs like teaching English students. How much, the story asks, should one be expected to starve for the sake of art, and at what point does one give up the illusion of impending fame? Some of the story’s imagery and allusions to works by Edgar Allan Poe may remind readers of “The Cousins,” and the notion of Roman architecture as a tomb is reminiscent of
Knights
. As Prenshaw has pointed out, the two major characters resemble Irene Waddell and Barry Day in Spencer’s novel
No Place for an Angel
. As in most of Spencer’s Italian tales, danger lurks just over one’s shoulder. In
Piazza
it is the cannon that fires and accidentally kills a man in the crowd. In “The Pincian Gate” it is the nervous horse galloping dangerously near the English students, Sara and Paul, flinging dirt “hard as bullets” against Sara’s cheek. Sara and Paul perhaps could rescue Gowan Palmer from obscurity, if indeed that is to be his fate. But the complexity of human relationships intervenes. If Gowan is to be saved, it must be through his own inner resources, as it was for Martha Ingram in
Knights
. Perhaps like the hero of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
, whose name Gowan’s recalls, he will be tested, prove himself true, and escape unharmed. But the story stops short of exploring further, indicating direction only.

Finally “The Visit,” is a somewhat satirical story about an academic and his wife who pay a pilgrimage to a Great Man in the teacher’s field. It is rather like visiting the Wise Old Man of the Mountain. Indeed, the venerable scholar, Thompson, lives up a mountain, like Elijah, an appropriate parallel, who challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest on Mount Carmel.

The couples surname is Owens, and there is a lot owed between them. Judy, who has only two years of college, keeps her husband’s life together while keeping hidden her relative ignorance of his field. He takes her for granted and feels the world owes him a living in the form of grants and fellowships. The grasping nature of Professor Owens is contrasted with the resigned nature of Thompson, who no longer produces scholarship and has let the invaluable mosaics entrusted to his care become a playground for his grandchildren. If Thompson represents Elijah, the figure of the wise old prophet who represents intelligence and knowledge, Judy Owens is Salome figure and anima figure, blind because she does not see the meaning of things. However, by the conclusion of their visit, the scales have fallen from her eyes. She is the one who has the rare encounter with the Great Man. She also sees her husband for what he really is. In all probability their marriage will come apart, like the boulder that loosens under the wheels of their taxi as it speeds back down the mountain. Once dislodged, it must roll on to another level.

Perhaps a comment is in order concerning the relationship between the fiction of Henry James and Elizabeth Spencer’s Italian tales. In
Light
and
Knights
, especially, we find international themes that have come to be thought of as “Jamesian,” such as the contrast in character between Americans and Europeans—the former open and honest, the latter scheming and devious—as illustrated in the elaborate cat-and-mouse game played by Signor Naccarelli and Margaret Johnson. And the internal narratives of
Knights
may owe a debt to the famous Jamesian “method.” But on several occasions Spencer has disclaimed any real fondness for James and denied his influence. Rather, she sees
Piazza
as more of a tall tale similar to those in Boccaccio’s
Decameron
, which satirize the deviousness and urge toward the complication of family matters found in Florentine males.

Although Spencer lived in Montreal from 1958 to 1986, in those twenty-eight years she wrote relatively little about Canada. The snowy mountains obviously held less magic for her than the cotton-fields of Mississippi and the piazzas of Italy. The presence of the cold
north country has been felt strongly only in “Jean-Pierre,” a story about what the French experienced in Montreal in their quest for assimilation, and in the 1991 novel
The Night Travellers
, partially set in Canada during the exile of American draft defectors during the Vietnam War.

The seven tales of allure and intrigue in the present collection are the fruits of one of Americas best living writers, works that reveal her lifelong love affair with the art of fiction as well as with Italy. Boccaccio, with whom she feels an affinity, would have been charmed by her ironies and contrasts, her seven chiaroscuros of lights and darks. She explores both sides of the moon.

—Robert Phillips

Referred Reading

Anderson, Hilton.
Elizabeth Spencer
. Jackson: Mississippi Library Commission, 1976.

Greene, Sally. “Re-Placing the Hero:
The Night Travellers
as Novel of Female Self-Discovery,”
The Southern Quarterly
32, no. 1 (Fall 1994): 33-40.

Hammond, David. “‘Parts of a Novel That Will Probably Never Get Written’: An Interview with Elizabeth Spencer,”
The Southern Quarterly
, 33, no. 2-3 (Winter-Spring 1995), 85-106.

Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman.
Conversations with Elizabeth Spencer
. Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1991.

——.
Elizabeth Spencer
. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985.

Roberts, Terry.
Self and Community in the Fiction of Elizabeth Spencer
. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

The Light in the Piazza
and Other Italian Tales

The Light in the Piazza

1

On a June afternoon at sunset, an American woman and her daughter fended their way along a crowded street in Florence and entered with relief the spacious Piazza della Signoria. They were tired from a day of tramping about with a guidebook, often in the sun. The café that faced the Palazzo Vecchio was a favorite spot for them; without discussion they sank down at an empty table. The Florentines seemed to favor other gathering places at this hour. No cars were allowed here, though an occasional bicycle skimmed through, and a few people, passing, met in little knots of conversation, then dispersed. A couple of tired German tourists, all but harnessed in fine camera equipment, sat at the foot of Cellini’s triumphant
Perseus
, slumped and staring at nothing.

