The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales (4 page)

Sitting sideways at the little table, his legs neatly crossed, Signor Naccarelli received his coffee, black as pitch. He downed it in one swallow. The general pleasantries about Florence were duly exchanged. And they were staying? At the Grand. Ah.

“Domani festa
,” he noted. “I say tomorrow is a holiday, a big one for us here. It is our saint’s day, San Giovanni. You have perhaps seen in the Signoria, they are putting up the seats. Do you go?”

Well, she supposed they should really; it was a thing to watch. And the spectacle beforehand? She thought perhaps she could get tickets at the hotel. Signor Naccarelli was struck by an idea. He by chance had extra tickets and the seats were good. She must excuse it if his signora did not come; she was in mourning.

“Oh, I’m very sorry,” said Mrs. Johnson.

He waved his hand. No matter. Her family in Naples was a large one; somebody was always dying. He sometimes wore the black band, but then someone might ask him who was dead and if he could not really remember?
Che figura!
His humor and laugh came and were over as fast as something being broken. “And now—you will come?”

“Well—”

“Good! Then my son will arrange where we are to meet and the hour.” He was so quickly on his feet. “Signora.” He kissed her hand. “Signorina.” Clara had learned to put out her hand quite prettily in the European fashion and she liked to do it. With a nod to Fabrizio he was gone.

So the next afternoon they were guided expertly through the packed, noisy streets of the
festa
by Fabrizio, who found them a choice point for watching the parade of the nobles. It seemed that twice a year, and that by coincidence during the tourist season, Florentine custom demanded that titled gentlemen should wedge themselves into the family suit of armor, mount a horse and ride in procession, preceded by lesser men in striped knee breeches beating drums. Pennants were twirled as crowds cheered, and while it was doubtless not as thrilling a spectacle as the Palio in Siena, everyone agreed that it was in much better taste. Who in Florence would dream of bringing a horse into church? Afterward in the piazza, two teams in red and green jerseys would sweat their way through a free-for-all of kicking and running and knocking each other down. This was medieval
calcio;
the program explained that it was the ancestor of American footballs. Fabrizio, whose English was improving, managed to convey that his brother might have been entitled to ride with the nobles, although it was true he was not in direct line for a title. Instead, his cousin, the Marchese della Valle—there he went now, drooping along on that stupid black horse that was not distinguished. “My brother Giuseppe wish so much to ride today,” said Fabrizio. “Also he offer to my cousin the marchese much money.” He laughed.

Fabrizio wished his English were equal to relating what a figure Giuseppe had made of himself. The marchese, who was fat, slow-witted and greedy, certainly preferred twenty thousand lire to being pinched black and blue by forty pounds of steel embossed with unicorns. He giggled and said,
“Va bene
. All right.” He sat frankly admiring the tall, swaying lines of Giuseppe’s figure and planning what he would do with the money. Giuseppe was carried away by a glorious prevision of himself prancing about the streets amid fluttering pennants, the beat of drums, the gasp of ladies. He swaggered about the room describing his noble bearing astride a horse of such mettle and spirit as would land his cousin the marchese in the street in five minutes, clanging like the gates of hell. He knew where to find it—just such an animal! Nothing like that dull beast that the marchese kept stalled out in the country all year round and that by this time believed himself to be a cow. … Unfortunately the mother of the marchese had been listening all the time behind the door, and took that moment to break in upon them. The whole plan was canceled in no time at all, and Giuseppe was shown to the door. There was not a drop of nobility in his blood, he was reminded, and no such substitution would be tolerated by the council. As Giuseppe had passed down the street, the marchese had flung open the window and called down to him, “Mamma says you only want to impress the American ladies.” Everyone in the street had laughed at him and he was furious.

Perhaps it was as well, Fabrizio reflected, not to be able to relate all this to the Signora and Clara. What would they think of his family? It was better not to tell too much. Fabrizio’s brother Giuseppe had enjoyed many successes with women and had developed elaborate theories of love, which he would discuss in detail, relating examples from his own experience, always with the same serious savor, as if for the first time. No, it was very much wiser not to speak too much of Giuseppe to nice American ladies.