Margaret Johnson, lighting a cigarette, relaxed over her aperitif and regarded the scene that she preferred before any other, anywhere. She never got enough of it, and now in the clear evening light that all the shadows had gone from—the sun being blocked away by the tight bulk of the city—she looked at the splendid old palace and forgot that her feet hurt. More than that: here she could almost lose the sorrow that for so many years had been a constant of her life. About the crenellated tower where the bells hung, a few swallows darted.

Margaret Johnsons daughter, Clara, looked up from the straw of her orangeade. She, too, seemed quieted from the fretful mood to which the long day had reduced her. “What happened here, Mother?”

“Well, the statue over there, the tall white boy, is by Michelangelo. You remember him. Then—though it isn’t a very happy thought—there was a man burned to death right over there, a monk.”

Any story attracted her. “Why was he burned?”

“Well, he was a preacher who told them they were wicked and they didn’t like him for it. People were apt to be very cruel in those days. It all happened a long while ago. They must feel sorry about it, because they put down a marker to his memory.”

Clara jumped up. “I want to see!” She was off before her mother could restrain her. For once Margaret Johnson thought, Why bother? In truth the space before them, so satisfyingly wide, like a pasture, might tempt any child to run across it. To Margaret Johnson, through long habit, it came naturally now to think like a child. Clara, she now saw, running with her head down to look for the marker, had bumped squarely into a young Italian. There went the straw hat she had bought in Fiesole. It sailed off prettily, its broad red ribbon a quick mark in the air. The young man was after it; he contrived to knock it still farther away, once and again, though the day was windless; his final success was heroic. Now he was returning, smiling, too graceful to be true; they were all too graceful to be true. Clara was talking to him. She pointed back toward her mother. Oh, Lord! He was coming back with Clara.

Margaret Johnson, confronted at close range by two such radiant young faces, was careful not to produce a very cordial smile.

“We met him before, Mother. Don’t you remember?”

She didn’t. They all looked like carbon copies of one another.

He gave a suggestion of a bow. “My—store—” English was coming out. “It—is—near—Piazza della Repubblica—how do you say? The beeg square. Oh, yes, and on Sunday,
si fanno la musica
. Museek, bom, bom.” He was a whole orchestra, though his gestures
were small. “And the lady—” Now a busty Neapolitan soprano sprang to view, in pink lace, one hand clenched to her heart. Margaret Johnson could not help laughing. Clara was delighted.

Ah, he had pleased. He dropped the role at once. “My store—is there.” A chair was vacant. “Please?” He sat. Here came the inevitable card. They were shoppers, after all, or would be. Well, it was better than compliments, offers to guide them, thought Mrs. Johnson. She took the card. It was in English except for the unpronounceable name. “‘Via Strozzi 8,’” she read. “‘Ties. Borsalino Hats. Gloves. Handkerchiefs. Everything for the Gentlemens.’”

“Not for you. But for your husband,” he said to Mrs. Johnson. In these phrases he was perfectly at home.

“He isn’t here, unfortunately.”

“Ah, but you must take him presents. Excuse me.” Now Clara was given a card. “And for your husband, also.”

She giggled. “I don’t have a husband!”

“Signorina! Ah! Forgive me.” He touched his breast. Again the quick suggestion of a bow. “Fabrizio Naccarelli.”

It sounded like a whole aria.

“I’m Clara Johnson,” the girl said at once. Mrs Johnson closed her eyes.

“Jean—Jean—” He strained for it.

“No,
Johnson.”

“Ah! Van Johnson!”

“That’s right!”

“He is—
cugino
—
parente
—
famiglia?
”

“No,” said Mrs. Johnson irritably. She prided herself on her tolerance and interest among foreigners, but she was tired, and Italians are so inquisitive. Given ten words of English they will invent a hundred questions from them. This one at least was sensitive. He withdrew at once. “Clara,” he said as if to himself. No trouble there. The girl gave him her innocent smile.

Indeed, she could be remarkably lovely when pleased. The somewhat long lines of her cheek and jaw drooped when she was down-hearted,
but happiness drew her up perfectly. Her dark-blue eyes grew serene and clear; her chestnut hair in its long girlish cut shadowed her smooth skin.

Due to an accident years ago, she had the mental age of a child of ten. But anyone on earth, meeting her for the first time, would have found this incredible. Mrs. Johnson had managed in many tactful ways to explain her daughter to young men without wounding them. She could even keep them from feeling too sorry for herself. “Every mother in some way wants a little girl who never grows up. Taken in that light, I do often feel fortunate. She is remarkably sweet, you see, and I find her a great satisfaction.” She did not foresee any such necessity with an Italian out principally to sell everything for the “gentlemens.” No, he could not offer them anything else. No, he certainly could not pay the check. He had been very kind … very kind … yes, yes, very, very kind. …