“My father wait for us in the piazza at this moment,” Fabrizio said.

Sitting beside Mrs. Johnson in the grandstand during the game, Signor Naccarelli dropped a significant remark or two. Her daughter was charming; his son could think of nothing else. It would be a sad day for Fabrizio when they went away. How nice to think that they would not go away at all, but would spend many months in Florence, perhaps take a small villa. Many outsiders did so. They wished never to leave.

Mrs. Johnson explained her responsibilities at home—her house, her husband and family. And what did Signor Johnson do? A businessman. He owned part interest in a cigarette company and devoted his whole time to the firm. Cigarettes—ah. Signor Naccarelli rattled off all the name brands until he found the right one. Ah.

And her daughter—perhaps the signorina did not wish to leave Florence?

“It is clear that she doesn’t,” said Mrs. Johnson. And then she thought, I must tell him now. It was the only sensible thing, and would end this ridiculous dragging on into deeper and deeper complications. She believed that he would understand, even help her to handle things in the right way. “You see—” she began, but just then the small medieval cannon that had fired a blank charge to announce the opening of the contest took a notion to fire again. Nobody ever seemed able to explain why. It was hard to believe that it had ever happened, for in the strong sun the flash of powder, which must have been considerable by another light, had been all but negated. All the players stopped and turned to look, and a man who had been standing between the cannon and the steps of the Palazzo Vecchio fell to the ground. People rushed in around him.

“Excuse me,” said Signor Naccarelli. “I think I know him.”

There followed a long series of discussions. Signor Naccarelli could be seen waving his hands as he talked. The game went on and everyone seemed to forget the man, who, every now and then, as the movement around him shifted, could be seen trying to get up. At last two of the drummers from the parade, still dressed in their knee
breeches, edged through the crowd with a stretcher and took him away.

Signor Naccarelli returned as the crowds were dispersing. He had apparently been visiting all the time among his various friends and relatives and appeared to have forgotten the accident. He took off his hat to Mrs. Johnson. “My wife and I invite you to tea with us. On Sunday at four. I have a little car and I will come to your hotel. You will come, no?”

5

Tea at the Naccarelli household revealed that they lived in a spacious apartment with marble floors and had more bad pictures than good furniture. They seemed comfortable, nonetheless, and a little maid in white gloves came and went seriously among them.

The Signora Naccarelli, constructed along ample Neapolitan lines, sat staring first at Clara and then at Mrs. Johnson and smiling at the conversation without understanding a word. Fabrizio sat near her on a little stool, let her pat him occasionally on the shoulder and gazed tenderly at Clara. Clara sat with her hands folded and smiled at everyone. She had more and more nowadays a rapt air of not listening to anything.

Giuseppe came in, accompanied by his wife. Sealed dungeons doubtless could not have contained them. He said at once in an accent so middle western as to be absurd, “How do you do? And how arrre you?” It was all he knew except “goodbye”; he had learned it the day before. Yet he gave the impression that he did not speak out of deference to his father, whose every word he followed attentively, making sure to laugh whenever Mrs. Johnson smiled.

Giuseppe’s wife was a slender girl with black hair cut short in the new fashion called simply “Italian.” She had French blood, though not as much as she led one to believe. She smoked from a short ivory holder clamped at the side of her mouth, and pretended to regard
Giuseppe’s amours—of which he had been known to boast in front of her, to the distress of his mama—with a knowing sidelong glance. Sometimes she would remind him of one of his failures. Now she took a place near Fabrizio and chatted with him in a low voice, casting down on him past the cigarette holder the eye of someone old in the ways of love, amused by the eagerness of the young. She looked occasionally at Clara, who beamed at her.

Signor Naccarelli kept the conversation going nicely and seemed to include everybody in the general small talk. There was family anecdote to draw upon; a word or two in Italian sufficed to give the key to which one he was telling now. Some little mention was made of the family villa in a nearby
paese
, blown up unfortunately by the Allies during the war—the Americans, in fact—but it was indeed a necessary military objective and these things happen in all wars.
Pazienza
. Mrs. Johnson remarked politely on the paintings, but he was quick to admit with a chuckle that they were no good whatsoever. Only one, perhaps; that one over there had been painted by Ghirlandaio—not the famous one in the guidebooks—on the occasion of some ancestor’s wedding; he could not quite remember whose.

“In Florence we have too much history. In America you are so free, free—oh, it is wonderful! Here if we move a stone in the street, who comes? The commission on antiquities, the scholars of the middle ages, priests, professors, committees of everything, saying, ‘Do not move it. No, you cannot move it.’ And even if you say, ‘But it has just this minute fallen on my foot,’ they show you no pity. In Rome they are even worse. It reminds me, do you remember the man who fell down when the cannon decide to shoot? Well, he is not well. They say the blood has been poisoned by the infection. If someone had given him penicillin. But nobody did. I hear from my friend who is a doctor at the hospital.” He turned to his wife.
“No, Mamma? Ti ricordi come ti ho detto
…”

When they spoke of the painting, Clara admired it. It was of course a Madonna and Child, all light-blue and pink flesh tones.
Clara had developed a great all-absorbing interest in these recurring ladies with little baby Jesus on their laps. She had a large collection of dolls at home and had often expressed her wish for a real live little baby brother. She did not see why her mother did not have one. The dolls cried only when she turned them over; they wet their pants only when you pushed something rubber, and so on through eye-closing and walking and saying, “Mama.” But a real one would do all these things whenever it wanted to. It certainly would, Mrs. Johnson agreed. She was glad those days, at any rate, were over.

Now Clara stared on with parted lips at the painting on which the soft evening light was falling. She had gotten it into her little head recently that Fabrizio and babies were somehow connected. The Signora Naccarelli did not fail to notice the nature of her gaze. On impulse she got up and crossed to sit beside Mrs. Johnson on the couch. She sat facing her and smiling with tears filling her eyes. She was all in black—black stockings, black crepe dress cut in a V at the neck, the small black crucifix on a chain.
“Mio Figlio,”
she pronounced slowly,
“è buono. Capisce?”

Mrs. Johnson nodded encouragingly.
“Si. Capisco.”

“Non lui,”
said the signora, pointing at Giuseppe, who glanced up with a wicked grin—he was delighted to be bad. The signora shook her finger at him. Then she indicated Fabrizio.
“Ma lui. Si,è buono. Va in chiesa, capisce?
” She put her hands together as if in prayer.

“No, ma Mamma. Che roba!”
Fabrizio protested.

“Si, è vero,”
the signora persisted solemnly; her voice fairly quivered.
“È buono. Capisce, signora?”

“Capisco
,” said Mrs. Johnson.

Everyone complimented her on how well she spoke Italian.

6

“Galileo, Dante Alighieri, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Michelangelo Buonarotti, Donatello, Amerigo Vespucci…” Clara chanted, reading
the names off the rows of statues of illustrious Tuscans that flanked the street. Her Italian was sounding more clearly every day.

“Hush!” said Mrs. Johnson.

“Leonardo da Vinci, Benvenuto Cellini, Petrarco. …” Clara went right on, like a little girl trailing a stick against the palings of a picket fence.

Relations between mother and daughter had deteriorated in recent days. In the full flush of pride at the subjugation of Fabrizio to her every whim, Clara, it is distressing to report, calculated that she could afford to stick out her tongue at her mother, and she did—at times, literally. She refused to pick up her clothes or be on time for any occasion that did not include Fabrizio. She was quarrelsome and she whined about what she didn’t want to do, lying with her elbows on the crumpled satin bedspread, staring out of the window. Or she took her Parcheesi board out of the suitcase and sat crosslegged on the floor with her back to the rugged beauties of the sky line across the Arno, shaking the dice in the wooden cup, throwing for two sets of “men” and tapping out the moves. When called she did not hear or would not answer, and Mrs. Johnson, smoking nervously in the adjoining room, thought the little sounds would drive her mad. She had never known Clara to show a mean or stubborn side. Yet the minute the girl fell beneath the eye of Fabrizio, her rapt, transported Madonna look came over her, and she sat still and gentle, docile as a saint, beautiful as an angel. Mrs. Johnson had never beheld such hypocrisy. She had let things go too far, she realized, and whereas before she had been worried, now she was becoming afraid.